Ava’s Armour: For Confidence, Community, and Comfort

Whenever you need to put your best foot forward, comfortability and confidence can be key. Whether for a job interview, a formal event, or just in your day to day. Feeling sure of  yourself is what helps you make impressions and continue to grow in both personal and professional settings. Often our attire can make or break our confidence. Feeling over or underdressed can make you feel out of place. Getting a stain on your clothes or feeling that something is too tight, too loose, or just uncomfortable can take away your boldness. Sweat can be a major player in loss of confidence. Sweat stains in any setting can be embarrassing, uncomfortable or awkward and can impact the ability to perform at our best. Ava’s Armour, a brand dedicated to creating sweat-proof attire, has stepped up to the challenge of providing a clothing solution to excessive sweat stains in stressful environments. 

Ava Figlar, a second year at Ohio State studying fashion and retail, is the creative mind behind Ava’s Armour. She balances a full course load while building her brand. This brand is personal to her as she has secondary hyperhidrosis, an excessive sweating condition. She knows first hand how sweat can impact your confidence. She considered this while looking for her angle when approaching the clothing retail industry. Ava’s Armour is not subject to seasonal change, which was important to her, and allows for her to use her personal experience to create a unique solution to the problems faced by many on a daily basis. 

She started developing this idea around August of 2024. She built her first pitch for BOSS, Best of Student Startups. BOSS is an entrepreneurship pitch competition focused on turning ideas into sustainable businesses. After the conclusion of this competition she continued to grow her idea. She is now working on a second pitch for the President’s Buckeye Accelerator, a similar competition. She is currently developing her first tangible prototype with a tech designer. This design is based on surveys she has conducted with her future customer base. The surveys are distributed through instagram, asking questions about the details for her first design such as if her prospective consumers would prefer a long sleeve or a short one. These surveys have helped her ensure the silhouette that she was creating was what her market wanted and would find best for her purpose. She has also lined up several testers that will provide feedback on the product and help her make improvements before the product is launched on her website. 

Technically speaking, how does this work though? How do her designs differ from others and solve the problem of large stains due to excessive sweating? The design she is currently working on prevents noticeable sweat marks through the inclusion of a fabric finish that is implemented in the production of the item. The finish is put on either a cotton or synthetic material. Due to the existing production systems for her market she will most likely start with using a synthetic material. Additionally some products will have a dual layer in which there is a hydrophilic layer, like cotton, that can absorb the moisture, and a hydrophobic layer that repels the water, blocking the stain from forming. 

Looking into the near future she hopes to be selling at least one silhouette direct to consumers through her website (avasarmour.com) in the next year. In the next two or three years she hopes to expand into other online retailers outside of her own website, most notably Amazon. Expanding outside of her own website comes with additional costs and expenses which is why this goal is further in the future. Beyond that she wants to bring her product into stores, specifically those for formal wear. In the future she would also like to grow her team. This would include a team member that would help with marketing as well as someone with experience in a more business focused field such as finance. 

Ava’s Armour does not only provide a clothing solution, she has also been writing blogs to post on her website that speak to her mission as a brand and her passion for the solution as a person. The blogs range in topic from the Inspiration Behind Ava’s Armour to The Unexpected Perks of Sweating and many more. They also add an aspect of mindfulness to the brand, this includes calming strategies to prevent excessive sweating due to anxiety and advice on how to not let sweat marks get the best of you and embrace it. As the brand grows, she hopes to one day include a podcast speaking to similar topics. 

The blogs offer a personal touch to the brand as a whole. The posts have also been inspired by interactions she has had with prospective customers, some of which also have hyperhidrosis. These publishings help connect her to her client base in an extremely unique way that fosters a community between those who feel passionate about the brand. The blogs show her dedication to the solution, as well as communicate why this is important to her and that she has the experience to understand the problem and go about creating a simple clothing solution. 

Ava’s Armour is not just a brand about sweating, it is about feeling your best, to be your best. It is about finding confidence in intimidating situations and finding strength within yourself. If you were to only have one takeaway from the brand as a whole it should be that clothing should make you feel protected, not exposed or embarrassed. As the name of the brand implies, your clothing can feel like your armour, and it should.