Founder Series: Kelly Slattery, Founder & CEO of Barely Canadian

Introducing Kelly Slattery: the visionary entrepreneur and heart behind Barely Canadian. Nearly two decades ago, Kelly embarked on a remarkable journey as a Canadian newcomer to the United States, driven by a desire to turn her dreams into reality. Guided by the symbol of the rainbow, Kelly's path led to love, family, and the creation of Barely Canadian - a social enterprise company that creates super soft clothing to support foster youth.

Barely Canadian is more than just a business; it's a way to teach children teamwork and how a business is run, providing foster families and youth the chance to participate. A portion of its sales goes towards organizations such as Echoes of Hope, a nonprofit the team believes in and has served as volunteers for several years.

We sat down with the founder to discuss the vision behind the business, its commitment to helping foster youth thrive, and more.

What motivated the inception of Barely Canadian?

It started as a result of feeling freezing all the time and my husband monikering me as “Barely Canadian.” We joked that we needed a line of summer sweaters and mittens for whinging Canadians like myself, during a California summer, and had an “ah-ha” moment. Where does one buy light sweaters? Why not have soft “smittens” to protect your hands from the elements? As we realized this could be a company, we immediately thought, what a great way to teach our kids about basic business and life skills.

Once we decided to fully dive in and do this, we set our goals for the company: to create the softest, highest quality, sustainable clothing line that helps support foster youth and to show our children how hard work and perseverance can lead to great things.

When we foster-to-adopted our children from foster care at ages 16 and 17, we quickly learned that our amazing, vibrant, smart kids never had the opportunity to learn the same life skills that were showcased for us growing up. Barely Canadian became and is the greatest opportunity to model for our kids that any idea can come alive by taking it one step at a time. We’re a small, but growing brand that wants to help the foster community in any way we can.

The Fosterpreneur Inc. program seems like a powerful initiative. Can you tell us about the key components of the program?

Fosterpreneur was created to help foster youth learn how to create their own business through their own designs and through their own mission and vision, and a portion of all of our sales goes to supporting this goal. The ultimate goal is to teach foster youth how to leverage their talents to create businesses and opportunities that pave the way for them to become self-sufficient, confident and successful. As a small business, our entire team works to mentor individuals on each part of the business, and help them gain valuable interpersonal skills and business experience.

Separately, we’ve also created a program that we have taught both in-house at Barely Canadian and on the UCLA campus to former and current foster youth. The idea is for the students to create a brand that aligns with something they’re passionate about, and build a business from there. Once their brand has an image and logo, we press their logo onto one of our products that we post for sale on our site. When someone buys that product, the money goes to the student. They get the tangible gratification of income, but also see that they’ve created something that someone wants.

We also have a practical and highly impactful 6-week business program that we teach in our Barely Canadian showroom, where we pay foster youth to train in a business and retail environment. Students get to learn how we go from client request to final delivery, and all the steps in-between.

Running a business that intertwines a meaningful mission with commerce can be intricate. What are some of the unique challenges you've faced in balancing the social impact goals of Barely Canadian with the operational demands of a growing business?

Interestingly, the biggest challenge is training beyond our core team. Many of the foster youth we employ have not worked in a professional environment before and need dedicated time to learn these new skills. When I’m in the midst of booking meetings, getting proposals out, running our social, overseeing production, reconciling your books, etc., it can be very challenging to teach at the same time, while getting a young business up and running.

That said, the Fosterpreneur program is such a wonderful complement to Barely Canadian, I’d love to spend more resources focusing on this, but there’s only so much time in one day. This might be a good time to share that we’re always looking for volunteers who are eager to help guide foster youth into their most successful futures. We welcome anyone who’d like to lend a hand with whatever time and talents they have - we can find a place for you!

In teaching foster youth about various skills, what are some of the most rewarding moments you've experienced?

There have been so many! But there was one moment from July that put such a smile on my heart, I’ve shared it often since then. We have a fantastic team member who is working hard to try to get her kids back from care. Having been in the system herself it's quite common for the cycle to repeat itself. She had virtually no work experience and she’d often become very nervous and overwhelmed when asked to do anything out of her comfort zone.

One day we had a customer in the Barely Canadian Showroom and I encouraged her to walk over and ask if they needed help. She shared that she was nervous, but I encouraged her to take a deep breath and try. She looked at me, took a deep breath, and said, “whenever I’m uncomfortable it’s an opportunity for growth.” It almost knocked me off my feet - I was so proud of her! I said, “Good for you!” And she said, “I learned that from you! You tell me that all the time.” It was a big moment for both of us because she found her power and the license to launch into her best and most courageous self, and I had this belly full of joy because I realized it’s working. She’s paying attention and this program is working!

Your message and mission are incredibly meaningful. What are some strategies you've employed to effectively communicate this message?

Our messaging is essentially softness on a mission. Our clients are very aware that we are a social enterprise, super soft clothing brand and that a portion of our profits go to supporting the foster community. We are also building a network of vendors that support worthy causes in the same way that we do. It’s allowed us to offer our clients the opportunity to support other organizations as well, through doing business with us.

Another unique element of our brand is that we customize our products for our clients and have stepped into the promotional advertising world as well. Most of the hoodies in the promotional advertising world are made overseas with basic fabrics. We share with partners and clients that if they’re going to put their name on apparel, they’ll have better results in overall wear of the product, and appreciation from their customers if it’s made with super soft high quality fabrics, and made sustainably. The nicer the product, the longer it will be worn and with more frequency.

Looking ahead, what are your future goals for Barely Canadian and the Fosterpreneur Inc. program?

One of our goals for expanding is to continue to build our current partnerships and work with more brands that have an agenda for social good - putting more resources back into the community. The more clients we take on, the more foster youth we can get involved and learning.

We are so fortunate to have created some amazing and really impactful partnerships with organizations like the LA Kings, LA Galaxy, Justice HQ, Sweet Spot, Simon Law Group, Gabe’s GPS, SMPREP, etc. Our goal is to continue to grow with these incredible partners, with more to come!

To learn more about Barely Canadian and its mission, please visit the Barely Canadian website.

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