When we were founding Dia, we knew we had a great idea — to style and create truly fashion-forward clothing for plus-size women.
But starting a business is tough, and as two female founders, pitching a business by women, for women, we discovered it was even harder.
We got hundreds of “no”s. Hundreds! What kept me going? My experiences as a plus-size woman — like having to design and make my own prom dress as a teenager just to be able to wear something that I loved. And the fact that more than 100 million women had similar stories.
What turned all those “no”s into “yes”es? Help from other women came, and Dia was off and running.
Now it’s our turn to pay it forward. COVID has had a catastrophic impact on retail, and plus-size businesses are on especially shaky ground. Plus-size shoppers are navigating a limited landscape to begin with; if their local stores shut down, their options are even more narrow.
We launched Dia Holiday Market as an initiative to help female-founded plus-size small business owners keep their doors open during these challenging times.
The Dia Holiday Market will help female owned, small, plus-size businesses across America reach more customers through Dia’s amazing community.
Plus-size shoppers are navigating a limited landscape to begin with; if their local stores shut down, their options are even more narrow.
The strategy is two-fold: Access to Dia’s robust marketing and sales resources will help with the nuts-and-bolts reality of keeping a business afloat during the holiday season in a pandemic.
The second piece is that through Dia, retailers can reach our extraordinarily supportive community across the country, who we know will embrace and support these entrepreneurs.
The boutiques that we are working with include a vintage-eclectic boutique owned by a mother of three in Chicago, the only plus-size boutique on the Las Vegas strip, which had to close only two weeks after opening due to COVID-19, and an environmentally-friendly plus-size capsule collection shop in Los Angeles. Shoppers can browse top-selling items from each boutique and learn more about the amazing women working tirelessly to keep their businesses open.
For several of these businesses, the Dia Holiday Market introduces them to an online e-commerce community for the first time and will help introduce them to customers across the country. Through the end of the year, these retailers will receive free marketing resources and exposure from Dia’s community of 5 million women.
It’s time to harness the power of strong women to lift each other up! We know intimately well the experience of being entrepreneurs. And we know that against the backdrop of COVID, the difficulties of owning a business are heightened, and only extremely more so for women.
To start or grow a company, you need a lot of people to take a chance on you. This holiday season, we’re asking the Dia community to rally together to help female founders thrive by supporting Dia Holiday Market.
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