This week we had an insightful chat with Care+Wear, a company that’s leading the charge in creating fashionable healthwear for patients, currently specializing in creating PICC covers. They shared the inspiration behind their company and explained how Refersion has helped their business.
About The Business: Origins And Lessons
The origin story of Care+Wear is a bit different from other startups. It all started two and a half years ago when a friend was diagnosed with cancer. As part of the treatment, the friend was required to have a PICC line. A PICC line is a long catheter (essentially a tube) that’s inserted into a vein in a patient’s arm, leg or neck.
The friend was told to wear a tube sock to cover the PICC line site. As Care+Wear explained it, this made “the uncomfortable treatment even more uncomfortable.” The tube sock was inconvenient in day-to-day activities and a “constant reminder” of the illness.
“Whenever you go to the hospital, everything is based on function and not necessarily how it makes you feel,” explained co-founder Chaitenya Razdan.
Seeing a close friend going through this inspired Razdan to reach out to the wife of another friend — who just so happened to be in the fashion industry.
He wanted to know if she could create something more fashionable and comfortable for his friend to wear, something other than the tube sock. So she got to work and the initial PICC cover was born.
While Care+Wear’s origin story is rather unique, co-founder Razdan believes that some of the entrepreneurial advice he’s learned can be applied to most other small businesses.
“ You need to find something you’re super passionate about,” Razdan said. “For me, that’s helping people.”
He also explained that entrepreneurs should be prepared to personally grow when starting their own company.
“ The ‘never give up’ mentality many of our patients have — I feel like that’s rubbed off on me,” Razdan said.
Razdan also elaborated on his favorite part about starting his business.
“I love knowing that we’re having a positive impact someone’s life,” he said.
How Care+Wear Uses Refersion
Curious as to how the Care+Wear business uses Refersion? Razdan was happy to share his thoughts on the platform.
“It’s great in terms of how easy it is to use,” he said. “The dashboard is easy to understand and real-time reporting is great.”
Razdan expressed how convenient Refersion is at managing affiliates.
“You can easily set commissions and make direct payments,” he said. “The platform is also great for affiliates to see how they’re doing and for us to get a good sense of who are best affiliates are.”
“Overall it’s an awesome tool and platform, and really provides a great opportunity to build an affiliate program from scratch,” Razdan said.
Razdan was also quick to offer advice to other businesses on the topic of building an affiliate program.
“It takes time,” he admitted. “ You aren’t always able to see results right away, which can be frustrating.”
But he emphasized that businesses need to understand that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
He recommended for businesses to find a pool of people that they think would make great ambassadors for their brand.
“They have to be passionate about your company or your cause,” he said. He explained that looking for people naturally interested in your niche makes things easier rather than looking for people that will need to “force” their enthusiasm.
“For example, Fran Drescher has a foundation called ‘Cancer Schmancer’. We got connected with her foundation and started chatting,” he said. “Long story short: Fran is now an affiliate.”
The secret, he said, was time, patience, and having some solid affiliate software in place.
Interested in supporting Care+Wear? Know someone that could use their healthwear? Check out their store!
