Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Turning your passion into a thriving business, with textile brand MINNA’s Founder, Sara Berks

Transcript

Turning your passion into a thriving business, with textile brand MINNA’s Founder, Sara Berks · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Sarah Burks for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roisin, and joining me on today's episode is Sarah Burks, founder of Minna.
• 0:24
  Minna is a queer-led home textile brand collaborating with master artisans in Latin America to make soft things for every room in your home. In this episode, we're chatting about how Sarah's journey to find herself evolved into a full-blown biz, why she decided to pull back on the wholesale side of her business, and how she finds artisan partners all around the world to bring her ideas to life.
• 0:46
  If you know someone that will benefit from hearing this story, please do share it with them. It helps us find new ears and empowers the women in your life who are dreaming big. This is Sarah for Female Startup Club. Sarah, hi, hello. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:08
  I'm so excited to be here and learn all about your brand, Minna. I always get you to start by just introducing yourself a little bit and telling us what your business is all about. Sure. Well, my name is Sarah Burks. I am the founder and creative director of Minna. We're an ethically handmade home textile brand. We collaborate with artisan groups in Latin America to produce basically anything soft and cozy for your home.
• 1:35
  Oh, heaven. Love that. Where does your story start? What was happening in your life that was getting you interested in bringing this to reality? Yeah.
• 1:45
  Yeah, I kind of stumbled into textiles, oddly. Prior to starting Minna, I was working in digital design and branding. I was at various agencies designing websites, sometimes e-commerce, sometimes more like educational or like for museums. And was fairly burnt out from that world and just like left feeling really uninspired and just fried generally and not feeling creative. Yeah.
• 2:15
  And 2013, I decided to quit my job. My dad was really freaked out about that and just to start freelancing. And during that time, I fell into weaving. I got really, really into learning how to weave, learning about every weaving technique around the world and started traveling, went to Mexico and.
• 2:43
  And then Mina kind of came to be. There was an evolution there, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like, oh, I'm quitting my job to start a business. It was, oh, I'm quitting my job to kind of find myself. And then the business came out of that. When you say weaving, do you mean like...
• 3:02
  I'm thinking, I'm imagining like you weaving a carpet, like on those huge looming kind of machines. What do you mean when you say weaving? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I was really into tapestry weaving. So I had...
• 3:18
  basically taken a picture frame and broken it and then like warped it like a small tapestry loom. And then I also like took a couple of classes on learning floor looms and that sort of thing, but I was not weaving a carpet. I did take a workshop in Mexico where I learned how to do rug weaving, which is one of the techniques that we still use. But the only carpet that I made was
• 3:48
  I bet it was amazing. So you go to Mexico, you're kind of like enjoying this process of weaving. You're just taking some time away from, you know, the corporate world. What gets you start thinking about like, oh, I'm actually going to create this into a business. Was there like a light bulb moment where you thought, oh, I could actually make money from this?
• 4:10
  There wasn't really a light bulb moment, to be honest. So I had started weaving, right? And I was selling these pieces, like one of a kind pieces through Instagram and selling them to a couple stores and getting a few commissions. And then I was like, you know, this is really amazing. Like, I really love this. But.
• 4:33
  I don't want to support myself off of my art. And I went to design school. I was a designer. So designing products, woven products, felt like the iteration of merging creative artistic brain with business design functional brain. So I just kind of set out
• 4:54
  to explore that and see what was possible. So there was the like, you know, the pieces that I was making. And then a couple of years later, the artisan made collection came to be, and that was very small at the time. It was about 12 pieces. Okay. Was that out of kind of the evolution of being like, you know, this isn't scalable. This is a lot of my time going into creating these pieces versus being able to like,
• 5:23
  you know, grow and do more? I think it was both. It was like, I can't weave all day, every day, and actually support myself in like the capacity that I would want. And also I wanted to make bigger things. Like I wanted to make rugs. I wanted to make blankets. And like the thought of me weaving a blanket, I was like, someone else knows how to do this better than me. And I can't actually, I don't have the capacity to do that.
