What Founders Can Learn From Togethxr’s Bet on an Underserved Market

0:00I do think virality comes with great story. And the story here was to change the rhetoric in women's sports across the board. Hey, I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Today, we're talking about building a company around untold stories. Our guest is Jessica Robertson. She is the co-founder and chief content officer at Together. She teamed up with professional athletes Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, and Sue Bird to tell women's sports stories. One of the ways they do that is by making merchandise for women's sports fans.

0:43Last year, the company's shirt went viral and 20 ,000 shirts were sold in three days. Celebrities like Aubrey Plaza, Jason Sudeikis, and Serena Williams have been spotted wearing the shirt. Jess is here to talk about building a media and merch company. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited and so happy to have you here. Tell us, how did the idea for Together come to be? The idea for Together starts really with Alex Morgan, one of our co-founders. Back in 2015, she even articulates this. She was sort of like coming into her own sort of like athletic prominence and sort of being just a female athlete in the sports world and experiencing sort of firsthand the lack of coverage and resources and investment and visibility.

1:41She knew that there was an opportunity at some point to create a media entity that was dedicated to Jess women's sports. and especially going into the 2019 World Cup where we often see a lot of investment and visibility and coverage around World Cup years or Olympic years. She wanted to capitalize on sort of the interest in women's sports at that temple. She was also, to be very honest about it, sort of on the back nine of her career and thinking about what legacy outside of sort of the greatness of her athletic achievements were and being sort of a see it be it role model for so many young athletes.

2:22I wouldn't even say just young girls, but those who like achieve or aspire to have the sort of greatness that she's had in her sport. She was sort of surveying the landscape as she often does. She's a very astute businesswoman. And there at the time had been a lot of athlete-founded media companies that had launched and had some success. And of course, you had legacy media companies too who were still not covering women's sports at scale. And you have LeBron James, who has his production company. You have Derek Jeter, who had the Player Tribune, which is where I worked at the time, and how I met Alex and Sue and Chloe and Simone.

3:05You have Seth Curry in Unanimous Media. There's a proliferation of athlete-owned and operated production companies and also legacy media companies that just weren't telling women's sports stories at scale. So knowing that she had this moment, she was on the back nine of her career, she wanted to create something that had real lasting cultural impact and drove investment into women's sports in a way that we haven't seen before. And it starts with visibility and storytelling. So I got a call from her and her team in 2019 ahead of that World Cup. and the sentiment was, it's great that all these other men can have companies that ultimately sort of like lift and uplift the athlete communities, but predominantly male athlete communities.

3:53I'm tired of waiting for someone else to decide that our stories are worth investing in. Would you come build something with me? And throughout that entire year, including the World Cup and coming out of the U.S. national team's massive and dominant win in France. We started to sort of back of the napkin scope what it could be. What does it mean? I mean, those early conversations were, you know, is it a brand that's super focused on young girls who want to be great athletes? Is it more culture and lifestyle? Like what's the white space that actually exists outside of telling women's sports stories?

4:32She was also adamant that she wanted to build it in partnership with other great female athletes. We know that women in particular, especially female athletes, when they come together as one sort of diverse, intersexual collective, they can really impact culture and change and business. So that's where Sue Bird, Chloe Kim, and Simone Manuel come in as our other athlete co-founders. I mean, for all of their shared greatness in their individual sports and in this world, they've had very different lived experiences and were in different journeys in their own individual careers and represent different identities.

5:11And that was always the intention here was to have really deep, meaningful, authentic representation of the communities that we represent in women's sports. So a lot has changed since 2019. to say the least. Yeah, it's an incredible journey. And it's also one that was almost going against the current because to your point, the market was so different before the focus was on sports dominated by male athletes. Because you're kind of carving out this new space for Together, what were you thinking about to validate this idea and validate this movement that you wanted to create. I'm a storyteller and journalist by nature.

5:59And when you are coming up as a journalist, you're taught to go where the silence is because that's where the stories often are. And when we were building together, we did sort of like a brand map of brands and media companies that exist where sport and culture come together for maybe a female-identifying audience and male - identifying audience. And there's a proliferation of brands that sort of connected sport and culture for men. But there were some, like a little bit white space, I would say, for a female identifying audience. But mostly it was either like a culture lifestyle brand, or it was sort of like a legacy W sports brand, and really didn't embrace these incredible athletes as like multi-hyphenates.

