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Stephanie Sarka: Embracing Bold Moves and Disrupting the Industry · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today, I'm excited to bring you Stephanie Sarka.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: She is the co-founder and CEO of One Atelier.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome, stephanie.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here, excited to jump into it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Would love to hear a little bit more about what One Atelier is and introduce you to the listeners.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: One Atelier was founded by myself and two co-founders, all of whom had been in the fashion industry and myself in tech.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: We created this as a result of our experience with the intention of building an independent luxury brand that was built to really celebrate individuality and empower self-expression, really to celebrate what makes each of us original.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Beyond that, to really try to disrupt the category as we knew it, both from a business model perspective and in terms of sustainability.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: What that reinvention looks like?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: It starts with our natively custom business model.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Virtually every piece can be customized on a proprietary design platform that we've built.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Then each of those pieces is handcrafted literally on demand at our One Atelier studio in the garment district of New York City.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: The result is that we have virtually zero excess inventory.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: We do not produce to forecast, we produce to order.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible thing to see a woman who's designed her one-of-a-kind piece.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: I can tell you we have not made the same bag twice.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: The intention was really to create a bag that, both from a visual and aesthetic perspective, but also from a functional perspective, really fit all of her needs, because we were hearing time and time again that women found that, despite the thousands and thousands of dollars they were spending on luxury product, luxury handbags.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Most of those were in their closet because there was inevitably something that just wasn't working for them.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Our goal was really to be, very simply, the bag that they used most of the time.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: We're now in the process of pushing even further upstream on our sustainability positioning and exploring the opportunity to create a handbag that is not just carbon neutral but carbon negative, that is zero waste again because of our own demand production and ultimately biodegradable.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: We're doing that by working with farmers in New Hampshire, in New England, new Vermont, massachusetts and also upper New York who are practicing regenerative agriculture, and working with those farmers who are cattle farmers using the hides from their work that were then veg tan, also in America and in Chicago.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Then that of course, comes full circle to be custom designed and produced on demand at our Atelier in New York City.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Excellent, I think one of the things that would be helpful.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: As we talk, we'll talk more about sustainability and how you got into this area, specifically sustainable fashion and the connection to that, Before we go there.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I wanted to start off with asking you the question I ask everyone what is your definition of bold?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: spent a long time after I left a company that I co-founded that became quite big.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: It was an ad tech company called gochuicom.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: We invented Page Search.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I have to tell you, it was important and big and I really wasn't that happy.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: We were disruptive but it wasn't my element.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I spent a little years trying to figure out what my path was, because I thrive on bold, I thrive on impact.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: How do we have an impact?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: For me, what that meant and when I finally felt I found my sweet spot with when I was at Atelier, is going after something that's important to me, that I also feel is important to others, in a way that can have some kind of impact.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: It could be small, it could be large and recognizing that there's going to be some risk along the way.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: That risk could take various shapes.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It could take physical shapes I guess if you're jumping off of jumping out of airplanes something that I will not do it can take emotional shape, emotional risk.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: It could take financial risk there's various forms of risk.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: But recognizing there's going to be risk or compromise to really have the impact by going after something that you think is important.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I'll add just two other little pieces of it.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: One of it to me is it needs to bring joy.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: For me, if you're bold and you feel like you're having an impact, you need to be bringing joy both to yourself and to others.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I've reduced life to this basic notion that joy is fleeting and life sometimes gets quite hard and you got to grab those moments of joy as a fleet by swing by and hopefully deliver those as well.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That's why I love what we do, because I think we really deliver joy to our clients.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Lastly, I always think about something when I think about bold and very few people who are as bold in my mind as Lou Frankfurt, who was my mentor at Coach for many years.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: He would always say you need to make magic from logic.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That really struck with me, this notion that in order to really have impact, you have to have this huge vision and this dream, but then you need to really ground it in the logic.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Those things kind of come together for me when I think about being bold.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that Magic from logic.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That is an excellent definition when you think about risk and compromise and making sure that when you're being bold it's bringing you joy.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: When's the first time, based on your definition, that you remember being bold?
