Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 Quick Questions with Elyce Arons, Co-founder of Frances Valentine (part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. So question number one, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing? I absolutely love creating and designing and I love doing it with my team. It just, it's so fulfilling. It makes me so happy.
- 0:26All through the pandemic, I came in every single day because the samples would come here. And I just, even if I was by myself, I'd try them on. And it's just, I love what I do. It's really fun. Sounds like a big, like dress up closet where you can just come in and try beautiful things on and spin around. I love that. That sounds so fun. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment so far for Frances Valentine?
- 0:53I think I'd have to say it was our catalog, our very first catalog. When all the stars aligned, everything came together just at that moment in time. Question number three is, what's your go-to business resource when you have to think about a book or a podcast or a newsletter? Well, as I mentioned, I get up really early and I read the trade papers every morning as well as a lot of other news. So I would probably say Women's Wear Daily and Business of Fashion.
- 1:21Love that. I'm going to link them both in the show notes for anyone listening. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and motivated and productive? Oh boy. I wake up really early. I think it's just because I grew up on a farm and we always woke up early. To the roosters. You were lazy if you did it. Crack of dawn. Yes, exactly.
- 1:49The rest of my family hates it, but I'm always up really early. How early are we talking? I usually get up at 5.30 or 6. That's early for my teenagers. They're up as late as it could be 11 or 12. But it's probably, I love getting up and having time to read articles and read the papers in the morning. It's one of my favorite things. Make coffee, hang out in front of the fire with the dog. That's part of one of my morning things that I love. And getting to the office early is really great.
- 2:18You know, the second is going home and making dinner for my family. I love to cook. I am a plant-based eater, which can be very challenging. So it's hard for my husband to make things for me because, you know, you have to really wrap your head around it and learn how to make things that are all plant-based, which can be a challenge. I'm used to it myself. Anyway, I love doing that. I love making dinner for my family. Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes almost sense. It's another really creative outlet for you to, you know, create.
- 2:48Create fun things. Yes, exactly. What's your favorite at the moment? I'm always looking for new plant-based recipes. So I made this up myself, but I made a shepherd's pie. And it was jardine, the chicken strips you can buy that are obviously made of tofu or soy, carrots, celery, onions, peas, corn, sweet potato, and then covering it with mashed potatoes.
- 3:15Yum. I haven't had a shepherd's pie in, you know, forever. I don't eat meat. I eat dairy, but I don't eat meat. And that sounds delicious. It's really good. And it's so easy to make. I mean, you use vegetable stock and then you have to mix a little flour with, I use almond milk, unsweetened almond milk and mix it together to, you know, once you have the pot boiling, you mix that in and it thickens everything. And then I just put that in a big,
- 3:41dish with the mashed potatoes on top and bake it. And it's really good. I'm so excited for the future as well of like lab grown meat and all these kinds of things, because I mean, everything now is amazing. The options that you can get on the market are just like so much better. Yeah. It's, I mean, there are just so many options, but I'm also excited for the future. Me too. Me too. But it's getting better all the time. It's just really amazing. Yeah, it really is. It really is. I digress.
- 4:07Question number five. We might have covered this already, but let's see if there's a different answer that we can come up with. What's been the worst money you've ever spent in the business? And how much was it?
- 4:20We love dollars over here. We want to know. I don't want to put anybody down. That's the only problem. You can keep the name, you know, fuzzy. We don't need to say the name. So there's a big online retailer. This was early on in the business and they wanted to carry our products. And we were, you know, they came in and sold us on it. They're like, it's going to be great. You're going to be huge. You're just going to sell out. It's going to be crazy, but it's going to cost you $50,000 to market this. So we did it. We got no business out of it.
- 4:50And we realized that retailer wasn't for us. You know, it was supposed to be a new dawn for them. And they were really going to take over the fashion industry. And lesson learned, an expensive lesson learned early on. Expensive lesson learned. Don't love that. And question number six, last question. This is kind of like a similar-ish question to the last one. But is there a major fail or major mistake that you can share in the business and how you dealt with it?
- 5:20Yes. So at one point we had sold out of basically everything in the summer of 2018. And it was a very emotional time for us. And so there was a huge demand for our products. So we ordered according to the demand.
- 5:39which we shouldn't have. And I, as a seasoned professional, should have known better that you're supposed to order for between 20 and 40% of demand because by the time you get those products here. But I was in a very emotional state and I just thought, yes, we have to do it. We have to do it. So we ordered to the demand and we had a lot of product leftovers. So our inventory levels were way too high by the summer of 2019. And I would just say it's so much better. And
- 6:08I've had to learn this lesson several times, but now I'm going to stick with me. We pretty much make everything in small batches at Francis Valentine. And the aim is to sell out of them after a period of four to six weeks. Advice for anyone is make things in as small batches as you're able to, because to have inventory is just cash sitting in boxes. And it's so much better to have the cash in the pocket to be able to deploy for marketing, whatever else you need for more.
- 6:37manufacturing, whatever you need, but it doesn't tie you up if you have no inventory. So that's probably one of the best lessons I could tell anyone. Yeah, that's a great lesson to end on. Elise, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your journey. You are just so bright and bubbly. I've loved chatting with you. Thank you so much. I have really enjoyed chatting with you too. Thanks so much, June.
- 7:06Hey, 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.
- 7:30And 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.
- 7:53As 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.
- 8:09Hey, 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.
- 8:34And 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.
- 8:57As 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.