{"id":11393,"date":"2023-02-13T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T13:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=11393"},"modified":"2023-02-13T08:53:11","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T13:53:11","slug":"what-a-girl-wants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2023\/02\/13\/what-a-girl-wants\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Girl Wants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With her e-commerce clothing brand, Rachel Schifter \u201997 Thebault is outfitting the next generation.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Models<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On the internet, there\u2019s a vintage-style T-shirt with a little green alien. The alien is throwing the peace sign and is surrounded by clouds, rainbows, butterflies, stars, and Ring Pops. The text on the shirt reads, in a graffiti-like font, \u201cIt was all a dream.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel Schifter \u201997 Thebault didn\u2019t buy this shirt three decades ago \u2014 she manufactured it in 2022, through her teen-focused, e-commerce clothing company Woodley + Lowe. Alongside the aforementioned vintage tee, every Woodley + Lowe item follows the \u201990s and early aughts aesthetic that\u2019s taken over the fashion industry in recent years: baby doll tees, pleated miniskirts, and matching tracksuits. \u201cGen Z is so comfort driven, and how things feel on their body is so much more important than for previous generations,\u201d Thebault notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She created Woodley + Lowe in part because she saw a hole in the market: \u201cAs the mall went away, no one came in and filled in these favorite teen apparel brands,\u201d says Thebault. The days of mall browsing are dead (e-commerce sales grew by 50% during the pandemic, according to Forbes, with 39% growth in the clothing and clothing accessories category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, teens are mostly shopping at fast-fashion stores, the Colgate economics major explains, which are notorious for providing cheaply made garments. \u201cThere are so many pain points,\u201d she says. \u201cNothing fits them well. The quality\u2019s poor. The brand messaging is kind of reprehensible. There\u2019s nothing that feels inclusive. It\u2019s feeding on their insecurities and not really pumping them up.\u201d So, collaborating with Neda Talebian (the wife of Brian Funk \u201997), she created her e-commerce platform to provide fashionable, well-made clothing to tween and teen girls. To counteract the negative practices of fast fashion, and recognizing that sustainability is important to this generation\u2019s future, clothing is made largely from recycled materials and organic cotton. Because teens often change sizes and styles, Woodley + Lowe offers a trade-in program. The items that are returned through this effort are upcycled, resold, or donated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thebault\u2019s \u201990s dreamland isn\u2019t built on off-the-cuff decisions. She relies on qualitative data provided by 150 teenage W+L ambassadors who are recruited to give feedback on new clothing items or design choices. Thebault uses the teens as a focus group to help decide what ultimately ends up on the website. \u201cAt first, we assumed these girls [weren\u2019t] into pastels,\u201d Thebault says. \u201cAnd then we found out very quickly, oh yes, they love a pastel aesthetic, but then they love pops of color too.\u201d Thebault jumps in to try to enter the mind of Gen Z girls in other ways \u2014 she\u2019s constantly lurking on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and BeReal to figure out what that generation is listening to, what\u2019s trending, and what emojis they\u2019re using. She uses that information to inspire new designs for both clothing and the Woodley + Lowe website. It helps that Thebault has three girls of her own, who act as live-in guides to what it means to be a teen girl in the 2020s. \u201cIt\u2019s an automatic litmus test,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woodley + Lowe isn\u2019t Thebault\u2019s first foray into the business world \u2014 she\u2019s adept at career pivots, spending seven years in the investment banking world before deciding to follow her passion and earn a degree from the Institute of Culinary Education. She then owned and operated the successful dessert company Tribeca Treats, crafting colorful kids\u2019 birthday cakes, personalized cookies, and holiday confections before closing that chapter in 2018. \u201cThere are dozens of things easier about running a website than a physical store, but customer acquisition and marketing require a lot more work and planning,\u201d she told Authority Magazine last year. Getting into the mind of today\u2019s teen has helped focus Thebault\u2019s mission of bringing ethically made closet staples to Gen Z closets. \u201c[To run a successful business,] you have to be a risk-taker but you also have to be able to listen to people,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel is married to Robert \u201cRobin\u201d Thebault \u201999.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With her e-commerce clothing brand, Rachel Schifter \u201997 Thebault is outfitting the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":11644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1393,846,1394,53,299],"coauthors":[158],"class_list":["post-11393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-endeavor","tag-apparel","tag-e-commerce","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-fashion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2XL","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2023\/02\/WhatAGirlWants_Edit.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11393"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11531,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393\/revisions\/11531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11393"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}