Marissa didn’t set out to build a major company – she just wanted to buy athletic wear that wasn’t so darn expensive. She wasn’t on a Lululemon budget, so she set out to solve her own problem.
It started her on an adventure of entrepreneurship – and now she’s patenting a custom line of products. Learn how Marissa went from an everyday mom of four – to cofounder, inventor, and entrepreneur.
Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Marissa Whalen, and I’m a wife and mom of four kiddos. I’m the owner and co-founder of Little Movements Apparel and our sister brand, Core Movements.
Little Movements is a women’s activewear company. We specialize in affordable style and size inclusivity. We carry sizes extra small to three XL.
Why did we name it Little Movements? We encourage all women to have movement each day, even if it’s little.
CORE is a sister brand that we started and is home to the new products we design, patent, and produce. Little Movements operates like a traditional boutique – we order products from wholesalers and resell under our brand. CORE is where we are creating our own patented, custom apparel products.
Our first CORE product is a sports bra with built-in, sewn-in, padding. This is something no one has ever done before, and we are very excited!
What was your background? How did you come up with the idea?
My background had nothing to do with entrepreneurship or even basic business.
I graduated from UNL in 2012 with a degree in moderate to severe secondary disabilities. This led to a teaching job in Lincoln Public Schools, right after college. When I think about my background, it’s interesting to realize how this first job modeled and encouraged me to a future path of entrepreneurship. In this job, I had a lot of freedom and independence. It gave me the autonomy to create plans and try things that would best help the students I worked with. That’s how I relate it to what I do now – I’m trying to solve problems for people – the same way I was trying to help those kids.
I taught for four years and soon started to have children. I eventually decided to take a year off to be with my kids. The year soon passed and I never went back; I was enjoying being a stay-at-home mom.
I met my eventual co-founder through our local church. We were new to the area, and both had an interest in fitness. We started working out together.
Not on a Lululemon budget
One day, in 2018, we were on a run and started joking about how expensive good athletic wear was. This was before the big ‘athleisure’ movement in fitness. We were teasing how people could actually afford Lululemon. We were moms on a real-life budget, and the prices were outright laughable to us.
We admitted though, that we loved the look of Lululemon clothing – anything we could get in our price range was not cute or enjoyable to work out in.
I don’t know where it came from, but I asked Lindsay, “What if we, I don’t know, just started an online boutique.” We could run it out of our house, and see if we could bring affordable athletic wear to our market.
And that’s when we decided to begin.
What were your first steps to starting the business and coming up with the product?
The first thing we asked ourselves was, why is athletic apparel so expensive?
We started researching it. We got on Google, and found a few online retailers that we liked. We learned that we would need to get a retail license, figured out how to get a business bank account, and determined how we were going to process money.
We came up with a short business plan, pitched it to our husbands (who were thankfully on board), and decided to go for it. Our original business plan didn’t even have a website, we would start by trying to sell through our personal Facebook and Instagram.
We put $500 down to start the business, and I think we only used $350 to launch it. We used Square to process payments, which was essentially, free.
Our first inventory order was very small – 2 sets of leggings, 2 sets of sports bras, and 2 sets of jackets. We were our own models – we got our cameras out and took photos of ourselves (looking back, that’s super embarrassing, but also great).
We posted them on Facebook, and we sold out in 3 days!
Looking back, I don’t think I would have started any other way. We started without expectations – we had no real idea what this could be and we didn’t quit our jobs or anything.
I like to say we tip-toed into the business, taking baby steps in the beginning. And I wouldn’t go any other way.
How did you go about validating the business idea? How did you know there was a need?
We kept things pretty small to start with. We took the money we made from our first launch, didn’t pay ourselves, and bought more sets. We posted the new inventory, sold, ordered more items, and kept doing this for 3 months.
Local Popups
As we were doing this, we knew that if we wanted to grow, we needed to find ways to stand out. There are a lot of local boutiques for people to shop at, and it can get very competitive. So we took the route of finding good people to collaborate with.
Since we were an athletic wear company – we should go where people wear that apparel!
We started going to local gyms in Lincoln and Omaha and hosting small popup shops. The gym owners were very welcoming, and we made sure that every bag we gave out had a business card in it – this tactic really helped us get rolling.
Nebraska Flood Relief Fundraiser
In 2019 there was a huge flood in Nebraska. The flood was most harmful to farmers and ranchers in the area. My dad is a farmer, and our family lost a huge amount of cattle in the disaster.
