I don't want my daughters wasting time
thinking about how much they weigh, what they look like.
And I think that fashion has done a terrible job of reinforcing a really
unrealistic beauty ideal. The entrepreneur who's driving a
multibillion dollar retail empire while trying to redefine the world of fashion.
British businesswoman Emma Grede has partnered with one of the most famous
families in Hollywood. She's chief executive and co-founder of
the inclusive fashion brand Good American, which she launched in 2016
with Khloe Kardashian. She's also the founding partner of
shapewear label Skims, alongside Khloe sister Kim as a young black female
entrepreneur. The only thing that I could do was what
I know from my experience. And the honest truth is I didn't set out
to create a company that was deeply rooted in the principles of inclusivity
and diversity. I set out to make a company that was
right for me. In this episode of Leaders with LaCour,
I speak to and agreed about her rise to the top, how she measures success and
why diversity remains elusive in the world of fashion.
And Margaret, thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg.
Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting.
I mean, you represent so much for so many people.
Everything you touch, all the businesses you touched turn into gold.
Did you ever you know, did you ever think that you would be such a success?
No. And that's mostly because most of the
businesses that I touched early in the days didn't tend to go.
I love this idea of like overnight success.
And I feel like our job to continue to perpetuate that make.
But, you know, I've just done a lot and there's been a lot of trial and error
along the way, and I feel like I've probably done every job imaginable from
having like a paper out when I was 12 to working in a deli to working in shops,
to starting things that were less successful, to selling things, I had
medium success. I feel like there's been a long journey
and I'm really thankful that now I'm 41 years old and I'm starting to see like
this, this type of success, which is really great.
I know Bureau is starting the journey. You always wanted to succeed.
Is that what actually makes your success?
You know, I think so. I also think, you know, there's an
element of luck in any of these things, right?
But then when you kind of take apart what luck means, I really believe that
when opportunity meets preparation, you know, I was always prepared.
And when my opportunity came along, I was ready to, like, really work for it.
And then there was just that old adage of like a lot of hard work.
And I've really, really put the time in, I think.
Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
No, no. I never knew what an entrepreneur was.
If you'd have asked me when I was a kid. I mean, I came from East London and I
didn't know anyone who had their own business.
Everyone that I knew went to work to pay their bills with usually very little joy
in it. So even the idea of doing something that
felt purposeful or meaningful or something you enjoyed really wasn't part
of my understanding. I tried really hard to get close to what
it is that I love, which is the fashion business.
But I didn't ever, ever think about starting my own thing.
I think it actually came out of a necessity.
I was like, Who else? Who's going to employ me and pay me what
I think I deserve? And I left the company because I was
out. They just not paying me properly.
So I'm going to have to I'm going to have to just pay myself with age 24 and
20. And that was the determination of
actually, you know, making something. Yeah.
Do you know what it was? I, I felt like I was adding a lot of
value. And I think so many people through their
careers have this feeling like I'm having adding a lot of value and I'm not
being renumeration for what I bring to the table.
And that feeling became so strong in me. But what do you do at 24?
You know, you don't really have that many options.
And so I did what a lot of people do. I went to a company and tried to do my
best at the position that I was given. And thankfully somebody saw that and
decided, okay, maybe we'll set this girl up on her own.
But I talk to so many, you know, either young people that I employ or people
that are trying to get noticed. And I honestly think that's such
amazingly good advice because no one's ever going to look at you to do the next
thing unless you're excelling where you are today.
And so sometimes just buckling down and doing the absolute best job wherever you
are is the best way to get ahead. But then actually making the step of
leaving and setting something on your own, you have to be brave.
And it's not always easy. No, it wasn't always easy.
Especially I remember the first time that I got a little bit of backing and
they said to me, You know, you're going to be in charge of your own panel.
And I was like, Fantastic. And I wrote it down.
I went home and Googled it like, What is it now?
I mean, sometimes naivety is the best thing for any entrepreneur.
