After waking up, Alden immediately checks her phone. She responds to unanswered text messages, skims through her email, and checks lottie's Instagram, which already has 16,000 followers.
"It's a bad habit, I know," said Alden, who shuffles between her parents' house on Martha's Vineyard, where she keeps her inventory, and her boyfriend's apartment in Manhattan to save money.
Phone still in hand, she makes herself a double espresso and checks Shopify to see if the company made any new sales since the day before. That wouldn't be unrealistic for lottie: In the past 90 days, lottie's web traffic increased by 129%.
Alden is lottie's sole employee but she's still able to plan a new collection and collaborations, including ones with significant properties like Palm Beach Historic Inn and Hudson Chatham Winery.
"lottie's success and failure is my responsibility," she said. "But another aspect of maintaining balance is never getting too high, and never getting too low."