The No Sweat Zone with Marnie Rabinovitch Consky

Justin Burrows: I'm Justin Burrows. This is Commerce CHATS, by high velocity. Welcome to Commerce Chats. I'm here with Marnie Rabinovich Consky, the CEO, founder, anti-chafing champion from Thigh Society. Welcome, Marnie. How are you doing today?

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: I'm good. Thanks so much for having me.

Justin Burrows: Oh, excellent, excellent. I'm so excited to have you as a guest on the podcast. We see a lot of different implementations and I was in systems integration, basically consulting to help people move on to new platforms or to re-platform. And so you get to see the back in the inner workings of a lot of different companies. And Thigh society just does such a wonderful job. I really wanted to talk to you about your approach.

Now, first, your product. Thigh Society, what would you call it?

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: A slip short.

Justin Burrows: What can you tell me a bit about that?

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Slip shorts, boxer briefs, long leg underwear for women. Any of those work

Justin Burrows: And I find it really interesting because you have ultimately there's this goal, right, that you have with your product. And I think one of the things that really struck us is how it's soaked into every part of your company but before we get quite to that, you literally started this company from whole cloth. You started from literally the fabric of your product. Could you talk us through like how you came to that process?

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Totally. So yes before Thigh Society, my background was in management consulting with an IT band. So not unlike what your tech implementation background is like combination of some human resource strategy, government work, employee engagement, HR stuff and MBA coaching, career coaching. So naturally, naturally lead into the Shmatte business, right. This is a clear fit.

I did do my Bachelor of commerce, my undergraduate degree at College in finance and entrepreneurship. And I had always had a desire to have my own business and I did, you know, have little. I had some small ideas over the years to start businesses, had a tutoring company in college, but Thigh Society was really my first foray into real entrepreneurship. And it came about as a classic entrepreneur story of me having a need for a product that I couldn't find in the marketplace. And it was June 2008.

And the famous story is true. I was putting on a dress that day. It was summer in Toronto. And for any of your listeners who are familiar with the climate here in Toronto and Montreal, we sort of skipped spring. So we go right from winter straight into summer. So I hadn't been accustomed to wearing bare legs or skirts and dresses until that point. So, you know, got dressed in the morning, threw my skirt on, my dress on, and then went off to work. So I went for a walk at lunch to take advantage of the nice weather. And within probably 5 or 10 minutes, I remember that all too familiar feeling between my thighs, which was this rubbing, sweating irritation. So I waddled over to the nearest pharmacy, you know, I would, I would look for baby powder, which has been my go-to option in the past. But my real option was my bike shorts that I had left at home that day and forgot to put on underneath my dress. And a couple of pairs that I would turn to was an old Nike pair. You know, one was another black shiny spandex pair. And these were my go to long leg underwear that I, I would need to wear anytime the weather got warm because I just sweat a lot. And I knew that I knew I couldn't go bare like without them. So waddled back to my office, put the baby powder on, made a huge mess everywhere. And there's no elegant way to apply, no elegant way, no baby powder on and sort of shook my fist in the air of like, there has to be a better way. And that started my summer of research to look for a pair of long leg underwear for women that wasn't shapewear, that would be a better alternative to my bike shorts. And I really didn't have my, the mindset at that time was not, oh, I'm going to start a business and make long leg underwear. Hell no. Like I grew up with a lot of people whose families had been in the garment business And I knew enough to know that it didn't really seem that appealing. It seemed like hard work. And what business did I have getting into that?

You know, I, what did I know about any of that landscape? I was literally just looking for a product to solve my problem. So I spent the summer doing research a little bit online. Although the Internet in 2008 is wasn't what it was today, I did find a couple of companies in the UK that were making plus size bloomers. They were calling them, which were really just, you know, in my mind, a pathetic excuse for underwear.

I mean, they were like very loose cottony type of shorts, which cotton for anyone that's worn cotton and sweat in it, you know, how much the moisture sort of sits there and like it keeps the moisture on your skin, which is exactly it's going to exacerbate any sort of rash that you might be prone to getting already. And I also in that moment, you know, resented that I couldn't find anything for people that were not plus size. And I thought, why is why this is not a plus size issue? You know, athletes get chafing, babies get chafing. You know, it doesn't matter what size you are. Your thighs can chafe if you have sensitive skin and if you're in a hot and humid environment and you're sweating. So I'd done some work online looking for these underwear.

