Hannah Garrou’s track career began on the soccer field.  She was always the fastest on the field, blowing by everyone to get to the ball first.  This was cute in youth rec soccer leagues, but became impossible to miss against older teens.  

Her school didn’t have a track team, so Hannah’s parents took her to a local club track coach for advice.  Hannah had never run a race before, so the coach had her run a few sprints. 

Then he asked her to run them again because he couldn’t believe the numbers on his stopwatch. 

Hannah is now a really fast high school sprinter.  She’s constantly training, going from school to practice to home, and traveling to competitions.  

She often dons athleisure wear over her training gear, and has worn a lot of track jackets.  They keep her warm between races and impacts how she feels.

When we talked with Hannah about products for her Campaign, she wanted to make something she would love, use, and represent who she was.  

She had already started the Hans & Murry brand with her friend Emory, so we created the “Hans & Murry Athletic” line for Hannah’s athleisure products.

Between school work, finals, track practice, competitions, and rolling around with her dogs, Hanna joined the short video calls required to launch her track jacket.  

Emory thought, “Why does dad get to wear sweatpants to work?”

She considered this as she painted fan art for her favorite movies, like How to Train Your Dragon, or anything Pixar.  She contemplated this as she pinned the older boys in her Brazilian jiu jitsu classes.  She reflected on this during volleyball practice, serving with a little extra oomph.  

Her dad would say, “Well, they’re not really sweatpants, they FEEL super comfortable like sweatpants, but they LOOK like business pants.”  That seemed unfair to Emory - why weren’t there options like that for girls?  She wanted something that passed the school dress code, but felt like pajamas.  

During sophomore year in high school, she spent time with a 2nd Cup, a non-profit in her hometown that helped prevent human trafficking, and she wanted to help.  

As luck would have it, she found a way to solve her pet peeve and make a difference.  She met with the Original Nations team and talked about her interests, brands, and product ideas.  In just a couple months she launched her Hans & Murry brand with a custom-designed t-shirt dress, with proceeds to support a 2nd Cup.  

Sutton was finding her groove as a sophomore in high school. 

She has a big whiteboard in her bedroom, where every Sunday she plans out her week.  Cross country practice, musical rehearsals, practicing her overhand volleyball serve, making a cake for her new dog Baker's "half birthday," and creating an "octopus umbrella" for her class assignment.  

All these activities require proper rest, which is hard to do when you don't have the right equipment.  Specifically, it's hard to find the perfect sleeping shorts.  They have to be just long enough but not too long, super soft but still substantial to survive washing, and fluffy but not bulky or scratchy.  

When we met with Sutton, she wasn't sure on brand style or specific product.  Her bright personality shined through, though, and that was enough for our team to create the Simply Sutton brand.  It has a celestial overtone, which is perfect for Sutton who is always shooting for the stars.  

Sutton felt dozens of different fabric swatches, and picked just the right fabric and shade of blue.  She was very specific about the fit, which allowed our engineering group to get it just right.

This is a true story about a girl named Sydney.

Second semester in freshman year of high school, Sydney took a one-month entrepreneurship seminar.  Students were to think of a product, make it, and sell it in a marketplace at the end of the month.

She decided on clocks, designing and then carving three beautiful faces using the school’s laser cutter.  She bought paint and lacquer to decorate them, and mechanical kits to assemble into clock hands.  

She sold her three clocks at the marketplace for $45 each and caught the entrepreneurship bug!  She loved wearing pullovers and wanted to make something for men and women.

But how?  She didn't have the money to buy pullovers to re-sell.  She didn't know how to set up a Shopify site.  She had brand ideas, but couldn’t do the design herself or pay for someone else to do it.   

Then homework, volleyball practice, college applications… life got in the way.  She almost forgot about her entrepreneur dreams, but second semester senior year, she heard about a new website to launch brands. 

Sydney signed up, met with the team on Google Meets, product samples showed up at her house, and her brand was born.  She used to be a Girl Scout and knew how to hit up her friends’ parents, parents’ friends, and relatives, and emails, texts, and social posts were way easier than door-to-door cookie sales! 

As she started Covid freshman year of college, dozens of people were receiving her branded premium pullovers!  For her first business class, she had to create a LinkedIn profile, and her first job entry was “Founder” of Southern Sky brands.