A new business venture -- Princess Awesome -- that aims to break down gender stereotypes in children’s clothing has the team at building block company Click-A-Brick nodding in approval.
Princess Awesome, started by Rebecca Melsky and Eva St. Clair in Maryland two years ago, wants to give girls the choice of what they want to wear. The company, which was featured in a recent Washington Post article, makes clothing that is traditionally worn by girls like dresses and skirts, and prints designs including items that are not as traditionally associated with girls, like dinosaurs, math symbols and robots.
The pair started small, hand making the clothing and selling it at church sales, before realizing there was a massive market for such items and taking to Kickstarter to raise funds. A feature on the A Mighty Girl website helped to drew hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds and the entrepreneurs are now up and running with their own website.
“Lots of little girls love dresses and rainbows and flowers and pink,” the company states on its Facebook page. “And lots of those same little girls love cars and robots and pirates and dinosaurs. … We believe that if a girl likes purple and also likes trucks, she should be able to wear a purple truck dress. And if a girl likes princesses and also aliens, then an alien princess skirt is for her.”
Click-A-Brick Co-Founders Jason Smith and Georg de Gorostiza say they like that another children’s company is joining in the growing list of small companies that are getting rid of gender stereotypes for children.
“We think it’s wonderful what these ladies are challenging gender stereotypes children’s clothing,” Smith said. “Just the other day, I saw a photo of one of my neighbor’s family on Facebook and while everyone in the picture is dressed like you’d expect, the little five-year-old girl is in a little eye mask with a towel tied around her shoulders like a cape and she’s putting a fist in the air in her best superhero pose. That, more than anything, tells me that these ladies are on the right track with this business and I know my neighbor’s little girl will be thrilled to know that there are clothes out there that she’ll enjoy.”
Princess Awesome is another instance of small companies listening to customers and giving them what they’re really asking for, the building block toy entrepreneurs say.
“It seems like every other week we’re saying this, but the small startup companies like Princess Awesome are showing that it’s far better to listen to customers and give them what they want rather than just making assumptions or trying to dictate what they want,” de Gorostiza said. “Princess Awesome isn’t doing something completely off the wall. They’re just listening to the millions of girls out there who love robots and dinosaurs as much as anyone else and making clothing that will allow them to be girls, but also promote their interests, regardless of whether the huge companies think they should be interested in it or not. It turns out that sometimes innovation is just following basic common sense.”
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