Want a bigger wardrobe? Share Closet founders Sara Longo and Andrea Wetherald are making it happen. Read on to learn how studying abroad sparked a startup and what it’s really like to work with your best friend.
Andrea Wetherald (left) and Sara Longo. “This is what Andrea and I call a ‘switchpic,'” says Sarah. “We traded outfits and Pic Stitched two photos together.”
HC Chatham: Where did you go to college?
Sara: I went to Allegheny College. It’s in Meadville, PA. I picked it because I honestly had a feeling when I went on campus that it was just like the right place to go. I played tennis, so I loved the tennis team, I loved the coach, I loved all of their programs. The campus was gorgeous, and it wasn’t too far from home, and it had a very diverse community, I thought that was pretty cool. It was everything that I wanted in a little piece.
Andrea: I often feel funny talking about how I chose Bluffton University because it’s a Mennonite school and I wasn’t raised Mennonite. And not a lot of people, at least like me, know what Mennonites are really or much about them, or [they] think that they’re the same as Amish. When I try to remember my senior year of high school, I remember I went for a campus visit with a couple of friends and so, in truth, I was probably super pumped about having a day off from school. But when I got there, I learned a lot about their international studies programs, and that was something that was really important to me. I was really excited to travel. And so I did in college, I did a decent amount of traveling. I mean, I feel like there are more well-traveled people than me. And I was just curious about what it would be like to be at a Mennonite school. I remember getting there and being like, Oh, they have electricity! This is already better than I thought. I think it was a good choice. I studied social work. And I mean, social work isn’t such a specialized field, but I need to find a really intensive course of study somewhere for social work. It was good.
Sara, what did you major in?
Sara: I was a biology major and a French minor.
Andrea: My minor was in teaching English as a second language. And so Bluffton offered that, and I did my internship in South Korea, so that was cool.
So now that you two are entreprenuers, is there anything you wish you’d studied in college that would have helped?
Sara: We talk about that all the time because we often get asked that question. Like, Oh, neither one of you have a business or entrepreneur or tech background, and you’re in this field now. How did that happen? But looking back, I don’t think I would have done anything different. Because I think I learned my work ethic a lot from my parents, of course, but I really was able to hone in on it when I was at school for biology because it was tough. And my teachers were tough on me, and they were all wonderful, so I don’t think that I would have the work ethic that I do now if I didn’t pick biology for a major. And then same thing with being able to study lots of different things. That’s what comes with going to a liberal arts school. That was half the reason I picked going to Allegheny: you were allowed to study so many things. It’s cool now that since I did that before, I just allowed myself to do that after I graduated.
Andrea: And the other thing, too… I’m glad that I studied social work because ultimately, the fact that you [points to Sara] had a science, research type background, and the fact that I had a social work background is the reason that we ended up meeting each other at our day job working in research at Pitt. I think that’s good. If I had it to do over, I really wish that I had realized how much I love to be creative because I think that if I had learned some of the technical skills with like graphic art and that sort of thing, that would have been helpful. And I really like doing that stuff anyway, so I’m sort of playing catch-up now…. I’m like playing around with Squarespace, learning how to make websites, and I’m trying to learn my way around InDesign and stuff like that as a grown woman. That’s what college is for: learning things.
How did you two meet?
Sara: We met at our day jobs. We both did research for the same study at the University of Pittsburgh. It was doing a smoking cessation research study.
Andrea: Sara has a much better story of what it was like the first time she met me.
Sara: Yeah – the first time we met, we were in a meeting. And Andrea was bringing up this case that we had that she had done over the week, and she described it perfectly. After the meeting, I went to my boss, and I was like, Andrea seems really smart and really nice and I’m so excited to work with her.
Andrea: So I saw Sara across the table and I was like, Oh, my god she’s really pretty, she’s probably mean. I was really scared about the fact that she was on the study.
Sara: And now we love each other.
Andrea: Yeah, and then it all worked out. I’m actually only a year older – which now doesn’t matter at all – but it was my first job out of college and her first job out of college. I just had been there for a year longer, so that’s why I was used to being with only guys and doctors, so there was this other young woman on the study, and I was like, Woah, woah, woah, who’s this girl? And then it was perfect.
Sara: It was perfect.
Where did the idea for Share Closet come from?
