Super Cute Dresses, an online shop with Cherry St. warehouse
ABOVE) Super Cute Dresses is located in the former Riley Creek Mercantile building
By Liz Gordon-Hancock
www.SuperCuteDresses.com/ is an online shop owned by Luke and Kariann Ringger of rural Bluffton. The business sells nursing dresses to mothers and dresses to women of all shapes and sizes. The business started back in July 2022 from their home.
Kariann learned how to buy and sell on Facebook out of necessity, because that’s how she could afford clothes. While Luke was in seminary getting his masters, Kariann would resell cloth diapers on Facebook to help with family finances.
After working in ministry in Alaska (Luke’s native state) and Florida, they came to Bluffton in 2022 to visit Luke’s parents, not expecting to stay. While applying for pastoral work, Luke worked at Diamond Manufacturing of Bluffton and Kariann homeschooled their (then) 3 children.
One particular month, when family finances were tight, Kariann sold a dress on Facebook’s Buy.Sell.Trade page. “Why don’t you design and sell your own dresses?” Luke suggested to his wife. Kariann had designed and sewn all her bridesmaids dresses. After researching the possibility, the Ringgers invested half of their nest egg in a shipment of 2,000 dresses from a manufacturer in China. They sold their first dress online on October 14, 2022.
The Ringgers realized there was tremendous opportunity in the market for nursing dresses and decided to invest everything they had into the business. Within three months, they turned a profit.
The name Super Cute Dresses came out of a need for a URL (website address) that was catchy and easy to remember. Kariann noted there is a difference between something “cute” and “super cute.”
At the start, Kariann designed everything, from the fabric to the style of the dress. Her wardrobe consists almost exclusively of dresses she’s designed: “I never designed a dress I didn't love!” As the business has grown, Kariann still does most of the designing but now oversees a team that handles design, social media and photography, while Luke manages logistics and the warehouse staff.
The three core principles for the business, which Luke particularly attributes to their success, are excellent customer service, transparency and quality of their product.
From day one, Luke was adamant that they offer free shipping to customers. That meant after a 10-hour day in the factory, Luke would come home and pack up any orders and carry them down to the post office.
If an item had a defect, they were transparent with customers and sold them at a discounted price. The Ringgers also checked every single item before shipping them to customers.
There were plenty of hiccups along the way. Luke had to manually reinforce over 1,500 pockets on that first shipment of dresses. More recently, tariffs threatened to make their business model unsustainable. "As a nod from God," they received their most recent shipment four days before overseas tariffs came into effect (which have since had a 90-day reprieve).
“We’re either going to make it or break it,” Luke said, about the early days of the business. “We were a month away from insolvency for 18 months."
“We started this business to just be tent-makers,” said Ringger, meaning it was meant to help fund ministry. Luke says he made a deal with God: “Bless the business and I’ll try to give the rest away.” Super Cute Dresses sponsored the annual Youth for Christ Golf Outing in June. Additionally, the business partners with a convent in Minsk, Belarus where they’re helping build a facility for the elderly and homeless.
As the business grew, so did the Ringger’s family: they had their fourth child, bought a house in rural Bluffton and extended their new barn to house all the dresses, so the family could eat off their dining room table again.
By November 2024, Super Cute Dresses had shipped 10,000 packages from Bluffton’s Post Office. (See Super Cute Dresses ships 10,000 packages via Bluffton Post Office in 2024)
Within three months they outgrew the barn extension, which led them to buy the former Riley Creek Mercantile building at 246 Cherry Street this past February. They currently have no plans to open a brick and mortar store, as the new space is solely used as a warehouse.
Currently, the business has nine staff members, plus seven independent contractors. Ninety percent of their orders are sent out within 24 hours of ordering.
By the end of July, Super Cute Dresses will have been in business three years. From their research, Ringger believes Super Cute Dresses is on their way to becoming the industry standard for nursing dresses online. They now sell nursing access dresses, modest dresses for women, dresses for girls, and men’s and boy’s shirts from their online store.
Super Cute Dresses can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.