6:49So that's the white space we knew we wanted to enter. Also at the time, in 2020 and 2021, when we launched, of 100 % of total sports media coverage, less than 5 % of that was dedicated to women's sports. And that's not even to dissect the breadth of that coverage, the depth, the diversity, the quality, anything. It's just incriminately low. So we understood that if you center these incredible athletes, if you tell women's sports stories, if more games are broadcast, more ancillary content exists, then you can grow the audience and community in the space. And if you can grow the audience and community in the space, drive viewership, put people in seats, then brands will show up to invest because they believe it's worth their ROI.

7:38There's an audience for them to reach. If the perception is that there's not and they don't think it's worth their ROI, then they don't invest in the space and therefore media companies don't cover it because they're not going to generate any revenue off of that coverage. So that visibility, driving visibility was really, really important for us in understanding the white space we were entering into. It's been four years since our launch and that 4 % stat is closer to 20%, which is significant growth. We still have a lot of work to do, but it's also commensurate to the investment, the brand dollars that are coming into this space.

8:15In 2021, of 100 % of total sports sponsorships, 0.4 % was dedicated to women's sports. Not even like a whole percent, just 0.4%. Now we're at 9%. So that's where the visibility directly correlates to the investment that comes in. and why it was so important for Alex, Chloe, Sue, and Simone to create this company and to make women's boards visible. Together is a media company shedding a light on untold stories. When did the piece of merchandise come into the picture? It's a great question. It was always our intention to build a business that had three components. Content, first and foremost, the storytelling part we just talked about, which ultimately drives community, our second C.

9:05We knew that those things were directly connected. And if we built a brand that filled a white space could become a home to women's sports fans, which by the way, there are millions, it's not a small audience and they are deeply, deeply engaged. And they've had no real brand to call home. If we could do that content and community, then an interesting space, also a white space that's growing now, but at the time was still pretty white, similar to visibility and storytelling, was consumer products. For a long time, it's been hard to be a women's sports fan. You've had to find your own coverage, make your own coverage, create your own experiences, find your own community, make your own merch.

9:57And oftentimes it's not super high quality. So we thought if we built a culturally resonant brand that had deeply engaged community, another opportunity we could bring to that audience and generate revenue for the business would be consumer products, which, you know, in the, I would say the first two and a half years was like together branded merchandise. It was like, if you love our brand, you'll wear a shirt that has our name and logo on it or like some manifesto. And then quickly changed when we had a hit with everyone watches women's sports. It's incredible impact from just one shirt and one phrase.

10:36I would love to hear behind the scenes, how did everyone watches women's sports? How did that phrase come into the dialogue? And how did you build this piece of merchandise? You know, it's funny because we don't have a consumer products team. We don't have a merch team. So everyone watches women's sports, which generated more than$6 million in revenue, top line for our business in just a year and a half, sort of changed how we think about consumer products. Now we're at the questioning, what do our fans want? We're asking them? What do they want to wear? Does it need to be a unified sort of like anthem?

11:21Does it just need to be like a cool pair of mesh shorts because you can't find any of those in any retail store? Like what do they actually want? Do they want hats? Is it how do our products fit on a diverse range of bodies? Like what is the audience in our community demanding because they can't find it anywhere else. Also, are there other creative brands or creators who we want to collaborate with to create net new consumer products? We're huge fans of Esther Wallace and Play a Society, and she's done an incredible job of building a really powerful, resonant, and cool women's sports merchandise collective there.

12:07Hoop York City and Alex Taylor have done some really incredible stuff too. So it's always looking at white space and saying what the fan demand is and ultimately like looking at our capabilities and where we can do that in-house and maybe where we need to partner. Yeah. I mean, I'm just so curious, right? I want to kind of dig in a little deeper. How did behind the scenes, how did that phrase even come to be? Everyone watches women's sports. Did the team just all feel like this is something that would catch on fire? It's kind of serendipitous that you're asking that now because the first time as a company we leaned into the phrase everyone watches women's sports was at final four in dallas in 2023 and we were there activating without one of our brand partners at the time buick and we were hosting some live conversations in the fan fest area and it was one of the first years at least in my sort of like 10 years of working in sports where it felt like this women's sports tentpole, which we could call March Madness for the first time.

