A Journey in our Positive Pants

Our journey began with Monie wanting to create some sort of passion project that would assist her in creating a passive stream of income.  As two sisters who have been pretty close throughout our entire lives, Monie decided to share this idea with Roxie, as she could not think of a better person to go into business with than her own sister. Initially, Roxie was not keen on the idea, as the all too common phrase of “I don’t have the time” kicked in. Of course, this response was 100% understandable. In the midst of pursuing her own business - finding time for things like leisure, fitness, family and friends was already proving to be a challenge - let alone starting an entirely new side-hustle. But, with a little perseverance and some sisterly encouragement, Roxie was convinced. Of course, this is where the exciting part came in, which involved trying to pinpoint exactly what venture we wanted to pursue. We both toyed with a few different options, from a baby clothing boutique, to an online stationery store but ultimately our exposure to the fitness industry and our passion for health and wellness prompted the creation of the brand and business that you have come to know and love today. 

Throughout our years of training together, and eventually competing in our first body building competition together, there was one thing that really stood out for us at the time and that was that there were (changed wording) very few affordable gym clothes available on the market that catered for all body shapes and sizes which made you look and feel GOOD (AND were squat-proof, of course.) Unless you were able to afford the more expensive athleisure brands, the only real options available to all women who wanted to train were boring, dark, plain and subsequently – not so feminine active wear. And so our idea was born! We set out to create a brand that would provide women with functional, attractive, high-quality active-wear that catered for ALL body types, not just supermodel runway figures (because I mean, who really looks like that??)

While our personal experiences definitely lead to the idea of creating a range of all-inclusive active-wear, we knew that we needed a bit more research to ensure there would be a market to sell to. Luckily, Monie’s partner (Rob) was the owner of a popular gym in Rivonia, which happened to be mostly frequented by woman of all ages, shapes and sizes. We had many conversations with these lovely ladies, and the general consensus confirmed the gap in the market for affordable but flattering active-wear. It was time to jump at the opportunity and follow our gut-feel.  With this leap of faith, we officially started the journey of building our own business together. The first few months of trying to source reliable, high-quality suppliers proved to be a challenge, resulting in a little frustration and some hair-pulling hours.  

FINALLY we found a supplier that seemed to tick all of our boxes – prioritizing quality and affordability at all times. We decided to place a small order for a few select items to sell at a variety of pop-up shops to truly test the waters. We were blown away - our first bulk order sold out in only a few days. When this happened, we realized the untapped potential that this beautiful little business had and made the decision to invest a bit more money into bringing in larger orders. We were so excited and agreed between ourselves that we would be relentless in our efforts to make this business work, no matter how difficult or time-consuming it would be. Remember, at this point – Positive Pants wasn’t officially established yet, all we had was our vision and purpose which was to create a  brand that empowered women through bright, beautiful, comfortable clothing that invoked positivity, confidence and resilience to all those who wore it.

So you are probably wondering, where did the name Positive Pants come from? Well, Monie actually stumbled across a sign that read “Put on your Positive Pants” one afternoon while she was browsing in a small décor shop with her husband, Rob. He gestured jokingly towards the sign, “Hey, what about Positive Pants?”

Monie just lit up and immediately called Roxie - and both agreed that the phrase of “Putting on your Positive Pants” perfectly encapsulated what we wanted to achieve with our brand, both literally and figuratively. In April 2018, “Positive Pants” was officially established, which also marked the beginning of our beautiful journey and the immeasurable amount of love, blood, sweat and  occasional tears that would be poured into our budding little business. At the time, even though we were working full-time jobs, we both jumped into dedicating our spare time to working multiple pop-up shops and events every single weekend for the first two years as our absolute best attempt to get our brand’s name out there. The passion and vision that we shared for our business and the message we wanted to share really made the lack of sleep and stress all worth it. These events and our social media platform enabled us to connect with so many different, like-minded women who all shared the same love and passion for health and wellness and we knew that we could only prosper that much more if we worked together with them. We used these incredible networks and our social media platform to search for the perfect women who would really embody everything that we wanted our brand to stand for, from resilience and entrepreneurship, to confidence and dedication and partnered with them to become our official brand ambassadors. To this day, we are so grateful to every single person, ambassador, customer and colleagues who have shown nothing but love and support from day one. We really have worked tirelessly at making our brand one that gives back to women by inspiring holistic health as well as the confidence and positivity they need to thrive in life and honestly have never looked back since. For us, and our #Sisterhoodofpositivepants – it’s only onwards and upwards from here.