• 5:53
  Right, yeah. And so while all this is happening, you know, it's kind of evolving. It's just becoming a business and gaining traction, it sounds like. What's happening on the community side of things? Like, how were you finding people who were interested in what you were doing and, you know, purchasing from you? Well, this was like 2013, 2014, when there wasn't really an algorithm to Instagram yet. So it was actually fairly...
• 6:21
  I mean, it was fairly easy to build a community that way. I could use a hashtag and actually get like new followers and like gain interest in that way. So I was able to garner a bit of a following through like my handmade pieces. And then by the time I was starting to travel and work on like the artisan made pieces, there was already an interest.
• 6:45
  And also, you know, branding and website design was what I did. So it was what I knew how to do. I knew how to design a website and build a brand that could gain a following.
• 6:58
  Does that kind of also mean that in the beginning, then you weren't having to outlay a lot of capital into those kinds of things, which can be quite expensive if you're needing to hire a freelancer or an agency. Is that right? Yeah, I didn't have to spend anything on web design or branding. I mean, all of what was being spent was product development. Are you able to share kind of what you...
• 7:25
  capital it did take to get started when you were kind of realizing, yep, okay, I'm going to need to outsource some of the production, buying, you know, inventory to have on my store and that kind of thing? Yeah. So...
• 7:39
  The first year, I would say, is like a little bit muddy because it was the kind of thing where I was like, OK, we're going to like launch this small collection. And then suddenly, you know, things kept growing. And also to clarify, when I was first starting, I was still freelancing. So I would work about.
• 7:58
  nine months out of the year to support myself. And I didn't take a dime from the business actually until like the fourth year. So I guess you could say like my salary was what was just like completely reinvested back in. Totally. So I had a little bit of savings. And because I was supporting myself, anything that a sale made just went right back into my
• 8:27
  reinvesting and buying more inventory and traveling. Because at that point, I was also traveling quite a bit to, you know, make the connections and meet the artisans that we were working with.
• 8:39
  How did you find the people that you were working with in those different countries? So in Mexico, Mexico is like a little bit different compared to how I work everywhere else, mostly because those connections were really, really personal at first. So when I had gone there the first time I was going to take a workshop on rug weaving and natural dyes and that trip I met.
• 9:02
  about three families that are still like my closest collaborators. And then through that, I was just doing a ton of research. I wanted to learn all of the techniques that we were doing. I wanted to know which weaving groups were working
• 9:18
  interested in innovation and interested in more contemporary product design. And the artisan sector is fairly small. So once you kind of know somebody, they're like, oh, yeah, you should meet this person and then you should meet this person. And it was really kind of once you know someone, there was like a domino effect. All those doors opened up and you were like immersed in that world of artisan creators. I love that. That's so cool. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:48
  Was there a point, you know, a few years in when you started to realize, oh, okay, it actually has come to life the way that I, you know, envisioned it. And it's like the tipping point where it sort of felt like things are just constantly growing and gaining momentum. Yeah.
• 10:05
  Yeah, it's funny because I kind of I feel like there's been a couple tipping points where I'm like, oh, we're doing this now. Like better, like put my real shoes on or something like it's just like things just kind of keep coming. Yeah.
• 10:22
  I'm trying to think of like when that was where like the past year has felt like a tipping point. I think when we joined a showroom for wholesale that really kind of pushed some of those relationships that we already had forward in a different way. And we were finding customers in that capacity.
• 10:53
  The new roadmap? Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. Right. So in the beginning, you were doing the wholesale. You had the Instagram firing. Everything was starting to really flourish. When you fast forward to, you know, today or last year, 2020 kind of time, what's been the biggest driver for growth at these times, like in the modern kind of sense of social media landscape and not having that wholesale arm?
