Before Women’s History Month 2018 ends, I thought I’d contribute this chapter in the Jogbra story. It is a revision of one that appeared earlier.
So often I get asked to tell this tale. Here’s a part of it.
Early “Jockbra”
We’d done it. Polly and I had transformed my idea into a reality: we had created the very first sports bra.
Sitting around on my living room floor in Burlington Vermont with Polly at the end of that summer in 1977, I recall brainstorming about what this new invention might mean, what to do next, and how to proceed. We dismissed two options right away: sewing the garments ourselves and, in effect, starting manufacturing biz (Polly especially was against this, having had experience with a few such operations in NYC) and selling the product design outright to a bigger company, sure of a difficult/bad deal from double-crossing sharks preying on us naive artsy types. (I was against this, having seen my father go through the agonies of pitching his ideas and invention to the corporate establishment).
There was the option to subcontract out the cut & sew processes and go into biz ourselves with the sales and marketing end. Then maybe sell it mail-order? Polly was indifferent about this. She wanted to design costumes. Business was not her forte. She’d been happy to help me bring the design into reality but was not prepared to go into a business around it. She was clear.
I was enthusiastic, already marketing in my head — thinking of a new kind of business, a new way of business, a women’s business.
Polly’s assistant up in the UVM costume shop, Hinda, was there for this conversation. Unlike Polly she was as enthusiastic as I was. She had always been athletic; although not a runner, she was into yoga and quite a skier. She got the potential for this product. I looked at her anew. In an aside, I asked Polly if she’d mind if I asked Hinda to join us officially. She shrugged, saying no problem, fine, fine.
By women, for women was envisioned as our tagline. We wouldn’t do business like men. We’d be cooperative, not competitive, inclusive, not exclusive. We weren’t lingerie (said with a sneer), Jock Bra was serious athletic equipment! We’d… we’d…. You can imagine the scene. Naifs.
Earlier in 1977 I had completed my Bachelor’s degree through the University of Vermont’s Evening Division — “Continuing Education” or “Adult Ed” by other names. I was also working part-time as an administrator in a not-for-profit residential treatment program for adolescent drug abusers, “full” time as an artist/artisan (stained glass at that time; it was the 70s, after all), and taking varied courses at night, and oh yes, I was married. A tad busy.
I loved learning/school and was very excited to have been accepted into the University’s Graduate Degree program in Educational Administration. I had started graduate classes while Polly and I were designing Jock Bra prototypes.
In retrospect, that period of time was my personal “perfect storm” brewing.
By the next summer of 1978, my marriage was over, and divorce was underway. I had no driver’s license. Epilepsy made that difficult at that time. And the prospect of living alone post-divorce was daunting as I’d been told that it was life-threatening (epilepsy again).
So after Polly and Hinda left Vermont at the end of the summer of ‘77, I formed a corporation around the Jockbra and distributed equal shares to Polly and to Hinda as well. I figured my new bra might be a nice little mail-order business on the side to help finance grad school while I found a real job I could walk to, continued with my studies and figured out how to make this new single life work. And frankly, I was frightened. I had, after all, been told all my life that if I had a grand mal seizure while alone I could die. And no license! Oh, well! Courage! Stuck up over my desk, I had a hand-lettered sign:
PERSEVERE!
Jockbra-soon-to-become-Jogbra trumped all that, both plans and fears. Well, the fears got suppressed, then morphed into new ones. The plans got re-made. What’s the saying? “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”
Hinda was stuck in South Carolina that summer of ’78, so I mailed her the precious prototype. I was worried that in my chaotic divorcing state, it might get lost in the proverbial shuffle, and frankly, other than being enthusiastic and supportive (pun intended), she had not yet “earned her shares,” so to speak.
That changed quickly. On a bicycle ride one day, she noticed a sign for a start-up cut & sew operation. She took them our prototype bra and asked how such a garment might be mass-produced and what it might cost. Changing the original design somewhat (me going “Yikes! What?” when I found out), they came up with a garment that could be manufactured for a reasonable cost. Hinda’s Dad generously loaned us the money for the initial production run of the first athletic supporter for women, and I opened up a corporate bank account in Vermont. We were moving forward.
