Congratulations to our winners:

Xenia started her career as an investment banker. But when she was sick of wearing uncomfortable, non-durable tights, she pivoted her career to launch Threads – a brand that offers high quality, sustainable and affordable tights, and hosiery.

As the world comes together to celebrate International Women's Month, DHL wants to shine a spotlight on extraordinary women who have made remarkable strides in their respective fields. Among them is Xenia Chen, the inspiring founder of Threads and one of the winners of our SME Discover Your Next Contest in 2022. Today, we celebrate Xenia's accomplishments and highlight the innovative impact of Threads in the fashion industry.

How did Threads start?

In 2018, Xenia was working in the financial services industry at the time and would go through a lot of hosiery with work wardrobe. She was getting fed up with the number of tights she was going through in a month, because of rips and pulls in the material. Xenia found that she was either spending $10 at the drugstore for a pair that sucked or spending $60 on a pair that was comfortable and luxurious, but still had some sort of shelf life before it rips or wears out. She noticed her female coworkers were also experiencing the same frustrations when it came to their tights, whether it was about comfort or how much money they were spending. And that’s when Threads was born, the experience motivated her to start doing her own research into the hosiery industry, where she learned there were virtually no companies out there who were making tights with women in mind.

Threads was created to be different in both design and affordability. They work directly with their factory in Italy, where they can cut out the middleman, so women can get luxury tights at the fraction of the price. It was important to Xenia that women had access to affordable and high-quality tights, seeing how they are a fundamental staple to women’s workwear.

Threads’ greatest challenge and success so far in the journey
Like many other small businesses, the most significant challenge (and accomplishment) for Threads was navigating the impact of COVID-19 in 2020. Operating as a young business in an industry reliant on people dressing up, whether for outings or work, posed considerable difficulties. Xenia expresses gratitude that Threads successfully re-strategized on the fly, nurtured existing customers, identified new and unexpected customer groups, launched new products, and ultimately made it through the challenging year with the entire team intact, while also establishing a new business line. A true testament that sometimes, the best ideas can come out of times of incredible challenge. 

Threads' achievements include significant media coverage from outlets such as the Today show, Fashion magazine, and Good Housekeeping. This recognition is attributed, in part, to the company's gender-inclusive policy, making Threads a popular choice within the drag and crossdressing communities, setting it apart from competitors. The brand has further diversified its product line with the introduction of fly-contour tights designed for men. Additionally, Threads has expanded its distribution network, now offering its products not only online but also in small independent clothing shops.

Xenia’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

“Just start! If you’ve been dreaming up something for awhile, start working on the idea now. There will never be a “perfect time” to start a business. This doesn’t mean you need to quit your full-time job – just start working on it on the weekends or at night (that’s what I did with Threads for the first year). Taking the first step is often the hardest step but also the most important! Lastly, failure is not the opposite of success: it’s a stepping stone to success.”

Learn more about Xenia and Threads at ca.yourthreads.co or on Instagram at @threads.co

For entrepreneurs, the road to success looks like a lonely one. But it doesn’t have to be. And to reach your next level, goal — or whatever it is — it’s easier when you’re doing it with those supporting you. For a serial entrepreneur like me, I’ve found that your business is only as strong as the people you work with along the way.

Success is impossible to achieve on your own, and I’m no exception. A lot of people have helped me along the way to help turn Sully & Son Co. into one of Canada’s top premium accessory and footwear brands.

I want to share some of the lessons I’ve learned about surrounding yourself with the right people, both personally and professionally, and how networking and collaboration has helped me take Sully & Son to its next.

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Tip 1:  Strategic Collaboration

Collaborations are an incredibly valuable way of introducing your brand to potential customers in new, unexplored demographics. Finding a brand that shares your values and is working towards the same goals as yours can be a challenge, but if you have a product or service you can stand behind, you’ll draw the attention of potential partners that will be a good fit.

It isn’t easy to find that perfect partner without having a solid grasp of what it is you do best. Find your thing and use it to stand out from the crowd. Because once you do – collaborations can really take your growth to another level.

There’s never a bad time for a brand to try and form a strategic partnership. As long as both parties can fulfill their part equally, there’s no question that it will be a mutually beneficial situation: a true win-win.

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Tip 2: Bringing on your brand champions

It’s important when finding people to promote and grow your brand, that they actively want you to succeed as much as you do.

And when it comes to presenting your brand to the world, your brand champions become even more integral. Here are some tips I’ve learned about finding vendors and collaborators to work with to help make my brand shine.

