Today we’d like to introduce you to Cassandra Manning
Hi Cassandra, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have always had a plucky, entrepreneurial spirit and knew I eventually wanted to own my own business early on. I was the first kid to set up a lemonade stand every summer, the cookie queen of Girl Scouts, and always had a notebook of ideas fluttering through my head. However, I suffer from often debilitating anxiety that held me back from chasing my dreams, and what served me best in my formative years was giving my energy to already established companies. Over my career, I have worked for large and small brands, like Stitch Fix, Gymboree, and Limited Too, leading others and learning the retail ropes within their safety net.
One problem I found myself encountering, again and again, was how fiercely difficult it was for my peers to balance their home lives with their professional ones, especially if they didn’t have a plethora of support from their families. As I grew older, got married, started a family with my husband, and found myself tasked with caring for my aging Grandmother in my home, I knew returning to traditional retail would mean sacrificing my family’s complex needs for my career. This struggle began to gnaw away at me and I began to challenge this binary. Why couldn’t I find a way to both meet the needs of my family and chase my ideas?
I found myself staring down my 40th birthday around the time of the pandemic and entered a season of life where I allowed myself to let the fear of failure quiet for a moment. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to dream of what I could do if I were the one in charge. What would I change? What would I do differently? I began to devise a wild idea and manifest this dream into reality.
While the nuts and bolts of Thread and Clover came together rather quickly, the array of information-gathering and preparing for this role as a business owner has happened over a lifetime. I had been playing the understudy my entire life and eventually decided life was too short to not play the lead role at least once.
Over the past decade, the retail landscape has fundamentally pivoted to the digital wild west, and finding cute clothing that fits and is affordable felt like a monumental task. While I understand the convenience of online shopping, I also greatly value the in-store shopping experience and I wanted to be a part of the revival to bring these unique experiences back. There is a certain magic to be found when a grown woman twirls in a new dress in the fitting room, taking us back to the lighthearted moments of our youth that simply cannot be replicated from a quick bathroom try-on in dim light before rushing our kids to soccer practice.
I wanted to bottle this magic and turn it into a physical space. Where women could run wild, leaving the world behind for a brief moment and taking a moment for themselves again.
After a summer of second-guessing this wild dream, signing a lease on a space, and everything that accompanies starting a business, Thread and Clover opened its doors in September of 2022. While I’d love to say “and the rest was history!”, this journey has been a bumpy ride and I have learned more in 2 years than I have in perhaps my entire life.
Being a small business owner, you eat adaptation for breakfast. You must be plucky and pivot at every turn. Your threshold for failure is incredibly narrow and you must be whip-smart at all times. I threw myself into the fire and could have been immediately engulfed by the flames. Rather, as many entrepreneurs do, I have allowed it to shape me, growing stronger and more resilient with every turn.
There’s an entire world to learn and take inspiration from and I continue to grow every day. While this dream often feels impossible, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I would not trade this for the world. One of my favorite sayings is “Some women fear the fire, some become it”, and my advice to any woman starting her own business is simple: Do it. Become the fire. Do not let the fear of failure cripple you into inaction. Invest in yourself and chase that dream. You are worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.threadandclovermn.com
- Instagram: @threadandclovermn
- Facebook: @threadandclovermn
