This spring, Rose Mangiarotti was in the process of finalizing the product that forms the backbone of her startup when the coronavirus pandemic threw her supply chain off-kilter.
Mangiarotti is the founder and CEO of Perkies, formerly known as ReliaBra, which designs and sells a stick-on bra. Each bra is essentially a pair of cups without the traditional straps; instead, it has adhesives inside that stick directly to the wearer's breasts. In December, we declared Perkies one of 2020's Startups to Watch in Rhode Island, as Mangiarotti planned to spend the year wrapping up product and manufacturing developments.
Mangiarotti has indeed spent 2020 so far tying those loose ends. But as with plenty of things in our new era, the development process hasn't gone quite as expected.
"I couldn't even wrap my head around a virus that was keeping people from work until it hit the U.S.," Mangiarotti told Rhode Island Inno. "The bra manufacturer is in China, and the adhesive manufacturer is here in the U.S."
Perkies' manufacturer was almost completely offline until around the beginning of April, when China began to recover from the virus' initial impact. Still, shipping times were slow, and by then, the coronavirus had fully taken hold of the northeastern U.S.
Mangiarotti and a local engineering team would create a mold, which takes several weeks to make to begin with. Mangiarotti then sent those molds to the manufacturing team in China, which took about six weeks' time. Samples would be created at the Chinese facility, then sent back to Mangiarotti in Providence, who would then review them, test them and get feedback. Since she couldn't conduct a full beta test, she tried on the bras herself and shipped them to her friends to sample.
"It's not like boxers or a pair of underwear," Mangiarotti said. "It's trial and error. You can't just send them 'X inches.' It's way too tricky of a product to send in straight-up metrics."
Luckily, for Mangiarotti, the delays provided a silver lining: She had time to hone in on her product. Stuck at home, Mangiarotti was in front of her samples 24/7, where she and her friends could test them out and make adjustments as necessary.
Mangiarotti is a solo founder, but she has engaged several freelancers who have been crucial to Perkies' upcoming launch, including graphic designer Pooja Nitturkar, brand and content strategist Kinsey Lane Sullivan and financial consultant Julia Xu.
Mangiarotti also has a team of advisors guiding her through the storm. The CEO had initially planned to raise institutional funding this summer. Those plans went out the window when investors largely stopped making new investments in the spring, but Mangiarotti said that her lead advisor, Sparks Enterprise CEO Melissa Studzinski, pushed her to pivot her funding strategy.
"She said, 'You know you're going to place the order in the fall. Why not collect that money now?'" Mangiarotti said. "'Use that capital to launch. That way, you're not waiting for investor capital, and you're proving demand.' Now, I know the size and colors that my customers want. It's rewarding to see who's interested."
Mangiarotti has received more than 100 pre-orders for the first batch of stick-on bras. She plans to max out at 200 pre-orders, for an initial 1,000-piece run. As of this month, Mangiarotti has B-cup samples being tested and additional samples en route. The packaging, inserts and lingerie bag are finalized, the adhesive stack-up is finalized and an adhesive prototype run is slated to begin within the next few weeks. Perkies' A- and C-cup bras are both in development.
Mangiarotti's ideal timeline is to finalize everything in mid-September, get the orders to her manufacturing partners, then have all the bras in front of her at the beginning of November to ship out from Rhode Island. The initial launch will include three colors: light nude, dark nude and black.
Perkies' fall launch is a long time in the making. Mangiarotti was a high school student when she first had the idea to invent a high-quality stick-on bra. The idea wasn't carried out until Mangiarotti was a junior at Brown University, taking the university's "Entrepreneurial Process" course, which provided the original springboard for her startup. While she was still at Brown, Mangiarotti participated in the Rhode Island Elevator Pitch competition, the Brown Venture Prize competition, Brown's Breakthrough Lab summer accelerator and Cox Business's Get Started RI pitch contest. Mangiarotti was named one of Rhode Island Inno's 25 Under 25 in 2018, the same year she graduated from college.
"Finally, the time is coming—at least for preorders," Mangiarotti said. "I guess my words of wisdom, as every entrepreneur says, are 'don't give up.'"
Disclosure: Cox Business is a founding partner of Rhode Island Inno.
