Once a month, Utah Business hosts Founder Friday, a free event that showcases the wisdom of Utah-based founders. In October, Kiln hosted a conversation between Utah Business Executive Editor Catherine Bennett and the founders of Baltic Born: Angela Liljenquist, Allison Hunt and Marianne Liljenquist. This event was sponsored by Kiln and Northwestern Mutual.
Listen to this episode of the Utah Business podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Transcript:
Catherine Bennett: Welcome to Founder Friday by Utah Business, where we bring you intimate conversations with Utah’s most innovative business leaders. Each episode, recorded live at our monthly Founder Friday events, features an in-depth interview with a company founder who shares their journey, challenges, and leadership insights. I’m your host, Catherine Bennett, executive editor of Utah Business. Thanks for joining us today.
Three sisters, Angela, Allison and Marianne, cofounded Baltic Born, an online women’s clothing company in 2016. Though none of them had business experience, they took out a loan and took a big risk, believing there was an opportunity to provide better clothing to women in their 20s and 30s. While they were having children, they skyrocketed through COVID, growing their customer base to hundreds of thousands of women. In this conversation, the Baltic Born sisters will talk not only about their impressive growth, but about maintaining growth realistically while prioritizing the things in life that matter most.
Hi everyone while they’re sitting down, just want to welcome you all. This is such a great group, so many great business owners in this room, and I’m excited for them to learn from you.
Allison Hunt: We’re excited to be here. Thanks so much for having us.
Catherine Bennett: Perfect, okay. We want to make sure we keep you guys straight while we’re speaking to you. So I want you guys to first, we want updates too because you told me the last time you did this was two and a half years ago. So we need a little, like individual update. There’s been some exciting things also that have been happening in all of your lives, definitely some of your lives recently. So tell us your name and give us just a quick update on you. Marianne, we’ll start with you.
Marianne Liljenquist: I’m Marianne, and I guess in the last two and a half years I’ve had a baby, and I get bullied by my two-year-old every day. But yeah, so I’m just, I have young kids, and being a working mom, full-time working mom, and it’s been busy, but exciting.
Angela Liljenquist: And I’m Angela. I got married two weeks ago, so that’s exciting. And yes, we’ve just been, I have an eight-year-old son as well, so just living the mom life and now a full family life, so it’s great.
Allison Hunt: Well I just hosted a giant Harry Potter party in my backyard for my teenage son and all of his friends. So I just like to host and throw parties when I’m not at work and just having fun with three kids and my husband.
Catherine Bennett: I love that. So I am excited for this conversation for a number of reasons, and I’ve hinted at it a little bit because we are so lucky to get to have all these incredible growth stories at Founder Friday. It’s always, “Oh this struggle. You know, we were, we struggled for 10 years, and suddenly we had this amazing growth. And now here we are. We’re so successful,” and sometimes we don’t talk about, “Okay, we grew, and then what?” Yes, and so I’m excited to talk about that. But of course, we need to talk about your, we need to remind everyone about the amazing start and that it wasn’t just like an immediate, you know, launch to the top. I want to get into that for sure. But also I want, can you guys set the stage for the roles that you have played at Baltic Born? What’s each of your zones of genius? We’ll start with you.
Allison Hunt: Yeah. So I think it’s kind of varied as the years have gone by. When we started, I can’t even remember what, we were all kind of hands-on. Everyone was asking questions to each other: “What do you think about this?” But now, at nine years, at nine and a half years in, I’m mostly over finance, and then I assist with merchandising and marketing. But really I live with the finance department and things like that.
Angela Liljenquist: And I am in design and merchandising mostly. I was over receiving and replenishment for a number of years, and it still, I love it still, but we’ve passed that on to someone else. But yeah, design and merchandising is my baby now.
Marianne Liljenquist: Yeah, right now, I do all the creative and brand management, and also help with a lot of the operations.
Catherine Bennett: What were you guys like as kids? What was your dynamic when you were younger?
Allison Hunt: Let me paint a picture here. We, Marianne had a bike and Angela and I didn’t when we moved to Utah — we grew up in a small town in Idaho — and we, all three of us, would ride that bike together at the same time to go places, because that was all we had.
Marianne Liljenquist: I would lean on the handlebars, Angela would sit on the seat and Allison would stand and pedal.
Allison Hunt: And so I feel like from childhood, we’ve had to work together as a team, and that is no joke. Like that is real. Down by Lone Peak, right? But, yeah, that is really like we all, we’re together, in charge of, like, cleaning the house before we could go play. We have three siblings above us, so our family is quite large. But there’s just, like kind of a natural break between me and the next sibling, and so the three youngest just, we figured it out and had fun together.
Catherine Bennett: Do you feel like you naturally just kind of, or by luck, complement each other? It sounds like you kind of naturally fit into these different roles that all work together well.
Angela Liljenquist: Yeah, I think we’re all very different. We all have very different strengths, which is very lucky, especially starting a business together, we could all really focus and bring our expertise to specific areas.
Marianne Liljenquist: And I think being sisters like, we’ve been able to help support those strengths as well, which has been amazing, and that’s how we’ve been able to work together for so long. I know that’s Angela’s strong suit, so how can I support her in that? Or, like, how can I support Allison in that? And it’s been really cool.
