Conversations with Lindsey Carter

And with that being said, please welcome Lindsay Carter. Hello, Hello, welcome. Thank you. You like my jacket? Yes, honestly I was going to wear Set two and I was like I probably like I'm in full set just so you know right now. Also in short, the bra, the whole. Oh my god, I'm we're sending you some new stuff, right

I think I'm so excited that's coming on the way. Yeah, thank you so much, because I'm not exaggerating when I say I've probably bought over twenty pairs of your workout here, Like, um, we'll stop buying it, We'll stud me. I'm happy to support, but I'm like a die hard fan. When they told me they were like, do you want Lindsay on the podcast? I was like, please, I really want to know everything. My god. So I'm just really excited you're here. Thank you so much for coming on. Um, of course, I'm

so excited. Should we just dive right in? Yeah, It's it's weird for me to be on the opposite end because I also host a podcast. So I'm like kind of excited to be in the hot seat rather than hosting because I get awkward sometimes I do. So if you want to take over at any point, feel free. I don't mind. Um, but will you give a little background as to who you are for the listeners that don't know. Yeah, Um, so I'm Lindsay Carter. I am

soon to be a mom of two. Um, I own that active I started it like four and a half years ago. Um. I started it with no experience in the active industry or fashion world. Um. I went to school to be a kindergarten teacher and now I have an office in Beverly Hills with over thirty employees. Wow. So when you say you had no experience in active where what made you want to start this? Then? Um it's kind of a loaded question, but I so After college, I got a job at NBC Universal and then I

dabbled in social media. Back then, I say back then as if like I'm, you know, a dinosaur. But back then, in my world, social media was just kind of like popping off, like no one really was using it, No one really used it for marketing or anything like that. And I had told my bosses at NBC Universals, like, I really think that we should be marketing these shows on social media, Like no one's doing that, but there's these personalities on social and that's where I found my

love for branding and social media. And I say this story because I think it's such an important part of how I started set um. And then from there I went to a trending forecasting agency UM where I did social media and branding and marketing and I basically wrote reports on how to create a cult like brand UM. And then from there I was like, you know what, I want to take what I know and apply it

to like myself. And I had my own social media marketing branding agency called Elie Social, where I did like I blew brands up for people UM. And then I was like, why am I giving everyone my idea? I

should do my own thing. So I was sitting at Alfred on Melrose Place and everyone was wearing activewear in and out of the coffee shop, but no one looked like they were cute cute people, but like no one looked put together, like no one looked street style active where you know, no one was doing it at the time.

Um Ala was really focused on like yoga, and Lulu was focused on exercise, and Jim Shark was focused on like full on yeah, and so it's like there's no one who's like focusing on the in between of being active while staying active essentially. So I was like, I'm gonna do it. So I did it so smart. You found the missing thing in the market and created it yourself. And I have to say it's it honestly is so

comfortable too. And I I feel like any time I don't know what to wear, I'm constantly reaching just for one of my set sets because it looks so chic and put together, like you're saying. Um So, I have a question that I've been wondering, and I love to ask this to people that have started their own businesses

or entrepreneurs in any sense of the word. If you're a young girl or a young boy, and you're sitting at home and you don't have the connections or maybe necessarily some of the resources that some people may have, and you really want to start a line. What would your advice be and where did you kind of start and say, Okay, this is what I want to do. This is the first step I'm taking. And obviously you can share as much as you want without giving too

much of your secrets and whatever. But I am curious. It's honestly really not a secret. I there's so many different ways to start a brand. UM. First of all, talk about it, Tell your friends, tell your family friends, talk to your parents, ask if they know anyone, because you would be so surprised who has connections where? And everyone has this like taboo thought like they don't want to ask for help or you know, whatever it might be. But you'd be so surprised who's willing to just connect

you to someone to start a conversation. UM. And then also, Google is your best friend. I literally googled seamless Active where Los Angeles. I already had my business plan in my head and I had it written up, and it was like this whole social media pitch um of how I was going to market it and like why they should partner with me, Because a lot of factories and manufacturers require minimums, and so unless you're willing to hit their minimum, they're probably not going to work with you.

