The pandemic accelerated the rise in e-commerce, with it bringing several direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to the forefront. In this saturated marketplace, companies that stand out have developed brands that appeal to the heightened social awareness of consumers, choosing to champion values that transcend the confines of the products that they sell. Lively, launched in 2016 by Michelle Cordeiro Grant, as an intimate brand that brings a fresh perspective to an old industry by seeking to inspire and empower women of all shapes and sizes. Lively develops products that fuse the comfort of athleisure wear with the function of lingerie in a new space, Cordeiro Grant calls, “leisurée”.

Michelle Cordeiro Grant’s upbringing seems distant from the life she leads today as the founder of an intimates brand headquartered in the US’s largest city, New York. A first-generation American, she was raised in Amish country in rural Pennsylvania, where, as she describes, “there was not even a stoplight”. She recounts that she was always creating and building. This was perhaps in part due to her parents, who were somewhat “tinkerers” themselves. Her father, a chemical engineer, experimented with the polymers used in computer screens and her mother was a cancer researcher. “So, I would see my mom on a microscope and I would see my dad in a lab creating things,” Cordeiro Grant comments.

*Michelle Cordeiro Grant, Founder, Lively.*

“[Entrepreneurship] was not in my vocabulary growing up, but I was always creating and building.” - Michelle Cordeiro Grant

Though she cannot recall any childhood entrepreneurial endeavors, Cordeiro Grant’s natural industriousness and penchant for building things did not take long to come to fruition. At her first job out of college, frustrated with sedentary desk life, she developed an under-the-desk stair stepper to stay more active during the workday. She pursued the idea, only pausing when she realized that a similar product had already been patented. A few years later she was at it again working with a friend’s grandmother to develop a foil-like material to line the interior of purses to prevent identity theft. Though these early ventures did not pan out, they demonstrate Cordeiro Grant’s proclivity for developing and launching ventures. This, coupled with the experience that she built in the retail industry, would eventually come together for the launch of her own brand - Lively.

“I quit Victoria's Secret because I knew I needed more.”

Michelle Cordeiro Grant first started working in retail at Federated Merchandising, directly after completing her undergraduate degree. There, she helped to launch brands around the world before deciding that she wanted to get closer to the end-customer by working for a vertical brand. She transitioned to a role at Victoria’s Secret. At Victoria’s Secret, Cordeiro Grant began to notice the dated content was still driving sales and that social media was not part of the strategy at all, though this was becoming an increasingly important channel for consumers to engage with brands. Cordeiro Grant comments that though she “was wearing stilettos and push-up bras every day and it was exhausting,” the real AHA moment was more personal and occurred when she got married. “I realized my husband loved me for all of my flaws and uniqueness - I was like where is the brand for that? There was no one telling me to love [me].” She left Victoria's Secret soon after, joining a startup to learn the inner workings of launching a business, before pivoting to launch her own.

“You need to find ways to hack, switch, and make better. We took a category that was dated and not celebrated and made it one that people love.”

Cordeiro Grant’s time in the retail industry played a critical role in the launch of Lively. She was introduced to a supplier via a connection from Victoria's Secret who had the capabilities to manufacture brands. Coupled with Cordeiro Grant’s experience launching brands, it felt like a natural partnership. After an initial investment in 2015, Lively was born. ‘Lively’ was selected as the name of the brand as Cordeiro Grant did not want one person’s name to encapsulate the brand. Instead, she searched for a word that made people feel a certain way. When she came across the word ‘lively’, meaning active, outgoing, energetic, she knew that was it. It represented perfectly how she wanted to make the women who wore her apparel feel and the target customer she wanted to attract.

Michelle Cordeiro Grant quickly built the business - going from product concept to development - to selling their first products by April 2016. Lively launched with 6 bras, 3 undies, and a bodysuit, as Cordeiro Grant comments, “that is all we needed ''. Through this time, Cordeiro Grant built the business impressively as a solopreneur before bringing on a small team that included: Sarah Sullivan (creative and design), a graphic design intern, and Ali Alquiza (Director of Brand). As Cordeiro Grant puts it, “we were really jacks of all trades”.