Allison Hunt: A really magical synergy, I feel like. Because I’m not going to try to do design, like, I’m not going to try to do anything on the creative side. I’ll give my input, but I know that Marianne can get that. Same with Angela on inventory, she just has a photographic memory of that. What does she see? Let’s support that.
Catherine Bennett: How many of you have been following Baltic Born for years? How many of you are new to like, maybe discover them through this event, or maybe in the last couple weeks? So let’s, explain one of you, whoever wants to chime in, what is Baltic Born? Give us the quick layout.
Marianne Liljenquist: So Baltic Born is an online e-commerce women’s clothing company. We focus mostly on dresses and occasion wear, and our big point is affordable occasion wear. So it’s not going to break the bank, and it’s also something that will, you can wear throughout the years and grow with you. When we started it, we were having babies. We had young kids, I was working, so we needed something that could kind of fill in that gap that wasn’t crazy expensive. And so we have a dress that I could wear to work, but then Allison could also wear when she was postpartum, and Angela wore it when she was pregnant. You know, that kind of thing. So a very universal fit that really grows with your body and helps you feel comfortable and beautiful.
Catherine Bennett: Perfect. Okay, let’s go back to 2016; let’s do it. Where did this idea come from? What was the very beginning, the first moment that it popped into someone’s head and whose head was it?
Allison Hunt: I mean, I had been working for a different, like dance clothing company at the time, and I called, I think, Angela first. And I said, “I think that we should start something.” This is like on the cusp of e-commerce, like we were not Amazon moms, any yet, you know what I mean? We were just like, “do we shop online? Is this real?” And so we just kind of started to figure it out.
Angela Liljenquist: E-commerce, social media, when that started to, you know, merge, yeah, we were like, “We should do something like this together.” And also, we can never find any clothes that we liked or any dresses that we liked.
Allison Hunt: And I think we just love being together and working together. So we’re like, let’s, this could be fun side gig. And so I don’t know if there was, like, this pivotal moment where we were like, “Oh, let’s go.” You know what I mean? But it really just kind of naturally came to be. And then next thing I knew, I was like, establishing an LLC. So then it was like, real, let’s go.
Catherine Bennett: Do you remember what your first products were? Like, what was the first thing that you put on the website? Or, it was a website, right?
Marianne Liljenquist: So I think we had like, 20 products, and we actually had some men’s and some women’s, and we kind of, the history of Baltic Born. We are all Scandinavian, and so we really wanted to play on our heritage and that. So we wanted a very modern line, kind of capsule wardrobe, neutrals, like very European-inspired. So that really was how it started. We had lots of black, white, gray, a little bit of olive, some men, some women’s. And it was just very kind of basic wear.
Catherine Bennett: I was going to say, you guys are Scandinavian? I can’t tell at all. So did it, I mean, did it boom, overnight? Were you getting sales immediately? What did that look like?
Allison Hunt: I mean, Shopify is our site host, and so anytime you get an order, there’s this little “cha ching” that rings on your phone that we had, because we got to have a cheerleader, right? We got to hear, like, if people are supporting us. And our kids even became familiar, like, if they heard the “cha ching,” we’re like, “Oh my gosh!” Like, someone spent their hard-earned money with us on our website. Like, we don’t know these people, we were so grateful, and so I really feel like that was so exciting, and we would just be thrilled to get an order. But we had like, five orders.
Marianne Liljenquist: We, what we did starting out is we went to every pop-up shop and little festival, like market thing we could find. Yeah, we’d go to, like, pumpkin palooza. We’d go to Pinner’s Conference, Crazy Daisy boutique, like all, every imaginable pop-up you could find in Utah we would go to because we had to get our brand in front of people. Like Instagram, it was the old algorithm. So it was really just like you had, you had to constantly post. So we were trying to build our community there and then just word of mouth. That was our biggest thing, because we really didn’t have money to pay for marketing, we took out a $20,000 small business loan, and that paid for our website, that paid for our inventory. We taught ourselves how to do photography and model at the beginning because we couldn’t afford it. You know, we really just had to grind at the beginning and figure out, how can we get our product and our brand in front of eyes as possible.
Catherine Bennett: And was it, were you purchasing wholesale stuff? Was it this year product? What was the product journey looked like?
Marianne Liljenquist: Yeah, no. So we purchased just wholesale, like from the LA Fashion District, things that we liked. And then two years in, we decided, we kind of saw a shift in our business. The neutrals weren’t selling as much as our floral maxi dresses. Like every time we got a floral maxi dress, it sold out like that. And we had more of a following, we had more consistent orders online through our website and like, direct to our website. So we decided, “Okay, I think it’s time to start looking for a manufacturer,” because we really want to do our own designs. We’re not quite finding what we want in our product, just through wholesaling. And so we found a manufacturer, we came up with, like, three or five like original designs, and that really took off.
Allison Hunt: But it was scary. It’s like a ton of money into this unknown thing, and it’s like, there’s minimum order quantities that you have to hit, and so if you order something that your customer doesn’t like, you’re stuck with that product until it’s gone, right?
Angela Liljenquist: And you’re out of the money to pay for the inventory. Yep.
Catherine Bennett: Tell me more about the loan and the money. Because I’m like, I think a lot of us in this room have felt the stress, the pressure of that, and what if this is all for naught? Like, how did you talk yourselves through that?
