Spotlight on women-owned merchant businesses: 11 businesses to watch
Carly Greenberg
·March 13, 2024
March is Women’s History Month, and we’re marking the occasion by celebrating our Loop women-owned merchant companies.
Women-owned businesses are instrumental to the American business landscape: Today, women-owned businesses represent 39.1% of all U.S.-based businesses, generating $2.7 trillion in revenue. And those statistics are even more impressive in the ecommerce space: Of all ecommerce businesses on the Shopify platform, an incredible 53% of them are owned by women.
Here are just a few of the women-owned merchants that we’re proud to have as our customers. We hope their stories inspire you as much as they do us.
Hedley & Bennett
At age 24, line cook Ellen Bennett was frustrated by the poor-quality aprons she and her peers were forced to wear in the kitchen – and started a mission to develop a line of durable, yet stylish, kitchen aprons for pro chefs and home cooks alike. Twelve years since the company’s founding, she’s grown Hedley & Bennett into a thriving ecommerce brand that sells aprons, chefs’ knives, and other accessories, and employs over 40 people. During the pandemic, the brand quickly pivoted, using its manufacturing facilities to produce face masks, more than 300,000 of which were donated to essential workers, before re-focusing on their primary product lines once restaurants re-opened. Hedley’s agility and out-of-the-box thinking has led the brand to new heights, including creative collaborations with Disney and Crocs. We can’t wait to see what Ellen and her team do next.
Ruggable
After being frustrated when her dog destroyed an expensive rug, Ruggable founder Jeneva Bell set out to create a new breed of rug that could survive pet accidents and other stains. In 2009, she founded Ruggable, a rug that included a removable, washable cover over a rug pad. This innovation meant that customers could buy rugs with the confidence that they wouldn’t be ruined by the first spill that came their way – and these durable, stylish rugs are now a mainstay in the home decor category. In the years since, this DTC brand has grown to nearly 400 employees, and offers hundreds of unique rug patterns to suit every style, including collaborations with Star Wars, Barbie, The Home Edit, and other brands and designers.
Set Active
Lindsey Carter went $20,000 into credit card debt to build an athleisure brand that she loved – but the gamble paid off, big time. She created Set Active as a line of athletic apparel that could be worn out to brunch or running errands as well as the gym. With a strong social media strategy and some powerful influencers (including the likes of Kylie Jenner) wearing her products out in the wild, she’s seen the brand explode. So what’s next for Carter and her team? Set Active has expanded from its ecommerce roots, now operating year-long pop-up shops in both New York and Los Angeles, and they’re building new product lines based on feedback from their community.
Aviator Nation
Paige Mycoskie launched her ‘70s surfer-inspired apparel line, Aviator Nation, in 2007, while working at a surf shop herself. The brand took off during the pandemic, when shoppers swapped out jeans and dress clothes for casual, yet fashionable, stay-at-home comfort, such as the brand’s $169 smiley face-sweatpants. Aviator Nation produces all of its apparel locally, in a factory in Huntington Beach, paying its workers a minimum of $17 per hour. Over the years, Mycoskie has always turned down opportunities with outside investors, enabling her to retain complete creative control of the brand – she still creates all of the store’s designs herself, and recently launched a new shopfront in New York City.
Maison Miru
Trisha Okubo was working in the Silicon Valley tech scene when she decided to pivot – and transform her hobby jewelry business into a full-fledged brand, which she called Maison Miru. Launching the DTC brand in New York in 2016, she used her industrial engineering background to create a line of beautiful yet multifunctional jewelry, such as the “infinite necklace,” which can be worn a dozen different ways and paired with other products for even more styling opportunities. Okubo says that she loves creating jewelry because it’s a means of self-expression that’s available to anyone – you don’t have to be a certain size or ethnicity. “Jewelry loves you for who you are,” she told JKC. “That’s why I make jewelry for everyone, regardless of things like gender, age, or personal architecture.”
