Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Building TWO fashion empires; Kate Spade & Frances Valentine, with Co-Founder Elyce Arons (part 1)

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Building TWO fashion empires; Kate Spade & Frances Valentine, with Co-Founder Elyce Arons (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Elise Ahrens for Female Startup Club. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Female Startup Club potty. I'm Dune, your host and hot girl. Today, we're learning from a fashion veteran, Elise Ahrens. She spent more than a decade building Kate Spade and then went on to do it all again with Frances Valentine. Okay.
• 0:29
  Frances Valentine was founded in 2016 alongside her best friends, Kate and Andy Spade. Rooted in joyful self-expression, the brand offers a spirited collection of original, vintage, modern apparel, shoes, and accessories designed to brighten and delight the lives of the women who wear them, as well as a growing line of home goods.
• 0:50
  In this episode, we're talking about learning the hard way, why we shouldn't buy into excess inventory and always, always order the small amount you can with the aim to sell out, building a fashion empire second time around, and why using traditional marketing methods might be the key to new growth and to try anything out once.
• 1:12
  And while I've got you here, make sure you mark February 28 in your diary for Your Hype Girl, the book to launch into the world. It's going to be a big day and we're going to have a launch week special to celebrate with all of you, my loyal listeners. I'm so excited. But let's get into it. This is Elise for Female Startup Club. Elise, hi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
• 1:38
  I'm so excited to be talking to you today. And for everyone listening, you're sitting here in front of this beautiful backdrop of prints and pieces and all fun fashion things. I wish that I had a little bit of an office vibe like yours. It's really fun. It's our inspiration board. So we do one for every season. And as we find things that are inspiring or we've created silhouettes, we tack them up next to the print that we're working on.
• 2:08
  Oh my gosh. I feel like I need that for my life. Like actually I need like a seasonal, this is what my life is going to be like for Q1 and this is what's on it. And this is what's going to be like for Q2 and this is what's on it. It might drive you a little crazy after a while if it were in your home surrounding you all the time, but maybe, but I'm not, I'm not convinced. I think I'd like, I'm very extra. Tell me about Frances Valentine and the ethos behind this beautiful brand.
• 2:39
  As you know, we started Kate Spade in 1993 and sold that business in 2006. That's a whole lot of history. I'm just saying, oh, that's what we did then. But give us the history. Give us the backstory. Okay. So Katie and I were best friends from college and we, you know, moved to New York and got different jobs in the fashion industry and decided to start our own business. It might've been foolhardy, you know, at the time we were broke, but somehow we made it work.
• 3:07
  And there were four of us actually in the business and started that. It just took off. It was great. It was, you know, sort of like Shangri-La. It was wonderful. We had really great staff, really wonderful employees. And it was just, you know, we were in our early thirties and it was just, we had the time of our lives building. It was really, really wonderful. The time came, we sold the business to Neiman Marcus group in 2006 and stayed for six months and left in 2007.
• 3:36
  And at that time, we'd all had children. And we thought, oh, what a great time to take off, spend time with our kids. Our kids were really little. I have three girls, so it was perfect timing for me. Cut to many years later in 2014, we were sitting around at a restaurant having dinner together. And we're kind of like, should we get back into it? Because I really missed creating. And I know Katie did too. And so we started talking about what we were going to do. And
• 4:04
  we ended up launching Francis Valentine in 2016. And initially we started just with shoes and handbags and,
• 4:12
  And after Katie died in 2018, we added apparel. It was more of an homage to her than anything else. There were a couple of favorite vintage pieces of hers. And it just blew out. And we sold everything within a matter of weeks. And so we reordered and we reordered. Now we have a full-fledged apparel collection, as well as our footwear, our handbags, jewelry, and now homeware and gifts. So it's just been a fairy tale. It's really been great.