Allison Hunt: So we have always been pretty, I don’t know, independent. We wanted to do it ourselves. We also don’t come from a family where we could be like, “Hey dad, like, can you spot us 20k?” That’s not a reality. And so we decided, we’re committe — obviously, if we’re taking a loan out on this, we are committed. And so we said, “Okay, who can qualify for a loan right now?” Because I had been a stay-at-home parent and, just our credit, we had been in college and all these things, we were young at this time. And so we go to the bank and we see, okay, who can qualify? Like, great, let’s take the loan out. And then we each were working. My husband was spotting mine because I had little babies at the time. But we paid back, we divided that loan payment into the sisters, and we each paid that each month. So we were actually paying the company because we were paying off that loan payment.
Angela Liljenquist: And we all had different jobs, yes, so we’re using that money to pay those loans on that startup.
Allison Hunt: And also live, right? So it’s like, we didn’t take money. We did not pay ourselves for years, and so that was terrifying, but that also was kind of the hustle that said, “Okay, we can’t quit because we have to pay this back.” It was a five-year loan, and I remember we did Pinner’s Conference, like, year two, like, it wasn’t even a full two years yet. We paid that off in a year and a half, and we were able to do the final payment after a Pinner’s Conference at South Town Expo.
Marianne Liljenquist: So yeah, we are completely self-funded. We’ve never raised money, we’ve never had investors. It’s all completely self-funded, and still is to this day. Started with that 20k. And I will say to that note, like we did not pay ourselves a livable salary until, I think, year six. And so really we were able to, we were very, very tight with that. So I highly recommend because it does pay off, if it’s possible.
Catherine Bennett: Do you recall the first time you properly paid yourself? And felt like, “This feels great.”
Allison Hunt: We got, like, $300. It was great. But we were, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Like, we joke about this Q-tip story too because we were at our first photoshoot, you know where we were the models and the photographer, and we needed Q-tips. So I’m just like, “Okay, I’m gonna go get Q-tips,” and then “Why did you spend money on Q-tips!”
Marianne Liljenquist: Me and Angela went to Walmart, and she, Allison, got the ding on her phone that the card had been used. And she’s like, “Who spent $2 at Walmart?”
Allison Hunt: Because every dime counts, right? Like, when you are in the startup, right? I’m like, “This is so much money.” I just was so particular. I mean, they put up with me, like, but it paid off, right? We really put every dime back into the business, which was huge. That’s how we were able to continue to grow, because we knew that if we invested in ourselves, we would get a return.
Catherine Bennett: Tell me more about the products that you made. You said a manufacturer found you. Yeah. Tell me more about that.
Angela Liljenquist: Yeah. So we had, obviously, we had our Baltic Born business, like Instagram account, and we would get messages. We started getting that as we were gaining momentum, we were getting messages from all sorts of people and agencies and manufacturers, and there was this one that just kept, like, DMing us.
Marianne Liljenquist: All our personal accounts too.
Allison Hunt: Sliding into the personal DMs.
Angela Liljenquist: This is probably, like, 2018, 2017, and I’m like, “Okay, no, we’re getting spammed.” But this one seemed like he just wouldn’t quit. And I’m like, “All right, fine. Like, if you want to send us your, like, samples on your dime. Like, you have to make them. You have to pay for the shipping, and you have to get them to us, and we’ll send you inspiration. You have to make them. Then we will, like, look at them.” And he did, he did it. And we were like, “Wait, these are kind of good.” I’m like, “Okay, what are your MOQs [minimum order quantity]?” He’s like, “we don’t have MOQs. You can order as many as you want.” And we’re like, “You can order 20 dresses.” This is amazing, because, like, and you can choose your own size run. And we’re like, “This is unheard of.” And so we, okay, fine. Like we did like 80 pieces maybe, like 20 of each size. And he did it, and we still use him to this day.
Catherine Bennett: No way. So how much of what you sell now is your designs, and with this manufacturer versus wholesale?
Allison Hunt: I would say 95 percent is our own.
Catherine Bennett: Really? That is actually so fun to hear.
Allison Hunt: So we are sourcing right now out of China and Turkey, and the tariffs have definitely impacted us. We are seeing an increase of costs, but a very important thing to the three of us is our pricing. So we have seen a lot of pricing go up, and it’s just like this is crazy, like we are so aware of our customers financial situation, and we do not want to strain her in that way. And so we are doing our best to maintain the price point that we’ve committed to, but we’re definitely feeling it in the margins. But we’re hoping it’s not a long term thing, but we have plans prepared in case it is.
Catherine Bennett: Okay, you hinted at your background, I guess your ancestry, and why Baltic Born is — tell us more, because it’s so interesting that actually you have it in your blood, like you have being a clothing retailer, or, you know, fashion is truly in your blood.
Allison Hunt: Yeah, three to four generations back on our dad’s side, like before they migrated to the U.S. — our four greats, I think it is, was the tailor to the Danish king, so he was already an excellent tailor. And then our grandpa, our dad’s dad, owned a suit shop in a small town in Idaho, and we grew up going to this suit shop. And we really just grew up, like we watched them do the buys from, like Nike and Levi, and then they did suits and things like that. So we’ve kind of been exposed to that a lot.
