Lagatta makes premium activewear  for 40+ women, for the go-getters, the ass-kickers, the strong and the fabulous.

I got a chance to meet the great Stephanie Reynders, the founder of Lagatta, and ask her about how she built her business up.

Welcome Stephanie! So when was Lagatta started and who was involved in the foundation of Lagatta?

The development of Lagatta started four years ago. It took such a long time to research and develop the product, especially without a team. I bootstrapped everything. Lagatta came to me when I went shopping with my mom and I saw her struggle to find any activewear that was modern and stylish, but still supportive and suitable for her age. And my mom is super modern … she's much, much cooler than I am. But still nothing felt right for her. And me - well I was an athlete and had a background in product development, so those two worlds collided when I embarked on a mission to help women like my mom find activewear they can love. The industry has really failed women over 40 by excluding them from design decisions and communications. We’re changing that. 

My mom was very involved because she was the target audience. We spent a big chunk of those early years together, developing and testing the first products. That involved everything from going to the store and buying fabrics to lay out on the kitchen table prototyping to visiting factories and finding manufacturers. 

That process took a long time because the average pair of leggings hadn’t evolved much in the past 60 years. Obviously there's been a lot of innovation in fabrics, especially around sweat-wicking properties - which is amazing for athletes - but we saw less innovation for the casually active woman who just wants to look and feel good. 

So we reimagined activewear - using our double-layer tech and other attributes that were completely new in the industry. Which is why it took us a while to actually find a manufacturer that was advanced enough to realise it. A lot of them just say no to start-ups right off the bat, but after pitching my heart out we managed to find great partners who also manufacture for some of the world’s biggest activewear brands. After that - we soft-launched in Belgium, where I was living at the time. And it went really, really well. Within six months we had already made back what we invested in manufacturing with organic sales alone. So to me - that confirmed that there is a huge gap and need in the market. That's when we took Lagatta to the UK and we've actually only just properly launched here in February 2021.

So - digging into the target demographic of the +40 year old woman: Between the product and the brand mission - which speaks to that audience most? 

It's definitely both - but early on we were mostly product-led. The mission and how vocal we were about that mission - that came on a bit later in the journey. 

Throughout the R&D phase, we didn’t use fitting models or mannequins as most brands do. We worked with women between 40 and 65 to try on and test our products. We sat there pinning and sewing on our actual target demographic, tweaking for the right support, coverage, comfort and freedom. That’s why we’re product-led and different from other brands - we’re pro-age by design, not just marketing. 

When we soft-launched, I positioned Lagatta as a product for all ages. I felt that if I was going to win over fashionable women between 40 and 65 - we couldn’t make them feel targeted for their age. I understood that if I were to tell my mom “here's a super cool brand for 55-year-old women” she may not necessarily relate to that. People feel on average 20% younger than they actually are, so in order to speak to them, we had to go beyond the demographic and relate to the psychographic. So we positioned Lagatta as activewear for all ages.

But after speaking to many, many customers, we learned that they wanted us to play a much bigger role in the pro-age movement. So we became much more vocal and explicit about it.

We understood that it was exactly our mission to smash those midlife stereotypes that held us back before, and show the world how cool women over 40 actually are. But that doesn’t mean we talk about age all the time.

We champion the active, bold and vibrant lives that our customers live - they just happen to be over 40. That’s how we make our community feel included, not targeted. 

During the soft launch - were you specifically executing on marketing tactics to find women in your target demo?

Not really. The way the product was built already communicated our USP's - so naturally, all our efforts were already leading us there. 80% of our early sales came from women between 40-65 right off the bat. That gave us the confidence to say “let's forget about the rest” and focus on our core audience. We did however anticipate that press would be a big channel for us in order to be discovered by our target audience, so we focused most of our marketing tactics there.

So how did you transition from soft-launch to a full-launch after moving to the UK? Was the website launch a big part of that launch? 

