Greece native to pitch specialty bra line on ‘Shark Tank’

Update, March 14, 2022: Athena Kasvikis, a Greece native and the creator of Behave Bras, appeared on the March 11 episode of ABC's Shark Tank, hoping to raise $150,000 for 10% equity in her specialty lingerie company. Shark Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, offered her $150,000 for 20% equity. Kasvikis countered him at 17%. However, the other Sharks told her that O'Leary's offer was a good one and haggling over three percentage points might cost her the deal, after which Kasvikis accepted O'Leary's terms.

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Original story, March 7, 2022: Athena Kasvikis didn’t have a background in design or textiles or anything fashion-related, nor did she sew.

What she did have was a long-standing problem: finding bras that fit her.

By the time she was a student at Greece Arcadia High School, Kasvikis was a double-F cup.

“In my family — I’m Greek and Italian — you either get an A cup or an H cup,” she said. “That’s how the genetics work. It’s like I woke up overnight with this chest. It was very hard to deal with.”

Now 39 and living in Boston, she’s found a way.

In 2017, Kasvikis began working on concepts for bras that support large-breasted women but without underwire. She incorporated her venture, Behave Bras, in 2019. In 2020, she launched it as an e-commerce business. And last year, she pitched it to a panel of high-powered investors on the wildly popular ABC show Shark Tank. Her episode airs at 8 p.m. Friday, March 11.

“It’s been a journey,” she said.

It began all those years ago in high school. Kasvikis was a dedicated soccer player, both for the Greece Arcadia Titans and the Cobras, a Greece travel team.

Unable to find a bra that offered what she needed as a student athlete, she resorted to layering three sports bras. “I was just trying to compress as much as I possibly could, so it wouldn’t be painful when I was running around,” she said.

Things weren’t any easier off the field. During the late the 1990s, Victoria’s Secret dominated the lingerie industry and was best-known for televised fashion shows featuring willowy Angels — not inclusive sizing.

Online shopping was not yet ubiquitous, so Kasvikis’ best option was going to a department store “and buying whatever they had,” which wasn’t much, she said.

Even worse, “I was made to feel like a freak. You’re overly sexualized through no fault of your own, and you’re trying to hide parts of your body.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but those painful formative experiences would lay the groundwork for Behave Bras.

First — after graduating from Greece Arcadia in 2000, earning a bachelor’s degree in business from St. John Fisher College in 2005 and an MBA from the University of Rochester’s Simon School in 2007 — she worked for more than four years at Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati as a brand manager for Vicks and Gillette products.

“It’s great because you’re overseeing anything that has to do with a product,” Kasvikis said. “Operations, coupon strategy, media buying, marketing, working with major retailers to drive sales, working with customers. You’re basically running a business. It was amazing. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur at some point, but what I first wanted to do was get the fundamentals, and this was the best way to do it.”

She went on to become a brand director for candy maker UnReal Brands in Boston, and then was vice president of marketing for ice cream company Ciao Bella Gelato and for Kill Cliff Inc., which makes a line of clean energy drinks.

Ultimately, though, trying to solve her own problem — the same one faced by millions of other women — has resulted in her most satisfying and high-profile professional success.

Or, as Kasvikis puts it in her online bio, “I finally got tired of waiting for the big bra brands to pay attention to big breasts.”

Research shows that DD is now the average cup size among U.S. women, which is strange, since “a lot of women think that’s the largest size, and it’s nowhere close to that,” she said.

Developing her Behave Bras — which start at DD and go up to I — began with simple sketches and working with a Boston-area seamstress on prototypes.

The goal was to come up with something underwire-free that “still kept the girls contained,” Kasvikis said.

Again, she did not have a design background. But, “You don’t need to be an expert in lingerie or engineering. You just need to be a consumer. It’s not that hard to figure out possible solution.”

In her case, it proved to be soft, stretchy pieces of fabric tucked into each cup that can be pulled into place for extra support but don’t compress breast tissue.

She calls the fabric inserts Stayz and in January was awarded a utility patent.

“Breast tissue should not be smashed and pushed and pulled,” she said. “You kind of want them to do their own thing while keeping them nicely supported. What I wanted was encapsulation versus compression — surrounding the entire breast to keep it contained and support it in its natural state. That’s what I created in the bra. It’s like a really soft seatbelt.”

She’s not sure how Shark Tank got wind her of work — which was bolstered by a stint with MassChallenge, a Boston-based startup accelerator — and was surprised when the show's casting director reached out.

“At first, I didn’t believe her,” said Kasvikis, who ultimately took on as her chief operating officer Jonathan Weisberg, a manufacturer's representative and consultant in apparel, textiles and consumer goods. “But I ended up giving her a virtual bra fitting, and in the end, she said, I think Shark Tank would love you.”

Kasvikis was not at liberty to talk about what happened on the episode prior to it airing but said she prepared carefully.

“The show has this natural conflict built into it and walking in with the stakes as high as they were was different for me. I was terrified,” she said. “I run all aspects of my business. I do my own accounting. I know my numbers. What I wanted to do was tell the most compelling story in front of the Sharks to make the case for why we’re more than just a product. We’re literally getting women comfortable with the most fundamental thing they wear every day and with their bodies.”

Reporter Marcia Greenwood covers general assignments. Send story tips to mgreenwo@rocheste.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @MarciaGreenwood.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Athena Kasvikis to pitch specialty bra line on ‘Shark Tank’