Inside the Industry: How to Build a Fashion Business | The Business of Fashion x Topshop

can you hear me all right um my name is lauren sherman i'm the new york editor for business of fashion thank you all for being here we're really excited about this event and i can't believe it's so packed someone just waved at me it's nice to see you too so this panel is called inside the industry it's part of our future voices partnership with topshop mbof and it's the second in a series of panels we did one in london a couple of weeks back and this panel we're specifically talking about entrepreneurship um i think that's how you pronounce it um we're talking about building your own business and and this panel is very no they know a lot about that and and are going to give us a ton of insight i've spoken with a lot of them before and also admire them greatly so i'm just going to introduce them really quickly so first we have jen rubio who is the co-founder of away a modern travel brand and before starting away jen worked as the head of social media warby parker where she spearheaded the brand's early content and partnership efforts and later as the global head of innovation at all saints and in 2015 jen was named to the forbes 30 under 30 list for marketing and advertising which is very impressive yeah i'm not under 30 anymore still close and then we have eva chen who is the head of [Applause] give it up for eva um she's the head of fashion partnerships for instagram prior to instagram eva was the editor-in-chief of lucky where i got to write for her which was great um and she was responsible there for more photo shoots involving instagram famous animals than any other conde nast publication i'm really proud of that which explains how she got a job at instagram she also worked at team vogue l m china um next we have carolina crespo and iris alonso and they are founders of everybody a really exciting clothing and lifestyle goods company inspired by reality people culture science history life that means leading with creativity and ensuring production is always ethical and as earth-friendly as possible during their tenure at american apparel the two spent some 26 years there between them which is pretty impressive people don't stay at jobs that long these days they shaped the brand's aesthetic and were influential in its explosive growth and last but not least we have aurora james all the way down there yay and aurora founded brother bellies with two specific goals to introduce her favorite traditional african footwear to the rest of the world and to create and sustain artisanal jobs in africa handmade in south africa kenya ethiopia and morocco brother valley shoes and handbags maintain the spirit and durability of their ancestral counterparts and she also won the 2015 cfda vogue fashion fund so congratulations to that for that um i i think to start it would be great to hear from the business owners in the group why you start decided to do your own business um jen you worked for other entrepreneurs what what made you want to do away i wish i was one of those entrepreneurs that was you know that always set out to say i would start my own business but i wasn't i started away really out of a need and out of um a gap in the market that i saw so you know as the story goes my luggage broke i was looking for something to replace it everything was either super expensive or like cheap and flimsy and i had just come from orbee parker and that was when kind of like the idea of like why doesn't a warby parker for this uh this category exist so it came out of um and i think because it came out of a of a personal need and something that i'm really passionate about which is travel it's allowed me to uh kind of like persist and approach it in a way rather than than some people who are just set out to build a business without really like a strong feeling towards the business that they're building yeah um for me i just knew it was something that that people needed and something that i wanted to create which was a sense of purpose yeah so aurora can you talk a little bit about that i feel like you might why i started also i feel like i was just not good at working for other people um and like a lot of different levels it wasn't always about just like not showing up sometimes it was about getting too invested yeah you know i was that person that was like there at seven in the morning still there at two in the morning and it got too crazy and i realized that ultimately you know when you work for a corporation you're going to be disposable in a sense or replaceable um and so i wanted to make sure that i was investing my time into something of like my own um that said like i started brother valleys completely accidentally it was just supposed to be like a flea market thing and and when did you realize it was not going to be a flea market thing uh i think probably like when anna was like you're having a fashion show she means anna anna anna when miss wintour was like you're having a fashion show and i was like oh you're looking at me that was when i would say yeah what about what about you guys well it started with the uh being unceremoniously fired from our jobs which i broke that story you did what was the headline it was american apparel creative director fired twice dot dot dot again so long story short you know the company changed hands we had been there for a very long time they wanted to switch everything up and we found ourselves kind of uh out in the big world wondering what we were going to do next with a lot of time on our hands and uh you know just kind of thinking about the last i was there for 11 years as the creative director and carolina was there for 15 years 15 years running two divisions at the company and um you know it started with thinking okay well we've gotten some calls from headhunters thinking about you know do we see ourselves at these big corporate companies do would they like us would we like them would we fit in probably not after going on a few interviews it just we couldn't see ourselves in this in these settings um and then we we had this idea first of all we had that we had a lot of experience carolina grew up in factories and we've been working in the american apparel factory which was the biggest american factory or the biggest stone garment factory in the country and um we had a ton of experience with making things so it just felt like a shame to sort of let that go to waste and we said well everyone else we need to start a website and ask our friends to come up with some ideas and put it online and sell that share the profits with them and then we said actually that could be kind of a concept so then we started forming this idea and um and then just put one foot in front of the other and the next thing you know here we are yeah and you guys do have a really unique business model and that you're kind of doing limited edition items or they're not are they even a limited edition but with specific people right yeah so our business is twofold we have um a basics line that's all made from 100 recycled cotton and that's something that we invented ourselves um we you know saw we knew that the the american apparel ship was kind of sailing into the sunset and knew that there would be an opportunity um on the market to come up with a new uh basic and we thought why not do it not only ethically with our factories making sure that our workers are treated fairly but also do it bring ecology into the equation um so that's one half of our business which is 100 recycled cotton blanks and then um and we people buy them print on them and we do customization and stuff like that and then we have a whole other side of our business which is what we call it you know it's our collection which i use very the term very loosely but it's um essentially we invite everyday extraordinary people to tell us what they feel is missing in their lives and then we manufacture those items or that item for them also with ethics sustainability and you know great craftsmanship and we share the profits with them so it's not just a product that we're putting on the planet it's something that has this whole soul and story behind it it's an interesting person that has lived this life our next contributor we call them contributors instead of designers um she's her name is dolores kerr she's 82 years old she was she's a retired nurse and educator she was african-american and grew up in the segregated south and she has an incredible story to tell and wonderful style she's absolutely fantastic so we're really