But when I was willing to like prove and show the growth to them and say like this is what this is the reach I have, and this is how I'm going to do it, they're more willing to listen and sort of negotiate with you. Um, everyone's willing to negotiate. Um.

And then also there's services. UM. I I'm not like a master in sourcing, but I did post on my TikTok with our head of production resources that if you did want to start your own clothing brand or anything like that, there are resources or websites that lead you to the right contacts depending on what it is that you want to start. UM. But I would really say the first steps that you should take our first understand

what it is that you're building. Be passionate about it, because if you're not passionate about it, it's not going to take off. It's not going to go anywhere. And don't fake your passionate about it, really be passionate about and ask yourself, can you do this every single day for the rest of your life, even the hard days, And if the answer is still yes, then go to the next step and keep going to that next step as long as you're answering yourself. Yes. Okay, great advice.

I love that. Can we backcheck a little bit about kind of maybe some like marketing hacks that you've discovered or what's worked really well for you and why you think it's worked really well. Yeah, Um, marketing is so broad, so it really depends on what the product is that you're marketing. The first thing you need to understand in any marketing position, whether you're working at an agency, marketing for your own brand, marketing for someone else's brand, is

no your audience. You have to understand who you're selling to, what their interests are, what they like, what they don't like, and then you have to trial and airing your marketing plans. So first set specifically, they need to be educated on new styles, new products, different things like that, because then they feel they get like anxiety if they're not understanding the function of the new the new style that we're doing. UM, I would definitely say. The first step any marketing hack

one on one is know your audience. Know who you're marketing to. You know, it's if you don't understand your audience, then you're not going to be able to tell the story, which is hack number two. Tell a story. You need to be able to talk to your audience and let them understand, like why are you doing this, Why did you decide to come out with this style dress, How does this dress make a difference in your day? One's

different about it? Um. And then I think and a lot of people might either agree or disagree with this, but tip number three is transparency. I think that's like what set No Pun intended, What set Set apart from other brands is our transparency. You know, if we've poked up and there was a production mistake, we say it. If something's delayed in our warehouse, we announce it. Um. I think that would definitely be hack number three. I love that. I feel like, yeah, that it's a huge thing.

And I also think like there's something to be said for the fact that I knew who you were before meeting you, or I like had a face to put to the brand head sort of and like I think that's really helpful as well, because you feel like a like there's a personal connection there just another like young woman or something of that regard. I think is helpful to not only sales, but just to make the consumer feel like, oh, this is like a legitimate, trustworthy, like

wholesome brand also, um, which I think is amazing. And I also just feel like it can be probably i'd imagine I've never started a company, but really difficult when something comes back fucked up like you said, or there was a mistake, and have you had I mean, I'm sure you guys have been around for a few years now, like any major no pun intended, but like setbacks. Um,

right now we're currently going through something. So I think the biggest lesson that I've learned in business in general is that not only are there going to be like problems externally you know with production and manufacturing, but internally managing your employees, understanding their personalities, um, creating a like company culture where people want to wake up and come to work every day, and then dealing with people who

aren't in the right you know, positions. It affects the company externally, having the wrong talent in the wrong positions could really up your company and something that we're dealing with now. So we're going through our second restructure. We're trying to find the right talent. We're poaching people were

doing really hardcore interviews. By talent, do you mean people that work on the Set Active team or you mean like social media presence that you like, I want to work with influencers talent meaning like employees, like people who work on this on like the Set Active team. Um. You know, so many people can like talk the talk, but they cannot walk the walk, they cannot execute, and

it can really really really like up a company. Um. And then also like obviously there's production issues our whole thing, or colors and like wearing matching colors, um with your sweats or your basics or you're active and we had a color for Montana that's it was really hard to get it to match and so it it's delayed and we had to be like, Okay, we got to get the DPS ready, which is the product description pages that you see on websites. We have to say, like this

item is not shipping till this date. You have to alert the whole team. You have to like let social media know, because they want to know when they're getting their stuff. Um, so like problems like that happen all the time, and that I would say, like the other hardest part of like being a business owner is that so many people think they know how to run your business. Um there's people who hide behind social media accounts or you know, someone commented on our TikTok saying like this