I didn't know what I didn't know, and therefore I just kind of had to go for
it and learn, learn fast and fail fast. And I think I've done throughout my
career, I haven't made the best choices every time, but I think part of being a
good interpreter is knowing when things are not going right and knowing what you
don't know. And I'm surrounded myself with the right
people continuously. So what's the biggest mistake that
you've learned from? You know, I think the biggest mistake
was probably when I had my first agency, ITB, and I was killing it in London.
And so there is this idea that the, you know, the company was completely
exportable. And I went to the US, opened an office
in New York. That office went really well.
And then I opened in L.A. and I failed miserably.
Underinvested, didn't bring the right people in and just thought that whatever
I was doing would translate and it didn't.
And I learnt that the hard way. I learnt that by starting something,
dragging people there and then having to close it and there's nothing like a bit
of embarrassment to humble the soul, you know, go back, packed everything up
and literally like I had to pack my own office back up.
And so that was a fantastic learning. But again, I never let it break my
spirit. I really, truly took those learnings and
when I started my second company in L.A., I was like, Okay, this is where I
need to do something different. And so I literally packed up my family
and went and moved to L.A.. I knew that if I was going to do
something that is going to be successful, I need to do it myself.
I need to be in the country. And I think to give it my absolute all.
So is that also giving time to understand a market to I mean, was it
that it was difficult to do it from from not being in the city, you know, being
in-country, being part of that, the fabric of that?
Culture has been really important, especially for my business, good
America, and that really is about what's happening at the moment.
Like where are we in society as women? Where is fashion?
And I think that's been really, really important to be like where it's all
happening. That's a really bold move, actually
selling denim to Americans. Yeah, Really?
Well, nobody needs more blue jeans. Let's be honest.
I actually doubted myself when we started, but again, coming to a business
with mission and purpose, at the heart of what we do is what sets us apart.
And so I think there are so many brands. But how do consumers make choices these
days? And right now we make our choices based
on what we believe in, what we feel is important, and what we want our children
to see. And I'm the mother of four, and so I
know only too well that I don't want my daughters wasting time thinking about
how much they weigh, what they look like.
And I think that fashion has done a terrible job of reinforcing a really
unrealistic beauty ideal. And so we've got America, the whole
premise of the brand, which is to say, we're going to make clothes for all
women, we're going to let women make their choices, and hopefully we're going
to take some of that pain out of what it means to be left out of the conversation
or not represented in fashion. And we've done that pretty well.
I think so. And you have this idea, right, of
inclusivity, of making women feel good. Who do you talk about it with first?
Funnily enough, my husband, you know, because I think that we're
both entrepreneurs and so it's natural for me to back any idea backwards and
forwards with them. But, you know, I've worked for years in
the fashion business, and so I think part of the problem, right, it's like
I've seen first hand how some fashion businesses make women fail.
And I think there's one thing, you know, being very vocal and being an Instagram
activist and talking about something, there's a difference.
Then putting your money where your mouth is and really trying to do something
about the problem. And that's what I did with that
business. It was about how do I take everything
that I know and I've learned and actually do the opposite.
And I think that as a young black female entrepreneur, the only thing that I
could do was what I know from my experience.
And the honest truth is I didn't set out to create a company that was deeply
rooted in the principles of inclusivity and diversity.
I set out to make a company that was right for me and my friends, and I knew
that if I had a problem, chances are somebody else does.
And I think that's why so many businesses are created when you're
solving a problem that's real for you and therefore for the consumer.
Is there a danger that, you know, some entrepreneurs look at numbers too much
and look for, you know, a gap in the market?
We're actually very true. It's very true.
And I think that's one way to approach things.
And there's a certain sense for me, you know, I go with my gut and gut instinct
tells me a lot and I tend not to go against my gut.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I didn't run some numbers and feel like there was
commercial opportunity here. Right.
Nobody makes 19 sizes of anything without thinking.
I reckon I can sell them somewhere along the line, but I definitely think so much
more of what I've done throughout my career has been in response to a feeling
that I've had and then acting on that feeling.
Were you surprised at how many other people felt like you were you?
Yeah, Yeah, I honestly I mean, it's one of those things that, like on paper,
Good American has been such a massive success.
