Carly Bigi of Laws of Motion: Why Sizing Is Completely Broken Because the Apparel Industry Prioritizes Antiquated Manufacturing Over Customers

Some people were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth. Even then, becoming a millionaire is still quite an accomplishment. But people who start from nothing, and especially women who start from nothing, who make it to the top to become millionaires, despite the pay inequalities based on gender, the confidence gap, with nothing but grit, hustle, resilience, and “stick-to-itness”, are on a whole new level. We want to share those stories and inspire other women. In this interview series, we’re talking to “Self-Made” women leaders who started with nothing (i.e. started without investors or trust fund or capital or even people believing in them) and went on to create a million dollar business.

As a part of our series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carly Bigi.

Carly Bigi founded Laws of Motion with the belief that “women shouldn’t have to sacrifice time or money for a highly-tailored aesthetic.” Guided by that north star, Carly built a new-age fashion company which uses data science, interaction with each customer individually, and a set of algorithms developed to map women to their perfect size.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory” and how you grew up?

I grew up in Houston, Texas with deep roots in the NASA community. Growing up surrounded by engineers empowered me to be curious and view the present as a springboard for what could be possible. As a young child I was inquisitive about how things worked in the world, passionate about math and science, and quick to question the status quo — I even carried a backpack of tools in case I needed to fix something or build something. I also developed a passion for playing team sports and leading organizations at a young age. An intrinsic desire to be the best at whatever I set out to do meant that I was willing to work hard for results, which was important given that I attended one of the largest public high schools in Texas and played in some of the most competitive leagues in the country. I would workout before practice at 5AM so I could be fully present with my team, pull all-nighters creating strategies for school initiatives, and volunteer to take on more responsibilities in my jobs. At my core, I’ve always believed that anything is possible in life and that you might as well go for it because at the end of the day, we’re on a rock in space.

I decided to attend undergrad outside of Texas to broaden my perspective. I chose Vanderbilt University, where I studied Human and Organizational Development and explored how to develop myself, teams, and businesses through different frameworks. My innate curiosity from childhood led me to a career in management consulting and I moved to Chicago to work at Deloitte, which sponsored me to attend business school. I knew I wanted to be in New York City so I chose to attend Columbia and it was during that time that I built what is now Laws of Motion.

Growing up, what were your early experiences and perspectives about money? Or we could say, what was the “money consciousness” in which you were raised? Can you please give an example of what you mean?

I’ve always made my own money, which created a real appreciation for assets at an early age and provided a strong foundation for the fiduciary responsibilities of strategically allocating others’ capital as a founder and CEO. The truth is that I’ve always loved working — I found the ability to make money while adding value to society both rewarding and empowering. My parents divorced when I was young and I was raised by a single mom. My mom’s resilience and confidence instilled in me that with hard work, ingenuity, and the right mindset anything is possible. She went from staying at home full-time to teaching advanced math while launching a creative afterschool program to building software for the space shuttle. By the time I was in high school she was running mission control. The fact that she was raising my sisters and me on a single salary meant that at an early age I learned to only ask for what I needed, and to work hard for everything else.

I launched my first business when I was 11 (certified safe babysitters — it was a hit in the suburbs), worked at a local market and cafe, wrote reviews of colleges I visited, and was tapped by my high school principal to work as a paralegal at her husband’s law firm. No task was beneath me and no role intimidated me — I appreciated the opportunities, had fun, and gave each one my all. As a founder, I look for this in potential hires and have found it to be a key differentiator in how our team makes every situation the best it could possibly be.

Awesome! Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers about the business you’ve created?

Laws of Motion is an AI fit tech company accelerating the advent of sustainable and personalized digitization of the apparel industry. We believe in doing ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Powered by billions of data points, Laws of Motion engineers precision sizing that is rooted in inclusivity. We are committed to innovating how you experience perfect-fitting clothing by digitizing body dimensions for real-time predictive capabilities. Our machine learning technology utilizes proprietary AI architecture to predict body measurements with over 99% accuracy. Customers are mapped to your personalized size by completing a simple 60 second Fit Quiz or Body Scan.

We also believe in making products that are better for you and better for our planet. Laws of Motion is a zero waste, zero inventory company. We are committed to accelerating the advent of sustainable, autonomous supply chains. Our technology produces apparel utilizing an on-demand, state-of-the-art supply chain based in the Americas. All pieces are made using zero waste manufacturing and delivered within 10 days. Laws of Motion 40X’d revenues in our first two years, scaled from incubating our AI fit technology and zero waste manufacturing processes within our DTC womenswear brand to scaling our B2B solution across three of the largest industries, and grew our data set from millions of body measurements to billions of body measurements.