excited to bring her ideas to life and then to share the profits with her that's cool eva you have been scouting different brands for so long as an editor but now it's a huge part of of your job do you think there's something different about this generation of of labels that is coming up definitely i mean i think if you listen to everyone's stories here i was so glad that you opened with a small business with the business owners and i didn't have to answer the first question by the way so thank you for that i segued this yeah i literally was like i can just sit here and like hang out the whole time don't ask me any questions but anyway um i think if you listen to everyone's story on um this stage like there's that sense of purpose and there's a sense of storytelling like you know jen who whose luggage broke and it helped her just uh create away you know aurora you know finding a way to help women around the world and then everybody world you know like creating something that hasn't really been done before there's all of them have a similar narrative um of purpose as you said and i think when you look at instagram i i do believe and i'm sure all of you guys in the audience all of you guys probably have been i assume you're on instagram please stand up and leave if you're not kidding but um like you know when you're on instagram how often do you kind of you're you're you have that thumb scrolling effect and then you're looking at a friend's post and you're like oh my god i love her dress where is it from and then you tap it and you look at the credits i do think the sense of discovery now is different and so much of it is through instagram um and so i think that's something that sets entrepreneurs apart today it's not it's great if you have great product it's better if you have like the storytelling the narrative behind it and yeah instagram obviously is instrumental towards that do you think you have to have a problem to solve i mean jen obviously was solving a problem specifically um but but for you guys do you feel like there's a problem that you're solving or you know a white space that you're filling or that sort of thing i feel like there's a lot of problems i try to solve i don't know if those can be necessarily always solved with shoes but i think for me it was about you know trying to prove that people in africa were capable of producing a luxury product that could sit you know with all the other shoe brands at netapporte and for me i felt like cultural appropriation was also a problem so i think it was about addressing those problems that i felt conflicted about within myself but i think that there are you know more than enough shoes to give everyone in the planet a pair of shoes so i don't think it was a gap per se but i think maybe there was an ethics gap that we tapped into yeah and i will say while a way was started you know because of a problem that happened it um really quickly evolved into a brand that we were building because it was um it's at that sweet spot of like like a venn diagram of like problems to solve and actually the things you love um i think it was just like a problem i was trying to solve and it wasn't like tied to travel which i'm so passionate about and care about so much there wouldn't have um i don't know if i'd have been able to kind of like deal with all the blood sweat and tears that went into it early on so i think you know it definitely started with a problem but um and i think like everyone on the stage you just like you keep doing it because you love it yeah you guys have a great susan sontag quote on your on the front of your store what is it exactly it's um i haven't been everywhere but it's on my list which is so good and the estate in her estate contacted us i was like did you get permission to use that did you do you have to get permission now see the things that you don't know fascinating um eva what do you think in terms of using instagram i know that you are asked this every single day how do i make my instagram better but for upstart brands what do you think is kind of the key to really getting an audience that is engaged not not just growing it but like getting them involved i think the sense of authenticity is really important um i think about brands like warby parker or like glossier like you know when you look at their profiles you can tell who the girl is or you can tell who the customer is you can tell like like what when i look at glossier's page i basically like without even knowing it's glossier if i could i think it's a good test if you cover the profile name if you could tell what brand it is um i feel the same way about menser gavriel the bagline you know it's like i can tell a man surposed from like a mile away because it has a certain aesthetic um and also like authenticity i think like being yourself whether you're an individual or a brand is really important if you look at instagram it's it's a mature platform now at like you know five plus years and you will remember when instagram first started people posted everything on instagram it would literally be like oatmeal breakfast there's a photo of my foot i think i deleted on instagram was a picture of kevin systrom i think took a picture of like a golden retriever and like a flip-flop and that was the first picture and like so people used to post like i suppose anything my first picture actually is and i'm curious what everyone's first instagram picture was but my first picture was of like my friend adam and his now ex-girlfriend and basically like i look back and i'm like that's really funny that's my first picture ever but anyway lumpy oatmeal and then what happened is that people started posting really really beautiful shots that hadn't been seen on social media um instead of before like editorial worthy shots so oh instead of lumpy oatmeal it became like avocado toast with like a sprinkle of paprika and then you know there's a pair of fendi sunglasses at that perfect angle in the corner with some cappuccino art in the corner right and it looked like it was shot on a dslr or like this is not like a reflection on any of the students or fashion bloggers in the audience there's there people would start posting pictures of themselves crossing fifth avenue with washington square and arch in the background one strand of hair whipping over their face perfectly and now i think we're seeing a return kind of to authenticity you're watching stories where people are like i mean the water in my apartment was turned off like an hour before this panel and i've been running around like crazy with like kind of gross hair all day and that's the kind of thing you're seeing more on instagram and stories where it's like oh my god what am i gonna do i have the bof panel in an hour and i have no water in my apartment so that i think for brands and for people having an original voice and being yourself is really important carolina and iris how have you're the newest brand on on this panel how have you guys approached social media well i might have to leave because i don't have a social media presence personally i know i know it's okay you're mysterious sure um so we you know we kind of it's it's a a lot of what you said we we document you know because we're manufacturing everything locally it gives us this great opportunity to really document the process behind everything we're doing and because there's all these great characters from the factories to the contributors to you know carolinas my muse and and and all of the the processes of making things it's really fun for us to capture those moments and share them and i think that that's why we are a company that's inspired by reality that's our thing you know we're we're less about kind of the illusion of the illusion of fashion which is very exciting and we have a great appreciation for it but our thing is more about um about reality and and color and bringing in kind of the the beauty of the beauty of imperfection really um and which is actually aside you know what you see on the glossy pages is one thing but it's behind the scenes that really intrigues us um so we we try to share that with customers and it's it hasn't really been you know we're so small we're we're uh we've like 3 000 followers and we we've launched six months ago so every day is another ten or so but we gotta we're at everybody.world defending anyone here um so we um you know i think i think it's just about using it as you know as a as any other platform just to to communicate and say this is what we have going on and just um you know it does