Naja: Making Women Feel Strong and Sexy

I know when someone thinks “lingerie,” the first word that comes next is rarely “empowerment.” However, at Naja, a lingerie start-up that has now gone global, their entire goal as a company is to provide jobs and benefits to single mothers while doing away with the wind-blown, men-aimed sales point and make women feel good about the bodies that they have. Their employees are all given flexible work hours necessary for being a female head of the household as well as programs that allow them to become their own “micro-entrepreneurs.” Further, two percent of all the purchases are donated to charities that assist in the furthering of education for women. Beyond their in-company social responsibility, the lingerie is amazing and has styles made for every body type, making their good two-fold.

The basis of this company stemmed from two women in the entertainment industry who were critiqued harshly and regularly for not being a size 2. Via social media, they received support and started looking into the depths of the messages from their fans. Not only do regular people look up to those promoting body positivity, they have begun challenging the massive companies that don’t also. For example, during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, many were tweeting about the beautiful bodies and outfits, but some mentioned how unrealistic the standards are and how they wished they could wear stuff like that but it would never contain all the body parts to be functional. Though their prices are slightly higher than those of the larger corporations (because they pay the women who work for them above market wages), they are still comparable and those who care about corporate social responsibility are willing to pay an extra $5 or $10 to promote some good (because let’s be real here, bras are crazy expensive regardless).

Now that the company is up and running, they, like most online retailers, have an email subscription list, where they appear in my inbox at least weekly. Every time I click on one of those emails, they then appear on the side of my screen when I’m scrolling through Facebook. I’ve also seen some of their pieces on my Pinterest, which makes researching big data from this side of it very interesting. They can use my clicks and everyone else’s to see where the demand is. In fact, their company depends on data to spread the word because, unlike Victoria’s Secret, they are too small right now to dominate the industry. Because they appear on so many social media sites, including being the sponsored ads on Instagram, I’m assuming they pay a lot of money to gather their data.