At the time, we only had like 1000 followers on Instagram. But, I just had this thought – what could our little brand do to help?
We found a local print shop (Joe at Little Mountain Printshop is awesome) and explained that we wanted to do a little fundraiser for flood relief. They created us a simple T-shirt design to sell.
We promoted the design and raised $13,000 to give to Nebraska Flood Relief. We loved being able to do something like this, and in the end, it brought a lot of awareness to our small brand. I loved getting to show people the heart behind the business – we weren’t building Little Movements just to make money. We are part of our local and state community.
We are people with similar personalities and a similar heart. I always tell new business owners to show people your heart and be a member of your local community.
What does your business do uniquely in the market? How did you grow?
By 2020, we had outgrown our basement (our first warehouse). We rented a local space, and had launched our website.
We had a great community of customers. At this point, we had about 25 different products, and we kept selling out each launch. I attribute this early success to the community we built. We were constantly engaging with our customer community to learn what they wanted in an apparel brand – and even named some of the product lines after loyal customers.
Building a great community like this led to us taking a chance to solve an even bigger problem for women.
Let’s create our own product
We kept hearing about our customer’s problems with the sports bras we were selling. At this point in the industry, almost all sports bras were made the same.
The bra pads that come in sports bras are all the same size – regardless of the size of the garment ordered. And the pads are annoying. They ‘float’ in the sports bra, often getting bundled up or ending up in the bottom of your dryer.
We thought, why don’t we do something about this?
So we dived in. We visited with an attorney to learn about the patent process – and found out it’s pretty expensive.
We hadn’t raised any capital at this point – it was just us snowballing. We knew we were going to need to raise money to do this.
Customer data
Luckily, we found a local start-up grant that could help with this.
I wanted to make our grant application strong, so we decided we were going to present how real of a problem this was for our customers. We sent out surveys to our customer base and scheduled Zoom interviews. We collected data from 35 customer interviews and used it to build a great story of the problem we were going to solve.
We were awarded the grant from our local chamber, and it covered all our patent expenses. The grant was also a way that we began to engage with our local business community. We got some awesome local mentorship – and even found a manufacturer because of it.
From this, our sister brand, CORE was born. We are the industry’s first sports bra with a sewn-in pad.
What were some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the pathway of building? What would you tell new business builders?
Collaborate with others
There is so much power in collaboration. Your reputation will carry you only so far – creating relationships with entrepreneurs, mentors, or businesses you look up to is everything.
There have been so many opportunities I would have missed out on, without the relationships I built with other business owners.
I ask other people who are starting businesses, ‘what are you doing to build relationships with people you look up to and other business owners?’
‘How can you create relationships or bonds with them?’
For example, when I was looking for a space to start our first retail store I first looked at the Haymarket. This was the big restaurant and bar scene area in Lincoln. I went over to Alisha at Wax Buffalo (a super cool local candle store) to ask what she thought. She explained that Haymarket sales were ok, but sales were even better in Prescott, a historical spot in south Lincoln. She even let me know that someone was moving out of a great space – and it’s where we opened our first retail spot!
Baby Steps
I tell a lot of other new entrepreneurs to take baby steps.
I think a lot of people think they are just going to venture out and get this big storefront. And then sales will come.
Slow growth is true growth. When you start, there is just so much to learn. Starting small helps you learn to grow into a space. I love slow, true, authentic growth.
Did you ever have any, Oh Crap, Moments? Maybe you thought the business wasn’t going to make it?
Oh yeah – probably like every day.
Friends to Co-Founders to Founder
In 2021, we had a difficult decision and my Co-Founder, Lindsay, decided to exit ownership in the company. It was very challenging.
When you start a business with a best friend, you both start together, at the same place. But as we grew, our ideas started to look different. We ended up separating in a positive way, and we are still friends – Lindsay is one of my biggest advocates for success.
But I’d be lying if I did not admit that it changes the dynamic of the friendship and business.
It was really hard.
But I don’t think there’s any way to avoid the hard. I would have never started this without her – no way I would have done this alone. If you have an idea to start a business with a friend, go for it.
But you can’t be afraid to have hard conversations and ask ‘What if?’ When we started we were pretty laid back. We never asked, what if one of us really wants to grow this? And one of us doesn’t?
When you get into business with a friend, my advice would be to define your roles and be prepared to have hard conversations. Go into it understanding there is a difference between a business mindset verses an emotional mindset.
Getting our books right
As we started to grow, we had some early conversations with some investors. Maybe it was the right time or just the vibe we were giving off, but investors came to us without even asking.
