Bye Bye Bra:30, it’s been a slice!

A SAD FAREWELL TO BRA:30

So how did a little US made cotton crop top literally save our business during Covid and why are we saying good bye to it now? 

In the winter of 2019, my husband and I went on a trip to one of our favorite places, Maui. While we were there, we stopped by the lingerie shop of Teri, a friend of mine from the lingerie industry. As you do, when you visit a friends shop, I wanted to buy something. But what to buy? We carried almost all of the same brands and styles. As I looked around looking for something to purchase to support my friend and fellow small business owner, I came across a table with these fun little cans on it. “What are these” I asked Teri? “Bra:30” she replied, “you know like when you get home at 5:30 and just want to take your bra off but you don’t want to be totally braless!”

I took it out of the can and it honestly didn’t look like much…a made in the USA cotton ribbed crop top, nothing ground breaking right? Wrong! I bought a bra:30 and tested it out for the rest of the trip. It was  great, just that little bit of support and hold you want when you don’t want to wear a ‘real’ bra. 

My first day back to work I reached out to the brand and placed my first order. It sold out within a week. The second order sold out within 3 days. We were on to something and didn’t even fully know what was coming yet!

What was coming was world wide pandemic and shut down. People staying home, wearing pj’s and lounge, working from home, all without needing or wanting to wear a bra but feeling like they still wanted a little something. 

As we closed our doors to the public for what we thought would be a 10 day reset, we ultimately ended up being closed for closer to 7 weeks. Selling bras that our customers would not be wearing very much for the foreseeable future seemed like a scary business to be in!  

So as any good entrepreneur does, I cried on my couch for the first week not knowing what would happen to my business, my family or my team. Once I cried all the tears I could I went about the business of saving my business and my teams livelihood! I became the home shopping channel, entertainment channel, and all things saving our small business channel!

And that involved paying our rent on time and in full (as well as rent for our unopened Burnaby store that we had just signed a lease on and could not get out of, but that’s a story for another day. You can see why that week of tears and freakouts seemed appropriate to me! and that is where Bra:30 entered the chat…

I knew that based on the initial excitement over those 2 sold out orders, y’all would love living in Bra:30 during lockdown, but I could not even anticipate the level of excitement over the little crop top that could!

Over the next few months of lockdown and our subsequent re-opening, we sold thousands of Bra:30’s, so when no one was buying ‘regular’ bras, you were keeping our lights on with your new found love of Bra:30! Because there was so much excitement over this new product we had to do multiple pre-sales before stock even arrived and that crashed our website multiple times! It was truly a great problem to have when we didn’t know whether we would be in business from one week to the next.

Curbside pick up presented a  whole new problem… How to deal with literally hundreds of bags of these guys going out our front door? We had a website before Covid, but never dealt with more than a few online orders a day. Now we had the new problem of how to process 100’s of orders a day in a reasonable amount of time, keep them all organized all while keeping our customers happy on a bare bones crew. 

We knew that it was a proven winner when even after people started going back to work and regular life, they were continuing to replace their old ones, buy new colors and styles as they came out. 

Fast forward 6 years…Bra:30 has continued to be a strong seller in our business, something that customers keep returning for, and new customers are excited to try. 

Canada and the US have been friendly neighbors, allies and trading partners for over 150 years and unfortunately within the last few years that has fallen apart. Between the 50% Trump tariffs and Canada's retaliatory tariffs, we sadly are not able to bring in US made products anymore until this trade war comes to an end. What is currently a $50 product at retail would now become an $85 product between the 50% tariff, brokerage fees and cross border shipping. That kind of increase isn’t something that a small business can absorb, and don’t think it’s fair to pass that kind of increase on to you. 

So, we have done one last giant order (400 pieces) including a new chocolate fashion color! Once they are sold out, we will not be re-ordering Bra:30 which is as sad for us as it is for you.

Given the history we have with it and how thankful we are for how it played such a large role roll in saving my little dream of a business, I hope you’ll order your last few pieces and be thankful for the comfort it provides in your life too!