{"id":298,"date":"2022-04-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/?p=298"},"modified":"2022-09-06T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T16:56:57","slug":"a-true-revolutionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/2022\/04\/22\/a-true-revolutionary\/","title":{"rendered":"A True Revolutionary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sara Jonsdottir, a 2017 graduate of the Wilson School of Design launched Revol Undies eight months after she received her bachelor of applied design. She explains her thought processes and ideas behind her ground-breaking company and how The Wilson School of Design has prepared her for the fashion industry.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Via KPU Alumni Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sara Jonsdottir never saw herself as an entrepreneur. Even after she launched Revol Undies, her ground-breaking line of menstruation-proof underwear, she didn\u2019t think the term really applied to her. She always saw herself as a technical designer, someone geared toward developing practical solutions in the fashion world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, as her company started growing, she says, \u201cthe lightbulb went off\u201d one day. \u201cI realized this excited me more than anything I\u2019ve ever done before,\u201d says Jonsdottir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI felt like I suddenly had this deep found purpose.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Jonsdottir launched Revol Undies in 2017, eight months after she graduated with her bachelor of applied design from the Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU). As CEO of Revol, she participates in all aspects of business development, from market research and finance to operations and marketing. Her products are sold all over North America and have been featured in Vogue, Refinery 29 and Vancouver Magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Refinery 29 article on Revol Undies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s beginnings are humble, with the first pair of underwear created for a class project in her final year at KPU. She had no idea anyone would be interested prior to launching them at a KPU fashion show, after which people\u2014strangers and classmates alike\u2014flocked to her asking if she could make them a pair. \u201cI was like, OK, maybe I have something here,\u201d Jonsdottir says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI came to realize as people were asking me to make them underwear, they had the exact same problem as I had. It just snowballed from there.\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Revol is growing rapidly and over the next year, it will launch its postpartum and fibroids collections, which are designed for doulas, midwives, gynecologists and others in the medical industry. Over the next two years, the plan is to expand globally, with specific targets in Europe and West Africa. Within five years Jonsdottie says the company hopes to fully expand its reach into the medical industry replacing disposable leak-proof items in hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI love to solve problems. If I know there\u2019s somebody out there who\u2019s been left out of the solution then I\u2019m not really solving the problem. It means I’m not actually doing what I\u2019m capable of doing, because I know I\u2019m capable of solving that issue on a more global level.\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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As a result of these efforts, Jonsdottir was awarded the 2021 KPU Outstanding Young Alumni Award. In a way, she embodies everything KPU hopes to see from its graduates: a socially conscious business leader who\u2019s applying her polytechnic education to create innovative solutions to a social problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonsdottir says she\u2019s grateful to be recognized by the very university that gave her the push she needed to start Revol. \u201cI do credit KPU a lot to where I am in my career,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was really the teachers\u2019 support that gave me the idea to start a company, I don\u2019t know that I would have necessarily thought that my idea was so good if someone with actual industry experience hadn\u2019t told me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also learned some fundamental skills at KPU that made her success possible. She says 90 percent of the fashion industry is practical and deadline-oriented, not the conceptual, artistic type of design the industry is sometimes characterized as in the media. Jonsdottir says she thrives in this kind of environment and because KPU\u2019s design program is rooted in the technical, she was a perfect fit for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKPU is such a good school if you\u2019re the kind of person that wants to have an actual career in the arts,\u201d she says. \u201cYou really have to learn structure and what people expect from you in the industry, and KPU taught me that. \u201cThe skills KPU graduates have are way better than most design schools because of the school\u2019s focus on critical thinking skills. The reality of the fashion business is you have to get stuff into production. You have to get your tech packs, you got to get all these not-so-glamorous things done. KPU\u2019s great because it prepares you for how the fashion industry actually works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To read the original article, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara Jonsdottir, a 2017 graduate of the Wilson School of Design launched Revol Undies eight months after she received her bachelor of applied design. She explains her thought processes and ideas behind her ground-breaking company and how The Wilson School of Design has prepared her for the fashion industry. Via KPU Alumni Magazine Sara Jonsdottir never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1300,"featured_media":299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":23,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,19],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wilson-school-of-design-blog","tag-alumni-spotlight","tag-fashion-design-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/wilsondesignloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}