Paradigm Shifters is a series of interviews with a select group of women and men from eclectic walks of life. It will highlight unspoken, real life insights on how they have been able to turn weakness into strength. A naked soul point of view of how their breakdowns were really a preparation for breakthroughs. They are your quintessential Paradigm Shifters; internal shifts converted into genuine change.
Everything I have ever done has been focused on this underlying theme of shifting the paradigm because, "what we think determines what we feel and what we feel determines what we do." Hence why Empowered by You takes lingerie, which has traditionally been seen merely as a tool of seduction and redirected that energy as a tool of empowerment.
I hope from these stories you will look at your own situations, struggles and accomplishments through a different lens. At the very least you will be more equipped with real life tools to change your own paradigm. At the end of the day we are our own Alchemist turning the silver we were born with into the gold we are destined to become.
Sabra Krock - Co-Owner and Creative Director of Everything But Water
Where do you find the inspiration to innovate for Everything But Water?
Well let me give you some context: I spent about six and a half years in management consulting before this. All of the things I learned there are directly relevant to things I now think about and do day-to-day from a strategic and business perspective. But inspiration comes from many places. I am a very visually oriented person. When I transitioned out of management consulting, I pursued professional photography for a while, primarily in food still life. I still am a contributor to The New York Times and I still take on selective client work. But then this opportunity came up and I shifted gears. I still consider myself a photographer and those skills and that experience is definitely related to how I think about merchandising and visual merchandising opportunities or how I look at analogs for inspiration. I look at many other [retailers] in the marketplace and fashion and art publications. I run our social media, which has a focus on Instagram. I spend a lot of time looking at others' feeds and trolling around. I find Instagram and the people who one encounters through it a huge source of visual inspiration. All of these things provide inspiration. My husband and I are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest and a part of that is so that we can see how people in different markets do things and present things differently. An important thing is to keep your head up, look, observe, and think. It all ends up mixing together in your brain. Something will gel and then something useful will come out of it.
It seems that you constantly put yourself out there as you venture into unknown terrain quite often- What do you think makes you so fearless?
I'm not sure I would say it's a matter of taking a lot of risks, but I think I'm just a weirdly equally left and right brained person. I'm always seeking a balance between the two. My work as a Management Consultant skewed strategic and quantitative, and I lacked true fulfillment in the creative area. That's what swung me into pursuing photography. Now as an owner, I am able to involve myself in so many things and I really am able to go achieve a balance between quantitative and qualitative pursuits; both business strategy and creative. For example, I have a marketing role, which provides business strategy-related tasks, but at the same time, I am also responsible for our creative assets such as our graphic design efforts.
What is your proudest accomplishment with Everything But Water?
[My husband and I] have been involved with Everything But Water for about five years. What is exciting is that we are really transforming [the swimwear] category in terms of the experience. What we are offering is much more lifestyle oriented and holistic. [We are] really thinking about customer aspirations and unmet needs in the category.
In terms of a specific moment, we just celebrated the company's thirtieth anniversary. We launched a thirty-piece collection in celebration of that time, with thirty exciting designers. This was a major effort that involved everyone in the company in some regard. Each piece [of the thirty piece collection] was inspired by a particular iconic moment in swim and resortwear history. The collection has pieces inspired by looks ranging from Marilyn Monroe's polka dot bikini to Bond Girl suits to Bo Derek's nude one piece in 10. It took a lot of thinking to just cull to the thirty moments we were most excited about and then [it took a lot] to launch the collection in stores and online. We also had a lookbook that we were proud of - people were really excited about it. It just made us think about the history of swim and the history of our business. We had an opportunity to think about the richness of our partnerships and think about our company's capabilities, and those were both definitely things to be proud of. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. It was one of the biggest endeavors of that nature that we have undertaken.
How do you go about choosing your collaborations?
Exclusive products and offerings are definitely important to our customer and us. We are always trying to offer something new and so we do a lot of exclusive products with different designers all throughout the year. In terms of how we decide, it can be many things. It can be designers that are trending or designers who represent certain types of products that we feel are trending. Or it could be with a designer we feel could address a particular need for a certain fit. It's really many things. Sometimes we collaborate with someone who is inspiring. Someone who is maybe doing something less commercial but that "something" is exciting to us. We are also constantly looking for new designers, people who might already be emerging in the press or people who are being watched. But we are also trying to find people who are under the radar who we are excited about, people that will excite our customer by virtue of the fact that they are not overexposed. That search is something that I am very involved in and that I find rewarding. I love getting to know these designers, their stories, how they came to be, and where they are going. That's inspiring to me. Even if someone does not end up moving the needle for us sales wise, it still can play a role in exciting us and exciting our customers.
Is there any advice that you would love to give your younger self?
I now have two amazing kids and another on the way. I am super busy and I have always been super busy, so I wish I had the time to accomplish some of the bigger projects that have been on my bucket list forever. I would tell myself to carve out more vacation time, more time to pursue personal interests. Sometimes I do wish I had some time back.... Actually, I probably wouldn't listen to that advice anyway because part of my success has been about working hard and focusing.
What would you want your legacy to be?
At the end of the day, what is really important to me is my family. I try to focus on bringing up happy and successful kids. Not successful in terms of material success, but in terms of people who will be happy and productive in life.
Sabra is a testament to knowing yourself and owning it regardless of the circumstances life throws at you. She can create and have a successful business without loosing sight of the essentials that are key to her legacy. Some people spend their lives trying to accomplish this whilst others are grateful to have encountered them, so that we can learn from them.