13:12Up until that point, we couldn't. It felt like something changed. The energy was different. There were a ton of activations. There was a lot happening for fans and for the teams. The energy in Dallas was incredible. The games were sold out. It was an incredible weekend. And I remember during the final on that Sunday, sort of being in a suite with some of the team and a handful of athletes and seeing, just feeling the energy in this space. And we were kind of like looked at each other and it was just sentiment, like, you can't say no one watches women's sports, which is kind of the default narrative that's existed in the space.

13:50Maybe no one watched because you couldn't find it or it wasn't available, but the sentiment was if you make it available, like they're already here, people will consume. And it was a tipping point for us. And then later that year, as we were exploring consumer products and trying to think about, you know, sort of consumer demand and meeting that need, we asked ourselves, like, what's the next orange WNBA hoodie, which had some virality to it? And we were thinking about design of the product. Is it a T-shirt? What is it actually? T-shirts are easy to move. They're easy to sort of scale. And went through a few iterations of what is that phrase?

14:29And we were like, we kept coming back to everyone watches women's sports. Like if we say it enough, if we stamp that, that becomes the default narrative in this space overall. So that's what we leaned into. And we seeded the product very thoughtfully and strategically with our four co-founders, of course, but also people like Don Staley and others in the space who we knew believed this. And we wanted to create a unifying anthem for fans and athletes, coaches, celebrities alike. And when Dawn Staley wore the shirt a couple months later in an ESPN primetime broadcast game against LSU, and Ryan Rucco referenced it on broadcast, we sold out within 30 minutes.

15:16And from there, we just could not keep the product in stock. How exciting to have something go viral. And I think it's so similar for founders getting that first large PO from a retailer or that first partnership. What was the team thinking about when you had to really scale up? Wow, I can feel their stress right now. Well, one, everything changes when you have a hit, right? That's a good challenge to have. And like I said, it's not like we had a consumer products team. It was just a team of creatives and designers who had an idea that took off like wildfire. We had to scale production really quickly.

15:59I was like sort of one person in an L.A. warehouse like hand dyeing every shirt and then we can't keep it in stock. So I also think at the time there was a major rap artist on tour who was using the same blanks that we were. So we like had to quickly pivot and figure out how to maintain the quality of the shirt and match the blanks that made the shirt so successful in the first place. figuring out fulfillment orders, cogs, shipping internationally, which at the time we couldn't do and we couldn't keep up with consumer demand globally, trying to figure out how to iterate on the product and grow it with success too, because at some point are people getting tired of just the black and white shirt or the hoodie.

16:46We were drinking from a fire hose and still are to this day from teams who wanted to customize the shirt in their own color ways and put their team logo on it. We've worked with the Golden State Valkyries, the Casey Current, Gotham FC, New York Liberty, Bay FC, ACFC, so many more who were coming in and wanting that. It was an interesting challenge of how do you keep it fresh? How do you continue to meet consumer demand and then how do you build sort of the infrastructure to support something like this because as you mentioned we're a media company so we learned we learned a lot through that and also how do we continue to bring the fans into this because the most important word in that phrase is everyone so how do you continue to reflect back the community that believes this is their anthem too not just maybe the athletes or celebrities that are wearing it i'm so fortunate to have an incredible team here, an executive leadership team around me personally.

17:51But then someone, our new executive chair, Nancy Dubuque, said something that has really stuck with me that makes me think about how you can lead and fulfill and still vision set and march towards future your goals, where you're sort of managing the chaos and the day-to-day. And she said, you know, every great team needs three types of people. You need a thinker, a feeler, and a doer. And I think it's really important in that matrix to understand as a leader, especially in a little bit of, you know, good chaos, maybe it's not so good chaos, to know which one is your strength and how you lead from there and surround yourself with people who expand you and who can complement by being maybe pieces of you that aren't your strongest suit.

