At A Glance

Nathaniel Johnson, the driving force behind Love, Vera, where inclusivity meets elegance in lingerie! Discover how a simple idea from a trade show became a powerhouse brand dedicated to serving all women. With a focus on community feedback and data-driven decisions, this story reveals the formula for success in a competitive industry!

Who is Nathaniel?

Meet Nathaniel, Co-Founder of Love, Vera!

About Love, Vera

Love, Vera is an inclusive lingerie brand  focused on bringing quality bras, panties, garter sets, loungewear, and other lingerie favorites to an underserved demographic. They want to raise the bar for representation and inclusivity for women of all races, color, or creed. 

This highly-rated brand boasts reputable manufacturing with products that fit well, have beautiful designs, and premium quality. With a high focus on listening to what their customers want, Love, Vera has built a strong and loyal following.

Nathaniel’s Journey

The creation of Love, Vera came after Nathaniel went to a trade show in China to pick up products for a client, and ended up starting a business with his friend Vera.

Once Nathaniel had finished his work for his client, he took a stroll around the tradeshow assessing the products available. Vera and Nate  landed on starting a lingerie brand after identifying a product that was small, light, and easy to ship with a large market.

“We looked at all different kinds of things. We settled on lingerie because it's small, light, easy to ship, great lifestyle products, huge market, and nice margins.”

Six months later Nathaniel and Vera were launching their new MVP: Love, Vera.

At first, they decided to do a minimal viable product store (MVP) with decent quality products to keep costs low. They knew if they were successful at selling this reduced product line, eventually, they could expand.

Starting with a low-budget photo shoot done right out on the streets of Los Angeles, they launched the line and started watching the data.

Their brand has grown exponentially with an extended product line that they started making in-house. They have a distribution center in Philadelphia and a content creation hub in Los Angeles.

“A big part of being a lifestyle brand is really being authentic and on the pulse of the culture.”

After they started sourcing their own products, they quickly moved into manufacturing them. This allowed the Love, Vera team to increase their profit margins, which they then invested in expanding their size selections. 

Prioritizing the Customer’s Voice

The driving force that helps make brand decisions are the Love, Vera customers. Nathaniel and his team’s ultimate goal with this brand is to build a community where all women feel represented, especially women of color who are mostly underserved in the lingerie world. 

“Our customers are really our priority for our business.”

To make sure their brand is on point, Vera herself regularly reaches out to their customer audience to find out what it is they want, need, and input on the styles they love. She also takes the time to find out what price points work for their audience.

Getting this direct feedback allows Vera to design lingerie, underwear, and loungewear that the Love, Vera customers actually want while providing the sizes they need. Doing this direct interaction has helped the team build a strong community and a loyal following.

Nathaniel believes using their innovative methods gives their company an edge in the market.

“When you do what the market does, you kind of grow as fast as the market. We've managed to find ways to perform beyond what the market would do for this product.”

Prioritizing the customer’s voice is a strategy that has had a genuinely positive outcome for Love, Vera.

A huge win for the team was listening to their customers about what sizes they needed. Having over 40 sizes ranging from petit to ALL plus sizes means no woman will be turned away from wearing this stunning brand.

Double Down on Data: Finding Success with E-Commerce

Nathaniel feels e-commerce is in its infancy. In high school during the early 2000’s he remembers the activity of the dot-com bubble, followed by the ever-growing online shopping industry.

With the e-commerce sector being so new, he feels there are a lot of opportunities on the horizon.

“If you think of a time period of just over 20 years, and a channel and segment of commerce that is just so expansive and so robust, I think there's tremendous opportunity for growth or innovation in e-commerce.”

Data gathering started from the very start of their MVP store launch. By seeing how their customers interacted with the smaller product line, they could make decisions on product styles and price points. After each product line launch, they would repeat this process, learning and growing from the data they gathered.

Another way his team is innovating how they make decisions for their e-commerce site is by carefully considering the customer opinion data collected from Vera along with actual purchasing data from their website.

Watching what price points their customers respond to along with the styles and looks their customers want allows them to pinpoint what product lines should stay, be expanded, or discontinued.

After finding a pricing formula and a successful traffic funnel from the data gathered, Nathaniel will then double down on their efforts with the goal of maximizing profits.

Succeeding as a Small Business in a Large Industry

Nathaniel has found big business can make it a struggle for smaller businesses in the lingerie industry.

“Big business makes it very, very challenging for small players to carve out their niche in the marketplace. A category like Intimates needs to really develop a certain amount of scale to be able to source product, manufacture product, to deliver all those different sizes, to be able to market and speak to your consumers in a certain way.”

They take an incremental approach to investing, while at the same time focusing on improving margins and profits. This strategy helps them incorporate better tools like inventory management while also finding better sourcing.

If Nathaniel could recommend one thing, be sure to have imagery and communication that is on point with your audience. 

When someone sees a model who looks like them they feel represented, and can picture themselves in that apparel. Giving women the confidence to wear what they want and feel good about it is the most rewarding part for the Love, Vera team.

“So many brands out here will do performative gestures to appeal to certain groups where it's like, clearly you're after the dollar for this customer segment and not actually delivering this in a way that authentically celebrates whomever you're speaking to.”

Nathaniel knows the more they can make their customer feel special and be put first, they will come back to the brand. They then build on that authenticity and perfect how they deliver their message to their audience.

Nathaniel also finds there’s a huge need to motivate yourself and your team. He finds when he can push himself and try different things it trickles down to his team in positive ways.

Using Customer Service to Drive Feedback and Foster Good Relationships

The Love, Vera brand has a full-time customer service team that is very hands-on and customer-facing.

Sometimes issues come up that a business can’t avoid. During the pandemic, Nathaniel and his team found themselves facing a big customer service problem. A situation arose that delayed shipping for many of their customers.

“First of all, we communicated with them transparently… The majority of the customers that we reached out to were so happy that we were transparent. We were empathetic to their need to have something special to wear, considering them, and what was important to them. There were only a handful of orders that cancelled.”

Love, Vera has learned how crucial direct contact with their customers is especially during a mishap in shipping or production.

Tech Stack

Canva

Shopify

‍