we don't we're not into crazy strategies like i know that probably many big brands are but um for us it's like it's just a great tool where we hope that you know some people are listening and it feels like they are when we put out a story we get so much feedback and um and we try to actually use the stories to tell a story um and we have a start and a beginning and a conclusion and there's sort of you know so when we do those things we really we we do them with intention i suppose i feel like aurora you did like an instagram story sample sale a few weeks ago which literally was like fire the best thing ever it was like really intense and crazy and that was the first time we used instagram stories for brother valleys at all because they didn't know how to approach it um but for us it was great because we do a sample sale once a year only and we have a lot of you know customers that don't live in new york and we don't go on sale at all as a brand so it gave like all of our instagram followers the opportunity to shop the sample sale and it was like literally completely insane how all of my co-workers were like oh my god like do you think it's gonna be sold out and i'm like yes you have to get those shoes immediately yeah so were people just how did it work were people just responding i want this here's my credit card they were so i would all in the beginning i like did a post and i was like don't dm me which like obviously didn't work but like it was like email us or call this number take a screenshot yeah um tell us your site so i would like post a picture like a rogue picture of the shoe like on the floor and i was like this is the size this is a price and then people would just screenshot an email like call in with their credit card number and buy it and it was like crazy um but for us that's how it made sense to use it at that time it wasn't fancy or pretty or anything like that but it got the job done and made people happy very neat trick you know yeah jen you have been doing social media for a long time you started at warby when they were really early warby parker so how have you seen how brands use the different platforms i'm like old now i don't know how to use instagram anymore um our social media manager at away is always like asking me for things i'm like i literally don't even know i had to talk uh neil at warby parker into signing up for this like new cool platform called instagram he's like do you watch his stories now yeah like prolific stories but i remember like having to make a case for it and for why we should be on this on this new platform and then like asking like the five people who sat around me to please make an account and follow oh yeah but i think um like you said it's been funny to watch um kind of the types of content like people put out there like evolved from literally taking pictures of um of anything at all to to making it like way more polished and now i think there's that split of um you know like instagram is like pretty polished and instagram stories is um is like a lot more real and organic but i think um it's it's been like with the kind of shift in the the people using it like people are just straight up like before it was like oh it's like a brand tool yeah um it's like it's very tough it's like it wasn't like a marketing thing but i don't wanna um i think a lot of these panels talk about the um importance of like instagram and being um organic and like creating a community which are obviously all things that like social media was built on but i think nowadays if you really want to get ahead and i don't know how you feel about this but like i don't want you guys to underestimate the power of like the kind of paid tools that a lot of these social platforms have which i think on a lot of fashion panels like people don't talk about so much because it is like much cooler um and to say like you know we're just like growing this and in the beginning we grew a lot of it organically um but the way we run away is like if you take all the brand building parts of um building a fashion company and i know we're not really a fashion company we sell luggage um it's fashion now um it is but we we take all like the we approach building our brand um the way like fashion com fashion brands do and then we approach like building our company and our audience the way like a tech startup would yeah and i think that's personally taught me a ton about like you know when i was at warby parker i was like there was no such th it was all organic it was about like the quality of the pictures you post and your tone of voice and all that stuff is still so important but the amount that you can amplify like if you're good at that and you nail that the amount that you can amplify what you're doing with a lot of these tools that that like instagram and facebook have is like is astounding yeah and you know i mean a very big part of our sales comes from instagram instagram ads and like the the return on investment on that is is incredible and i i think that's like that's not something you want to overlook yeah so so you're talking about what they call in the wonky tech world paid acquisition yeah so advertising on instagram or facebook or something to drive sales which is and you don't you don't need like a like an acquisition marketing team to do it like the platforms make it really easy and really simple um and you get a ton of like data back that i think you know if any of you are like starting your own business or just um just beginning to grow your audience you learn so much about who you're interacting with and that stuff like straight up did not exist when i started so how many of you are students everybody or a lot how many of you want to start your own businesses or have started your own businesses many of you so here's the question i have for you guys you've all worked for other people eva still works for other people but is a brand in and of herself that is true we all work for each other we all work for you um no here's my question for the students out there who are who really want to start their own brands or or people how much how important is it to work for other people first if you have a really if you think you have the best idea in the world and you're super passionate about it what what is your advice to people who kind of want to start a brand straight out of school aurora i feel like you have you probably have an interesting opinion well i would say it depends on how much you're willing to lose and how much you're willing to sacrifice um i've been like pretty candid about my journey i was definitely like one friend away from being homeless when i lived in l.a i had no green card um there's definitely been some rough patches for sure and even with brother of ellie's it's super hard i still don't have health insurance thank god for planned parenthood um but you know um so you know it depends on how much you want to sacrifice i mean i started my company with five thousand dollars i had a meeting today with my accountant he was like i don't know if it was five i think it was like two um you know and it's definitely been hard and i think you know we're all women up here and so it seems like it's maybe leveling out a little bit for for women but it's not it's really not especially when it comes to the finance side um and with sustainability and all that i'm sure the way you guys work the way i work like it's really hard to get like you know funding or anything like that so you have to be like very committed very determined ready to give up everything ready to lose everything ready to have all doors slammed in your face um i'm also in the cfda incubator and earlier we were in this meeting with andrew rosen and he was talking about survival of the fittest and it's totally like that it's like no one's going to do anything for you like you have you know a million instagram followers great are they going to go online and buy your because if not what's the point you know unless you need that kind of validation which is also fun you know i asked my interns to like my phone i'm like can you like our photo because you know i want that but like they're not buying my shoes like i can't sell so i think you know i got my ass kicked by the people that i worked for early on which was great i was convinced they were all completely psycho which they were but i'm definitely thankful um because i learned a lot from them and i know why a lot of those women were like that um and so i'm grateful that i had that opportunity for sure and i you know was able to make a