• 11:23
  Yeah. So, well, 2020 was obviously a freak show of a year, but we had gone into the year thinking by the end of the year, we would be winding down our wholesale program, maintaining some key accounts with like,
• 11:41
  specific retailers that we thought were good brand alignment. So it felt kind of impossible to really shift our business model in that way because it was essentially wholesale was like 65% of the business. But I had always wanted to get away from wholesale and
• 12:00
  because we could like operate, you know, more creatively, really focus on our direct customer, get to know our direct customer better. And then COVID happened and kind of overnight, our business model flipped. We, a lot of our wholesale stores like canceled orders or they shuttered, so they stopped ordering. And then our online business just really kind of exploded. And I think that's like,
• 12:30
  both like we were ready for that. Like we were ready to like focus our energy on our e-commerce. That was like the plan for the year anyways. But then, you know, everyone was home. They wanted to improve their homes. They wanted to like make their house as cozy as possible. And I think any consumer brand that is in the home space is...
• 12:57
  is doing okay if they can keep up producing the goods. Right. Did any of your production get affected with the pandemic? Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:11
  So right when shutdown happened, we had just delivered our spring-summer collection. And we usually order immediately after. But there was kind of this moment where we were like, oh God, what's going to happen? How do we kind of keep everybody working? So there was two things that happened. I was panicked that we weren't going to be able to keep everything.
• 13:36
  the weavers weaving or working. So we started making masks. And that was at first more of like a, how do we keep production going so we can keep everybody employed? And then,
• 13:51
  Things got so busy that it didn't actually matter. We were able to keep everybody working, but we were having a lot of issues getting materials because a lot of the factories were closing, so we couldn't get the yarns and the threads that we needed. There was a lot of transportation slowdowns or shutdowns. If we could get the material, we couldn't get it to the artisan groups. We've been able to navigate it okay. It's just there's been some slowdowns almost everywhere.
• 14:20
  Yeah, I bet. It seems like it's affected so many different layers of like supply chain and the logistics and storage, all that kind of thing. So with your marketing, is your Instagram channel still what drives a lot of that growth for you or is it different owned channels that you have? It's a mix for sure. So...
• 14:46
  I hired my first marketing manager in October, which has been really amazing because prior to that, it was kind of a more like free form approach. And now we have someone who like really knows what she's doing and like is focusing on the different channels. So Instagram, like, yes, it's definitely where we, we like make sure that our content is good and we're posting there every day and all of that.
• 15:13
  But building our email list is super important and we're exploring other types of alignments. And we see that like the key wholesale accounts that we kept are essentially marketing opportunities because it's some of the retailers are larger. We are able to, you know, be exposed to customers that wouldn't normally find us. Yeah.
• 15:37
  And when you say other alignments, do you mean other like credible wholesale accounts or does that mean something else? Yeah, like other retailers or other brands. So like we've designed a collection for Nordstrom and for Design Within Reach that will be launching this spring. So that's what I mean about like marketing opportunities where like we're just being exposed to an audience that we couldn't reach just on Instagram.
• 16:07
  Got it. How exciting. Congrats. Love that for you. What does your team look like today and where is the business in, you know, early 2021? Yeah, the team, we're about, we're eight people now and we're split between upstate New York and the city. And then of course, all of our artists and partners are all throughout Latin
• 16:37
  Hiring for two pretty big roles right now, a production manager. So we can really like focus on production and supply chain management and making a sustainability roadmap for the rest of 2021 and 2022. And then an operations coordinator. So someone more on like the financial side.
• 17:00
  Hmm. When you say sustainability roadmap, what does that mean? And how does that like translate into the business? Yeah, it's a good question. So we, you know, we're at this point, I think, where we're,
• 17:16
  We work in so many different places in so many different capacities in terms of how we produce our products that in, say, in Peru, for instance, like we transitioned to all organic cotton. And we're able to really tell that story and like explain how we did it. Whereas in Mexico, we're not there yet. So I would love to be able to transition our supply chain all over.