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: This will stick with me forever.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I was a sophomore class president in high school and had this crazy notion that we were going to create a carnival for the school district, not just for the high school but for the middle school and the elementary schools.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: We actually called it lab and rack, which is carnival spelled backwards.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I thought that was very clever.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I guess at the time it just had never been done trying to harness talent, basically students, across the entire district.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I walked into it, quite frankly, not knowing what the heck I was doing.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: We had all these components.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: We had a pretzel vendor and apple bobbing and scarecrow.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Basically, the idea was to build it off of an Octoberfest idea.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I remember just looking at my mom about two days before this whole thing is about to go live and realizing I was so underwater and well over my head.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: She really helped me sit down and map it out and make sure we had a clear understanding what all the deliverables are and that all the folks knew what the rules were going to be.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And we pulled it off and it was a huge hit.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I stepped into that, knowing it would be big.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And back to my definition.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I thought it was important to bring the whole district together, including our high school.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I was way on the line on so many levels over the line or out on a limb, I guess you could say but I felt like it was important and I felt like, at the end of the day, people had such a great time and I had a great time.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: I'm in my element in that kind of situation.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so just kind of going into it having a mission, almost, or a vision for what you want to create and then figuring it out along the way, which I think in itself is a way to define being bold, honestly, exactly, and it was a great success.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So, when you think about using your definition of bold and that one example, how did you go?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Like I heard you mentioned some tech pieces, some technology company, heard you mentioned coach and now one atelier, kind of give us a sense of, like, how you progress.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Like, did you start out knowing you wanted to be CEO and co-founder, or did that kind of come along the way in your journey of figuring out your life, your purpose?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I think the one thing that was clear in those days in high school, as I continued down that leadership path in student government and otherwise, was that I liked being a leader and I thought I was okay, pretty good at it and liked being that position where I could inspire other people.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I really remember a leadership camp I went to the summer before senior year in high school when I was going to be student body president and there was a speaker there who was just mind blowing, just so motivational, and I never have forgotten that feeling of the role that we can play by being a great leader, which wasn't to say that I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur, but I was always pretty scrappy, a bit of a hustler, and definitely that notion of leading people against a common mission very early on resonated.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: That said, I did not follow that path.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Right after college I went to Golden Sachs, but I already knew I was.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Within weeks I knew I was in the wrong element.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I had two great years as a mergers and acquisition analyst and I would never change that because I learned so much and I saw so much and, quite frankly, it helped cement what I wanted to do, because in mergers and acquisitions.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: You're going and looking at other companies and seeing what they do so that you could write about it and then ultimately help perhaps create a merger or acquisition.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And I was fortunate to be able to go to some really interesting companies, including in the consumer goods and luxury space, and I remember very distinctly, just knowing I absolutely belonged on the other side of the table, that I am a builder, not a banker, and that just was not my sweet spot and it was very much a forced fit and I could knock out the work, I guess, like anybody could, but it wasn't a happy place for me.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: So, even before even considering going to grad school, I managed, through one of the contacts I made in one of these due diligence visits, to find myself in an interesting position for a year in Paris for international flavors and fragrances, literally stepping in for a woman who was on her one year maternity leave and I was in my element.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: I took a 70% salary of reduction.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: I was living in a Chambdeban in Paris and I still don't think I've ever been that happy.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Just, I was in an environment of fragrances and the perfume and you'd walk in and people were building stuff and making stuff and just living on my own terms.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And so I left that realizing not only did I belong in an environment that built things and created things you know money was important, but it wasn't the only thing, because I had managed to live very happily on much reduced salary.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So from there I did go to HBS and thought I would straddle finance and building things with venture capital.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: I was at Advent International for the summer and still just didn't feel like I was close enough.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: So when it was time to graduate I just jumped off the deck completely.