FPGIRL.COM · VENTURE-BACKED STARTUP

Built a customer strategy that helped sales grow nearly 500%.

FPGirl.com was an early-stage technology and manufacturing company that let girls design and purchase their own clothing. I joined as a project manager and was promoted to Director of Marketing, managing a team of three and a $500K budget, with responsibility spanning customer growth, experience and product strategy.

Looking at customer behavior, I saw an important disconnect: girls were spending significant time designing outfits, but much of that activity wasn’t translating into purchases. Rather than treating this simply as a conversion problem, I saw an opportunity to make participation itself part of the product.

The challenge

The business had been built around a transactional experience: design an outfit, then buy it. But our customers were showing us they wanted to engage with the brand even when they weren’t ready to purchase.

I proposed creating an experience that would bring girls directly into product decisions and conversations. With the internal development team already committed to other priorities, making the idea real required finding another path.

What I did

With the CEO’s support, I assembled a small external development team and built a new online customer experience alongside the existing product.

We introduced voting, design competitions, commenting and other ways for girls to influence what the company created. Customer behavior became an input into product and marketing decisions, while giving girls reasons to return and participate beyond making a purchase.

As the company scaled, I also took on our fashion photography operation — redesigning the production process to cut costs while maintaining creative quality, a reminder that growth strategy and operational discipline had to move together.

The result

NEARLY 500% SALES GROWTH
Sales grew nearly 500% during a period of rapid company expansion.

75,000+ CUSTOMER RESPONSES IN SIX MONTHS
Girls actively voted, commented and contributed to product decisions through the new experience.

1M+ REGISTERED USERS
The community ultimately grew to more than one million registered users.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT BECAME A STRATEGIC ASSET
The highly engaged community gave the company a direct, ongoing channel to a hard-to-reach consumer audience — insight other brands recognized as valuable too.

50% LOWER PHOTOGRAPHY COSTS
Redesigned production process cut costs in half while managing the creative and operational process.