How to Monetize Your Hobby

0:00It really is just these moments where you've got to take a risk. You think it's all falling apart, and then at the end, someone brings the glue. Hi, I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Have you ever started a new hobby and wondered, could I turn this into a business? Maybe it's knitting, but it sounds like it's something that's hard to scale. Well, meet South Fendier Lee. She's the president and designer behind GoGo Sweaters. It's a handmade luxury knitwear brand based in Calgary, Canada. You can find a GoGo in stores like Free People, Revolve, and Holt Renfrew.

0:44South is here today to chat about managing a team of knitters and negotiating with suppliers and retailers. South, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Shuang. I'm so excited to chat. I think there's a lot of people getting into crafts and knitting and they might be intimidated to think, wow, I don't know how to turn this into a business. It's such a laborious process. Tell us how you actually reinvigorated this business that was in your family for a while. Oh, that's a good question. Well, it just happens sort of step by step. Not a lot of pre-planning has gone into go-go. frankly, I've never done a business plan.

1:27I feel that way you can really sort of change on a dime when new challenges come into play and you need to make decisions quickly. So growing up in Banff, it was a small town. So there wasn't a ton of opportunity outside of maybe the sporting good industry, which is my family's business. And I knew I didn't want to take over that business. But there was this sort of small business that my mom had started called GoGo, which was the hand-knit sweaters. And so there was always yarn in the storeroom, and I would walk by it a million times in my childhood. And one day I was like, you know, I think I would like to try that.

2:14So after university, instead of taking home of my family business, I decided to go on with GoGo. And I knew that in order for GoGo to, you know, shine a little bit better and grow, I would have to move to a larger city like Toronto. And that proved to be a good decision in the long run. But at first, it was a little difficult because, you know, nobody knows who you are. You don't have any experience. I didn't have a lot of experience. I studied communications and in school. So, yeah, not fashion. And all I knew really was my family's business. And I did learn quite a bit there through Mountain Magic.

2:58But when I got to the city, it was tough. Yeah, and I think that was still a good starting point. You got into photography, blogging, taking inspiration from the fashion industry you were working with. And that really helped you to actually build up the brand for GoGo. Yeah, blogging was a really big thing at the time. And I do feel like I was slightly late to the party. There were a lot of already very established bloggers making really good incomes off of it. And of course, think, oh, well, I can put my spin on it. But it really never took off. So I thought, oh, maybe I'll try these internships that, you know, I thought they paid and they didn't.

3:45I found out the hard way. I went for a job interview at one of these internships. I didn't know it was an internship because they advertise it as a job in fashion, you know, you'll love it kind of thing. So I showed up looking great and with my portfolio of things I had done in the past and found out it was an unpaid internship and you had to do these crazy hours. And I felt so bummed at the end of the interview. And I walked out into the street to go get my car and it had been towed. And I was there like a week in the city. So I like broke down in tears. I'm like taking the subway up to this very obscure part of Toronto.

4:30I'm in my outfit, my high heels, it's pouring rain. And I'm like crying my eyes out, have to go retrieve my car, pay like$500 to get it out. And so that was my introduction to the fashion world in Toronto. I feel like that is a movie scene, right? That's the first harsh introduction to the city, but I feel like you only go up from there and you start learning. One of those really great experiences was also working at Holt Renfrew. Tell us more about that. so I moved to Toronto twice so right after school I moved to Toronto and then I got freaked out and moved home and then I was like I want to take on go go seriously and move again and so the first time I went to Toronto that's when I worked at Holtz on Bloor I worked in their private label and just was working hard trying to make a living and surrounded by all these beautiful clothes and had a big dream that maybe one day they would be there.

5:34Well, even though working in Toronto was really tough, I think it did give you that foundation within design and fashion to truly revamp GoGo. Tell us about some of the first steps you took to reimagine the brand. Well, I started out with the supplier that my mom had, which was a Canadian supplier of wool. being a smaller brand you sort of have to figure out ways of finding suppliers that will sell smaller minimums to you and so this one supplier was that but I also found it was limited in the styles of the yarn and it was sort of a raw material so it wasn't particularly comfortable next to skin and I had these great ideas and was interpreting them into the sweaters but it was not the greatest material.