Angela Liljenquist: I don’t think any of us thought we would ever.
Allison Hunt: When you think, like, “Okay, what do I want to major in?” Like, I majored in broadcast journalism. Like, I don’t do anything with that, except for, like, video editing, now, but really, you’re never too old to reinvent yourself, you know what I mean? And so it is in our heritage. But again, we never, like thought that that would be our future.
Catherine Bennett: And you never, you don’t — I mean, as you mentioned, you don’t have business backgrounds. One, was it you that did cosmetology?
Marianne Liljenquist: Yeah, yep. I was a hair stylist for almost 10 years.
Catherine Bennett: How did you figure that out? How, what did and do you feel like you were naive at the time? You’re like, “No, we can figure anything out.”
Angela Liljenquist: I think we still are, yeah. But it was like, also, it was exciting. Do you know what I mean? Like, we can figure this out. We can do this. Like, we will do this.
Marianne Liljenquist: And we also, all three of us, had very pivotal moments in our life. Early on, I became super allergic to the like, chemicals and product I was using as a hair stylist, and I couldn’t continue working full-time. So I was like, “We have to make a change.” Angela got laid off from her corporate job and needed to provide for her son. So that needed to change. Allison had three kids, was moving them around all the time, and we’re like, “Okay, we have to make this happen, because our lives are demanding it, and we want to make it happen.”
Catherine Bennett: Do you think that you would have done it in the same way, or that you would have had the courage, the confidence, if it wasn’t all three of you, if you didn’t have each other’s back?
Allison Hunt: I mean, people say that to us all the time, like, “You’re so lucky.” We are so lucky to have each other. I mean, genuinely, we each bring something so unique to the table. And so doing it alone, I would be in the mental institute.
Angela Liljenquist: The burnout is real too. So like, there’s days where it’s like, “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t like, I’m exhausted.” Like, family life’s calling. And these two would pick up, like, where I couldn’t be, and then it’s like, “Okay, I get my like, fire back.” And then that happens to her, you know.
Marianne Liljenquist: Totally. Well, I think being in different phases of life too, like Allison’s kids are much older than my kids, and so like, when she was having babies and we were just starting out, I would take both of their babies in a front pack, in a stroller to the park while they fulfilled orders. And I would be on babysitting duty, and then now, like, they’ll hold my babies during meetings well, so I can get or, like, during a photo shoot, they’re babysitting, so I can be there. And it’s really cool to, like, have that support and be there for each other.
Allison Hunt: I feel like working as sisters and as a family, obviously, there can always be drama, right? And we’re women, I mean, right? Like, come on, that happens, and it can be challenging, but we all have the best intentions for each other. Again, we grew up in a family where family came first, and we have to give each other grace, and we’ve all had periods where we’ve been at burnout, and each of us have stepped in to help support that person. And so I really think again, it’s unique, because do I recommend going into business with family? I mean, if you have sisters like me, yes; but generally, it’s very challenging. But I do feel like just compassion, love, grace, and none of us are, like selfish in that way, right? We would never do each other wrong, genuinely. I trust them completely, and they trust me. And so it’s an awesome relationship.
Catherine Bennett: Do you remember moments where you were googling things for your business? You’re like, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what to do.” Do you remember any specific things that you were like, “Oh, that’s how you do that.”
Marianne Liljenquist: So there’s like, global barcodes that you have to register if you want your products to show up accurately through Google, that kind of thing. They’re called GTINs. And we were, like, we had, we had a third-party website team that, like, said, “Okay, where are your GTINs, huh?” So yes, we had to figure that out, like, register with the database and everything. And, I mean, but honestly, that was almost a daily occurrence in the start, because we were learning, we were teaching ourselves like, we had to teach ourselves fulfillment. We had to teach ourselves customer service, returns. Like, I mean, so many different services.
Allison Hunt: Well, even like, what software are we going to use for shipping? Like, I remember we were like, ShipStation, Shippo, like, there’s so many options. And now with Chat GPT it’s like, oh my gosh, this is, this is incredible. But back then, like, it didn’t exist. So we’re like, okay, what are the pros and cons of this one? Okay, you look at that one, I’ll look at this one, and then let’s talk and see what we think is best. How much does it cost? Can we afford it, you know?
Catherine Bennett: What year was it when you really started to take off? Because I think I saw now you guys are close to 600,000 followers. I feel like, yeah, that’s just a good metric to see, kind of like, where you are in the growth that you’ve had. It’s not everything also. But when did you kind of see stuff really start to take off?
Allison Hunt: Honestly, in 2019.
Angela Liljenquist: Yeah, 2019. We hired our first Facebook advertising agency in 2018 and actually, the first one that we hired, it was a flop. We, I think it was, she charged like $10,000 retainer, and she didn’t deliver. She wasn’t doing what we needed. And we were like, I mean, we have had multiple experiences, like everyone does, you know?
Allison Hunt: We had just paid the loan off.
Angela Liljenquist: We had just paid it off. And so we were at, I remember we were at Easter dinner with and our uncle was like, “Hey, like, how’s the business going?” And he had, he knew of an advertising agency, and, like, connected us, and they really helped us start to explode. Yeah, start to go but yeah 2019.
