A Q&A with Inclusive Entrepreneur Marianne Weber

A Q&A with Inclusive Entrepreneur Marianne Weber

Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. Our founder and principal designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman has encountered many talented designers throughout her career, and in our Spotlight interviews we ask them about their work, their design journey, and what inspires them. In this interview we spoke with Marianne Weber, the founder and CEO of the inclusive lingerie line Even Adaptive and a licensed occupational therapist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Marianne worked with Interwoven to realize her empathetic vision, founding Even Adaptive in 2021 and launching the adaptive lingerie line in 2024. That our team contributed to Marianne’s incredible project, which won a Core77 design award in 2023, makes this a particularly special Spotlight feature for us. We asked Marianne about what inspired her to become an entrepreneur, the power of designing for a traditionally neglected audience, and what it was like to work with a design team. 

Portrait of EvenAdaptive CEO Marianne Weber
Photo courtesy of Marianne Weber.

Q: You had a career in occupational therapy when you became an entrepreneur. What inspired that transition? 

A: I’m still currently working as an occupational therapist and keeping up my license, so it’s a long, slow transition. I’m still providing people with what we do as occupational therapists: providing independence and helping them relearn how to do things for themselves. It’s definitely a career change, moving into a CEO and founder role and away from being a full-time therapist. But I feel like the change is necessary for touching more lives than I could in my occupational therapy role. When I had the idea to make this happen, I didn’t immediately think, I need to switch jobs. This has been a three-year journey so far, and I’m still doing both roles. 

The job I have is in acute care. What that means is that I come in when people are initially in the hospital or post-op day one. I’m seeing people at the most heightened and scared time of their lives, and it has to be taken very seriously every moment that I am working as an OT because one wrong step and I could seriously injure somebody. I’m not able to focus on being a CEO when I am at my job, I still have to be a hundred percent there and present. Then when I’m not there I can be 100% present as the founder of Even Adaptive. 

I think one element of the transition that changed my perspective was starting to talk to all of my patients about their engagement and their sexual health as well. As occupational therapists, we focus on making sure that everybody can complete their activities of daily life, their ADLs, and sex is one of those things that we have within our scope of practice. Before becoming the CEO and the founder of Even Adaptive, I was a bit more shy about asking those questions because my toolbox wasn’t full. But, through this process, I’ve done a lot of continuing education. I became more educated on how I can help people through the process of creating our products.

Q: You explain that confidence and sexiness are the pillars of your brand ethos, could you elaborate on that?

A: When you’re faced with these disease processes or you have a disability of some kind, a lot of society communicates that these people are not allowed to express themselves in any kind of sexual manner. They’re not allowed to date, and they’re not looked at as valuable in that way that other women can be when they have full function. The pillars of being independent and sexy go hand in hand for Even Adaptive. If we can make you feel good, and increase your confidence and your independence by providing you with something that you want to be wearing instead of something that was made for 75% of women out there, then we can help to drive change. Sexiness is not just about how someone else is perceiving you but about how you perceive yourself.

Q: Your brand focuses on a neglected target audience. Did anything about this audience surprise you? 

A: I don’t know if they’ve surprised me so much because I’ve been working with this community for many years now, but one thing that I was excited about was how willing they are to lift everybody up. In so much of the world, when you’re trying to do something new, you hear no over and over again. But this community says, Let’s make change. Let’s do this. Let me post about it. Let me share your website. Everybody is excited to be involved in the ambassador program and get their name out there and their story out there. They are used to being told no as well, so when somebody finally tells them, This is for you, they grab onto it and they’re excited to be a part of it.

I’ve got both sides of the coin. We’re looking for fundraising and venture capitalists are 98% men. You’re faced with talking to men about women’s bras and underwear but also about women with disabilities and underwear. It’s this far out concept to them. They think, Who out there would need this? No we’re not going to fund that. I don’t see how it’s going to make money. But when you give it to the people who need it, they’re extremely excited to hear about the product and want to know more and be involved.  As an entrepreneur, there’s one side that’s beating you down, but then the other side that’s lifting you up. There’s a balance.

I think my personal story into why this business came to be is a pretty powerful story and seems to resonate with a lot of people. It doesn’t resonate so much with men but whenever I can tell it to women entrepreneurs they get it right away.

