A Conversation with Cassie Abel
Triple threat: Gear maker, PR pro, and creator of Women-Led Wednesday
Cassie Abel is the owner of the women’s mountain brand, Wild Rye, and of her own boutique public relations company, White Cloud Communication. She’s also the creator of Women-Led Wednesday, an annual shopping holiday on Nov. 25 this year encouraging buyers to support women-led businesses. Additionally, the Idaho-based businesswoman shreds on a mountain bike and she’s a new mom to her adorable son.
I caught her during some down time at her headquarters in Ketchum to talk creativity and business. In this interview, we dive deep into learning on the fly, how the pandemic shifted her workload, the places she feels most creative, and the qualities of a seamless business buyout.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Cassie Abel. I’m a new mom, an outdoor industry professional, an entrepreneur, an advocate for women in business, and a mountain lover. I am the co-founder and CEO of Wild Rye, a brand that specializes in beautiful and technical mountain apparel that fits, inspires confidence, and gets more women outside. I am the founder of White Cloud Communication, a boutique PR and marketing consulting business specializing in outdoor, active lifestyle, and mountain sports. And then I am the creator of Women-Led Wednesday, which is an initiative aimed at elevating women in business through an annual shopping holiday and a robust directory of women-led brands that encourages the general public to vote for women in leadership with their dollars.
Do you own or work for a women-led business? Add your name to the directory for the Women-Led Wednesday movement.
How do you combine your vastly different roles?
Honestly, 2020 has been a year of serious transition for me, aside from becoming a mom. COVID hit and it’s totally changed the landscape of my own professional career. Budgets were being slashed and I saw clients needing to preserve funds, so White Cloud naturally scaled back. Simultaneously, the bike industry boomed, which is a big part of Wild Rye’s business. I stepped into more of a full-time role running Wild Rye. A sliver of my time is focused on White Cloud with just a few very key clients. And then I spend time on Women-Led Wednesday more on a seasonal basis, but it fills in the cracks as inspiration strikes.
They all work really well together while being separate entities to some degree. The ratios ebb and flow over the course of seasons and years. There’s no major science to it. A lot of Wild Rye works into what I do with White Cloud. And Women-Led Wednesday was completely inspired by my work with Wild Rye.
(Wild Rye’s mountain bike shorts stand out for their fun patterns. Shop for them here.)
Did you know anything about clothing design before you started?
Absolutely nothing. The way Katy Hover-Smoot, my co-founder, and I divvied up responsibilities is I was front of brand, so marketing, communications, and community building. Katy was running the backend and she had a little more institutional knowledge on apparel design, but still, it was very new to her. We actually connected with our first designer on Craigslist. Funny enough, that designer is still my main lady today. She was freelancing for the first time and had just come out of the fashion industry. She wanted to work more in the outdoors and with sustainably-minded brands. We cherry-picked what we needed from her and tried to hammer through the rest on our own. And by on our own, Katy did a lot of that. On January 1, 2019, I ended up buying out Katy and taking over Wild Rye 100 percent. At that point, I had to learn that side of the business very quickly. It’s been a massive learning curve the last year and a half, but I think I’m getting there.
What goes into one pair of mountain bike shorts?
It all starts with the need. What features are missing in other shorts? What do women want to see? That turns into some sort of drawing and leads to researching and exploring and feeling and testing fabrics. We look for wicking properties, breathability, durability, the right amount of stretch, how it absorbs dyes, all of those things. From there, between drawing and choosing fabric, we build out a tech pack that gets into the actual specs of a product. Then we send that first tech pack to our factories overseas and we work together to create a first sample. Fit sessions are the next steps. We typically try products on multiple different shapes of people of the same size to ensure the shorts fit a broad range. We go back and forth in the sampling process a couple times to get the right fit and colors, and then we grade out the different sizes. Basically, it’s at least a year-and-a-half-long process to actually bring shorts to market. There’s testing in there, too.
Get inspired on Instagram: Follow @wild_rye_, @womenledwednesday, and @cassieabel.
What was it like to buy out your business partner?
