Betsie Larkin spent about a decade on stage, touring the world as a vocalist for some of electronic dance music's biggest acts. Before every show she reached for the same thing - shapewear meant to smooth a silhouette under stage lights - and every time it did the same thing: it rolled down, dug in at the wrong places, and left her adjusting instead of performing.
Larkin's frustration was not unusual. When she later surveyed close to a thousand women, roughly 70% reported the same complaint: shapewear that migrated, pinched, or was made from fabric too cheap to trust. What was unusual was her response. Rather than accept the category's limits, she started sketching garment designs backstage around 2016, then spent two years on manufacturing research and prototypes.
The result launched publicly in 2018 as Honeylove - legally, Honeylove Sculptwear, Inc. - and it arrived with an argument baked in. Shapewear, the company proposed, had been sold on a fantasy of transformation when the real, unglamorous problem was fit and retention. Solve the engineering, and the marketing takes care of itself.
That premise turned out to be commercially durable. A Kickstarter campaign raised more than $300,000, much of it on the first day. A spot in Y Combinator followed, then a seed round with backers that included Serena Williams and Joe Montana's investment fund, and eventually a $13 million Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. By 2024 the company had served more than three million customers and landed at #660 on the Inc. 5000.
Today Honeylove operates out of Los Angeles as a direct-to-consumer business, selling shapewear, wireless bras, bodysuits, underwear and everyday apparel primarily through its own website, with select wholesale placement at retailers such as Dillard's.
