When Laura Low Ah Kee and Shannon Savage met while working at Lululemon in 2005, the Vancouver, Canada-based athletic apparel brand wasn’t yet the global phenomenon it is today.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Left On Friday. Laura Low Ah Kee, left, and Shannon Savage, right.
“The term ‘athleisure’ didn’t exist yet,” Savage tells Entrepreneur. “This whole world of women’s athletic apparel did not exist yet. So it was a really cool time to be involved in the company, and we just always had this love for this active lifestyle and product and fashion.”
Low Ah Kee and Savage both took on executive roles at Lululemon; Low Ah Kee went on “many journeys” during her tenure but primarily focused on merchandising, and Savage worked on the design side.
After a sabbatical partially spent in Maui surfing and kiteboarding, Low Ah Kee was catching up with Savage when inspiration struck. She’d worn Lululemon sports bras in lieu of typical swimwear for all of her water activities because they performed the way other products on the market couldn’t. What if they leveraged their expertise to create swimwear that merged fashion and function?
The duo continued their careers at Lululemon and worked on their passion product on the side, coming up with an exhaustive list of everything they wanted in an ideal bathing suit. But it wasn’t until they left their jobs at the athleisure giant that they got serious about starting a business.
“We wanted a name that had one part nostalgia and one part pure spontaneity.”
In 2017, amid a “booming” swimwear industry that still wasn’t designing the fashion-forward, high-performing products they wanted to see, the co-founders seized the opportunity to launch their own premium active swimwear brand: Left On Friday, headquartered in Victoria, Canada.
“ Laura and I are both the ultimate weekend warriors,” Savage says, “and we’re always off to have an adventure somewhere. We wanted a name that had one part nostalgia and one part pure spontaneity, a name that people immediately identify with, and it captures this idea of the ultimate weekend going away. You don’t know where you’re going. Grab one swimsuit, you’re good.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Left On Friday
The co-founders knew that “any great product starts with great fabric,” so they set out to find one that could address several major issues they saw within the existing swimwear market.
The fabric had to be compressive when wet and dry and provide “smoothing coverage.” “We did really find that most swim out there, once it gets wet, you do feel quite naked, but not naked in a great way,” Savage explains. “It shows every lump and bump.”
Additionally, the material had to be durable enough to hold up to an active lifestyle without sacrificing the handfeel. The goal was to design with a fabric that “as soon as you touch it, you’re like, I need to put this on my body, I want to experience this product,” Savage says.
A lot of trial and error went into finding the fabric that could do it all. The co-founders ordered countless fabrics to experiment with; a friend’s mother sewed the first designs in her basement, and Low Ah Kee and Savage tested them out in different climates, from the desert to the beach. Finally, they landed on their Smoothing Dream Fabric.
“It started as a bikini side project and then became Left On Friday.”
Then it was a matter of coming up with a line of styles that each served a distinct purpose. The co-founders self-funded their business, investing their own money in the fabric, inventory and “making the best product possible.” “ Shannon and I really hustled, [but] more from like workload [hustle] versus hustle, get money,” Low Ah Kee recalls. “It started as a bikini side project and then became Left On Friday.”
By leveraging their extensive existing skill sets in the activewear space, Low Ah Kee and Savage launched their business online — and it was “immediately profitable.” Left On Friday continued self-funded growth via its ecommerce channel for a while, but eventually, the co-founders wanted a board of advisors “with skin in the game.”
“The goal of the advisors was to get some advice, to keep us accountable, to pull us out of the day-to-day, which we were very much in,” Low Ah Kee explains. “So we surrounded ourselves with three incredible advisors who we knew from our community, and they put in a little bit of money.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Left On Friday
Related: Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a Board of Advisors
When the pandemic hit, Left on Friday had to navigate supply chain challenges, but the brand ultimately came out stronger and with more funds raised on the other side.
“We’re a very cyclical, seasonal business,” Savage says, “so when you get something like the pressure cooker of Covid, all the supply chains shift, so when we get a huge inventory drop in October, we can’t sell that. That ended up happening. All the timelines got shuffled, so we needed money when we didn’t have money.”
Left On Friday hasn’t raised more money since that point, and Low Ah Kee and Savage remain the brand’s majority owners.
“ The uniforms made such a splash. They were going viral in the Olympic Village.”
Another exciting breakthrough came in 2024, when Left On Friday designed the official national team uniforms for Canada’s women’s beach volleyball team for the Paris Olympics and World Tour. Savage designed a piece that lived up to the brand’s commitment to fashion and function: the one-shoulder suit left the players’ hitting arms free.
Image Credit: Coliena Rentmeester
“It was [a] career highlight, life highlight, brand highlight, everything that happened on this stage in the epicenter of fashion at the biggest sporting event that ever happens,” Savage says. “ The uniforms made such a splash. They were going viral in the Olympic Village, and everybody was talking about them. From a business standpoint, we got global awareness.”
Left On Friday saw a 136% increase in international traffic during the Olympics and a sustained sales growth of 67% in its native Canada in early 2025, per the company. The brand renewed its partnership with the team for another four years through 2028.
In response to customer demand, Left On Friday has also expanded into other premium activewear, from sweatshirts to tights, playsuits and more, keeping its dedication to fashion and performance at the forefront of every design.
Now, Left On Friday is an eight-figure brand, and Low Ah Kee and Savage look forward to its continued growth in the premium activewear arena — and the chance to provide products that fit into women’s active lives.
“ I love that there’s still so much untapped potential in the market, in apparel and just in the space in general,” Savage says. “ It’s a very intimate place. Not everyone always feels comfortable in that place, so I love that we’re creating this product [that allows] women to have the ability to live their best life, if that’s being an Olympian or if that’s just going out and playing some casual volleyball on the beach.”