6:27So I did have to branch out and I found this partner in Montreal who has been amazing, helping me build GoGo, helping me pay in sometimes difficult ways. You know, as a small brand, you have to find people who are going to work with you. And there's really no way of planning this. For me, it was just one experience led to another experience led to another. and so I found this partner in Montreal when I purchased my wool and he helps me buy from Italy from this mill and so we've had a relationship for over a decade now and it's really been wonderful and has allowed me to grow go-go to where it is among other things.

7:18Of course finding someone who supply the wool is so important. How did you find your partner and what were some criterias you were looking for during the search to say, wow, this is someone I want to work with? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it just has to do with do your personalities work together? Do they want to help? Do they want to support your creative vision? I don't know whether this partner is so interested in my creative side, but I think he sees the passion I have for my business and my willingness to live up to my word. You know, maybe I didn't pay exactly on time in the earlier years, but I always ended up paying.

8:04And that just shows loyalty and that you can back your word. And I think that's really important in business is that you don't just leave your partners. You don't back up your word. Your word is who you are. So that was important to me. And I think it's shown in how long our relationship has lasted. Yeah. That dynamic is so important because you're hopefully having someone who could accommodate you during the hard times. Absolutely. Yeah, and who can grow with you when you also see growth. So yeah, it's very important. And it's great to hear that this is a partner you've had since the beginning, and this is someone who you still work with today.

8:52I think for a lot of people who might get into a craft, they are creatives, they have the vision, they might not have the business skills to feel confident in that area of management. what advice do you have for being more comfortable and less intimidated by finances or operations I think you have to be confident in yourself and what you have created because you are going to have to be your best advocate you're going to have to hear a ton of no's and still get up and and put one foot in front of the other and not say, oh, this is a crap business. You have to be really just confident in what you want to create.

9:43And with GoGo, I mean, you really don't see a lot of hand-knit products. So we've literally had to create something from nothing as far as all the business, all the different ways of producing. A lot of people can't even imagine it because you're creating it out of nothing. So you really do have to trust that you have something here. And then it's just a matter of taking those baby steps every day. There's this equation, I have a picture of it. It's my phone background. And it's if you do one thing more every day, the equation is like 365 it comes to. But if you do one thing less, it's like negative something.

10:27So even if it's just like one tiny little thing more, maybe you think a positive thought or you do that one email that, you know, you're nervous to do. You do an interview with Schwang that you're totally nervous to do. But if you just do it and you put yourself out of the comfort zone, then amazing things happen. And I think you get rewarded for tackling your fears. I love it so much. Yeah, it's really about just one step at a time. And I think making that into a daily habit is so important. I think for your story is so unique because you are creative, you design, and you love this craft. I think at a certain point, anybody would have been tempted to say, I could scale this business so much faster if I took out the handmade aspect and looked into factory production.

11:26Why was being handcrafted, still hand-knit so important for GoGo? Well, I think we're lucky that people are starting to be more aware of this, these sort of special aspects of handmade or locally made. But it was just a matter of this is what is accessible right now. Trying to go to factories offshore, it was really difficult. You know, you have to meet these minimums and then there's getting it here. And even to this day, we still do a lot. I would say 100 % locally right here. We're making all the sweaters here. We're doing all the quality control. We're packaging it. We're shipping it. We do all of the photos in Alberta, although we're branching out with photos now.

12:19But, you know, so whatever is accessible to you, try to just use that to your advantage. So don't think, okay, the only way I'm going to succeed is if I'm making at a really great factory offshore. That's the only way. Because that's how I used to think. I was like, that's the only way that people are going to take me seriously is if I make it here or do this or do that. But you really have to come back to yourself and what you want to do and then just slowly make it happen. And that's what we've figured out with GoGo. We figured out how to do production. I mean, we do production on apps now where the knitter gets their order to their phone.

13:10And these things just come through Google searches. That's how I found that partner. I'm working with yarn. That's how we found these production platforms. That's how we find a lot of our knitters. I mean, if you use these resources, we have so much at our fingertips now with the internet. And there's just so much available to us. So you should just exploit that as much as you can. So now you have a large team of local knitters. These are creative individuals, but you're also asking them to knit and follow a pattern and have uniform quality control. How do you actually manage a team of crafters?