Andrea: So there’s a story of where the heart of it came from and then when the actual idea happened. I had been studying abroad in Pitsane, Botswana, and we lived with a host family…in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. And so this was very, very different. But even though I seriously missed showers and Facebook, I was so touched by the way that it felt like a family. It wasn’t like any other community I had ever experienced. My host sister made enough porridge in the morning for everyone, all of the children in the village, just in case people stopped by. And they did, as people were walking wherever they were going. I could just go on forever about how wonderful it was, so I won’t, but the whole point is that they shared everything. And I just thought, god, there is something to this. There is something to the way that this connects people to each other. I like to talk about it as shifting the focus from what do I need to what do we need. It was just this beautiful thing. It was a life-changing experience for me, and I came back to the United States thinking, There’s got to be a way to make that feel more approachable. Because we’re not expecting people to turn their lives upside-down and share mattresses and, you know, not have doors on their houses anymore so people can just walk in. We get that this is a different culture, and that’s okay. But sharing clothing is so simple and it’s something that a lot of people do anyway.
Sara: Yeah. When we were at work together, every time she had something to do – had to go to a wedding or had to go to three weddings even – she’d be like, I don’t want to buy a new dress every time. It gets expensive, I don’t know what to wear, this is a last-minute thing. There are so many reasons why you would need stuff. So I would just bring bags of clothes and flip through Facebook and try to find pictures of my dresses or my shoes. There was one day at the office when we were laughing about it, and Andrea said, We should do this! Let’s make an app called Share Closet! And we were like, Okay!
Andrea: So it really just sort of stemmed out of…the original meaning was just a way to see specifically what’s in your friend’s closet. If you’re trying to find, What kind of shoes can I wear with this dress?, it’s not especially helpful for your friends to have a thousand selfies on their Facebook. That’s not the most helpful way.
“This was a picture of an actual SC follower’s closet that was sent to us during Startup Weekend,” says Sara. “Share Closet will help you organize your closet (online of course) so that you don’t have to dig through a pile of clothes like this to figure out what is in your closet.”
What is the general concept of Share Closet? What can people expect?
Andrea: So essentially, version one will be very simple, and it will allow you to upload pictures of clothing, shoes and accessories that you’re willing to share with your friends. So you’re essentially making a virtual closet. And then when you and your friends have an event, a date, a job interview, a wedding or whatever to go to, you can browse through each other’s closets to see what your friends have said that they’re willing to share and then make borrow requests. And then we keep track of who’s borrowed what from whom so you don’t forget who has your earrings your scarf or your shoes. Then we send reminders to your friends for you so you don’t have to nag them or ask them when you want your things back. The original thing was just making it available, just to see what your friends are willing to share. But as we were polling college students, we realized that most people do share – 70% said that they do share – but they said that they would share more or that they would start sharing if they didn’t have to be the ones to ask for their stuff back.
Sara: Like, if they made sure their items were being cared for appropriately.
Andrea: Yeah. And then, Am I gonna forget where I lent my stuff? Because we do these things.
Sara: So we tried to make Share Closet take care of all of that.
How did you start? What was the first thing you did to make this a reality?
Andrea: We have never been asked that question before.
Sara: Andrea had started kind of exploring the idea by going to workshops. You went to a Google workshop…
Andrea: I took a class at Chatham! Of all things, I can’t believe how perfect it is that this is the first time we’ve been asked this question. My dear friend Erica, who was a business major in college, said, You need to take this class with me, the Kaufmann FastTrac® NewVenture™ training program. So I did, I took that class, and just learned a whole lot of the basic stuff, like how to incorporate and learning about your market and learning about the industry.
Sara: That was a big jumping-off point for Share Closet.
Andrea: Especially because the people at the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship were so helpful with making connections for us. This is totally a little shout-out for Chatham. This is so perfect. But it was very, very helpful to us because that’s when they said, Oh, you should do this thing at Google! So we went there. And then, they said, Oh, we’re going to get you connected with PopCity. And so then they wrote about us. And keep in mind, at this point, we have no product, right? We’re not developers. So we’re like, okay, we’ll do this thing for PopCity. And then some people started signing up to use this thing that didn’t exist yet, and it just sort of snowballed from there. People were signing up and we were like, Super duper! We’ll keep you posted.
What roles do you have within the company and how did you build your team?
Sara: That part of Share Closet has been a process.
Andrea: That has probably been the most challenging part: finding someone to build it.