18:47I'm very much the feeler at the company, and I'm surrounded by an incredible thinker and an incredible doer and our chief digital officer and our chief business officer. So I think people, especially in chaos, look to you to have all the answers and being vulnerable and knowing your strengths through that is really important. Yeah, for sure. I think especially when you're going through such a new challenge, it's important to kind of align and also like have your emotions and also your thoughts in check. And I know like because of the virality of the t-shirt, you mentioned, you know, the seating, the gifting was a big part.

19:26Having a showcase of like someone wearing it during a very important event, very important games, athletes wearing it. Are there other aspects you feel like that has contributed to different pieces of merch catching on fire? Are there other things that you feel like has been just really powerful in storytelling and marketing? Seeding for us was really important in the beginning, and then it just sort of took on a life of its own. We wanted to sort of market the product with the incredible story, but also with, you know, athletes, celebrities, influencers who are already sort of lightning rods in our space, who our fans, our community look to as maybe arbiters of truth or validators of their own fandom and their own experience.

20:20So if, you know, Dawn Staley, Serena Williams, Chris Paul, Seth Curry, even the he for she here was also really important. If they are authenticating and validating and proudly wearing, like we call it saying it with your chest, wearing this anthem on their chest, then it's real and they want to be a part of that. But that wouldn't mean anything if we didn't have the story behind it. I do think virality comes with great story. And the story here was, again, to change the rhetoric in women's sports across the board. For sure. And I think it mirrors and also it's a reflection of how well you build the community as well and how receptive the community is.

21:09When founders are thinking about building and fostering those relationships, whether online or in person, what is your advice for not only getting people into the community, but having them being happy and staying and being advocates of the community as well? It's a great question. I mean, I think the, a popular question that founders and companies, CMOs ask a lot is who is your consumer? Who are they? And that is incredibly important to know, to identify, to know, to grow, to expand, to be thoughtful about. One of the most, I would say, equally important questions that we ask ourselves is who are we to them?

21:52Because it really impacts how we show up, the content that we make, the stories that we tell, the experiences that we curate, the one-to-one connection we try to build. Are we their friend? Are we their validator? Are we their platform? Are we their megaphone? Are we there home? What is that? Because that will ultimately dictate what we build and how we show up. And also it gives us a good read on, especially as the audience is getting bigger and more people in our case are coming into women's sports who maybe weren't the same people from four years ago. then how does that sort of the tonality and the brand expression change and grow over time and I think coming back to yes who are they but who are you to them will really drive some of those decisions that you make on what you create and how you show up also you just came off of the most important time for together which is March Madness where there was a big launch event for the everyone watches line the collab line with nike talk to us about that event i i bless my family i always say like march march is truly madness for us it's um it's our anniversary month um year over year um but also it's probably one of the biggest if not the biggest sort of moment for women's sports annually um we were down in tampa for the final four um and to sort of celebrate the partnership that we have, a new partnership that we have with Nike on Everyone Watches Women's Sports.

23:29We did sort of like a four-hour takeover of their retail store down in Tampa. So you could, if you're in Hyde Park, you could go past and see Everyone Watches Women's Sports, big marketing between Nike and Together on the windows, and then walk in and buy the product in retail for the first time. And so we had the team down there. It was an incredible celebration. We sold out of all of our product in a very, very short amount of time. But while we were there, one of our business partners is Megan Rapinoe. And I was outside for the FaceTiming and had someone come up to me and just be like, oh, my God, it's so great to see you.

24:07And I look and it's Megan. And I was like, what are you doing here? And she was like, I'm working out at Barry's Boot Camp next door. I'll be right back. So after she wrapped her workout, she came over to the store and hung out with all these incredible fans who was a surprise and delight for them. Put on the T-shirt, was like spending time with the staff and the retail staff, taking pictures with everybody, which further drove some more participation on the retail experience side. But it was incredible. It was an incredible weekend. And we celebrated what was a very sort of vision board moment for us, which is a collaboration with Nike on the product side.

24:46So Nike is just one of the incredible brands you get to partner with. I would love to hear about other collabs. And also, what do you think has made those partnerships really beneficial for both teams where you walk away feeling very synergistic? I think it's as a founder, sometimes you feel pressure, especially when revenue is on the table to say yes. You want to generate brand dollars. You know, it's important to your top and bottom line as a business. As a startup, you don't always have the luxury of saying no, but we've been very thoughtful and intentional about who we say yes to. and value alignment, especially sort of in a mission-driven company like ours, is really, really important.

