When Kimberly Borges and Miriam McDonald went to start a business, they didn’t know what they were doing. But they did it anyway. And that’s the attitude they bring to their company and use to empower other female entrepreneurs.
In 2018, the pair launched PWR WMN, a women’s workwear fashion brand, to fill a need many women have encountered before. While working in automotive sales, they saw how male counterparts were always on the lookout for new clients and quickly able to get a business card in their hand due to something most take for granted – pockets. Tired of having to grab a purse to hold a wallet, keys, phone – all the things that would fit into a normal suit – when going out for lunch or meeting a client, Borges and McDonald decided to create their own solution.
“It just kind of leaves you feeling ill prepared and it also kind of throws you off of your game when a client says, ‘let’s go have lunch, let’s go do this,’ and you’re the only one asking, ‘wait everybody, let me go get my purse,’” Borges told NTX Inno.
And while pockets may seem like a small deal, Borges said that as they began showing off some of their PWR WMN designs, family, friends and even strangers would come up to ask about the clothes after seeing them pull something out of their blazer pockets.
“We sat down and really excitedly drew some blazer that we would like to wear with the pockets where we wanted them and made them, and the response was immediate,” Borges said. “It was like we invented the wheel. It was something that we actually needed, and it turns out every woman needs it too. It’s kind of like having a tool belt… it just feels really cool to kind of walk around so prepared.”
Borges said part of the problem with women’s work clothes there’s not enough women making and designing them, making them typically prioritize visual appeal over functionality. When they started PWR WMN, they set out to do both, making clothes with purposely designed pockets to fit the needs of working women.
“Womens’ purpose in society has so quickly been changing and clothes are not catching up to it. There aren’t enough women making these clothes,” Borges said. “We have the unique perspective of women who use these blazers on a daily basis.”
Taking their go-for-it attitude to the market, PWR WMN made its first sale in September 2019 without having inventory. After that, Borges and McDonald began showing up to events to build their name and brand and taking on more pre-orders. Being self-funded, the pair got their company off the ground with some help from family. McDonald’s husband and father-in-law built the booth that PWR WMN takes to events, helping to save them thousands.
“They’re so pumped up about PWR WMN, sometimes when we're the ones who are feeling down, they’re just like so excised because they believe in the message, they believe in the brand so much,” Borges said.
When starting the company, Borges said they began with a Google search about how to create an online boutique. And since their brand is built around empowering women in the workplace, they decided that from the start they would be honest about the challenges and successes they had along the way. Borges said when PWR WMN started, the wanted to look like every other brand, but quickly learned honesty and being themselves was most important. The pair use their blog to share tips and insights into how they have grown their company, as well as sharing stories about their entrepreneurial journey.
“If you see someone sort of stumbling through leadership it makes it more relatable. You can say, ‘I don’t have to be perfect to start my own business. I don’t have to be rich to start a business. I don’t have to be a single, childless semi-rich woman, a white woman to start this business,” Borges said. “I can be working six days a week, I can have a newborn kid, I can have no investors and I can also not know what the hell I’m doing and start my own business.”
Borges said that though sometimes not entirely knowing what you’re doing running a new business can be a weakness, during this time of uncertainty it has been a strength, allowing them to “try anything and everything.”
“Our whole thing is about empowering women and helping women, and that’s one of the best things about starting this business, is that we’ve gotten to connect with so many women,” McDonald said. “When we started this, we didn’t know anything, we were just like we have this idea, let’s do it and I feel like a lot of women out there have great ideas and they’re just afraid to just go for it.”
While the pandemic has shut down many of the events PWR WMN used to get its brand out, it has given the team time to pivot to a more digital interface and figure out the ins and outs of online marketing. Borges said online shopping is likely to be the future of the industry, better fitting to busy lifestyles and people who have taken their shopping virtual due to the pandemic.
As they have been growing virtually, the PWR WMN team has plans for the future. McDonald said the pandemic has caused them to put on hold plans for a brick-and-mortar location, but as it looks to get its product line in stores both large and small, it still hopes to open that in the future. They plan to have it be a place where women can come to not only get fitted with new styles, but also celebrate careers successes and promotions with a little champagne and camaraderie. PWR WMN is also looking to add new features to its app, like one that allows a user to upload an image of themselves to see how certain items of clothing would look on them.
“I am a strong woman. I am not strong and happen to be a woman… I can be strong and wear pink… I can still wear flowers inside my jacket and still tell you what’s up," Borges said.