lot of mistakes before i started my own company so that i could learn from that so definitely don't be dissuaded but also know that like there's a great chance that you could fail and you have to be willing to like go out there and push really hard every single day because even when you think you have a breakthrough even when you design the best thing in the world or what you think is the best thing in the world like you know any fast fashion brand could even make it faster than you can get it out of the store anyways so it's like you have to have like all of your bases covered and be ready and be passionate and super naive and totally crazy all at the same time and like it would be great if you have a lot of roommates so that your costume is lower yeah you know some of my like fellow incubator designers are here like the people that know me know like it's real like just because you win the fashion fan doesn't mean that everything's like all hunky-dory like it got harder yeah like that minute when anna was like anna wintour it was like was hat like she was like you're having a fashion show was like i'm screwed you know what i mean it's like no longer fun and games it's like you break up with your boyfriend and guess what you still live there yeah i i lived for a year like that sacrifice if i was working you know for someone else i could have moved out you're telling me lauren yeah come on well that's why i asked you i knew you would give it to us straight yeah yeah but i i also think that like and when i was working at teen vogue i met with a lot of aspiring designers i met with like students every week where like i want to be a fashion designer when not when i grow up because that you know what i mean like when i graduate i want to be a fashion designer and i'm like great tell me about the business courses you've taken and everyone's like no no creativity and i'm like no no business like you can't go into fashion without now i feel like you must have an understanding of the business of fashion these days business of fashion at boss but seriously because it's like creativity is wonderful creativity is obviously going to be something that takes you far but you have to understand the business side of fashion these days and you have to understand supply chain and like everything that like goes on that i don't even understand but if you don't understand that like your business is not going to work or you have to have a business partner who like you need to know like like just out of a show of hands i'm curious just for my own sake how many people in this room know what an rtv is raise your hand so if your hands not up right now and you want to start a fashion business you need to google that really fast or like look at the people that just raised their hand would you like to define that for us return to vendor [Music] is that the fancy word for buybacks i guess it's like you know i'm still i was like what is that it's basically like you know stores a lot of the big stores like if you ship them a bunch of stuff and you don't hit a certain sell through like they'll want to give it back to you which for me when i was starting i was like what do you mean no i'm not doing that but and i just didn't but then when you grow and as you continue to grow then they're like no really like i was meeting with nordstrom today and they're like okay can we trade that out for that and i was like you want to trade what why i was like so confused yeah but that's like the reality of the situation and like it's not all of these things are not the designer's fault necessarily like it's not my fault if it rains in seattle and people didn't buy fur shoes for that month like that's not my problem yeah but there's all these things now where it's like actually girl it is your problem yeah yeah you know yeah i'm curious to know iris in carolina because carolina you grew up with it you you know the factory business and also you guys worked for a vertically integrated compa company for a long time so do do you feel like when you started from the business perspective that you really got it and you were prepared to grow in the way that you wanted to grow did you feel more prepared than a little bit i think you know we had an understanding of we didn't want to be stuck with a lot of inventory we only wanted to make small little batches maybe around a 50 but a lot of manufacturers don't really want to work with just 50 pieces they're like 50. come on give me 500. so it wasn't something so we took when we were looking for our manufacturers and we wanted to partner up with people we wanted to make sure we were working with like mom and pop shops that were able to support just 50 100 pieces until we got the pattern right because you make it once pattern goes wrong you don't want to be stuck with inventory and we want to make sure we sell it yeah and we we did working at a big company where you know we at american apparel we didn't sell to any retailers and actually we don't sell to any retailers either um and that mainly it's because you know at american apparel we didn't want to deal with rtv because they will uh i mean you there are companies that are bankrupted for things like that um and you know someone places an order they say they need it in two weeks you put all your cash into making this order and the next thing you know they cancel the order and you're stuck with half zone inventory or whatever it is or you should they they send you a 50-page shipping document and they say you have to package it like this and this barcode has to be on the right side and they get it and they somehow change their mind and the bars code was on the left side and guess what they're our tv you know so we don't didn't don't want to get into that um we didn't get into it uh at american apparel and it's something that we're gonna um we're gonna we're gonna stick with that because it's so much easier to control your own sort of destiny control your own supply chain you can we can you know we're starting to do pre-orders now and that's a great tool for especially a small business like ours where you know every small run we do is a several thousand dollar investment on our on our part so we just want to make sure that we're um you know that we have a customer for it and that's and actually instagram is an amazing tool for that eva what do you think some of the other than authenticity for the these really upstart brands i'm seeing more and more of these kind of brands out of nowhere becoming popular through instagram what do you think are some of the keys to maybe not their social media but just things that you notice about qualities about the brands that what they're doing right in terms of building their business i think they're very conversational and they reach out to people in the industry whether it's influencers and i don't know if you guys have an influence or strategy that you yeah we have a whole influencer team who like their full-time jobs just talking to influencers so talking to influencers like i know that like if i see something on leandra medin's instagram like 99 of the time if it's a brand i haven't heard of i'm like ooh i want to buy fill in the blank so i think like having a conversational tone i think talking with their followers is something that a lot of the smaller brands start out doing and a lot of big brands fail to do that because they might see it as being down market or you know not they don't want to engage with their followers but i think having an active conversation with your followers is a quality that i see with a lot of these smaller brands that works to their advantage so like customer service on sorry i keep using glossy as an example but like if you ask glossier a question like oh what shade of blush cloud tint whatever brow boy brow or eyebrow boy gel something like that like would i be within minutes you get a response and it's funny once i actually got a message from glossier social person who was like we got blocked for spam because we were responding to too many followers and that's like a good thing you know it helps you grow and it boosts your engagement um and obviously content is queen you know it's like you want like you want great content and you want um to tell a story so a lot of the time i talk to these fashion brands and they're like we're based in paris but it's like oh paris is so boring and i'm like you have to realize that of the 700 million people on instagram like people dream of going to paris and that's one of the things i hear from designers the most often