I literally knocked on doors of small boutiques in Toronto and some big department stores, really hoping that I could find what I was looking for. Because again, this was not me thinking I'm going to start an underwear business. This was I really just I'm a girl with a problem and surely I cannot be the only one. And in the past, in addition to those, those bike shorts I referenced before the Nike, and then I had another pair of spandex, spandex ones, my other alternative was shapewear. And I thought, you know, everyone has every woman I know has a love hate relationship with shapewear. It's kind of one of those things that you might, every woman might own one or two pairs. You might wear it under very specific outfits and you might, you're probably wearing it only for a few hours at a time where it's a very controlled environment because you're wearing it under a specific outfit. They're extremely hot, uncomfortable, they roll down, they're hard to put on, they're hard to take off, and you end up being a sweaty, uncomfortable mess and you end up being distracted really, because you can't forget that you're wearing shapewear. You can never forget that you're wearing shapewear. I knew what I was looking for, which was a comfortable second skin long leg underwear for women that felt invisible because nobody wants to be necessary unless you're looking for modesty. You really don't want to feel like there's anything underneath your skirt or dress. You want the freedom that comes with going bare legged without actually being bare legged. And something that would have be based with, you know, some sort of performance in that it could Wick moisture, take moisture off the skin, have minimal seams because you wanted it to be seamless under clothes. And bottom line is I couldn't find anything. I spent the whole summer looking, researching, doing mini focus groups, you know, posting in some channels and forums online. And so I decided at the end of that summer to quit my job, which was I've been working for two years at the provincial government and was very unfulfilled in that job was a bit of a culture shock for me working in public sector, having come from eight years in the private sector at a very fast moving consulting firm. So it was time and I took six months off to basically teach myself e-commerce and clothing manufacturing. So that's sort of like, yeah, I can, I'll stop there if you delve into any of that or I'll keep going.

Justin Burrows: Well, the I, I guess the thing that I find interesting about it is that you're digital native. Like you started as a you were e-commerce and the overnight success that took ten years, but you had to build that and from scratch. And I think that's incredible and a little unnerving where it's like the thing that the thing that really is a factor for success, I think is not so much having the specific technical know-how, but rather knowing the problem that you're trying to solve. And that kind of ends up being like a Lone Star for all of the things that you do.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Totally. There's so much there. I mean, I knew that there was that. As far as I knew, there was no product on the market that existed to do what I wanted it to do. I knew we needed to figure out a way to get this product to market. But at the time I wasn't. I want to say that I wouldn't allow myself to have big dreams. I thought to myself, you know what? Maybe I'll produce a couple of hundred of these. You know, I'll figure out how to do that. I'll find a manufacturer, I'll find a pattern maker, I'll source the fabric, you know I'll learn e-commerce. I know this all sounds a little nutty now that I say it in hindsight, but I was really craving some challenge in my life at the time. I hadn't really felt challenged in my job the previous two years and I was looking for something new to do. So, you know the opportunity was waiting for me to explore and the curiosity of figuring out if I could do this was enough for me at the time. I think if I'd known then what I knew now what I really redo it all over again, Who knows? But I didn't do it all. I mean, I tapped into my network of resources for help because nobody can ever do it alone. And I think that's the mistake so many people make as they get scared of a problem because they think it's on them alone to solve. But there are so many resources out there that one can tap into. You know, at the time I was reading books on some product manufacturing forums. To learn about what people wanted in terms of, you know, if you could wave your magic wand and make this women's underwear that I'm describing, what were the features? What would the features be? I was connecting with graphic designers that I knew to help me come up with a logo and a website design connected with websites developer because at the time Shopify was just a payment provider, payment processor. You had to use a WordPress site or Wix or one of these other ones. And I didn't know anything about actually that's not true. I did know a little thing a little bit about programming from my first couple of years out of college, but not enough to program a website. So I had allocated about $8000 of my own personal savings and said I'm going to take this and I'm going to explore this money has to take me to the launch of a website and a couple, you know, and, and about 100 pairs of shorts that I can sell. And that's the mentality I went in with that first year of how much can I squeeze out of this $8000? Because if I don't try this, I might have regrets later about not ever having explored it.

And I felt comfortable with, you know, knowing what things were going to cost. Which is ironic because I think of that $8000, if I'm not mistaken, $1 to $2K was for inventory, like was for actually the product cost. The rest was web design and all that. Which nowadays if you want to start a website, you can go into Shopify.

