7. Marnie Rabinovitch Consky's Thigh Society: Redefining Comfort, One Leg at a Time
EPISODE 7
Ever dealt with that annoying thigh chafing? Julie had a heart-to-heart with Marnie Rabinovitch Consky, Founder and CEO of Thigh Society, who turned her personal struggle into a thriving business.
In this episode of Figure Eight, Julie and Marnie discuss rejecting diet culture, the power of focusing on a single product, and scaling a remote-work team.
Catch the Conversation
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Marnie Rabinovitch Consky is the Founder and CEO of Thigh Society, the leading direct-to-consumer brand of size-inclusive long leg undergarment solutions to sweating, chafing and modesty designed to help women move through the world with comfort and confidence.
Marnie is an entrepreneur who started her company based on a problem that she couldn't find a solution for: long leg underwear for women that wasn’t shapewear or a men’s boxer brief. Without any related experience in sales, clothing manufacturing or ecommerce, she followed her hunch and self-funded Thigh Society to over $25M in sales, creating a new long leg underwear category of shorties that she calls “chafewear”.
Thigh Society has been featured on The Today Show & The Marilyn Denis Show, in In Style, Buzzfeed, and SELF to name a few, and is well loved by celeb influencers like Meredith Shaw, Alicia McCarvell and Remi Bader in addition to being ranked as one of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies in the Globe & Mail’s Report on Business for 3 years in a row. Marnie has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Nasdaq, the Toronto Star and several other notable publications and podcasts.
Marnie is passionate about promoting body confidence and teaching women and girls to recognize and reject diet culture.
Before becoming a full-time entrepreneur with Thigh Society, Marnie had a few different careers in recruiting, training, consulting and career coaching.
You can connect with Marnie on Instagram or LinkedIn and follow Thigh Society on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Pinterest. -
The journey of Thigh Society and the power of hyper-focus (00:01:29)
Marnie's journey as an entrepreneur, identifying a gap in the market and creating the product she was looking for.
Thigh Society's mission (00:19:14)
Marnie discusses the evolution of Thigh Society's product line, the mission to help people feel comfortable and confident, and destigmatizing thigh chafing.
Scaling up with a results-only remote work environment (00:26:16)
Marnie talks about the challenges and decisions involved in scaling up the business, including moving away from cotton manufacturing and the shift to seamless knitting.
Expanding markets and utilizing social media (00:38:39)
Marnie discusses the growth targets surrounding social media, marketing efforts in Australia, and product use expansion for Thigh Society.
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Julie Ellis (00:00:04) - Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you are in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them, and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur, and a growth in leadership coach who co-founded, grew, and exited an eight figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book, Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Figure Eight podcast. Today I have Marnie Rabinovitch Consky with me. She is the founder and CEO of Thigh Society, and they are the leading direct to consumer brand of size inclusive, long leg undergarment solutions to sweating, chafing and modesty designed to help women move through the world with comfort and confidence.
Julie Ellis (00:01:29) - Marnie built this business from the ground up and like many of us, she started her business because she saw a problem in the world. There was not a solution for her, and she started the business without any real experience in consumer packaged goods or how to sell to you on the internet. And she created the category known as shapewear, and her business has been featured all over the place. The Today Show in the US, Marilyn Dennis in Canada, lots of magazines you've heard of. And you know, I think it's really exciting when a brand takes flight like that and you get influencers who are talking about you and all the things, and I see you on social media, Marnie, talking about body confidence. I mean, we can have a whole conversation about legging legs today. Um, but you know, what are real bodies like and how do we reject diet culture? And so becoming. Before becoming an entrepreneur, you had a whole successful career doing something entirely different and recruiting and training. And so today I'm super interested to hear about your journey.
Julie Ellis (00:02:40) - Welcome.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:02:41) - Thanks for having me.
Julie Ellis (00:02:42) - You're welcome. I'm so glad you were able to join me. And I'm so curious about, you know, what was it that made you see the need for this product and how did you get started?