color is just the same as Macha. I'm like, really, because you and opened our Pantone book and pack the Pantone color yourself, and you know for a fact that we just took that color. And I'm just like sitting there and I had this conversation with a friend last night at dinner, and I was like, would they say that to someone's face, No, they sit behind don't even saying I've It's it's mind blowing to me what some

of these people do behind a phone screen. I'm just like audacity, because they know how to run a multimillion dollar company. Maybe I should bring them in and let them do it for a week. I have a question. This is so random, but I feel like one of the trickiest things to do with anything like legging material or just like tight and a mixture of a light color creates a camel toe or like something that's unflattering. And I feel like with all the workout gear I've

purchased from you guys that doesn't happen. Is that because of the material, Is there like a double layer situation happening? How do you avoid that? Um? Get yourself a good tech packer? Um? No, but really there's some thing called, well, all of our all of our leggings now don't have a front seam. They have the back seam that you know flatters your butt, but there's no front seam that gives you that camel toe. I think it just depends. Obviously,

everyone's like bottom half is created differently. Um, understanding and in seems so like the line that would go in the front, and like how that measures is also really important for camel toe, and so getting that in seam like perfect will make a huge difference in any active where. Um. However, we took out our front seam to alleviate the camel toe situation. Um, it also depends, like what underwear you're

wearing under your leggings. Um. Some I mean consult with your doctor when I say this, But some gynecologists say, like, you're not supposed to wear underwear with your leggings because it's like a double added like bacteria layer. So that might help or not help with camel too. Try out, let us know, Yeah, try it out, let us know. And we also came out with seamless underwear to like mitigate what camel toe does. Um, And it's like we're

finally bringing it back. We had a production issue with them and it was our best like one of our best selling products. So I'm excited that indoors coming back because that helps the camel too. That's huge. When you first started, like backtrack a little bit more, were you immediately using a factory or like a shipping warehouse or were you when you first began like shipping things yourself. How how much help did you have? Like what was

the really early stage looking like? Um, the really early stage is probably exactly what you imagine a young entrepreneurs life to look like. Um, it was me and Nicky Shay, who was my first employee, and we looked like Santa Claus every day with like plastic bags full of orders over my shoulder, my whole apartment, my poor husband who is now my husband at the time, but was my

boyfriend and fiance. Basically had to live in this box line department with me of like you know, container store boxes labeled with sizes and colors, and then production boxes I'm talking lined from the floor to the ceiling every crevice of my apartment. UM. And so me and Nicky were shipping out orders every single day. UM. I remember like burying Nikki in the orders, Like one day when we got a time and it was like find Nikki

and she like pops up from the orders. Um. And then we graduated to my family friend's house, her guesthouse. She like had it as an office um, and we shipped orders from there because we needed more space. And then we worked for my dining room up until two and a half years ago. I would say, um, we crowded my dining room table. Once I hired on more employees. I think at one point I had ten employees at my dining room table. And then we were like, okay,

it's time for an office. And that was year three that we got an office. So for three years I worked from my dining room table at my house. That's some serious hustle. I respect that on so many levels. That's amazing. What was like the trickiest thing within that, UM, I would say, keeping up with the growth, UM, teaching myself things that I am not good at, like Shopify

and inventory and customer service. Oh my god. I learned so quickly that I could never work on a customer service team, Like ever did you have to deal with that? Like when if things weren't going or if like an order didn't ship or somebody didn't receive something, where you personally in the beginning messaging these people back, being like I'm so sorry, what was your order number? Dada da da? Oh yeah, I mean even on launch day, I don't even think we had a customer service email set up

like it was it was my hand Like it was crazy. UM. And I learned quickly that I have little patients for rude people, and people tend to get very rude over customer service. I understand the frustration of like spending money on something and not receiving it and you know the long list of reasons, but you don't need to be rude. And I was like finding that I didn't have tolerance for that. But Nikki is so patient and so kind, and she was really good at it, so I kind

of like put that on her weight. UM. And then you know that goes into just like knowing your employees and always hiring for your weaknesses because UM, that's what's going to move a company forward in the end. But yeah, I mean we did all of the customer service. That was definitely one of the hardest things. UM. And then just like things that I didn't know, like you had to put package weights and I'm like, well, I don't know how much this package ways? Like what am I

