In the News | At Work With Dawn Cover

As told to Pilot writer Carolyn Shapiro

We manufacture post-operative compression garments. It includes not only garments for after plastic surgery, or any type of cosmetic surgery, but we’ve delved into shapewear. It’s a big thing right now. People want to look smoother under their clothes without actually having surgery.

We have body suits, bras, binders, male vests. A binder is a big, elastic, velcro-closure garment. It’s generally worn around the midsection, after liposuction or a tummy tuck. I think a girdle is more comfortable.

We have three new garments. Thong garments, for people who are having fat transfers into their buttock region. And you have to have compression on

Dawn Cover, right, with partner Loan Luu. (David B. Hollingsworth | The Virginian-Pilot)

the front, because normally they’ll take the fat out of your stomach, put it in the back. You can’t have compression where they put the fat. And a new face garment, for a facelift or a lipo to the chin.

We’ve been open for six years. We were in a similar business and my partner, Loan Luu, has been a seamstress her entire life. I have run businesses before, so it was kind of a happy partnership. She does the manufacturing end; I take care of the business end. We met working at another office in a similar business. We basically went as far as we could go there and branched off on our own.

We knew there was such a market for comfortable compression wear. You’re in pain already after surgery, and then you have a garment that you’re to wear for six to eight weeks, and you’re uncomfortable. We spent a lot of time looking into fabrics. We wore them ourselves. We tested them ourselves. We still, to this day, wear them. So we know that they’re comfortable.

There’s just a lack of knowledge in the area of compression garments. Patients are concerned. So a lot of my job in talking to them on the phone is to educate them in what they need, how it’s supposed to fit, how long they’re supposed to wear it, how to launder it – down to simple washing. Most of the people end up thanking me because I have given them more information than their doctor.

When somebody walks out of here and throws another garment in the trash, they are thanking me – “Oh my gosh, I’m no longer in pain.” They’ll call me from in their car on the way home – “I feel so much better. Thank you. Thank you.” – within 10 minutes.

Over the years, you learn how to fit people and how your fabric works in conjunction with the body. All of our fabric comes out of Rhode Island. We are 100 percent made in the USA. I’m very proud of that. It’s very important to us. I believe we should keep all that we can here. There’s nine of us (working here): from sewers to cutters to me being office manager, people helping with the books, someone who takes care of my Internet.

We are like a family. We work well together. Every once in a while you’ll get a customer that’s unhappy. And we work very, very hard to make them happy. If their garment doesn’t fit, I’ll say, “OK, I need more specific measurements. I want you to do this again. Maybe you didn’t measure correctly the first time.” I’ll ask, “How’s it fitting, say, in the chest or in the waist? How can we fix it?” We will alter things. Send it back to me. Let me do a little tweak here and there. I, 100 percent, stand behind our garments. A happy customer gets more happy customers. People get on blogs. People will call me and say, “Is this Dawn? I heard about you on this blog.”

We have three international distributors right now. We are in Kuwait, Dubai and England. The international has grown threefold for us. We’ve kind of gone down here (in U.S. sales), way up over there. It’s not growing as fast here. We have every year continually grown, but our international business is three times what it was last year.

In the next six months we’re looking at properties. We’re busting at the seams here. We’re tripping over each other and the dogs. We’ve got to at least double, hopefully triple our square footage.

DAWN COVER

• Co-owner and co-founder of Nouvelle Inc., Virginia Beach
• Age: 40
• Home: Virginia Beach
• Family: husband, three children and two dogs – shih tzus, who come to the office with her
• Favorite product in her line: the pull-on girdle. “It’s considered shapewear. It has no zippers or hooks and eyes, so you pull it on.”