SET Active CEO on the company's sales growth over the past year

Lindsey Carter, SET Active Founder & CEO, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the company's growth over the past year and what's next.

Video Transcript

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Now it's 2021, but we're still waiting for the whole vaccine rollout to happen and for us to be able to gather at least in small groups by July 4th. But in the meantime, we still care about our fitness and how we look, and we want to be comfortable. So for many people working from home, they've been really investing in fitness and activewear.

Now to talk some more about this, I want to bring in Lindsey Carter. She is the SET Active founder and CEO. Lindsey, what has really been driving sales for your company?

LINDSEY CARTER: Honestly, I think the number one thing that drives sales is how in tune we are with our customers. I don't really see any other brands out there that are as engaging with our customers as SET is.

Of course, we don't let SET make business decisions for us. But we really involve them in the whole decision making process, whether it's picking a color, designing a new bra, who we should collab with, different things like that. And I think that connection with the consumer makes them feel a part of building a brand, which then turns into more sales at the end.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Who is your-- I know it's not me. Who is your target consumer? I'm at your website right now looking, and nothing for guys but maybe in the future.

LINDSEY CARTER: It will be you in 2022. We are building out a men's collection. But it is women ages 18 to 35 that are mostly buying our activewear. We're working on a program right now to elevate, you know, into an older demographic, but still stay in our sweet spot of our demographic right now. But it will be available for you in 2022, at least for men.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Lindsey, I'm all about the comfortable workout gear that you can wear from home, as you're working from home. Many Americans are, as you can see witnessed by your sales growth. What are some of the outfits that have gotten the most hype?

LINDSEY CARTER: Oh, I think pre-pandemic, it was, I think, athleisure. You know, like, the typical yoga outfit was the front runner. And then when we released sweats during the pandemic, we sold out in under 10 minutes. It was a whole frenzy that we-- was good and bad for the company, because we had some disappointed customers. But I would say the two front runners of SET have to be our sculpt flex proprietary trademarked fabric and our SET sweats.

ADAM SHAPIRO: As I look at the website, I mean, the style of the stuff is pretty cool. The colors are pretty cool, too. But when you say trademark fabric, school me here. Cotton? I mean, what is it?

LINDSEY CARTER: It's a microfiber nylon Spandex. We use really, really special fabric that no other factories have. I can't reveal the secret blend of the missing ingredient because it's what makes us special. But the fabric is proprietary to SET. So if, like, someone wanted to copy us and they wanted to take our fabric and send it to a factory and say make this, they wouldn't know how to do that.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And, you know, I see that you're saying that being nimble has really helped you guys grow. But is that code for saying that you have a small staff or that you were dealing with working from home? Explain to us kind of how you've been dealing with the infrastructure of your business.

LINDSEY CARTER: Yeah, I mean, we did have a small staff when COVID first hit back in March. I think we were a team of maybe five people. And now we're a team of 20. So we've grown really quickly. But I think it's, we all think very quickly on our feet, whether there's something that's controversial that we have to speak on or a human error that we made on our side, like putting too much inventory into Shopify so that we were overselling our product was a huge mistake.

And I think making sure that you have-- I hate the word hierarchy, but kind of like a hierarchy so that you can, like, make sure you know who you're going to for the right things really helps. I know for me, whenever I have an issue, the first person I call is our brand strategist, Gina. I'm like, this is happening. We need to get this out there and figure out what to do right now.

And we, like, figure it out in five minutes, and then we tell the plan to the whole team. And we make that decision, and then the team has to follow. Unless someone strongly disagrees, I'll hear what they have to say. But most times, between Gina and I, our brand strategist, we're able to quickly think on our feet.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: That's definitely the key in business. You got to be able to think quick on your feet, especially when you're dealing with a pandemic that has not completely left us. I just want to thank you, Lindsey Carter, SET Active founder and CEO.