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:02:54) - So the big question, I mean, I have always had sweaty thighs. That's we're getting right into the TMI right out the gate. Right. Um, I've always had thighs that touch and I've always been someone that sweats a lot. And so throughout my entire life and I have, um, I did yoyo diet for much of my teen years through to my, you know, 20s. But no matter what my weight was, my thighs always touched and I always had thigh chafe. So in the summertime, as soon as the weather would warm up, um, and I love to wear skirts and dresses. I'd always have this struggle because I could never go bare legged. Um. I knew my thighs were going to chafe almost within five minutes of having sweat and friction with my thighs rubbing together.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:03:35) - And so, um, for all these years, I had worn a pair or two. I think I had two pairs, like a Nike and another old brand of, like, cotton. Jenny. For those of us who are of a certain generation that might remember that, um, I had some, uh, old black ratty bike shorts that I would put on underneath every, uh, dress and skirt that I owned in the summertime. And I just accepted this as a fact for so many years. Um, occasionally I would try some creams. You know, there's a lot of gels, creams, powders that runners use. Um, but no matter what I tried, nothing worked. Um, no matter what my weight was, I always got thigh chafing. So I had this issue of, like, there has to be there, there has to be a better way. And that really came to me one day on one of the first days of summer, when I was wearing a skirt for the first time to my workplace at the time, and went for a short walk at lunch and got so frustrated because my thighs were rubbing together, I had to run to the nearest Shoppers Drug Mart for any Canadians listening, um, you know, got some baby powder, waddled back to my office, literally like legs apart, trying to not make them touch and, you know, made a huge mess.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:04:42) - I was wearing a black dress. There was white powder everywhere. It was disastrous, you know, and I just thought from that point forward I was going to find something better. And it really wasn't my intention to start a business making anti chafe shorts. I was more interested in finding a solution for my problem, because I was convinced I just hadn't looked hard enough. There has to be something on the market, right? And so I spent the remainder of that summer looking on the internet, um, going to small boutiques and bra shops around Toronto, checking big department stores like the Bay, um, and ultimately couldn't find anything. Um, I don't know if we have time for a quick story, but I do, um, I like to tell this quick story that I was at the Bay, uh, looking, uh, first in the women's section. Couldn't find anything there. That was long leg underwear. It was only shapewear. So I sort of, you know, found my way to the men's department, men's underwear.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:05:34) - And I was in a section where there's a brand of underwear that's actually a Canadian brand, I later learned. But they were, um, they were stocked with a lot of long leg boxers. So I start, you know, rummaging through, seeing what's there. And within a few minutes, I hear a little voice behind me. And it's it's one of the salespeople, or so I thought. Turns out she's a sales manager or a rep for this brand, and she was there to just check their, um, like, check how their underwear had been laid out. And she whispers over in my ear, she comes over and she's like, um, excuse me, can I ask you, are you shopping for your boyfriend or for yourself? And I was like, wait a minute, aha moment. Like I said, what do you mean? Like, are women often here shopping for themselves? She's like, oh yeah, people are always looking for some long underwear, you know, to prevent legs rubbing and things like that.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:06:23) - And I was like, okay, why is there not a women's underwear designed just to do that? So, you know, it was that in a combination of other conversations I had with retailers in Toronto who, you know, I went to a couple of smaller bras fitting boutiques and said, do you ever get customers who are looking for this type of long leg underwear? You know, I want it to be lightweight, invisible, uh, seamless because anyone like me wearing these underwear wants to pretend we're not wearing any underwear, right? I get it, you know, we want we want to feel like we're bare legged, but we need that fabric coverage between our thighs. And the answers that I got from all of these different boutiques was always the same. Yes, we do get requests for this. And no, we don't have anything to recommend. And I really resented the fact that shapewear at the time was the only option served up to women. Like, sure, we'll give you an undergarment that will provide you with this fabric coverage between your thighs.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:07:18) - But guess what? It's going to be super tight, so you're going to be suffocating in it, and you're going to be boiling hot and melting from overheating. Because these, these. Don't breathe. And so condensing a lot of time into a very short, uh, description here. I spent the I basically quit my job at the end of that summer, which I'd been planning to do anyway because I was bored and needed a change, but spent the remaining six months of the year or so, um, finding a factory, educating myself on, um, you know, how to make garments. Like what is e-commerce? Um, just being a real sponge and learning as much as I could on the internet, uh, reaching out to friends, parents, and a lot of cases who had been working in apparel and manufacturing for their whole careers, asking for informational meetings, um, join, you know, seeking out there's some great not for profits that, um, were in and around the GTA, uh, that were providing assistance to, uh, you know, uh, fashion designers, which I clearly was not and have never identified as a fashion designer, but it was sort of a, you know, fashion adjacent and close enough for me as somebody outside the industry to get a handle on what do I need to know? And a lot of it was, you know, trial by fire, just learning and learning as I went, um, ultimately came up with a prototype after I found a, a local factory here in Toronto.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:08:34) - And it was around Christmas time that we got our first prototype, um, of a shorty that was made of then bamboo spandex. And I was able to I mean, I tried it myself, and then I ended up asking them to make a bunch more and paid for that in different sizes, because I knew from the get go that this was something that, you know, a garment that a woman of any size would need. This was not a, uh, an undergarment that should be relegated to certain sizes, uh, body types, because chafing doesn't discriminate based on your size. Um, and then had a bunch of users test, uh, across Canada and the US because this was around Jan to March. So it's pretty cold here in Canada. Not really opportune conditions for.
