Aside of the music in the rave culture, being your own unique person is another side of the culture that sets itself apart from others. During the 90’s, there were the boiler suits, cyber gear, and phat pants. People dressed up in all kinds of different and unique outfits to express themselves and to look cool. Soon the smiley-faced shirts and phat pants of the 90’s slowly faded away, and evolved into a newer look for ravers. Now raver girls can be seen wearing a lot less clothing with an occasional tutu and top with some fluffy leggings. In the rave scene, as far as fashion is concerned, anything goes. Although many people either don’t have the time, or they don’t know how to make their own cool rave outfit. And that’s where the Kandi Poppers come in.
Kandi Poppers is a custom rave outfit designer company based out of Atlanta, Georgia. This brand new company is run by co-owners, Nicole and Melanie. All you have to do is give the Kandi Poppers girls your idea for an outfit; and then girls will begin to handcraft your outfit just for you. We had the pleasure of meeting these girls for an interview with Kandi Poppers to give you an idea of who they are and what they are about. Check it out below and don’t forget to also visit their Etsy page to get yourself a custom-made rave outfit of your own!
How did you ladies come up with the idea of Kandi Poppers?
Nicole: Well basically it all started because Melanie and I started going to raves together a few years ago. We loved to wear tutus and we would find cute tops to go along with them. Melanie got tired of having to adjust her top after dancing around so much, so I just decided to make her a custom-fit top. I posted it online and got tons of feedback with people interested in me making one for them, so we just decided to make it into an actual business to make them for people.
Have you thought about maybe expanding and hiring employees?
Melanie: We would like to keep it with us two for right now, but we do enjoy collaborating with other companies.
Nicole: We do work well together, but we would like to have people work for us if we get big enough in the future. We do have girls who promote for us but that’s it for right now. We are just trying to get ourselves going first before bringing on extra help.
How about finding an actual store for your business along with the online shop?
Nicole: We would love to actually have a store that customers can come in and pick out an outfit in person. We still want to keep the online shop for convenience, though. I would love to have an actual store so that we can help fit the customers, because women are all different shapes and sizes. Maybe in the future when the business grows like we want it to, we will shoot for finding an actual store to use.
Melanie: Like Nicole said, it would be a lot easier for us to actually fit our customers if we had a store. I agree that would definitely be something we would work towards when we grow our business more.
So with your outfits being hand-made, how do you start with making one?
Melanie: Basically what we do is come up with an idea, and put out a demo on our Etsy. Then what our customers do is choose what kind of design they like and we get their bra size from them. We get the same bra that we used in the demo and make the design specific to the customer’s requests.
Nicole: And that’s pretty much the whole point of our company is that people have these certain identities within the rave scene. What we at Kandi Poppers want to accomplish is taking your identity and expressing it on the outside.
Since you express that you will make anything for the customer, is there anything you won’t do as far as making an outfit?
Nicole: Well, we try to stay away from the outfits that would have drug references on them. We’ve actually had some people ask us to make those for them and we respectfully declined. We want to be professional and not make outfits that have those references on them, so that’s pretty much what we won’t do.
Melanie: I mean besides the drug references, we will pretty much do anything else. Like if you want something crazy like a pizza-themed outfit, we will do that. We are very versatile and we like challenges!
Have you seen the business beginning to grow already?
Nicole: We are actually blown away by how much the business has grown in the short time we have been running. I mean we have only been around for a little over a month. What we expected to happen in around six months has happened in just one month which is very exciting. We have looked around for others doing the same things that we are doing in Atlanta, and we haven’t found much so we kind of have a leg up here locally.
Melanie: Yeah, what is helping us grow is we don’t really say no to many ideas, so we definitely try to keep open minds.
With ‘Kandi’ being in your name, have you considered branching from outfits and making kandis for people as well?
Nicole: Yes! That is definitely in our future with making those. We don’t really want to sell it because that goes against the whole kandi concept, but we definitely would make bracelets.
Melanie: We have talked about actually including some kandi along with a purchase of a bra or tutu as a special “thank you” gift from us.
Finally, what has been a big challenge for you so far with the outfits?
Melanie: Actually, we just recently had this order that we’ve started working on that is a 38F bra size. That’s honestly one of the bigger bras that we have had to work on, but we will definitely make it work for that person.
Nicole: Yeah, I agree that has definitely a challenge for us, but it’s nothing that we cant’ handle. Again, going back to what our company is about, we will fit your needs as a customer no matter the body size or type.
Click here to make a purchase from Kandi Poppers!
