On building an ecosystem

Ellie Chen and Jensen Neff are co-founders of the sustainable clothing brand Oddli. They launched the brand in 2021 with a Kickstarter campaign to create a sustainable clothing line made from leftover deadstock fabric.

Why is it important for you to build community through your work, and with the people who invest in your brand?

Ellie Chen: I think that community is the best part of bringing a physical product into the world. I more see community as the main goal, honestly, and what gives us a lot of the joy, and the product as the way to do that. I think especially in the world we’re living in, it’s sometimes hard to meet new people, make new friends, go out in the world, and find people you resonate with. I think that the brand has been able to bring people together. If you know someone wearing Oddli, you can infer, hopefully, that they’re kind, creative, and a whole other host of things. That’s my favorite aspect of community. If people feel a bit more comfortable going up to someone and making a friend, that’s success to me.

Jensen Neff: So much of the brand started as Ellie and I’s desire to have community around the clothing. Or our desire to have community in general, with people who have shared values. A shared interest in storytelling, shared interest in brands, spaces, products, and the lifestyle that we loved, and still love—which is waking up and getting in the ocean before class or work, and then putting on a movie screening or some sort of art party at night. That specific lifestyle that Oddli stands for, and its form of participation in the world, didn’t exist in a clothing brand. It’s been so fun to build that. As a side note, we’ve gotten to meet literally just such an abundance of incredible people. I think that Oddli’s given us community, too.

What have you learned about building community along the way? What worked and what didn’t?

Jensen: I think Ellie’s naturally one of the most inclusive and open people that I’ve ever met… I always think of Ellie looking around a room and wanting everyone in that room to feel like they have a place. I think just following that sensibility that she has naturally has been the brand’s lane for community.

Ellie: I learned that community has to be rooted in inspiration, to some degree. A lot of it does come from the visual of the brand identity and Jensen’s creative direction… There has to be a cohesive visual. It has to be so strong creatively and visually, especially when we’re trying to inspire a community built around creativity. That was my takeaway, because I think when I started it, I was much younger. I was like, “We can just do it.” We were putting so much out. I think people resonated with that authenticity. But as we’ve refined our brand identity, the community has gotten even stronger. People can identify with it more and see themselves as a part of that identity… It can always be evolving, but there has to be a strong, uniform visual identity that the community can then identify themselves with.

You guys also do extensive work locally in the LA community. Tell me about your process of building relationships with partners and other businesses?

Jensen: It’s cool having, like, five-year relationships now with a lot of the people that we’ve worked with. Getting to see fabric vendors or manufacturers at least once a week for a long period of time, you naturally get close. Some of the guys that I interact with know me better than a lot of people in this city. It’s really special, and they are just cheering for the brand, in a way. That means a ton.

Ellie: Community means helping each other and being on each other’s team. I think in the fashion industry in LA, there is a sense of camaraderie and of support because it is expensive to make things in LA. It is hard. It is an ever-changing situation. There is a sense of such deep support, and when you have that, it’s easy to have genuine community. As much as they want Oddli to succeed, we also want to see the manufacturers stay in business and succeed because the seamstresses are so talented. They’ve been there for so long. I’m never like, “Only Oddli can work at this manufacturer.” We’re always of the mind of, “Can we introduce you to our other friend who has an up-and-coming brand?” We want the ecosystem as a whole to succeed.

What do you want to provide for your community and the people who are part of it?

Ellie: First, I would define community as the customer, the people who work with us, like manufacturers, anyone in the supply chain, and the team. Am I missing anyone, Jen?

Jensen: I don’t think so.

Ellie: What I want people to feel within that is an agency. When they’re a part of this community, they feel more empowered to do things in their own life. They feel more capable and inspired to do things. That’s been one of the most fulfilling things in building the team culture, which is the closest community we have, just because we interact with them 24/7. They are the backbone of Oddli and what’s allowing us to grow. All of them have had a deep sense of learning, inspiration, and growth—they can keep going and keep adding to this world that can sometimes feel scary, but they’re able to keep bringing a light and a life to it.

Jensen: I feel like [Oddli gives] a creative permission slip. Oddli makes me feel like there’s less red tape around going for things, and I hope that’s what other people feel, too—and not just in the way that we think about creativity. I don’t know. I think sometimes the word “creativity” can bring up thinking of, like, a table of crafts. I think of creativity more like permission to wake up and dream. It can also mean picking up a group of friends and getting outside before the sunrise, or a niche costume party that you think is maybe a little bit out of the box.

It makes me think of play and innovation. What do you think you have learned from the people who invest in your work? What have you learned from your community?

Ellie: So much.

Jensen: It’s such a timely question. We had a club event this weekend and it was the first of its type, but we hope to do a lot more of them. There’s something called the Oddli Club. We opened up a form for an event led by a local yoga instructor. It filled in 15 seconds. It was crazy. It made us realize how much appetite there is for it. At the event, we did a prompt for people to talk about something that they’re building creatively, a passion project of some sort. Hearing about all the different clubs, small businesses, and community events that the Oddli customer is throwing was so inspiring for us.

Ellie: It’s a collective, but I hope it can also make individual people feel unique and seen. That’s what the event made me feel: every person in that clubroom was distinct. Someone was working on their own jewelry brand. One person was a children’s book publisher, another was starting a mail club. There was a shared value that was like, “We’re going to bring something to the world. We can do it.” That in and of itself is inspiring. It’s also really inspiring that they’re all so different, but can exist and support each other within the ecosystem. That also inspires me. You don’t have to fit into one box to be a part of this community. Come as you are. And as Jen said, you are then invited to create your own thing. None of those two things are going to be the same.

How has merging a personal relationship with professional partnership allowed you to support each other through the obstacles of running Oddli?

Jensen: Could not be building something alone, that’s for sure.

Ellie: I know. Jen’s just inspired. I think she is a gifted creative, and I see the brand as a way to bring that creative gift to as many eyes as we can. So I think I often act almost as the customer’s point of view, as a creative learning how to step into my own creativity. I’m taking guitar lessons for the first time. Jen has given me watercolor lessons. I feel like I often bring the POV of, “What would the customer want? Would the girl who I know looks up to Jen want to take a painting class from her? Do they want to see her paintings on a really elevated note card in our packaging?” And that’s our dialogue. She just brings such a light and creativity to whatever space. I think that my brain works in terms of bringing it to more and more people.

Jensen: I mean, it just would be an entirely different life without working with Ellie. I think mentioning Charlotte is super important, too; she’s the third employee of Oddli. She started working with us as an intern, maybe a couple of months into building the brand. I think of them as kind of the engine of the brand. They lift up all of us every day.

Ellie: Creativity, to me, is a lot of heart. It takes a lot of heart both within the person who’s creating, and then within the person who’s supporting the creative, to bring something to life at a high level of execution. I think that’s where the team comes in. We are all this heart that keeps going together, feeding off of each other, helping support Jensen’s creative vision, and adding in and making it come to life. I couldn’t imagine a more symbiotic, healthy structure. You need so much trust with anything creative—trust and respect.