Today we’d like to introduce you to Kat Hawley Cook.
Hi Kat, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was tired of struggling to find modest dresses that also made me feel excited and beautiful. One day, my husband, Ryan, suggested we just make our own. This was a frame-breaking experience because I never imagined I would open my own business. But with his background in entrepreneurship, and my love of art and fashion, we turned out to be a great pair for the job. After a year of designing, we opened Poet Dresses on August 22, 2022, a store for “trending dress styles with a ✨little more✨ coverage. “
Almost 3 years later, we have more than quadrupled our dress selection. We have an amazing community of women (over 28K of them on Instagram!) who support us in our mission: to help women who value higher coverage feel comfortable and beautiful!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the greatest struggles I face is learning how to do things I’ve never done before. I had no prior experience with clothing design before we embarked on this small business journey. I have had to learn everything on the fly.
Everybody knows that women’s sizing is a difficult thing to nail down. We do our best to make our sizing as close to the industry standard as possible, but making a dress that fits the widely diverse range of women’s body types is a lot of work! I spend months and even years perfecting designs, trying them on models, researching trends, and asking for feedback.
Sometimes we make mistakes: early on, I had a dream of creating a dress with a sheer sleeve that still provides shoulder coverage. I worked with our manufacturer, but the design ended up a little funky, making the mobility in the arm not as smooth as I would have preferred. Buying a whole order of defective dresses hurts really bad, especially as a small business with tight funds! But we learned a lot and have processes in place going forward that will hopefully prevent these types of mistakes going forward.
As you know, we’re big fans of Poet Dresses. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are an online clothing company that sells high-coverage dresses. Our purpose is to take trending and timeless styles and make them available in higher coverage options. We make the tiny tweaks you’ve always wanted: slightly higher necklines, longer hemlines, shoulder coverage. We add just enough coverage that you enjoy the integrity of the design without feeling frumpy. We also provide options for women who want nursing-friendly, maternity-friendly, and natural materials.
The naming scheme of every dress style is inspired by poetry or literature, and every order comes with a wax-sealed poem hand-packaged by the founders, Kat and Ryan.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
A thick skin – people online can be mean, and not everybody respects what you’re offering
Ongoing education – learning on the fly and developing new skills to solve the problem at hand
Perseverance – a small clothing business is a long game; the returns are still a long way out
Resilience – there are lots of costly mistakes between you and success, don’t let them stop you
Pricing:
- $28 – cheapest price
- $70 – average price
- $97 – highest price
- $16 – brand accessory (necklace)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://poetdresses.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poetdresses/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poetdresses
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/103713994/admin/dashboard/
- Twitter: https://x.com/poetdresses
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@poetdresses
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@poetdresses