What was your vision when you started this business? What’s the WHY behind the work that you do? (Please share a story about this if you can.)

I founded Laws of Motion with the belief that women should be a force at whatever we choose to be and that, no matter what size or shape you are, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice time, money, or values for a highly-tailored aesthetic. It all started when I was a management consultant, working 80-hour weeks and consuming 8x more coffee than the average human should. One weekend, I went shopping for work clothes with a guy friend. He walked into a menswear shop and spent less than 30 minutes selecting fabric, getting measured, and sipping whiskey. Three days later, a well-priced and impeccable-fitting suit arrived at his door. I, on the other hand, trekked to a dozen different stores, finding something that sort of fit, that was sort of my style, and sort of my price point. I took it to get tailored, waited a week, and in the end paid twice the price for something I liked half as much.

I recognized that sizing was broken because the apparel industry was broken — prioritizing antiquated and wasteful manufacturing processes instead of the customer — and that combining artificial intelligence and autonomous supply chains could create a highly scalable solution rooted in personalization and inclusivity. Creating products that are better for people and the planet shouldn’t be revolutionary, but hey equal pay shouldn’t be either. At Laws of Motion, we believe in being a force at whatever you choose to be — and we exist to fuel those ambitions. As a DTC brand, we fuel our customer’s ambitions through perfect-fitting apparel made with zero waste. As an AI fit tech company, we empower other brands and creators to offer personalized apparel at scale and serve as the nucleus for disruption within the apparel industry.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Laws of Motion was nine months old when Covid-19 swept across the world and I had a terrible case of the virus in early March 2020. While facing the worst of my symptoms, our NYC-based team watched as our city and country suffered, too — non-essential businesses closed, healthcare providers wore tablecloths as gowns, and temporary morgues launched across NYC. At a time when so many felt so helpless, I told the team that this is when we dig into the ingenuity and innovation that got us to where we are and that we would do everything we could to help. We decided to pivot our on-demand, Americas-based supply chain to help tackle the dire shortage of PPE in the US and agree that doing so wasn’t only the right decision — it was the only decision. That week, Laws of Motion launched the Hero Initiative.The mission of the Hero Initiative was to empower our community to support those in need, protect frontline heroes, and help save lives. Over the course of just a few months, we produced over 5,000,000 pieces of PPE and donated over 1,000,000 masks to communities in need. This pivot prioritized purpose over profit, and our team worked around the clock to bring the emergency response effort to life. Fast Company just named our Hero Initiative pivot a 2021 World Changing Idea, and Columbia Business School wrote a case about our pivot, which I teach twice a year in Entrepreneurial Strategy.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

That time I decided to name the company Laws of Motion without looking it up from an SEO perspective, is definitely up there. It taught me the value of building a company through community and search terms that reflect the value you add to society. My hypothesis is that we’ll see a shift in SEO significance with web3 and the metaverse anyway.

We’d love to explore the traits that help you achieve your success. What were the mindset obstacles that you had to overcome in order to reach the place of earning millions of dollars? Can you tell us what you did to overcome them?

• Curiosity — The best solutions stem from understanding the root cause of an issue and to a willingness to be in a constant state of development. It’s common at Laws to hear “my hypothesis is…” and the underlying curiosity is something that’s helped me push the boundaries of what’s possible for our team and helped our team be at the forefront of AI fit tech innovation.
• Perseverance — I’ve always believed that if something was easy or obvious then it would already be done. The pursuit of building world-changing technology that will revolutionize the future of an industry in a way that directly benefits people and our planet comes with constant challenges. The ability to see challenges as opportunities and never accepting “no” as an answer is something that’s been central to our success as a company.
• Prioritization — Time is our most valuable and scarce resource. Early on in my career, I worked tirelessly to do everything immediately and to the best of my ability. At Laws of Motion, I’ve taken a different approach. Any high growth startup is faced with constantly shifting priorities and I use the Eisenhower matrix (level of importance v level of urgency) to categorize open items on an ongoing basis. This framework coupled with stand-ups provides a common vehicle for team alignment.
• Ingenuity — Having a vision that will change the world for the better and dedicating yourself to bringing that to life instills in you that just because something has been done a certain way in the past does not mean that’s necessarily the way to do it going forward. You won’t change the world by being like it and the more I became comfortable with that discomfort, the more we accomplished as a company.
• Praise — I believe in celebrating your people and celebrating team wins. I’ve grown to also believe in celebrating learnings from losses and think that doing so is a critical part of encouraging fast failures that are essential for true innovation. We have a Friday wins call where the sole purpose is to celebrate wins and learnings from losses on an equal footing. It’s been a great way to maintain morale and grow together.

