How One Woman Startup Founder Left Corporate and Disrupted a Billion Dollar Bra Industry with ThirdLove | Heidi Zak
Dear FoundHer...Real Founder Stories for Women Small Business Owners
Lindsay Pinchuk
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Subscribe to The FoundHer Files: No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just what works… because we’re better together.
Heidi Zak took a bra that didn’t fit and turned that frustration into ThirdLove, a DTC brand that challenged an industry dominated by one player and proved that listening to women could transform everything about how a product is made, marketed, and sold.
For her 300th episode, Lindsay Pinchuk chose a woman startup founder whose story embodies exactly what Dear FoundHer is built on. Heidi walks through the decisions that defined ThirdLove's early years, from leaving corporate and bootstrapping on savings, to spending months finding a manufacturer willing to work with an unknown brand, to pushing through on half-cup sizing after being told it was a stupid idea. When the company was running out of money and struggling to acquire customers, the team went back to their research and found the real problem was not price. Women didn't trust bra brands. That insight became Try Before You Buy, a program so radical in 2015 that it required complete belief in the product. Eighty percent of women kept the bra. Heidi also talks through the scaling challenges that came after, including an on-demand manufacturing experiment across 60-plus sizes that cost them real time and money before they walked it back, and what learning from failure actually looks like when inventory and cash are both on the line.
This episode is for founders who are early in the build and trying to do too much alone. Heidi closes with three things she wishes she had done sooner: test the smallest version of your idea first, make sure you can see yourself doing this for fifteen years, and use your network before you think you need it. She waited too long on all three, and she is direct about what that cost her.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introducing Heidi Zak
06:19 Heidi Zak’s Founding Story of ThirdLove
14:01 Launching the First Product Line and Market Strategy
19:35 Creating Half-Cup Sizes and Disrupting the Bra Industry
24:08 Building Trust and Driving Customer Acquisition
32:01 How Customer Feedback Shaped ThirdLove’s Growth
36:17 Lessons Learned from Failed Experiments
38:56 ThirdLove’s Current Status and Future Plans
Connect with Heidi Zak:
Subscribe to The FoundHer Files: No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just what works… because we’re better together.
Join our online networking community, the Dear FoundHer... Forum
Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram
Don’t forget to follow Lindsay on Instagram
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to another episode of Dear Found Her. I am your host, Lindsay Pinchuk, and today is our 300th episode. |
| 0:08.5 | When I say that number and look at it on paper, it's honestly astounding. I started Deer Founder as a passion project nearly four years ago. |
| 0:18.3 | I simply wanted to share the stories of amazing female founders in an |
| 0:22.5 | effort to help women in business. And what started as a podcast has not only naturally become the |
| 0:29.6 | greatest marketing vehicle for the services that I offer, but it's become an absolute movement |
| 0:35.7 | for women business owners over the age of 40. |
| 0:39.7 | Deer Founder is helping thousands of women over 40 realize their dreams by helping you to turn |
| 0:45.7 | your ideas into a reality. |
| 0:49.1 | In addition to the podcast, Deer Founder boasts a weekly newsletter, the Founder files, |
| 0:54.1 | we host regular networking events. |
| 0:56.7 | We've taken the show on tour with two more stops coming this fall. We have an online networking |
| 1:02.6 | community called the forum that is on fire. And we have a group mentorship for those of you |
| 1:07.5 | who are looking to level up your marketing strategies. We are here to support you |
| 1:11.8 | in any way you need. But the greatest support of all here at Dear Founder is the community itself. |
| 1:19.5 | It's each and every one of you. Your support started when I dropped my first episode and it's never |
| 1:26.1 | wavered. But you don't just support me. |
| 1:29.4 | You support each other. |
| 1:30.9 | And in building this community, there is truly nothing better than watching all of you |
| 1:35.6 | stand by one another, lift up one another, and help one another to succeed. |
| 1:40.7 | Which is one of the many reasons why I chose Heidi Zach, founder of Third Love, as the guest |
| 1:46.6 | on my 300th episode of Dear Found Her. Besides the fact that she is a huge proponent for women |
| 1:52.9 | in business and her story is amazing and you're going to learn so much today. This episode is the |
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