Starting own bra company has given 18-year-old a lift
As a junior in high school, Megan Grassell was disturbed by the bras available for girls and young teenagers. The market, she thought, was dominated by push-up styles with padding and underwires. So last year, Grassell founded her own company, Yellowberry, and began making colorful, age-appropriate bras. • She isn’t merely interested in joining the ranks of teenage entrepreneurs; she is bent on changing the bra industry and starting a social movement among her customer base. “There shouldn’t be so much of a hurry to grow up so fast,” she said.
Her mission began after a shopping expedition last spring with her sister, Mary Margaret, then 13, at a mall near their home in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “The minute I walked into the dressing room, I was like ‘Oh, my God; you can’t wear that,’ ” Grassell recalled telling her sister, who was in the market for her first bra. The options looked uncomfortable and risque.
Even though she herself was just 17 at the time, Grassell was frustrated enough that she sprang into action. She decided to design a bra for Mary Margaret that would be confidence-inspiring, nonsexual and comfortable.
She discovered that the 11- to 15-year-old demographic was, as she put it, “sort of forgotten” by the bra industry.
Without knowing how to sew, much less how to create prototypes and samples, she researched fabrics and sketched designs. She asked her mother for help ordering materials, and she hired a seamstress to help.
Grassell also sought mentors in Jackson Hole business circles to advise her on tasks she didn’t yet know how to do. That way, she avoided what Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, the undergarment company, called a common pitfall for young entrepreneurs.
“There’s a real advantage to being vulnerable and asking for help,” Blakely said.
One of Grassell’s mentors has been Stephen Sullivan, co-founder of Cloudveil and founder of Stio, outdoor apparel companies. Sullivan knew of Grassell’s prowess as a ski racer — she is the Wyoming state champion in the slalom and giant slalom events. Soon after their first meeting, he could see that she had devised a solution to a real problem. Yet Sullivan didn’t sugarcoat the challenges that Grassell would face in getting her company off the ground.
“I gave her the devil’sadvocate side of things,” he said.
Grassell credits him with encouraging her to fine-tune her prototype.
In February, the first batch of Yellowberry bras arrived at her home from a Los Angeles manufacturer. She began selling them online for $29.95 to $42.95. She declined to disclose Yellowberry’s total sales, other than to say that the first three orders she placed with her manufacturer had sold out.
In March, during the final semester of her senior year of high school, Grassell decided to expand the business.
She set a $25,000 fundraising goal and decided to use Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website. After a slow start, the campaign eventually brought in almost $42,000.
Grassell has been accepted at Middlebury College in Vermont next year, but she is considering deferring college in order to guide Yellowberry through the next phase.