Morning Coffee with Heidi Armstrong, Founder of Wear That

Lindsay Judge   |   25-02-2019

 

 

Heidi Armstrong recent left her career in fashion buying to set up start up company Wear That. Wear That offers women styling solutions of looks that will really look good on them and encourage them to feel confident.

Today Heidi joins us for a Morning Coffee to talk about her new venture and what she plans to achieve with it.

 

Describe your morning routine.

I wake at 5am, check WhatsApp, Instagram and my emails, and then I usually try to do 10 minutes of meditation to set the tone for the day before I go out for a run, because I’m usually training for some crazy ultramarathon. Then I come back, usually start work at about 9am, and that’s on a perfect day. There are day’s I can sleep in and then go to work.

 

 

Tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired Wear That?

I come from a buying and product development background. I started in Australia and I worked from there to China, London, Paris, Italy and the Middle East and I noticed that it was the same issue of ‘I don’t know what to wear or what looks good on me’. So I created Wear That to solve this problem.

 

What do you hope to achieve with this platform?

I want to a build a platform for women that makes them feel amazing, so not only look amazing but feel amazing as that’s where the confidence comes from. Then of course I want to do something ‘small’ and have the biggest styling online platform in the world. I’m just going to go for it!

 

What do you consider your biggest career success to date?

Launching Wear That has been so exciting and rewarding and different, but all the things I’ve worked on in my career, the last 10 years I’ve worked as a fashion buyer, have led me to this. I identified trends, I worked with different women, I understood their needs and their wants which has brought me to this.

 

What is the motto you live by professionally?

It’s a new motto, I’m still trying to tell myself every day ‘just enjoy the process’, because time passes by so quickly and you always look back in hindsight and you think ‘it happened for a reason’ but I want to be a bit more mindful of the situations I’m in right now.

 

What has been the biggest challenge?

Coming from a fashion buying background I had a very structured job and a team, and now I’ve gone to a start-up which means you’re everything. I’m the CEO, I’m the delivery boy, I’m the accountant. Whilst I’m learning a lot, you have to put on different hats and that’s probably the biggest challenge to adapt to.

 

What do you still want to achieve?

So much, we haven’t even scratched the surface of Wear That. We are very much still in Phase 1, we are testing new things every day, the business is growing so quickly that it’s just developing, and it’s so exciting to be part of it and to see how it evolves.

 

Who has influenced you the most?

I could sit here and say my family and friends, and that’s probably a political answer, but what I really want to say is I just love other start-ups, I love hearing their miseries and achievements, and things I can adapt to my business, take their learnings and make my business better. I just love start-ups because everyone is so honest about the journey they have to go through.

 

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Just to chill and it will all be okay. I think we stress so much, but even now if I look back six months I think ‘oh gosh’. I think you need to be in the moment, enjoy the highs and the lows, relax and go with it.

 

What would you tell yourself 10 years from now? 

Enjoy the process.

 

Complete this sentence: I’m happy when…
I’m in the mountains with my husband and my friends. We run these crazy ultramarathons and it’s just so good to get out there for 10 hours, you have no phone, and it’s so good to get away from it all.

 

Describe your personal style in one word.
Eclectic.

 

What do you say ‘no’ to?
Meat. And professionally I say no to the word ‘I can’t’ because there is always a solution to something, you just have to think outside the box.

 

What book are you reading at the moment?

I’m listening to Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, but I’m really obsessed with this podcast called ‘My Favourite Murder’, it’s just a light hearted way to relax if you don’t want to listen to business things.

 

How do you want the world to remember you?

I figure that I won’t be around so I don’t care what they say about me.

 

 

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