• 17:41
  the way to organic, to really kind of figuring out what that needs, because it's not just like, okay, like we were buying cotton from someplace else. Like we need to find it and then figure out how to make sure that like we're getting the same colors that we had before and that the quality is the same. So like really mapping out how to go from, okay, we want to make this improvement to how are we going to do it? Is that at the artisan group level? Is that at
• 18:07
  the product level, country level, like how, what's the plan and how will we make that happen? It sounds like a really unique set of challenges that you have to kind of steer and problem solve to be able to keep that level of standard that you offer and quality. Yeah. I'm also wondering,
• 18:28
  When you're growing this business and as you continue to grow, are there challenges that you face with scaling in terms of, you know, do you kind of outgrow an artisan and be like, okay, we're not outgrow as in you need to move on from them, but you need to find new artisans to add in the mix to keep being able to keep up with the demand and the orders? Yeah. So...
• 18:52
  I'm like, there's like two ways for me to approach this answer. Sorry. Feel free to choose either way. Well, I mean, I think there's like two things to consider in scaling. It's like...
• 19:05
  my team here, like in, in upstate New York, but then also like literal production scaling. And the way that I've kind of approached scaling production has always been consistent orders and just like increasing slowly and consistently instead of
• 19:24
  massive orders up front or massive like jumps, like being like, Hey, this is, this is what we're thinking will happen over the next six months over the next year. And it's taken us a while to get to that point where we're like, where we have enough foresight to be like, okay, like we need X amount of units. Um,
• 19:43
  this year, like who's going to make this and then talking to each group instead of just reacting to the order volume coming in. So I think it's a bit of both. It's like, you know, working with our partners to be like, this is what we need. Like, how can we support you to scale with us? And then also seeking out additional artists and groups to work with. And then there's the team side of...
• 20:10
  making sure that there's enough of us here to do the work to grow. Right. And I imagine like forecasting would be really important to, you know, be on top of that historical data and projections looking to the future. Yeah, absolutely. I like can get a little caught up in the weeds, I think, with forecasting and like thinking ahead because I'm like,
• 20:36
  I like refer to it as like being stuck in a tunnel of like zooming in and zooming out where I'm like getting really granular. And then I'm like, how does this affect everything else? And then like getting really granular again. But that that like forecasting and having data to refer back to is so, so important.
• 20:54
  Yeah, I bet. I totally imagine. For anyone tuning into this episode, is there anything that you wish your younger self knew when starting out building this business that might help other people who are kind of early on in the journey and just getting started now?
• 21:11
  I think really like find your community was, has been really helpful for me, like finding the people that I can turn to when I need support or I need help. And also knowing that like,
• 21:29
  creativity isn't the only thing that will drive a business forward, that you need a good foundation and organization and understanding of the numbers. And like, as soon as you can get that understanding, the better off you'll be. Did it take you a while to figure out that kind of thing? Or do you think it happened for you quite early? It took me a while to like fit all the pieces together. But in terms of like
• 21:57
  Getting like granular number understanding, like that did come fairly early because it had to because I was like, you know, figuring it all out. But it did take me a little bit to fully understand it and understand it enough to really like share that information to my team and empower my team with that information as well. Totally. Totally.
• 22:20
  And in a similar kind of space, what would your key advice be for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business? That would be like asking questions and getting support and talking to other people who have done it. That was really helpful for me was that outreach and connection. Yeah.
• 22:44
  for you when you were doing like outreach and connecting with people? Were you just like blind contacting people or did you kind of ask for introductions or how did it work? What did that look like for you?
• 22:58
  Yeah, I was kind of blindly reaching out, which in hindsight is shocking to me because I'm an extremely shy person. I'm like, I'm not very bold. So that feels kind of bold in hindsight. I also like I had some friends who had started businesses, but more so on like the agency side type thing. So kind of like picking their brains about like how they did it. Yeah.
