Outdoor apparel company SheFly reportedly rebranded as Gnara. After gaining early traction from industry awards and grants and earning viral popularity with consumers on social media, the company said it changed its name to Gnara to “expand licensing opportunities, continue developing a wide product range, and foster community and inclusivity.”
Part of the change may also be because another apparel company, Turkey-based Melik Tenstil Group, is using the Shefly brand name and the shefly.com domain name to sell its fashion apparel at wholesale prices.
“We’re still the same brand that you know and love, just with a name that sets us up to solve more problems and be able to grow,” explained Co-founder and COO Charlotte Massey.
The founding team started the “SheFly” brand out of a college dorm room, thinking it would be the “perfect descriptor of the original product they were trying to explain, prototype and bring into the world.” But as the company has evolved, they said they realized that the original name “simply did not encompass its full potential or diverse community.”
The rebrand separates the consumer brand name, Gnara, from the patented zipper technology GoFly™, making it easier for the technology to be licensed to other brands, including partnerships with unisex, men’s or adaptive-focused companies. The new brand name also creates an umbrella name, allowing the company to “continue seeking innovative solutions to apparel problems.”
“There are plenty more problems to solve in the apparel world besides our pee zipper,” Massey hinted.
Finally, company leadership felt it was important for the brand name to align with “the core company values of inclusivity.”
“Not all our customers identify with ‘she’ pronouns,” explained CEO & Co-founder Georgia Grace Edwards. “We want to create a space for all people to be part of our community and not have a name that is unnecessarily exclusionary.”
