Kickstarter campaign - we need help to change the world with our pants!

[sarahjordan]

Good morning Pioneers!

I have just launched an ethical underwear business, Y.O.U underwear, and I need your help to start changing the world one pair of pants at a time! 

Y.O.U makes stylish, ethical, super soft 100% organic cotton underwear for men and women. They look good, make you feel good, and with our buy one give one model, they also do good. Millions of people around the world don't have access to underwear, so when we saw this in Uganda in 2016 we were inspired to start a business to make a difference. Just over a year later, Y.O.U has come to life and we are now manufacturing our first products and helping provide underwear to people in need. 

In order to have the biggest impact possible, we have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us get out into the world and start making a difference. So far the response has been great and people love the products, but we still have a big target to raise so we are looking for help. 

Any support for our campaign would be amazing - please like, share or pledge - and if you know any PR / media contacts who may be interested please get in touch. We'd love to be featured in your newsletters, shared on your social media profiles, anything that can help us. We really do want to change the world one pair of pants at a time, and with Y.O.U we can do it!

Many thanks in advance - a link to full info about what we're doing and our campaign is below. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/youunderwear/you-change-the-world-with-your-own-underwear/

www.youunderwear.com

[Niel]

Thank you @sarahjordan

My wife and I absolutely loved this - well done and well though through!

I have some questions (that will not influence giving but might influence selling) - the challenge is meant in good spirits: 

- Do you have nursing bra's? - my wife (Jeanette) is currently nursing and it is really difficult getting the right stuff.

- As people who did primary and emergency healthcare in place like Liberia, we wondered what your size spectrum was? I ask this from the perspective of seeing millions of starved patients. 

- Do you have +++ sizes. As a brand that is all about inclusion - which is awesome - I wondered how inclusive your sizes were?

- Your male and female models both reflect the socially constructed ideal image - how can you juxtaposition more between privilege and poverty while being more representative of what it actually means? 

**in short, how can you appeal to a more diverse consumer market in order to give more?

Good luck with the campaign and we cannot wait to order.

Best wishes

Niel 

[sarahjordan]

Hi Niel, 

Many thanks for responding to my post yesterday and for your positive feedback. That's great that you and your wife liked what we are doing - it means a lot and it's always good to hear, so thank you!

I have attempted to answer your questions below, although I am also happy to chat to you in more detail about this in person or over the phone. Your feedback and questions were invaluable, so I want to make sure I do them justice! 

- Do you have nursing bra's? - my wife (Jeanette) is currently nursing and it is really difficult getting the right stuff.

Sarah - not yet, but this is something that we are definitely considering and it's great to know that they would be wanted. We are actually speaking to people about a whole range of more specialist products that will suit a variety of needs, including for nursing mums and people with specific disabilities or medical conditions. We would love to do this and think it's important for everyone to have products that they like as well as feel comfortable - and good - in! 

- As people who did primary and emergency healthcare in place like Liberia, we wondered what your size spectrum was? I ask this from the perspective of seeing millions of starved patients. 

- Do you have +++ sizes. As a brand that is all about inclusion - which is awesome - I wondered how inclusive your sizes were?

Sarah - at the moment we will have the women's bikinis, thongs and boy shorts in UK sizes 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16. Men's trunks will come in sizes small, medium, large and extra large. The women's bralette will also be in a small (8-10), medium (10-12) and large (12-14). These are soft products and so come in more general measurements rather than cup sizes. Full details of the sizing, including inch measurements, are at the bottom of our Kickstarter page. It's a long page though, so you do have to scroll to find it - unfortunately I can't include it here as you can't add images.  

These will just be our initial sizes to get us up and running and are based on customer feedback. We would like to expand our range of sizes so we are as inclusive as possible, so once again it's really useful to get that feedback. Please do let us know if there are specific sizes that you would like to see and we will do our best to accommodate that.

- Your male and female models both reflect the socially constructed ideal image - how can you juxtaposition more between privilege and poverty while being more representative of what it actually means? 

**in short, how can you appeal to a more diverse consumer market in order to give more?

Sarah - part of our philosophy with Y.O.U is to support positive body imagery and to empower and give confidence to our customers when they wear our underwear. We used 'real' models in our photoshoot (including us!) and deliberately tried not to present unrealistic images. This principle is something that we will stick to as one of our values is around authenticity and we really want to inspire confidence rather than negativity. We did work with professional models to make our video though, mainly because of the time we had available and how much more comfortable they were in front of the camera. 
Once again we hope to continue to improve, widen our range of products, customers and images - and this is all just a starting point for us. We are trying our best to get it right - whilst also getting it done so that we can actually have the impact we want to. 

Many thanks again for all your feedback Niel. All questions like this will really help inform our product development, so it's great to hear exactly what you would like and we will do what we can. Assuming we are succesful with this campaign, we plan to continually evolve our products and would love our customers to be as closely involved in that as possible. Please stay in touch, support and share what we're doing and hopefully we really will be able to make a difference with our pants!

Thanks again, 
Sarah 

[Niel]

Thank you for the great response @sarahjordan!

If I could be of service in any shape or form, please let me know. 

BW

Niel 

[sarahjordan]

Many thanks Niel. I hope I answered all your questions, although please do let me know if you need any further information. 

Many thanks for your offer of help too, I really appreciate that. To be honest the main thing we need at the moment is support for our campaign - clicking on the link, sharing it, pledging ...  Every pound - and pair of pants helps - and we're just trying to get it out to as many people as possible at the moment. 

Any media or PR contacts who may be interested too is always useful - or bloggers, influencers, people to talk about us, share on their sites and social channels. Feedback so far has been great and we're doing well, but we've still got a long way to go to hit our target and have the impact we want. Fingers crossed!
Thanks again, 
Sarah

[sarahjordan]

Dear all, 

I just wanted to quickly update on this, as having shared details of our Kickstarter campaign back in December I wanted to let you know that we were successfully funded. It's very exciting and we've had amazing feedback from everyone who we've already sent underwear out to, so a huge thank you to everyone in this community who helped and shared our details. We are looking forward to the next stage as we continue to send out pants (my house is so full of pants!) and we have our next items arriving at the end of this month too. 
Many thanks again to you all and I will keep you posted as we build our site and soon have full ecommerce functionality too. 

Happy New Year!

Sarah