Eberjey
Twenty-five years ago, friends Ali Mejia and Mariela Rovito set out to create Eberjey, a line of comfortable and beautiful pajamas, feel-good lingerie, and other apparel. They saw their products as an antidote to brands like Victoria’s Secret, which were more concerned with selling products that would appeal to women’s male partners. Instead, Eberjey was about making products that women could feel both comfortable and confident in, using organic cotton, linen, and other sustainable fabrics. Selling both via ecommerce and at five retail stores around the country, the brand has seen its products take off since the pandemic, when customers realized the importance of embracing sustainable and comfortable clothes to wear inside their homes. This year, Vogue name-checked Eberjey as one of their 25 favorite brands for slumbering in style.
Hilma Running Shoes
Brooke Torres founded this line of all-weather, all-terrain women’s running shoes when she found that most shoes suitable for ultramarathons and all-terrain runs were sized for men’s feet – neglecting women’s needs. She launched the brand in 2019, with a personalized fit test that makes it easy for women to find the right shoe size and style for their feet and how they plan to use the shoe. Hilma also has an easy, flexible return and exchange policy, so if they don’t get it right the first time around, customers can come back to find the right fit. While most shoe brands offer 10 to 14 different sizes, Hilma offers 45 unique size variations that take into account foot length, width, and overall dimensions – ensuring that every customer has access to the most comfortable possible fit for all her running needs.
Odele
Lindsay Holden, Britta Chatterjee and Shannon Kearney, who all attended business school together, started brainstorming a beauty product line together once they realized there was a gap in the market for minimalist, clean beauty products that appealed to mass-market shoppers. They launched Odele, a line of clean hair care products, in 2020 – beginning with ecommerce sales, but scaling quickly when Target came knocking on their door. The brand now sells their sustainable, cruelty-free hair and beauty products at Target, CVS, and Ulta Beauty, along with a thriving ecommerce business. For its ecommerce customers, Odele offers a personalized product quiz, to help every customer find the right hair regimen – plus a flexible returns and exchange policy if their shoppers need to tweak their routine. Just four years post-product launch, Odele is forecasting sales of $40 million for 2024 – a clear indication that sustainability sells.
Hill House Home
Founder Nell Diamond launched her home decor brand, Hill House Home, in 2016 – but it wasn’t until the release of the brand’s “nap dress” in 2019 that the company really took off. The nap dress, which could be worn as a versatile day or sleepwear outfit, turned out to be the perfect fit for the pandemic: During Spring 2020, the brand sold $1 million of inventory in under 30 minutes. Diamond says that inclusivity is very important to her in her designs: “I have friends who I want to wear this product; I want my 65-year-old mom to feel amazing in this product; I want my 15-year-old niece to feel great in the product…all of those things,” she told Elle last year. “There’s a power in being uncool. I’ve been cringe since I was born.”
Birdies
Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey launched their footwear brand, Birdies, in 2015, after realizing that there was a gap in the market for a pair of shoes that felt as comfortable as slippers, but were fashionable enough to wear to the office or a party. Though neither of them had experience in footwear, they invested $100,000 of their own money and began focusing on R&D to determine the features they needed in their new footwear brand – and, after developing a solid prototype, they were soon able to attract millions in VC investment to take their product and marketing to the next level. They were supported in their mission by other successful women in business, including Gates’ mentor from her former job at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, who encouraged Gates to give up her full-time job, with the option to return if it didn’t work out, and go all in on Birdies. Now a $50 million a year brand, the gamble they took on Birdies paid off – and women everywhere are thanking them for a stylish and comfortable alternative to heels.
Third Love
Third Love, co-founded in 2013 by two women, Heidi Zak (CEO) and Ra’el Cohen (Chief Creative Officer) alongside Zak’s husband, David Spector, is a brand that focuses on making bras and other intimates that fit every body, including a wide range of cup sizes, as well as half-cup sizes for those somewhere in between. The brand touts the shocking statistic that 80% of women wear the wrong size bra – and offers a personalized fitting quiz to make sure that their customers are able to get the right fit for the products they want. The brand also prioritizes sustainability, using its “Take-Back Bag” program to encourage shoppers to send back their old and unwanted bras and underwear, which Third Love will use to recycle into new products and help keep these products out of landfills.
Here at Loop, we applaud these pioneering women entrepreneurs for growing successful and sustainable businesses that their customers love – and serving as role models for the next generation of female business owners.
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