How it Began

Andie Swim is a direct-to-consumer swimwear brand, for women and by women. Melanie Travis, Founder & CEO, started the company in 2017 to take the struggle out of shopping for swimwear and provide a better product. Five years later, the New York City-based brand was seeing amazing growth. But with that growth came new challenges.

"There comes a point when your startup is doing well and scaling, that basically things start breaking at the seams," Melanie said. "We had raised enough money at that point that it was inexcusable the situation we were in with HR, with payroll, with everything on that part of the business." 

Melanie felt that Andie's HR practices were disorganized, and she knew it was time to find the right solution to help the business scale effectively. When her Head of People suggested that Andie join Justworks to make back-office tasks easier, Melanie was beyond ready to make the switch.

Buttoned-up HR & Benefits

When Andie started with Justworks PEO in 2021, Melanie described it as "life changing" for the business. 

"It was one of the first things we did where we finally felt like we were becoming real and professional. It was during a real growth period for us as a company and I was really proud of that change," said Melanie. "I also think it saved us money from the mess we had before. Total win!"

With Justworks in their corner, the Andie team was able to streamline many of their back-office functions, particularly when it came to payroll and HR. Plus, being able to provide employees access to desirable benefits they wouldn't be able to offer otherwise — like Citi Bike and Talkspace memberships — helped them up their game in employee engagement and recruiting.

Melissa Atienza Fink, VP of Finance, is another key member of the Andie team who relies on the Justworks platform. As someone who manages HR tasks but doesn't come from an HR background, Justworks is a lifesaver for Melissa.

"We've had to overcome challenges being a small team, but having Justworks has been such a win for us on the people side," said Melissa. "I feel like people who are not experienced on the HR side in-house can really depend on [Justworks]."

Hiring International Talent

Justworks also supported the Andie team in ways they didn't predict. Though Andie is headquartered in New York City, Melissa recently wanted to hire a candidate based in Canada — an accountant who had already worked with her team as part of a third-party accounting firm. 

"Going to search for a new employee from scratch is a huge risk," Melissa said. "You can interview them and they sound great, but maybe it's not a good cultural fit and they're not what you wanted. So we thought, wouldn't it be so great if we could hire this person in house?"

But she didn't know how to go about hiring internationally. Andie didn't have a legal entity in Canada, and Melissa didn't want to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to figure out the process. She thought there was no way.

Enter Justworks EOR.

Melissa reached out to her Customer Success Manager to see if Justworks could help. "I was shocked," she said. "[They] were like 'no problem, we're going to do it for you'." The Justworks team set up Andie on the Employer of Record (EOR), and guided Melissa through the process of hiring that accountant in Canada. 

"If you had asked me just a few months ago about an international hire, I'd have said 'no, we don't need that.' But I think things especially in the startup world change so quickly that I do appreciate [Justworks] coming to us with new solutions and new products." Melissa said.

When it comes to change, working with Justworks EOR is a big win for Melanie as well as she looks toward the future of Andie.

"Now that I know that we can hire talent really anywhere in the world, it opens up a lot of possibilities," she said. "And that's pretty amazing."