Honestly, I think we had the cleanest buyout possible. Katy had definitely taken the brunt of the business the first three years. She did all the shipping and a lot of the relationship management with the factory. Those are some of the areas that had the most problems. She did an incredible job, but she just got really burned out and with an inventory-driven business, growth is incredibly capital intensive. She was super uncomfortable with debt and the risk involved with committing to big purchase orders, and I’m still uncomfortable with that. She didn’t know if we were ever going to break even, she has a phD in art history and was teaching at a local college, and she was getting married. She didn’t want the risk and stress hanging over her head. So she presented me with two options.
One was that we just sell off the remaining inventory and recoup the finances that we could. The other option was that I buy her out for the cost of the remaining inventory and my percentage ownership in the business. I hadn’t been in the weeds with all those other really challenging, stressful pieces of business. We weren’t in the same room together, so I didn’t see all that stress on a daily basis. What I was feeling was just incredible momentum and seeing Wild Rye pick up across the country. We’d just executed our first Women-Led Wednesday. I ended up deciding to buy her out. When I was talking it through with my now-husband and my parents and all the people I talk to about big decisions, my initial thought process was, “I’ve always wanted to get an MBA. I might as well just crash course it and learn on the fly.” So here I am. Katy is still incredibly supportive of the business and of me. I just feel very lucky that it was such a clean, seamless process for us.
(Cassie shredding on a mountain bike in her Wild Rye shorts in Moab.)
What’s a piece of financial advice that has helped you run all these different businesses?
First of all, I would say that’s not my strong suit. I’m really good at giving my time away for free. I still haven’t paid myself through Wild Rye. I essentially have a very expensive hobby business that takes up 80 hours a week. But I think that’s a big part of the reason I’ve started working with a contract CFO to project where we are and where we’re going so I can start paying myself. One of the biggest pieces of advice I’ve gotten from people is number one, you have to pay yourself as soon as possible. It’s just really important that you acknowledge your time and commitment to the brand, even if it’s just a small amount. It’s something I’m actively working towards.
On the PR side of things, how have you gone about being flexible with your rates while also putting your foot down?
That’s something I would say I’ve never quite mastered. I was oftentimes too flexible and wanted to make projects happen. My personality is to help people and a lot of the people at small brands really wanted the help. But I think that the only way you can be firm on your rates is if you’re willing to walk away from a project.
You also need to be forthright and know what you need. That’s one of the bigger challenges. I didn’t necessarily know what I needed to get a project done, so I’d undercut myself. Clients can’t read your mind and unless they’ve been on the contract/creative side, they’re likely not going to lob up the questions that will allow you to answer what you need. If you’re going to grow, it’s easy to get pigeonholed at a rate if you’re not strong in the upfront about what you really need. One way to put it is, “I will do this for you one time at this other cost, but in the future, we need to get to my rate”—or something along those lines.
How do you keep learning and growing?
I think a lot of how I operate and learn comes from my background in team sports. I played lacrosse through college and even continued to coach into my adult life. In relating it to team sports, I’ve created this extended team of people and resources that I’m comfortable calling upon to help me learn. I also just feel like I’m one of those people who has an innate desire to continue learning, which is part of the reason the opportunity to do something totally scary and hard in buying out my business partner was really exciting. I also seek out other opportunities to learn. I applied to be a Tory Burch fellow and was recently named a Tory Burch fellow for 2020. That’s been a secondary mini-MBA program. I have been super diligent about attending all the presentations and gleaning all the information offered to me there.
(Cassie was named a winner of the 2019 Title Nine Movers & Makers Pitchfest, where women entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas.)
Where do you get your creative energy?
It’s while I’m on my bike or hiking outside. When I’m in the pain cave riding up a hill or whatever, my mind starts wandering and I basically start writing marketing campaigns or ideas for products in my head. I’ll oftentimes get to the top of a hill and have to pull out my phone and take notes on my Notes app.
What are you doing in your free time these days?
I’m hanging with the little man. And I’m doing a lot of mountain biking. I have an awesome community of lady shredders here. We have a Thursday night ride and I can pretty much find someone to ride with any other night of the week if I can’t make Thursday. That’s what my husband and I like to do together in the summer, too. We’re also doing a lot of dog walks and stroller walks around the neighborhood.
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Before you go…
Download free 2020 vote posters (artist Anna Brones)
Apply to Weston x AIARE’s scholarship for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ (Weston)
Lauren Fleshman’s Feminist Approach to Coaching (The New York Times)