You know, for 40 bucks, you're up and running like in 24 hours, right? It's pretty amazing how far our technology has come. But so I spent this for so I spent from August till December, we had a prototype.

I say we me and my then manufacturer had a prototype by around Christmas time of 2000 and 8:00 and then I spent the first quarter of 2009 perfecting that prototype by giving some samples away to people who I knew who were living in hot climates like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and a few locals too.

But I just needed hot weather. I need people to test this and weather where it was warm in January and February and that certainly wasn't the case in Toronto. I also around in that first quarter went back to work full time because I knew that this would be a long road.

I still had no idea what I was doing and I liked my lifestyle and I wanted to keep that up. So right for me it was it was really a choice about I can do this part time. I think I can do this part time. I can get a job somewhere else and focus on the business after hours. And that's what I did.

I went to work for as a career coach at the University of Toronto and I launched Thigh Society in July of that year and that I ended up working at that MBA career coaching job for seven years. My two year plan became seven years because honestly, I loved the work with MBA’s I loved coaching students. I love that real time impact that I was able to make on people's careers.

It was immensely fulfilling to me and it gave me the opportunity to work on Thigh Society in my spare time and to treat it like a bit of a hobby. I cringe now at that word because it wasn't quite a hobby. I still was on it every day.

I had to fulfill and ship orders when they came in. I was still getting orders and I was getting orders at that time, probably because we were the only people bidding on, you know, anti-chafing.

We're only, we were the only people using anti chafing in our language on our website language. So like SEO was a joke for us back then. It was like we're going to be, we're going to rank organically in the 1st place because we're the only ones talking about this.

Justin Burrows: Oh, the algo. Well, the good old algo.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Exactly.

Justin Burrows: I think that's critically important, though, understanding the like the unsaid need or you know, if, if, and I think a lot of that has to do with like representation. If people aren't represented and you go and you're representing them, all of the sudden boom, that connection happens. And before I go into some of the, the what, what was the unsaid need? I think what you just said was a really, really great example of the entrepreneur story that a lot of it is you got to have a posse, you know, you got to rely on, you know, the people that you have and it's not like A to B like A and it's up and down, but you ultimately had that. But the unsaid need monkey **** swamp bass, thigh chafe, all sort of you know, I think there's even something called anti monkey ****.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Yes, I have it in I have it in the back of me. One of these one of these boxes there has that effect in there.

Justin Burrows: So, you know, this is something that, you know, and I went to Kohl's, this department store that we have over here. I went there and I was looking at the various, you know, garments that they had and you're right. Every single one of them has something that's talking to you about your body and what's wrong. There's nothing. And it's either like designed to be, you know, designed for the male gaze or is something that that has panels, it has every, every single thing.

None of them actually talk about comfort. None of them talk about like, this is actually going to fulfill the role of underwear or slip short, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. And so you really leaned into that and you made a you made a connection with people because you were like, no, this is this is the thing. And we're going to talk about.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Yes, I did. And again, it's I think it helps. I don't think you have to be the customer for your products that you're selling, but I think it certainly helps. And I was trying to solve this problem for myself and it turns out for millions of other women too. And I, I, I really did resent the fact as a woman that I was always told to shrink myself. And I had struggled. You know, I had some personal experience with disordered eating and diet culture from a very young age and just really resented the fact that in order to get some damn fabric coverage between my thighs that I was expected to put on an undergarment that would be suffocating or distracting and uncomfortable. And I just didn't think that was fair. I mean, men get all different leg lengths of boxer brief underwear and nobody ever questions why men don't need it for, for protection of thigh chafe because men are always wearing pants for the most part, right? You don't often see a lot of men in, in skirts unless they're talking about kilts. And so, you know, it's like, well, no one's questioning why men wear long leg underwear under their jeans. Why would anyone question why women need long leg underwear? Because that was part of the, some of the, some people who objected to my business idea at the beginning were like, women are never going to buy long leg underwear that doesn't shape them in some way. Like you're not who's going to buy this, right? And I thought at the time, really my only target market was talking about thigh chafe and the sweating and, you know, irritation and rash that comes with thigh chafe. But wow, like in the last 15 years, we have learned that people wear our products for swamp ***. You know, that's but sweat, crotch sweat. Anyone who has sensitive scarring that needs some sort of barrier that's cozy and comfortable between their sensitive skin or scarring or lipedema and the fabric that they're wearing on top, you know, I can go on and on and on and on. You know, even people who like any of that sweat in your pelvic region where you want something to like Wick it off so it's not sticking on your skin giving you groin pimples. I mean, there's so many uses for long leg underwear for women that have performance attributes that it's crazy to me that we didn't have that in 2008.

