https://theisland360.com/manhasset-107/manhasset-teens-found-international-clothing-line/
By Nitya Wanchoo:
Sisters Madison and Paige Governale, Manhasset’s newest entrepreneurs, are riding great success with their company, Wave Creations.
Madison, a rising freshman at Fairfield University who just graduated, and Paige, a rising senior at Manhasset High School, took their sisterhood one step forward by founding a business together. What started out due to free time and an immense love for the beach in the midst of the pandemic has grown into a clothing line on the rise.
The idea was born during quarantine after the two had exhausted all of their hobbies. The two had experience with businesses in the past after attempting to create a lip scrub company in 2017 and often spending summer days out in the scorching sun with lemonade stands. After countless hours trying out painting, making jewelry, and tie dying clothes, a few pastimes managed to stick.
The first time they realized their talents were good enough to market was when they gifted a handmade beaded necklace to a friend for her birthday and she loved it. Conveniently, they’d lost their summer jobs as camp counselors during 2020 and so this was the perfect opportunity for them to launch their new idea: a beach-inspired clothing and jewelry enterprise.
The idea got a foothold in March 2020, then the website went up in May that year, and the two received their first order on July 14. Now Wave Creations has 175,700 followers on TikTok. To add to that, they are a verified account on Pinterest, where they have 1,200 followers, and they’re also available on Instagram, where they have over 3,000 followers.
These social media platforms account for the majority of the exposure that Wave Creations gets online. From these pages, customers are directed to the main Wave Creations shopping site at shopwavecreations.com, where they can browse products and place online orders to be shipped directly to their houses.
Wave Creations has registered as a LLC, or a limited liability corporation, which protects them from lawsuits and other such legal complications. Now, nearly two years into the start of their business, Madison and Paige can proudly advertise that they ship worldwide and have received orders from places as far away as Australia, Ireland, Iceland, France, and even Switzerland. Their recently upgraded website provides them with insights into where people come to the website from and which products are most often looked up.
Believe it or not, the two still run this booming business out of their basement. Once orders started to pick up, the two decided to turn their downstairs floor into a home office. After doing extensive research about different materials and merchandise creation techniques, they decided to invest in four different printers and machines to help them get designs from their iPad to their products.
They create their clothing designs digitally and they make their beaded necklaces and braided bracelets by hand. The two do it all on their own. Paige explains the dynamic that the two have with one another: “Her ideas, my execution. She comes up with the ideas and I bring them to life.”
Once a custom item is created for a customer, it is shipped out from the local USPS office with a free Wave Creations sticker and a notecard which explains how to take care of the jewelry or clothing.
Wave Creations is a clothing brand with the primary target audience of teenagers, specifically girls, who are into beach-themed clothing and accessories. To stay relevant, Madison and Paige create themed jewelry for popular shows such as “Outer Banks.” Their feed on all social media accounts is carefully curated.
Madison, who has always been involved in photography, uses her Canon camera to take pictures of their products at the beach for their website. In addition, Wave Creations has started to partner with influencers online. They reach out to several teenagers in the influencer industry, specifically in California and Florida – where there are a lot of beaches – and send them free items in return for quality photos for them to post. This exchange benefits both of them by providing extra publicity.
Typically, the influencers sign a contract promising to uphold their end of the deal, but that’s not to say that these deals always operate smoothly.“You have to know how to be considerably nice and straight to the point,” says Paige, because otherwise, people will just try to get free clothes.
This experience has been amply constructive for the two in learning how to conduct these formal arrangements. The sisters have also had to handle knockoff establishments, which have reached out asking about where they get their raw resources in hopes of creating a similar business, but Madison and Paige did their own research. They’ve also had to learn to work with unpredictable glitches like lost packages and mixed up shipping addresses.
In addition to shipping internationally, select Wave Creations items can be found in Flying Point SurfShop in both Southampton and Sag Harbor. These stores are stocked with about 50 necklaces. but they tend to run out quickly.
In terms of expansion, Madison and Paige hope to sell Wave Creations products during Al Fresco or to have them in Indie Surf on Plandome Road. They’re also considering reaching out to spots in Montauk and Greenport for select in-store shopping spots by the beach.
Looking ahead, Madison and Paige have lots of ideas for what the future of Wave Creations holds. They’ve just recently released a new line with original hoodies, tote bags, and trucker hats. They have a wider selection now and they’re only just getting started. On a short-term basis, they want to expand into boys’ clothing lines and necklaces to include them in their target demographic.
Long term, the duo has hopes of becoming like a Pura Vida or Salt Life style brand and they want to one day include made-to-order swimsuits in their catalog. As Madison says, “Wave Creations is still growing and getting out there and it has potential if we go about it right.”
For now, they’re some of Manhasset’s best and brightest entrepreneurs.