The journey of Modest Mermaid from day 1 of taking the plunge to work on my own business to delivering our first product was a speedy one it took only 4 months. The idea however was one that had been in my mind for some time. Having worked in fashion for 17 years prior to Modest Mermaid's birth. I had extensive experience developing product ranges, communicating with suppliers, marketing products, designing, fitting, logistics the list goes on.
The biggest step for me was taking that first step to back myself and develop products I had envisaged and see them to come to life and furthermore women to love them. I left the retail world to start my business and that was scary to give up a stable salary with a growing family to start my own business. It has come with many challenges, things I would do differently next time but also so much fulfilment. Having two young children now I often spend most nights/early mornings/nap times/weekends working on my business. However I never see it as work. It gives me such joy and I feel so motivated to get up each day and continue building my dream and expanding it.
The biggest success and joy for me is hearing from my customers and how empowered and wonderful they feel in our modest swimwear. This makes my day and makes all the hard work worth it. I really felt there was a gap in the market for fashionable, flattering modest swimwear and equally as important sun smart too since our products are UPF50+, the highest level of UPF available.
The very first product I designed was what is known as our Classic swim set, we started with a black and white print as we felt this would appeal to the majority of people and to get a read of if there is a market. To this day this is our best seller. The classic print came in a above the knee length dress and we had lots of feedback that customers wanted a longer option.
This is where we developed our second range the Long length dresses this hits the knee or just over (height dependant) which came in four new prints- Retro (sold out), Tropicana (sold our), Hawaiian (limited sizes left in all 3 sizes), Palm (small and medium left in limited quantities). This range was a great success.
We in our third and most recent range have increased the hem again to our Extra long length, these dresses will go over the knee for all heights. Our newest ranges comes in three beautiful prints- Aztec, Fern and Violet. We have also introduced a fourth size in this range XL. Along with these three prints we have designed a waffle edge black swimming hijab which looks fabulous with our swim dresses/sets.
We are currently looking ahead to our next range and feel free to comment below anything you would like to see.
Love MM xx
