Children’s Librarian Builds Crossfit Bra Business

Notes from Chris

Episode 1543

Allison Alexander saw a problem and took it upon herself to find a solution. In 2015, she started doing Crossfit and quickly became a passionate athlete. As she continued to work out, her body began to change.

Then came the problem: she was more muscular than she was before, and her sports bras didn’t fit right. She tried shopping for new ones, but the options available on the market didn’t fit well either. She was also bothered by the fact that muscular women weren’t often showcased in advertisements for sports bras. She didn’t feel seen.

Allison wanted to change that for both her and women who looked like her – muscular and strong. That’s why she started KFT, a fitness apparel brand geared toward female strength athletes.

One store that already offered sports bras was Lululemon. It’s an incredibly popular brand, but Allison says she felt it catered to thinner women. She wondered if she could somehow tweak one of their bras slightly to make it fit muscular women like her better. She bought a bra from there and began some online research, searching how to find a manufacturer. Allison eventually connected with a few of them and had samples made—samples of bras designed to fit women with muscular backs.

Allison began wearing the samples to the gym, and several other women asked about them. Seeing this interest, she decided to invest in several colors of one style of sports bra and launch KFT with them. She enlisted a photographer she knew who was hoping to start a portfolio and would take product photos for free. Then, she created a Shopify site and chose ShipStation to manage everything associated with shipping. (Thanks, ShipStation!)

KFT started by Allison connecting with local Crossfit women who competed at elite levels and selling to them. The local athletes then introduced her to Crossfit women who were nationally recognized. Allison even had whole teams of women order custom bras to wear at large Crossfit events that were well-photographed and resulted in organic marketing for KFT.

Currently, KFT averages a profit of $5,000 to $7,000 a month. Allison markets her products primarily on Instagram and an active email list. She’s utilized paid ads only a few times and prefers instead to identify influencers to promote KFT. She now has an ambassador team of more than 100 women to market her products. Micro-influencers have been a huge key to her success, and she says to never underestimate someone’s value based on their number of followers.

Looking to the future, Allison plans to wrap up her graduate degree in leadership, which aids both KFT and the coaching business she recently started that’s focused on working with other women who have side hustles – women like her, who saw a problem and set out to solve it.

 

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Learn more about Allison and KFT at www.kftbrands.com.
• To launcher her hustle, Allison used online platforms like, ShipStation (60-day free trial), to process and ship orders and, Shopify, for her ecommerce store.

SEE ALSO:

• UX Designer Creates "SimpleBra" to Help Women Feel More Comfortable: How a UI/UX designer scratched an entrepreneurial itch and used $15,000 of her savings to create a side hustle manufacturing bras for women looking for an alternative to the push-up bra.
• New Yorker Covers Up With Comfy Underwear Line: For years, she wanted her own side hustle—and she finally uncovered it in a drawer of intimate apparel.
• Strap-Saving Invention Helps Women Get Their Bounce Back: A pair of female inventors are bringing clothes back to life with a simple gadget that saves straps with no need to sew—then using it to send a positive message about women’s health.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,