From begging to be the resident baker at Campus Job to asking Brian Bordainick to join DinnerLab in restaurant domination, I’m incredibly fortunate to profile startups that I’d love to work for myself.
My conversation with Galyn Bernard and Christina Carbonell was no different. Five days later, I’m still thinking about the incredible impact the Primary team is making simplifying children’s clothing.
Former senior executives at Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com, Galyn and Christina were troubled by the complexity of building their children’s wardrobes.
Only a few months later Primary was born, boasting 30 basic children’s styles in a variety of colors.
Primary is the first clothing line for babies, girls, and boys that’s centered on quality basics all under $25. Parents rejoice!
According to Galyn, Primary is helping parents build “a closet full of good choices. Everything mixes and matches including colors and styles.”
Parents themselves, Galyn and Christina are cognizant that families don’t have time to search for essentials, especially when it comes to cost.
It’s about curation and making this experience as easy as possible for parents.
One of the ways the team is facilitating that is through Primary’s MyCloset feature.
MyCloset saves your order history enabling you to review past purchases and easily order the next size up.
Nearly a month in, Primary’s receiving an extremely positive response from customers and press. Perhaps more importantly, the brand’s a hit with parenting blogs; a community I feel will be a huge resource for them in the long run.
Aside from the exciting mission driving the team, Galyn and Christina shared helpful insights from their experiences building the business.
- Start every new project with a framework in place to evaluate it. For example, Galyn and Christina zoom in on the cost it takes to acquire a customer and their expected lifetime value before implementing new marketing initiatives.
- Structure your organization to be analytically oriented. Understanding your numbers, benchmarks, and initiatives affords you the freedom to pursue out of the box ideas.
- When it comes to fundraising, be prepared for rejection. Understand no’s as a positive. They demonstrate your willingness to find the perfect match. Promise your team and yourself that you’ll never shift your model to work with others.
- Customer experience is not something that can be measured with numbers. Do whatever it takes to fully delight each individual who uses your service.
- Cultivate a “culture of informality and a lack of hierarchy for as long as you can.” Christina emphasizes this as especially important in the early days of a startup.
- Be active about celebrating the baby steps, big milestones and the journey as a whole. If a customer shares a great experience on the site, make an announcement acknowledging your Head of Customer Service. Each team member deserves to be recognized.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously. Make it a habit to lighten up stressful situations by maintaining perspective.
To learn more about Galyn and Christina’s journey building Primary, including a close look at their experiences mapping out the model and fundraising, tune into their episode of 33founders.
They’ve also kindly given 33voices a special offer for a year of free shipping. Enter the code JENNA or 33FOUNDERS at checkout by May 31.