I’m an angel investor in Lucky Sweater, a platform to discover and trade items you love with communities who love these items, too. Today, I’ll do a deep dive into the background of the company, why it was created, and their ambitious plans for the future.
This is an interview with Carley Lake, the founder & CEO of Lucky Sweater. It has been edited for clarity.
To start, Carley, can you tell me a little about slow commerce?
Slow commerce encourages you to reduce your purchases and rewear more of the items already in your closet, as well as those in others' closets too!
Since we only wear 20% of the items in our personal closets, swapping for pieces from others' collections extends the use of seldom-worn items. This not only breathes new life into under appreciated garments, but also uncovers new favorites!
Can a brand itself be considered “slow commerce/slow fashion”?
Yes! Slow fashion brands use environmentally-friendly materials and production methods, and they focus on creating high-quality, long-lasting garments that are meant to be worn for years, not just a season. They also place a strong emphasis on fair wages and safe labor practices. The site Good on You has more great info on slow fashion.
Our first community on Lucky Sweater focuses on trading and celebrating a curated selection of slow fashion brands. The second community on our platform focuses on handmade pieces and supplies (fabrics, yarn, patterns, and more)—another form of slow commerce—making things yourself!
These spaces alone will be huge:
Research and Markets, First Insight/Wharton, Statista,The Harris Polls
What inspired you to start Lucky Sweater?
Many people I interviewed for my secondhand fashion website, Thoughtful Flamingo, joined niche communities/groups on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit to buy, sell, and find unique clothing pieces instead of using resale marketplaces. Facebook shared that already in 2016, more than 450 million people were using Facebook buy, sell, and trade in style- and passion-specific groups. That’s more than the top 5 resale marketplaces user bases combined!
People want to refresh their closets thoughtfully with things they love and develop their personal style with help from others they trust and share their style. They want curation and community. They no longer want to buy and sell 1,000s of items, be inundated with low-quality items, like fast fashion, they don’t want or need, and have reseller burnout.
How does Lucky Sweater compare to apps like Facebook Marketplace, RealReal, and others?
Community & Curation: We’ve built the ultimate digital third space to find advice, inspiration, and items you love! We do this by putting community and curation at the center of everything we build. Instead of going to the platform to find an item, you first go to find your community of people who share your interests/passions, like sewing, or your favorite style and brands, like slow fashion.
Advice & inspiration: Once you find your community(ies), you can first jump into the discussion section to learn—get advice about a certain brand, items you’re eyeing, or a crafting project you’re starting. In addition, there is a section to catalog your looks or find outfit and project inspiration from a community whose style you admire!
Trade away!: Once you’re inspired and received the information about the item, you can start building out your “ISO” list. This is a list of items you are in search of. You then list your items and join the community for a live, weekly swap drop! This is when all items added throughout the week are released and the community all comes together to browse, save the items to find a save match, and trade with your matches!
We also make it super easy to re-list traded items to continue the stories and memories behind each item. The more we wear and share our items, the more special they become!
So far more than 9,000 items have been traded and more than 15,000 pieces of advice given on Lucky Sweater!
One other thing we are so excited about is that members are organizing, hosting, and attending in-person clothing swaps and meet-ups. It's so cool to see that when you place community at the center of secondhand, you find more than just items you love...but cool people to hang out with too!
Lucky Sweater members at a Seattle clothing swap they organized this summer.
What are some experiments that you’ve tested so far with the business?
Our first experiment was testing the high risk assumption that people would be willing to leave social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, for a space made for community and exchange. We proved this once the same number of people who follow @selltradeslowfashion jumped over to our app and co-founder Moria left moderating the group on Instagram completely to become one of the community moderators on Lucky Sweater!
We then spent a lot of time experimenting with how we can make exchanging items feel like a community-first experience. We first launched with “Trade Tuesday” as the one day you could see items and also trade. We soon realized this was limiting, especially for people with strict schedules. We then experimented with opening it up to all week and having items instantly be listed for all to see on the app. However, this didn’t lead to community togetherness and felt too similar to a traditional resale platform. So, we tried another experiment to have the best of both worlds, and it stuck! We now have a weekly swap drop where all items added from the past week are now visible to the entire community. If a member can’t attend on Tuesday, they can still browse, save, and request the newly added items all week.
You’ve now been running the business for 2 years. What are a few things that you wish you knew when starting out?
Choose an easy name to remember for your company. The first name of the app was “Isthmus.” We loved what an Isthmus represented but it was hard to say and hard to spell. So we renamed and rebranded. Doing a full rebrand, choosing a new name, and making sure we could secure the .com took precious time away from building the core product.
Be willing to test, ship, and try new things as fast as you can. We didn’t realize how much the community on the app would love testing and experimenting with us. They love to provide feedback, volunteer for user testing sessions, and take surveys. Early adopters enjoy building the product with you so don’t worry if something isn’t perfect (it will never be!).
What tips would you give to new founders starting out today?
Surround yourself with fellow founders who are on this journey too. I have a WhatsApp group with five women founders, and I go to them for questions and suggestions about anything from hiring to helping spread the word about a launch. No one understands the ups and downs like fellow founders.
I also joined On Deck soon after I left Uber. As a first time founder, I learned about fundraising, beta testing, finding a co-founder, and more, through this community.
Speaking of co-founder, I think it is important to find someone who can rally others around the company's vision, something you might not first think of when looking for a partner. Will they be able to recruit and inspire top talent to work here? Can they lead teams and a company? Can they not just build a company, but a culture? I’m happy to say I found someone who can do all of that in my co-founder, Tanya!
What is your vision for where Lucky Sweater goes from here?
Our vision is to expand to any passionate community of people and enable them to connect around and exchange their favorite brands and niche items—online and off. This includes larger communities and smaller communities too. You can be in our large slow fashion community and also a community for moms in Portland, who especially love the slow fashion brand Nooworks!
We want communities for vinyl records, surfboards, pottery, books, puzzles, vintage cowboy boots, and more! Our goal is instead of heading to Amazon to buy something new, everyone always come to their Lucky Sweater communities first! Why not? It’s so much more fun too!
We’re also fundraising now to build out and scale these communities.
How can readers get involved & try out Lucky Sweater?
We’d love to have you join us on the app if you love slow fashion or handmade items/supplies! You can use the invite code “Allison” and download Lucky Sweater app in the Google Play and App Store. We also have a waitlist for our next communities including vintage, thrift, and kids’/baby clothes. You can also suggest a group on this waitlist form too.