What were the external obstacles that you had to overcome in reaching these milestones? And how specifically did you overcome them? (Please share a story or example.)

When I was first getting started, I intended to raise around $500K and was proactive in reaching out to other founders and investors in my network for insights on raising. I will never forget one man telling me that it would take twice as long and I’d likely raise half as much because I was a solo, first-time female founder. While there were many sentiments I wanted to offer in response, I simply smiled and said game on. 1.5 months later I closed an oversubscribed $1M pre-seed. At the time, Laws of Motion was pre-brand, pre-revenue, and pre-product, and yes, I was still a solo first-time female founder. Be open to all ideas and neutral to none — you are you and that is your superpower.

Was there ever a point where you wanted to give up on your journey to creating a multi-million dollar business? How did you work through that panic point? Please share a story.

No. I would never give up. This career is a dream for me and any obstacle that might come my way would never deter me from giving up.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are certain humans who are a walking “yes and” in life. My powerhouse friend and mentor, Arlyn, is one of them. The week after I started to work on Laws of Motion full time, I ran into Arlyn at three different entrepreneur events in the city. She had an incredible presence and I admired how confidently she addressed the room. Little did I know that she was also a Columbia Business School alum, had just exited her first tech startup, and was exploring what to do next. Arlyn and I became fast friends and she was invaluable in the earliest days of Laws, helping me craft my initial pitch deck, brainstorming business names during our 6am “pumps” (power walks) through the West Village, and serving as the ultimate hype woman every step of the way. I remember Arlyn telling me before a pitch that it wasn’t even a question if the fund was going to invest, it was just a matter of how much, and to let her know when they were in. Sure enough, they invested and the check was double what I expected. Five years later and so much has changed but quarterly pumps with Arlyn remain a constant. She celebrates wins with a “yes and” followed by big ideas for book deals or reality shows and immediately offers ideas about ways you can solve challenges, framing them as the greatest opportunity ever. And if I’m ever doubting myself even in the slightest, Arlyn is there to set me straight. The key is to align yourself with humans like Arlyn who almost believe in you more than you believe in yourself and who will remind you that you’ve got this, because you do.

What were the most important resources, tools, affirmations, mindset strategies or practices that you used to build your business to where it is today?

This is such an important topic and I value learning from other founders and greats about how they stay aligned with their true north. Prioritizing whatever you need to be the best version of yourself allows you to empower your team to prioritize whatever they need to be the best versions of themselves and that’s how 1+1 can equal a million.

• Mindset — At the highest level, I believe that we’re all here for a reason so your intuition is a powerful thing, that like frequencies attract like frequencies so how you choose to view the world will directly influence the opportunities in your life, and that anything is possible so don’t just think outside the box — think like there is no box.
• Resources — The books The Daily Stoic and Zen and the Art of Happiness help keep me centered, and the workout app Melissa Wood Health is a gamechanger for incorporating movement throughout the day (I love her shorter series).
• Rituals — I also have a standing 30 minute meeting with myself first thing in the morning to reflect on how I intend to allocate energy throughout the day and anticipate any challenges I may run into so I can be fully present throughout the day.

What do you think is the greatest challenge for women and creating wealth/abundance? What advice would you have for someone that is feeling blocked by that obstacle?

There are funding differentials statistically, but don’t put yourself in that box. Learn from mentors who have done it before you and surround yourself with humans who make you feel like you can do anything on earth — because you can.

Great! Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

• First, ignore everything people tell you before you start. I’m kidding. But do keep in mind that there is no one way to do anything and you are you for a reason — listen to your intuition.
• Success is a collection of hard and fast failures. Make mistakes early, calibrate quickly, and keep going.
• Optimizing your day around energy levels is a cheat code to working smarter not harder. More energized in the morning? Great, schedule your most important meetings then. Hate mornings? Also great, schedule your most important meetings in the afternoon.
• If a potential hire isn’t a hell yes, then they’re a hell no. This will create more value for the company and for them, and will save you so much time and energy.
• Always add the egg. Life’s too short not to.

We are sure that you are not done. What comes next? What’s your next big goal and why? What plan have you put in place to achieve it? Why is it a stretch for you? What will achieving it represent for you and for others?

Laws of Motion is committed to revolutionizing the apparel industry. We will continue to innovate on AI fit technologies, powering the inclusive sizing and sustainable supply chain capabilities of other brands, platforms, and creators, while empowering our DTC community through perfect-fitting timeless aesthetics.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

@lawsofmotion @carlybigi www.lawsofmotion.com

Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and our readers. We know that it will make a tremendous difference and impact thousands of lives. We are excited to connect further and we wish you so much joy in your next success.

Thank you!