Meet Ashley Mitchell of The Yellow Morning

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Mitchell.

Ashley, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I had a love for fashion at a young age. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, there was limited access to the fashion industry, so after high school, I moved to Madison to study Fashion Merchandising and Management. While doing so, I started my career in retail—working my way up into management. However, throughout my ten-year career, I started to see poorer quality clothes sold on a mass scale while in-store sales struggled. Doing my own research, it became clear that the industry business model and its supply chain had a huge problem. It largely benefited the corporate conglomerates rather than the garment workers, customers, or the environment.

That’s when the concept of The Yellow Morning came to me. What if you could educate consumers on the detrimental impact of fast fashion—in doing so—promote sustainable solutions for the end consumer? By building a brand of curated vintage and preloved collections, consumers can shop intentionally so they can look good without feeling bad.

Has it been a smooth road?
Building a brand by yourself is a lot of work. Originally, I wanted a brick-and-mortar location, but my husband who owns a digital marketing consultancy encouraged me to find a more economical way to launch an online brand with little startup capital. In doing so, there were some hurdles.

There was the learning curve of working through the branding, website build, etc. Once I fleshed that out, my goal was to launch spring 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The timing felt inappropriate to launch. People were struggling to pay rent and trying to sell clothes with so much uncertainty didn’t settle well with me. However, like every entrepreneur, I had to adapt. Luckily, the overhead is low enough where I have that flexibility and was able to move the launch to August.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Yellow Morning is a digital shopping experience for anyone who loves fashion and cares about the environment. Our key differentiator is our values. Consumers need to change how they view shopping for clothing because it’s having a devastating impact on our environment. Let’s not kid ourselves, climate change is real. Plastic waste in our oceans is real. If we don’t find sustainable solutions, the future on this planet could be grim.