Julie Ellis (00:09:16) - Legs and skirts, weather.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:09:18) - Not bare legs and skirts unless you're lucky enough to go to, you know, Mexico and all inclusive spring break. But yeah, I certainly gave it to friends who were traveling, gave it to people, friends of friends in Vegas, and collected feedback and, you know, I, uh, spent quite a bit of time in those in the, in this was 2008 leading into 2009, testing, iterating, working with my factory to make some adjustments based on feedback.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:09:41) - And ultimately we launched, uh, I say we but it was really me. Uh, it was just a little printer back then. Launched in July of 2009. So a full year after a full year and a month after I had the idea for the undergarments. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:09:55) - The me, myself and I years of entrepreneurship.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:09:58) - Totally. Exactly. Me, myself and I. That's the team. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:10:03) - Yeah. Excuse me while I put another hat on and answer your question.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:10:06) - Right. Exactly, exactly. But I wouldn't trade that for the world. You know, it really knowing about all the different aspects of the business allowed me to be and still allows me to be, I think a better manager or better a better CEO. I mean, now I'm definitely much more far removed from certain elements of the business, but even getting that groundwork for like, I'll use email marketing as an example. Um, because I do mentor quite a few, uh, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, you know, and they ask me, like, what do I need to know going into this? And, you know, one of my pieces of advice is, in this digital age, you know, when you're when you are going to need to do online marketing to reach your target market, if you're doing service, a service based business, or a product based business, you know, having a basic understanding of how email marketing works is going to serve you well.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:10:51) - Um, and even like how many all of us are like online consumers, right? Like, I shop online all the time. So we are all, um, observers of what other brands are doing in order to capture our attention and capture our share of wallets. So paying attention and, you know, you don't have to be an expert in email marketing, but you certainly should. You know, it helps to understand and learn that, um, to see how you can, you know, tailor your, your correspondence, your communications, your advertising and all that to your customers.
Julie Ellis (00:11:20) - And, and also, I think it's about like you could do lots of research and get really tied up in all the, like, complexities of things that you could do with email, which ends in you doing nothing because you're like paralyzed by the wealth of information.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:11:36) - Yes. For sure. Um, and that's something I think we'll probably get to later in this conversation. I think that's one of the roadblocks that a lot of people fall into, where they try to do too much.
Julie Ellis (00:11:46) - Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So how did you decide in those early days to become a direct to consumer brand, as opposed to becoming a packaged good that's sold at department stores or lingerie shops or that sort of thing. Mhm.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:12:02) - Good. Good question. Um, I think I inherently knew from some of those early conversations of speaking with like I mentioned, like people in my network who had done who had had a career in retail, that retail to me seemed very scary. So when I say retail, I mean selling wholesale right, to boutiques. Um, yeah. Right. Right. You know, from your experience.
Julie Ellis (00:12:25) - It seems.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:12:25) - So scary and daunting and. Very complicated. Um, you know, I remember hearing, you know. Well, first of all, I remember that one of my first boutiques, um, was a small bra shop at Yonge and Eglinton, and they've since moved, and I'm still in touch with the owner. She's wonderful. Um, but I remember thinking, you know what? I think it's important for me to be in one bra fitting slash underwear specialty boutique per Canadian city.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:12:52) - Because these people, through my few of my conversations, they didn't seem to overcomplicate the process they were educating me on. Like this. Have you ever seen a sales order form? No, I hadn't, you know, they were showing me sort of, you know, asking me questions about, do we have minimums that we can order? And this is sort of the the price that we would expect you to sell these shorties to us for because we need to sell them for this. So I was sort of learning on the ground and had, you know, some great partners in the early days, but. I realized that working with or trying to capture an account like the Bay, for example, would require me as a teeny tiny little business to, you know, put in place certain software and have certain payment terms and all of these things that I already had a bajillion things going on, trying to launch the e-commerce side of things. I just didn't have the bandwidth, and I didn't want to, uh, get investors.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:13:46) - That was a key, key point I wanted. I bootstrapped, and I still bootstrap this business all these years later. Um, so knowing that that money was tight, it was like, all right, I have to pick a lane and I'm going to stay with it. And so I decided that even though direct to consumer would result in smaller orders. Right. Because you're selling to one customer at a time rather than a store who's going to buy 25 pairs? 50 pairs, who knows? I decided that that was my preferred route because it gave me a little bit more focus and control over, over my marketing. Um, I also, on the marketing side, knew that, you know well what would happen if I wanted to offer my shorties on sale online. Would that rub my retailers the wrong way? Like probably right that they'd be like, what? Can we offer this promotion in store? And wait a minute, we're not ready to put these on sale yet. And so essentially, you know, and this is something maybe it'll come up later in this conversation.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:14:37) - I really, um, work by the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid. Um, kiss. It is my guiding light. I am I am not a lazy entrepreneur by any means, but I am definitely someone who likes to keep things simple and streamlined. Um, and I think that has a bad rap sometimes because people think simple equals bad, or simple equals less than simple equals focused targeted. Right. Like you can really concentrate your efforts in, you know, and into what you're doing. So yeah, I wish I had a better answer. I wish I could say I intuited that, you know, that was something I, you know, that wouldn't work well for us because I still think, you know, we could probably double this business overnight by going into wholesale, but only now are we thinking about that. Right. Um, and now you've.