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I blocked any interview opportunities from the investment banks which are prolific when you've already got that on your resume and very happily managed to have a conversation with Lou Frankfurt, who was the CEO of Coach at the time.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: They had just been acquired by Sara Lee and that's where I landed.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Those seven years really were transformational for me.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I will say that he brought me in his office a few weeks after I got there at Coach and said just so you know, nobody cares.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: You went to Harvard Business School.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: He just kind of ripped those stripes right off my arm.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: He says but they will care if you can lead and you can show them that you understand what they're doing and that you even know how to do some of it.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: So he very systematically gave me the opportunity to be in the factory, to be in the tanning arena to sell behind the counter.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I ultimately led the handbag piece of the business and then ultimately led an acquisition called Mark Cross a previous life of Mark Cross and really taught me to be an operator and a merchant.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: This word merchant is such a powerful world in the retail and the consumer space I didn't really appreciate that until I was with him.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: As much as it was.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Not only did I have probably the lowest salary of anybody coming out of my class at Harvard Business School, but I now couldn't even tell anybody that I went to Harvard Business School.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: It was just the most extraordinary training.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: From there I made a huge leap.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Talk about bold.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I guess I don't think I'm attracted to shiny things, but I'm always really curious and interested and the Internet was just starting to happen.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: It was late 90s and I just thought I belong there, I need to be part of this, and it was a compelling feeling.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: So I took a couple of months off and I actively networked and found myself as a co-founder of go tocom.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: It was a portfolio company of IDLAB and Pasadena.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: That in itself was bold because I left New York City to literally it feels like a country.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: I never felt comfortable in Los Angeles, where I was based in Pasadena, a very sweet, very small town, and we had an incredible ride.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: We literally invented the paid search business model.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Still have a piece of poster paper where four or five of us in the room were figuring out the mechanics, the business model behind paid search.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: So it was an incredibly heady time.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, we hired hundreds of thousands of people, we took the company public and a year after launch and we drove it, drove it, drove it for several years.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: We even beat Disney at a trademark infringement lawsuit for the Go logo versus the go tocom logo.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: So it was just an insane.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Four years I walked away having felt like we had such a huge impact.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: We had some conversations in the early days with the couple guys that were starting this brand called Google.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Anyhow, there's a long story why they're at Google and we're not, and it has to do with Yahoo buying our brand about five years in.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: But we changed the whole ad tech world and today even search engine marketing is the power behind most digital marketing plans.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So it was an extraordinary experience.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: But I came back here and I said, okay, did, done that back to New York as fast as possible and still realize that it's powerful as it had been.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: It's very hard to constantly be working.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: There's just no thing.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: For me, it was all digital, and so I was thinking about what I learned around the power of technology for transformation and how I could direct that against the category or the industry that I loved and that I felt was really broken.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And luxury, and specifically luxury leather goods, was where that came together.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of bold moments across that timeline, so let me just kind of recap.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So, coming out of school and high school into college and into grad school at Harvard, kind of finding your way and figuring it out, but doing some things that you knew.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: One of the things you said is I knew instantly it wasn't a fit.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Right, you knew you went into something totally qualified, making probably very good salary, or at least initially good salary out of grad school, but you knew it wasn't a fit.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And so I think one of the things we do sometimes along the way is we just think we can make it fit, right, well, I'll just buck up and I'll just be okay.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And then what happens is potentially people become unhappy and making good money.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: You went from a role where you made good money to Paris and one of the things you said when you were talking about Paris was like I don't think I've ever been that happy since then, right, because?
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So I would love just to juxtapose those two things.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: What was it that?
