Little Words Project founder Adriana Carrig on making friendship bracelets a thriving business even before Taylor Swift

Little Words Project launched in 2013 as a quasi-side hustle of founder Adriana Carrig. But the project soon turned into a standalone business. Fast forward to today, Little Words Project has 12 stores around the U.S., is profitable and has hit a revenue run rate of over $20 million.

Carrig joined this week’s Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the brand’s journey and what it’s focused on in the year to come.

As Carrig sees it, community is what has helped Little Words Project be so successful thus far. In its early days, Carrig would post on Instagram — before it became crowded with preened photos and airbrushed influencers — about what the business was and how she was growing it.

“[It was] really just bringing our community on along for the ride,” she said. “It definitely was the foundation for what the community ultimately became, which was this group of friends that just want to support one another, help one another, when they’re down.”

It’s easy to start an online community, but harder to keep it at the forefront when a business grows. For example, in 2022, Little Words Project expanded beyond its direct-to-consumer roots into large stores like Target.

“When it comes to the big-box story and how we keep that community build, it’s really just about making decisions with the concept of the community first,” she said. That meant making sure she was able to market Little Words Project in the same ways she had been doing online for years, as well as keeping the products at the same price point. And while Carrig has considered fading into the background and not being the brand’s figurehead, she now realizes, “I do want to be at the forefront.”

This remains true even when the products go viral, as was the case with the Taylor Swift song. The friendship bracelet became one of the summer’s hottest accessories, after Swift’s fans started gifting them to each other during her Eras tour concerts.

But, according to Carrig, while other brands tried to ride the wave of Swift fandom — making new products to try and go viral — Little Words Project changed nothing. But, the company was still able to be part of the fervor in bigger ways compared to brands that were only just now jumping on the trend. Musician Lance Bass gifted Taylor Swift a stack of friendship bracelets from Little Words Project on stage at the VMAs last year.

But even with the help of Swift, Carrig said the business has been so good that the Swift bump was only negligible. “We saw a less than 1% sales lift from that collection, which is immaterial when you think about the overall brand presence,” Carrig said. “And I think it just goes to show that the brand had its own legs before Taylor. And while the rest of the world who jumped on Taylor-adjacent things — that maybe didn’t make sense to their regular product assortment — they might have seen a more significant lift because they really did grift.”

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

How Little Words Project keeps its community in mind with big retail expansions
“When it comes to the big-box story and how we keep that community build, it’s really just about making decisions with the concept of the community first, being at the forefront of those decisions. So even when it came to Target, I was adamant that we could not go at a cheaper price point. And that’s not something that’s normal for Target. We weren’t making a sub-brand — we were taking our brand identity and putting it in Target. This was in an effort to maintain all of our independent retailer relationships that we had built tirelessly over the last decade. We did not want to offend or upset them, we did not want to affect our DTC business. We really wanted to be intentional with that decision. Further, I was adamant about having a real marketing presence. Like I wanted them to put my name — I wanted them to put the brand storytelling, the mission — behind it. I wanted a splash page on the website.”

The store opening strategy
“We opened our first store in November of 2021 in the West Village on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, and it was lightning in a bottle. I mean, it did $1 million in its first year. It was like an immediate four-wall profitable experience. And it was amazing to see the customer show up live, in person. We’d never had this in-person experience for these customers, and yet we were founded on community. And community makes you think [of] coming together, doing something together in person. And where the brand really took off was once it had that in-person experience at the retail store. So once we did the Bleecker Street experience we were like, wow, this could probably show up in tons of different markets.”

The Taylor Swift effect
“We’ve certainly leaned into [Taylor Swift-associated friendship bracelets] on our end. We created a collection that is the exact collection that Lance Bass actually gifted to Taylor Swift on the VMA stage… And so when that happened, we leaned into it immediately, we jumped on the viral social media play. And we popped those very bracelets up on our website that we knew Taylor now owned. And customers came out in droves to buy that collection, her fans bought that collection. And we definitely saw a little lift around that. But what’s funny is, we looked back at those numbers — we’ve actually had to do it recently for our investors and had internal conversations about the overall Taylor effect — and while she’s been an incredible brand adjacent female that we’re so proud to be associated with in some way, we saw a less than 1% sales lift from that collection, which is immaterial when you think about the overall brand presence. And I think it just goes to show that the brand had its own legs before Taylor. And while the rest of the world who jumped on Taylor-adjacent things — that maybe didn’t make sense to their regular product assortment — they might have seen a more significant lift because they really did grift. Whereas… I almost want to say we kind of paved the path to begin with on the friendship bracelet, and Taylor kind of slotted right in when it mattered.”