Julie Ellis (00:15:24) - Got now you've got the revenue to support because it is like starting another business. I think you're 100% right about that. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:15:32) - And now you've got the infrastructure and you've built the scaffolding where you could take the, you know, financially make the investment, you could make a people investment, all those, you know, things that you need totally to make it successful.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:15:45) - Totally infrastructure people that and that's what I was thinking of at the time. Thinking I was I was the one knocking on doors. So there's no way I could have divided by myself. And in half I would have had to hire a sales rep, implement all of these new in my mind anyways. You know, new new softwares, technology. Some of the payment terms were horrendous with some of the bigger retailers, which is very tough as a small business, especially when you're bootstrapped because you have all this, you have to pay for the inventory and then you're not getting paid for it for, you know, for a while. So it didn't it just felt like too much hassle for me. And I was still learning on the ground of how to sell online.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:16:19) - And I thought, let's just stick to this. And so, yeah, you know, well.
Julie Ellis (00:16:22) - And back to the kiss theory. Yeah. There you are. Right. Keep it simple. Yeah. Um, and you, you and I have talked before about, I mean, how hyper focused you are, how you really live, that keep it simple. Stupid as, like how you run your business. I do, which I love about it because, you know, you're so focused on how many SKUs you have, what products you're selling, you're what your path to growth looks like. Like what are the ways that that has really benefited you, that hyper focus.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:16:53) - So I will say, when I first started the business, um, I think it's worth noting to inspire anyone else listening that, um, I heard from a lot of people that, uh, doing a one product business would be impossible. Like, you could never scale a one product business. Um, never mind the naysayers who didn't believe in the idea for this product at all.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:17:13) - But that's we could do a whole separate podcast just on that.
Julie Ellis (00:17:18) - Um, yeah. Right.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:17:20) - Uh, but I did get a lot of people saying there's no way you can scale. And I think that's an a really like, old school mentality that you need to have an entire catalog of products in order to build a business. I think that's actually, you know, I got that advice from a lot of people who were not familiar with direct to consumer. You know, this is back in the early days of e-commerce. You know, they just didn't, um, they were playing by an old playbook, which was, well, you're not even going to be able to get into retail, to retail wholesale unless you have the shorties with a matching tank top or a matching bralette. And and I was like, but I don't want to do bralettes and tank tops. Like, I really want to, you know, produce the best possible anti chafe shorts. Um, that now we call them, you know, more multi wear shorties because they have so many great usages beyond just chase.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:18:06) - But I really wanted to be the best in this category of underwear that we were essentially inventing. And I think that focus on just doing one thing and ignoring the naysayers and, you know, allowed us to keep iterating on the. Product to make our products, um, the best that they can be in terms of innovation, technology, you know, fit, quality, all of that. Um, it allowed us to stay really hyper focus on what our customers were looking for and what they wanted. Um, and it allowed us to stand out in the market because we're the only brand, um, even now that only does slip shorts like it's all we do. So I, and I still think there's so much opportunity for us to continue on this path to growth with just shorties, because we offer a very clear value proposition. We're not overcomplicating the business with making a million things, although I'm sure one day we will be making other other products that solve real problems. Um, and then, you know, in terms of thinking about our, our SKUs, we really think about our products as solutions, you know? And yes, we have SKUs.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:19:14) - Sure. We have about 600 active SKUs right now. Um, yeah. So nothing. Right? You know what it's like to manage a whole bunch of SKUs? Um, but we didn't start with 600, right? I started with, um, one. I knew I wanted to make a black short because I felt like I was coming from those days of my black bicycle short. And then I wanted to make something a little bit lighter colored. So we had like a beige skin tone. We had a white, um, and then we only had one leg length when we started. It was only over time as we start to hear from customers, what did they like about it? Um, what did they want? Uh, where we started to slowly, slowly expand. Um, but even for many years, we didn't have any colors in our, in our product line. And again, that comes back to keep it simple. Stupid. I didn't want to get investors. I wanted to just not have to worry about another seat at the table telling me, you know, you have to discount this month and offer all these sales because you're not meeting your sales targets, or we want you to go in this direction.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:20:12) - I wanted to have complete autonomy over those decisions. And so it meant, you know, sort of, uh, doing and saying a lot of the same things, repeating the same things over and over again. But we are always attracting a new audience and we are always acquiring new customers. So, yeah, I think you know it. Also, I haven't mentioned this to this point. I can't believe this. But it also allowed us to stay really true to our mission, really, which was about, um, helping people feel comfortable and confident in the, in the skin that they're in, um, and working to, uh, you know, demystify and destigmatize sweating, basically, because that's ultimately what chafe is. So, yeah, I wouldn't if I could go back, I still would I would do it the same. I wouldn't change it.