But it seemed in some areas of the country, South Carolina in 1978 among them, “jock” wasn’t such a nice word, so Jogbra was born. I think 12 dozen were manufactured and shipped to me in my Vermont apartment. My living room became the warehouse, my tiny dining room the office. A small ad in a running magazine of the time showed the product and listed my address as the contact point. Let’s remember: this was before computers and websites. The orders started rolling in. OMG.
Meanwhile, Hinda’s stay in South Carolina was over. She drove to NYC and stopped in to visit Polly. There she bought the majority of the shares I had issued to Polly, telling her that I was not going forward with the business after all. That convinced Polly to sell; she certainly wouldn’t go forward with it if I weren’t. After all, she’d only gotten involved for my sake, her childhood friend, to begin with. And if Hinda wanted to do it and was willing to actually buy her shares, well, okay!
When I learned of this transaction, I was surprised and dismayed and called Polly. When I told her that, yes, of course, I was still doing Jogbra — it was my brainchild that was going to put me through grad school — Polly was upset; she’d not thought to check with me before accepting Hinda’s offer. She was embarrassed and angry that she had been intentionally misled. We were both shocked.
This initial deception was not a good way for Hinda and me to start our partnership. And when I offered to buy back the shares in question to equalize our ownership, Hinda refused, causing further shock on my part. It wasn’t until four years later that the equalization finally occurred, which is in itself another chapter in the story.
Needless to say, this caused friction and ill-will between Hinda and me. It destroyed the trust I’d had when I’d included her in the stock issuance. I wondered what had happened to the “for women by women” and the attendant ethos she had enthusiastically agreed with the summer before.
And I realized I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, as the saying goes…leaving one betrayal behind only to encounter another.
Naif.
One of the first orders was from Macy’s department store. Only a “sample order” (what was that?). How are they packaged the buyer asked. I scrambled to figure out packaging with our new help, an advertising and marketing agency. But this order, among other things, reinforced my thinking regarding our marketplace: we did not want to sell into department stores. We were athletic equipment, not lingerie, and the sort of game the Macy’s of the world wanted to play was beyond our ken in those early days.
Brilliantly, in those first years, we chose to sell into the independent athletic stores that were springing up everywhere. Many fun and funny stories there about trying to sell a bra to the proverbial jocks who ran those stores. But that’s for later because…
First, of course, came financing. Financing? Yikes again. Money for packaging, more fabric, a bit of communication to let the world know we existed — advertising and some p.r. maybe. Somehow I knew to go to the Small Business Administration. One thing to be said about the two of us: we weren’t shy about asking questions.
Hinda decided that I should write the business plan the SBA said we must have before they could help us get a loan from a bank. “Why me?” I asked. “Because you’re in grad school and used to writing papers. Just think of this as another paper.” I looked at her to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. The truth was that neither of us had a clue, and she wanted no part of it. At least I had taken an accounting class once.
The SBA sent me a many-paged form to fill out, and I began. Privately I titled it “Financial Fairytales” because, really, how the hell did I know how many bras we were going to sell in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3? Or what the production costs would be each year. Or what percentage of sales we’d spend on marketing and advertising? Hell, I’d never even heard the term “CGS” before. So, I made it all up. “Educated guesses?” Maybe. I liked to think.
It was a damn good “paper” and got us our loan. Really, writing a business plan with financials was just an exercise and a test. An exercise to make us think through many aspects that we otherwise might not have and a test of our intention, sincerity, and dedication to our proposal. Pretty smart hoop, actually. (And years later, I found myself teaching aspiring entrepreneurs how to write a business plan. Of course.).
Can you believe it? Two inexperienced women with a bra in Vermont — and the loan officer said yes. I think he was just aghast by our ardent chutzpah. It didn’t hurt that the Vermont SBA had minority quotas to fill for their loan applications, Vermont had very few minorities at the time, and (drum roll) women constituted a minority. Really. Who knew?
A “perfect storm.” Facing a major life change, from a difficult marital partner to an adversarial biz partner. Confronting both mythical and real fears. So many of my assumptions were being challenged, my life was changing radically, and I had to choose between pursuing graduate school and this nascent-but-wildly-growing business. I had to move. I spent one lunch hour finalizing a divorce. I had to petition for my driver’s license and learn how to drive. Running, my joy and my coping mechanism for so many years, was beginning to fail me (knees blowing out). And then, how to deal with a business partner who, it turned out, I knew not at all.
And all that is just the beginning of this woman’s history story.
First promotional T-shirt