During our soft-launch we found PMF and had great traction, even with our DIY website, branding, packaging and marketing. But in order to launch in the UK, we needed more than that. Being on a mission to lead the wave of modern pro-age consumer brands, we knew we couldn't just bootstrap it anymore. To shift such an entrenched consumer mindset and make something sexy that, in the past, hasn't always been portrayed that way - we needed budget to do that. So we took the traction and numbers from Belgium to investors and raised our pre-seed round in the UK. Our investors include the co-founder of dating app Badoo, Max Cheremkhin, Sarah Guemouri of Atomico and Gulnaz Khusainova of the 2020 Atomico Angel Programme. We were finally able to give the brand a new look and optimise our website to reflect our brand voice and mission. The website was definitely a big part of that - It’s the cornerstone piece of our relaunch.

Talk to us about raising - Was that challenging? 

It’s easy to forget how difficult it was once you've done it. It’s always worth it, but the process can be extremely exhausting, especially while running a business solo at the same time. It's tough to face rejection - but that’s part of the process and you have to keep looking forward. I struggled most with the over-extended back and forth discussions with investors who were interested but not quite convinced. I obviously wanted to answer every question but at the same time, you think, “well instead of spending five hours here, I could actually do five pitches”. So at a certain point I made a decision to say, “ someone is either super passionate about it or they're not”, and I'm only going to spend time with the passionate ones. And that’s how I ended up with investors who are bringing so much more to the table than just their investment.

So what’s the focus now? New SKUs? New geographies? 

In the first 18 months we want to be super focused on the activewear industry, that’s our expertise and that’s where our audience is incredibly underserved. Historically, the activewear industry has just focused on fit 20-somethings, but that's just a small piece of the pie. In 2025, the first millennials will turn 45. So the opportunity in activewear is not only huge, it’s also ever-growing, and we're very excited to come out with all of our new products.

Let’s chat about acquisition - Are you going to be using paid media? 

To date - one of our main approaches has been press and there's a very simple reason for that: even though women over 40 are definitely active online, they also love reading newspapers and magazines. Those mediums give a sense of trust that you don't always get on paid social. So having our story picked up by press has been huge for us, but that said  - we are going to start paid social too. Facebook and Instagram are our main channels. 

We’re also investing in SEO. We know our target audience is Googling for “activewear that isn’t see-through” or “activewear that doesn’t show cellulite”. And this search behavior is exactly how women between 40 and 65 shop - so SEO is a priority for us too.

‍Let’s touch on the supply chain. Any learnings to share on that front?

Supply chain is a very difficult one for start-ups, especially now with Brexit. When we were operating in Europe, we did everything ourselves. It was literally me and my parents packing up all of the orders and shipping everything out. Right now we're moving everything over to the UK which is proving to be easier said than done with customs and Brexit.

We'll be working with a fulfillment center and everything will ship from the UK. We sell on a delivery duty paid basis, which means we don’t make our customers pay any duties. We’re going above and beyond to create a customer experience that this demographic has long been deprived of because brands ignored them. As soon as we start exporting a higher volume of sales to mainland Europe, we might actually have a few warehouses spread out - but those are good problems to have.

Let’s jump onto team structure: How do you structure the best workforce to succeed in the D2C space?

Until recently, I had to do everything myself because we were bootstrapping. You have to stretch in order to make the business work and to reinvest as much as possible back into the business. Only recently we’ve started working with agencies and freelancers - and I’m now looking to hire the first team members. So that's going to happen in the next month or so. I believe good D2C brands are built from a mix of great product, original marketing strategies and a vocal and inspired community. 

And community is very important to us. I’ll be hiring someone that can support us in building a strong community both online and offline in an original way, as it’s a very interesting nut to crack - How do you build a powerful community with a generation that isn't necessarily as vocal on online platforms as younger generations, yet. But we’re seeing the start of a big pro-age revolution on both Instagram and Facebook, and it’s exciting. 

It's amazing that it's been unexplored up until this point. I'm super excited for what you're working on. Before we wrap - are there any tools that you're using today or that you've used along your journey that are worth calling out? 

Yeah,  I actually have 2 tools to recommend. The first is one is Tweek - it’s basically the most simple to-do list ever. It’s boosted my productivity significantly and it’s so simple and nice to use. And then there’s “Easysize”. They use AI to help customers find the right size. It's just incredible.

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That's fantastic. Well, that's it for me. Thank you so much for sharing all your insights.