25:30And our audience and our community, and I think this is probably true for a lot of brands and businesses, our audience will know when it's not authentic. And that point, it's not good for anybody. And they care a lot about the brands that show up for them. And that's not just a media company. That's also retail and consumer brands as well. We've had the fortune of working with some incredible sort of like global blue chip brands over the last four years. As I mentioned, sort of the growth and investment that's happening in this space. And a lot of brands are coming to us because they know they need to get in on women's sports because it's good business.

26:09It's not a charity or a cause, which is how it's been looked at in the past. And they want to do it in the right way. So a lot of brands are coming to us and saying, women's sports. And you're like, yes, and. And asking questions like, what's the right way to show up? What are the stories that we should tell? What are the experiences that we should create? Which is a really incredible position for us to be in because we can build in partnerships sort of side by side with these brands who are thoughtful and intentional and want to get it right. And also have lasting impact in the space and not just sort of write a check and they don't care where it goes.

26:46So we've worked with, I mean, Nike is one of our partners. They've been a multi-year partner of ours over the last three years. This is our first big sort of like co-branded consumer product drop. Aflac has been an incredible partner of ours over the last couple of years. And they've been really thoughtful about creating experiences for fans, both on sort of the content side, but also in real life. We've done watch parties in partnership with them. a raise the bar initiative to get more sports bars airing women's sports, which is its own sort of like great community builder. TJ Maxx has been an incredible partner of ours.

27:26Coca-Cola, Geico, Google, AT &T, so many are coming to us because they believe in this space and they want to be thoughtful and get it right because they know that it can have really lasting impact in a space like this one. Yeah, I think it's incredible when brands want to amplify the story of women's sports. And I know that you're also thinking about different new ways to share more stories, whether it's through expanding product lines and also maybe exploring a book. So yeah, talk to us about those new ways. We actually just released a book at the beginning of March called Play It Forward, which is a collection of 25 essays about sort of game changers and culture shapers and barrier breakers who some you may know and some you may hear their stories for the first time.

28:19But it was a really cool sort of physical manifestation of what our brand stands for and who we aim to serve and sort of our purpose and taking, no pun intended, these athletes for so long who have been in the margins and centering them in their stories and their experiences across generations. The key word for us is, which is, it sounds like a boring word, but it's actually very exciting, is inventory. There needs to be more live experiences and community experiences for fans, more content. We have sort of our always on social channels, of course, and our newsletter and texts and sort of episodic series on YouTube, but we're also creating premium docs and series for networks like FuboTV and Amazon Prime and CBS and others.

29:11So it's about meeting consumer demand on every single platform. Consumer products also. We've had this incredible hit with Everyone Watches Women's Sports, which we're continuing to invest in. But what else is out there for us. What does our community want? What is the market showing? What is that continued white space? We know consumer products on the women's sports side is a$4 billion industry that's been largely untapped. We have an incredible community that, going back to who are we to them, wants us to create more for them. So everything, it's all about inventory right now for us. And I know that there are founders out there that wants to perhaps go into untapped industries, maybe share awareness for untold stories.

29:59To close off the show, what is your advice for people who want to take on those challenges? You said a version of this in the middle of the conversation, but it really resonates to me. There is a lot of organic chaos that comes with being an entrepreneur or a founder. And in many ways, you're sort of building the plane while you fly it. I think one of the most important things is to be very clear on your vision. The market may change. The goalposts may change. The sort of the clear-eyed, simplistic vision of where you want to go is the thing, the North Star, that will anchor you and it will anchor your entire team, assuming you're privileged enough to have a team around you.

30:54to get you there. In the end, through all of that chaos, if you can point back to that vision and that North Star, it tends to sort of like allow people to drop their shoulders and the weight of things and reset and refocus. And anything that feels chaotic or questions or priorities or non-priorities, you can go back to that vision and that North Star and say, does this align? And if it doesn't, then it's deprioritized. Yeah, because I think having a shared vision is able to bring people back together throughout that chaos. Well, thank you so much, Jess, for being here with us today. Thank you so much for having me.