Innovation is a broad term, even by its own definition: "the introduction of something new."
We believe each of this year's Innovation Awards honorees match that definition perfectly. Whether it's inventing a crime-stopping technology, paving the way for Indigenous entrepreneurship or breaking outside the clothing binary, they are all innovating in their own ways.
This year's New Mexico Inno special edition comes with the same concept and the same focus as the 2022 Fire Awards, but with a new name — the Innovation Awards. In light of the devastating fires that spread across large swaths of New Mexico last year, we felt it important to rebrand this annual section.
The Innovation Awards recipients were selected by the Albuquerque Business First editorial team and New Mexico Inno Reporter Jacob Maranda. The process was based on reader nominations and our own insights. Some of the things we looked for when evaluating organizations were: new funding, adding headcount, social and community impact, product launches, company pivots/growth and stories of innovators reshaping the ecosystem.
In the end we chose five honorees, a mix of companies and organizations each carving their own path and helping to drive New Mexico's economy forward.
All five of the honorees are featured in the April 28 print edition of Business First. Each profile will also be rolled out online in the coming days.
Both&
"Visionary" is an adjective that means, according to Merriam-Webster, "having or marked by foresight and imagination." By that definition, Finnegan Shepard is a visionary.
Shepard founded Both&, an apparel company and brand that makes clothing designed for transmasculine people, in 2020. Headquartered in Albuquerque, the company includes Shepard and two other full-time employees who are part of a design and marketing team based in New York City.
A recent $1 million raise has pushed the startup from phase one into phase two, he said. That means growing the company from market discovery to global brand awareness.
Shepard's outlook for Both& wasn't always that expansive. But after a close advisor who had led marketing at Nike told him the startup was "so much bigger than what you initially imagined," Shepard's vision grew.
Once Shepard — who came up with the idea for Both& from his own challenges finding clothing that fit — started hearing positive feedback about his company's clothing, he knew his brand could become industry-changing.
"I think Both& is the perfect investment right now because it is predicting the wave before the wave is obvious," Shepard said. "If you start digging into the numbers, you're going to find estimates of anywhere between 1 to 25% of the population is trans or non-binary. Those are hugely different numbers.
"I think everyone right now is like: How big is the actual total market? Is this a venture-backable scope?" he continued. "My answer to that is clearly yes."
That market, for Shepard, is much larger than just the number of people who have medically transitioned. It's full of people who want to align with an innovative brand that no longer believes gender is binary.
"If you're attracted to [Both&] for innovation, it is because you believe — and this is perhaps a very philosophical answer — that the best questions are simple questions and the best solutions come from simple problems," Shepard said, who spent time studying philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
Both& rolled out a '90s-inspired campaign on March 31, which was International Trans Day of Visibility. Featuring transmasculine models Arthur Macnair, Ethan DeNadai and Tai Hattingh, the campaign mirrors Calvin Klein advertisements from the last decade of the 20th century.
It's part of the company's second phase of development. The third phase? "Think a classy non-binary cross between Amazon and Glossier."
That might be a few years down the road, though, Shepard said. For now, he's focused on furthering his brand's identity to meet the needs of what he sees as a growing non-binary conforming marketplace.
"Different consumer sets require different product innovation," Shepard said. "I firmly believe that the biggest paradigm shift we're going to see in worldview and consumer behavior in our lifetime is going to be around gender identity and presentation, so the brand that understands how to design for that and to speak to that worldview is going to be a generation-defining brand."
