Little did I know Saintly would be the tip of the customization iceberg. After 1.5 years of building Saintly, I decided it was time to take it big. The only way to do that would be to sell through luxury retailers like Barney’s, Saks 5th Ave, Neiman Marcus, etc. A friend of mine had some great connections and set up meetings with some major retailers. We received consistent feedback from virtually all of them: They loved the product but couldn’t sell a customizable made-to-order product. If we could create a standard collaboration bag, they would purchase and offer our bags the same way they do everyone else. While that in itself was a coup, it wasn’t what we wanted. Saintly was purely about customization, and putting our regular bags on shelves would dilute our story and the value proposition of customization. So we declined.