13:51I would say that's one of the more challenging parts of the job, but I try to take the stance that I am the shepherd. I'm trying to lead this group of people knitting for us and I want to lead by example so when I started gogo I didn't know how to knit actually so I had to teach myself and learn through the help of other ladies so I could speak the same language as them and by leading them I can try to inspire them to do their best. So we have things on the walls that says keep it simple, like don't try to overwork the sweaters. We want it to look, you know, natural and beautiful where it's not overdone.

14:40Lead with your intuition is a really important thing. And so I try to inspire the knitters to do their best because this is their work. You know, this is a product that they have made themselves. It's not a machine that made this. So I want them to see this as something that they've created, they should be proud of, and now someone is out wearing a piece that they made. It's a very special thing. Yeah, yeah. Showing the impact and the full circle moment of the end product is so important. These decisions happen organically, right? Sticking with local crafters sticking with that one supplier, but these are actually really big business decisions.

15:23How do you have the confidence and the assurance that, hey, this decision is the right one for the business? I'm not scared. I'm not thinking about alternatives. I'm actually going to stick with the decision that I've made. I think I have learned through experience. I've tried to learn from mistakes and bad decisions. So every good decision has had a bad decision before it. So if I learn from my bad decisions or mistakes, I mean, they're not all decisions. Some of them are genuine mistakes. But if you can look back and just review what has happened, then, you know, you just really try to not make the same mistake twice.

16:09My parents always said that to me, just really learn from your mistakes, and then you'll start making better decisions. Nice. Yeah, got to go through the fire to understand how to navigate it. Really, really interesting to hear your business journey, and I'm very excited to get into it even more. I just wanted to take a moment to thank our listeners for tuning into the show. Wherever you're listening now, make sure to follow or subscribe to Shopify Masters and share this episode with a friend. While you're at it, give us some of your thoughts with a review for today's episode. Thank you so much.

16:51One of the things I also find interesting about GoGo is the fact that the business is also somewhat seasonal, right? We're not buying sweaters in the middle of July, not often. So there is that kind of seasonal pressure with managing inventory and managing your capital. There are times that you've actually turned to Shopify Capital to manage those financial logistics. Talk to us about that side of the business and making it a little bit less stressful for yourself. Yeah, so it is seasonal. We're trying to, you know, grow that side of the business, just using different materials, just lighter weight sweaters.

17:38So we are growing that side but yeah last year especially we saw two things major growth for winter and then also bringing on a summer collection so that was like big whammy you know in the month of March basically so we start production for fall in March April and we also have to bring out a summer collection so not only are we having to buy more material than we did last year we have to start production earlier. So yeah, Shopify Capital has been a great asset for helping bridge those, maybe just when there's not a lot of capital flowing, so to speak. And it's the way it works is every sale that you get online, they take a percentage off and it's just so easy.

18:31You don't even have to think about it. It's not like, oh, I got to pay the bank. I got to pay my loan. It's just it takes it off your sales and you can take as long as you need to pay it off too so luckily we were able to pay it off quickly and because I don't know I just don't like that lingering on my my mind too much but you know if you are in a in a situation where you can't pay it back right away it's they give you all the time you need to do that so that was very flexible very convenient and quick like in my bank account like within two days so super great helpful yeah a built-in alternative way of getting a loan and also working with the Shopify capital team for me the way that I discovered Gogo was I got interested in hooded scarves and I think when I saw the design of the one by gogo and the imagery there was like no competition i was on your site for a very long time and i think that speaks so much to your design your creativity and also the beautiful aesthetics that you've transferred through to screen how do you go through this creative process right how do you do the design and also share the imagery virtually well that's so nice, Shuang, to know that you like the product and found us organically.