they're literally like ugh the eiffel tower sparkling so basic and i'm like you have to remember that the eiffel tower sparkling of your like bazillions of followers most of them live in you know a city or country or state where they will like they'll never go to paris and they're experiencing paris through your instagram show them the sparkling eiffel tower in slow motion on stories or live you know and it's so i think like having that direct connection with your follower and like showing them what's around you um is really important yeah we are we have time for one more question we're gonna open it up to you guys i'm sure you have a lot of questions the one thing is you have to come up to the microphone and stand in line so while we ask this next question please start making your way up there i'm sure you all have questions and and i'll be waiting to see very like someone please stand up please please ask questions but start get going up now so that when we're done we can just get things moving um so one question i did have really quickly for jen and then we're going to do a final is you know what opportunities do you see because you've been you've worked at a lot of different companies you're you're you've been at a lot of these startups that have become really big what do you think is an opportunity in the industry that that people are missing i mean travel is a huge a huge part of that but is there anything else if someone wants to start a business that you feel like you should look into that i mean i haven't thought about starting a business since i started yeah um i i don't know i can't answer that but i do think that like if you guys are out there like shopping or doing something and you're like why hasn't anyone done this yeah like that's when you start thinking about it like i didn't sit there thinking about like oh it'd be really great to start direct to consumer travel goods brand it was like oh my bag broke it was super annoying to buy a new one yeah um so just like think about the things that really annoy you and then like make sure you want to work on it okay okay really really fast what's the best piece of advice you've received during your career start with aurora oh my gosh that's so hard because i was saying i get like so much advice all the time i would say don't listen to what it was like andrew rosen said today he was like don't listen to any of the advice anyone gives you because ultimately you're the one that's going to have to answer to the choices that you made and if you totally destroy your business it's on you you can't be like well eva told me to post three times a day i think i actually told you to post five times a day yeah you need to be more candid and i feel like you were completely right and now i've taken it to the nth degree in my stories and i feel like every day i get in trouble because people not enjoy it did people not come up to you and see the people enjoy it your pr is like shut up basically but you know it's reality no one needs pr you have instagram i love you joe all of our people are pr people are in the audience like oh god iris and carolina what would you say um i think um bake it till you make it really yeah put one friend in front of the other and just you know if you if you have a vision for where you want to go just start doing it and no one knows the better if you're you know if you're just still trying to pull it all together just put it out there and uh and do it and another thing that someone told me was like we had messed up an order and we're redoing it and they said you know what this is a work in progress everything is a work in progress you don't have to strive for it doesn't have to be perfect all the time it's you know and actually embrace imperfections and and we started to and we started to see the beauty in that really and um it's helped us kind of be better uh business people i think at the end of the day that's great eva this is like the hardest question um i would say i remember when i was at lucky when i was at lucky the creative director of conde nast was anna wintour obviously i if i say anna you don't know what i'm talking about but i remember i was like super stressed or like on like something turned out not the way i wanted it to and i was like oh my god and then like page six wrote something it was like whole thing page six yeah it's like a thing and i remember like send like literally i got an email from anna it was just like two words and i literally was like i was like okay this is gonna be like this is good life advice and it was just like move forward and like her motto was always just like move on move forward like don't look back like move on to the next thing and i do feel like in life you know especially the students in the room you will experience failure um that's inevitable failure is not a bad thing it actually teaches you more about yourself and what you want to do in life i was pre-med i was pre-law i was pre-philosophy major i was pretty like everything that was when my parents were the most depressed by the way pre-philosophy major they were like what um but you know not even philosophy yeah pre-philosophy philosophy i was like i think i want to be a philosophy major they were like no um but basically you know the more things you try in life whenever you have a failure and if it's a great failure that's okay it will teach you about yourself and every failure i've had i've learned from and there's no such thing as wasted experience so move forward always that's great what about you jim um i think mine would be that i mean i wish someone had told me this actually so i'm giving you advice um there's just there's not a linear path to success like i wanted to be a lawyer forever and then i like didn't get into the law program that i went to so i went to supply chain and then i was like a financial analyst and then i had like a social media agency at one point this makes me sound really old i'm not they're short she was just 30 under 30. a couple years ago but i mean and then i just i just feel like it's so easy to look at something and be like i don't know what to do to get there or like here are like the eight jobs i need to have before i get there but like let me tell you guys two years ago the only thing i knew about luggage was that i had some and um and the only thing i knew about being a creative director is that like they were cool working on that one but like there wasn't um you know i didn't go to like luggage school yeah i i pretty much did actually um but there's not there's everything i've done up until this point has gotten me here and like i've taken like bits and pieces of everything i've done um so it's not like you know if if somebody were like later in your career in the middle of something it's it's not like you have to start from scratch or um you know i don't and i'm not saying like skip steps but like there's not like one straight path to what you want to do yeah it's a really good point let's let's go oh hi um this is jt i'm a editor at wgsn and i have a question for jane so jennifer so i was just wondering as your business becomes more and more financially successful have you ever thought about doing philanthropy maybe i mean using some of your business profits to help you know a cause and to make and make a bigger impact sometimes like that yeah um we've definitely thought a lot about philanthropy when steph and i started the company um we we were both on the same page that we didn't want to start a company unless it had a net positive impact on the world and i think you know obviously we're coming from warby parker where they have like a one for one model and they do a lot of philanthropic things um and we knew like that model necessarily wasn't going to be right for us but um besides from like you know the financial part of it we always thought about like the suppliers that we work with um you know how we treat our employees like what our material does to the environment and just thought about it holistically like that um in fact since we've sold our very first suitcase there's a non-profit that we've worked with called peace direct that um we've donated a portion of the sale of every single suitcase to and we just hold our hundred thousandth suitcase um but we've actually never talked about that in the press and we will like next month but um but we knew from the beginning we were like let's let's let's find a cause that we can get behind um and now there's like 60 people on our team and they all donate their time to helping this um this like