• 4:41
  I was looking back at those vintage pieces from that collection and the photos of her wearing the cardigan with the flowers on them. That was such a beautiful little jacket. I can so see that being successful. Loved it. She bought that so long ago. So that was a real American thing back in the 40s and 50s to have those embroidered. And
• 5:03
  The woman's name was still, there was a label that had her name on it. So it wasn't a particular designer brand, but they would be made for people and their names were sewn into the collar. So it was really, they were really special pieces. And Katie loved that piece.
• 5:18
  Yes. Wow. Isn't that beautiful to also have those like, you know, that's a piece from such a long time ago and to bring it back for it to still be in style and to still be a timeless kind of piece, even though it was very fun and quirky in a way. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And that's really what we try to do. We really bring back nostalgic pieces.
• 5:40
  And in our own way, make them modern. Yes, yes. Things that make you happy. Anything that makes you happy. It's like when you walk into one of our retail stores, I want people just to walk in and say, oh, my God, this is amazing. I want everything in here. Kind of like walking into a really great candy store.
• 5:57
  Yes, just that overwhelming joy that you can receive when you get hit with a dose of color on multiple levels. Yes, exactly. Also like going on a trip and maybe you've gone to Morocco or Mexico and you walk into a store and there's just so much color that you want to take the whole thing with you. And sometimes I'll just go and buy a piece, not because I'm necessarily going to wear it or use it, but just to look at it because it's so beautiful and the craftsmanship.
• 6:26
  I have so many of those kinds of things in my wardrobe that I'm like, I just love this fabric so much. Maybe I've never worn it, even though I absolutely should, but I'm just like, I can't get rid of it because the fabric is too nice. Yes, exactly. Because you love it so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 6:42
  feel you know in the early days starting this new brand when you'd gone from creating this huge globally recognized brand that was a behemoth I'm assuming at the point of acquisition what were those early days starting from scratch like can you paint the picture of what it was like was it like scrappy or was it like chic from the get-go I don't know
• 7:08
  For Kate Spade, it was definitely scrappy. We did everything ourselves. For Frances Valentine, we had the luxury of not having to be quite as scrappy. I think it's in our nature that...
• 7:20
  to be scrappy. I grew up on a farm, and so I try and fix everything myself before I'll call someone to repair it. You know, we do things ourselves unless we really can't do them. So I would say we're still scrappy, but when we started this, before we moved into our office space, which is this gorgeous space at Bryant Park, we had the luxury of having it built out. So that space kind of, it almost feels like someone's living room. It's so beautiful, and it's got art everywhere,
• 7:50
  It's warm. And yes, it is. It's just beautiful. So we had the luxury of being able to do that. And it was really nice and to take our time. And when we were going to launch, it wasn't we didn't have to rush through it. So it was a less scrappy version of ourselves.
• 8:08
  Scrappy at the heart of what you're doing, but in a beautiful location and interior. Right, right. You obviously had the, you know, the privilege to have this blueprint of what you'd done. What was your kind of blueprint to starting the new brand? And what was your approach to launch? So the blueprint was really making things we love and doing it with my best friend, too. I mean, when you have that shared vision about things, I think it just makes it all that much more fun.
• 8:38
  And I think you need to enjoy what you're doing and really love the process of all of it. So the blueprint was at that point, shoes and handbags and, you know, really creating the things that we couldn't find anywhere else at this price point. Because during the time between Kate Spade and Francis Valentine, I would go out and, you know, find different shoes. And I loved the Roger Vivier shoes that I found. I was like, gosh, just I still am kind of a scrappy person.
• 9:08
  I want it to be like a third of that price and I want to be able to buy two or three pair. And so you want to buy every color, right? Exactly. So I think our aim was really to make it accessible to people, but really provide that great quality and craftsmanship. And I feel like we did that for our launch and it's been part of our success.
• 9:29
  And obviously for you, like, you know, Kate Spade launched in 1993 and this was circa 2016, if I'm not mistaken, around then. So the landscape is very different. You went from having like potentially no internet in 1993, I can't recall because I was so little, to then, you know, the introduction of social media and being taken by storm by, you know, Facebook at that point and probably even Instagram by 2016. Yeah.
