cayla o'connell davis & subset
Doing the Unscalable: How Cayla O'Connell Davis Built Subset
We’re creating space for the brains behind the brands we love, and asking good questions along the way. The result is a deep dive into the how and why of brand-building, from blueprints to launch day, customers as community and the detours in between. Big lessons, easy listening.
the Show Notes
In this episode of Read Receipt, Sean sits down with Cayla O'Connell Davis, co-founder and CEO of Subset, the organic cotton underwear brand rethinking what goes into your most-worn layer.
Cayla bootstrapped Subset in one of the toughest categories to fund, buying inventory five to six months ahead and launching with just four styles. One of them, the high-rise brief, got written up by Vogue and became a cult favorite that carried the brand out of the gate.
She gets into the scrappy, human side of growth: a first-of-its-kind program that takes back and recycles your old underwear, handing out free undies on the streets of New York, Galentine's Day roses with a buyback card, and why she markets an unseen product more like a perfume brand. Along the way she shares hard-won lessons on doing the unscalable things on purpose, and protecting time to stay creative several years in.
Tune in for an honest look at building a mission-driven brand through organic cotton, grassroots marketing, and a refusal to grow the easy way. For 20% off Subset, use code READRECEIPT.
Keywords
subset, cayla o'connell davis, organic cotton underwear, sustainable fashion, textile recycling, circular fashion, dtc, intimates, bootstrapping, customer acquisition, brand building, read receipt, antidote
Takeaways
- Bootstrapping apparel is a cash-flow game. Fair-trade, organic production means buying into purchase orders five to six months ahead, so tight planning beats over-diversifying.
- One product can carry a launch. The high-rise brief got written up by Vogue and became a cult style, and it was a bet on 4,000 of the first 16,000 units that happened to be right.
- Do the unscalable thing. Free undie giveaways, a sign that reads "ask me about my underwear," and Galentine's roses on the street built real word of mouth that paid media couldn't.
- Turn responsibility into acquisition. The take-back recycling program brings in net-new customers who had never heard of the brand until they came to recycle, now run with partners Trashie and SuperCircle.
- Market the unseen product. You can't see underwear, so Subset builds a world around it, the way a perfume or candle brand sells emotion and ritual over the object.
- Protect creative time. Cayla blocks Mondays and Fridays and one deep-ideation day a month to step away from the work-work and actually think.
Sound Bites
- "If you go Subset, you never go back. If you get the product in your hand, you'll wear it and buy more."
- "We had to ask ourselves: are we going to be a recycling company or an underwear company?"
- "I think about our product like a perfume or a candle. It's an unseen product, so you have to build the world around it."
- "People find us because they're excited to find a company actually taking responsibility for what it puts into the world."
- "I held up a sign on the street corner that said, 'ask me about my underwear,' and just started talking to people."
- "Why am I wearing underwear that's the same material as a garbage bag?"
- "I'd get hundreds of boxes of people's old underwear delivered to my apartment and have to deal with it."