Marianne Liljenquist: From the year of like 2018 to 2021, we grew over 18,000 percent. It was a rocket ship. It was pretty wild.
Catherine Bennett: Do you attribute it to just getting the right advertising concoction, or do you think people were looking for something specific? Like, I mean, obviously a number of things have to align to take off. But what were those things?
Marianne Liljenquist: I think it was a combination. Yeah, we were finally paying for advertising. So you’re paying for eyes, which definitely helps. COVID happened as well. And so because, like, yes, we were occasion wear, but people were still having backyard weddings, and they didn’t want to spend $500 on a dress. They wanted to spend 75. So they were buying our dresses to wear for their backyard wedding, and it was so beautiful and intimate. And that really built our community, too. So our social following really grew in that time. And we were like, everyone was at home, quarantined. So we would get on Facebook Live and be like, “Hey, we’re gonna do a flash sale. Like, this dress is $25, who wants it?” kind of thing.
Angela Liljenquist: Like, “Message here,” and we would manually create the order.
Marianne Liljenquist: But it was really fun. Like, it was a weird time, but it was a really cool time as well because we could connect with our audience, we could connect with our customer, and it really helped us learn who she is, what she wants and how we could continue to grow.
Catherine Bennett: Okay, so obviously, growth comes with a lot of challenges too. It’s not all happy, but what was that like? Were there really big, were there bigger hurdles before the crazy growth or after?
Allison Hunt: Kind of different. I feel like the earlier days the demand was more mental, like, “We have to figure this out.” We have to create this book of policies and procedures, right? Like, what is the customer service template? What is like, very mentally driven, where then when the orders just kept coming in, and we couldn’t keep up with that physically, like, we would wear workout clothes to the warehouse and we would work.
Marianne Liljenquist: I was there from seven to seven because I wasn’t married, I didn’t have kids, so I was there all day.
Angela Liljenquist: We were receiving from the truck. We get two trucks at it sometimes at a time, like unloading, plus fulfilling, plus trying to check all that in and get it in inventory so it can start selling.
Allison Hunt: Like, I feel like all of us were just like running on caffeine.
Angela Liljenquist: And running, literally.
Allison Hunt: That was hard, for sure. but I do feel like they’re both equally challenging.
Catherine Bennett: What was the most unglamorous thing about that place in time?
Marianne Liljenquist: Moving into our current warehouse. So we moved into this warehouse in early like 2022, and it’s a 30,000 square foot warehouse. We moved from four warehouses and like 13, 16, how many storage units, all into one space. So finally, like we were running all around, and it was great to finally be under one roof. But we also implemented, like a warehouse management software, so we had just, it had all been pen and paper before. We had to barcode every product. We had to assign locations to everything, get racking, get pick locations. Everything.
Angela Liljenquist: Had to teach all the employees how to use the new system.
Marianne Liljenquist: And because we wanted to make sure our inventory was perfect moving in, we had to scan every single item into this new warehouse. And we, the three of us, were there seven days a week, 14-hour days. And like, friends, husband, yes, nieces and nephews, my in-laws, came and counted product; like, it was all hands on deck. And I think, like, after three weeks of doing that, we were like, “What did we do?” I think this might put us in our grave, like it was just all three of us were crying.
Allison Hunt: I genuinely thought like that, this is the refiner’s fire. This is where I die. This is where we break up. Yeah, exactly, and honestly, like, we would not have survived that without our husbands, friends, family, everything, even our dad. Our dad is not like a coddle-y dad, you know what I mean? Like he has five daughters, but like he was sending us quotes of inspiration.
Angela Liljenquist: Her husband was calling, giving me a pep talk in the morning.
Allison Hunt: And, like, honestly, and it just was really awesome to see our family support us, because little did we know, that wasn’t the hardest, yeah, it just keeps getting more challenging.
Marianne Liljenquist: It’s also cool to see because those systems we put in place during that time are still in place. So it’s like we really laid the foundation and the bedrock of what needed to happen for us to continue to grow and sustain what we had built.
Allison Hunt: Also like being scrappy, right? Like a lot of people, when they move into a warehouse and implement a WMS, they hire that out, okay? Like, they bring in a team to do this. Marianne was the team. Like, she was the mind behind it. Like, you can just do it on your own, and you can follow the how-to from the account manager. And we were, like, “We’ve got to save money, so let’s do that.”
Marianne Liljenquist: It was like, $15,000 or 14-hour days in the warehouse.
Allison Hunt: I think that again, just being scrappy and saying, like, no is not an option. We have to figure this out, like we’re gonna do it. And it was very challenging, but we did it with our awesome team.
Catherine Bennett: So it sounds like you also in this journey learned a lot about just customers and what listening to them can do for your business. What was that journey like for you?
Angela Liljenquist: I think, like, you know, you have an idea, any business, or someone starting a business, you have an idea of what you want it to be, right? And like, you have your product and what you are hoping they’ll love, and you’re excited about it. You’re thrilled about it, that’s why you’re doing it. But when maybe the customer reacts differently or like wants something that you like you didn’t see, It’s really hard to like pivot and be like, this is the customer. The customer doesn’t want what I wanted. They want this and giving that to them. That I think that was part of like, that was huge for us. Pivoting to maxi dresses and pivoting to like florals at that time was huge. And just getting, listening to the customer and really, like taking it, like making adjustments of what they were saying, it was really big for our product.