But if you think back to day one, everyone thought you saw ,000,000 in
Taiwan. The truth is, you know, 9:00 I was the
hero. By 11:00, I had no stock left.
And everyone was like, You have no idea what you're doing, do you?
And I was like, No, actually I don't. And in a way, that was my first lesson
in what it means to be excellent from a customer experience point of view.
Because I just started emailing people and I was like, How long do I think
people will wait? Turns out not that long.
Certainly not as long as it was going to take me.
Who are you? The stock customer.
Customer. Actually, I was like, Can you help me
get some more fabric? Will you wait eight weeks for a pair of
jeans? And somewhere in that it all kind of
worked out. But I think again, what people respond
to is brands that have authenticity, and there's a level of honesty that's
needed. And I went and said, You know what?
We had no idea how popular and how much this was going to chime with customers.
And if you can just be patient, we're going to get you something hands out.
We know we messed up and we don't want to disappoint you.
And there's a part of that honesty that actually really chimes with people.
They knew that we weren't feeding the line.
It was clearly not written by PR because that kind of a PR at that point
you're signing Emma Love.
Emma Excite You know how I do. How I'd speak to my mom or something.
Coming up, Emma Grede on her attempts to break one of the last taboos in fashion
and how success is making her reassess what it means to be an entrepreneur. Emma.
Greed has made a personal fortune by founding inclusive and progressive
clothing companies. Good American was the biggest denim
launch in history when it made million in sales on its first day.
She tells me about her success and the challenges that remain across the
industry. Has fashion done.
I mean, it hasn't done enough when it comes to inclusivity and adversity.
But has it done something in the last 5 to 10 years?
Well, you know, it's interesting because fashion is quick, easy, easy to change,
like in the kind of aesthetic. It's very difficult to change a system.
Right. And I think that that comes down to who
makes decisions. And the people that make decisions in
fashion don't typically look like me. They aren't typically women all the
time. When we look at who's at the helm at the
Big East High Street players, it tends to be the same type of people.
And so I honestly think there's a lot of work to be done.
Progress has definitely happened, but you only have to look at the last like
New York Fashion Week, which is the biggest and the most commercial to see
that, you know, there's so much tokenism around what inclusivity really means.
And I think that especially when it comes to size, we're back where we were
20 or 30 years ago when you'd have one single black model that would walk down
the catwalk. Now we're in that same situation where,
you know, I can't remember the stat, but I think it's less than 3% of models that
came down the catwalk were about the size 12.
I mean, a size 12 is like less than average.
And so there's just so much work to be done there.
And it almost size is the last allowed taboo.
You know, we're allowed to disclose people because of their size.
And it's really crazy. I was reading something saying, you
know, people feel a bit rubbish when they look at all this stuff because they
don't feel represented and they feel that there's something wrong with them.
Yeah. And that's the whole reason I started
the brand, because, you know, if you go back seven years ago, I was pregnant
with my second child, a girl, and I really felt that deeply, like how much
time and effort you can spend and waste time.
And to me it's like if you take out some of that, you know, worry and the strife
around how much we think about our looks and instead put our energy into saying,
I need a pay rise. I think I should be doing something else
with my life. Like, part of it was really like, what
happens if you shift and change the paradigm of how people see themselves?
And, you know, it's a really trite sentence, but representation really
matters when you see a version of yourself in something, there's a level
of acceptance, and that's what I wanted to do, just like level the playing field
and say, You know what? Like we all look different.
We all are different and that's okay. Like, that is not what we should be
thinking about. We should be thinking about like equal
pay, like that's that. They're the things that we should use
our time for as women. Let's just get like an equality going
with men. And that I mean, throughout the
workplace, throughout all of the industries.
And honestly, I feel like that the media is such a huge impact on us.
And I'm noticing just fashion media, I mean, the media at large.
And so we need to see better representation everywhere in society.