small non-profit organization and i think because i think for us because it wasn't a marketing thing or something we were like doing to get press and which is why we didn't talk about it for so long it's come from like a really genuine place in the company okay thank you i mean just a very quick similar question for aurora so i understand you must be working with a lot of artisans from africa right that means actually you guys must be already helping some of the artists by like helping them create job opportunities sometimes like that but in the meantime have you ever thought about creating a foundation or maybe a charity organization that can better help some of those artisans for me i think it's always really been about creating job opportunities and trying to put money into their community so they can decide what they want to do with that money we did sort of cheat the system early on in south africa because we realized that we needed to get the guys kids into a better school because if they were in a better school the kids were more engaged and the kids then forced their parents to make sure they got to school on time which in turn would get our guys to work on time so for me it was actually a return on my investment so i don't consider that so much charitable though technically it was a charity donation um but no for me it's really all about i i can't be like and now i'm going to build you a well here because i would rather they just use their own money to build a well if they feel like they want one thank you thank you hi my name is mary kate brennan and we've talked a lot about the business side and the importance of understanding that before you start a new company but i'm curious for everyone on the stage who has at what stage do you engage legal and how important is that out the gate for me yeah because i like suck at reading contracts um and i found this like amazing lawyer and i um called his office and i was like hi can i please speak with ted max and they were like who is it and i was like it's aurora from brother bellies and they were like from where and i was like brother vellies and she was like what is that and that was like um it's a shoe brand and she was like okay i'll take down your information and if he wants to call you back he will um and he's been my attorney now the whole time and does it pro bono which is amazing because i think he felt so bad for me that first day because i was so out of base he was like how much money do you sell in shoes a year and at the time i was like 30 000 and he was like so you basically can't afford this phone call and i was like yeah but he's like the most epic person in the world so you know cold call a lawyer and see what happens you could try douglas hand he works for the cfda just trying to figure out i'm actually a lawyer and graduated from the fashion law program at fordham so i'm curious to hear from the others like your side and how you got that connection or at what stage or who told you to make it you should get some really well-paying clients and then like hook up like small designers for real because we become big designers if we have good [Applause] for us it's kind of on a case-by-case basis we you know we have really basic contracts with all of the people we work with but we like things to be because we're not you know we're dealing with everyday people who are not coming armed with a with you know several attorneys so we like to write things in plain english um and have a lawyer look it over and make sure that it's okay but um you know we're still so small that we kind of we kind of do things that way and we may there may come a time when we need when we need you know something more serious and it would be great to find somebody who people that understand the you know all of the worlds that we're kind of working in yeah thank you thank you hi guys my name is may and i'm a recent graduate from fit i wanted to touch on something that you mentioned earlier about how these days fast fashion companies can rip off your design or product not even fast fashion companies that you know the typical ones any brand fashion to copy each other and they rip them off and you know they can make it either cheaper faster or sometimes better i don't know um so when starting a small business or a brand or you're a line how what do you think what do you guys think a company should do earlier in the earlier stage to protect i guess to make yourself like bulletproof from those kind of things or like last year anyone could have like copied them i guess or you know make a similar product but you know what do you advise like um businesses to do like in the earlier stage so that they can prepare for like all these people trying to copy them or doing similar stuff yeah i would say if there's like legal seminars um that you can go to even like the law firm that i was talking about shepherd mullen they actually do like these like workshops where designers can literally just go and drop in and like learn how to protect yourself but to be honest with you the problem is is like you can't really protect yourself as a designer right now um for us the best tool that we've had up until now even beyond my lawyer is actually instagram because when we get knocked off i'll go on my instagram and i'll talk about it and thank god for our followers because they freak out and they were like calling steve madden and the shoes got pulled within 24 hours because of my instagram followers and if like the reason you know glossy like glossier pink right that's like a thing and everyone now is like filling the fill in the blank beauty brand pink and it's like it because glossier from the very beginning had a very specific specific visual style and they owned glossier pink on their instagram they like made it into a hashtag everyone was using it it became a visual signature so i would say as a young designer like it's really important to have a visual voice to have a visual identity to own it on instagram so that when someone knocks you off people will like start tagging you and being like did you see this other account like you know i think that's really important yeah but it's crazy because there's not that much you can do yeah i mean legal stuff aside i do think um it is just all about the brand that you're building i mean like samsonite could literally make our suitcases overnight but i think what has drawn a lot of people to away is like that we've built this travel brand around it and they like you know they care about what we say and where we go and and what we do and it's you know it's our instagram it's a tone of voice it's like it's the customer experience they have like one of our very first employees when we launched was like like customer service customer experience and that was like such a core part of our dna in the beginning and and that's the brand stuff that you can't copy i remember when um you know i started at warby parker very very early we were like 15 employees and they're probably more warby parker copycats than employees when i started working there and like i don't know you guys don't know who they are because like very few of them exist um and they were literally when i say like copying warby parker they they actually would just like take pictures off the website and like just put them on theirs some of them had like copied and pasted the like the terms and conditions and and like forgot to take out warby parker um and they were straight copying but and you know cutting the price in half but they but no one wanted to associate with those brands they want to associate with warby parker um you know and if there are you know if if samsonite copies away well people aren't like oh cool like this cool huge brand that made the same the same bag give you know give your audience something that they want to associate with that like will build loyalty to you and then lawyer up yes thank you so much thank you hi guys um so i'm angela day job i work with kids i'm like a baby whisperer therapist but um at night i'm building my shop queen algebra's closet which literally was born out of my closet so i blog and take pictures of like my fun outfits but i didn't want to take just the regular photos because i feel like there's millions of people doing that so my question is about sustainability and global fashion so flash forward i'm really into culture my dad's from ghana from west africa my mom's from the caribbean and there's so much now happening with fashion of like boho and tribal and but no one knows like who the people are