Not Your Average Founder Spotlight: Ashleigh Corker, Co-Founder of Proto101
Welcome to “Not Your Average Founder” with Ashleigh Corker, Co-Founder of Proto101.
Q: Why did you start Proto101?
Ashleigh: Proto101 is an apparel company founded with the notion that your clothes can look good, feel good, and do good. In the past, my co-founders and I worked for very large clothing companies where we grew tired of making design compromises like using cheaper fabrics, specing a one-size-fits all t-shirt for everyone, and supporting an industry with a dirty supply chain that thrives on fast-fashion. Proto101 strives to do better across all these areas by continually raising the bar on ourselves and hopefully doing our small part to improve the fashion industry.
Q: How has COVID impacted your business? What are the biggest trade winds helping you?
Ashleigh: We are a DTC, digitally native brand and we have always worked largely remotely with our manufacturing partners, so, how we do business has not changed significantly. On Fridays, I have a socially-distant walk with my cofounders – there is something about stretching your legs that heightens creativity. We also use this as an opportunity to crystalize our priorities for the following week. With many people spending more time at home, we are leaning into our comfort offerings (joggers, shorts, hoodies, and the t-shirt). All are supremely comfortable, look impeccable on a Zoom call, and have wicking properties that keep you feeling fresh.
Q: How did you get into e-commerce? What advice would you give to people considering the industry?
Ashleigh: I started my career in finance, which was wonderful for instilling the concept of allocating scarce resources. When I decided to leave finance, wanted to find an industry where I could leverage my analytical skills. I was fortunate that I lived in Seattle and later Boston, home to two of the best e-commerce companies in the world, Amazon and Wayfair.
When I was just starting at Amazon I had the pleasure of having lunch with the first female store manager of Macy’s, who was 92 at the time. When I told her I was going to sell shoes on the internet she was both crest-fallen and skeptical. She went on to tell me that the best salespeople at Macy’s were exemplary students of human nature; they could watch a women’s eyes light up at a dress, only to walk away after looking at the price tag or a husband holding up two sweaters deliberating which one was his wife’s size. “How?” she asked, “could a website ever replicate this?”
I took her question to heart; I knew from work in finance that numbers could help signal where you should be asking questions, and I thought that this could translate to e-commerce. So, all that to say, my advice to those considering e-commerce, never forget that there are real people at the other end of the internet, analytics can help you uncover areas where you need to start asking questions about the customer experience and where there are gaps, and then you need to start thinking about ways to solve these gaps for the customer. And realize that there are some customer subtleties that you will not see in the data and you will have to empathize with your customer.
Q; You have experience working at retail companies that are also tech companies, how has that impacted how you do things at Proto101?
Ashleigh: Like tech teams, we operate on a 2-week sprint with daily stand-ups, we value testing and learning as quickly as possible, we leverage data where we have it and seek customer input where we don’t, and we have a sense of optimism that seems to permeate a lot of tech.
Q: Personal goals in 2021?
Ashleigh: My goal for 2021 is to relentlessly prioritize and practice focus. Like many people, with the pandemic, the majority of my life is within the confines of my house, so, it is easy to become distracted. It is my goal to explicitly prioritize a limited number of things every day, week, and month and when I’m working on those things to practice focus – if I’m playing with my kids, I want to do that with my full attention; if I’m setting up marketing plans, I don’t want to be distracted with emails.
Q: Speaking of which, how has parenthood impacted your work?
Ashleigh: Sooooo many areas! When I was a new parent, I’d also just built a new team. I was reading a bunch of management books and a bunch of parenting books and I kept seeing all this overlap, because, at the root both are about people. Both children and teammates want to have autonomy, they thrive when they are playing to their strengths and yet challenged. For both employees and children, in times of trouble, it can be disarming to acknowledge their reality and then use as an opportunity for growth.
When I was working on a computer vision machine learning product, I had a newly minted one year old who was working on language acquisition – it was such a helpful metaphor. When kids are learning language, visuals are so important. There is a lot of pointing and adult naming what they are pointing at and then later there is a lot of testing and feedback from the parent, with the mistakes being a big part of learning. These insights impacted the methodology that we eventually used.
Having three kids, I have learned the necessity of prioritization and making sure I have team members and partners that can cover prioritize I won’t get to. I used to rely on brute-force to get things done, but now value sleep (have you seen ever seen a tired 2 year old? it’s not that different for adults, we just do a better job of hiding it).
Lastly, while the impact of climate change has been apparent for years, having kids compelled me to do what I could in my work to curb the impact, hence Proto101’s focus on perpetually raising our sustainability bar.
Q: What is the 80/20 rule with regards to having a positive impact on the environment with fashion?
Ashleigh: Look, the two biggest bang-for-you-buck things you can do to have a positive impact on the environment are 1) not buy new clothes, and 2) wash your clothes in cold water. We are super inspired by Patagonia’s reminder to ‘not buy if you don’t need to.’ For us, it was important to build clothing items that will not only last years, but get better with age so you’re not buying a new five pack of t-shirts every year. And washing your clothes in cold water will help them last longer, reduces the amount of micro-plastics that get into our water supply, and requires less energy.
Q: First place you’re going to vacation post covid?
Ashleigh: I have a 10-day trek around the base of Mont Blanc planned for August 2021, who knows if it will happen, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to.
Q: Favorite purchase of $100 or less?
Ashleigh: It’s just over $100 and seems so boring, but I bought this beautiful Japanese stepping stool. It is so elegantly designed that I find myself finding excuses to use it (and talk about it).
Q: How do you bring ideas to life?
Ashleigh: We always start with the customer and what problems we are trying to solve, which means extensive research: developing innovative fabrics from scratch, breaking down the construction of a garment, analyzing fits, comparing price and value, testing materials to meet quality and compliance standards, color and trend, and expected customer uses. We are fortunate to have trustworthy manufacturers that we have worked with for decades who we collaborate with to innovate new fabrication and construction techniques. After we have a prototype, we put our products through user testing to stress test and get feedback. That feedback loop continues after we have released a product into the market; we are constantly trying to improve based on customer input whether it is reviews, return rates, or conversion rates. This is a way of working that will be very familiar to those working in tech, but is less common within the fashion industry.
Q: What’s one trend that excites you?
Ashleigh: There is an old joke in Seattle that people are always wearing their Patagonia fleece because they never know when they’re going to have to hike a mountain or hop into a kayak. We’re energized by innovative fabrication that bring performance features into your everyday clothing, because you’re just as likely to need to jump onto a last-minute Zoom call as you are to go on a hike.
Q: What’s coming down the pipe for Proto101?
Ashleigh: We’re expanding our product assortment, including long-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts, joggers, and women’s.
Q: What are your thoughts on trends in DTC?
Ashleigh: I think DTC gives customers the opportunity to demand higher quality products. With mass-offering sites like Amazon and Walmart, the cheapest product tends to dominate the ‘virtual shelf-space,’ and so there is little incentive to improve the quality of products. DTC brands are better able to signal quality through their own site (compared to a marketplace) and because they own the customer relationship, they nurture this relationship over time.
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That concludes Not Your Average Founder Spotlight. Thank you, Ashleigh! Can’t wait to get my hands on one of Proto’s tees.