While living in Connecticut in 2021, Tori Grieser saw a digital advertisement, prompting viewers to design a pair of sneakers. She thought to herself, “I can do that.”
After exploring the advertisement’s website, she decided that specific platform wasn’t for her, but that exploration sparked something for Grieser, who went on to create
Push for Progress, a lifestyle brand for children.
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser, founder of Push for Progress“I always wanted to design for kids,” she says. “Kids just don't have a lot of stuff that's just theirs. You'll see a lot of brands make a kid’s line– or a kid version of what they sell to adults and it leads to styles that aren't really for kids. I think that the world has become less kid-centered and a lot of what I do is try to bring that– bring them back to the center.”
Push for Progress releases clothing collections that feature streetwear, such as sneakers, bags, shirts and jackets in corresponding patterns and color palettes, all especially designed with children in mind. Grieser says the idea behind the company’s collections is to make it easier to dress children and to do it in style.
“Just making it easier for people to put together a solid outfit for their kids,” she says. “It helps give parents peace of mind. The kids don't look crazy, but it only took five minutes to get ready– that's basically what I'm trying to build.”
She builds each collection off of a pattern, for which the colorway is very carefully designed. From there, Grieser incorporates that pattern and its colors into each item, starting with shoes.
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Rachel Von Art LLCA white out high top sneaker part of the "Composition Collection" by Tori Grieser, the founder of Push for Progress.“The first thing I always make are the sneakers and if the pattern looks good on the sneakers, then I can kind of switch it up for the shirts,” she explains.
When it comes to design elements included on the clothing, Grieser tries to maintain a high level of diligence about what she uses. This includes looking into the history and meaning of symbols and phrases.
“I'm always looking into the history of something or trying to understand something better before I put it on my clothes because I want to make sure that the kids are safe in my clothes,” she explains. “A lot of people have dealt with the feeling of supporting someone who you later find out made lots of bad choices or did things you never would support. I'm aware of the responsibility that comes with building a kid's lifestyle brand, and I take it seriously.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser, founder of Push for Progress, zips her white out composition puffer jacket.The Push for Progress logo, for example, is an owl, which represents wisdom. The original colors of the logo, which Grieser says isn’t used frequently, are green and purple– meant to represent knowledge and royalty.
Designing especially for children, there are limits to what Grieser can make, but she says there’s fun to be found in the work.
“Kids are really picky, but at the same time, I think kids get things that sometimes adults are just moving too fast to understand,” she says.
Grieser is conscientious about the quality of her clothing. Anytime she works with a new vendor she puts their items through a quality test. The goal is to create clothes that children can wear for as long as they fit.
“I want to make sure I'm creating things that can be worn multiple times,” Grieser says. “Fast fashion is really big right now, but a lot of those clothes don't last. So yeah, your shirt might have cost five dollars, but you wash it twice and it's too small for your kid because it's shrunk.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser, founder of Push for Progress, with Ja'Maire Frison, 7, sporting items from the Fearless Collection.She says that quality is worth the higher price tag.
“Sometimes people get a little bit of sticker shock when they look at my website or look at my prices,” she explains. “But when I have a kid who is wearing the same t-shirt from January to December and it looks virtually the same– that's what I'm going for.”
Grieser does everything for Push for Progress online. The brand has no storefront and pop-up locations are rare. To get products to customers, they utilize a drop shipping model, which provides Push for Progress with a few benefits.
First and foremost, it provided Grieser with a lower overhead cost, as she’s not required to purchase inventory in advance. It also saves Grieser time. Drop shipping allows her to skip fulfilling and packaging orders herself. As a foster parent, who started the business as a side hustle to a full-time job, she says it was important this business not eat up all her time.
“Building a business that didn't take all of my time was important to me so that I could balance my family and stuff like that,” she explains.
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser zips a sports backpack from her brand Push for Progress.Additionally, the drop shipping method Grieser uses makes the business more environmentally friendly. With drop shipping, products are essentially made-to-order, meaning there’s not typically an overstock of clothing items that aren’t sold. It also cuts down the number of times an item is shipped and the amount of packing used for shipping. Instead of going from a manufacturer to Grieser and then being repacked to give to the customer, purchased products are shipped once– directly to the customer from the manufacturer.
As an online business, Push for Progress has large customer bases in New York City, L.A., Chicago, Washington D.C. and Atlanta. A large part of her marketing includes working with brand ambassadors on social media.
“I have probably, this past year, worked with about 18 kids,” she says. “A lot of all of my models are children of color, but it's mostly Black children and a lot of them have darker skin tones– and that's all intentional. The entire brand is really about promoting kids who don't typically have these types of opportunities.”
Grieser says it’s integral to her brand to work with children of color and create those opportunities and representation.
“I'm mixed race, so I'm white, Black and Native American,” Grieser says. “I think that it was always hard for me to fit in. It was just something that always made me feel like I didn't belong– made me stand out. I was always looking for versions of myself in the media or in real life and never seeing them. When I started designing, I immediately made the decision that I wanted this brand to be about representation because I felt like it was lacking. I want people who look like me and love like me to see my success and know they can do whatever they put their minds to. No matter how often it's said, the fact remains– representation matters.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser, founder of Push for Progress, with Ja'Maire Frison, 7, sporting items from the Fearless and White Out Composition Collections.While the business originally started in Connecticut, Grieser and her wife moved back to Fort Wayne to be closer to family. Grieser was born and raised in Fort Wayne, but left to attend the University of Hartford.
“My mom lives here and most of my family lives here and it's just a very family-oriented town,” Grieser says. “The cost of living, the fact that the zoo's 10 minutes away from virtually anywhere that you live in Fort Wayne. Those are all things that were a huge deal to me and my wife, especially knowing that we want to foster, that we want it to have a family and things of that nature. It just made sense to move back.”
Relocating to Fort Wayne inspired Grieser to start exploring ways to better connect her business with her hometown community. For Juneteenth celebrations earlier this year and University of Connecticut Basketball Player Ayanna Patterson’s Empower Basketball Camp, Push for Progress supplied swag bags.
“I would love to be more connected,” she says. “This year, I've changed my focus to Fort Wayne. Because it is an online business, I really wasn't necessarily focused on Fort Wayne. But my brand is community-centric, so I have started supporting things that are going on in the community.”
Being community-centered is embedded in the DNA of Push for Progress. It’s where the name comes from.
“I have always been a little outspoken and I actually started using the hashtag ‘push for progress,’” Grieser says. “I wanted people to care about what's happening in our world and so with that, I'm like push for progress– we need to move forward. We need to have a purpose and have intention behind what we're doing.”
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Rachel Von Art LLCTori Grieser, founder of Push for Progress, models the sports backpack.While Grieser’s focus with Push for Progress is designing children’s streetwear, she has bigger plans for the brand as well.
“I want to add on to Push for Progress– like this is fashion, but I want to like push literacy, push fitness and lots of different things,” she explains. “So I think the name really lends itself to being a lifestyle brand– a lot bigger than just fashion. This is just my starting point.”
Meet founder Tori Grieser at the Push For Progress Pop-Up Fashion Show on October 24 at The Local Archive from 6 to 8 p.m.
Check out Push for Progress’ website and Instagram.
Follow Tori Grieser on Instagram.