The new Star Wars episode, The Force Awakens, hits theaters December 18 and is expected to bring in $5 billion in branded merchandise in 2016 alone, according to analysts. But there is no doubt that Kennedy’s endorsement at the Star Wars Celebration gave her company a big bump. She is also organizing fashion shows for female sci-fi fans, and says she has lots of other plans to grow her brand outside of Star Wars. Next up for Eckstein: expanding her apparel line (she already sells Star Trek and Doctor Who-themed clothing) and distributing through more and more retailers. Eventually, she was able to take her expanding clothing line-including lightsaber-patterned skirts and Yoda-decked scarves-to retailer Hot Topic, which sold out of inventory almost immediately following her launch. (Today, she says she is delivering about 30 different designs to Disney parks and stores). The first opportunity she had to set up shop at Disney, she sold five times the inventory that products in her category normally sell at the theme park. She started selling her t-shirts at events. The restrictive license forced Eckstein to build up her brand before pitching to larger retailers. The characters featured were also carefully considered: Growing up, Eckstein wanted to dress up as R2D2, not Princess Leia. As for her first line? “All of the t-shirts were purposely gray, black, blue or brown,” she says. The few girls’ and women’s lines out there, says Eckstein, were badly sized-and pink. It just became something that society just did.” “You’re programmed to think Star Wars is a boys’ property. “For so long there has been gender marketing and a boys’ aisle and pink aisle,” says Eckstein. She discovered that while about half of Star Wars fans are female, and women make roughly 85% of purchasing decisions, brands catering to sci-fi fans had largely overlooked this vast demographic. That’s when she realized there wasn’t much out there, and the light bulb went off. After she got the part she started making appearances at the annual Comic-Con convention and other events, and searched for Star Wars-themed clothes to wear.

She is an actress who provides the voice of Ahsoka Tano in the animated Star Wars Rebels series and a lifelong fan of the space saga. ”Įckstein is a trendsetter in her own right. “Every single fan girl had to have that t-shirt after that. “Kathy Kennedy is the Kate Middleton of Star Wars,” Ashley Eckstein, founder of HER Universe, says of the Lucasfilm head and long-time producer, recently profiled in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women issue. Months later, it remains one of the sci-fi fan girl fashion line’s best-selling products. By the end of the day, the t-shirt, made by a small apparel company called HER Universe, had sold out.

Ashley eckstein her universe