In the increasingly crowded lingerie space, from newcomers, ThirdLove and Parade to new big brands entrants including Gap and American Eagle, Lively differentiate itself with a fresh product and attitude. Lively’s intimates leverage the materials and comfort of athleisure and swimwear, combined with the functionality of bras. The features are more logical than the traditional bra we are used to today. For instance, the adjuster to manipulate the length of a strap is located in the front, not the back (game changer!). Beyond the product, the brand seeks to empower women and tear down the decades of stereotypical women represented in lingerie advertising and build a community of “smart, strong women doing the things they love with the people that they love”. This mission is resonating with women across generations and socioeconomic backgrounds - who are all purchasing Lively products.

Lively’s approach to growth has been dissimilar to other brands over-investing in social media and paid advertising. As the costs associated with digital advertising increase exponentially, Cordeiro Grant thought about how brands were built before social media, when “you had to spend time building lists and getting grassroots”. She started from the bottom relying on community and word of mouth and instead investing in PR. For their initial product launch, Lively ran a “refer-a-friend” campaign. The campaign led to the company collecting 133,000 emails and 300,000 visits to their splash page from shoppers around the world. Lively has continued to build its community via an ambassador program. The program, now boasting 150,000 ambassadors, provides unique links to the Lively webpage for each ambassador to sell products. In exchange, they are awarded points that they can swap for merchandise and early access to launches, among other perks. These tactics seem to be paying off, as the Lively community is highly engaged. Ambassadors share content on average 2-3 times per week and Lively uses user-generated content from the community in their own advertising campaigns.

“I would be the obstacle to the business growing if I did not embrace the idea of team and invest[ing] in people.”

The road to launching and scaling a successful startup is not without hurdles. From a strap developed to be silky smooth that did not stay on in the application, to launching a new website only to realize that this would delete all of the organic searches that the company had built, directly before one of the largest days for US retailers - Black Friday. These are situations that often can cripple an early-stage retail startup, where cash is critical to the continued existence of the company, or as Cordeiro Grant puts it, “any kind of cost was a bullet to the heart,” at this time. She took these hurdles in stride as learning opportunities were needed to scale her business. For Cordeiro Grant, the hardest issue faced has been people. Two months after launching, Cordeiro Grant became pregnant with her son and had to learn how to let go of some of the business and delegate. She came to the hard realization that she, “would be the obstacle of the business growing if I did not embrace the idea of team and invest[ing] in people.” This is reflected in the various business decisions she has chosen to make, including selecting to reduce advertising costs, so that she could, “invest in [her] people”.

“Entrepreneurship is a mental game - start with inside and physically - so you can push through.”

The Advice

Cordeiro Grant shares some sage advice for those looking to launch a fashion business:

Start with a very tight assortment and figure out how to market that. Once that is figured out, then expand beyond there (Lively launched with just 6 bras, 3 undies and a bodysuit - that was it!)
No need to invent, just figure out ways to hack, switch, and make better.
Being successful externally starts from within: “I learned the hard way that not feeling good and burnout do not add to efficiency, greatness or any type of success. I have become much more selfish about taking care of my body and family, so I can kickass at work.”
Cordeiro Grant recommends picking up a copy of Blue Ocean Strategy and listening to other founders on podcasts, such as How I Built This.

Today, Lively is available for purchase on their website, 4 stores, and via Target and Nordstrom. If you are interested in becoming an ambassador or placing your first order, check out their website here and use code RADICHE10 for a 10% discount! Offer expires on March 31, 2022.

Photo courtesy of Lively.

Written by Simmone Seymour.

Simmone is a member of BLK VC, an organization that aims to increase the number of Black Venture Capitalists. A retail and consumer goods enthusiast, she works in Strategy at Nordstrom and writes about the topic for StartU, Radiche, and on her Medium page. You can follow her on Twitter @SeymourSimmone.