Julie Ellis (00:20:58) - No. And I, I'm sort of fascinated. And also, you know, I mean, here you've been in business for quite a while now and the stigma taking away the stigma and demystifying.
Julie Ellis (00:21:12) - Yeah. Uh, but it's, it's still a topic, a big topic of conversation.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:21:18) - It is. I mean, it's it's come a long way. When I first started Instagram, it was still in its infancy. Um, and there were like bloggers then who had blogs. They were, you know, I mean, bloggers still exist today, but now they've sort of morphed into influencers on, on Instagram, Facebook. So, um, TikTok and, you know, even typing in the words anti-chafe for thigh chafe, like, you didn't get a lot of results on Google back, back in the day. So one of the advantages I think we had like a bit of a first mover advantage in that sense, because we were talking about it, we were using that keyword in a lot of our, uh, marketing on our website and our emails, etc., etc. and it's been incredible for me to watch over the last almost 15 years, um, that this term is coming into common parlance.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:22:04) - People are using the term people understand what chafing means. Now, I used to call it chub rub. I know that that term sort of rubs people the wrong way. Pun intended, I guess. Um, I always have used it with my friends as a bit of a term of endearment because, you know, we see weight as neutral. And, you know, if I have a bit of chub on my thighs, that's just the way it is and it's gonna rub together and that's, you know, I call it chub rub. And that's sort of something I've always liked, laughed about. But, um, it is amazing to know that we've had some sort of influence, I think, on opening up the conversation and letting people feel comfortable talking about a perfectly normal skin condition. Um, when I first started something, I think I skipped over at the beginning of this story telling is that when I was doing my market research, I only was able to find a few companies, uh, and they were European companies who are catering to only plus sizes, making like a bloomer type of underwear.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:23:00) - That was purely cotton and that was their offering to prevent thigh chafe. And I really knew I mean, I knew as a person who suffered from thigh chafe that that was, you know, a big mess. Because number one, people of all sizes can experience thigh chafe. And number two, nobody needs a cotton long underwear. Cotton absorbs moisture like crazy. And the last thing you want is that water, that sweat sitting on your skin. Because that's just what's going to, you know, increase the chance of a rash. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:23:30) - I think people also don't want something that's visible, right? And that's one of the things that's so great about your product is it's virtually invisible when you're wearing it.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:23:39) - Totally. I mean, not to make this a commercial for society, but I mean.
Julie Ellis (00:23:43) - Go ahead.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:23:44) - Right.
Julie Ellis (00:23:44) - I mean.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:23:45) - I was the target customer. I designed these for me. And I was like, hey, if someone if other people are going to buy these, so much the better.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:23:52) - Um, but I knew I wanted something that was lightweight, invisible, seam free. You know, even things like, people don't think about this, but, um, you know, I knew having worn those old bike shorts, they had a seam right down the center of the inner thigh, which is going to exacerbate chafing, because not only are your thighs sweating in that area, but the, the abrasion of the, of the actual, um, seam and thread can be an irritant. And so when we were designing these, um, when my, you know, me and my then pattern maker and I've worked with many designers over the years and we have a great team of designers now. You know, the, the starting point was always to eliminate that center seam because you know, big brands, I think, who are looking to make something quickly and just cheaply and get it onto the market aren't going to be thinking about some of these little details that make a difference. But I was because I knew I wanted these to work better than anything else that I could find out there.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:24:42) - So, you know, we actually made the seams off center so they're not in the center coming down your thighs. So when you when you wear them, you still won't feel the seam won't show. They're flat. Um, you won't see them under clothing and you also won't have that abrasion, um, rubbing on your thighs. Plus, we don't use an elastic. We, you know, knit the elastic in. We use 360 degree stretch fabric that we make ourselves. You know, our our fabrics are the combination of a lot of testing and experimentation with different yarns and spandex to see what works and performs the best. And we only use the highest quality yarn because we want these to last a long time. So, yeah. Um, fundamentally it's, you know, I am at the heart of this business not only as the CEO, but as the customer I want. I wear these, I want, I want to feel like I'm wearing nothing. And I want these to serve so many purposes, um, beyond just for chafe.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:25:34) - And they do.