Sara: When you’re building [a team], especially with a startup, things just happen, so everybody does a little bit of everything. Andrea and I, we’ve done a little bit of everything ourselves until we needed a developer. So we searched high and low for the right person, we explored every avenue in Pittsburgh, and as we meet people and get referalls, we’ve kind of built a team. We had a really awesome experience at Startup Weekend…. We still have people on our team who we met at Startup Weekend.
Andrea: As far as the roles that we each play, we’ve been doing some soul-searching, to be perfectly honest with you, about who we are. Because I think one of the hardest things to do as a new entrepreneur, at least, or as someone who doesn’t have experience in starting a business before, is being brutally honest with yourself. And just being like, There is no reason to be proud and say, I’m going to take on this role because I said it on my business cards before. It’s more important to learn than it is to stay rigidly attached to what you’ve said before. There’s no reason to do it, and it can hurt your company. It can kill your company.
Up until recently, I’ve said, I guess I’m the CEO…. And I just realized, I love to be creative, I love to write, I love to do that sort of thing, so maybe really I’m more of a Creative Director to Share Closet. So when it comes to, how are we going to roll out, how are we going to do these sorts of things, I’m all over that stuff. I love that. But when it comes to equity and pricing and numbers and charts and graphs, I would literally rather walk barefoot over a mile’s worth of hot, fiery lava. Maybe. I mean, not to exaggerate.
Sara: No, no, it’s fine. I feel like I’m still exploring a lot of what I’m good at at Share Closet. But it’s been easier to figure out that I don’t mind doing the stuff that Andrea hates to do.
Andrea: Like the charts.
Sara: Yeah.
Andrea: Anything that resembles math or science in any fashion.
Sara: Yeah. And that’s easy for me, and it’s fun to learn about, so that kind of creates a fun relationship for us.
Andrea: Yeah, and she’s also really, really organized. I like to think that I’m not a total trainwreck, but Sara definitely keeps things together.
Share Closet landing page
How big is your team right now?
Sara: There’s like five or six of us on the core team of Share Closet, and then we have this whole group of advisors who have tremendously helped us navigate our choices and give us advice on what’s the right thing to do. And to be perfectly honest, everybody in Pittsburgh has been very helpful. We haven’t run into that many major issues that we haven’t been able to take care of.
Andrea: Yeah, Pittsburgh’s great.
A lot of people come up with entrepreneurial ideas in college, but there’s that fear factor. Is there something that stands out to you as the thing that scared you the most about this whole process?
Andrea: Quitting our jobs!
Sara: It’s so funny because it was so easy for me to push Andrea in the direction of doing Share Closet. Like, Go for it! Quit your day job. Go for it, go for it. And not that I’ve ever not been committed to Share Closet before, because I fully am, but when it actually came down to quitting my job…
Andrea: It was really hard.
Sara: It’s a hard decision.
Andrea: She had to go on a European hiatus and collect her thoughts.
Sara: So overcoming the fear of not having resources or income, and just trusting that what you’re doing is the right thing, that’s been the biggest [fear].
Andrea: But also, at the same time, the most fulfilling. And, for the record, we’re still not sure how that’s going to play out. I think one of the myths that I had about entrepreneurship is that once you make a decision, that sets you on the path that you’re on forever or something. I just thought, Okay, so we quit our day jobs and then we start making money. Because that’s what has to happen in order to stay without a day job. But as it turns out, you have to stay creative. You have to stay flexible. And so it seems like, okay, well maybe we’ll make Share Closet our main day job, and then we’ll have like something that we go to at night or whatever. So it really is just a matter of being able to emotionally manage the risk and…
Sara: Trust yourself.
Andrea: Yeah, trust yourself. But also, be smart and willing to say yes. That’s one of the things that we talk about a whole lot. Like, when I first quit my day job, you just have to be willing to say yes to the universe. If that means that there’s this crazy vocal chord research study that’s going to pay you fifty bucks, you freaking do it and you just see what happens. I work two nights a week at the farmers’ market, and…
Sara: Babysit.
Andrea: Yeah. Plant begonias. Whatever it is that comes up. It’s fun trying to be open.
What’s the most fun part of the whole experience?
Sara: The most fun part…. There’s two things, I guess. It’s pretty kicka** to work with your best friend every day. Not gonna lie about that. But it’s fun having an idea and going through this whole process and meeting all these people. It’s fun discovering real friends. People being able to help you and you being able to help other people and just everybody collaboratively working on this thing together. So it’s really cool to see how it hasn’t been just our project, it’s been lots of ideas from lots of people. That whole process is so cool.
