Largo Entrepreneur Launches Shapewear Line

A Largo entrepreneur wants woman to look good and be comfortable at the same time.

Thanks to some help from the Pinellas County Business Development Center, Martha Istefanidis, a garment industry veteran, has launched a new line of more comfortable body-wrapping shapewear for women called N-fini.

Martha Istefanidis, founder of MGI Graphics in Largo in 1995, built her company making a variety of clothing products. But the entrepreneur inside her wanted to break out with a new, innovative line.

Recently, Istefanidis earned a resource partner's scholarship to write a marketing plan, expand her business and launch N-fini in Largo. She wants N-fini to eventually become a leading brand in the shapewear and undergarments industry for women. The product is completely made in the United States.

Her niche was developing a shapewear product that a woman could wear comfortably all day, something that would tone the body in relative comfort. But she needed some outside help to launch the product.

"With a new marketing plan, I was able to work around the recent economic downturn," Istefanidis says.

Istefanidis has also given women recently released from prison a chance at reform by hiring them to work at MGI through a nonprofit organization called Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises, known as PRIDE.

Writer: Dave Szymanski

Source: Martha Istefanidis, MGI Graphics and N-fini