During the first round of lockdown and quarantine, we were all grounded in our homes and removed from our exciting and independent lives. I found myself stuck in the same room every day taking online classes and hanging out with my family. After a couple of months, my friend from high school approached me and suggested we start a clothing brand since we had so much time on our hands. She offered to handle the business and administrative side, and I would handle the more creative and design aspect of things.
Our company is titled Leudic, which means spontaneity in Latin. The brand focuses on creating comfortable clothing for the modern woman or man. We specialize in sweatshirts, sweatpants, hoodies, crop tops, and bucket hats. Since we started our brand in COVID, all the clothing was very comfortable and meant to be worn at home and outside. All our products are very affordable and has a strong focus on sustainability.
You can check out our brand at: https://leudic.com/
Starting a company is difficult in and of itself, but on top of all the usual challenges, we also had another big obstacle: COVID-19. This is how we navigated a global pandemic and made the most of our resources.
The best part of starting a small business during peak quarantine was the amount of time we had on our hands. Besides taking classes, we really had no other plans. This allowed us to focus all of our excess time on this business. Now that we are coming out of quarantine, it has honestly become harder to keep up with the company because our lives are returning to their normal level of craziness. The second thing that was beneficial to us was the boom in eCommerce. Online shopping had already been taking over as the preferred method of shopping, but with everyone stuck in their homes, it led to an incredible increase in eCommerce. We started our business on the popular eCommerce host site, Shopify, and found it was easy to get our products to customers without the traditional brick-and-mortar barrier.
There were obviously many challenges that were also associated with opening a brand during the pandemic, and in the beginning, we struggled with the shipping times. When we started our brand, it took everyone a really long time to receive their orders, and there was nothing we could really do about it. Next, it was sometimes hard to get people to spend money on seemingly “unnecessary” products because of the complicated financial situations people found themselves in during this time. We went back and forth on what was fair to ask of our customers. Finally, we decided on a price that we thought was affordable and appropriate for the time we spent on each product.
These were just some of the biggest pros and cons of opening our new business during COVID-19, however, it barely scratches the surface of what we went through to get our business up and running. My biggest takeaway from this whole process is that it is challenging to start a business no matter what is going in the world, but if you can get through those hardships, the feeling of having something of your own is so rewarding and fulfilling.