Julie Ellis (00:25:35) - Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Now, you talking about spinning your own yarn to make your own fabric versus those first ones that were like a bamboo stretch, um, stretch type of material. So let's talk about scaling up. Right. So, you know, you start in one place and now you're in a very different place. Yes. When did you kind of feel the first pain points of, oh, like we're hitting a ceiling and now I'm going to have to pivot because you're now in the multi eights. Yeah. In terms of revenue. And you know, coming all the way from you know getting to the first million and then getting to where you are now. Like those are all huge jumps.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:26:16) - They are they are um so let's see I guess I could think of. You know, three big jumps, um, at different stages of the business. The first was when we moved away from cotton. So manufacturing, which is where I started, uh, to seamless manufacturing.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:26:36) - And I started because, well, when I started, I didn't have the money or the volume, you know, or the proof of concept to go out and make my own fabric. And, and I didn't even know, to be honest with you, that seamless knitting existed back then. I only knew about cut and sell, and so I knew I didn't want to, you know, outlay tons and tons of of cash on custom fabric. So I had to buy what was available to me. So. And I and I recommend this to people just starting out is there's lots of fabric importers that you can find in your, you know, in your city and your state. You know, there's usually nowadays it's possible to find someone that's importing bolts of fabric. Sometimes they may be importing for much bigger brands. So you can sort of piggyback on some of those orders. Um, and so after, uh, I would say when I started in 2009 and it was 2014 or 2013 because it took about a year to develop.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:27:27) - But around 2013, 2014, I became aware of this, uh, seamless knitting, which is basically knitting tubes of fabric that have no seams and 360 degree stretch on these very specific machines by Santoni, which is a brand of, of seamless knitting machines. And I became aware of this through a factory in Montreal. I was manufacturing in Toronto, and I thought, okay, well, um, this type of seamless knitting can offer a superior fit for the garment that I'm trying to make, because essentially it allowed me to cut back on seams, add more, stretch, reduce the need to have an elastic in the waistband. It had all these amazing benefits for the end customer. So I moved my manufacturing at that point over to, uh, Seamless Knit in Montreal, which is where we were from 2014 to about 2018. And so 2018, you know, we were already we were scaling, we were getting bigger. Um, I think we had crossed the million dollar mark by then because I had quit my full time job in 2016.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:28:26) - Um, and there was a bit of a confluence of factors. One, I met a designer who was incredibly talented, who's still with us today, who had experience with seamless knitting and suggested that there there could be a lot of innovation to be found overseas. Um, number two, we wanted to expand our size range, and our Montreal factory did not have extra machinery that would allow us to go up in size. And their business was winding down because so much of the local and domestic manufacturing industry was just going offshore at that time. And so the writing was a bit on the wall, like, this isn't sustainable. You know, if we want to scale and grow, we're missing a bunch of key factors here that are going to, you know, set us up for success in that regard. And so we spent that year, um, basically just working, working with our, um, a manufacturer in China who and we ultimately ended up going to visit, uh, in 20, I think it was 2018 or maybe mixing up 2017 and 18, but it was definitely not 2019 because I know, we know the pandemic happened shortly after that.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:29:31) - We weren't there. Um, but yeah, that was so that was another marker because for all the reasons I just mentioned of why it was, it was time. It just made sense. Um, it wasn't. Notice how I didn't even talk about cost. I mean, we were able to save, um, a few cents on the dollar for sure by going overseas, but I don't think the difference at that size of our business at that point, when we were, you know, the order quantities we had to put in to this larger, um, Asian manufacturer, the savings weren't huge because we still have to import and there's freight charges and you're going to air freight or ocean freight and then duties and customs and warehousing and all of that. So it really wasn't a cost motivator at that time, I think now and the third jump is where we realized we need multiple suppliers. We can't be at our stage of growth relying on one one manufacturer because we're still a small business. When you think of us, compared to really, really large players in the underwear business.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:30:29) - Um, and, you know, if they're placing orders that are, you know, three, 4 or 5, six times the size of ours, you know, our orders could get shunted out and pushed down the line, which could hurt our business immensely and could could, you know, could potentially destroy our business if we don't get our inventory on time. So the thinking was, you know, let's let's start exploring some other manufacturing partners just to hedge our risk. Um, you know, and we've also been able, over the years working with these trusted partners or our one trusted partner. Anyways, for, for the most of the time to negotiate better volume discounts and whatnot over time, um, as our business scales. So I think you have to take it slow. I think a lot of people think they have to start right away with going overseas. I also, I, I pushed it as long as we could, um, to go to go overseas. I really didn't want to stop manufacturing domestically.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:31:17) - And we looked at some creative options. If I'm being totally transparent here, like maybe we were going to buy the fact. Tree in Montreal. Maybe we're going to invest in new equipment, but financially it just didn't make sense for us at the time. Um, and the innovation was really just it was clear to us that the innovation was happening elsewhere. Elsewhere. Yeah. So and yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:31:37) - Those are big decisions to make though, as you're like, you know, they feel scary. Oh, definitely.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:31:42) - Terrifying. Yeah. Terrifying.
Julie Ellis (00:31:45) - So I know that one of the powerful things for you has been finding the right people to add to your team as you have gone through all of these major changes. Yes. Business. Yeah. Um, what has, you know, how has that helped you bring your vision to fruition?