Justin Burrows: I but I, and I mean, part of part of one of the reasons why I was initially so impressed and I really liked your site was I had an experience with my wife trying to buy a brassiere at a Macy's. And it was, it was a completely humiliating experience for me. Just like second part because I'm just like, we just get a fitting. We just need to try to find. And it's like I you know, we have a kind of a worldview that's like A to D and like that's it, you know, which is why, you know, there are private like fitting boutiques, bra fitting boutiques that are doing the god’s work. One of the benefits that being D to C as being direct to consumer, having a site that focuses, you know, on this is that you're just having conversation with your customer. You're not doing it in the context of the outsider of the mall. It's kind of it's intimate, which is kind of the kind of the nature of intimates, which is, you know, one of the, the things that always bugs me is like, if it's, if it's intimate, why is it that we throw all of this other stuff on it? You know, where it's freighted with, you know, what you're supposed to look like. And sometimes you just want something to recover it. You want it for, you know, for basically what it's supposed to do. And one of the things I found interesting is that you look at a lot of these as we talk about like representation and like being able to see people you have committed to representation on your site. You have size based photography, like you have the different models and the different shapes so you can actually see what they look like. And like trying to buy online, it's like really difficult for sizing because all you see is a size 2 model, which is the default for, you know, a lot of the different websites. And, you know, invariably, like thigh gap is much more represented there than perhaps it is like in, in society. And I don't that's not realistic. How am I supposed to try to find a product if I don't have that representation? Yeah, how like, but that's not easy, right? You didn't just decide that. You learned that over the course of talking to people.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Well, I learned that it wasn't easy, but I, I would say I knew and it has been baked into the brand since I had the seed of an idea for this brand in 2008 that we were going to be size inclusive and we were going to represent diversity of bodies, age, size on our site. And that really came from again, my, I guess my anger really towards so many brands at that time that we're only showing one body type. And by all accounts, I have a ton of thin privilege. You know, my weight has fluctuated over the years between a six and a size 14 when I was yo-yo dieting up until 15-20 years ago. But as a size 8 woman, I don't face any discrimination like weight-based discrimination in my life. But I am sensitive to the fact that there is weight based discrimination and it is hard for my friends who are, you know, in bigger bodies to shop in stores to find their size in stores to see themselves represented and myself as well. You know, I don't really see a in 2008, you certainly didn't see a size 8 woman on any website as a model unless they were sort of tailoring unless they made it their permission that they were tailoring their branding to quote UN quote plus size models, right?

Justin Burrows: Like, I think there's Lane Bryant.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Well, Lane Bryant is, yes, Lane Bryant would be considered really plus size.

But even if you look at someone like Ashley Graham, you know, a gorgeous plus size model, I think when she first, like, bursts on the scene, she was maybe a size 8 or 10, which is hardly plus size when you think about the fact that the average American woman is a size 14-16.

So you know, when I started Thigh Society in my mind, we you know, there I had two goals. One is to produce the best possible product I could of long leg underwear for women that would perform in the sense of being lightweight, minimal seams, breathable moisture wicking, uncomfortable. And the second point was to try to build a brand around this that women felt they could identify with. And so and that meant that would mean trying to be inclusive, size inclusive and not just with our sizing, but demonstrate that on our website. So I'm sure, you know, if any of your listeners are starting out in a product based business and clothing, it's very challenging because you know, there are so many different skews that can proliferate from that that one seed of an idea. So I started with doing black and beige or black, beige and white. We introduced white or beige. Now I'm forgetting which one we introduced first, but I kept it to a color minimum and we were doing size small, medium to size XL to excel, which already was to excel at that time was still to do a size range that big was quite, you know, got some people to take notice. But I always knew we wanted to expand beyond that and we have since expanded to 6 XL and we're even looking at expanding on the smaller end of that range because again, I've always known eye chafing and our customers have told us eye chafing. That's why CrossFit isn't limited to your body size. You can have it at any size, but it is challenging because when you are bootstrapped like Thigh Society, you know you have to manage your inventory costs. So for every single, you know, color you're going to offer, you can offer every size and for every leg length of short, you can offer every size. And I always wanted to offer the same options to my customers in a size, you know, 14 body as I was to my customers in a size 6 body. So I did have to manage that over the years.