Bloggers/Stylists

When finding the right stylists for your products, try to seek out those with some good credentials. Stylists that have more experience tend to have more access to what we are constantly looking for the most, and that’s exposure. Most importantly, access to the right opportunities can lead to the right personality endorsements.

If you’re working with someone new and on the rise, just make sure you have great chemistry and that their hunger to prove themselves (and ultimately your brand) feels right.

Photographers

There are thousands of talented photographers out there and choosing the right one for you might feel impossible. But that’s where social media can be your best friend. There’re plenty of professional photographers who use specific hashtags – such as #advertisingphotographer or #photoshoot – that could be a good avenue to finding someone you’d like to work with. On the flip side, your social pages are also a great way to showcase the creative vision of your brand to photographers interested in working with you.

Brand Reps

You can’t be multiple places at once, so when you’re able to find someone to carry your water in different markets, it can be a true game changer. Again, it’s about finding the right people who you jive with and get a good sense that they’re actively part of your team. Start by doing your research. You’ll be surprised what you can find online if you actually take the time to look. The fashion landscape is ever changing and so are the reps that are constantly looking for new product!

Press & PR

There are lots of ways to hustle and get your name out there. I know people who approach journalists, bloggers, and influencers in hope of getting your brand out there. I’m fortunate to be at a stage where I have a publicist who handles those matters for me now, but if you’re new to the industry, I suggest focusing on your social media and making sure its tight! These days press will come to you if you have the right stuff.

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Tip 3: Support Networks

Family

Having a supportive family network has benefits that go just beyond your business’s bottom line. When your family is in your corner cheering on your success, any challenge becomes more manageable. My family cheered me on from day one. They’re entrepreneurs themselves, they always got it and have supported me 100%.

But what about working with family? I think you can tell from the name of my company that I’m all about working with family. My son may only be two and a half, but I can already see the budding entrepreneur in him. I can’t wait to see where it takes him. They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and in this case, that couldn’t be truer! He’s well aware of what his daddy does for a living and he’s right there in the mix with me. I look forward to seeing his creative genius flourish regardless of the direction it takes him.

Community

The business community is just that — a community. That means there are a wealth of resources to help business owners manage challenges, get advice, and find collaborators. Finding that community and the tools that come with it is a definite key to success.

It’s a different landscape now. When I started out, there was a lack of information; a lack of knowledge. But resources like DHL Mentorship are special because it’s information, tips, and advice coming from people who’ve been there before. It’s the coolest thing to get that type of information readily available to people like myself who are always learning, listening, and trying to find a better way to do what we do.

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Tip # 4 Networking, Networking, Networking

Surrounding yourself with knowledgeable, supportive, and like-minded people is a major step towards finding your next. The power of connecting with people and growing your network cannot be overstated.  The vision for your business may come from one person, but the more people who share it, the more likely you are to succeed.

About the Author

FGI Visionary Award Winner, George Sully is best known as the original maker of the Star Trek Discovery Starfleet boot. Sully is also a Bata Shoe Museum inductee, the creator of Black Designers of Canada, and co-founder of House of Hayla and his newly minted accessory brand Sully & Son Co., which can be found in both Hudson’s Bay and Harry Rosen.

Learn more about George Sully at Sully & Son Co. or on Instagram at @realgeorgesully

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Have you ever felt the following:

• You feel like your website is “good enough”, but now it doesn't feel like it's reflective of our ever-changing digital world.
• You're looking for a new way to reach your community and build strong relationships with warm leads.
• You're ready to confidently elevate your brand professionally so you can increase your impact and sales.

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My name is Christine Lieu, and I am the expert behind CL Designs and the Brand Party Podcast. My first dip into entrepreneurship and startup culture was inspired by a time of loss in my life, but it had me reflect on how I wanted to live my life to help clients create bold legacies.

Your website is a portal to your magic. You are investing in it (through the domain, hosting, and more) and it should be a platform that returns your investment. I’ve put together a list of my top 5 tips to optimize conversions for your website and some prompts to dive deeper.

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1. Make your design friendly

To create a memorable experience, you’ll want to consider user experience (UX). If it’s difficult to find the information your customers need and difficult to navigate the pages, they will leave and be unlikely to return. Today, we peruse websites mainly through our mobile devices first and laptop/desktops second. Ensure your layout is responsive (catered towards various screen sizes), easy to navigate with a touch of a finger and that you have simple CTA buttons.

