Who are Those Gals: Kaity Cimo & Katharine Requa, Co-Founders of For Now

For Now Co-Founders (L to R) - Kaity Cimo & Katharine Requa.jpg

Occupations: Co-Founders of For Now

Hometowns:

KR: Newcastle, ME
KC: Framingham, MA

Current ‘hoods:

KR: Back Bay
KC: Scituate

Books we’re currently reading:

KR: American Dirt by Jeannine Cummins
KC: I don’t have a book going at the moment - it’s hard to find time to read with two kids at home and trying to work full time during a pandemic!

Favorite workouts:

KR: BIG fan of Rebecca Pacheco / Omgal’s yoga classes + missing Jae Pukma’s classes at Equinox
KC: Peloton w/ Robin Arzon

We never leave home without____:

KR: water bottle / chapstick
KC: diapers / poop bags

Current dream trips:

KR: Honestly, at this point, just looking forward to going to Maine to see my folks.
KC: My sister’s May wedding in Napa had to be postponed so I’m really looking forward to that being rescheduled, seeing our family and watching her get married.

Favorite snack food:

KR: Carrots or peanut butter pretzels from Trader Joes
KC: Cape Cod chips

Who are your role models?

KR: Kaity - she’s growing a family and a business! Seemingly effortlessly.
KC: My sister, Holly Maloney. She worked her way to being the first female partner at one of the nation’s top investment firms, General Catalyst. All before age 33!

Tell us about For Now. What made you want to start the company?

After working side-by-side at a local fitness-wear brand, we began For Now as a marketing and operations consulting business specializing in emerging retail and e-commerce consumer brands. We saw a lot of early stage brands wrestle to get their product physically in front of their audience: digital marketing was expensive (and complex) and the barrier to entry for brick and mortar retail was too high. So we decided to focus our efforts on solving that problem by launching a retail incubator in Boston. For Now is a gathering space where small businesses can tell their story and sell their products without the risk or financial burden of opening their own store, and an opportunity for Bostonians to be learn about uncommon, up-and-coming merchandise.

How did you decide on the name For Now?

For Now was a placeholder name because we needed to get a website live for a potential client who wasn't going to wait around while we trolled thesaurus.com. It was potentially our first client and we didn't want to miss the opportunity. So we cranked on the website, went live, and were really happy with the outcome even though it was seemingly nameless. Pretty soon after that though, For Now started feeling For Real. We started attributing a meaning to the name.

Why are we being honest about this non-story? Because naming is hard, and even a non-story can be a story. Even for marketing people. Maybe even especially for marketing people. It's one of the hardest parts of getting a business going, but our word of advice? Maybe don't look so hard. You know that random file on your desktop or that bookmark folder on your browser where you've been saving business ideas? It's probably not called "business" or called "visceral" (one of our many thesaurus queries). What's it called? Stale Cake? Tiny Dancer? Maybe there's something there...

We’d love to learn more about your careers. How’d you get interested in retail and specifically in supporting products made by small businesses?

KR: My first job, in 8th grade, was packing orders for a small brand in my hometown. From there I dabbled in a couple different retail positions through high school and college. I never thought I would make a career out of it, but always enjoyed learning about new brands and meeting REALLY interesting customers. Fast forward to 2013ish and I found myself opening a store in Stowe, VT … and from there, the rest in history. Retail, for me, is an excuse to get to know more people - brands, customers, and everyone in between - heck, even our mailman is my homeboy. I find excitement in storytelling and think it’s thrilling when customers light-up when they find a personal connection to a brand or product.