Andrea: I think one of the most fun moments that I can think of was…it was when the Buccos were playing the Wild Card Game, whenever that was. My sister texted me – she goes to Bowling Green in Ohio – and she said, Oh my god you’re famous! And I was like, What are you talking about? And she said, My friend was just talking with one of her friends, and I overheard her saying something about Share Closet. I walked up and I said, Did you know that that’s my sister’s company? And she was like, What? And so the next day, I said, Are you sure that she was talking about Share Closet? Because people use the word ‘share’ and they’re talking about how you share a status on Facebook…. And she’s like, Yes! I’m completely sure! And sure enough, the next day, I saw that there were new people from Bowling Green that were liking our page. And I was like, What? This is so crazy! How did they even find out about this to begin with?
Sara: Yeah, that’s cool.
Andrea: So little things like that when we realize we’re not the only loonies that are excited about sharing clothes. There are plenty of people that want to do this, so that’s fun.
Fundamentally, what do you want college students to know about Share Closet?
Sara: We both really want Share Closet to be a place where people can grow their friendships through their closets. We talk all the time about how opening your closet is a way of opening your life, especially to your friends. Our friendship, believe it or not, really grew because we were able to share clothes with each other, and that’s something that’s really special to us.
Andrea: It really is.
Sara: We just want Share Closet to be a place where people can come and feel safe and foster relationships.
Andrea: And in the long term, one of the things that we hear a whole lot is that people shared a whole lot in college and then they graduated and they moved to a new city for work or for an internship, and then they lost these networks of people. And so what we want to do is be the hallway that connects you and your friends’ closets to each other so that if you have a friend in Dallas, if you have a friend in Boston, if you have a friend in Sacramento, wherever they are, you can stay connected that way. And then if you are local, if you are with your friends, how great to have face time with your friends right before a job interview, right before a first date, right before a class reunion: these things that can spark anxiety or just possible milestones in your life. So I think it’s great to be able to give your friend your lucky pencil skirt with a little Post-It that says, You’re gonna kill it! I think that’s great. I think that’s what it’s about. We’re not meant to do this alone.
Photo courtesy of Ray Miles Creative
A lot of people are talking about competitiveness among women in the workplace. What do you bring out in one another that makes your friendship so strong?
Andrea: That is easy for me to answer. I am a different person because of Sara. I had just sort of told myself this story my whole life, like, I’m gonna be a social worker, so I’m probably not ever going to have a lot of money and I’m always going to have student debt, and I’ll probably end up burnt out and grouchy and whatever, and that just is what it is and that’s okay. Because I want to help people, so at the end of the day, as long as I’m helping people, that will be okay. And then Sara burst into my life and was like, What? You can do anything you want! You can do anything you want! And you have to. And I will kick you in the shins until you do it. Like, literally. If we’re at a networking event and they say, Okay, who wants to pitch their idea? And I’m pale-faced, clammy – this is the part where I break out in hives and run and hide in the corner – Sara has actually kicked me in the shins before and been like, Get up there right now! She doesn’t let me off the hook. And so I feel like even though I still feel nervous – and I’ve had to come up with my own coping skills for speaking in public and that sort of thing – Sara has really pushed me to not be afraid. And if there’s one thing I think probably holds other women back, it’s just being afraid. We tell ourselves this story and we get comfortable with it, and even if we’re not in love with it, we’re like, this is safe. This is my little safe spot.
Sara: I read a whole lot of articles about how women – especially when they’re in the business field – feel almost like you have to be a b*tch to be at the top of your level.
Andrea: Like nice girls don’t get the corner office.
Sara: It’s totally not true. And that question that you asked is easy for me to answer also because Andrea has pushed me to really find out what is best for me. Not what everybody else thinks is best for me, but what is really best for me and what is going to make me happy. So there is no reason for me to go to a networking event and think that I’m this know-it-all or need to be at the top of a company just because women have to push their way forward. Women should be helping each other.
Andrea: We should all be helping each other. I mean, the thing that I say a whole lot is, who wants to cross the finish line alone? Maybe some people are happy to do that, but at the risk of sounding cliché, you can’t take it with you. And so if we want to be whole people, which is what I want to be in the business of doing, we have to realize that we are going to die someday. This party has an end, and who do you want to be when you get to the end of it? If you want to be a lonely rich person, have fun, but I would so much rather do this with a friend. I would so much rather get to the end of this and be a happy person.
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