Story by Liz Miller
Visuals by Michael Thomas
On a warm day in July, Lori Coulter and Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin arrive at the Summersalt offices in downtown Clayton ready for a photoshoot.
Usually they’re on the same side of the camera as the photographer who captures the joyful imagery used to promote their apparel, which started with women’s swimwear and has now expanded to include activewear, apparel, loungewear, and more.
Today, however, the camera is pointed at Coulter and Chamberlin, yet their instincts as stylists, art directors, and entrepreneurs shine through. Coulter considers which items from the Summersalt clothing line the founders should wear, while Chamberlin observes their poses and positioning behind the camera, making slight tweaks to enhance how their clothes and jewelry drape.
These details may seem small, but they both know that the details matter. Both serial entrepreneurs in their own rights, Coulter and Chamberlin built Summersalt from its nascent beginning in 2017 to a successful direct-to-consumer brand beloved for its focus on data-driven fit. To date, they’ve sold over 4 million garments in 140 countries — and have raised over $25 million dollars of funding in the process.
“In retail, you almost know day one if it’s going to go or not, and we had really captured lightning in the bottle,” Coulter says. “It’s been a wild ride since. And everything is designed and sourced here in St. Louis — I’m talking about the components around materials, our technical designers, pattern makers, fashion designers. All the brand and creative is still done in-house. So the authenticity of what we’re doing, the uniqueness, the differentiation, is driven by a St. Louis team.”
Data-Backed Design
Coulter first became interested in a data-driven approach to swimwear design and fit while in graduate school at WashU. She researched and studied digital body-scanning technology that led her to launch Lori Coulter Made-to-Order Swimwear in 2005. The brand produced custom-fitted swimwear using specialized tech and software as well as ready-to-wear swimwear. At that time, Coulter partnered with Macy’s to offer digital 3-D body-scanning to make its swimwear, which yielded data from 10,000 customers as well as customer feedback, which helped inform Coulter’s swimwear pattern library.
As Coulter was building her first business, Chamberlin was running a creative agency in St. Louis while also supporting direct-to-consumer brands across the U.S., with many based on the East Coast. The two women had met previously, including their first introduction at a networking event at T-REX in Downtown St. Louis, but didn’t know each other well when they crossed paths again in New York in January 2017.
“I’d been interviewing PR teams, and on the spot, cornered her and said, “Let’s look at this,” Coulter recalls with a laugh. “And she said, ‘I’m interested, but would you consider a co-founder?’ So one of the best decisions of my career and my life was to be open to a partner who I believed had a very complementary skill set, the same level of intensity, and the ability to make us both better individually.”
Chamberlin remembers that moment well — one where she asked for what she wanted, as she knew the value she could bring to the brand.
“After almost seven years at my agency, I was ready to wind that down and live, sleep, eat a brand as we do at Summersalt,” Chamberlin says. “And I had incredible respect for Lori. That evening, we both left there going, ‘Oh my God, did we actually decide to do this together?’ It was one of those moments.”
“The three things that made me excited about the business then are still what makes me excited about the business today,” Chamberlin continues. “One was the entire highway that we had to capitalize when it came to swimwear. No one was really owning the middle, what we call a highway where you had great quality for a great price and that really exceeded on the fit standpoint. The second reason was that we could create an exceptional product. And then the third reason: We could create that incredible product together.”
The runway to launch was short: Summersalt officially debuted on May 23, 2017, less than five months after Coulter and Chamberlin’s conversation in New York. The company, which has always been based in St. Louis, was an instant hit. The brand launched with a line of swimwear, including its signature suit, The Sidestroke, a color-blocked one-piece, one-shoulder design called the “unicorn of swimsuits” by The Today Show. The Sidestroke remains one of the brand’s best-selling styles, beloved for its compression fit, stylish design, and joyful colorways.
“Everything sold out right away,” Chamberlin recalls. “The best way to describe it ever since is an absolute wild ride of a rollercoaster.”