Q: Could you tell that story?

A: I was in graduate school in 2018 and it was finals week. I was having trouble with my vision and I was thinking, I’m going to go to the doctor and get really cute glasses!  The doctor thought something was strange, so he sent me in for an MRI. The MRI resulted with multiple lesions in my brain and my cervical spinal cord, and a very long diagnostic process led to a diagnosis of MS [Multiple Sclerosis]. So I was diagnosed with MS during finals week of grad school to become an occupational therapist. I already had my career laid out for me. I knew what I wanted to do, and it just happened that this was happening at the same time. The whole disease diagnosis process is fairly unpredictable with MS. Being me, with well-established anxiety, I was going through all the terrible things that could come from it. It was a very taxing year for me before I got on medication and was able to deal with it. In that process, I started working at Johns Hopkins in neurology. I was watching these women, who were dealing with a more advanced disease process than I had, not be able to do basics for themselves because that’s my whole job: to help people to be able to do those things again. These women couldn’t put bras on. Those were always the first things that women with neurological conditions gave up on, their underwear and their sexuality. They would just say, What? I’m never going to leave my house again, so why do I need to do this? But that doesn’t have to be the only option.

Even Adaptive was created from my own experience of going through this diagnosis and feeling like my self-worth was down in the dumps, and then watching women have this reaction over and over and over. I wondered, What is the thing that I can do to help these people? And the answer was to create an adaptive intimate line, because it was the one thing I couldn’t solve. I can teach anybody how to put on a shirt one-handed or a pant or a sock, there are tools out there for that. But nothing existed for these women that could lay the foundation of confidence and help them to feel good again. 

Q: Could you talk about your experience working with Interwoven? What was it like to have a vision realized with a design consultancy? 

A: When first I called Rebeccah, I remember her calling me back very quickly. She was immediately interested in the concept. Hearing that, I realized, Someone is going to help me with this! It was very exciting that she was able to see the vision, wrap her head around it, and know confidently that she could come up with a functional solution. It was so exciting to have a team of experts that had this portfolio behind them, that actually listened to what the product needed to be. I think Interwoven did a great job of taking the requirements that I knew that the product needed and creating something that has never been done before; to make it the best in the market and the only one-handed functional bra product that exists. The other beautiful thing that they did for me was to think about how the product was going to survive in the world in an extremely realistic way. They thought, We’re putting this work in, has this been created before? Has this been patented before? Are we going to be able to get a patent through? They did work to find out how it’s going to be manufactured, and they thought about the pricing. Interwoven thought about every detail, so they knew that the product would be viable once it left their hands. That was one of the most important things that they gave to me besides the clasp design. They wanted to see the project succeed, so they designed it with that in mind.

Q: What is something you experienced in the Even Adaptive journey that you didn’t anticipate? 

A: It was surprising how much attention went into creating this product. The multiple iterations and all the trial and error, all of the tiny little changes that Aybuke would make along the way…the product is highly fine-tuned and functional. When you’re not on the inside, you don’t think about what it takes to really create something like this. I was surprised at how much they cared.

Q: While awareness is growing, inclusive design is not yet a universal priority. What does the landscape of the inclusive market look like from your perspective? What are your hopes for this market? 

A: Since I started, I do see more adaptive companies. They’re starting to get funding and they’re popping up more and more often. I am seeing a big shift in the normalization of it. It’s still really slow moving. In terms of taking into account the look of the products and being fashioned forward, a lot of them are stuck on function. I do think that we’re going to move into a realm—and this is part of what Even Adaptive wants to help accomplish—where you don’t have to search endlessly online to find the thing that will help you get dressed after breaking your arm. You should be able to just pop online, already have a brand in your head, and order it up. There are a ton of inclusive designs that have been normalized in our homes, like all of the door handles that are levers instead of knobs. That’s an inclusive design option and we don’t think twice about it. It’s just in houses everywhere now. 

Hopefully that’s where adaptive clothing will go. It happened with baby onesies overnight. Somebody came up with baby onesies that have magnets and moms are like, Yes!  That’s a cool normalization, and that inclusive normalization is going to move up the line as long as we can make things that people want to wear.