KC: My background/career has been in marketing. After college I worked for a small marketing agency in Boston. I enjoyed it - the creative atmosphere - but after five years wanted to try something new. I worked in-house at a large company, Active.com, and then found myself working for another small company after that, Crane & Lion, a fitness wear brand. It was a great combination for me: marketing, creative atmosphere and a small business. I loved the scrappy atmosphere of start-ups and being able to wear all the hats. In parallel, I always enjoyed, in my spare time, discovering under the radar brands and products online and sharing the discovery with friends and my sister. That research was always something I thought “would be cool” to have as a career. I fell into retail specifically by way of Crane & Lion - it wasn’t something I planned but I really do love. Again, I love the physical creative space that also allows you to meet new people. One of the best unexpected things about my career is the network of entrepreneurs that I’ve become really close with - they feel like “my people” and I love supporting them.

How is COVID-19 impacting your business?

For Now is a retail store that was created to give digital brands the opportunity to exist, offline. We believe in community, face to face relationships, and storytelling, IRL. We closed our doors and quickly scrambled to take our offline presence online - a, now, digital platform to tell our brands stories until we can resume good old face to face interactions.

How can readers support you and other small businesses during this time?

Most importantly, be there for us when we’re all back on our feet but in the meantime, check out our online store!

What’s the best thing about starting your own business?

KR: I’ve always been a creature of comfort and stability - in starting a business I’ve learned my threshold for risk is more tolerant than I thought - there is something oddly comforting (and inspiring) in building something from scratch - decision by decision with no safety net.

KC: The satisfaction that comes with being able to envision and execute our own ideas.

What’s the hardest?

KR: Knowing that your safety net looks different - it’s more like a parachute.

KC: Knowing that the financial payoff for owning your own business won’t come for quite some time. Entrepreneurs really have to be scrappy and ok with close to no income for a while.

What skill is most important for you to be successful? Why?

KR: Resiliency. Buck up and keep on keepin’ on.

KC: Having conviction. If you authentically think your business is amazing and worth supporting, then other people will too. The second you waiver, it spreads like wildfire.

What professional accomplishment are you most proud of? Why?

KR: Opening our first store. And our second. But especially our first. It was a comedy of errors that would make almost anyone second guess their vision, but something takes over you at the 11th hour and you enter this weird alternate universe that jolts your survival instincts. We often refer to it as “blacking out” (minus the booze, but also sometimes with booze), you forfeit the ability to second-guess and the only thing you can do is take ACTION and then, sometimes after many hours, you snap out if it and the pieces start to come together - not always how you thought they would, but they do. Basically, being an entrepreneur is really just a constant game on whack-a-mole that you eventually get really good at.

KC: It might be because the wound is still fresh, but what I’m most proud of right now is our Female Founders Summit that was supposed to be on March 12th, but had to be postponed. I was so proud of all the work that went into it, the speakers we lined up, the tickets we sold - it was going to be amazing. And then oddly enough I’m really proud of the moment we decided to hold our heads up high and cancel due to the virus. There were definitely tears on my part, but it was hard not to be super proud of everything surrounding that moment.

Any advice for other professional ladies?

Entrepreneurship can be a roller coaster; extreme fluctuations between confidence and self doubt, happiness and frustration, full bank accounts and empty bank accounts. However at the end of the day, the autonomy trumps all.

Our biggest piece of advice is to make sure to surround yourself with smart people and advisors, but at the end of the day, trust your gut. No one knows your business better than you do, and you're the best person to make the hard decisions.

One example that sticks in our mind is when we were propositioned by a potential third partner. This third partner, a very successful entrepreneur, was wanting to join our team as a co-founder and grow our business to a multi-million dollar one very quickly. At first this was very exciting to us. However, after many meetings the plan and partnership didn’t seem to feel right. The growth seemed way too fast for (successful) experiential retail, we already didn’t think our voices were being heard, and the partnership structure was uncomfortable. We could have ignored all that and focused on the financial model, but we decided to trust our guts and walk away. It was one of the biggest, and most liberating decisions we’ve made.

How can JUGs readers get involved?

Any ladies with an inkling of an entrepreneurial idea or a more developed one can enter our Stuck-at-home Startup Challenge by April 20th at midnight PST.

You can also follow us on social media (Instagram, Facebook,) or visit For Now’s website!