Today we’d like to introduce you to Blythe Zemel.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The best part of my story is that it’s equally filled with humor as it is a story about empowering girls and women around us. How did I get started? I got started with a pair of polka dot cat-eye sunglasses, a chainsaw, and a tree limb that needed to be cut down. I was laughed at and mocked for my choice in eye attire, but I simply stated, “Wait for it, I am going to create cat-eye safety glasses for women”. So I did, Safety Sasses.
But here’s where the story gets good, Safety Sasses launched as a prototype last year and has done well in wholesale and direct sales. We continue to strive for our next phase of models and exposure to the marketplace. But Safety Sasses was so much more than just another brand hitting the market nor a bad joke turned real. It was a statement about women’s needs. Sure, Safety Sasses wanted to empower every woman working in trades or women working in safety glasses daily. But, I also wanted ALL women thinking about PPE – even at home when they are doing the yard or restoring that piece of furniture. I wanted them to know women needed eye protection too. Safety Sasses took hold in the skilled trades scene and immediately found itself in the hands of women from automotive shows on History Channel and MotorTrend.
This is where another beautiful story emerges, the nonprofit Girl with Grit Program begins.
By January of 2021, I wanted to show girls why they needed Safety Sasses and launched the nonprofit Girl with Grit Program, currently based in the Texas Hill Country Town of Boerne, TX, west of Austin. Through sales and sponsorship of Safety Sasses, we immediately had Ashley Robertson from ToyMakerz on History Channel volunteer to come out to pull a 327 engine out of the program’s 1934 Chevy Truck with 24 teenage girls in a field, all in Safety Sasses and then she joined our board.
Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1gdaKmVl_U&t=13s
In April, Briana Huhn, a welder/fabricator for 11 years across multiple industries came down through a Minnesota based nonprofit, Big Ideas Inc and got 18 girls welding. She joined our board with the goal to end the stigma that the trades are second rate. Her metalworking skills earned her a spot on Motortrend’s ‘Bitchin Bootcamp’ and Discovery Channel’s ‘Monster Garage’.
Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4glYY0CNo&t=23s
Our girls gain a lot of real life skills in our program and we keep it balanced with fun. We have been able to grow a wonderful and meaningful program that fills gaps in real life skills for women and encourages them that we can do it and they can do it too. My feeling is this – if we want women to not get taken advantage of by a mechanic or a contractor, we have to saturate basic skills into enough girls today to prevent it in the future. They need to learn how to change their flat tire, what they see under the hood, or how to fix something. They learn to hustle through our Maker’s Market where they learn real business skills by selling their merchandise for a return. They have access to tools, sewing machines, a welder, jewelry making supplies, art supplies, 3-D Printing Equipment and so much more, so these kids have skills. The best part is that we aren’t exclusively for girls, we invite boys into workshops and classes alongside the girls. The point is to keep them striding forward together.
Here’s our official nonprofit mission: Girl with Grit Program provides the community with an inclusive community makerspace that’s full of co-ed educational opportunities in the arts, trades, traditional arts and crafts, STEM, and real-life skills. We offer access to equipment, tools, and supplies. In our Makerspace, we provide community classes and workshops for all; a Maker’s Market – where young makers learn business skills by developing, selling, and earning a return on their handmade goods. We house the Girl with Grit Program, whose mission is to give girls and women a safe space to grow their skills and confidence through mentors and experiences that help develop life skills, career paths, and passions. We house a program for special needs individuals bi-monthly.
Girl with Grit Program is now expanding to take our program mobile to residential facilities like women’s shelters and group homes. Our services in will be giving them independent living skills from tools to cars to repairs to business start-up and computer skills and will also ignite passions and hobbies with access to the arts and other enrichment.
With our Trades Director working in Dripping Springs now, we also have plans to discuss programming options there for expansion.
Currently, all the girls in the program wear Safety Sasses and a portion of all sales goes to the nonprofit. Between Safety Sasses and Girl with Grit Program, I hope to be a small voice of a generation that helps to empower the next woman to be stronger, tougher, and more skilled than ever before.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s definitely not been a smooth. Both Safety Sasses and Grit with Grit Program have been completely Grassroots with minimal outside funding. While it’s left me working long hours, it’s allowed us to do this all without borrowing money – just a stable and steady growth up without large sums of money. We have been fortunate to start falling into more audiences of support.
