Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting a hit girls who have made main occupation adjustments—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted via Hillary Kerr, co-founder and leader content material officer at Who What Wear, every episode offers you an immediate line to girls who’re sport changers of their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any place you get your podcasts to stick tuned.
When Ariana Ferwerda and Kiley McKinnon based Halfdays in 2020, they got down to revolutionize the skiwear trade, which had lengthy been ruled via pricey, male-centric designs. Their venture was once to create trendy, high-performance, and sustainable ski tools that’s obtainable to everybody. The result’s a emblem that no longer handiest disrupts the slopes but additionally redefines outside tradition.
The fusion in their other backgrounds is what in point of fact makes Halfdays such a success. McKinnon, a former freestyle aerial skier, competed within the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics—an atypical fulfillment overshadowed via a realistic frustration: she needed to put on males’s skiwear. The girls’s choices merely weren’t useful or comfy sufficient for her wishes. After retiring, McKinnon crossed paths with Ferwerda, an information analytics and retail consulting knowledgeable with levels in Marketing and Marketing Research. Ferwerda shared the similar battle, discovering girls’s ski tools both overpriced, impractical, or uninspiring.
This shared frustration sparked Halfdays, a direct-to-consumer skiwear emblem that prioritizes have compatibility, serve as, and style. What units Halfdays aside is its dedication to sustainability—just about 100% of its fabrics are recycled—paired with a extra reasonably priced value level than conventional luxurious skiwear manufacturers. Their colourful, trend-forward designs have resonated with a brand new technology of skiers, proving that functionality tools may also be each sublime and approachable.
Since launching, Halfdays has noticed exponential expansion, increasing past skiwear into low season outerwear and athleisure. The emblem has additionally made waves in retail, opening a brick-and-mortar retailer and partnering with main shops like Nordstrom and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Ferwerda and McKinnon’s imaginative and prescient extends past product: they target to make snowboarding and outside tradition extra inclusive.
Listen to the most recent episode of Second Life to listen to how Ferwerda and McKinnon plan to proceed revolutionizing girls’s energetic tradition. And stay scrolling to buy a few of our favorites from Halfdays.
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