In the fall of 2022, Jill Spector and Julie Weitz sat me down and said “We want to make tzitzit open and accessible to everyone—no matter their gender, no matter their body type, no matter their level of observance—but we’re not sure it’s going to work.”

I admitted to them, “Yes, you’re marketing to a very specific audience and you may have to adjust your definition of success because of that. But we WILL make it work.”

Over the next 4 months we worked shoulder to (virtual) shoulder to take their product from concept to reality.

Before I could dive right into my end of the deal we had some extra fundraising to do. Jill and Jules had begun a fundraising campaign a year earlier that gave them the seed money to begin designing and sewing prototypes, hiring photographers and models. They wanted a strong stock of collateral to present on the website.

However, the initial store of cash they raised wouldn’t cover the marketing and communications costs. I helped them design a fundraising space though Flipcause using assets from the Ritual Guide they were offering as a gift upon donation.

While Squarespace isn’t the web builder I tend to recommend I wanted to make sure Julie and Jill had a site that would be easily accessible from the back end. I’m happy to continue maintenance on websites I’ve created but it was important for them to have independence for the long term.

I presented a sitemap describing the best layout for their needs—including additional donation and sliding scale pages to ensure that their products would be accessible to anyone regardless of their ability to pay.

After some back and forth we agreed on a plan and landed on the site they use to this day.