And that that meant, you know, in photo shoots, I could only have two models at the beginning and then three models, you know, and then early half day just based on affordability or getting people who weren't quite professional models, but were people who were just trying to get their career off the ground. I didn't care. I just wanted to make sure that we could show that when I was putting these products up on the site that I could at least cover a wide enough swath of body types that somebody's shopping with thigh Society would immediately understand that we were a brand that was about no judgement.

This is a shame-free zone and we are here to offer you the best possible solution you're going to find for this long leg underwear garment that you're looking for. And so it's been such a treat and a dream come true over the last 15 years to where we are today, where we have that body diversity on the site. We have different leg lengths that we offer across all of those sizes. You know, we have like more than 500 SKUs now, but fundamentally we only make one product which is anti chafing or slip shorts, right? So it's been something that has been, you know, my personal mission since day one. We were, you know, and then we happened to be quote UN quote on trend, right? Because around 2010, 2012, Instagram was blowing up with body positivity, hashtags, influencers and all that movement. And we were already doing that. You know, we were like, yeah, we're happy to be here. Like finally everyone's catching up. And I think that movement, you know, moved into body neutrality over the years.

And now we're sort of seeing a little bit of backlash of that with this sort of GLP ones and the Ozempics and the it's a whole other conversation about, you know, weight based stigmas and conversations happening online. But fundamentally that society stands for accepting the body that you're in and just being comfortable in it. Or even even if we scrap the accepting, I mean, we're in the bodies we're in and we might as well be comfortable in them. And I'm a really big fan of body autonomy. People can do what they want. If they if they're aiming to lose weight, that's great. Good for them. They want to wear shapewear. Good for them. We don't judge. We're just here to say for those times when you want a really comfy, you know, set it and forget it underwear for whatever sweat based or comfort based solution you're looking for, we've got you.

Justin Burrows: Yeah. And, I think, yeah, I'm reminded of, there's a poem by Mary Oliver where she's talking about her body and kind of coming to terms with, but accepting and, and loving her body as kind of the vessel that's in. I think like, you know, you know, I'm getting older. I'm realizing that, you know, you, I get a sense of kind of a little bit of curiosity and wonder and appreciation about my body because it's at a certain point you're just like, this is my body. And it's amazing that some people have a problem with that. It's like I've just I got a body, I a corporal entity, you know, deal with it. Why is that an issue? And you go to what's interesting about the fit models is that you talk about like systemic biases, like things that are biases that are like baked in to our systems. But data is a system. E-commerce sites are a system and I think it's interesting that to really provide that experience for your users that's going to answer their particular thing, you actually have to internalize, you know, what you're trying to do, what you're trying to represent in your very data. You know, and, and, but that is hugely influential. The fact that we have the default model is a size 2 model. That's incredible. That's mind blowing that that that that's a the thing and but you have not only do you have it baked into your site, even to down to the data structure of it and and the way it's presented, the way the models are presented. You have a team that it seems, from what I gather when you talk about it, you know, on social media, that's also really aligned that are providing a lot of that love into it as you get love back.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Yes, totally. I mean, everyone on the team is aware of our, our mission from, you know, customer service to our media buyers, right? And our product design team especially is very made of very diverse body types, sizes, shapes, ages. And you know, our team is often part of fit, fit explorations and fit modeling. I was the fit model for society for the first, I'd say like decade for sure decade plus as a size 6-8 with a, an hourglass figure, which is like not necessarily representative of the whole population. We all have so many different shapes and sizes. So we would always rope in our designers who, you know, in different, you know, I hate the fruit analogy, but pear size and apple size and whatever you want to describe it, like to make sure that our products had we're fitting different shapes of bodies too, because that's another thing I love. You know, a struggle that that I've heard from people when they try other shorts brands or shapewear is either rolls down on them or you have to size up because they're weight, you know, or they have to size down, size up because their thighs and their lower half, their body is larger than their waist. And so it all becomes problematic if you know, and it can be difficult for different body shapes to shop for for bottoms, you know, whether that's in fits or jeans or whatnot, just to get that right fit.

