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Heidi Zak took a bra that didn’t fit and turned that frustration into ThirdLove, a DTC brand that challenged an industry dominated by one player and proved that listening to women could transform everything about how a product is made, marketed, and sold.
For her 300th episode, Lindsay Pinchuk chose a woman startup founder whose story embodies exactly what Dear FoundHer is built on. Heidi walks through the decisions that defined ThirdLove's early years, from leaving corporate and bootstrapping on savings, to spending months finding a manufacturer willing to work with an unknown brand, to pushing through on half-cup sizing after being told it was a stupid idea. When the company was running out of money and struggling to acquire customers, the team went back to their research and found the real problem was not price. Women didn't trust bra brands. That insight became Try Before You Buy, a program so radical in 2015 that it required complete belief in the product. Eighty percent of women kept the bra. Heidi also talks through the scaling challenges that came after, including an on-demand manufacturing experiment across 60-plus sizes that cost them real time and money before they walked it back, and what learning from failure actually looks like when inventory and cash are both on the line.
This episode is for founders who are early in the build and trying to do too much alone. Heidi closes with three things she wishes she had done sooner: test the smallest version of your idea first, make sure you can see yourself doing this for fifteen years, and use your network before you think you need it. She waited too long on all three, and she is direct about what that cost her.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introducing Heidi Zak
06:19 Heidi Zak’s Founding Story of ThirdLove
14:01 Launching the First Product Line and Market Strategy
19:35 Creating Half-Cup Sizes and Disrupting the Bra Industry
24:08 Building Trust and Driving Customer Acquisition
32:01 How Customer Feedback Shaped ThirdLove’s Growth
36:17 Lessons Learned from Failed Experiments
38:56 ThirdLove’s Current Status and Future Plans
Connect with Heidi Zak:
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Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
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