Inclusive Swimwear Brand, Kitty And Vibe, Names First Class Of Celebrity Investors, Creative Designers

Celebrities are finding more value in investing than just endorsement deals.

Influencer marketing took the world by storm almost a decade ago. The Influencer Marketing Hub shared that the market grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.7 billion in 2020. It then soared to $13.8 billion in 2021. By the end of last year, it expanded to a $16.4 billion industry. Over the previous five years, celebrities have found investing more lucrative; they can support companies that align with their values and morals.

For Cameron Armstrong, founder of Kitty and Vibe, she saw the potential in bringing on celebrity investors to expand her inclusive swimwear collections. Last month, the company announced its first-ever celebrity investors and creative designers cohort. Actress Zoe Colletti, entertainment icon Nicole Byer, and Grand Slam Champion Sloane Stephens have aligned their brands and missions with the Kitty and Vibe community. They are now investors in the company and have designed their own exclusive swimsuit prints inspired by their respective personalities and styles.

“They have a great way of making bathing suit shopping fun and not like this daunting, scary thing that makes you not want to go into a dressing room trying on bathing suits,” Colletti says over a phone interview. “For me, in particular, I have an intestinal disease, Hirschsprung’s. I have a ton of scarring all over my stomach that I’ve had ever since I was a few days old. And even having that my whole life, definitely growing up and coming into my own and figuring out who the heck I am as a woman, it was difficult sometimes to lean into wearing a one-piece bathing suit. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a lot more confident in embracing my scars and embracing the fact that that shows people what I’ve been through as a person; how I got to be the type of person I am today. I felt that matched their mission to feel confident and let it all out there and be yourself.”

Founded in 2018, Kitty and Vibe became a first-to-market sizing metric swimwear brand. All campaigns are 100% photoshop free featuring real women, including its customers. The company’s community-centric approach has led to Armstrong bootstrapping the company to a seven-figure business before bringing in celebrity investors. Its customers play a vital role in building the brand. Their participation in co-creating the products through email surveying and social media polling has laid the foundation for an open dialogue with its most loyal fans.

Currently, the growing repeat customer rate hovers around 35%. Its new collection peaked at fifty-five percent. Additionally, the organization is seeing a sales split of 53% for the larger booty sizing versus 47% for the smaller booty.

Armstrong started her career interning at L’Oreal, which became a full-time operational marketing position. During this time, she shopped for swimsuits only to feel defeated and not confident in her own body. That experience became the genesis behind Kitty and Vibe—a brand to make women feel empowered and confident.

“I started diving into the industry as a whole and analyzing the emotional relationship women had with swimsuits,” Armstrong states during a phone interview. “I was so struck by the negativity around it. At the time, I was living in Manhattan, and I started polling focus groups in my tiny apartment. I did it on Sunday mornings. I was like, ‘Can you just talk about swimsuits? I’m really interested in this.’ I found that there is this unanimous dissatisfaction with the industry and the product as a whole. So I set out to solve two things: the actual fit and the emotional response to it.”

She discovered that the length of the inseam made all the difference in the sizing. So, in addition to the focus group, she sent out a massive survey garnering over 500 responses. Ninety-six percent said they hate shopping for swimsuits. That’s when Armstrong decided to start the brand.

Instead of guessing what people would buy, she went back to surveying. She asked what colors people liked to wear most and their preferred patterns. Armstrong wanted to keep it focused on the consumers’ needs, so she invited them to help her design the swimwear line. For the brand, majority votes rule.

As Armstrong grew the brand, she joined FlyteVu’s marketing incubator founded by Laura Huftless, which serves mission-driven startups. The main KPI and goal for joining were to take Kitty and Vibe to the next level.

“We wanted to build our first class of creative designers and celebrity investors,” Armstrong states. “That came as a result of the extent of our community. It’s so unique because we have this ongoing dialogue with our customers at all times... So when looking at who could be a spokesperson for Kitty, it didn’t make sense to look for one partner because that’s not reflective of our community. We wanted to have a diverse group of women that we admire that reflect different interests, professions, sizes, etc.”

As Armstrong continues to expand Kitty and Vibe, she focuses on the following essential steps:

• Zoom out of a situation. When you have a bad day, look at the bigger picture as a reminder as to why you started in the first place.
• Monitor your comparison. You cannot compare your starting point to another founder’s ten years in business.
• Be the expert in your business. Do the research. Have a clear vision of what you want your company to grow into.

“I printed out all these text messages, DMs and reviews from customers saying, ‘This brand has changed the perspective of my body. This product, I will be forever indebted to Kitty and Vibe for building my confidence,’” Armstrong concludes. “Huge emotional testimonials. That’s what was fueling me in those [early] days where it was one in the morning, and I’m just packing orders, so exhausted living off mac and cheese. I’m staring at those testimonials saying this is worth it. I know it’s a bikini, but I’m actually impacting someone’s life.”