And the reason why we ended up moving from a cut and sew product, which is what I started with until 2014 over to a seamless very, it's called seamless. It's knit on Santoni seamless knitting machines. It's because there's so much stretch in that garment that that finished product that it really fits multiple sizes very comfortably. So, you know, we, we usually have one size for every two sizes on our website. So like a small medium would be a 6-8 as opposed to just small as a size 6 medium. And that allows for total comfort. Even if a customer were to buy a size too small or too big, they probably wouldn't feel that. They wouldn't, let's put it this way, They would never feel sucked in the way they would in shapewear. And so where was I going with that? Right. With fit models, I think you know, not to bore your audience with the details of how apparel manufacturing works, but you often have one size model and then you extrapolate your dimensions and measurements for your other sizes based on a certain formula that is pretty standardized from ahead of that, Judy, like ahead of that base standard size and then below it. And we don't follow conventional sizing standards that way because we understand, and as a, you know, our design team is all women. We understand that. It wasn't always though. My pattern maker used to be a guy. We understand that just because someone's size might be increasing, it doesn't mean that we all put weight on proportionally in the same spot. So you have to factor that into your product design. And I just think, you know, some of the larger companies maybe don't have the time or don't have the ability to tweak things like the way we would. So all of that stuff is baked into every process. You know, how we speak to our customers, how we design our products, what we show on our website, how our front-facing customer service folks interact with our customers at every touch point, how I talk to her, people in, in emails, how I talk to our team and all of that. It's really, we're not just paying lip service to the cause, you know, we really believe through and through and what we're doing. And it's, it's quite simple. It's like, well, women deserve comfort. Women deserve solutions, solutions to common problems.

And can we please do away with all of the shame and the weight based stick up that is attached to some of these totally normal skin conditions? Like, you know, we I think I was giving you this analogy and went in our early chat before this recording, you know, is that we all put on most of us put on deodorant in the morning and we don't think twice about it. We're not berating ourselves for putting on deodorant because we sweat. So why would we? Why would women do the same if they needed a long leg undergarment to prevent, you know, any set type of sweaty, sweaty problems down there?

Justin Burrows: So, and I think that's interesting because again, I think that's like important to emphasize the fact that how deep into your business, your positioning is like what's your brand problem. What you're trying to solve that's in everything. It's in your people, it's in your data, it's in your product design. It's not, it's not a lip service thing. And I, I think like, especially when you talk about like the garment industry, there are a lot of tropes and norms that are ossified into it. Like if you were trying to sell to, you know, major retailers, I would imagine that you would face a lot of struggle because they would be like, well, this is what we sell now. We sell these 4 sizes and like, that's, that's it. And we need you to conform to this, you know, or be like the things that we're already selling versus having a different type of conversation.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: I mean, that's true. I keep it much simpler though when it comes to selling to like big department stores and all that and follow the KISS principle to keep it simple, stupid principle. And for me, getting into that, getting into wholesale was a whole other business that I just wasn't that keen to diversify into.

We haven't until this point, although we are in, you know, probably about two dozen specialty bra boutiques in in Canada. For me, it was less about you bring a really good point up in terms of the product assortment, right, that somebody shopping. It's more like, you know, we might have to limit our product assortment at certain stores. And for me it was much simpler than that. It was just I didn't want to have long windows before I would get paid. You know, some at the beginning were asking for consignment back in the day, you know, having to integrate really complex technical systems in order to get paid. I just wasn't interested and I also didn't want to have to worry about another stakeholder in a sense because you know, we're not a promotion based brand.

But I didn't want to worry about if we wanted to run a promotion that I had to clear it by my wholesalers first and make sure that aligned with their wholesale programming and planning.

In recent years it's been more a function of well, a lot of these retailers have not necessarily the mom and pops or the women owned ones, but the big ones have online presences and very big budgets to advertise. So I would never want to be in a situation where, you know, Thigh Society, we're competing against ourselves, right? Where we have like a Nordstrom, for example, advertising Thigh Society online and then us selling it on our website and then them having a sale and us not being able to compete with that. So those are those are more of the challenges. Now as far as when I think about wholesale and what that could look like or what are the things we'd want to steer clear of and make sure that we don't, you know, that we don't cannibalize on our on our website.

