Sash Group, Inc.

Handbags have historically been pretty much the same. A container for things to go into, with a strap or handle. Over time, various designs have emerged offering different straps such as cross-body, and additional organization and pockets inside the purse. But ultimately one thing remains the same: All your stuff is lumped into one spot and a burden to carry around.

If you are someone who carries a purse, you know exactly what we're talking about. We schlep these purses around on our shoulders, walking lopsided half the time. We spend way too much time digging in them. They bounce around on our hips and cut into our necks. It's really silly when you think about it!

If you do not carry a purse, let me walk you through a scenario... You probably have a computer bag or briefcase, right? Imagine taking that bag everywhere you went. Not just to meetings where it is useful, but into the grocery store, to the farmer's market, for a walk on the beach, to your nephew's second birthday party.

How long would you do that before you wanted to chuck that thing off a bridge?

Now you know how we feel.

When Sash launched, it quickly caught the eye of women who were looking for a better way to have the things they need at their fingertips. Completely unlike anything on the market, the unique design has transformed the way women move throughout life.

We basically took a purse and blew it apart. No lumping things together in one pile. It makes you wonder... Why didn't anyone think of this before? Well, thank goodness we did, because it's pretty amazing.

The Sash bag has a series of 10 pockets that stack up the front and back, evenly distributing the weight of the contents. It fits all the same typical items a woman would store in her purse, but the ergonomic design makes it feel light as air.

The intelligent, patented design is what has women fall in love with the bag, but the company culture, caring customer service, and built-in community is what has them stay.

Our Sash Squad is fierce. This community started as individual strangers who fell in love with a product that changed their life, and turned into a community of real-life friendships. Sash meetups are a common thing where Sash lovers will get together for adventures. People who met in our VIP group communicate outside of the group regularly and travel to other parts of the country and the world to visit with each other. 

We attribute this to a combination of things. One, the Sash bag naturally attracts people who are adventurous and like to be out and about doing things (hence the need for a comfortable bag that holds all their stuff). Secondly, the bag provides a level of freedom that shifts a person's "being" (their inner experience). Suddenly, with a new sense of lightness, they start looking at things differently and wondering where else in their life they are carrying around unnecessary weight. They feel freer and this is the magic of the Sash bag. This shift in awareness creates a bond that has Sash customers relating to each other and wanting to share experiences. 

It wasn't an intentional strategy, rather something that was naturally born out of the growth of the company.

We spent the first few years hitting the pavement and selling Sash bags. This strategy was two fold: Get the product out there on people's bodies, and find out who our customer is. 

After nearly three years of schlepping booth supplies around in our cars, setting up early in the mornings, talking to anyone who would listen, and selling one bag at a time, we learned everything we needed to know about our customer. 

We knew what other brands she likes, what questions she'll ask, what color she'll buy first, and what color she'll back and buy next. We learned which people will try and haggle a deal and who will just fork over their money and say, "I'll take five." We got to the point where we could see a Sash customer from a mile away. We know what she's going to pick up first, what questions she is going to ask, and how much money she will spend.

The next step was to take allllll of that information and turn it into a marketing campaign online. Because we knew exactly who we were looking for online and what message to deliver, it simply took mastering the nuances of Facebook advertising and this strategy took us to multi-million dollars practically overnight.

Throughout the last few years we have grown and pivoted our online strategy to cope with the ever changing climate online. Facebook changes stuff, we change stuff. Algorithms make it harder to reach people, we turn to live video. We've successfully navigated our way through the trends and ups and downs of online marketing, building and engaging our community along the way. 

Then the pandemic hit, and our factory shut down. The domino effect of that has impacted our business tremendously, so we turned back to our creative roots, offering pre-order campaigns, and utilizing live sales to bring different products to our customers while we waited for things to "get back to normal".

Now the factory is back up to full capacity and this campaign (and your investment) is what will get us back on track and growing again with rolling production. We know our customers are ready for more bags!

You may wonder what has our customers purchasing so many bags and still wanting more. We do attribute some of the magic to our community spirit, but the bottom line is that the Sash bag is a life changing product. 

What happens is a person will move all their necessities over from their purse to the Sash bag, and then once the Sash bag is worn, that person never wants to go back to a purse. Because the Sash is so comfortable, going back to the bulky purse that was pulling on their shoulder is just not an option. 

In addition to having a customer base that want to keep growing their collection, we have only scratched the surface of reaching all of our target customers. We often have to pull back on our marketing because we don't have enough inventory to meet demand and we know new customers aren't as likely to wait for a pre-order.

Simply put, we need more cash for inventory. Every time we get inventory in, our sales skyrocket, as you can see above. You know the old saying, "You can't sell what you don't have." And we have tried! But pre-orders will only take us so far.

Our plan with this campaign is to set up a letter of credit with our factory that will allow us to place four consecutive purchase orders. This will set us up to start receiving inventory every month, which will have us in a nice marketing and sale flow versus starting and stopping, which also creates a lot of unpredictability for our manufacturer. Rolling production keeps our factory happy, our customers happy, and our investors happy. Win/win/win. We have multiple fundraising activities happening to ensure we set up the company with a new "once and for all" foundation of production capital.

The company was founded and has been led by Nichole MacDonald, a veteran entrepreneur and product designer with a strong background in marketing and communications. 

Nichole is joined by an incredibly talented team of advisors, including Ugg founder, Brian Smith, and AdAstra founders Silvia Mah and Vidya Dinamani, as well as a small and mighty staff of employees who run the day-to-day operations of the company.

We plan to hire a COO when the WeFunder campaign completes to support our growth strategy.

Brian has been involved with Sash bags since 2015, when he met Nichole during a particularly challenging time in manufacturing. Recognizing that the challenges were familiar to a company he had once grown and sold (you might have heard of it, it’s called Ugg) he jumped in to help steer the company toward manufacturing wins.

Nichole and Brian have since forged a partnership that has taken them all over the world and through all kinds of ups and downs, with one goal in mind: Make Sash as successful as it can be.

Brian is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and business advisor who has focused the majority of his time on Sash. He represents the WeFunder community as the Lead Investor and brings all the experience of helping to shape the company with him.

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Short Term Debt Explained

To address our short term debt figure of $901,721: We have relied on Kickstarter and pre-order strategies to fund production. When bags are in production and not yet delivered to customers, that income sits on the balance sheet as a liability. Until the product is actually in the hands of the customer, we cannot consider it income, thus it is not included in the revenue numbers that you see in our financial statements. 

The majority of that "Short Term Debt" figure is actually pre-order (deferred) revenue that will be eventually moved over to income. If, for example, we had delivered those products before January 1, 2021, that income would have made us profitable in 2020 instead of carrying a net loss.

This is all part of why we want to stop taking pre-orders. It muddies up the financials. When I reached out to my contacts at WeFunder to fix this figure, they explained that in the eyes of the SEC, all liabilities are lumped together as one. There's apparently nothing I can do to change that but I wanted to make sure everyone knew the reality behind that figure. Soon enough, it'll be moved over to the profit and loss statement as income and no longer on the balance sheet as a liability.