When teenaged Miriam Baker’s mother took her shopping for bras, she found that as a size 32E or F, she couldn’t fit into the biggest size (DD) that the mall’s lingerie store had available. Shopping was so discouraging and painful for Miriam that one day she daydreamed the idea of creating flattering, well-tailored clothing for women with big busts like herself.
The idea never left her, and she graduated from Ryerson University’s Fashion Design program in 2013. After winning a cash prize from the Toronto Fashion Incubator’s New Labels competition, Miriam set to work making her dream a reality — she rented her own space at TFI, created her first collection and her business, creating beautiful well-fitting clothes for big busted women, was on its way.
Today, Miriam’s typical customers are professional women: realtors, women in business, finance, a lot of lawyers and doctors — high-earning women who need to look well put together and want their clothes to transition from day to evening. Miriam describes her designs as classy and timeless, saying: “I like things to be a little bit fun, a little contemporary.”
“You shouldn’t be made to feel like something is wrong with your body, because clothing is made to fit a B and the average cup size is a D. Boobs are the biggest they’ve ever been.”
— Miriam Baker
What is unique and special about your business?
All my pieces are made for women with big boobs. As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of people doing what I do. Nobody else has my fit or quality. Throughout the past 3 years, I’ve been getting messages from women as far away as Australia telling me I’m solving a real pain point.
For me, content marketing goes hand in hand with e-commerce and is a fantastic way for me reach so many more women. I also want to make retailers realize there is a market for women with big busts! I’ve had retailers say to me, “Oh, I don’t have that kind of customer.” Then you don’t know your customer!
When you were starting your business, did you have a plan for content?
I’ve been quite naïve to be honest, and it’s turned out that running a profitable business has had more to do with marketing than I ever wanted to admit I knew I had a great, beautiful product and I thought when I launched the business it should sell itself, but apparently it doesn’t!
I was so busy getting my e-commerce site going that I only started properly thinking about content in 2017. A friend of mine who is a pretty big deal in the start-up community told me I needed to start inbound marketing. I’m not a writer at all, so I reconnected with a Ryerson Fashion Communications grad who wrote my first blogs. I don’t think marketing content is something any business owner can do entirely on their own.
“When you run your own business, you live and breathe your brand all the time. Working with a writer to produce my content has been a great way to get out of my own head and become more concise and targeted in my messaging.”
— Miriam Baker
What are some of the challenges you’ve faced marketing your clothes?
About a year ago I lost my right-hand employee (who was also a very dear friend) to cancer. She had been holding down the fort so I could focus on building the e-commerce and marketing side of my business. When I lost her, I had to figure out how to move forward and that was tough.
You can have the most incredible product but if no one knows about it, no one is going to buy it. Marketing requires help — I can’t design, sell and market entirely by myself. So I’ve gradually been building a team of people who’ve been helping me. I thought this process would go faster than it’s gone, and I find magazine write-ups have led to more sales than social media posts, but we’re getting there.
Which content are you most proud of?
I feel like my brand messaging is really taking shape. I’m much clearer about what I stand for and what my brand represents: women helping women, being relatable and approachable, talking about things that are difficult to talk about. I’m always looking to get across how our fit is different, because women should be comfortable in their clothes.
I’ve brought on someone to help with communications. She preps the content and makes sure stuff is regularly being posted so I can spend more time on the design and business side of things. I work with a writer to create the blogs and the brand copy on my website, and I love that we’re doing more educational content. We did one on how to deal with big boobs in the summer, which is a challenge so many of my customers can relate to! We’ve also pivoted to talking a lot more about women’s empowerment and the history of fashion. We just put out a blog about the history of the décolletage in Western fashion which I love.
What types of content are most important to your business?
We’re focusing more on email marketing, sending out at least two emails a month promoting our collection. We’re also writing two regular blog posts monthly on things like how to find the right bra, explaining fashion trends, and promoting female designers.
On social, we’re committed to posting daily and traffic to the site has increased through Facebook posts. Surprisingly, Instagram hasn’t been great for us. But even more surprisingly, we’ve had a surge of followers and ‘Likes’ on Twitter. We’re looking to conquer LinkedIn next since so many of my customers are working women.
“We are women designing for women. A male designer doesn’t have to wear what he creates, but you do! So it should be comfortable, and make you feel beautiful.”
- Miriam Baker
What advice would you give to someone starting their business now?
Looking back, I would have spent more money at the beginning on strategy rather than product development and look books. I would have budgeted out a portion for marketing. As a business owner, you can’t wear all the hats — so if there’s a way to get help from someone who knows, do it!
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