or where the textiles come from so that's like a really big platform for me and kind of what i want to showcase another flash forward i'm going to qatar to hopefully move there and my question is how do you connect with so i've started connecting with artisans because i want that connection to have it be authentic and to tell the authentic stories of the tribes of the people of where these things come from and you're kind of shopping this awesome museum of pieces and it's a conversation piece but slowly getting the middleman out of that and going direct if you have any advice even for everyday people like for sustainability for the environment connecting with you know the authentic folks that are there um and telling their story if you have advice for me especially if i'm going to be out in the middle east where there's like a whole other world now like textiles and materials and designing things aurora um well i met most of our artisans from actually traveling to the locations um but there's a couple of things i think if you have something in mind that you want to find so for example i wanted to find shoemakers so and when i was looking in south africa for example i found out that most of the world's ostrich comes from south africa specifically one tannery so i called that tannery and was like can you tell me like who you sell to locally and they were like no one and i was like okay but like like at all and they were like well there's this one guy that comes every three months and buys one piece and makes juice and i was like okay give me his number so i think if you can find like workarounds um and you said your dad is from there if he happens to have my dad was too if he happens to have like any family that's still there and it's really just about a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend yeah and then like testing it out yeah because it's like make awesome clothes and like make jewelry and things but that's really what i want is to connect with the people hashtags like okay so the fashion industry the same fashion designer who was a eiffel tower sparkling was like oh hashtag so tacky um i really want to know who it was my mind yeah now like and just note that my accent is very ambiguous because i'm terrible with accents so that sounds like a french accent but it wasn't a french accent that's a clue um hashtags are a great way to connect with people in specific communities so fashion people sometimes are like oh i don't wanna we all have that friend who uses like 360 hashtags in the caption right where she's like bacon hashtag egg cheese hashtag sandwich hashtag young yesterday and you're literally like you need to stop with the hashtags christine that's like my actual friend christine i actually had this conversation with her i was like i work for instagram and i'm telling you right now your captions are annoying like um so what i would say is look into the hashtags for the local communities look for people who live there already follow local instagramers instagram is like 700 million people 80 of which are outside of the us there are people in the countries and the cities that you're interested in moving in moving to find those people reach out them to them slide into their dms all right like say like i'm moving here like i don't know if you ever do instagram meetups or like you know like i'd love to like just try you never know and for and this is the same advice i give for people who are looking for internships or looking for jobs for every like 20 people you contact maybe one person's gonna write you back and that's all you need is one person to take a shot and to give you a chance and to talk to you and then that person might introduce you to a larger community so slide into the dms and hashtags thank you yes hey uh thank you so much by the way uh everything you've shared has been really really helpful it's been great um i have a question about uh starting when you're looking to find and create something what is the best like i guess resource to go to i feel like typing into google like what how to create you know a watch or how to create you know what i mean like where do you really go if there's a book that you can recommend or something that you can just kind of in the beginning stages of figuring out what i want to make but i know that i want to create something so it's an epic question that's like really all existential and deep yeah it is you know the specific product though the type of product you want to create yeah um well i'm thinking about uh creating a bag but um i'm not sure exactly like where to start like should i be because in my mind i'm like okay do i go straight to like manufacturers like i said like start creating like the actual the actual thing and then and then send it to them or am i supposed to have cover conversations with different people i don't know exactly where to go in turn yeah jen what do what did you do when you started with luggage literally you didn't know how to make like yeah i mean yeah really what you need to do is some deep googling right yeah to start but did you look for manufacturers or vendors yeah i mean i think i was really lucky because you know my my co-founder like has a background in manufacturing like eyewear from warby parker and she just asked it was it was a very much like a network thing but i think um like at a higher level whenever i want to know about stuff like that i look at people who have done it before me successfully and i think um a lot of uh like media online like business of fashion um does a great job at like profiling people like this and like telling their story and i think that's there's so many things out there where like um i'll read an interview or a profile like of someone who created a brand that i really love and i'm like huh that's how they did it because there's always like something like weird in there that like you wouldn't have thought of um or for something different so i think just like if there are like bag brands that you like and um there's like news articles or interviews with their um creators and founders like there are like really good like nuggets of wisdom in there also i think the cfda has a resource for like fashion manufacturers in new york cool thank you i would reach out to people too okay brands that you like some of them will respond to you or one of them ask for informational interviews but don't use the words pick your brain hey guys thank you so much for all of your advice um so to the business owners and i know aurora sort of touched on this already who provided the startup capital for your company and how much was that initial investment and how long did it take you to reach profitability and how long do you project profitability if you haven't reached it yet wow like works in private i'm really glad i don't have to answer that question i'll answer it so um as i said i said it was five thousand my accountant says it was two i um got the money i saved it i used to work for this um not-for-profit arts organization called gen art and then i also did like random freelance stuff um for cynthia rowley and that sort of thing um and we actually have always pretty much operated at a break even or slight loss or a slight profit like plus or minus forty thousand dollars basically um so yeah that's where we're at it's just cruising here um well we uh we put a little bit of savings together i won't say exactly how much it was but it wasn't it you know it was a little more than that but uh less than less than um you know many many brands have been started with and um and our our mothers also invested um and uh we are currently profitable um we're starting to pay back our we're six months into our business and we're starting to pay back our initial investment and um you know and it it kind of happened naturally um i suppose just every every day there's a little more momentum there's a new inquiry email there's a wholesale account there's a you know there's a few more customers online and and it just sort of trickles in but you really have to you know you have to keep pushing for it to get it there um yeah yeah so this uh my answer's a little different because we're we're a venture-backed company like i said we're building this company like a tech company and um it's a big part of why so we're backed by a venture capitalist i mean it did start the same way where um steph and i each put in like a little bit of our own money to get to like a certain step and then we took money from like friends and family into friends and family around and then we