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NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Why do towels that don't even perform well cost so much? Liz Eichholz and Lindsey Johnson are hoping to fix this problem with Weezie, one of the first startups to focus entirely on towels.
Weezie sells towels direct to consumer online, with offices in New York City and operations in Savannah, Georgia.
The brand was inspired by Liz's experience picking towels for her wedding registry. When she went shopping, she was overwhelmed by all of the different brands and price points. She didn't understand the difference in quality and was confused by all of the jargon.
Liz and Lindsey quickly realized that a lot of other shoppers felt the same way. When they first started talking to consumers, Lindsey says, they were surprised to find that eight out of 10 people didn't even know who made their towels. And the ones who did know didn't have many positive things to say about them.
Weezie offers washcloths, hand towels, bath towels, and bath sheets all in white. They can be customized with five different fonts, six different piping colors, and 10 different thread colors.
Towels run from $30 to $78. A starter pack of hand and bath towels is $230.
Liz says so many people complained about makeup stains on white towels that they also came up with navy blue makeup towels, which are very popular: 10,000 have sold in less than four months.
Weezie towels are made in a family-owned factory in Portugal and are customized in Savannah.
Lindsey says they deliver the highest-quality towel on the market at that price point. The customization, she says, is where you can really make them your own.
As a business, the women of Weezie have taken on no outside capital. They've spent very little on marketing, relying largely on Instagram. And they've done a lot of the hands-on work themselves. Liz says they packed boxes, learned embroidery and now know how to use an embroidery machine. They learned a lot of things, she says, that they would've outsourced if they had raised funding.
She believes they now understand the company and its processes in a way you only can if you do the work yourself.
One of the best things about Weezie is that every towel has a hook for easy hanging to help keep them off the floor.
So what's next for the brand? Beach towels and robes are coming for summer. Baby towels are due in the fall.
And if you want to check out how the towels look and feel in person, Weezie has a pop-up shop at Showfields on Bond Street in NoHo starting March 14.