Soon after launching, Summersalt was featured in People, In Style, Elle, Forbes, and more, and in 2019, the company made CNBC’s list of The World’s Most Promising Startups. A year later, Fast Company named Summersalt one of the 10 Most Innovative Style Companies of the Year.
The two founders often describe Summersalt as sitting at the “intersection of tech and fashion,” a distinction that made the brand disruptive when it came to market in 2017.
“You can Google how many companies have launched swimwear and failed at bringing swimwear to market because they don’t understand the technicality of that fit,” Chamberlin says. “So that’s one place where that fit is so important, and the 10,000 women’s body scans, 1.5 million measurements, really provide that data-backed fit. However, another piece is having our team be technology forward: How do we use technology to make our jobs easier so that we can spend time doing the things that are super, super creative, super, super strategic and bring them to life?”
Suiting Up
As the company has grown, it’s proven to be both super creative and super strategic. Over the years, Summersalt has launched product collaborations with L.L. Bean, The Home Edit, Mac & Mia, Supergoop, and other popular brands. This summer, Summersalt celebrated the launch of two collaborations: one with Netflix series “Bridgerton,” with swimwear inspired by characters on the show, and the brand Weezie.
And over the past almost decade, Summersalt has expanded from women’s swimwear to activewear, apparel, and loungewear, as well as maternity, children’s, and matching family swimwear sets. Coulter and Chamberlin say those new products and categories were natural extensions of the brand as well as an evolution of meeting the market, as was the case with pivoting to loungewear during the pandemic.
“Summersalt really was intended to represent this idea of joy, engaging with life, wherever it might lead,” Coulter says. “We like to use the phrase, ‘The brand is for your bucket list trip to Bali or your slip-and-slide adventure in your backyard.’ But the common theme is about travel, fun, adventure, going places. COVID was a bit of a bump, because at that point in time, stay-at-home, cozy, comfy was really what her adventure was about, and so we met our customer in that moment intentionally. We had buys that we just transferred to more pajamas, loungewear, etc.”
Chamberlin echoes Coulter, expanding on the lessons they’ve learned as they approach the brand’s 10th anniversary next year.
“I think as a founder, you’re often a shock absorber for the team,” Chamberlin says. “You have to absorb the brunt of everything and then you have to be the positive force to continue to keep the engine moving no matter what the circumstance. And so I think our partnership has expanded because initially it was all about ambition and hard work.”
“And as any business will tell you, over 10 years you face so many things, from employees moving on to factories being shut down due to COVID, and the things that come with shipping and the industry changing. It’s things that you couldn’t even imagine. But now we’re just so much more resilient in the way in which we deal with that. We rely on each other, I think more now, at least I do than we did previously when it comes to strategy and how we deal with these things.”
Their business partnership has deepened over the years, both women say, as they’ve grown as entrepreneurs and leaders. Chamberlin has described Summersalt as a brand that’s “unapologetically for women,” and that ethos filters through not just in how products are designed and marketed, but how she and Coulter run their business.
“We made this business to make women feel confident,” Chamberlin says. “And if you think about many of the major fashion houses or large brands, they’re mostly run by men. We’re making it for women like us who are moms and juggling stuff, or who are not moms and juggling stuff. It’s a product made by women for women unapologetically. We’re not trying to build a product that doesn’t work for our bodies. It’s just about making women feel happy, comfortable, confident to dive in where life might lead.”
They also agree that St. Louis has been a part of their success story.
Coulter credits early local investors with helping launch the brand and supporting it on its journey. “We had a very small group of investors that made it possible for Summersalt to even launch and then even more that have supported us along the way and they have shown up consistently,” she says.
“This would not have happened if we didn’t live in St. Louis,” Chamberlin adds. “Timing is everything. Serendipity is everything. Opportunity is everything. You think about the fact that we have an affordable standard of living. We could take the risks to be able to build a business. If you have an incredibly high-paying job in New York and your spouse does, it’s very hard to take that risk to be able to build a business. There’s so many things that happen because of St. Louis.”