Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The positioning was as a gym bag.

Hannah Fastov: We started as a gym bag. Our first trade show and our first target demo was either to the fitness instructor who was teaching four different classes all over the place who was always on the go. We also targeted the avid gym goer who is going to the gym and then straight to work or vice versa. Once we started to sell the bag, I learned that it was so much more than that. A lot of people were using it for the gym but also for travel, baby bag, or tennis bag. We started to evolve into more of a lifestyle accessories brand.

Sramana Mitra: It’s an interesting dilemma. Positioning is always an interesting dilemma. How do you position your product? What demographic do you get? Between that launch party selling 50 and collecting feedback, how much time elapsed?

Hannah Fastov: Our launch party was in October 2016. Our first trade show was in January of 2017. At that time, we were still learning and growing. We were still going through the gym bag market. At that time, people were still using our product and coming to us saying, “I used my bag on a flight the other day.” Or that they use it as a baby bag. We were learning all the different use cases of the product.

Also another interesting thing from the B2B side is that the active wear craze was just starting. There were a lot of boutique independent stores that were starting to carry athleisure and activewear as well as travel stores. It opened us up to a wide variety of stores that were willing to carry us. We aren’t just good for athleisure.

Sramana Mitra: What happened at the trade show? What did you get?

Hannah Fastov: Not a lot. It was our first trade show. We made a lot of contacts. We didn’t sell one bag. As with anything, you’re going to learn your first time out. That’s where we became friends with others. There were a lot of other new brands who were starting to figure it out as well. That’s where we made our first foray into that network of entrepreneurs. That was great.

Prior to this, I had just made a website. That was where I learned that there’s a thing called Shopify. That’s where I got connected to an agency that helped me launch a website. I learned all sorts of techniques not only for wholesale but also for our e-commerce. From that trade show, we learned a ton. We took that and continued growing.

Sramana Mitra: When you came back from the trade show, you started selling retail using e-commerce.

Hannah Fastov: Yes. We continued the wholesale business though. We attended another trade show.

Sramana Mitra: When were you selling e-commerce versus when was the next trade show?

Hannah Fastov: We launched our Wix website in October. It was driving a couple thousand dollars a month through just word of mouth. Then we attended our second trade show in February of 2017. That was in New York. It was called the Capsule Show. It’s a really well-known trade show that was attended by all retailers. They had just developed an active wear section. That was more successful for us.

That was where we opened up our first national retailer. We opened a whole ton of accounts with independent boutiques. We just continued to network with other business owners until we started to build relationships with them. We started to grow our brand reach and doing it organically. We attended that trade show in February of 2017. June was when we launched our Shopify website.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov
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