Justin Burrows: So Speaking of ad spend, you found that Meta is probably one of your more effective channels, if I understand that correctly. Meta and Google, Meta and Google. What did it feel like to drop those first dollars on ad spent? Was that really right? It's like a gutter.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Yeah, I still have it now. I still can feel it so viscerally like I did. It was 2016. It was either late 2015 or early 2016. And we had, I had spoken to a founder, a local founder of another intimate apparel brand here in Toronto because I'd seen her business skyrocketing. And I was like, what are you doing? Like what, what happened? I'm seeing all your, I'm seeing ads all the time. She's like, it's ads. And I had this agency and let me introduce you to them. She was kind enough to introduce me to, to, to an ads agency that I put my full trust in, but was very, for, for sure was very, I think gosh, it was several $1000 a month plus ad spend. So it was a bit like I was choking on it, but I was also smart enough to see that Facebook ads were picking up as, as a user of Facebook then and now, I mean, I, I was being targeted with ads. I know those ads weren't coming free, weren't coming cheap by the brands who were doing it. And I thought, you know what, like, I don't think we're going to be able to just keep growing organically like we had been until that point. And so it was like within a couple of months, we were already seeing the possibilities for scaling on Meta, so much so that I actually ended up quitting my full plan job that year because the business just, you know, I think we almost doubled in size by the end of 2016, going from like 350 to 750, something like that in 2016. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. It's taken me like 7 years to get to 350 and now six months to get to 750. So there was a lot of power in that. And you know what, you've got to spend money to make money. I think we're fed a lot of the media love sexy headlines and click bait. And so we're sold a lot of these, you know, and goes viral on one TikTok and yeah, drop ship, become a millionaire, drop ship, become a millionaire. And there's, you know what? No one likes to hear the unsexy message of there's no fast track way to success. You know, sure, there's unicorns out there. And I think Thigh Society is a Unicorn in a lot of ways. But we've been doing this for 15 years. You know, I've been I've been full time on this for eight years. So I think it's you know, so unsteady wins the race, you know, depending on how you want to build your business, but don't set yourself up for to expect to have these this like rocket ship growth going viral from organic content. Like you usually have to play the game. You have to put your put your money down. You have to find some trustworthy partners, whether they're freelancers or, you know, small agencies, people that know more because you cannot be an expert at all things. And I see so many. I see some of my counterparts, founder CEO’s, whose businesses are where we were a few years ago. And a lot of them are trying to do it all. And, you know, they have my respect for their intellectual ability to learn Facebook ads and, you know, to try to master that. But you cannot be a Jill of all trades. You know, you, you can know enough to be dangerous, as my, my CFO likes to say, you know, I know it has to be dangerous, but you don't, you cannot be an expert in all things. You need to outsource that. You need to spend a little bit of money, put some money down, invest in good people, invest in those platforms that are going to give you that return because your time has value as well.

And so if you're spending time trying to learn and you're never, you're never going to have time to learn all the things it takes to run a business, not to the level of depth that you're going to need to scale.

So that's always my advice to people as I know it hurts. Believe me, I feel it. You know, we're bootstrapped.

So it's all Thigh Society money going back into Thigh Society. You know, it's, it's just you, you, you have to accept at some point that you're going to need to make an investment and you're making an investment in yourself and in your business.

Justin Burrows: But it hurts, It hurts.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: It sure does. It's thousands of dollars. And it's like, I'm not. That's why I say don't quit your day job. I think the entrepreneurs all the time. And I say, you know what? Do not quit your day job. You know, I think we're still again, like businesses take a long time to ramp up and try to figure out a way to make money elsewhere. So you're not like stressed out about trying to squeeze everything out of your business. That's a really stressful place to be. And we have one life. You know, you don't want to burn out. You don't want to be working yourself to the bone. Sure, there have been times where I've been working really hard and I've poured everything in this business, but thankfully I've never had burnout. You know, I've never gotten sick from working on this business. And that's all by design. It's because I, I know my boundaries. I set boundaries. I know my limits. And I know that sometimes, even though it hurts to put those dollars down, it's going to let you sleep at night better than better than the alternative.

And I, I think that that's part of acceptance, right, Is that it's like it's not accepting your limitations. It's accepting that you are valuable, your time is valuable. Still hurts to spend that money, especially if you've been skating around like on trial versions of things and stuff like that. But you got to go in, you got to commit on that. And isn't there that that that old saying, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others, go with friends.

And I think that that saying applies for sure when it comes to running a business.

Justin Burrows: So there's a going back to the site and kind of one of the reasons I really liked it. What How long have you had that quiz?

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: The quiz I think we put into place about two and a half three years ago.

Justin Burrows: I encourage everyone on here. Summer is coming up go to the site take the quiz. It's a master class on explaining the value proposition of the product and explaining what it is. I think, as I mentioned before, I'm a cotton, but the cargo is also very nice because it has a pocket, which I think is, you know, for I have a lot of friends who keep their, their, you know, stuff in their bra, you know, because they're trying to carry.