Catherine Bennett: What gave you the humility? I guess it is a little bit of that, right? Yeah, being to say, okay, yeah, if this is going to work, I need to change my thinking. Was that something that was easy to do at the time, or did you feel some resistance?
Allison Hunt: Honestly, I feel like for us, our customer is very top of mind for us, right? Like, because we are her, like, our body is changing. We’ve had kids, we’ve gained a lot of weight, we’ve lost a lot of weight, we’ve had sicknesses, things like that. And so it wasn’t challenging, I don’t think, for us to say, like, no, like, let’s lean into this. Also, like looking at data analytics, I was gonna say data like that. If you want to have a successful business, you look at the data. She’s telling you what she wants. And really, Angela really pushed that from the beginning. Like, okay, see what’s working, and do more of it. Like, just two little tweaks, and then she’ll just keep buying that. And it works like, that is the equation that you got to follow. But I do feel like, again, even noticing that, like, our middle sizes are selling the most, so we need to extend the size offering, right? Like, okay, what is she? She is, her body is changing as she’s having babies, so we need to accommodate those changes. So I really think that it wasn’t challenging, because we have lived it as well.
Angela Liljenquist: And still to this day, like in our fit meetings, we, I say, “Okay, we put your mind in the customer. Be the customer.” Maybe we don’t, maybe none of us like it right here, but will the customer like it? What is she using it for? Okay, then we’re gonna do it.
Catherine Bennett: Have you found a lot of fulfillment in being able to help women who are you? Find things that, they’re comfortable, and you get a lot of feedback to people. I mean, you know, with social media, we see comments, we see, you know, I’m sure you get DMs personally, like, “I loved this particular thing.” What has that fulfillment been like?
Allison Hunt: That is why we do what we do, literally. Like, coming from a family of a lot of girls, we have one brother, and then there’s five girls. We are through and through a girl’s girl, and so when we get messages from — I will never forget, we’ve had a lot but this one stands out to me, where she had to go up on stage to receive an award because she had, like, crushed it at work, and she was so terrified to get up on this stage because she didn’t like the way that she looked. And so she saw one of our ads, she ordered the dress, and she put it on. She’s like, I was able to get up on that stage feeling like a million dollars. And like, we get emotional. I cry, but like, crying out. And our customer service team is so great, because weekly they’re just, they’re putting in stories from messages of like, “This totally made my day!” You know, like women who have suffered from surgeries from cancer, who don’t feel like they can wear dresses, and then they feel amazing, you know what I mean? And so just that is literally why we do what we do. It is the reason that we are here.
Angela Liljenquist: There were, I mean, for years, we were reading every single DM that came in through Instagram, like checking, you know, we would see all the messages, and it’s cool that customers will freely give you feedback. It’s great for the most part. But I mean, we read these customer reviews, I still read the reviews on our site today. And just the DMs, you know, we would see. And then now we do surveys.
Marianne Liljenquist: Yeah, in the last year, we’ve launched surveys. So we’ll do post checkout surveys, we’ll also, like, if someone is on a product page and they don’t add to cart, we’ll do a survey, like, after a certain amount of time, like, why didn’t you add to cart? What are you looking for that’s missing? You know, we really are trying to understand every aspect and how the customer shops, what they want to see, what they’re not seeing, that they need to see that kind of thing.
Allison Hunt: And even as top level, we are reading the results of these surveys. So we like this is, we’re very aware of what that is. We’re not just leaving it up to the teams to figure that out.
Angela Liljenquist: Now our customer service, but yes, they’re like, thank you so much for the feedback. You know, okay.
Allison Hunt: We would joke like we’re like feeding our baby and like answering customer service. This person has no idea that we’re actually laying by our kids, we’re in bed.
Angela Liljenquist: Like I would never imagine that the person that I’m DMing with other of this clothing company is laying by their child.
Catherine Bennett: Okay so, I want to talk about you guys grew, you’ve been on lists, you’ve been in awards, and right now you’re kind of in a different like, you’ve shifted your focus a little bit. But let’s come at this from the angle you said, like, there’s been challenges along the way, like getting this big warehouse and setting up the systems that now are working so well for you was a huge lift. What was like the next huge lift? Or maybe what was the kind of big pivot after all of like, the chaos maybe died down a little bit.
Allison Hunt: We’re all control freaks. We had a really hard time hiring, like, good middle and mid-level management. And so that was, like, a challenge. And honestly, hiring is very difficult, like, you have to hire fast and fire fast if it’s not a good fit. And so I feel like in the last year, we have been able to bring in incredible employees that we love. We look forward to working with them like it’s fun, it’s fun to go to work, and they do a good job. They do an incredible job. And really, that has been a huge gain.
Marianne Liljenquist: And we’ve also had a good amount of employees that have worked for us long enough that we’ve been able to build and promote, so we promoted like seven or eight people, just from within this year, and they have stepped up amazingly. It’s been so awesome to see their growth, and they understand how we work and we can work well together, which is a huge bonus. And it’s been really, really awesome to see.
