Interview: Improving your self-esteem through jeans with Kelly Ernst of Redenim

Passion is infectious. I found this trait in one of our new members, Kelly Ernst of Redenim, and was inspired to go behind the scenes.

Redenim is a personal on-demand jean stylist. My providing some quick info on your measurements, for a moderate fee they send you 3 pairs of jeans they have found through their algorithm which will be perfect for you. Austin, Texas — with its history of denim loving cowboys — is no better place to serve as the incubator for one of the first data-driven fashion service providers.

HW: So Kelly, how and why did you start Redenim?

KE: I started off, kind of years ago, when I first figured out how jeans really fit women’s bodies in terms of finding the right length, the right rise, the right style, that going to work for somebody. To start, I was just kind of helping my friends on one offs as they were shopping for jeans as they knew I just kind of was like a pants whisperer, I guess. And I was just able to match them with the perfect pairs that fit them, right from the ‘get go’ so they wouldn’t have to get things altered and it kind of expanded out from there. People told other people, and I realised there’s a really strong demand here, so I took the original spreadsheets that I used and the charts that I had built and began to create a software programme that would do that for me so I would be able to give that personal styling experience to a lot more people at scale. And it was like the next thing I knew I had a company.

HW: Wow. Very cool. So you just started building from spreadsheets and charts?

KE: I did yeah, I’m an engineer by trade and used to be a developer for J. P. Morgan Chase here in the U.S. so I always had this engineer’s brain about things — style and fashion seems like it’s really subjective and it’s all about taste but there are a few things that are really driven by numbers and surprisingly the way that pants and jeans specifically fit — there’s a formula behind that. Once I figured that out, I was able to write a series of algorithms around it, and the next thing I knew, these super crazy complicated spreadsheets and charts turned into a software platform!

HW: That’s really cool, blending engineering, developing and fashion. So as a female founder have you found it was specifically important then to create a movement that would empower other women? How did it kind of come about that the startup is obviously orientated into empowering women and helping them too?

KE: Yeah actually so this is one of those problems where you know when it comes to finding the perfect pair of jeans, women are not agnostic about it. You know they care very very deeply and they have these extraordinarily emotional responses to both the problem and the solution and once I saw just how powerful this was and just how far deep it ran for other women I was like ok this isn’t just like a little novel thing that is getting built.

We’re talking about women’s self esteem, about their self image, how they feel in their own bodies. And if I can in the littlest possible way take away some of the stress and self confidence issues that they feel when not being able to find clothes that fit them, then “I have to build that company”.

But we always joke, it’s like jeans, bras and bathing suits are the worst thing to shop for…

HW: It is though! It is definitely, I mean the other day I bought two pairs of jeans and spend about two hours in the shop! So yeah I would need your app to sort me out. Do you work outside the States at the moment or are you mainly in the U.S.?

KE: We’re just in the U.S. at the moment, because we ship all of our jeans. We buy them online like any other retailer at wholesale and then we sell them. But I’m looking into ways in doing a drop shipping solution, outside of the U.S. in Europe and Australia, where there’s actually a really big market. I mean the platform still applies, we can still sort things, it’s just a matter of figuring out the actual logistics of like drop shipping from somewhere that’s closer to the customer.

HW: So other than shipping, did you have any challenges that you specifically encountered when you started Redenim in 2015?

KE: I think you know like funding is always the big one for companies right and where I am in Austin, it’s very difficult to raise money as a woman, it’s very difficult to raise money in the fashion industry, it’s very difficult to raise money as an early stage company — so it’s like I had three things up against me.

And when your female founder leads a predominantly female team, solving a problem that is for women, it can be really difficult sometimes to get investors to really understand, empathise and see the potential if it’s not a problem that directly affects them. And I have heard anecdotally about this it’s like “oh if you’re pitching guys and they don’t have any problems shopping for jeans, try to really explain it to them, try to show them the numbers, you know the things that are more important to them”. Whereas what actually works for me when I raised my first seed round of funding of 100K dollars earlier this year, one of the partners was male and he flat out told me “I don’t get it, I don’t think this is a good idea”.

So I say, “Okay, are you married, do you have kids?” and he said “Yeah I’m married and I’ve got two daughters” So I put them through the process. You know his wife and his daughters, came to him in tears “oh my gosh I can’t believe this person’s service has found jeans that we’ve never been able to find”. And he came back a few days later and said to me “Okay, when I saw my daughter in tears because this was the first pair of jeans that had ever fit her, I got it”.

So for me I think it was about finding a really creative way to overcome that, because even if it’s intrinsic to the business, this is what I do and I’ve learned to never take no for an answer and take every opportunity to show and get them to understand the process even if it doesn’t directly affect them (the investor).

HW: You definitely took the best out of that opportunity to show him you’re doing something really good. That’s a really creative way of convincing him — not sure if you could use that approach through Fundsup but you can definitely try! So, how do the challenges differ as a female founder, from three years ago until now?

KE: I think you go through phases, at the beginning it was like validating the product and making sure there was an actual need, and even if it’s obvious you have to do it because you might have a problem you set out to solve, a few of your friends might have it, but if it’s not something that’s very prevalent across the market place, you can spin your wheels for a very very long time and not get anywhere. So I think the first real challenges were around product market fit and validating and all of that. And now that we unequivocally have that established and have a little bit of funding — we’re actually coming up on our official seed round of 1,5M dollars — now that we’re at this point where we have paying customers, we have a warehouse, we have staff. It’s really about organising the business and a way to scale.

We have to make sure that everything we’re doing and building now, is going to be a rock solid foundation for when we add more and more customers, staff, processes and workflows. And I tend to get a little bit ‘in my head’ about if this is going to scale, if this is going to break at a thousand customers.

HW: I mean you’re very passionate about what you do and it’s come from a place of need. So I think you’re on the right track, let’s hope we can start to alleviate these funding troubles for you, keep it up!