Word Of The Year

Dear all,

If you’ve followed Made for Freedom for the past few years, you’ll notice that we have grown mostly through in-person events and conferences. I’ve met thousands of incredible people at conferences across the country who were excited about the impact Made for Freedom makes globally in the lives of survivors of exploitation and marginalization.

Conference cancellations threw us quite a curveball. To be completely honest, I was wondering if we would have to shut down. We needed to streamline our processes, figure out how to scale, and create a better online customer experience in order to gain momentum for our mission. There is no denying that the past several months have been a roller coaster. I have a few contenders for Word of the Year that I think might best describe our triumphs and struggles.

Pivot

The first contender for Word of the Year is pivot. With all conferences canceled, it provided us time to really focus on our online sales. This has always been our priority but frequent travel ate up a lot of our time and resources. Could Made for Freedom make it as an online store exclusively? COVID-19 forced us to find out.

We started by updating our branding. You may or may not have noticed the subtle font change and layout of the Made for Freedom wordmark. We wanted to keep the branding fresh and also make a statement. 

We applied for and received a government stimulus loan to not only help us stay afloat, but also execute new online strategies. We hired a digital marketing firm to create awareness of our brand and increase online sales. They really believe in our cause and it shows in the incredible results we started seeing from the start of this relationship! We worked with them to load up on apps that would significantly improve the online buying experience, customer service, and communicate with amazing advocates like you.

Oops!

Some of these apps require a bit of a learning curve and getting them to work with each other can sometimes be tricky (just be friends already!). Which brings me to the second contender for Word of the Year: oops. We may have recently sent a welcome email to thousands of people from my personal email account rather than just to subscribers on our list!

That’s a huge oops on our part and thanks for being gracious and forgiving about this random email. We’ve had a few other glitches to deal with simultaneously, including supply chain issues and limited raw materials for suppliers, that just adds to this roller-coaster time we are in. 

Hope

We have also been taking this time to connect with new collectives that support survivors and those at-risk through dignified employment. We have several new partnerships in the works and are ecstatic to welcome Greenhouse 17 as a new supplier! Based in Kentucky, Greenhouse 17 nurtures lives harmed by intimate partner abuse with healing, job training and dignified employment by making bath and body products. This was an opportunity to continue to bring hope (our final contender for Word of the Year) to those who really need it, in the U.S. and around the world.

Test Out a New App!

With one of our newest app integrations, you can now seamlessly review products you’ve purchased. Online reviews from our fans are incredibly helpful in building trust and advocating our brand. We’d love to hear your feedback (hopefully how much you love what you purchased!) on one or several of our products. Pictures are really helpful too! Go to the product(s), click on Write a review next to the stars, and share some love today!