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: In Paris, you were kind of in control.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You took a substantial salary decrease to be there, but the work was just in the environment and the.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I've seen hallmark movies about creating perfumes and things like that.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Actually, it's one of my favorites, but just, it's extremely creative and you're constantly inventing what I would just outside in.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But tell me a little bit more about the Paris experience.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: If we could bottle it, what would it look like?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Mm-hm, couple things.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: One is just walking in was amazing.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Right, you just hit the waft.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: I was on the fragrant side.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: There's also a flavor side, but since I was on the fragrant side, you would walk in and you're in Paris walking into this sort of incredible set of aromas.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Secondly, it's like you said, it was a very creative environment, and you were surrounded by the perfumers and sales guys who were trying to work with all the major luxury brands to figure out what the right product was for them, whether it was gonna be a fragrance or it was gonna be the high end luxury perfume or it was gonna be the fragrance in a washing detergent.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: And so they were always walking around.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: They called them the noses sniffing things.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: And distilling what the breakdown of the fragrances were, of the elements and the various fragrances that they were building and also the competitive fragrances, and I loved that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: And then I got to part of my role was to travel across the continent and work with these clients in presenting what trends were and helping them and I would usually go with one of the salespeople figure out what the direction is that they wanted to go with whatever particular project.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: So I felt like we were constantly in a mode of creativity, of invention and of building and of doing things that again brought joy.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've really come to appreciate the role of fragrances in how you create feelings.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: So for me I thought we were delivering something really important and I loved the process to get there.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and bringing joy again, like talking and going back to some of the things with you and your definition right.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So I think from the perspective of it was probably an unknown stepping into it, figuring it out along the way, and then finding joy as you're working there and being able to do things.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So kind of base of business, a creative, innovative space where you can be a builder, which is one of the things you said you like to do and then coming into the tech space where it's like innovate, innovate at a pace and rate you know, because the competition in this particular area like almost feels like probably some days you can't sleep, I'm assuming, and so just a rapid pace.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So then you have all that in your toolbox.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: How does one atelier get born?
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: How does it get created?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: It took a while and it took some fall starts.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I started a little thing here, a little thing there it's a building with some coders here, some building with some coders there, and I even ended up working with a career coach just to have a sounding board and forced me to think through sort of the basics about who I am, what defines my happiness, what defines my strengths.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting because, even though we think we know these things, it's just so helpful to have someone to push a chance on these concepts.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And I realized that all these little startups I'd been sort of pretending to try we're all digital, completely digital.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And it was actually a crazy moment.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: I still remember it in the foyer here of my apartment where a woman came to visit and I said I love your bag and it was a beautiful bag, and yet she proceeded to tell me all the things that were wrong with it.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: The shoulder strap was just a little bit too short, so she couldn't get over her coat and she usually wears gold hardware and the hardware was only silver and they didn't have the gold option and there was some functional considerations internally that she wished were different and she said it's funny that you say that, because I almost never wear this bag, even though I spent, whatever the time, $15 for it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And she said something like it would be amazing if someone would create a brand where you could actually create exactly the piece that you want.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: And that's when the bulb went off, I guess, and I realized that technology could provide the basically replace what the old school bespoke atelier used to do, by allowing folks to design their piece online, and then we still handcrafted it in the old school way at our atelier in New York City.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: And I will be honest, and I'm sure you hear this from a lot of people, but there were a lot of things I didn't think about when I sort of plowed into this with my two colleagues, neither of whom are involved in the business anymore.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I've had the staying power and for, on many levels, and the simple thing like finding people who can actually handcraft luxury goods and that and you know, in the industry it literally had taken flight.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: But fortunately we are able to find a few of the incredible artisans who had been left essentially unemployed when those other brands, all well known brands, had left the city and gone to Asia.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: So I would say, despite all my background and my training and HBS and blah, blah, blah, you still just kind of dive in naively.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: We did some market research and we felt we saw an opportunity, but we didn't probably think through all the mechanics and so you know we definitely hit our stride at one point, but it was the hardest thing I've ever built and post pandemic.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: You know we're rebuilding and so it's been hard again, yeah.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you know being a founder is like your.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I almost feel like you're reinventing.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it feels like daily, but at a minimum quarterly.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: You're like reassessing and going okay, what's working, what isn't working, what can we tune.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Which actually I love that part about being a founder because it's you're able to kind of again have the logic of your past or how things have gone or how they've sold, and then you can create magic, quicker, right?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: You know, from that perspective you're able to innovate at a pace and rate that just within organizations, large organizations or corporations, it's just harder to do at least my experience with it in healthcare but at the same time it's also stressful because you're trying to do things, sometimes without knowing and without a guide and without a map, and you're doing it.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: You have obviously sense of sales or sense of likes or trends or marketing, and of course you have the business history.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But there are still a lot of unknowns that you work with in this situation as you're inventing.