But, after our first meeting, they turned us down.
I remember them saying to us, ‘If we put money into you, we think we would drown you.’
What they meant was that we had no structure to our business. Our books were not organized, we didn’t have specific roles as founders, and we had no processes for what we did. Essentially, we weren’t running this like a professional business.
This gave me the gusto I needed to upgrade our business.
One of the best things we ever did was hire a great bookkeeper. She takes care of everything for us. She keeps us on track, prepares our books, and even preps the business for investor meetings.
I learned that at first when you start small, you are just doing everything. But if you ever want to take on capital, you have to get organized and start to outsource the things you aren’t specialized in.
When you reflect on building your enterprise, how has it changed your life? Positive or negative?
It has changed my life. I like to describe it like this: It really works for me.
I love the flexibility of being my own boss. If I need to do something or run an errand, I can just do it. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.
Being a founder vs. a worker
However, with that comes the challenge to stop – to flip the switch to off, and stop working on the business all hours of the day. This is especially true with my family.
When you start a new business and it’s something you are passionate about, it’s something you can work on 24 hours. That’s what I’ve found as the biggest difference between someone who works a 9-5 job. When you are done, you can be done. As a founder, I could always be working and I want to work.
It’s a constant challenge to turn it off as a wife and a mom. I’ve been getting better at relying on a team and scheduling things out so I’m not glued to my phone all hours of the day. I have no doubts that owning a business can consume you, if you let it. I’m continually learning how to create balance.
Little Movements has also given me the opportunity to be in my community in a new way. I get to do really cool things – talk to schools, speak to college classes, and pitch to investors in Lincoln and Omaha. It creates experiences that I’ve never had before, which I really enjoy.
Seeming money in a new way
Money is motivating but in a different way. I used to see money as income – paychecks came in and we used it to support our family, buy things, and do fun stuff.
Now it’s almost like Monopoly when I see the money our business makes. It’s the tool that we use to make our business run and grow.
We just had Black Friday Sales, and we had our best sales day ever. But, instead of only seeing a big sales number, my brain went to where and how this money was going to funnel into the business. This much is going to inventory, this much is going to debt, this much is going to payroll, this much is going to growth.
It’s not ‘Wow look at this big number,’ it’s ‘Wow, this is what we can do with the revenue.’
I’m learning skills to be smart and intentional with our revenue. Making money is motivating, but learning and thinking about how we are going to use the money to accelerate Little Movements is thrilling.
What are some of your favorite books, classes or resources that have helped you?
- Launch – I listened to this book, and followed every single step to launch our CORE apparel product. We sold out in 22 minutes. It’s great to understand marketing as you scale.
- Seguno – We have valued Seguno for our Popups and Email Marketing on our Shopify store.
- CHATgpt – I know some people think this is controversial, but this has been a great help for content writing and caption ideas.
- Erica from Proven Ventures – She has been a great mentor to our business and growth.
- Goaldigger Podcast by Jenna Kutcher – It’s a great resource for female founders.
Where can we learn more about your business?
Breakdown
In this section, Humble Starts provides a summary of the main lessons from Marissa’s story. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own journey towards enterprise building.
1. Build a community, then your business.
Marissa contributes much of her success to the community that she has built. As she has grown, her community has grown with her. From day one, instead of just thinking about sales, she thought about how her brand could be focused on her customer. She focused on growing a community first, and then the consistent sales came.Little Movements has built a moat of loyal customers because Marissa built a community. This is a huge advantage for a business, especially a consumer brand.
Action Step: Instead of thinking of business ideas first, brainstorm a community that you want to serve. Try to write down 10 communities that you would enjoy serving as a business.
2. Scratch your own itch.
Marissa got started by trying to solve a problem that she had. This gave her immediate credibility and knowledge of how to build a successful product and brand. She’s an everyday user of the product, and building a business in a strong interest of hers. Building around a market that you are a part of, and solving a problem that you experience every day is a shortcut to a sustainable business.
Action Step: Make a list of ‘things that bother you.’ Keep the list with you throughout the day, and keep asking yourself what bothers you or is a pain point. Try to get to a list of 50 things and then evaluate for potential business ideas.
3. Start small, and then let it snowball.
Marissa didn’t start with a website, a professional photographer, or a big retail front. She started with what she had – her Facebook page and an iPhone.Starting small and cheap keeps things low-risk and manageable. As you grow, you can take more risks. There is nothing wrong or embarrasing with starting small – it’s the best way to do it!
