Eli and Krista Coughlin-Galbraith are the Co-Founders of Shapeshifters, an apparel brand specializing in gender-affirming clothing, particularly binders, and sports bras designed for the queer community. Operating from their Vermont sewing studio, Eli and Krista's team takes pride in meticulously handcrafting each garment, providing a comfortable and personalized fit for every customer. Recognizing the transformative power of clothing in self-expression and identity, Shapeshifters is dedicated to creating custom-fit binders and sports bras in every size, shape, and color.

During the interview, Eli and Krista shared their experience navigating the challenges of being a queer-owned, small business and their dreams of turning Shapeshifters into an employee-owned co-op. We also learned about their commitment to creating binders and sports bras that are safe to wear by honoring the endless variety of body shapes.

Shapeshifters will be at Pride Vermont 2023 in Burlington on Sunday, September 10th! Visit them and get fitted in person for your perfect chest binder.

What inspired Shapeshifters and how did you get started?

Eli’s maternal family is from rural Kentucky and have been fiber artists for generations. When Eli was a teenager, they were going to an anime convention and asked their Southern Baptist aunt to help with a costume. She taught Eli how to use a sewing machine, and Eli’s grandmother later taught them how to use a loom.

Years later, Eli started binding and couldn’t find a chest binder that fit properly. So Eli utilized the sewing skills they learned from their aunt, along with a summer intensive course at FIT, and decided to create their own binder. They dissected a larger one, experimented until it fit properly, and realized that, “Hey, I can do this!” So Eli started making binders for a few of their friends and then made a listing on the Etsy shop that Krista and their two roommates shared. Within a year, that single listing had evolved into a solo Etsy shop that was the very first iteration of Shapeshifters.

What does your creative process look like when working on a new product?

It really depends on what it is! When we first introduced sports bras we did a lot of at-home testing. We started with a binder and slightly adjusted the pattern and construction until it worked for Krista. Also, our first round of customers who bought our sports bras helped us test out the pattern on a larger variety of bodies.

The customizations that folks can add to their binders and sports bras were almost all requests from earlier customers. Some of them had a specific issue they were trying to solve, while others just thought it would be cool to have a hood on their binder, and we were like, “Sure! Let’s figure out how to do that!”

And sometimes we see a long-term need and then spend an extensive amount of time developing a way to fill it. We received many, many emails and had lots of conversations with people who were interested in making at-home alterations for their chest binders. From there, we must have spent months in between the concept and the release of the Make-Your-Own Binder Kit, which organically evolved from those initial conversations. 

What is one challenge you have faced as the Founders of Shapeshifters and how did you navigate it?

Up until about four years ago, it was hard to communicate that we’re a very small business. It wasn’t until recently that our employees actually outnumbered us as co-owners. The corporatization of everything has created a capitalist mindset where small businesses need to present themself the same way as giant corporations. This includes similar customer-facing language and polish in order to seem professional, and customers in turn expect a corporate level of output.

Back in 2014, when we officially launched Shapeshifters, a lot of folks were purchasing everything they needed from Amazon. And a lot of other online retailers had started making similar shipping promises in order to compete. This left a lot of customers expecting quick shipping times, no matter who they were ordering from. People would email us to ask why their two-day-old order of a custom-made garment hadn’t shipped yet.

What worked eventually was being really honest and vulnerable with our customers about how small we are and the limitations of what we can do.

It has taken years for folks to understand us as this very small business with only a handful of people. We still have new customers who imagine we have a more corporate structure, despite all the information we’ve made available. So we make a point to talk about it in social media posts, in emails, at events, in interviews like this one. We’ve also worked on our tone in emails to help make it clear that customers aren’t just getting an auto-reply or a scripted response, and for customers who write in, to be clear that they are talking directly to a co-owner with their hands in the production process.

What is your long-term vision for Shapeshifters?

The expectation for a new business is usually growth: get big, go corporate, or get bought out by a large corporation. But our niche is small. And the things that make us unique and necessary within that niche, the things that we’ve been the most passionate about over the years — no-limit sizing, custom-sizing, custom-fitting in every way— don’t scale up that far.

With our addition of Make-Your-Own Binder Kits and new binder sewing workshops, we’d like to build a tradition of makers’ knowledge that will outlast us.

Also, an employee-owned co-op is a great thing if you're a stable business that will be in the black for a long time. However, we still have to navigate some potential roadblocks. First and foremost, stability was rough during COVID times because of our supply chain. Although our cloth is milled domestically, the fiber still comes from overseas. I've been talking with our employees about the risks and future opportunities. An employee-owned co-op is the dream, but stability is the first step in that process.