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So when you launched, you know you go back to kind of where you are now and from where you launched.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: What have you learned Like?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: What's been the most surprising learning for you?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Standing where I am today, I guess it would be to be sure that I'm bringing a co-founding team together that are prepared to be at 100%, whatever that takes.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: It was what we agreed to at the time, but I went in 100% and then I had two co-founders who are extraordinary people and all contributed but never really left their day jobs, and they didn't feel like they were in a position to do that.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: And I get it, and I think that knowing that you have other people who are deeply invested and have skin in the game whether it's their time and talent or their treasure you know money, as I call it and who are dealing with the blows as well as the highs with you, I think is critical.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so a few things there.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So, in the sense of making sure, as you do anything, that you surround yourself with people who are 100% all in to support whether it's the mission or the vision that you have for your business or for your journey, whatever it is you may be doing I'm extrapolating this out a bit, but I think you know one of the things that's hard is doing a plan A, plan B and thinking you can just give enough energy to each to keep them going.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: And one of the things I've talked about before is you have to be all in.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: On plan A, you know I'm a plan.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I like a BCDE, but I don't, and I just want to make sure I know what it is if I would need it.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: But you can't be straddling all these different pieces and parts and still be able to move at the rate that you could, or at the level that you could, or even you know, have the outcomes that you would want if you're not all in right.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So I think that's key.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And then also knowing that you can rebuild I mean you said some important pieces in there and flex or pivot.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: You know you doesn't mean like your mission went away, it doesn't mean that your vision of your company went away, but you knew you had to do something different to keep going.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So I think sometimes people like, oh well, I can't, because then that's so far off of what I want to do, or you know, they kind of like, you know, put a stake in the ground of you know I can't and like, well, you can.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And I think one of the things I'd love to hear about is kind of that pivot that you made right there.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So you had to make a decision during the pandemic to do something differently, right To keep the company going in a float, and how did that feel?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And then how did you get back to where you wanted to be with a company?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: It was pretty clear for a moment at least, and the industry did take a you know 20 some percent tank, although the next year it went up 20 plus percent, even compensating for the loss the luxury, luxury leather goods industry that for a moment at least people weren't going to be worried about you know, their next luxury handbag, partly because they weren't even going out, partly because it was just not the focus at the moment.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: I will say that we got a lot of support from our current clients.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: We did end up closing up some doors in Nordstrom where we had concessions, so bringing some of the merchandise in and did some special offers and I don't think we've ever had as successful of an online finished goods sale as we had.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Then people really got behind us.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: But then at the time, governor Cuomo was you know on TV all the factories in the city.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: You know we're going to give you money to build masks and build gowns and we'll sell them to New York state and we never want to be caught like this again where we don't have built in, you know, keep capability capacity to do this stuff.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: So we bit, we had divide.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: We actually designed a mask and it was a really good mask which we were on path for a 95 certification, and we did it with in partnership at the beginning with one of the major hospitals here in the city, hospital groups, and indeed New York state was offering a grant at various levels, and so while we continued to do what you know we did on a very low burn basis.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: This allowed me to keep one of the three craftspeople that I had kept busy and working and a couple other people as well that we had taken over half of the team down.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: And in the end, and we pursued the 95 process and were actively in it and I have to say it was just gruesome and something that I would never like to go after again.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: And I just realized there was just no market here.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: You know that we had done this with the expectation that there was a built in market, that there was a built in pipeline, and there really wasn't.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: So we realized that New York state had never bought a mask from any vendor that was building masks in New York, even though we'd all received funds to build capacity and in many cases we were doing it hands-on, just leveraging the team and the machinery we had in-house.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: But there just wasn't a market and our price was obviously going to be higher by a long shot than the masks that were being mass produced in China.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: And if we didn't have a guaranteed protection of a market here with New York state, then it just didn't make any more sense to continue.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And we dedicated a lot of time to this and talent Essentially it was one person's full-time job for almost a year but we all kind of came to the recognition that whatever had been said was not what had been done and we have a great mask.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: That's basically through the process of all the rigor and testing to submit into the N95 certification process when we need to, and we move back into the game that we play best.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: So, again, a pivot, because you had to right, and sometimes you have to do things that are suboptimal, that don't bring you joy potentially, but you know you're not going to do them for a long time.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Right, there is a exit ramp planned, right, so you never went into that going.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: We're now going to be the number one mask seller in the country or anything like that.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Obviously, you want to do a good job, but it wasn't the intention of what you need to do.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: You did what you needed to do at the time.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You needed to do it, and I think sometimes that's also a bold move.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: So I think, stephanie, you've been being bold in different pockets and different spaces across your career.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So as people think about making their bold move, so if a lot of people are creative and they're innovative and they love to build things like I consider myself a fixer I like to come in and turn things around and like take things from A to Z and look at things differently what advice or guidance would you give someone who's just trying to find that space or place to at least start to explore it?