19:59So I love hearing that. Well, I think with coming up with the designs, I'm always sort of rooted in my Alberta and Canadian roots. So it's very important to have those sort of images, whether it be the cowboy or their Northwestern skies. I want it to be whimsical, but wearable. I want it to be identifiably go-go. A lot of our customers say that people ask them where they got their sweaters or they're like, oh, is that a go-go? I want it to be identifiably go-go. So when it comes to new styles, there's always that rooted in Alberta. And then the ski industry has been a very big part of it. That's what I grew up in and was surrounded around beautiful European ski wear that my mother would buy in Europe and bring to Canada and people from lots of different places would come and shop with her.

20:54So the ski industry is a big one and authentically ski, you know, not just we're going for a walk in Aspen, which of course you can do. We're not ruling it out, but I am a skier. I love knowing that people who ski, you know, can recognize that I do as well, just through the authenticity of the pictures. You know, you'll see a lot of ski brands or people trying to do ski and they'll like have a sweater on with snow flying and she's holding poles, but no gloves on. And just those kind of details really speak to me. And then as far as colors, I do a lot of color research on Pinterest and I look at what has been done in years past and where I think we're going with colors.

21:44Colors is very important for GoGo. We want to be known as a forward brand for creating fabulous color palettes. And then we also have our classic styles, like the heart we've done since the beginning. That's the OG sweater. The cowboy is one that my mom did. So we've kept that going, but changed the silhouette slightly. We're trying to work on men's. I'm going down that road, but it's a little daunting. I'm not going to lie. I don't know what the guys like to wear. I know what women like to wear. Yeah. And I like how you have actually used your production processes and have that be an inspiration to how you design because we have to talk about the zero waste pieces where you notice that there were, you know, know small amounts of yarn left over from production so you've decided to actually use them into different pieces yeah this was one of those moments that I'll always remember I was knitting a hat and we have these bins these Tupperware style bins on the desk where we keep you know yarn maybe this long for buttons because that's how we sew the buttons on is with a piece of yarn so we do try to keep a lot of that sort of handy and I was just looking at that how beautiful it was and then I was also looking in the trash at how much was going in there too and just how beautiful our garbages looked I'm like this is crazy I mean it's great looking down and seeing these beautiful garbages but at the same time it's like I can't throw this out We'd have balls of yarn that were too small to make a hat even, or any part of a sweater, maybe a small heart on the sweater.

23:36And it was just like, oh, well, maybe we should try and joining them because the colors, they kind of all work together in a fun, weird way. And lo and behold, one of these sweaters, I had a lady knit it up and it was brought back the next or few days from then. And it was just like, oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. And I loved it. And then we took some photos and put them on Instagram. And the response was the same as what I had. So I was like, okay, we've got something here. And then last year, it was our number one seller. So I do think that people like the story. I think they like the fact that it's sustainable.

24:20Yeah, that was a really kind of cool moment in my career. And it shows that your creativity is not just in design. It's also problem solving kind of a logistical question as well. You have all this multicolored leftovers, if you will, and you've integrated into a piece that is so eye-catching and that it did go viral and people loved it on social media as well. What is your approach to social media now? Because you've started in the blogging era. There's so many new channels. How are you approaching sharing images and stories of GoGo? So Instagram is our platform of choice. And we just try to show really beautiful, inspiring photos of the GoGo lifestyle.

25:12And luckily, a few years ago, Instagram and Shopify have made the images shoppable. So that was a big moment of change for our sales. We do notice that most people shopping on Google are on their phones. So as opposed to desktop or tablet. So we do try to make images that look the best on a phone. And one of the big moments for me with Gogo was when I moved back to Alberta and I did the first photo shoot. I think it was fall, winter 2018, 2019. I decided to go up to Norquay, which is a ski hill just outside Banff. And they have this old lodge up there with this amazing mountain behind. And we took some shots there.

26:06And I really, that was the moment when GoGo found its identity. Before it was, it didn't really have an identity. It was cute, but it just, it didn't have something anchoring it. And ski will always be the anchoring point of GoGo. And that's really when things started to really take shape. So it's really important that we have photos, especially when you're trying to sell online that the shopper can put themselves into. So you're going on a ski trip. Oh, I love this outfit for skiing. Because if you're not in person with them, it's really hard to sell them with just like a flat image. In the luxury business, I think you have to really just sell this fantasy and this image.