supposed to put shop? Um, There's things that you learn a long way. And so I think that's like my biggest piece of advice that I try to tell people is like take it step by step. Things are going to pop up. You can google, you can ask a friend, like, you'll figure it out as long as you take it step by step. Just don't get ahead of yourself totally. How many sets did you guys release when you first started? UM, So it was only one active fabric, which was our

skull flex fabric. It's that buttery seamless fabric that UM we came out with, and then we came out with four colors UM, and then I think it was two style tops, and then biker shorts. Actually biker shorts didn't come until a little bit later, and then the legging and then um, it was we've kind of dominated like

the limited edition aspect for the first year. UM at the time, like no one was really doing drop model businesses like they were, but it was like supreme like really you know coveted brands that either were like known for like the lines on Fairfax and things like that, and there wasn't really a dt C brand, or at least maybe I just was. I'm naive and I have no idea, but I didn't know the DTC brand that we was doing drop model um. And so that's sort of how we went about doing things. And we don't

do any wholesale UM, I won't do it. This might be a really dumb question, but what is a drop model? What does that mean? Drop model means that it doesn't stay in stock, So you like have a limited edition collection, you drop it, and then you do a new drop a couple of weeks later, a month later, whatever your cadence that you want is. And that's not a dumb question question. So it just like makes it a little bit more enticing maybe for the consumer like, I have

to have that before it is out of there. Obviously, we talked a little bit in the beginning about marketing and how important that was. But before you guys launched your product, did you have a marketing plan in place that you guys were posting like this is a new brand set active drops this day, And did you build like a little bit of a social media following for the brand before launching it or when you launched it then, did you guys really go like balls to the wall

with promotion. Yeah, so, actually we never ran ads um first set, I started like an Instagram page and had a mood board going. But on my personal Instagram, which is something I still do on my personal Instagram, was I was posting samples. I was posting teasers. I had all of my friends come over and shy on samples, and then they were posting about it, and then their friends were like, where is that from? So I call it my digital word of mouth like marketing strategy. Because

I had everyone anyone come over. I wouldn't have a pizza party when it was sample night and all of the sample boxes would arrive and all of my friends would take me yourselfies and like just be like this, these leggings are insane or you know. I I posted reviews on my Instagram and this was all through my personal Instagram, and then I started selling the samples on my Instagram very transparently. I was like, this is a sample, it might not fit perfectly. This is my venmo. Whoever

secures it gets it. And I sold out of all my samples. UM. So yeah, I like did a Set Active mood board because I knew I needed a home base for these people to follow once my friends started posting about it UM, and I needed to keep the momentum going of the chatter about the brand. UM. But I will say that what I intended for to start Set Active and what it is today has changed, has pivoted. UM.

That's always going to happen in business. If it's not pivoting and it's not you know, like staying the same like or changing and something's wrong like you're it's never going to succeed. So that's amazing. And would you say that you intended to expand into UM like different types of product, not just work out because obviously I'm in like a hoodie and I know you guys have like

the comfy shorts and the cute like quarter zips. And was that always a part of the plan or are you saying like kind of similar to what you just had said, Like No, that wasn't initially what you had in mind, but you just kind of like grow and evolve and see what the people want. Um. I mean I always knew that the sky was a limit and tow in terms of you know, expanding into new categories.

That's why the one mistake I did make was not doing just Set on Instagram and just and doing that active because I did know that I was going to expand eventually. I didn't know how hard it was going to be to get an Instagram handle later on. Um. But it's okay. I mean, as long as it's still staying true to the idea of why Set was created, it's fine. Um. But I actually started Set, I wanted it to be like a subscription box. Um. I don't know how to explain it. Do you know? Do you

know who Nicole Rogers is. She's friends with like Devon and Stuffs. So Nicole actually in the early days like helped me get Set started. Um, And she her and Devon have this like tattoo right here. It's like three hearts. That was going to be the set logo. So I don't even I can't explain why. I don't ask why. Um, I have like a denim custom jacket with that logo on it because I was like, look, how cool to set logo. It's just just like heart hears um. It

