shapewear
(7)
Betsie Larkin and the business between two songs
While touring with Armin van Buuren, Betsie Larkin used the gap between performances to sketch garments and talk to factories. Honeylove grew out of a problem she could no longer ignore on stage.
SKIMS made the underwear the outfit
Kim Kardashian started with the layer nobody was supposed to see. SKIMS built a business by making fit, skin tone and everyday comfort part of the fashion conversation.
Justin Kassan
Justin Kassan is the Chief Marketing Officer of Honeylove, the Los Angeles-based sculptwear and intimates brand founded by musician Betsie Larkin. He joined in 2025 after roughly a decade spent inside some of the most recognizable direct-to-consumer brands in America: he ran paid social acquisition at Dollar Shave Club, climbed from Director of Acquisition to VP of Growth at the watch brand MVMT, and served as Vice President of Media at Fabletics from 2023 to 2025. His specialty is the unglamorous engine room of modern retail - media buying, attribution, creative testing and the arithmetic of turning ad spend into repeat customers. He studied Environmental Science at UC Santa Barbara before ending up, improbably, in the business of compression panels and wireless bras.
Honeylove
Honeylove is a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer apparel company that designs shapewear, wireless bras, and everyday intimates engineered with targeted compression and supportive panels. Founded in 2018 by former EDM vocalist Betsie Larkin after she couldn't find shapewear that stayed in place on stage, the brand built its reputation on no-roll construction and comfort-first engineering. It has grown from a $300K Kickstarter and a Y Combinator batch into a nine-figure-revenue business serving more than 3 million customers, backed by a $13M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Knix
Knix is a Toronto-based direct-to-consumer intimate apparel company that pioneered the leakproof underwear category. Founded in 2013 by Joanna Griffiths, it designs machine-washable, reusable period and leakproof underwear, bras, activewear, swimwear and shapewear built for the realities of menstruation, bladder leaks, postpartum and body changes. Known for size-inclusive design and a mission to empower women to be 'unapologetically free,' Knix grew into the #1 leakproof brand in North America and was acquired by Swedish hygiene giant Essity in 2022 in what was reported as the largest exit by a Canadian female founder.
Victoria's Secret & Co.
Victoria's Secret & Co. is a Columbus, Ohio-based specialty retailer of lingerie, intimates, beauty and fragrance, operating the Victoria's Secret, PINK and Victoria's Secret Beauty brands along with the digital-first label Adore Me. Spun off from L Brands as an independent NYSE-listed company (VSCO) in 2021, it sells bras, panties, sleepwear, activewear, body care and fragrance through roughly 1,300 retail stores, a global network of partner-operated locations and a large e-commerce operation. With about $6.55 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and around 31,000 employees, the company is pursuing a turnaround that pairs a revived Victoria's Secret Fashion Show with a broader, more inclusive brand message.
Shapewear, Roller Coasters, and Borrowed Cars Walk Into a Contact Center
Three companies that couldn't look less alike — SPANX in shapewear, Herschend in theme parks, and Turo in car sharing — turn out to share the same architecture underneath: a CRM-first, cloud-native contact center on UJET, no stored PII, deployment measured in weeks or hours, and one hard number each that moved. This profile examines the common pattern behind three very different customer-experience turnarounds.