Olaf Growald
Cynthia Sadler believes 2018 will be a “banner year” for her accessory company, Signature Cuffs. She currently has 6,000 products in production, licensed products at TCU’s bookstore and the Bass Performance Hall gift shop, and just completed a run at Dallas Market Hall’s Dallas Western Market in March.
Her company focuses on a singular item: the cuff.
“I spent a lot of time in boardrooms ... You need to dress the part in a corporate world,” says Sadler, who started the company after a long career as a Fort Worth banker. “You’re in a setting with a bunch of men in striped suits, and they’re all wearing white starched shirts. A lot of them have French cuffs. I just got to liking French cuffs.”
Sadler spent 30 years in the banking industry, most of which was spent at Frost Bank, before retiring in 2016. She had every intention to go back to work; she just wasn’t sure what to pursue.
Olaf Growald
Then an idea came one day when Sadler was preparing for an evening event. She picked her outfit, a black sweater dress, but wanted to add a French cuff for a little flair. After searching exhaustively, she couldn’t quite find what she was looking for.
So, she decided to not just make her own, but turn it into her next step in life — a business. There was just one problem: She had no experience in fashion and couldn’t sew a stitch. She went to Dr. Sally Fortenberry, a professor at TCU’s Interior Design & Fashion Merchandising department, who connected Sadler to Jenny Claire Siede, owner of fabric shop in.Style eXchange in Arlington. Sadler and Siede created a prototype — a simple, white cuff, dubbed Corporate White — and in January 2017, Signature Cuffs was born. After months of design and production work, the products launched that fall.
Sadler's daughter-in-law, Lindsey (right), and friend's daughter, Callie (left), model the TCU cuffs.
Before Sadler knew it, Christmas was around the corner, so she teamed up with Texas artist Dani Hale to produce a Christmas line and connected with Bass Hall to launch the line at the gift shop.
But Sadler says her “biggest catapult” came through her TCU line — another learning curve, as the product went through an eight-month licensing process through IMG College Licensing. But by February, Sadler had products in the bookstore.
“If all goes well with TCU, IMG reps 200 other universities,” she says. “We’ve already had those conversations.”
Signature Cuffs retail between $78-$98. They’re designed at the company’s Near Southside office, right next to Shinjuku Station, and manufactured in New York City’s Garment District. Orders are fulfilled at Woods Distribution Solution’s 250,000-square-foot warehouse in Fort Worth, and Expanco, a Fort Worth nonprofit that provides vocational services to adults with disabilities, assists with product assembly and package production.
The work has paid off — Sadler’s business savvy was recognized last October when the company became a Top 10 Finalist for the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center’s Fort Worth Business Plan. Signature Cuffs also won a Bronze ADDY Award for Packaging Design from the Advertising Club of Fort Worth in February.
Olaf Growald
Still, Sadler admits, she’s learning to “take it one step at a time.”
“All those years, 30 years of banking, prepared me for this,” she says. “With that said, none of that had any focus on manufacturing, production, web design — any of those areas; they were complete unknowns to me … I knew nothing about any of that, so I learned it.”