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:32:02) - So on my head, there are so many things I want to say about that. Um, so our team is comprised of all freelance part time contractors. And again, thinking back to the Kiss principle, um, I started this business realizing that I wanted to say hyper focus.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:32:19) - And I also at the same time wanted to keep things really simple and streamlined. I had a background in human resources, um, but from a perspective of advising CEOs and senior leadership about how to keep employees, uh, happy and satisfied in their career. And I knew that it was going to take a lot of work to keep employees motivated, excited, engaged. And I thought, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that and run the business at the same time. I'm going to have to hire an HR director. And that doesn't seem like a smart use of my resources. Knowing that I wanted to bootstrap and most of my, most of my cash was going to be tied up in inventory and marketing. And so I set out with the intention of bringing on subject matter experts who, you know, which I think I borrowed a little bit from my consulting background, where I could hire experts in their fields who could come in and own a piece of work, and then I wouldn't have to worry about micromanaging them.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:33:13) - Um, I would know that they were already they had already found their sweet spot, their area of flow where they like to work in and really give them autonomy in their work and allow them to bring their value to the business.
Julie Ellis (00:33:27) - Um, there's something to about, like you didn't need a full time person with that kind of expertise, so you could put together a bunch of experts and get actually better results, better outcomes, than if you hired one person who was trying to do everything you know with general experience.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:33:43) - Exactly, exactly. And and there's different ways to do it. I don't think there's a one right way. I just knew, like, I, I didn't want I loved working from home. I had had experience back in like Y2K, working from home for a multinational consulting firm. So I knew that this notion of remote work was very doable. This was, you know, 2009 and in my first, you know, I brought on a social media person, probably in 2012. But, you know, this concept of remote work isn't new, it's just that the pandemic over the last few years has normalized remote work in a way that we never really, you know, it accelerated the pace at which people were willing to accept that as the norm.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:34:20) - Um, and so, yeah, I think I, I think I realized from the get go that that was an approach I preferred in terms of how I wanted to work, my working style and then how I grew. My team was really a combination of, uh, luck and my network, um, and searching on LinkedIn, using LinkedIn as a tool to find other people, and asking for referrals from other founders that I knew. And so I was very fortunate through my network to be able to find our now CFO, COO, who I was connected to through a professor at the University of Toronto, because I was working full time on the business for seven years before I quit that job and went full time on this society. And so I didn't make a secret about having this business on the side. But I definitely made it clear, you know, that this was, you know, that my job as an MBA career coach was my full time priority, and this was my sort of side hobby.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:35:11) - I didn't even call it a side hustle. Um, because quite frankly, I wasn't working 80 hours a week. Right? I really was really about trying to, um, I think I, I knew even then that I wanted to have a life at the same time as enjoy myself while growing and learning about how to run a business and how to run this business. So I met our our CFO, CEO, who came on initially as a mentor, and then her role evolved, you know, slowly as a fractional CFO. And then she ended up taking over over the years, some of my operations, uh, responsibilities that she's now our joint CFO as well. And you never know where you're going to meet somebody. Our CMO currently actually is also fractional. Um, and I met her very serendipitously. She was calling me to do a reference for another vendor that we were working with. And through the course of our conversation, she revealed that she was a fractional CMO. And we started talking about what that what her services were, what kind of value she could offer.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:36:06) - And, uh, then she ended up doing an audit for us, and we ended up bringing her on. And, you know, she actually ended up funny enough at the time when she joined. We still joke about this today. You know, 3 or 4 years later, she ended up, you know, encouraging me to, like, fire my entire team at the time. We we. A lot of agency partners. We are working with an email agency, we are working with a Facebook ads agency, and she basically came in and was like, nope, they have to go. They have to go. Um, because she felt that. We were not of necessarily the size at that point of a business that we needed an agency and that we could find freelancers who were subject matter experts who would who would work harder for us, or just as hard, um, with better results. Um, and I mean, back to something you just said earlier, I think the reality is, if we look at, you know, corporate world, a lot of people and there's a study, I don't have the exact the exact, uh, source of it, but I read somewhere once that most people at their jobs in a corporate job where they go into the office and work, they're only productive like 50% of the time.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:37:12) - So if you have somebody working 40 hours a week, they're only really working and doing their work in, in 20, in 20 hours. So my attitude was always, I don't care if somebody's working at 2 a.m. as long as they get the job done and I don't care where they are in the world, if they show up to the meetings, I don't mind. I don't care if you're in Bali, which some of our team members have been in and worked from, right? I don't care what time of day it is, just show up and get the work done and so, you know, and I think, again, the pandemic normalized a lot of this thinking, but I knew from having worked remotely in my past careers and I, I just believed in, you know, I believed in people and their work ethic. And that's how we hire to this day, is people with a strong work ethic who have integrity and take a lot of pride in their work, um, who want to make a difference and who are, you know, motivated and aligned to our vision and our brand and, and have value to add in terms of what they bring to the table.
Julie Ellis (00:38:04) - That's a really great way of looking at it, I think. And, you know, um, I mean, at Mabel's Labels, we had a results only work environment, which means that people were it was about work product, not where in the world you were or how you were planning to do that work. It was about delivering and it was a really successful model.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:38:24) - Yeah it is. It can be. Right. Like why not? Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:38:28) - Yeah, yeah. So that's really great. And so now what's next for Marnie and Thigh Society? What does the future hold in store for you as a business and for you personally?