I'm sorry, I'm sure that you know, but it was very common for my friends in Austin, mostly because it's hot, right? So, but to just have a have a pocket, I think is, is great, but it's really interesting because it walks through the different use cases for your product and help me understand, just like what it is like it, like you said, this is it just gets the job done and it answers a problem and we're going to take all the other **** out of it and just answer your problem.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Exactly. What are you? What is the what are you most looking for here? And how can we help whittle that down for you. Once you argue there's a use case for everything. There is a use case for every short. I love to say that everyone should have at least one style in their drawer, or at least one.

I start with at least one pair and then I say, well, why not get one of each? Because each for a different purpose. And people have their preferences, you know, and we do have customers that own multiple pairs and we'll alternate between the fabrics depending on whatever they're using it for.

And I think, yeah, you have like the really sheer, you have the ones that have more coverage. You different lengths, different sizes, and you can see it all. Justin Burrows: Yeah, I think that's great. One other kind of side thing, it's funny, 'cause there are a lot of groups that because you are, you get people's attention because you're honest about what you're talking. It's not, it's not all this word keeps killing me. It's not no transgressive. It's not transgressive, but it is candorous. It does have a certain degree of candor that is arresting and other probably that because we've been we've been because we don't talk about stuff that is sometimes tends to be really problems. And I'm thinking about things like you mentioned. We talked about monk, monkey **** swamp *** quartz, sweat, all of that stuff. But then there are also like other issues like people who are disabled, people who are peri perimenopausal. Nobody talks about menopause and just I just happen to know that like that's a big thing. And there are elements that that come up with that. Nobody ******* talks about it. And it's like, you know, I think one of the great things about direct to consumer is that you could have the conversation that you want. And if people are looking for that conversation, they will find you.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Yes, because I think a lot of what you see on the benefits thing on the rack from the the shapewear isn't necessarily what somebody's going to go searching, you know?

Justin Burrows: Right. I think people, given the chance, can understand their bodies, can do that without speaking the language of, you know, fear and shame, right? Make yourself smaller. It's like, I just want to cover my crotch.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: So I exactly, I mean, so many brands profit off of shame, right? Shame is a selling point. And we're the opposite of that. We are like, you know what? The only way to get rid of shame and taboos is to talk openly about them because, you know, a core part of of shame and taboos is feeling alone and embarrassed and thinking you're the only one that has that problem. And in fact, you know, we all like to think that we're special and we are special in our own ways, but we all have these human vessel bodies that are taking us through this world and they all function the same. No matter what your skin tone, we all have blood inside us. We all have the same functions that our organs perform, that our sweat glands perform, and we're all the same. So why let you know conventional patriarchal standards? Tell us how you know how and what we should talk about and what we should feel embarrassed to talk about. We're all about busting that wide open and there's a lot of great brands starting to do that now. I think it's you know, there's another expression. I really love that rising tides raises all ships, something like that.

I think, you know, the more we see brands emerging with this type of direct communication about the problems their products are solving in a way that is non-judgmental and very matter of fact, the better it's going to be for everybody. You know, it's easier than for other brands to come up with ideas and talk to their customer base. People are now primed for, you know, having these conversations.

And I mean, I've seen that with, you know, the topic around bodies over the last for sure over the last decade is that, you know, I wouldn't want Thigh Society to be the only brand in the market showing size diversity on our site.

You know, that would be sure. On the one hand, it'd be like great to be held up on that pedestal, but that's not for the benefit of everybody. The benefit of everyone is if more brands and and you know, overtime are showing diversity on their site, You know what benefits one benefits all usually.

So, you know, we're a leader for sure in the discussions around anti chafe and you know, swamp *** and all of those fun topics. And I, you know, I love, I love seeing more brands come out with more honest communications about, you know, what their why their products are going to help solve a problem. And especially I like those brands that are solving problems that are real problems, not manufacturing standards relating to manufacturing problems relating to artificial beauty standards.

Justin Burrows: And to that I say right on! Thank you Marnie. Marnie Rabinovich Consky, CEO of Thigh Society, Outstanding product creator. Just incredible to hear your story of how you have worked and really made your brand fit all through all the different levels. Thank you for sharing your journey with us and, and talking about swamp *** with so I really appreciate a lot of it.

Marnie Rabinovitch Consky: Any, any opportunity to talk about swamp *** you know it. I'm your girl. Just call me.