• 23:24
  Getting those pearls of wisdom from the people around you. I love that. We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. Some of the things we may have touched on, but I always do this at the end of every episode. Question number one is, what's your why? Why do you do what you do?
• 23:43
  Some days it's harder, but I think like overarching my like goal with Minna was always to use business to do good. And whether that's like creating something that's beautiful or creating something that's made fairly and just using business as a platform to like be better people and create a community around that.
• 24:05
  Yeah, I so agree with that. Having that meaningful work to drive you forward versus just doing something for the sake of doing it. Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made your business pop?
• 24:23
  I think I kind of touched on this a bit earlier too, that like, I don't really think there was one, like, I don't know, maybe, maybe that happens for some businesses. I think for us that it's like a little bit of a misconception because there isn't,
• 24:38
  Or there wasn't like a thing that happened overnight. Like it's been like a slow build over time. And like there are moments like we had some like really exciting press things. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. But I don't know if that necessarily was like the thing that propelled us forward. So for us for now, like our marketing is really focused on just like telling stories and focusing on how to tell real stories.
• 25:08
  Love that. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What kinds of things are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that others would benefit from hearing from? Well, I don't hang out anywhere now currently besides my house. I honestly like the thing that I think
• 25:31
  makes me smarter is talking to other business owners and like making those connections and learning from the people that I know. I listen to some podcasts. There's one that I always like to refer back to.
• 25:46
  It's how I built this, but specifically the one with Eileen Fisher, because I think just the way she, you know, talks about how she built her business and how humble she is in that is really inspiring. And I've also been reading this book, Quiet, which is about the difference between how introverts and extroverts lead.
• 26:09
  And being an introvert, it's been really helpful to understand a different kind of leadership. That sounds awesome. I'm going to link both of those in the show notes for anyone who's interested in checking them out. Question number four is, how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 26:34
  Well, I try to stretch every morning. I'm also, unfortunately, very addicted to caffeine. So I have to have coffee within like an hour of waking up. Otherwise, you don't want to be near me. I've also been, this isn't really like a beginning or end of day thing, but I've been trying to really limit the amount of meetings I have in a day, because especially with like
• 26:59
  A lot of our team is a bit remote now, so I found myself just on Zoom calls for like six to eight hours a day. And then I couldn't actually do work. So I'm trying to set limits on how many I can handle in a day and then make Mondays, typically the day where I don't have anything scheduled or just like one thing scheduled. Yeah.
• 27:25
  And then at night I try to paint every day. That's been a really grounding practice. I feel like I've also been dreaming of painting for that kind of calm,
• 27:40
  activity that is not attached to a screen and it's using my hands versus like, I mean, you obviously use your hands with your screen as well, but you know, using your fingers to type and stuff, doing something else. I need to get into that.
• 27:56
  Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? I would spend it on my team or and or my arts and partners. Yeah, I would absolutely go go to them. Amazing. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What is your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan?
• 28:24
  I guess I've evolved a lot with how I deal with failure. It's always been a struggle for me. And I used to be the kind of person that was like very secretive about my goals because if nobody knew, then no one would know that I failed.
• 28:40
  I can't really do that anymore since I have a team and we always have, you know, shared goals and things that we're working towards. And I think that now, like as a leader, I kind of have to embrace failure because I have to like normalize it for myself and also for my team to create an environment where it's OK to fail or it's OK to make a mistake and then just, you know, keep going. Yeah.
• 29:09
  publicize those goals put them out there yeah no secrets yeah oh sarah thank you so much for taking the time to be on female startup club today and for sharing your journey with minna and what you've been creating i've loved chatting with you yeah thank you so much for having me this was fun
• 29:36
  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.
• 30:00
  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.
• 30:23
  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.
• 30:40
  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.
• 31:04
  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.
• 31:27
  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.