Customers In The Fitting Room – via Retail Briefs If only fitting lingerie was as simple as having a single bra size.  Yes, I can hear the chuckles from the fitting community.  We all know better.  Bra sizes vary from brand to brand, and even within a brand from bra to bra.  I was prepping [...]

If you are a lingerie retailer and gearing up for trade show season, it’s important to have a strategy for your buying.  I talked to Ellen Lewis at Lingerie Briefs and compiled some tips for buying at trade shows.  While this focuses on lingerie boutiques, there are tips here that are helpful for any small [...]

Via Lingerie Briefs Coup de Foudre is one of the only luxury lingerie stores in Washington DC, located in the heart of downtown, just steps from the famed Ford’s Theater.  In 2011, owner Kiersten Butterfield purchased the store from the woman who originally opened in 2004. To learn more about Coup de Foudre, their story [...]

via Lingerie Briefs Welcome to Retail Briefs, Lingerie Brief’s latest column, dedicated to answering your burning questions about the world of lingerie retail. The day-to-day of lingerie retailing is challenging.  You’re always on the go – managing your inventory, your employees, your customers.  Keeping a store (or stores) on track is hard enough, and too [...]

Via Lingerie Briefs By Ali Cudby Innovation comes in many guises, and in this column we’ll take a look at some “cheeky” new approaches to undies.  In this case, the focus is not so much on the garments, but rather their distribution mechanisms. Empowered By You  The Empowered By You panty is a new luxury [...]

Via Lingerie Briefs by Ali Cudby Innovation has many faces.  While I often discuss garments in this space, there are many more aspects to innovation in our industry. Here are a few new ways in which technology is improving the lingerie buyer’s customer experience: New website for Prima Donna and Marie Jo brands.  For consumers, [...]

This year’s Curvexpo in New York revealed a number of manufacturers that are catering increasingly to the cohort of full-figured women.  This marks a shift from previous years, when the full-busted market got more of the attention. What differentiates full-figured from full-busted?  Here’s the line of demarcation used in my book Busted! The Fab Foundations Guide [...]

By Ali Cudby Recently, Commando was awarded a patent for their slip.  Intrigued by the aspect of their slip that made it a patented technology, I learned more – here’s what they shared: AC:  Please explain the innovation that is built into your slip. Commando:  The major innovation that is built into the slip, and [...]

At June’s Full Figured Fashion Week, panel participants and audience members alike got into a rollicking discussion about bras.  While many of these women were unaware of the options that existed in the market, some also lamented that the brands focusing on fashion-forward, full-figured options were limited in their sizes. In fact, a Facebook poll [...]

Get a bunch of MBA’s in a room and you might expect them to focus on the next big technology play or Wall Street bull, but in the 2012 Harvard Business School competition for Alumni Entrepreneurs, Knock Out!® panties KO’d the other 130 new companies in the field to take home the championship belt. Knock Out!®, owned [...]