As much as they may land on your website to learn more about you and what you have to offer, ensure your messaging is actually more about how it can help them. In order to stand out from your competitors and attract new leads, ensure your design, layout and composition create a cohesive identity that’s also functional and gets the job done quickly. Audit your colour choices, logo usage, styling of photos and graphic elements. To ensure cohesion, make sure you’re using a few font choices to streamline the overall look and feel to make it easy for visitors to read.

If you think about a time you were checking the credibility of a brand, it’s more than likely you’ve searched their website. According to Forrester Research, good UX design can increase your website's conversion rate by up to 400%, while Invision has stated that 88% of online customers are less likely to return after a bad experience. Visitors’ actions are inspired by their perception of design and the overall experience.

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2. Create a low effort, high touch experience

Consider the most integral steps in your customer’s journey. Is there a lot of heavy and manual lifting to be done? If so, consider integrating tools to help with calendar scheduling, automating a questionnaire post-sales calls, or create a contact form directly within your website for a one-click correspondence. In doing the work upfront, you’ll end up creating a high-touch experience for visitors to get what they need in 1 click.

Customers are becoming more and more impatient with so much content at our disposal. If you’re looking to optimize speed and boost your SEO, you can:

• Ensure that your page loads in a matter of seconds to increase your visitor’s chance of staying on longer.
• Speed up your website load time by compressing your images to a smaller size or resolution quality. 72 dpi is the resolution quality needed for anything digital.
• Clean up your media library if you have a lot of video, especially if they’re running natively from your website.
• Embed videos sourced from other platforms
• Integrate newsletter sign-ups with a hyperlinked button
• Share an embedded calendar link through a frame.

3. Remember accessibility always matters

You should always consider the accessibility of your website, firstly to be compassionate to visitors, and secondly to reach an audience that you may be missing out on. When choosing colours, you want to ensure that it’s AODA compliant to boost contrast and legibility for those who may have different visual abilities. It’s said that by the University of Loyola, they’ve seen an 80% increase of brand recognition by the use of colour. Evoke the mood you’re looking to reflect and can use it strategically to emphasize certain actions and elements. Create multiple visual cues whether that’s photo references for added visual support with alt text to stated button actions and visual cues for various elements like arrows to prompt further.

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4. Provide social proof

According to Kinesis, 94% of first impressions are design-related. Of course there are other factors that will impact this figure, but the influence that design has to make that immediate judgment is too large to ignore.

You can add testimonials, reviews, and press features for added credibility to build trust with your community. With the possibility of large areas of text, consider what’s most relevant for visitors coming to your website. If they were to glance through your content, bolding certain parts you want them to focus on will help with the overall design to capture attention.

5. Be direct and clear about choices

The majority of small business websites don’t have enough calls to action (CTAs) on their website. They may not always do the action you advise, but that prompt really does help boost familiarity and encourage action. It’s like dangling the carrot but not giving the treat. You’ve got to share the offer. Minimize the amount of choices to make a clear decision making process for your visitors.

Make sure your buttons are all styled with the same shape and punchy copy. With copy, make sure it’s understandable what you’re expecting the next step to be and that it’s hyperlinked accordingly. With colour choices, you’ll want to choose from your brand palette that is used for emphasis to encourage bright and inspired action. Studies have shown that buttons with red, orange, or green colouring get the highest conversion rates, as long as they’re clearly identified on the page.

6. Humanize your experience

Remember that there’s a human behind the screen! People don’t buy products — they buy the story and solutions you have to offer. Learning more about your intention and purpose will help turn those website creepers to converters.

Put your best foot forward! Incorporate negative white space to ensure a breathable and legible experience. Remember, less is more.

Celebrate creating! Experiment with different ways to optimize opportunities and conversions with your website with a human-centered approach. Delight your potential new leads, current customers, and community with your magic.

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About the Author:

Christine Lieu is the expert behind CL Designs and the Brand Party Podcast. She helps purpose-driven businesses create cohesive branding, web design, and social content creation to increase your impact and sales. Saying no to dull and clunky visuals and yes to consistency, creativity, and efficiency forms the core of her approach. As featured in Top 10 Canada Design and Apple Podcasts’ New + Noteworthy lists, the Brand Party Podcast delivers fun, honest, to-the-point advice that you can implement RIGHT AWAY in your entrepreneurial journey.

Christine has been featured in Yahoo News’ Top 10 graphic designers to watch for in 2021, has had the honour to be nominated for RBC'S Women of Influence Award two years in a row, and earned Digital Publishing Awards for her work on Maclean’s “Bulldog” Election Daily issue, Walmart Live Better​ and CBC Music.

Learn more about Christine at christineldesigns.com or on Instagram at @_clieu or @brandpartypodcast

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