Sarah Greisdorf (CAS ’21) is the founder and CEO of The Collective. It’s a website that connects women to clothing with pockets they can actually fit their belongings into. Sarah was tired of having to always carry a bag, or to hand her phone and keys off to one of her male friends who had large pockets. As she noticed the persistent occurrence of this issue, Sarah felt passionate about making a change. She is majoring in Computer Science at BU, and this has fueled her desire to build a website for her startup. She purchased the domain and coded the whole thing from scratch.
Her website serves as a testament to the current women’s equality movements. She realized there was no reason men’s clothing could have functional pockets and women’s could not. Sarah wants to bring this functionality to women’s clothing and the name encompasses the idea. She explained the idea behind it, “It’s called The Collective because it is a collection of women’s clothing, pockets have the purpose of collecting items, and collectively women desire better pockets.”
The end product of The Collective is a website where you can search for items, but you’re able to guarantee that each of these items has a functional pocket. It showcases popular brands we all know and love as well as lesser known brands. They currently send out a newsletter you can subscribe to here. The Collective is what’s called a Lead Aggregator. They partner with brands to put their clothing on the website, they aren’t selling their own clothes and competing.
Sarah’s team currently consists of herself and two other members. Julia Bighetto is the Director of Outreach. She organized their recent photo shoot and is responsible for connecting with brands. Geneve Lau is the Director of Communication and Media. Her job is to spread the word about The Collective. She works on the social media and press aspects of the startup. Sarah is looking to expand her team and grow The Collective and so far, Sarah and her team have been successful in getting the word out about their goal. Sarah gave a talk on March 14th at an event called 1 Million Cups at BU’s Build Lab. The business was also presented at a startup fair at Build Lab.
The Collective is the startup to watch. They currently have a 55% open rate on newsletters, compared to the national average of about 16.75%. Don’t miss their progress…stay up to date by subscribing to their newsletter and following them on Instagram.
All photos are from a recent photo shoot for The Collective taken by Noor Nasser.
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