Introduction
Parenting can be a challenge, even for the most organized of people. With concerns like food, schooling, and socialization, the sustainability of kids’ clothing is often not a priority for parents. What is a priority is cost — especially since children can outgrow their clothes in a matter of months or even weeks.
Enter Mightly, a company with its sights set on making sure parents have access to affordable, ethically conscious clothing options for their kids. We talked with co-founder and CEO Tierra Forte about the importance of sustainable production, affordability, and the company’s focus moving forward.
Note: This interview was conducted over phone and email. It has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What inspired you to take the leap and start Mightly?
I’ve been working in the fashion and textile industry for more than two decades now, from design to production to marketing to management. Mightly is a sustainable children’s apparel company, which obviously begs two questions — why sustainable and why children’s?
Early in my career, in 2005, I traveled to China for work. At a factory I was visiting, I remember standing over a wastewater catchment. The water was a beautiful, bright, bright blue, made so alluring — it took me a moment to realize — by the factory’s chemical waste and run-off fabric dyes. Textile mills, I soon learned, generate around a fifth of the world’s pollution. Non-organic cotton farming is the fourth largest agricultural user of pesticides, and the water used to grow cotton is often siphoned from drought-threatened rivers and lakes. Since then I have worked to make the apparel industry more sustainable through positions at Fair Trade USA (where I helped develop fair trade standards for textiles and factories), at Pact Apparel (a sustainable adult wear company), and by consulting for companies like Patagonia on sustainability issues.
At the same time, after my second child was born, I found myself growing increasingly frustrated by my inability to find sustainable children’s clothing. Sure, I could find fair trade organic kids clothing — if I wanted to pay $60 for a single t-shirt in some fancy boutique. Through my long-standing sustainable textile connections, I knew how to produce quality apparel made from certified organic cotton and produced at fair-trade certified factories. I knew I could do it more affordably and better than any other company out there.
In 2019 my two co-founders and I launched Mightly, with the goal of creating an authentically sustainable brand for the millions of parents who want to buy from brands that share their values.
Who is on your team and how did you come together?
I founded Mightly with two other women, Anya Emerson, our COO, and Barrie Brouse, our Chief Creative Officer. We’ve all known each other for decades, and Barrie and I had worked together previously. Between the three of us, we have more than 50 years of apparel industry experience with complementary skill sets in design, production, operations, legal, strategy, and marketing.
We came together starting in 2018 when Anya and I were both ready for a career change. I was ready to start my own company for the second time — I had founded another startup focusing on high-end sustainable denim a decade earlier – and Anya, a leading domestic violence attorney, was looking for an opportunity to promote women’s economic development and women-founded businesses.
After much brainstorming and a lot of market research we discovered a gap in the market for affordable, easy to find, and authentically sustainable children’s wear. As soon as we identified the enormous opportunity in children’s wear, I knew exactly who else I wanted to join our founding team. Barrie is an award-winning children’s wear designer and has extensive global product development and production experience. I knew both Anya and Barrie had the drive and grit you want in a co-founder, and my choice of co-founders has proven to be the best decision I’ve ever made!
What are the biggest business lessons you learned from your previous company, Del Forte Denim?
The three most important lessons I learned as a founder are:
- Product is not as important as you think. This may sound controversial in consumer goods circles, so I’ll elaborate. Having an amazing, differentiated product that your target customer loves and is willing to pay for is, of course, essential. But a lot of people confuse having an amazing product with having a viable business. If you don’t also have a marketing strategy, a financial plan, operational infrastructure, the ability to scale, and the resources to do so, having the best product in the world does not equate to business success.
- Have a Plan B (and C and D). Not to state the obvious, but with startups, things rarely go as planned. When we launched in summer 2019, we had no idea that there would soon be a global pandemic causing massive economic uncertainty and unprecedented supply chain disruptions. Even before the first US shutdowns were announced, we had a worst-case scenario mapped out and were able to quickly adapt to the new reality.
- Spend more time thinking about collaborators and less time thinking about competitors. When I launched Del Forte Denim, the sustainable fashion space was very small and the whole sector had a “rising tide lifts all boats” attitude, which I have carried forward. While I don’t totally ignore what our competitors are doing, I put a lot more time and energy into figuring out how to collaborate with non-competitive, like-minded brands.
What does the competitive landscape look like, and how do you differentiate?
Most children’s wear brands that claim to be sustainable are expensive, only available in fancy boutiques, and make vague claims like “eco-friendly” or “ethically-made.” Mightly’s products are affordable, available where parents already shop on a regular basis, and are third-party certified to both environmental and social standards. In fact, we’re the only organic and fair-trade certified children’s wear brand on Amazon or Target.com.
What is Mightly’s marketing strategy?
For our direct-to-consumer business, Mightly.com, we have an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes community-based marketing (such as influencer marketing), a brand ambassador program, brand partnerships, and a very effective customer referral program. We also use more traditional marketing channels like search and social advertising and direct mail. On e-commerce marketplaces, such as Amazon and Target.com, we use in-platform advertising and promotional opportunities to drive traffic to our listings and branded storefront. We have just retained a national sales manager and a team of regional sales reps to develop our wholesale channel so that we have a brick and mortar presence as well.
How do you intend to use the money you raise this round to scale the business?
Because we are already operating our Amazon and Target.com channels’ profitably, 80% of the funds we are raising are to support customer acquisition for Mightly.com. These expenses include hiring a head of e-commerce, investments in our community-based marketing programs, content creation for our own social channels, and testing digital marketing channels. The rest will be invested in operations and customer service support required to support growth.
How and when can you reach break-even and become profitable?
We are on track to break even by the end of 2023. We have already made the infrastructure investments needed to get to profitability, so we expect minimal increase in overhead as we grow revenue to $3 million in annual recurring revenue over the next 16 months. Revenue drivers in Q4 and next year will be:
- Increased sales of existing products on Amazon. We have just been accepted into the exclusive Amazon Launchpad program, which supports sellers that Amazon has determined to have high growth potential.
- An expanded product offering on Target.com.
- Investments in customer acquisition for Mightly.com.
- Wholesale expansion led by our newly retained national sales manager and her team of regional sales representatives.
We look forward to seeing where Tierra and her team take the company. Mightly is currently raising capital on Wefunder.