27:00And so photos have been really an important aspect of selling our products and getting people thinking about how they want to wear it. Like a lot of Instagram is just daily stories of how we wear go-go at work and maybe to re-envision a sweater. You know, of people will wear sweaters underneath things. I'm trying to train people to think of wearing sweaters over things. So a down jacket with a big heart jacket that we have with the wide sleeves, you put it over the down sweater so that all these terms are kind of like down sweater, knit jacket. It's all kind of together, but we want Go-Go to be the outer statement piece So it's just re-envisioning how you wear your clothes.

27:57And we try to inspire people through pictures on social media. Yeah. You got to show your go-go. Yeah. And one of the things that I think is such a beautiful full circle moment is you worked at Whole Rent-Fru and now go-go sweaters can be found at holds as well. And not even that, you have great retail partnerships with Free People and Revolve. Talk to us about some of those relationships and how they came to be. Well, one of my favorite stories is with free people. I did a trip to a trade show in New York and it was a very expensive trip for me at the time. So I put a lot into it and it was a risky choice.

28:45I'd never done something outside of the ski industry. I had done trade shows at ski shows before, but never a fashion one. It was right down in the key area. I was really excited, nervous, but it didn't turn out quite as I had hoped the first few days. You know, there wasn't a lot of traffic. The booths were really minimal. You couldn't really style it up because they wanted to keep it really sort of consistent across the board and just let the clothes speak. but at other shows I had put banners up and photos and so that people could see how we wanted you to wear it and it was coming to a close on the last day and I was like wah wah this is this has not been good I wasted all this money it came all this way and I kid you not in the last 30 minutes of the show we were like almost breaking down the rolling racks and everything to leave.

29:48This whirlwind of a woman came in. I love your sweaters. Here's my card. Get in touch. We'll talk soon. And was gone. Went through the rolling rack, pulled out a few pieces, looked at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And was gone. I was like, what was that? What just happened? And I looked at the card and it said free people on it. And I'm thinking, free people? Do they do they sell other brands don't they just sell their own brands and or sell their own stuff and what I found is that they were really trying to branch out into selling other brands and and grow their online presence with that and to this day it's been a 12-year relationship yeah they've just sold a ton of them they placed an order probably two months after we saw them in New York.

30:38So that just was like the catalyst to really fund the brand to where we started to see big change. And I was able to work a little less on my other jobs and work a little more on go-go. And so it really is just these moments where you've got to take a risk. You think it's all falling apart. And then at the end, someone brings the glue to put it all back together. And then you've got this amazing story at the end of it. I feel like one day, hopefully there is a Go-Go movie and those moments that feels like everything is broken. But yeah, you can knit it back together as well. Yeah. Oh, I love that.

31:27But yeah, I know looking forward for this new year, you are actually looking into expanding GoGo abroad. Talk to us about some of your goals for this year. So we had a great year this year growing big time into the U.S. with Revolve bringing us on. We've had great success with them. They've been lovely to work with and free people, of course, which is our bread and butter. But there is a huge ski industry in Europe and we were approached by a sales agency over there to bring Gogo over to the European market. They show in London and in Paris, which is very exciting to say, I'm not gonna lie. So we'll see how that goes.

32:18There's, like we said, there's a big ski industry there. They do a lot of apreeing. I mean, they invented the apree lifestyle. Let's just be real. Out in the Swiss Alps with your fondue and your white wine and on the outside in your Adirondack chair or out with all the beautiful mountains. Yeah, we'll see. It's exciting. Another risk though. Got to take these risks to keep on growing. I mean, as someone who just recently moved to London, UK, I'm so excited for that. Yeah, yeah. And I'm excited to see a go-go in Europe soon. You'll have to keep me posted, Schweng. Yes, yes. I'll be your on-the-ground reporter.

33:03Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here today, South. Thanks, Schweng. That was fun. That's South Van Deerle, the president and designer of GoGo Sweaters. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Shopify Masters featuring GoGo Sweaters, produced by GoGo Zoger. Our engineers are Miku Betlam and Matt Shorts. Benjamin Gottlieb is our managing producer. And I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan. Don't forget to come back every Tuesday and Thursday for a brand new episode of Shopify Masters. and if you're still listening, go and share this episode with a friend. Thank you so much.