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: I have this conversation with my nine-year-old.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: You know you first you have to start with what you love, because you're gonna spend, and I just seems trite, but it's so true, like it has been really really really hard as much of these last few years, you know, and only then to have, you know the bank through your bank account, you know, go under.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, you just like what next could happen.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: But I love, I love going to the office in the morning, I love the team, I love the creativity.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: I think what we're doing is important, you know, and in my opinion, we didn't just.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: The world did not need another handbag brand, the world needed a completely different kind of luxury brand, and that's what we're really doing.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: We're changing the game to be a essentially a sustainable, but also, you know, to literally remove all the waste and inefficiencies and carbon and many Contributions to the place where we are right now with the planet that come from fashion.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: And so if it weren't for that Deep-seated love of what I do and even my daughter says, mom, why are you still doing this?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: To sell the company, I'm like, well, review years from that now, because we got a rebuild, I I feel happy, despite all the stresses, and I think that's only because I really love what I'm doing.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: And so you have to start there and then figure out.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: I think in any category, there's an opportunity for disruption, an opportunity to Be bold and opportunity to change the game and do it differently.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: But I would say, go to for me and Remember I was brought in on a concept that I helped formulate but was an opportunity to be bold and change the game.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: But it didn't start from a place that I was a really that deeply knowledgeable or really, you know, in love with ad tech and advertising sales.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: That's never been my Sweet spot, if you will.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: So we made it happen at a sheer brute force and we maybe got a little bit lucky and we had some other people on the team, you know, that brought.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: You know we all compliment each other very well and, to be honest, all of us were.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: You know the internet was just starting then 97, 98, 99, so there was a lot that nobody had ever, you know, come across before.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: But I think when I left, that's why I felt this need to do Something else and and sometimes I'll Sometimes I asked myself why you know that I had to dive in again and it has been so bloody hard these last few years Because I really didn't have to.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: But I didn't feel, despite the success of go-to and this is just being really honest that it was fully mine, that it was fully the thing that made me happy that I felt was my contribution to the world, even though I think my name is on a patent for the paid-search business model.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I had to do something that I felt really resonated with me and where I felt I was having the kind of impact that I wanted to have, and and that starts from something that I really Loved and felt was important personally, yeah, and the journey is not always a straight line, it's not always easy, it doesn't come with, you know, rewards every day and accolades, but you keep going and those things come along the way.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So I think you know making sure folks understand that bold moves and your bold journey and thinking about what's next for you.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: It comes with effort, it comes with action and it comes with intention.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: You know, I've seen that in the work that you've described with the company that you have now, and just the opportunity for people to create and co-create Basically their own little masterpiece that they can, you know that they can wear about.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: That's right, yeah.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for being on the bold lounge all the information about one atelier and about Stephanie's below in the episode notes.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you again.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: My pleasure, thank you.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the presentation.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the bold lounge podcast.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories Vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with the bold mindset.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.