BUILDING A vertically INTEGRATED DTC BRAND
From the Ground Up: SugarSky
SugarSky
What started with sewing headbands in my 300-square-foot apartment turned into something bigger. After launching SugarSky in 2015, over the next six years, it grew from a one-woman operation into a fully-operational DTC brand. I'm grateful for what building SugarSky has taught me along the way: dreaming up and designing products, designing and sourcing fabric, sewing product myself or managing a team / partner who does, building and running a robust Shopify ecommerce site, social, marketing, selling wholesale, managing inventory, packing orders and, eventually, figuring out how to hand some of those things off as we grew. SugarSky is where I learned how all the pieces of a business fit together and where I fell in love with ecommerce.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: SUGARSKY'S MISSION STATEMENT
"Here at SugarSky, we exist to encourage and empower everyone who comes in contact with our products — those who design, make, sell, buy, gift and wear them."
The beginning days
From my 300sf Apartment
After saving up a few dollars from corporate America, I took a leap of faith and left to start SugarSky - a brand we coined as: made-in-the-USA headwear and accessories where we designed, printed, cut and sewed fun-patterned products from eco-friendly, UV-rated material. Eventually, our product line grew significantly but IT ALL STARTED WITH A HEADBAND that was wearable 4 different ways.
Every headband left with a hand-stamped kraft paper tag tied on with twine. It wasn’t fancy, but it was what we could afford.
My dad was an avid photographer and helped me rig up a makeshift studio for SugarSky’s first product photos.
Our first professional photoshoot. I remember seeing this image for the first time and feeling like the brand I’d pictured in my head was finally becoming real.
The first wholesale line sheet. With some nudging from people smarter than me, I started pursuing retail pretty early on. It ended up becoming an important part of the business.
From One Woman Show to 5,000-Piece Order
And Then It Grew
I realized I couldn’t keep sewing everything myself. So I found two amazing seamstresses who started sewing alongside me, and suddenly SugarSky had a little production team.
We were pretty scrappy and I landed a huge subscription box order for 5,000 pieces. I remember absolutely freaking out. How in the world were we going to make 5,000 of anything?
I designed and sourced all of the fabric, designed dyelines and had new packaging cards created, wrote copy, figured out exactly what we needed to make and when, and planned production out over the next 2 months. Then we got to work.
Somehow, between our three homes and a whole lot of sewing, we made all 5,000 pieces and shipped the entire order on time.
It was a huge win, but it also made something pretty obvious: I couldn’t keep doing things this way if SugarSky was going to keep growing. I knew I had to put some processes and partnerships in place to be able to scale.
Turns out, sewing 5,000 headbands was only half the battle. My mom, my husband and I packaged every single one.
We had to create new packaging for the order, including figuring out how to keep the headbands from sliding right off the cards.
The packing list. 5,540 headbands ordered on 12/23/16 and shipped just a little over 2 months later.
SugarSky sitting alongside Manduka and Lander in the subscription box, circa 2017.
Figuring out how to scale
We Needed a Better Way
After the subscription box order, I knew we couldn't do that again, so we started weighing options and eventually landed a partnership with a USA-based print / cut / sew shop.
We were the first brand like SugarSky they’d ever worked with, and I’d never handed our production over to anyone before, so there was a lot of figuring it out together.
Little by little, we worked through how to take products we’d been making ourselves for years and make them there instead... still in our home state of Colorado.
Once we were moving and grooving, we knew we could start expanding our product line.
In 2018, SugarSky grew beyond the headband that started it all. We added tubes, bandanas, and scrunchies... always printing from designs that were uniquely ours. I started seeing a much bigger, more full version of SugarSky come to life.
ADDITIONS TO THE PRODUCT LINE INCLUDED: BANDANAS, TUBES, SCRUNCHIES, REVERSIBLE TOWELS, FANNY PACKS AND MORE.
And with new products came new (good) problems
Where do we put this stuff?
For years, SugarSky orders had been packed and shipped by us. But as the product line grew and more inventory started showing up, our spare bedroom was starting to look a whole lot more like a warehouse.
Eventually, we found a fulfillment partner and moved SugarSky into a 3PL. Our products could now be made in one place, packaged and barcoded there, and sent straight to a warehouse where orders were picked, packed and shipped to customers.
For the first time, a SugarSky order could make it all the way to someone’s doorstep without ever coming through mine which felt pretty wild.
The inventory wall my husband built that took over our spare bedroom before we found a fulfillment partner.
SugarSky bandanas became a favorite with our four-legged customers too.
Lots of laughs were shared and friendships formed during collection launches and on photoshoot days.
Somewhere along the way, SugarSky got a little brand refresh too and we made some merch!
and just like that...
This little thing became a real brand.
Somewhere in the middle of all the sewing, packing, manufacturing, websites, photoshoots and figuring things out as we went, SugarSky started to feel like a real brand.
We showed up alongside some of the biggest names in the biz in Outside Magazine. We were shipping to retailers around the country. People I’d never met were tagging us from trails and campsites. And every once in a while, I’d spot someone wearing SugarSky out in the wild, or someone would notice me wearing it and say, “Oh, I love SugarSky!” which never stopped being completely surreal.
The little headband company I’d started in my apartment had become a real brand.
Seeing SugarSky alongside Orvis, Lululemon and Buff in Outside Magazine’s Gear Guide was a definite pinch-me moment.
That first little wholesale line sheet eventually turned into this. We’d come a long way from the one I made in my apartment.
We got to make custom SugarSky goods for some pretty cool brands and organizations along the way.
Our Insta started looking really professional, which my millennial self still doesn’t know is a good thing or a bad thing.
Somewhere along the way, I changed too.
Life started to look a lot different.
By 2020, life started looking a whole lot different than it had when I sat down at that sewing machine.
The website work I’d started doing on the side had grown into a business of its own, and I’d realized how much I loved it. Brian and I had also moved to Idaho to take on the huge undertaking of building Trimjoist West, and on a personal note, we were starting the long road of IVF.
For a while, I kept trying to make all of it work at the same time. Eventually, something had to give.
So after six years, I made the really hard decision to close it.
There wasn’t some big dramatic ending. Life had just changed, and through it all, so had I... and I look at that as a good thing.
All in all, I started SugarSky because I wanted to make something. I had absolutely no idea where it would take me.
Six years later, I’d made a whole lot more than headbands. I’d built a business, met lifelong friends, made a million mistakes, figured out more than I ever thought I would, and, most gratefully, found the work I wanted to keep doing.
SugarSky, you were my first ecommerce love and taught me so much... and for that, thank you.
Though SugarSky ended, it wasn’t the end of the story.
It was the beginning of a whole other one.