• 9:57
  What was your approach to marketing? Obviously, you'd had that within Kate Spade still towards the end there, but what was your approach to marketing in this new landscape of digital media, social media, communities online?
• 10:12
  Right. Well, it's funny because the whole world changed while we were taking time off to raise our kids. And with the advent of all of the social, paid, organic media, I was pretty blind when we started this because I was sort of like, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. But I don't think I realized when we started just how important it was.
• 10:34
  And I've learned so much since we started. I mean, we've got three people here who just work on that. And it's a full-time thing. And to me, it really took the place of what the editors for magazines used to do. You know, styling pieces, creating stories.
• 10:53
  And I feel like the influencers are those editors today and they've really taken over that role. So it's very important to us. I'm still learning every day, but we tend to market on Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and we do a lot paid and we do a lot organic. So it's extremely important today. And would you say like that's primarily how you grow the brand in today's landscape or are there other things at play?
• 11:19
  There are other things. That's one piece of the puzzle. So obviously PR and editorial content is still very important in the magazines that are still important to us in fashion. So it's PR. And aside from
• 11:35
  using the influencers and organic, you know, organic social, the team really wanted to do a catalog two years ago. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of old marketing. I don't really know. So like direct mail kind of thing. Yes. Yes. So I was like, okay, let's do, I finally relented and I finally said, okay, let's do it. And they were totally right. So we shot it March of 2020 in Palm beach and we
• 12:02
  We flew home that Friday. It was Friday the 13th. And of course, the whole world went into lockdown two days later. But we had the film. So we edited it all on Zoom. And we put out our first catalog in June of 2020.
• 12:17
  And it was just fortuitous. It just happened all the right time. But that has been, I think, largely because of COVID, that has just been such a fantastic marketing tool for us. And we've continued to utilize that because you're coming to people's homes directly. And our product is just so joyful and happy. And it was a time when people were really scared and sad. So I think to get that, and it was a breath of fresh air to think,
• 12:44
  There's light at the end of the tunnel. I'm going to buy that party dress. I'm going to go to a party at the end of this. And I just feel like it really lifted people up. But that's been a fantastic tool for us that I was wrong about. And I'll admit it to the team because the team was really into doing it. I think our creative really lends itself to print also. So that was another really good thing that came out of it. And so catalogs are really a good, nice business for us. Yes. Yes.
• 13:13
  That's so interesting. And I also, like, now that I'm thinking about it, you know, I can't recall a time that I've received a direct mail in recent years to do with fashion. So maybe by kind of taking that avenue when usually it's like homewares. I think what I receive direct mail is homewares and I always like flip through it. I quite like direct mail. So fashion brands, please send us direct mail. But I wonder if it's because it's not a saturated space for fashion.
• 13:42
  I don't think it has been. I think it was in decline for many years, but I think since COVID and certainly since we put out our first catalog, I've noticed a barrage of fashion catalogs now that I get. The ones during the holiday season were just stacks and stacks every day.
• 14:00
  Wow, that's so interesting. I love that. Are there any other kind of pieces like that where, you know, it's a piece of the puzzle that was a bit more unexpected or that you decided to play around with more in the traditional marketing kind of space? You know, we haven't yet. We've talked about it. We did do some radio spots on SiriusXM and just testing that, but I don't feel like we actually gave that a fair chance. I think we need to do more of that and investigate.
• 14:27
  more of traditional media. I'd love to do a big billboard and outdoor campaign if our marketing budget allows. That would be so fun. Right. It really would. It really would. Because, you know, as much as I love the radio and I listen to radio often, I feel like we're such a visual company and a colorful, creative company that to see our products are a better way to reach people. And what about TikTok? Have you started to foray in that space?
