Sarah Greisdorf, freshly graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in computer science, is diving headfirst into a wholly different industry: fashion.
Her startup, Holdette, aims to provide functional workwear for women, starting with a line of suits that Greisdorf hopes to launch later this year. Each suit will be equipped with eight pockets, addressing an issue that has long plagued the world of women's fashion.
"I started working on the company about three years ago with the realization that whenever I left the house, I had to carry my phone and keys and wallet in my hands," Greisdorf said. "None of my male friends had to do that. It's because they had pockets, and I didn't."
Greisdorf didn't originally set out to develop a line of clothing from whole cloth (if you'll pardon the pun). The first iteration of Holdette was a website that aggregated women's clothing items, each of them outfitted with reasonably sized pockets. The business model was based on affiliate marketing, and the skills it took to run the site were much more in line with Greisdorf's computer science expertise.
Then, last year, Greisdorf and her team—eight people now, with Greisdorf leading the charge as CEO—decided to pivot. Instead of finding and advertising clothing made by other agencies, they would create their own line.
Greisdorf quickly started learning about the fashion industry. She teamed up with Philip Sawyer, co-owner of Boston-based clothing design and manufacturing company Philip Sawyer Designs and a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, who taught her how to approach the creation of a clothing line.
"He recommended a book; I made him some drawings, and he helped me get them into a more usable state," Greisdorf recalled. "He helped us create our first patterns and our first muslin."
Around the same time, Greisdorf was introduced to the Vertical Collective, a women-owned fashion company based in Redondo Beach, Calif. The teams at the Vertical Collective and Holdette have been collaborating on the process of manufacturing Holdette's first line of suits.
Like many startups, Holdette has run into delays as a result of the coronavirus. Los Angeles County, where the Vertical Collective is located, is still under a stay-at-home order, which is likely to be extended another three months. Certain restrictions may ease before then, but for the moment, the order means that manufacturing is on hold. Greisdorf hopes to be able to start manufacturing by the end of the summer to prepare for a full launch.
The coronavirus isn't the only manufacturing issue Holdette has come up against. Part of the startup's mission is to create clothing as sustainably as possible, but that process involves significant hurdles for a small company like Greisdorf's. Minimum orders and shipping rates are expensive, and Greisdorf has only just begun raising outside funding.
Greisdorf and the team at the Vertical Collective are currently experimenting with a fabric partially made from sustainably sourced wood pulp.
"We're trying our best to make the most intentional decisions to help the planet more than hurt it," Greisdorf said. "It's very hard to meet minimum order quantities for sustainable fabric, because not until recently was there much innovation in this space. ... As soon as we're able to reasonably source these materials, we'll incorporate them into our suit."
Holdette launched a crowdfunding campaign on IFundWomen, a platform dedicated specifically to women founders, earlier this week for friends and family and opened it to the public on Friday. So far, the startup has raised just under $14,000, about 54 percent of the way to its goal of $25,000. The campaign is slated to end in mid-June.
Last month, Holdette launched another initiative with women's careers in mind: a virtual mentoring program. The program matches a cohort of young women with mentors who meet every Sunday. Holdette also has a podcast that lines up with the program's curriculum.
"We start with the clothes, but we want to support you beyond that," Greisdorf said. "At the end of the day, our mission is to support women from head to toe, from the beginning of the day to the end."