Allison Hunt: Really getting to that maintenance phase, right? Like, again, we talked earlier about this, you have this explosive, like a hockey stick, swing of growth, but then what? How are you going to maintain that? It’s not sustainable to have exponential growth, right? And so now we’re saying, “Okay, we need sanity. We need good, you know, routines and things like that.” So this is what we can, we have to draw boundaries.
Angela Liljenquist: You do. I would find myself like, I mean, all, even when I go home thinking of ideas for the business, like, and texting them all, we have this group, you know, we still have constant but it’s like, “We should do this. We should do this.” It’s like, 7 p.m., we’re trying to have dinner, and I’m on my phone and like, okay, we have to be with our families, you know? And it’s like, it’s okay to have boundaries with the business.
Catherine Bennett: Did one of you have, like, you remember having a specific breaking point, like, where you’re like, “I actually feel insane.” And what was going on at that time?
Allison Hunt: I think all of us, well, multiple.
Catherine Bennett: Did it all happen at the same time? Were you all becoming insane at the same time?
Allison Hunt: I mean, I feel like we all had different things. I actually was in a ski accident last year. So I was forced to not, I mean, I was, it was rough.
Angela Liljenquist: We’re all forced. Because I was like, I can’t, I had to pick up her, we pick up hers. So we had to take care of her like and her job. So it was like, I could no longer put all of me into my, now we’re spread thinner, so that kind of things like this happen, and it forces you to slow down.
Marianne Liljenquist: I think that made us realize too, like, wow, we do need help. Like, we need to find people that can help us run this business, that can support and take the load off of us, because we can’t continue doing this as much as we are.
Catherine Bennett: How has it changed your perspective, focusing more on people, and I mean the people who can grow this with you and for you, and how does that, like, actually feel?
Angela Liljenquist: It’s still hard. But like, again, finding the right people, then it’s like, “Wow. Okay, yes, you can do this, and we can do this.”
Allison Hunt: We have made wrong or, like, poor, hire choices like that, you learn later, right? You’re like, ah. But you learn from it, right? So it’s like, okay, that person wasn’t a good fit here. We need to let them go, and now we know what we need in this role. And so now I feel like we’re in a good place where we are, like, we have the people we want.
Marianne Liljenquist: And they bring, yeah, they bring in new energy, they bring in new ideas. And like all of our team can feel that as well. So it’s been really cool to see kind of a revival with each new hire we get at a senior level, there’s like new energy coming into the office, which is really fun.
Catherine Bennett: Are there specific red flags that you’ve witnessed, or is it we just didn’t understand what this job would require and what we should look for?
Allison Hunt: Both. I would say that one thing that we always talk like, we are not, again, being an entrepreneur, like, you’re not a good, we are not good managers necessarily, right? We are a creative. We are driving the ideas. We’re like the drone up top that’s like, “Why is this happening?” Because we see how it all connects. So we’re not, we learned we had to learn this that we’re not good at, like, direct management. We really, I’m not. And so I think that takes humility to say, “Okay, this is something I need to work on. I need to read books, listen to podcasts, understand better how to manage people and how to communicate better,” because we can read each other’s minds. I mean, we’re sisters, right? She knows exactly what I said and I mumbled, right? But she knows what I’m thinking. Where my employees, they don’t know what I’m saying. And so I think that that’s taken a lot of self reflection, of like, “Okay, we’re going to communicate better. We need to hire these roles that can create better structure and management.” And it has paid off so well.
Catherine Bennett: What are some of your best tips then for hiring and managing, for maybe someone who is in that middle ground where it feel you’re, you know, you feel in control. I’ve felt, yeah, exact thing I think we all do is we could grow into leadership. But what, what has been a big aha moment that you’ve had?
Allison Hunt: I would say first, hire. If you’re feeling like you’re drowning, that means you need help, and you should listen to that, and you should accept the fact that you need to hire. And then secondly, fire fast if it’s not a good fit.
Angela Liljenquist: Yeah. I think, like, open communication between you and whoever you hire to that’s critical. Like, community. It sounds so like, it sounds very elementary, and just like, Well, yeah, but like, we’ve had, we’ve hired people that, like, they don’t communicate with us. We have no idea what they’re like. Like, what is this? And we have what is happening? Like with the launch, whatever, you know. And it’s like, you know, you have to have that open communication between the departments and the whole business and the owners.
Marianne Liljenquist: And I also, like, find someone who knows more about that specific area than you do, you know, because you are spread so thin as a founder or entrepreneur, and you have to know a lot about or a little about a lot sometimes. So find someone who really knows that expertise, and then they can teach you, and you can trust that they are doing a good job.
Catherine Bennett: So has becoming a little bit more quiet, maybe just publicly, it’s been really intentional for all of you, what was kind of happening in your life at the time? Where like, let’s take a step back, like, and it’s part of that maintenance, yes, too. But explain, like, where you kind of have are in life right now, and what you’re hoping life can continue to be?
Allison Hunt: I think, like what Angela was saying earlier, to have, like, I’m at dinner and I’m constantly sending texts like, I think we all really felt that. And it’s like, for what? What are we doing this for? Our families, like our families are our priority, our relationship together, like we have a very close even, like our siblings and parents and then our own individual families. And I think that being intentional about being a little less so out there socially, as an individual, but like, yes, with the company and the brand, we have to maintain that, and we enjoy doing that, but just so that I can be a better wife and a better mother and a better sister, I’m like, okay, this is my boundary. Like, I can’t try to fill everyone’s cup, because I got to fill my cup and my family’s cup comes first.