• 14:56
  Yes, we have. So my daughters were onto this years ago. Of course they were. They told me, they were like, you got to get on now. You got to get on now. So I've been on a couple with them before and I can see how it's very addictive. Like if you are on that all the time and my daughters are,
• 15:15
  how much she would just make you want to be on it more and create. It's addictive. It really is. It really is. But we've got a few really great people on our team here who loves to do it and are super creative, really good dancers and wear the product so well and style the product really well. So yes, we're doing more and more of that. And it's really a lot of fun. I love that.
• 15:39
  For anyone listening who is building a fashion brand or is in that kind of like medium tier price point fashion space, what is your kind of key lessons and learnings for people who are just getting started to keep in mind? How does it work? Tell us the ins and outs. What do we really need to know here? Well, you know,
• 16:03
  I have to say it was harder second time around and not for me personally, but I just think the timing when we started our first business in 1993, there wasn't so much competition in our space of handbags and in the American market in particular.
• 16:19
  it was, again, we were scrappy and we could get things done. We would talk people into things. If they said, no, you have to buy 500 yards of that for a minimum, we could talk them into, oh, just give us a little bit of sample yardage. We'll pay extra if you just give us some sample yardage. So we still have to be a little scrappy that way this time around, but I feel like it's harder this time around in this year we're in. I think raising capital is difficult for a lot of folks and
• 16:46
  unless you have this gigantic idea and you can't just start a small business and grow it as easily as back then. However, I totally think it's doable. And I think if you have a really great product that you believe in and you have other people who believe in you, that you can actually get it done. And you just have to stay on your own trajectory. And you'll get advice from all these other people who say, no, do it this way, do it this way. But
• 17:13
  you've created the product and you know what is best for your brand. And my main piece of advice would be to stick to your guns, to really do what you set out to do. And nothing is insurmountable. I mean, we all started somewhere and you think of every designer or fashion person who's out there, they all started, we all started the same way pretty much. And we were all, most of us were broke when we started and we still made it through. So it's a matter of persevering. I think
• 17:42
  One of the things that entrepreneurs have a difficulty with is having ready capital to help them. I wish there were more female investors than there are, but there are some seed investors out there, women's groups, and it's a matter of trying to tap into those early on and keep a bead, watch who they're investing with.
• 18:03
  If you have access to it, read the trade papers every day, read Women's Wear Daily, read Business of Fashion, because they do stories on all these investors. If they've made a small investment in certain companies, it's how I, you know, when we were raising capital for Francis Valentine, it's how I found a lot of the people who I contacted. And if I couldn't find their email address.
• 18:25
  You know, I'd go look at their company website and, you know, you'll find somebody's name and that's how their email address goes. So you keep going through those bounce backs until one won't bounce back. That's right. That's right. You just have to keep trying, you know, any way you possibly can.
• 18:41
  Wow, that is such a great tip to kind of like, you know, go through those publications, keep a bit of a record of the people that are being mentioned until you're ready to reach out. And then you've essentially built a little database to go after. You said two things just now that I want to ask a follow up question to. The first question is, you know, yes, you need a lot of capital and it takes time to build a fashion brand. It's definitely not one of those overnight success that takes 10 years to get that kind of thing.
• 19:08
  In Kate Spade, how long did it take to get traction until you were kind of like, oh, yeah, things are really like going full steam ahead? Was it quite quick or did it also take time? It was two to three years, which I find extremely fast because now, I mean, February 14th is our six year anniversary.
• 19:28
  But it does take time to grow that business. I mean, some businesses have been around 10 years and finally hit their stride at 10 years. There are some that are really well capitalized early on that can afford all the marketing and the traditional advertising and can really zoom past everybody else. If you look at some of the bigger ones like Warby Parker or Casper or some of those that got money right when they started and really took off. For me, I like to
• 19:57
  I would prefer to spend more time growing thoughtfully at the beginning and have a kind of slow organic growth. But then I'm not a VC. I'm not a venture capitalist. So I think I think differently than that. It's more about how the business is growing organically than it is, you know, how can we grow it so fast that we can sell it for a lot of money and make it profitable? Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:20
  You mentioned funding in there. What has been your approach to the funding path and your experience this time around? So this time around, we did a couple of small rounds and I talked to everybody. And so I think for anyone listening, I think any social connections you have, any groups you can join, either trade groups or any kind of group that you can, if they're not meeting in person, social groups on Zoom, the more people you can meet, the better.
