You may wonder why a brand like iteration would want to create with community. Hopefully, if you're reading this, you already appreciate and value the benefits of creating with community. But for those who may not be familiar with iteration and what we stand for, we wanted to highlight some of our most important beliefs and values.
Gathering the opinions of many takes more time, effort, and organization, and you can't forget to mention that everyone has different opinions. So, is it possible to create what a large group of women desires? While it's not the norm, here's why we embrace it:
Customer-centricity is our core.
At iteration, our products start with you. We can't imagine creating without our community. Long before we dreamt our first collection up and started co-creating together, the amazing women who would wear our intimates were already on our minds. We created this brand for those who have searched endlessly for the right fit and feel in your intimates. With these women front and center in our minds, we couldn't imagine taking the next step in product development without including them.
Good ideas come from all over.
It's not just our brand, our designers, or fashion industry veterans who come up with great ideas. We believe good ideas come from all directions—and even more specifically, they come from our community. You are in bras and underwear all the time. You have dreams, ideas, and thoughts about your next bra and problems that we can improve. We truly believe that one great idea can spark another. The more our community grows, the more our creative ideas can multiply.
Your voice matters.
It's one thing to voice your opinion. Most brands have space to leave reviews, or you can write about them on their social media. You can use your words or voice, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will be heard. At iteration, we believe your voice matters. This is why we've created our community space to share ideas, come together, and collaborate - a space where we listen and acknowledge, build off each other, and co-create. Rest assured, your thoughts and opinions don't fall on deaf ears. We listen and respond–we iterate based on what you say to improve our products, processes, and your experiences.
Community is critical to sustainability.
Creating with community is central to our goal of creating more sustainably. Most brands operate with a "push" model. That is, they decide what customers want. They design, test, put it on shelves, and wait for a reaction. They push the products they think you want into stores and online. It's often stuff no one asked for or wanted, leading to unsold products and excess waste.
On the other hand, a community-centric approach utilizes a "pull" model. With iteration, we start with you. We go on a discovery journey to fully understand your pain points and what you want in your bras and underwear. We "pull" the ideas and product creation from you to ensure what we're building together is not what we think you want, but what you actually want.
To say it another way–the entire product development process revolves around you, not just one or two pieces of what we do. This helps ensure the colors, sizes, styles, and product details align with what you're looking for. Instead of ending up with unwanted or unused products, we only make what you want and need so we can help reduce waste in the fashion industry.
The real world doesn't listen well.
One of the main reasons that addressing customers' needs and desires became our main priority is because we saw how little this was practiced in the real world. Kristen, one of our founders, has worked or designed for top lingerie brands (some of the who's-who in our world). She's seen firsthand that many of these companies will collect data on what customers are saying, what they're returning, and what's performing well - but they don't do much with the information that is collected. On the off chance they listen to what customers are saying and make changes, they rarely tell the customer about the changes they've made. So customers never know that their concerns have been fixed. They never go back and try a previously returned style again or know that their feedback has been taken into account. We think that sucks.
How do we make community-creation happen?
Feedback loops are critical to ensuring we collect the right information from customers and share the right information in return. We engage in an iterative design process, strategically improving and adapting our products over time based on feedback from our community. We take it further and communicate the changes we make based on this feedback - we don't shy away from the mistakes we've made or the areas our community tells us we can improve–our mistakes are a path forward to a better future. We communicate everything, so you know we are constantly improving based on what you tell us.
By creating a space to share ideas and collaborate together, we make community the center of our universe. As a customer-obsessed brand, we can't imagine any other model than community creation. If you are interested in becoming a driving force behind idea generation and production creation and you want to help make the best products possible, please join our community. We are better together.