was I don't listen. I don't know what I was, but I was very stoked about it. Um. And then it was gonna be a subscription box of like everything you need to like jump start your workout, even if you didn't want to go to the gym. So it was going to be like a subscription box of like a water bottle, a jump rope, a set, and like something else. And then it just can't. Like every creative meeting we had leading up to production and the launch, it just evolved and changed and it completely changed the

business model. And I called my dad and I was like, I need an investor, like I need to I need I need this much. And he was like, how do you know you need this much money? And I was like I don't know. So he's like, okay, let me let me connect you with my friend chat. He like does investments and stuff, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he connected me to this guy. And I called chet and chats asking me all these hard questions. I start crying because I have no idea what the

hell he's asking me. And I was like, I can't start this company. I don't have an investment, and I didn't start Set with an investment. I started Set with my own investment of credit card debt um So, yeah, stop, I'm no longer in debt. But wow, that's wild. Did you ever run into like any problems when you like, did you ever have too many sets that wouldn't sell and then what do you do with those? Or it was that never an issue? Because I know that's a

thing for some companies. Listen, we can only predict what colors are going to do well and what aren't. Like we had a drop maybe it was last year where pinks just weren't selling. Pink was not a good color. And then when we decided we were picking our Montana colors,

that's how to be. Like eight months ago, when we were picking our Montana colors that drops tomorrow, Ali was like, I really want to do a baby pink, Like we should do one and I was like, the pinks don't sell, and now pink is is like people are so excited about paink that we think it's going to be the number one seller tomorrow. But um, sometimes we get our prediction song like what we think is going to be a fire color ends up being the least seller, like

the least selling color that we do. So you have to get creative. We put it on whether it's a sale or UM, we market it differently. You just you just got to get creative. I know, for like, for example, our shorty suit, it's a unitard that's like in short version, UM wasn't selling. We almost discontinued it, like it just was not selling. And then one day this girl I think she bought it or we we must. I don't know if we gifted it to her or she bought it.

I'm almost positive she bought it because the whole office was like, what's going on, Like the shorty suits selling out on the website, and she posted a TikTok video I think, just like talking about the shorty suit and it went viral and shorty suits and are number one of our number one selling products. And we were this close to discontinuing it. It's crazy the power of social media and if it just has a little buzz or something that looks like appealing, it's it's really so insane,

which I think comes back down to marketing. But I think now more than ever, especially with TikTok and Instagram, but especially TikTok, because the amount of times I see a girl or even sometimes a boy like post a fashion video and say where their stuff is from? You bet my first thing I'm doing is like quitting out buying the same thing. It's it's really wild the impact it has. Um. I don't want to keep you for

too long. I know you're very busy. Do you have anything upcoming besides I know you have a collection dropping tomorrow, as you've said, that's really exciting. But anything else that you want to share that is in the brand's future. Um, it depends what gets the people excited. For me, what it gets me and I'm going to sound like such a moment when I say this word, but what gets me super jazzed is creative and campaigns and how we market things um our Black Friday campaign and what we're

doing next year creatively. I haven't seen a brand do before. So I'm excited to like tell that story. We locked ourselves in the in the conference room on Friday, me our creative director, and um my best friend Nicholas, who used to work out set, and for hours we just creatively planned out um next year. And I'm I like pitched it to the team yesterday and then after on Friday, and they were like jaws were on the floor. They're like, holy,

this is going to be epic. Um. So I'm really excited about that we have coming, and I'm really excited about some new styles we have, like long sleeve robbers coming, we have new style dresses coming. Um, we have a flare onesie coming with spaghetti straps. Like, we're just getting really creative with where we're putting out there. In terms of product. We have swimt coming next year, Men's coming next year, a bunch of collaborations and new categories. So yeah,

oh my god, it's so exciting. Well, congratulations on all your success. I can only see it going up from here. I am truly a die hard fan. I'm obsessed with your brand and um, yeah, thank you so much for sharing some wisdom. I know this will help so many people listening that are feeling either uninspired or don't know where to start when creating their own company helped me so much. You know that if you ever need anything, or have any questions or want to start your own thing,

you know I'm here to help. So uh, thanks for having me. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on good Luck with two Bye, Thank you