• 20:50
  And the more you can listen to them and get to know them, the better, because everybody's got connections to someone else. So I think people who are interested in what you're doing are key. I met so many different people and funds and bankers and VCs, and I found the women investors the most interesting and the ones who really understood our brand. And I think that was really important.
• 21:16
  Nothing against men, but a lot of the bankers and the VCs are men. And if they can't try the product on or feel it or look at it and say, oh, my gosh, that's great. They're not going to get it like women are. Yeah. And we've heard this before, right? Like it's just more difficult inherently. Yeah, exactly. It is. So we generally raise funds through friends and family. And it has been the easy way because when you start.
• 21:44
  or even if you're raising after two or three years, you want patient investors. You want people who are in it for the long haul with you, who aren't going to call you every day and say, okay, what's going on? What's happening? You know, how come you didn't make money last year? That kind of thing. You need people who are going to be supportive and say, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. Can we put more money in? And it's a matter of, you know, keeping them abreast, you know, every quarter about the growth and the numbers and how you're doing.
• 22:13
  How big is the company today when it comes to your team? Are you able to share any kind of, you know, vague revenues? You know, paint the picture for today. Okay, so we don't share numbers, but I'll tell you our growth in 2021 was 85% over 2020. So this year has been phenomenal for us this past year. We have plans to grow hopefully that amount, I'm knocking on wood, in 2022. Love that for you.
• 22:41
  So within 2020, you know, we had a staff at the office of about 11 or 12 people. And it's been that way really since the beginning. Everybody wore three hats, like everybody was doing everything. And it felt like we were getting to a breaking point of, oh, my gosh, we just we can't do certain things that we really want to do because we just don't have the staff to do it. So we've added about seven people in the last six months. Yeah.
• 23:09
  And it's really been fantastic. We hired some people who are best in their class at what they do. And for us, probably the most important thing in bringing in new people is the cultural fit. They obviously have to be really good at what they do, but it's the cultural fit because we are a company, very respectful, and everybody's nice to everybody else. And we have a really good time. We have a lot of fun. And everybody works really hard.
• 23:36
  So that's usually the part that takes the longest is finding those folks who will fit right into the group here. Absolutely. I've heard that. That's a common theme from what I hear. What is the best and the worst advice you've ever received? Oh, gosh. The best advice is probably don't spend money you don't have, hoping that it will come. And, oh, the worst advice.
• 24:05
  This happened to do with another business, but it was making bags for Bendels. They wanted us to make a bag for them. And they really wanted us to do fanny packs for them in neon colors with our label on it. And we said, we really don't want to do that. What's Bendels? I'm out of the loop. So Bendels was a specialty department store here. It was fabulous back in the day. I can't remember how long they've been out of business now, but it was really fantastic.
• 24:35
  And we made these bags for them and we regretted it from the second we said, yes, we regretted it because it wasn't our aesthetic. And that's why I said, stick to your guns, because if you really don't feel like something's right, if someone's asking you to do a collaboration with them and they want to use neon and that's just not part of what you do, you got to say no. I've learned that over the years. We just closed our eyes and did it. And a lot of stuff.
• 25:00
  A lot of leftover stuff. No, we didn't, thank goodness. We shipped them everything and they had to deal with all of it. But it was, you know, stick to what you do best and don't let people try and talk you into something you're not comfortable with. Two great ones. Love that for me.
• 25:18
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 25:42
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 26:05
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
• 26:22
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 26:46
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 27:09
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.