Check out the rest of our Insight series to learn more about the design industry. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn for design news, multi-media recommendations, and to learn more about product design and development!

A Q&A with Franca Ceramic Studio Co-Founder Sierra Yip-Banniq

A Q&A with Franca Ceramic Studio Co-Founder Sierra Yip-Banniq

Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. Our founder and principal designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman has met many wonderful designers in her time in the industry, and in our Spotlight interviews we ask them about their work, their design journey, and what inspires them. In this interview we spoke with Sierra Yip-Banniq, a ceramic artist who co-founded the Brooklyn ceramic studio Franca in 2016. The studio is known for its elegant slip cast ceramics featuring bold, distinctive patterns. Sierra studied industrial design at Pratt and enjoys exploring new materials and production methods. We asked her about starting her own business, developing new products, and the relationship between her practice as a designer and her practice as an artist.

Photo courtesy of Sierra Yip-Banniq.

“We want our pieces to be enjoyed and used every day.”

Q: How did you come to start your ceramic studio?

A:  I’m actually only one half of Franca. My business partner is Jazmin De La Guardia. She’s based in Florida at the moment. We started Franca together back in 2016. We both went to Pratt: I went to Pratt for ID [Industrial Design], she went to Pratt for printmaking. In 2013, a few years after we graduated, we met up for dinner and realized that we both wanted to start our own thing, but we weren’t a hundred percent sure what it should be. We decided to work on a studio together but we didn’t settle on ceramics right off the bat. We had the idea to start a design studio and then we were trying to brainstorm what medium or what products we could feasibly make ourselves in Brooklyn. We both really liked ceramics. It was something we did as a hobby. I had a membership space in a ceramic studio and she had a background in hand building. Ceramics was something we were both interested in but it is also something that is relatively quick to make. From start to finish you can come up with a design, make a sample, fire it, and test it – all within about two weeks. That’s uncommon. For most other materials, to make a finished sample in the right material would take a lot longer. And now it’s been six and a half, almost seven years of us solely doing ceramics. It’s not what we had originally planned, but it’s a happy accident, I guess. 

Q: Did you have business experience when you started Franca?

A: I took this introductory course. I didn’t do the full course because I was working full-time, I only did the evening and weekend sessions that I could fit into my schedule. It was about how to trademark designs and how to start a business. It was a really good course. That prepared me a little bit. 

Not everyone is built to work for themselves. It does take a particular type of person. Jazmin and I are very different in terms of our personalities and how we work. I think we’re really fortunate to have found each other. We met at Pratt in the first year and we lived together, so we knew each other well as roommates and we got along really well. That gave us hope, even though we knew that we were very different going into starting Franca together. There are things that I’m better at and things she’s better at. I think it’s very hard to find a good business partner. That was the one piece of advice I got from a good friend of mine who started a foundation. He wishes that he had started his business 20 years ago with a business partner. He says it’s almost impossible to find and bring on a business partner later. Not impossible, but it’s very hard. The idea of me doing Franca by myself… I don’t think we would be sitting here right now. It’s so much work that I can’t fathom doing it all by myself. We can lean on each other and we do everything together. 

Q: Do you distinguish between a design practice and an artistic practice in your process? What is the relationship between the two?

A: We see-saw back and forth because we think of ourselves as designers but at the same time we also think of ourselves as artists. I think there is kind of this gray area. We are not fine artists in the sense that we’re not making one-off pieces. We wanted our pieces to be producible in a way such that the price point wouldn’t have to be at that fine art level. But because our things are handmade and all of our patterns are hand painted, our product falls in this price point where they’re designed objects. We want them to be as accessible as possible, and it’s important for us to try to keep that in mind when designing new things. So we see ourselves as both artists and designers, both at the same time. Ceramics is traditionally more of a fine art field but I think, especially in the last decade or so, so many small practices have been started.

Also, the power of social media has allowed makers to share the process of small batch manufacturing. A lot of it is how to produce things efficiently, and how to be able to produce well-designed and intentional objects.

Q: Have you seen changes in the market for artisanal ceramics since you started your business?