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:38:39) - I mean, well, for this year, we're you know, it's right now as, as we're recording this, it's early days of 2024. So we, you know, we have some pretty big growth targets as we always do, uh, for the year ahead. We recently um, started advertising in Australia. So I had sold in Australia as early as 2009 actually.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:38:56) - But we never really focus any of our marketing and advertising efforts online towards Australia. But it makes a nice complement to our seasonality. Um, even though people wear our shorties all year round, if we think about hot weather and sweating in North America, that's usually concentrated between, you know, April and August. So focusing on Australia, um, which has been a, uh, something we've been doing for the last couple of months. Uh, over here, um, we have some new products that are coming down the pipe, uh, still within our short line. Um, I hope to get a little bit more in front of the brand on socials. It's one of my weak points. I always, you know, it seems to be one of my one of the parts of my day that gets shunted off to the next day on my to do list, like, oh, yeah, I should do a reel. And it's funny you started this with talking about legging leggs, which we shouldn't even give more attention to because it's such a horrible, awful, uh, trend that I hope will be a distant memory very soon.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:39:52) - Um, but, uh, I do enjoy, you know, I enjoy social media and, and, you know, being, to some extent, being able to. Well, I don't enjoy necessarily being the face of the brand because I always feel like there are so many other people behind me at this society that are doing such incredible work. And I, I kind of resent that, like glorification of the, the founder CEO. Um, but I am at the same time so passionate about our mission and our values that I, I feel like if people want to listen to me, I could talk all day about that and I can, you know, I can produce content on that all day long, um, on social. So that's definitely a goal of mine for this year. And we're continuing to unlock more of these amazing use cases for our shorties, which we've been doing for the last few years. I mean, you know, largely led by our customers who are like, these shorts are amazing for sleeping, they're amazing for hot flashes.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:40:41) - They're amazing for working out in. I wear them underneath my online pants. I wear them underneath my ski pants. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Like, you know, maternity as well. A whole other market that we hadn't even, you know, initially started out thinking. But there's nothing different about our shorts that make them maternity, but they're so stretchy and the fabric is such high quality that it doesn't bag or sag after you wear it. So you're not ever going to get like if you're thinking about someone who's pregnant and who's baby bumps growing, that those shorts are going to grow with you and you can even wear them after, um, you know, after you get birth. So just continue about.
Julie Ellis (00:41:13) - How sensitive and uncomfortable your skin can get to.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:41:16) - Sensitive, uncomfortable. And I mean, people wear them post-surgery, like after any sort of abdominal surgery or people with sensitive skin conditions or people with sensory issues just as a base layer underneath their clothes. I mean, it's so incredible.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:41:30) - And if you think about it like, why didn't women have long, like, underwear until, you know, until we came along, like, why were. No one questions why men need long leg underwear under their jeans. Nobody's ever asked that question. So it's high time that women have access to choice, right? Access to more choices. Um, and so yeah, we're happy to to give that to people. And I'm happy to keep, you know, being saying what I need to say in order to make people realize, number one, that, you know, these underwear, uh, if you need to wear these underwear because you sweat, that's fine. It has nothing to do with your body. Your body is the least interesting thing about you. Um, and as a woman, you know, having fallen victim to diet culture for so many years, um, to really stand up and say. Women are capable of so much. And if we didn't have our attention divested and diverted on, you know, calorie counting and and obsessing over food and our weight and how our body looks, imagine what we could do with all of that mental energy.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:42:31) - We could put that towards so many more productive endeavors. So that's that's where my passions are. It's just reminding women that we are so much more than our bodies.
Julie Ellis (00:42:40) - Good. And I'm so thankful that you're out there promoting that and you know that world domination is in your sights. Yeah. And you're going to keep.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:42:52) - Woo woo woo woo! Yes. That's obviously our goal, right. To become a household name and get more women introduced to this society and maybe eventually do men's line. Right. There's nothing gender specific about our shorties. Um, and we do have a lot of people, you know, a lot of men coming to us asking if they could wear it, wear our shorts, and a lot of women saying to us, you know, hey, I couldn't find my Thigh Societies. And I found them in my husband's laundry pile, haha. So yeah, it's definitely.
Julie Ellis (00:43:19) - All the ideas that come from opportunities.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:43:21) - Exactly.
Julie Ellis (00:43:22) - Yeah, yeah. Oh that's good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your story.
Julie Ellis (00:43:27) - It was so great to listen to your journey and hear about the lessons that you've learned. And I'm wishing you all the success as you grow this business.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky (00:43:36) - Thanks so much, Julie.
Julie Ellis (00:43:38) - Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. So you won't miss any episodes. Figure Eight isn't just a podcast, it's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book, Big Gorgeous Goals on Amazon anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.julieellis.ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again. That's julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure Eight.