Lily didn’t set out to launch a clothing line because of fashion. The idea came from a daily frustration that he couldn’t ignore.
While working full-time on electric vehicle infrastructure, Lily found herself battling pet hair on a regular basis.
“I work in electric vehicle infrastructure. It’s eight to five, Monday to Friday. I have three dogs, and I’m always covered in fur,” he explained.
The problem was simple, persistent, and personal.
“I thought to myself a lot, how can I make clothes where the hair doesn’t stick – or can I wipe it off easily?”
That question became the basis of his product. Lily began making custom fabric designed to resist pet hair, committing to a process that took longer than launching a standard product.
“It’s like a year-long job trying to find the right manufacturer because my clothes are made from custom fabric,” he said.
All the while, he chose to build in public, sharing the process openly as it unfolded.
“I was making myself public, I put my idea on TikTok, and it started to go viral.”
What followed confirmed the need he suspected had been there all along. When his first tone went live, the response was immediate.
“When the drop came down, I sold in a few hours,” remembers Lily.
The challenge quickly went from showing interest to managing it – all while still working a full-time job.
Learning email marketing from scratch
As Lily approached the launch, she faced a new challenge outside of fabric and production: learning email marketing from the ground up while working full-time.
“Actually. I’m very new to email marketing,” he explains.
Playing a heavy role from Monday to Friday, time was the most pressing factor for him.
“I needed something that would be easy enough for me to learn — something intuitive enough that I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time on it.”
He first started with Klaviyo, aiming to set up emails and automations for himself.
“I started with Klaviyo first. Let me continue here, start doing emails, and start doing my automations,” he says.
But instead of being clear, the process became circular.
“I was going along with it, and things weren’t going the way I wanted them to look.”
As his audience grew, the frustration grew.
“I felt like I was being punished for growing up.”
That experience led him to switch to Omnisend – and the difference was immediate.
“That’s how I felt when I switched to Omnisend, it was so easy to use,” Lily explained.
He moved quickly without overthinking the setup.
“I was able to put all my automations together quickly, and things looked the way I wanted them to look.”
For a founder balancing a full-time job around a launch, that simplicity was important. Omnisend helped Lily put important systems in place without taking the focus off of everything else she was building.
How Lily Uses Omnisend Every Day
Day in and day out, Lily relies on Omnisend to keep customer communications running without demanding constant attention. With a full-time job and many priorities, the platform is something he can set up and trust.
“I’m glad I can just put it on and leave it so I don’t have to worry about it,” he explained explaining how emails and SMS work in the background when everything is ready.
Rather than managing campaigns manually, Lily uses Omnisend to support early outreach and trigger direct automation. That hands-off structure is what allows Omnisend to fit his schedule.
Instead of taking the focus away from product development or fulfillment, his customer communication works faithfully in the background – helping him manage demand while balancing everything else.
Impact Lily Sees
For Lily, the effect of the Omnisend is most clearly seen when it is introduced. By building his audience early, he was able to start selling with an existing need.
“I was about 3,000 years old when I started,” he explains.
From there, growth continued as the product came out of development and into active drops.
And, that audience was not silent. Lily used email and SMS to communicate when – and how – customers could access each release.
“I had all these people just sitting on that email list, waiting for their text or email for the launch date, the time, everything,” he explained, explaining how anticipation builds before products go live.
Reflecting on the launch as a whole, Lily is clear about the role the platform plays in turning preparations into results.
“Omnisend has been a huge part of my launch,” he said, describing it as “a really big tool when it comes to the initial success of my product.”
How Student Innovators Use Omnisend in Real Businesses
Lily’s experience reflects the broader reality of many Student Founders building businesses alongside full-time jobs. With limited time, power, and error rate, they need programs that are fast to learn, easy to use, and reliable when it matters most.
Instead of treating email and SMS as separate, complex disciplines, innovators like Lily integrate them directly into their launch process. By setting up important automations in advance, they can build audiences early, coordinate demand, and manage access – without ongoing operational work.
That structure frees them to focus on product development and fulfillment, while customer communications continue to work in the background.
If you want to create similar campaigns without doubling your work, Omnisend makes it work. Foundr readers can too. get 50% off their first three months – use the code AVAILABLE50 when you sign up, and start creating emails that not only meet but exceed your customers’ expectations.