I spent a few years doing trademarks, patents, research, and prototype development just to get hit like the rest of the world with a pandemic. After the launch of Safety Sasses in November of 2020, they found what they thought could be an early stage melanoma on my back. It definitely sent me into a shockwave as they made sure that they had any potential cancer removed. It was only a month and sometimes in retrospect, maybe it was a big deal, maybe it wasn’t, however, I got at least a nice, strong week to question my mortality, and that felt like a very big deal.
In many ways, that might have helped be a catalyst for Girl with Grit Program. You want to leave something behind and we become aware that our time is limited and it can end rather quickly, it probably helps spark the fire to make you connect deeper with upcoming generations, making sure they know your message for them, what needs to change and how they can do it.
So the challenge in Safety Sasses became the drive for Girl with Grit Program.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Safety Sasses® are the first safety glasses line that are exclusively designed for women by women. They were created and grassroots funded by Blythe Zemel to show women that eye protection could be safe and sassy, fun and functional, and just plain cute. They are the only patent-pending impact-resistant eyewear that are designed exclusively for a woman by a woman-owned company. Safety Sasses® have passed the ball drop test for impact resistance and are made from the same shatter-resistant materials as standard safety glasses. Safety Sasses is currently in the next round of funding for our next phase. The current model is still available at independent retailers and through direct sales online but is selling fast and has potential to be back-ordered. A percentage of all sales helped to fund the nonprofit Safety Sasses helped to launch, Girl with Grit Program.
Girl with Grit Program and Makerspace is a grassroots nonprofit organization founded by Blythe Zemel in January 2021. We provide the community with an inclusive community makerspace in Kendall County that’s full of educational opportunities in the arts, trades, traditional arts and crafts, STEM, and real-life skills. We also offer access to equipment, tools, and supplies. In our Makerspace, we provide community classes and workshops for all; a Maker’s Market – where young makers learn business skills by developing, selling, and earning a return on their handmade goods.
Additionally, we house the Girl with Grit Program, whose mission is to give girls and women a safe space to grow their skills and confidence through mentors and experiences that help develop life skills, career paths, and passions. Girls and women get crash course workshops in everything our Makerspace offers – such as automotive care, tools, vocational arts to real-world applications – and more. Last but certainly not least, we house the Boerne Peace Program, a program for special needs individuals bi-monthly.
The mission behind our girl-centered program at Girl with Grit is to saturate enough girls and women with skill sets that girls that can no longer be taken advantage of at a mechanic or if they walk into a hardware store, they can with confidence. This program is not about making girls an exclusive club, it’s about just giving them a temporary safe space as we make it normal for a girl to sign up for a welding or auto class at her high school. It’s about making them confident, independent women that know how to operate power tools, know how to fix things, and understand how to care for things like their cars and homes. Obviously, we want to reach as many girls and women as possible and it requires us getting in and delivering these skills and ideologies firsthand to as many young girls and women as possible. We need a mobile workshop to get into schools and women shelters with crash course Girl with Grit workshops (i.e., changing a flat tire, using standard tools, car and house maintenance) or encouraging trades for young women not college-bound.
Our goal is to create the independent women. There are gaps in what some girls learn when it comes to real-life skills when it comes to career paths, and garnering skills need not just to thrive but to survive. Girl with Grit Program not only hopes to help to create a well-rounded woman of tomorrow that understands the secret code her mechanic speaks or doesn’t feel like a “damsel in distress” when she needs to power up a weed eater. We also serve women and all area youth (boys too) in gaining these skills.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
For Girl with Grit Program, we are always looking for volunteers, people to get our message and cause out. We need funding and donations to keep the nonprofit growing the way it is, we hope to take it to more communities and spread real empowerment. You can check us out on social media @girlwithgritprogram or web girlwithgrit.com.
Safety Sasses, support comes in the next round of funding or just buying some. They are available on safetysasses.com or @safetysasses.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@safetysasses.com / info@girlwithgrit.com
- Website: safetysasses.com / girlwithgrit.com
- Instagram: @safetysasses / @girlwithgritprogram
- Facebook: @safetysasses / @girlwithgritprogram
Image Credits:
Paula VM, Chloe Flores, Brent Strong, Blythe Zemel, Andy Holcomb
