Monday 22 August 2016

My Experience On Creating My Own Line of Fitness Leggings

SENI by Fit Rebel leggings has officially launched and the first batch of orders has been processed and delivered to the backers of our crowd funding campaign.

The best moments from the previous weekend was receiving emails, messages and seeing posts from friends & customers receiving their leggings & doing social media shout-outs.

Here's Claudia from Vienna, Austria, enjoying the weekend, going about town in her fun, new leggings.

Suhana was spotted engaging in the #22pushupchallenge in our phoenix inspired leggings.


Alya was captured ice skating in our Japanese Koi inspired leggings! 


When good things happen in life, one has to take a moment of silence to feel gratitude and to give thanks to the universe, and to everyone and everything that has helped me along this journey to make this moment possible.

I believe that things are better when shared, so I would just like to share some learnings and observations that I picked up/ experienced through out this whole journey of creating my own line of leggings and running a crowd funding campaign.

LESSON #1: To Build Something Great From Nothing, You Must Really, Really, Really Want It

All I started with was an idea. Just an idea. Something in my head.
Literally, it went like this, "I want to create the most beautiful yoga pants in the world".

I didn't know how I was gonna do it, or what it took. I just really, really, really wanted it.
And the reason why I wanted it was due to a calling that was much bigger than myself. I realized that most women would get more excited about their workouts if they had fun and beautiful workout attire. Having been through some difficult times in the past 4 years (death of father, broken engagement, etc) I have personally felt the positive benefits of exercise which helped me overcome some of the most difficult moments in my life.

If having fun and beautiful active wear can get women to exercise more often, then I was going to create the most beautiful leggings in the world to inspire women to do just that.

It took me 12 months, which consisted of the following:
  • 2 months of design, and finding the right artists to work with
  • Going through 20 different prototypes before I was happy with the final product. 
  • Traveling through the region, visiting fabric suppliers and manufacturers to compare fabrics, printing and manufacturing quality
  • Weeks of stress testing the prototype with friends who engage in a wide variety of sports such as running, yoga, aerial hoops, martial arts and dance. Making improvements to the prototype based on their feedback
  • Photoshoot, videoshoot, running the crowd funding and doing all the necessary marketing activities required to grow awareness
  • etc
 It was hard. But I was clear on my vision and my intention, and I was unstoppable.


LESSON #2: You Must be Willing To Give Up Everything For What You Really Want

There really is no other way about this. To get something you really want, you need to do something you have never done. It's a shift of priorities that comes from within, once you have committed yourself to the goal.

I quit my job.
I think twice, three times before going on vacation, because that means I'll be away from work.
Hanging out with friends for a period longer than 3 hours makes me uncomfortable because it's time away that I could be doing something else for my business.


LESSON #3: People Will Surprise You

This has got the be the best lesson/ observation that I gained from this entire experience.
What I realized is that most people who can help, will do everything they can to help you succeed. Everyone from my models, photographer, artists, friends and family rose up to meet me and carried me even higher.

I can still remember the day of the photo shoot, when we were on our feet from the crack of dawn until sunset. I was barking out requests to friend & photographer (Jonathan Khee) the whole day, and he patiently obliged to everything I wanted. Till this day, I am filled with gratitude that he put up with my moment of crazy and we remain good friends :)

The flip side to all this light is the 'dark side'. Some people disappoint.

I guess that is life. Everyone is fighting their own battles and I should not judge people for what they did or did not do. I can only hope that with time, everyone will show their good side eventually.

And that's all for today, folks!

To view the SENI by Fit Rebel collection, you can visit the Fit Rebel website here: https://fitrebel.com/