How an activewear company founder embraces the joy of movement

Nicole Gaviria recalls a specific moment that helped spark her founder's fire. She’d been asked to teach a yoga class in an activewear store, but when nothing on the shelves fit her she was body shamed by its staff.

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“I just walked out of that experience with a real fire under my ass,” says the founder and CEO of Lulah Collective. “I didn't know I would start an activewear brand – but here I am.”

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After a year spent developing designs, and sourcing manufacturers and samples, Gaviria launched the exclusively plus-size activewear brand in February.  

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“I've been every shape and size myself. I'm not plus size anymore, but I know what it feels like to be in a plus-size body and really struggle with finding clothes that were made for your curves.”

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“I'm also a therapist, and I work mainly with women and girls around body image. A lot of my clients are plus size, and they talk about how they feel excluded from fashion and fitness, and that has such a big impact on their self-worth…there are brands for everyone else and everyone else has so much choice. I just wanted to create a special, really safe, fun space for them.”

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As Gaviria describes it, balancing her therapist day job with starting Lulah Collective has been demanding – particularly dealing with the financial stress. She’s undertaken a number of accelerator programmes while bootstrapping the business, but is launching a PledgeMe campaign next month to raise money for a new collection.

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“I feel like there's not a heck of a lot of support for fashion startups, at least not in New Zealand. And I've connected with some mentors in Australia who are also in fashion who have said the same thing – especially the plus-size fashion startups. It feels like we really have to justify why we should exist.”

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Despite the demands, she says building a startup has “also been the most rewarding and transformative experience of my life”. And her day job has given her knowledge of tools, like mindfulness techniques and somatic practices, that she incorporates into her daily wellness routine. Here are some other things she does to keep herself well as a founder.

Embrace joyful movement

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I'm trying to practice what I preach, because I talk a lot at work and with Lulah about moving for joy and not seeing movement as a chore. I got quite caught up in that fitspo gym culture and started hating exercise. But movement is a privilege and not a chore. There have been times in my life where I didn’t have as much freedom to move, so now I can, I want to cherish it.

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I'm trying new types of movement too. I've recently begun practising reformer pilates, which aligns perfectly with that philosophy of joyful movement. I'm also exploring activities like roller skating and dance that bring back the playfulness of movement from my childhood. We should all be having fun in our bodies!  

Couples that workout together, stay together

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My husband and I have decided we'll try and do some more movement together. There’s a lot of research around couples that workout together, stay together. So we've been trying different types of movement – the reformer pilates has been really fun. It was quite a novelty.

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Also, we just moved house and we're living by the water. There's this really cool freeway that goes past the water that's got a nice wide footpath, so we were like, ‘oh, we could skate up and down there and just get outside’. And now that the sun's coming out you feel your energy lift.

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It's easy to sit at my desk all day and then come home and feel like I have to work on Lulah all night, and I’ve definitely had to have some hard chats with my husband around boundaries. I haven't always been great with respecting the boundaries – there’s always another thing to do for Lulah, and nothing's quite enough – so I think important self-care for me, and for our marriage, is just stopping.

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About those boundaries …

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I make a conscious effort to step away from my computer and leave my office to live my life. It's essential to remind myself that the to-do list is never-ending, and I need to make the most of the present moment because anything could happen and Lulah could cease to exist in a few years. I don't want to look back at this time in my life and realise that I didn't allow space for anything else to flourish.

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The first thing is accepting that the to-do list will never be finished. I'm probably never going to feel 100 percent satisfied with the amount of stuff that I've done in the day anyway; I have very high expectations of myself in terms of how much I do and the quality. That's just about knowing me.

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Then between my husband and I, it's just saying, ‘okay, if you cook tonight, I get two hours of work done on Lulah’. It’s negotiating between us what's fair in terms of workload. And also we've had to talk about the reality that I have to work more at this point in my life and hopefully it will pay off. And at the very least I'm learning a lot.

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Find your fellow founders

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Prior to launching, I listened to a lot of podcasts – things like Female Startup Club; listening to other women who've been there and done that. But it wasn't until I did Blackbird’s Giants, and then I did the Electrify Accelerator, which was with real humans, that I really pushed over the line of ‘I don't feel so alone. I can ask my silly questions’.

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I'm definitely getting more opportunities presented to me just through being part of these networks, but I did find it hard to get my foot in the door. Once you're in, you're in, but if you don't know what exists, it's really hard to find them. I didn't even know how to find other founders.

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I found it really isolating because I wasn't sure that I would fit into that startup world. I wasn't sure my business was the kind of business that they wanted in their space, because when you look at startups, I don't really see a lot of businesses like mine. It seems to be those big shiny techie startups or someone who's got heaps of VC millions behind them.

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This year has presented a number of challenges and dark nights of the soul, and sometimes a coffee chat with a peer was all I needed. There have been moments when I've felt completely out of my depth and clueless, but having advisors and peers around me has been instrumental. They've not only guided me through difficulties but also highlighted my strengths and reminded me of the significant progress I've made. It's easy to get wrapped up in the current problems and forget how far you've come – and having that perspective has been invaluable for my wellness.

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As told to Caitlin Sykes

‘How I keep well’ highlights what individual founders do to keep themselves mentally and physically in the right shape to deal with the demands of startup life. If you know someone with wellness insights to share, email caitlin@caffeinedaily.co. 

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