Is that what you're doing? Dragons Den Well, you know, it's so
interesting. You asked me earlier, what did I think
about being an entrepreneur? And I honestly just never thought about
being an entrepreneur. But as I've got more successful, I
thought a lot about what it means to be an entrepreneur because they talk about
being really small at the top, but it's not small at the top, like it's
minuscule. It's the same people doing the same
deals, giving each other money who all typically went to like one of five or
six schools. And so for me, you know, because I'm on
Shark Tank in the US and the idea of Dragons Den and that you could be an
entrepreneur with seemingly very little background and absolutely no access to
funding and walk on and get a check to start to do something that means
something to you and that could mean something for your family.
I'm like, Why wouldn't you? You know, it wasn't so long ago that I
was out fundraising, and so I'm just like, if I could be a small part of
somebody's journey, that wouldn't usually get the opportunity.
To me, it just makes so much sense. And it's not just about women, not just
about women of color. It's like if you didn't have the means
or the education to know anything differently than getting up and going to
work every day, That doesn't mean to say you can't have a successful business.
I am like walking proof of that, right? So like I left school when I was 16
years old and I've done pretty well. So to me it's about levelling the
playing field and I love the idea of that being seen on TV and people having
that idea that they can be successful if they just get an opportunity.
Is entrepreneurship in the UK different to the US?
In the US there's almost a badge of honour of trying or failing, of trying
again, of starting again. I don't know if there's a stigma in the
UK that people are less bold, you know, I don't think they're less bold.
I think that there is more, you know, we're different here.
We don't celebrate in the same way. And I find that really difficult to say
because I feel like I'm so celebrated, especially where I'm from.
Like people in London are so nice to me. Like I turned up in this office and like
two girls come up to me and I'm like, Oh, we love you, like high five.
And so I think things are shifting. And what I am all about is like
celebrating people. And listen, it doesn't all work out, but
that's also part of life. And I think that we just have to be a
little bit more honest with ourselves about what it takes and how hard it is.
It's hard because you need to build a team around you.
You need funding. Oh yeah, there is a little bit of luck.
What what have you found hardest? If I'm really honest, probably the
funding piece, because I think without the right background and circles around
you, access is really difficult. For me, I raised my first check for my
clients because I'd built a business in the fashion media, and so I had lots of
clients. So they only like quote unquote, rich
people I knew were clients of mine that had been paying me retainers.
And so that was for me the easiest way. I was like, Hi, remember me?
Would you like to give me $3 million? Most of them said no, but a couple said
yes. So I think just knowing where to go in
the beginning and that there the barriers that most people face.
But once you're in it, I think that it's all so much about the journey, like none
of this stuff happens like it does on social media.
And I think just knowing that, you know, you're on a journey and actually I
honestly think the best way to start a business is with no money.
You don't need to go out and raise tons of finances.
You need to figure out like, what am I creating?
Where is my audience and what am I uniquely good at?
Because when you figure out what you're good at, you know who else you need
around you to make something really work.
I mean, Kris Jenner was part of your journey.
Yes, very much so. I mean, how did that kind of, you know,
shape the entrepreneur you are? Well, you know, I think that I've been
really lucky to be surrounded by so many incredible entrepreneurs, starting with
my clients, also my husband being around people like Kris and also just having
access and listening and watching some brilliant people as I grew up, you know,
just even on the TV, really soaking that out.
And I am one of those people that can learn from anything.
You know, I've read books about being an entrepreneur before I even really knew
what one was. And so I really am someone that, like,
I'll take from any situation that you like me coming up and agreed tells me
why diversity is a superpower and what she's doing to try and improve access
and opportunity. Emma Grede is perhaps best known as the
founding partner of Skims, along with Kim Kardashian.
The shapewear brand was valued at $4 billion last year.
I continue the conversation by asking Emma about the business and her
commitment to supporting diversity and black owned companies.
This games is also huge. Did you ever think that I shouldn't
underwear and what you call it, an underwear shaping company?
Well, yes. I mean we make underwear solution where,
you know, skims is grown so unbelievably.
And you know, that is Kim Kardashian's company.
It was her idea from the outset. And I honestly believe that we never
thought that it would just be one thing. You know, we always thought about it as
being this huge company that would do lots of things well.
But again, that company was based on just doing one product really, really
well. And I think that's testament to any
great company. We had so much focus in the beginning.
We were like, Here's what we're going to do.