raised two and a half million dollars and then we raised 11 million dollars and then last month we raised 20 million dollars so there's like a lot of numbers in our bank account yeah um but the thing with venture capital is that like people give you money and you're expected to grow at like a certain rate um there's not like just like it's just constant like intense like month over month growth um that's expected of you and i think we went into this you know we could have gone two ways i could and actually when i first thought of starting a luggage company i was like we start this cool like luggage brand it'll be like in liberty and that a poor day and i'll like and i just like had this like vision of this like you know this like smaller brand that would be mine um but we saw this um opportunity in this category that you know we knew from having worked with startups like warby parker and casper that um if we could fund like really intense like rapid growth um with venture capital that we would that either it would be like a spectacular failure or not yeah we have time for one more question thank you by the way thank you two more questions that girl just like frowned so sadly so let's go hello everyone thank you so much for all the great information you've provided so one of the problems that i often see with fashion so to speak um relates to clothing there is vanity sizing there is you know the expected size and what you get so one of the things that i'm thinking of um getting into is developing a more specific sizing system right and i've reserved like the social media and domain that's such a good idea so um one of the things i wanted to know well also what i intended to use this platform as was to work with other designers who are more specific in their sizing to promote those brands and so on but one of the questions that i wanna wanted to ask is how do you go about finding um manufacturers which will use your specifications and not the stat standard numeric sizing or the alpha sizing charts where you want to be really specific with your measurements that's not how it works you you go to a pattern maker you make your first pattern based on the size that you want and then you decide what your rules are once you have your patterns you go to a grader the grading person take follows your rules and takes that pattern and expands it to you know and shrinks it to whatever you want to do they follow your rules and they apply it to your patterns that's how it works you can go standard which but there's so many different there is no standard really maybe it's it's a couple inches on the width an inch on the length you know but it's so it's so specific to the garment you have to know what you want and tell the grader and that's what they're going to follow okay so in term think about the fabric okay yeah so in terms of finding specific manufacturing because i've tried working with some but uh you know they're international and i'm not sure how do you find reputable manufacturers to make your clothing if you're trying to go specific routes didn't you say the cfda yeah has like a whole resource of um uh manufacturers based here actually in the garment district i would i would just call them all up and and as we were saying before someone will respond to you and give you some advice for sure okay i think a lot of like the common thread of the questions is like you have to put in like the blood sweat and tears of calling every single fill in the blank like i remember when i was looking for an internship in fashion i literally like stood outside the lvmh tower and was like that person looks like they work for dior and like was like and i literally when i was applying for internships also like i think i applied for like 50 50 internships for one summer i used to go into the offices and drop a paper resume and there was one editor who i remember him laughing at me and now we are very good friends he doesn't remember it i went through like who are you i went through like my high school alumni list and literally contacted anyone who worked in publishing and was like hi you work for dog fancy and i really want to get into publishing like anyone i think will want to help you and they also need your business the manufacturing here in particular they they want your business so go on the cfda's website and call a bunch of people and someone will someone will take your uh take a meeting and then if they don't say like and the question that not enough people ask in an informational interview it's like who else do you think i should talk to that could help me so like if someone's like oh i don't know do you know anyone who might know like you have to keep the conversation going okay well thank you and um it's working with female clothing the handle is busting hips domain and everything look out for me that's good nice [Applause] hi i'm scared this is like really a cool opportunity um my name is danny um i daylight as a social media content producer and then i moonlight as a founder of a social media community with about 500 excuse me 500 people i told you i'm really scared um and i mentor people in social media all walks of life all different kinds of creative pursuits so i guess this is like a broad question for all of you guys so chime in as you please um a lot of people are discouraged with um like social media visibility right now so some of you guys have a lot of followers eva um and then some of you guys don't have like much of a social media presence so like how do you i guess like prioritize social media and um and i guess push through like a slump and and i don't know like find the inspiration when things aren't really going so great there's a lot of people like i work with people who have like hundreds of thousands of followers and then some people who are just starting so i kind of i came here to like give them some of your words should i start maybe um so i like talked to a lot of designers a lot of emerging designers a lot of influencers bloggers models etc i mean we had a meeting aurora like i did a whole cfda incubator meeting and it's like a lot of people said the same thing where they're like well i only have like 5 000 followers i only have 10 000 followers like but i want more but i don't want to post selfies and i don't want to post the sparkling eiffel tower like basic shot the most important thing is to tell your own story like the problem social media can feel like homework if you're doing it to someone else's specifications if you're trying to recreate a lifestyle or something that's not true to you so for me personally like i'm friends with a lot of bloggers a lot of these influencers who always have their makeup done always have like crazy like head to toe chanel etc they're always in like florence for the gucci show or somewhere and for me like being friends with these people i was like oh my god they have the best life but like that's not my life like every day i take it i was working at conde nasta at the time i take a taxi to work i have no makeup on i usually have like some tag sticking out of my clothes but i do know that i wear nice shoes and i like like to shop for bags and i always have food in my bag because i'm always hungry and then i literally was like that's the one thing i can do every day that's true to me like i can take a picture of my bag and shoes so even if my makeup's not done i have weird hair and i think lauren or someone pointing out that i had chocolate on the back of my pants walking out onto the stage listen my shoes still look good and my bag still looks good so i think when you talk to your clients tell them to tell their tell their own story and figure out they have to figure out what that is for themselves i think aurora's anecdote about her stories and just being herself is really important everyone just has to be themselves thank you so much thank you thank you to our wonderful panel [Applause] thank you to topshop for co-hosting this with bos and for the beautiful flowers are also courtesy of topshop and thank you to all of you for coming and asking such great questions i hope you learned a lot thank you thanks you

Channel: The Business of Fashion

Views: 50,230

Rating: 4.8307133 out of 5

Keywords: Fashion, Away, Fashion Education, Instagram, The Business of Fashion, Educational, Carolina Crespo, Brother Vellies, Iris Alonzo, fashion, insider, Luxury Fashion, Topshop, Fashion Business, Everybody.world, Eva Chen, business

Id: vqE0zLDBcAE

Length: 71min 0sec (4260 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2017