Travis is the Founder and Chief Dreamer of Yogavated Athletics, a fashion company that collaborates with artists to create limited edition luxury activewear “that motivates and inspires” it’s users. Travis walks us through the lifecycle of a product launch, from ideation and artist selection through sample cutting and trade shows. Find out why Travis’s best advice to interested entrepreneurs (a saying he learned at Rollins) is “Fail cheap and fail fast.”
Transcript
Travis: My name is Travis Strote and I am the founder and chief dreamer of Yogavated Athletics. Yogavated Athletics is an active wear apparel brand that incorporates art from local artists and artists across the country to create an original art piece that we put on leggings. It starts with, typically, one piece of art. We find one piece of art that we fall in love with or one idea that we fall in love with and, from that point, we search for artists that are passionate about their art work. That all encompass that same idea. So, for example, surrealism. It's all art pieces that you would imagine in your dreams. Places you would imagine that go to, experiences you would imagine having. So then we find all of these artists that have very different art styles but all are encompassed under this one common theme. You narrow that down to a good chunk of artists that you feel are very passionate that are going to be amazing to work with and that really have devoted their lives to art. We don't want to promote somebody that is making this art piece because they want to put it on yoga pants. We want to promote someone that is painting night and day because they are an artist. And then, from that point, once we have our art pieces, then we go to our fabric sources and we start picking fabric colors that are in-line with the art. Then we start sketching out flats, hundreds and hundreds of flats of different designs for leggings. Where the art's placed, whether we split the art in half so that, when you put the legs together, it creates the whole image. Then we create samples. And, we create a photoshoot and look-book and that's when we go to market. And then we go to market and we sell X amount to wholesalers and then when that season's released, about two months prior, we go into full production. And that's where we order all the materials, everything gets cut and sewn and put together. Each season we do what's called a pre-order release, a VIP fashion show. And that's where we get everybody that's ever been a customer and they're invited to a preview of the product. And once we do that, then we fill those preorders and then we hit the road and we do trade shows, we do events. We are very grassroots marketing so it's very involved in the community. As a small business owner, as a startup, like you do it all. So, we go from conceptualizing the product to doing the photoshoot to making the product and then to selling it. So, once the product is made, then we hit the road and start selling it. And we start selling the brand story and we start selling the artists. We do it all.
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