At A Glance

The seed for Springrose was planted in 2015 when Nicole was visiting her grandmother Rose, an inspiring woman who was still teaching classes and living alone at the age of 89. It was, however, hard for Rose to get dressed. Arthritis and chronic pain made bras especially difficult. Nicole wanted to make her grandmother’s life easier, and as you read her story, you’ll see how she created an innovative company to do that at scale so women like her grandmother can now get dressed independently with both dignity and style.

Who is Nicole?

Meet Nicole Cuervo, CEO and founder of Springrose

About Springrose

Springrose was founded in July 2020 with a clear mission: to create bras that never force women to choose between comfort, style, and dignity. Nicole was inspired by her grandmother Rose, who faced daily struggles getting dressed due to chronic pain. Rose’s experience sparked the vision for Springrose, a company designing bras that go beyond being attractive underwear and instead restore independence and ease to everyday life for women with limited mobility.

After years of development and listening closely to feedback, Springrose launched its first product in September 2023. Its thoughtful, patented innovation includes a Velcro front closure that can be put on over eight different ways, so people can find the way that works best for them. Every detail was engineered to create adaptive, easy-on bras that feel good not just to wear, but to live in.

Nicole’s Journey

Nicole studied entrepreneurship and organizations as an undergrad. After earning her degree, she spent four years working in Deloitte’s Government and Public Services practice. She has a background in human-centered design and strategy. While the idea that became Springrose was planted in 2015, Nicole didn’t start the company until 2020 when she began pursuing dual graduate degrees at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “I was going to go get an MBA, so that I could learn marketing, accounting, finance, operations,” Nicole says, “All these things I'd never touched upon before.” She started Springrose her second week on campus, and has worked full-time on her company after earning both her MBA and an MS in Design Innovation.

Springrose’s team structure

Springrose’s team is lean, but growing. Nicole and her Chief customer support representative are both located in the U.S. while the rest of the team is international, largely located in Latin America. Nicole says that she really appreciates the fractional support that she’s hired over the years, especially bringing in people with expertise in specific areas of the business when she first started. “We bring in people who've done this before,” she says, “[People] who have a lot of experience and can bring that knowledge, since it might take us a very long time and be a painful lesson to learn it ourselves.”

‍Learning from the best 

Founders must be flexible, and they must become fluent in a broad range of issues. The DIY spirit that is so essential to being an entrepreneur can also slow you down. Nicole says there are benefits in working with people who have done it before. “If your knowledge about a topic area is zero,” she says, “maybe you could just have a 30-minute informational call with somebody. Or maybe you can hire them part-time for one project or a couple hours a week to start with.” If you do bring someone in, Nicole says it’s a good idea to set clear expectations, defining key metrics or specific timetables to make sure everyone is on the same page.

‍CX that’s Xtraordinary

Springrose’s entire approach is rooted in understanding that each of their customers is coming to them because they’re in pain. “It could be temporary pain,” Nicole says, “It could be long-term pain. But everybody's experiencing pain and difficult circumstances.” Springrose is trying to make things easier not only with the design of its bras, but its approach to customer support. “We're trying to be very empathetic,” Nicole says. “Sometimes people miss the return deadline because they were having surgery or their spouse was having surgery and they were the sole caregiver and they couldn't get to the post office. We try to be flexible and make the customer happy because the whole purpose of our company is to bring them joy.”

No AI agents

Springrose does not utilize AI agents as part of its customer support because many of the questions that customers have are very specific and because many customers are dealing with medical diagnoses, there are issues of privacy.

Getting ahead of the game

Springrose’s sales follow a fairly traditional retail calendar with a surge in Q4 followed by a dip in sales at the start of the next year. Sales pick up again in the spring with less volume in the summer. Nicole says she uses the periods of slower sales to build out and schedule the marketing assets so that they’re ready to go when sales pick up and more focus is required on customer-support needs. “We want to be doing the work in Q3 for Q4,” Nicoles says, “so we're not stressed and running around during Q4 because we're going to have higher customer-support needs.”

‍Tech stack

Gorgias. “It's easy,” says Nicole. “It's what we know. It's very affordable for smaller brands and it's what we've been using since the beginning. Do we use the full functionality?  No. Could we be more organized? Yes, but you're winning where you can, and you don't do the things that you don't need.

‍Advice to other entrepreneurs

One of the most important things an entrepreneur can do, says Nicole, is to reframe setbacks and challenges as opportunities for growth. It’s the best way to keep the inevitable day-to-day difficulties from becoming a weight that drags you down.  “You have to be optimistic as a person,” she says, “It's a muscle you have to work on. People say, ‘You can be born optimistic and not optimistic.’ And that's true, but it is a muscle you have to work on to see things positively. To say, ‘OK, there's this setback, but what can that mean? How can that be good for me? What could that mean in terms of progress, focus, knowledge?’ “