I launched Avo Activewear from my back bedroom with £3,000 in savings and, honestly, very little idea of what I was doing.
Pictured: Our first bulk order, laid out in my living room (mid-house reno!)
I had a problem I couldn't solve any other way. I was tired of activewear that almost fit. Tired of rolling waistbands and bunched hems and leggings that looked fine on the model but never quite right on me. I'd searched everywhere for activewear designed properly for shorter women and kept coming up empty.
So I decided to make it myself. Which sounds brave when I write it like that. At the time it mostly felt terrifying.
The early days (my first rather hilarious attempt at making leggings)
I won't pretend I knew what I was doing. My first sample was, let's say, a learning experience. The fabric was wrong. The seams were in odd places. The waistband had a mind of its own. I look back at photos from that period and genuinely laugh.
But I kept going, because the problem I was trying to solve was real. Not just for me, for the thousands of petite women who'd been buying activewear for years and making do with something that never quite worked.
I spent months researching. Measuring. Talking to petite women about exactly where things went wrong for them. Building a sizing guide from the ground up, one that started with a shorter frame instead of scaling down from a taller one.
What kept me going
Honestly? The messages.
Even in those early days, when Avo was barely a thing, women would reach out to say they'd finally found leggings that fit. That they'd cried in the changing room (happy tears). That they'd been waiting for something like this for years.
I still do a little happy dance with every single order. I'm not even joking. Every one of them means someone found what they were looking for, and that never gets old.
In January, we hit 10,000 orders, and Shopify sent me this little award to mark it. It sounds like a number, but I know it's not. It's 10,000 times someone shopped with us and found something that finally fit. I can't really put that into words.
Avo is still a small business. I run it solo from my garden office, with some help from my almost 3-year-old sidekick Bowe, who is a questionable assistant but excellent company. It's not always glamorous. There have been delays and wrong parcel stickers and weeks where everything goes sideways at once.
But I'll never take it for granted. Not for a single second 🥹
Love,
Ally x