A: We have. Even before Franca was founded, there were definitely studios we looked up to. It’s interesting to see that now, six years later, some of those studios have stayed the same, some have closed, and some have gotten a lot bigger. But we’ve always had customers—both stores and individual customers—who really appreciate handcrafted and handmade objects. That’s our ideal target audience; someone who appreciates handcrafted design and pieces. Because you can buy a mug at Target for $1.50, and you can also buy a mug from us that is definitely not $1.50. Then there are mugs that are $200 on the market if you go to a place like ABC Home.

We want our stuff to be used and cherished. We don’t want it to be so expensive that someone buys it and then doesn’t want to use it because it’s too fragile, you know? Or too precious. We want our pieces to be enjoyed and used every day. We love hearing stories from people who say, Oh, I broke my wife’s favorite mug and she’s upset because she uses it every day for her coffee. We like hearing those kinds of stories, and we’ll work with them to replace it. The pieces are actually being used and enjoyed and they bring happiness into people’s lives.

Q: Could you walk us through how you develop a new product or collection? 

A:  It varies depending on the time of year but basically Jazmin and I usually come up with an idea for a collection that we want to either expand or launch. We’ll test a small new product or pattern or shape and see how it does at these in-person sample sales. We’ll see if it seems like people are really interested in it, or if people don’t buy it at all. It lets us do these little user tests organically before we actually invest in making molds and producing the product. 

We usually come up with an idea of what product we want to make. Maybe we want to make new planters or we want to do lighting. Lighting is an example of something that we’ve been working on for many years and are finally hoping to launch later this year. Once we pick the product type, we both sketch separately. Then we come together, see which designs we both like, and work on developing those further. Basically we design everything together. Jazmin, because of her printmaking background, is stronger in pattern-making. I have more of a production background. Our goal is to design products that are producible by our studio. We decide if they are going to feature a lot of surface finishing or hand painting. We don’t want to make anything that’s too complicated or that’s something that we don’t specialize in.

With slip casting and mold-making there’s quite a lot of freedom. Sometimes we make a mold and it doesn’t work, and we need to fix it for production. But other times we come up with a design of something that we already have a mold for. We just don’t punch the hold in it to make it a planter, flip it upside down, and it could be something else. We like to play around with existing forms and see what else they could be. It’s a lot of stacking things, playing around with things, and trimming things down to different sizes so we can physically visualize the forms three dimensionally. We can sketch in 2D, but it’s really different when you can see something and manipulate the clay with your hands in 3D. Clay is a very therapeutic material in and of itself. You can shape it and sometimes it cooperates, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it cracks, sometimes it blows up in the kiln. You never know.

Q: Could you tell us about one of your favorite projects and share why it is important to you?

A: One of my favorite projects has been one of our longest ongoing projects, a collaboration with the New York Times. We were already making our own products and showing them at trade shows and different fairs around New York when the creative director of the New York Times store e-mailed us out of the blue. This was probably in our first year, maybe our second year. Our brand recognition was quite low and he actually e-mailed us…and we kind of ignored the e-mail because we thought it was spam. Then he followed up a second time and we replied. They were working on a project to restructure the New York Times store to bring production back to the U.S. and to New York in particular.

While they make certain products overseas, and they have for a while, they wanted some of their knitwear and their ceramics to be made in New York, to be true to the brand name. They chose to work with us and with our price point, and they’ve never pushed back when we need to do a price increase because it’s important to them to have products made in New York. We deliver small batches and mugs whenever we can and they’re really flexible, working with us when we’re too overwhelmed or having production problems. It’s nice to see bigger brands that want to work with small artisans 

Q: What are you working on that’s interesting to you at the moment?

A: We’re working on a bunch of lighting. Before starting Franca, I worked at a higher end residential and commercial lighting studio. So I knew the background of not just wiring lights but also lighting certification and everything goes into selling lights. Lighting has always kind of scared us because we don’t want to launch a product that isn’t fully ready to go out into the world. We’ve spent a lot of time researching different types of lighting and how we want the lights to look. We’re going to be launching a couple of different collections of LED lights that don’t look like LED lights due to glass diffusers. Mainly we didn’t want the bulbs to be producing too much heat, as ceramic retains heat quite well. So it will look like a traditional globe light but essentially produce no heat. It’s a big project but we’re hoping to launch pretty soon! In late summer.

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