vision have not wavered. “It always goes back to that same idea of making high quality, beautiful and functional swimwear for D-plus women,” Korn told Inside Retail. Niching down If you go to Form and Fold’s ‘about us’ page the first thing you see is the co-founders’ cup sizes – signalling to customers that they have found their community. When asked if Form and Fold had been tempted to extend its size range below a D-plus, Korn admitted that it had crossed her and Warson’s mind but it doesn’t come up anymore. “I think there are so many amazing brands out there that are doing swimwear for smaller cup sizes,” said Korn. “Why are we going to try and compete with that when we have such a strong niche and we know what we know by now? We’re focused on D-plus sizes and so we’re the experts in that,” she added. It’s Form and Fold’s seven-year-long tunnel vision on designing for its niche demographic that has earned it a devoted customer base. “We have thought about doing clothing or branching into these lifestyle categories but we always come back to swimwear for D-plus women and just nailing that one product,” Korn shared. Right fit The brand’s considered and efficacious designs have been a double-edged sword since launching in 2017 – its success is hinged on a rigorous product development process but for the co-founders, it is still a labour of love. “We had to find these incredible D-plus technicians who basically helped us engineer the styles we wanted and it took three years to get three core tops,” Korn revealed. “We were like, ‘OK, this is why it doesn’t exist out there in the market’, because it’s incredibly timely and incredibly costly to spend three years to develop products for any business model,” she added. “We could nail the marketing and the business plan and set everything up, but it was the product that was just so difficult.” Seven years later, product development is still Form and Fold’s greatest challenge and bottleneck with some designs requiring more than 10 samples to get it up to the co-founders’ standards. “We all have our doubts throughout the process, but there’s always one of us like, ‘One more sample, one more sample, one more sample’, and we always get there in the end,” Korn said. “We never compare to other brands, and we know that we just have a great fit. And so we don’t really need to compete,” she added. Customer first  Swimwear is extremely personal, and Form and Fold has approached its customers with care and inclusion at every step over the last seven years. “Every single collection is not based on any sort of trend or any sort of brand vision. It’s actually just coming from the customer,” Korn stated. “There is no fluffy story – it’s really based on what we have heard from customers through Instagram or through our email or reviews on our website,” she added. Form and Fold personally reaches out to customers who have returned an order to actively seek out constructive feedback and have a collaborative conversation. “They’re just just hopeful women wanting to find swimwear that’s going to fit and make them feel great,” Korn shared. “I think they’re probably quite cynical at first, and then when they try it, they’re so happy, and they’re so grateful,” she added. Form and Fold, under Korn and Warson’s leadership, has pioneered a new and inclusive category of swimwear for D-plus women and set a standard that has been hard to replicate. Form and Fold is “such a strong idea that really comes from our dissatisfaction with swimwear,” Korn concluded. “We’re literally just serving this niche.”