Customer Story: Corinne from RepYourWater

Welcome Corinne! Pleasure to have you. Was RepYourWater something you expected to become such a big part of your life? 

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I did not. My husband, Garrison, and I have been in business for over 11 years now, but at the time that we started this business he was doing architectural renderings and guiding a little on the side for a local fly fishing shop in his free time, and I was teaching.

During the 2008 recession, the architectural space took a huge hit - so we started exploring other avenues. And that’s when we identified a gap in the fishing apparel space. There weren’t many brands that offered niche designs that call out things like “I love fishing in Colorado” or “I love fishing for brown trout” - so we decided to give eCommerce a chance. 

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He was able to go full time with RepYourWater after a few years.  I taught full-time for another year or two and for the past 5 years, we’ve both been full-time on RepYourWater. 

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Incredible! So how's business been? Any insights on the acquisition front? 

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We’re continuing to find new customers, partially via Facebook advertising - but also via organic Instagram exposure. And the past 2-3 years have been great in terms of growth, largely due to COVID - where many ventured outdoors during the lockdown period. So now - we’re stabilizing again as the “outdoors boom” is starting to go back to normalcy. 

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And what’s on the horizon for RepYourWater?

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When we started, we had to buy someone's hat and then put our design on it. The next step was to work directly with the factory to make the hat ourselves and increase our margin. And that’s where we’re at right now, slowly moving up the supply chain. 

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We also want our products to be even more sustainable which is aligned to our fly fishing & conservation focused messaging. So that + new designs are the big tackles of the moment. 

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Let’s talk about your Pixel Union theme: What were you using before switching to Dawn?

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We were using Atlantic by Pixel Union. And I was drawn to it mostly for the aesthetics.

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We have a relatively large catalog for how small of a company we are. So filtering, product categorizations and overall aesthetic were very top of mind when we selected Atlantic. 

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And how did you stumble upon Storetasker in the process? What’s the experience been like? 

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That was when we initially needed to tweak our Pixel Union theme. We were using a Shipping Protection third party app that we wanted to code ourselves - so that was our first project. And the one right after that was focused on making our site ADA compliant.

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Having a go-to dev to quickly hop on and quickly solve these dev challenges has been super helpful.  

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Last question: What would you attribute your success to?

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I have 3 different buckets:

1. Doing something unique:
A fishing hat doesn't seem all that special. But for us, our focus on design really makes a difference. Your product doesn't always have to be radically innovative or new, but you must have your ownable spin on it. 

2. Authenticity: 

Our products wouldn't sell if they weren't things that we weren’t using ourselves and if it wasn't in an industry or sport that we're passionate about. 

3. Learning from others: 

We’re constantly taking inspiration from the best brands in the game. From their website design to their email flows - we’re always learning, testing and optimizing. 

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Corinne - thank you so much for sharing all your insights! Go you and go RepYourWater!