We're going to make superior shapewear in every single size and every single
color. And it worked out incredibly well.
And now also selling to men. When's the right time to, I guess,
either grow or go into a slightly different branch?
Well, you know, it's so interesting because in in Good America and the first
time we ever thought of going into another category was because customers
asked us to. And I think it's a really smart way to
think about your growth and your development in a business like you
really have to listen and it's them. You can't take that commentary like just
the good things because your customers will tell you what you need to hear.
They will also tell you what you don't want to hear.
And it's like a big fat mirror, right? And I feel like that's one of the things
where social media is so exceptionally important in business right now because
it is just a reflection of everything you're doing, a reflection of your
consumer base. And if you're listening carefully
enough, the data will tell you things and all you need to do is tune in to
that. And so when I think about category
expansion, it really is in in regards to or in relation to really what customers
are asking me for. And we make those decisions based on
that. But how do you build a team that can
also say, no, I'm a this is not a great idea?
You know what? That is a great question.
I think I spend about 25% of my time hiring and I will take speculative
meetings even if I don't have a position that's available because you're only as
good as your team. And to do what I do, you have to
surround yourself with experts like people that are really, really good at
what they do. And part of that is being able to stand
up to you and you being able to listen. And so when I think about myself as a
leader, I really lead with empathy because I need people to be able to say
to me, that's a bad idea, or based on my experience because my experience is
limited. Do you think it's different being a
leader in 2024 than it was in 2004? 100%, because the workforce has changed
immeasurably. If we think post-pandemic also the
generation that we're dealing with right now, it's entirely different.
And you have to create a company that can succeed with the workforce that it
has is at its disposal. And so I think there's been enormous
amounts of change. Young, younger, younger people have a
different expectation of their life and their work and how those two things
together. And like it or not, COVID changed the
working environment forever and you either adapt or you die.
I might have a certain opinion about how I want people to come into a space, into
a business, but at the end of the day, you've got to work with where the
cultures and I'm not here to fight the culture.
I'm like, okay, it is what it is. How do we work to maximize this?
Because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing.
How do you spot a, you know, a good entrepreneur like I'm dragons?
And how do you decide whether you're you're all in you know, I am so
personality driven. Of course a good idea is a good idea and
a white space is a white space. But if I meet someone that just like
does something to me, like I feel it immediately, I'm like, It's you.
What? Like, you know, fire in the belly?
Like, how would you describe it? Sometimes just not mad passion.
Like I could get excited about an origami company.
If somebody comes to me and they're like, you know, it's like I'm that
person. And I respond to that because that's who
I am. But I also really respond to the fact
that I'm like, you know, sometimes seeing a little bit of yourself knowing
that someone hasn't got another opportunity or a chance.
I'm like, I'll have a crack, I'll have a go at you.
What's Emma going to do in five years? Oh, I don't know.
Lie down. I don't say one second.
No, it's true. I'll find something else.
You know, I'm really focused on a lot of my nonprofit work these days.
I'm the chairwoman of an incredible organization called the 15% Pledge,
which is really focused on creating some semblance of balance in the world of
black owned businesses, figuring out how they can show up in retail with more
balance. And I honestly believe that, you know,
any way that I can use my voice, use my influence and use the knowledge that
I've built over all this time for good is a good use of my energy.
Why? Why is it so underfunded?
So, you know, it's so interesting because it's about access.
You know, I think about this all the time.
You know, talent is fairly evenly distributed, opportunity isn't.
And what we need is to give more people opportunity regardless of education.
Race, background, age. All the things.
And so it's about leveling the playing field.
We come back to that same idea. Who gets to be an entrepreneur?
Who gets to make decisions? And so I really believe that the more we
can open that up, the better it is for everybody.
And I've proven in my businesses that diversity actually is a superpower.
The more people you have at the table, the more customers you can serve.
It's just good business. It's not about being holier than thou or
giving somebody an opportunity that doesn't deserve it.
It's actually about being able to service as many customers as you can.
And the more mines that you have around the table that reflect your customer
base, the better. Emma Grede.
Thank you so much for joining us today so much.
