Honest Update about DTL

The honest truth about why it's taken me so long to drop new product.

I started DTL when I was nineteen years old. And honestly? I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to make friends with the women training at my gym. They had ten, fifteen years on me and I didn't know how to connect with them - so I made them leggings. I made them a sports bra. Product was how I bonded with them.

That's it. That's how this brand started.

There was no business plan. No inventory strategy. No grand vision. I was just a nineteen year old girl trying to belong somewhere. And because I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't carry the weight of it. I just played. I tried things. I wasn't scared because I didn't know enough to be scared.

Fast forward to now. I'm twenty eight. We have twelve staff. Two warehouses. And we're about to open a third in the US.

And up until December last year, I was running all of it while still working a full-time job. That job was my safety net. If I made a bad call - wrong stock, wrong collection, cash flow mistake, my salary was there to quietly cover it. I could absorb errors without anyone really knowing. That buffer is gone now.

So when people wonder why inventory has felt messy, or why new product has been slow, that's why. Last year we grew fast. Really fast. And I couldn't keep up with it properly. I was constantly having to pump money back into our core styles - the black, the foundational pieces, because that's what every new customer buys first. Black leggings, black bra. That's the entry point. And then she comes back for colour. 

So I was just trying to keep up with that demand, keep stock on hand, keep the business moving, and because of that I couldn't free up the cash to invest in new collections the way I wanted to. We ended up on preorder on and off throughout the year because of it. I got us into trouble. And I'm telling you that because honestly? There's just something relieving about being upfront. I'd rather tell you exactly what's going on than stand here pretending I've got it all together and I'm some perfect business owner. Because I'm not. And I think you already know that about me.

This year I went full-time DTL. And with that came something I didn't expect — fear. Real fear. Because now the risk is real. Now it's my entire livelihood. And every time I go to put money into new product I second guess myself. I wonder if you'll love it. I wonder if it's good enough. I wonder if I'm good enough. There's a layer of self doubt in this that I don't talk about enough.

I'm not a cool twenty-eight-year-old. I'm not aesthetic. I wear leggings and a t-shirt most days and I'm not on trend and I'm not hip, and for a long time I thought that was a problem for this brand. But I'm realising it's not. 

Because most of you don't care about that either. You don't want trend. You don't want Instagram. You just want garments that work. Garments that are built properly, made from performance materials, designed to actually support your body, and that feel as good as they look. The older I get, the more I know that's true - and the more I know that my customer is just me.

So here's where we're at.

We have new pieces coming. Really exciting ones. And I've been slow and careful about it because I refuse to drop product just to drop product. If you don't love it, I end up with dead stock and that's a very real risk for a business like ours. So I'm doing it slowly, deliberately, piece by piece, making sure everything we bring out is something I genuinely believe in.

We also have a new collection launching in July. And I cannot wait for you to see it. It's the one I'm most proud of because there is more new product in it than I've ever done before. New silhouettes. New categories. Pieces I've had a gut feeling about for a long time.

Am I freaking out? Yes. Genuinely. I'm terrified you won't love it. But I'm taking the risk anyway. Because I think you will.

Just please be patient with me. I'm figuring this out in real time, same as I always have.

Rhi 🤍