Marianne Liljenquist: Yeah, I was done bringing my computer to family parties, like, let’s be present. Let’s be with one another and build that relationship. That’s what’s like, most important down the road.
Catherine Bennett: What would you say to people who are having a hard time setting that boundary?
Angela Liljenquist: Well, it’s hard too because it’s like, you have to hustle in the beginning, and you have to work constantly in the beginning, you know, like, otherwise, like, it doesn’t really take off. But it’s exactly like I, we were taking our laptops on every vacation, on every, everything, everywhere, and but I think, like, once you’re to a place where it feels like, you know, like, and you do have, like, maybe some hires, or you just, you just have to be, like, very aware and intentional about it, I think.
Allison Hunt: And I also think chasing, kind of going back to, like, doing social thing, or like public events, you have to have that boundary with like, okay at the beginning, yes, I need to get my name out, we were at every cheer competition, all these booths and setups. But then it’s like, okay, once you get to this safety period of where these processes are in place, like, I don’t owe this event anything. I actually need to have time with my family. So really creating that healthy boundary, because that is sustainable, right? That is that healthy boundary of like, “Okay, we can make it now, we’re okay,” but and you’re just more picky on what you choose to do and put your time into.
Catherine Bennett: What have been the game changers I guess, at work, like, maybe it was a specific hire that was like, wow, that changed everything. But also things you do at home or with your family, they’re like, I would recommend everyone have someone do our laundry for us, you know, something like that. What’s made everything just more possible.
Allison Hunt: Having a stay-at-home husband and a house cleaner. I love our honestly, like all of our spouses are so supportive, it took a while to get here right, like, because you have this shift, and they were, I mean, I’ve been married for 15 years, so I feel like they know my husband really well too. So it’s like, but just having support like that and like, it’s a role reversal that we weren’t used to originally, right? So it switched. That was mine, for me.
Angela Liljenquist: I was a single mom for eight years, and while building this business. And I mean, I can remember in ‘21 and ‘22 I mean, it, I didn’t know how I was, like, I don’t even know how I was surviving, like, with a toddler he was, like, four at the time, you know. Like, how would I go to work these massive days and then come home and, like, play with my four-year-old, who just wanted mom, you know? And then if we would need to, like, go to an event, or, like, I was just like, I can’t do it. Like, I have to be home, you know. And like, find a babysitter. I was only with my son, like, for an hour or two of the day. I felt very guilty, you know, but and exhausted, and so just like, exactly, drawing boundaries. And then my mom, my parents had helped me a ton, just as a single mom until two weeks ago. But you just have to do it works for your lifestyle, too.
Marianne Liljenquist: We hired a president about six months ago, and he’s been a game changer for us. Like, the past six months, it’s been, it was definitely a shift and, like, a release of control, but he has been such a great fit and such an asset to the company, and I feel like it’s really been a relief off of all of our plates, because I also had a baby six months ago, so he came in for three weeks, and then I had a baby, and so I, like, had to offload everything onto him, because I’m like, I’m taking maternity leave. That’s the engine, yeah. But that’s been really awesome to find that right fit. And someone who wants to be, like, be part of the company, is a fan of the company, and really, like, committed.
Catherine Bennett: Yeah. What, knowing you’re in this sustainability phase, what does the next couple of years of Baltic Born, the next 10 years, what does it look like for you? I want to hear from each of you the future of it and and how you’re feeling right now in this era of the company.
Allison Hunt: Yeah. I mean, well, now that a lot of, how Marianne mentioned that we have a president, we can kind of step out of the weeds more and see, “Okay, what does our customer want?” So I had so much fun putting together ideas of how we can make the launches more creative, because I’m like more of the organization brain. So for 2026, get excited, because we have so many new things coming that we’ve now been able to put a lot of attention and detail into and listening to our customer and giving her more of what she wants, and really spending even more time on the designs. So I feel like that has been fun, and that’s something I’m super excited about.
Angela Liljenquist: Totally, I think, like, keeping up with our, you know, our customer that we’ve had all these years, but she’s getting, like, older now, and like, are we now? Are we targeting new customers, these young ones? So offering perspective, like, what are we going to do? Like, are we, you know, like, going to launch new, newer, younger things and keep the original? You know, it’s, it’s fun to navigate that, and I’m excited about that, and also putting more attention into the launches and planning, instead of just throwing things together.
Marianne Liljenquist: This is, like, all of our like, another baby of ours, you know. So we obviously want to see it grow and flourish and thrive. And so adding, you know, new verticals would be, is something we’re looking into with potential storefronts. You know, we’re like, just expanding in ways that we haven’t expanded yet. But now that we have the time, we can put effort into that, which is really exciting.
Catherine Bennett: I love that. Thank you. Okay, thank you so so much, and thank you. One more huge round of applause.
Catherine Bennett: Thanks for listening to Founder Friday by Utah Business. Join us live at our next Founder Friday event, details at utahbusiness.com. Subscribe to our podcast and follow Utah Business on social media for more insights from Utah’s business leaders. This podcast is produced by Utah Business.