If you could give one piece of advice to future LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Oops, we have a few.

Don’t just try to work Monday-Friday, 9-5, if you find it difficult. Figure out what kind of schedule works for you and do that. If you wake up two years, a month, a week, or three days later and realize it’s not working anymore, change it! Don’t be afraid to tailor your work day to what works best for you. If you’re worried about customers seeing an email reply at 1:00 AM and thinking you’re unprofessional, many email services allow you to schedule emails to be sent at a certain time.

Be open and honest with your customers about your business size and limitations. There’s nothing wrong with giving folks a peek behind the scenes. In fact, we’ve found that most people really appreciate it because it helps them contextualize how much work is going into their order.

Ask for help. Tiny businesses survive because we talk to each other share resourcesideas and contacts and strategies. You cannot do this alone.

One last thing: Everyone gets emails from angry customers. It doesn’t make you a terrible business owner; it just means a mistake happened somewhere and needs fixing. But take a step back if you get worked up over an angry email, review, or whatever. Get some emotional distance and return to it in an hour or the next day with a clear head and a better ability to respond professionally.

What LGBTQ+ owned brands are your go-to's and why? 

NerdyKeppie: They offer tons of different clothes (in a wide range of sizes) and accessories with unique and gorgeous prints in multiple pride flag colors, with the colors very thoughtfully worked into the pattern. All of their patterns are designed by them or by other queer artists they collaborate with.

Warp Weft: A local brand that makes custom clothes, mostly for babies and small children. They’re high-quality with fun and interesting prints and extremely cute but also functional designs that can be adjusted so that they grow with your child. Our kid has a couple of pieces from them that have outlasted a lot of other clothes they’ve quickly grown out of.

They’re not really a “brand” per se, but we’d love to shout out Mountainsong Expeditions, which is owned and run by a local queer Vermonter. They offer practical training in archery, street medicine, and wilderness skills like chopping wood, building a shelter, and hunting. Also, spiritual practices, including reading tarot and runes, and they also host a four-day long transmasc camp. Many of these classes happen on their land in central Vermont, but they’ve also been known to find space for workshops in other areas around northern New England—a true community-builder.

Can you tell us about one of your core values and how that value is applied to Shapeshifters? 

One of our long-standing core values that really became Shapeshifters’ guiding principle is that there’s no such thing as “one size fits all.” People don’t fit into the boxes created by the S/M/L sizing system (a very recent invention anyway and wasn’t meant to be a consumer-side system), even when companies design to include larger sizes. A lot of people end up with a choice between a binder that’s too big and does nothing, or one that’s too small and might break their ribs or damage their lungs.

How do you take care of yourself, especially during this moment in history (a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being passed and increased violence against our community)?

It’s hard, we’re not going to lie. Not just as queer folks ourselves, but as a business that caters almost exclusively to queer folks. People don’t buy gender-affirming clothes when they’re afraid of what people will do if they start presenting differently. So, on one hand, we’re worried about being able to stay open to keep providing binders to folks who need them while continuing to support our employees. On the other hand, we’re also worried about being a queer couple with a kid during a growing moral panic around queer folks with kids.

It does help to see the strides activists have been making in getting those bigoted laws blocked and repealed. As for our own actions, what helps is focusing on our local community and connecting with our support here, going to picnics, meeting people for dinner, and showing up with Out In The Open. We garden, too: growing things is a ritual for calm and hope for the future. We draw, we sing, we cook. You have to keep making.

Who is your favorite LGBTQ+ celebrity and why? 

Ooh, that’s a hard question!

Krista: I’m going to have to go with Kevin Conroy. Batman the Animated Series was a formative piece of media for us growing up and is how we originally met. Kevin’s Batman is the quintessential Batman to this day (not that there haven’t been great ones since) and finding out he was gay was just … everything. I don’t normally get really emotional over celebrity deaths, but his hit me really hard.

Eli: Janelle Monáe has had a piece of my heart since Many Moons. I can’t possibly say how much I’ve thought and felt about her queer powers of storytelling and memory keeping and, you know, making music about human-cyborg relations. 

Can you share one fun or unusual fact about yourself?

Krista: I once sang in a concert performance of a techno-opera at Carnegie Hall in NYC. I paid $600 to be there in a 424-person choir with only three days of rehearsal with the whole group, but I got to be directed by acclaimed composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, and also perform at Carnegie Hall! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’ll never forget it.

Eli: My first claim to Internet fame was an annotated re-translation of Final Fantasy 6. It was a student’s effort full of mistakes, but it struck a chord with enough people that somehow, I still make connections through it more than twenty years later.

Check out Shapeshifters’ profile here.