Andrew: Hey there, Freedom Fighters. You know me. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. What that means is that there are some people out there who really aspire to do more with their lives, who really want to build incredible businesses and for fun, when they’re out running, when they’re in their cars, when they’re just sitting around the house, they listen to this podcast where they hear other entrepreneurs how they did it. Strange group of people that we are, but that’s what we’re about and that’s what this interview is for.
Joining me today is Emilie Whitaker. She is the co-founder of Beija Flor. It’s a jeans company that makes jeans for women by women. For a second there, I was going to say jeans pants, but then I said, “Well, jeans are pants, essentially,” unless you say otherwise, right?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: Yeah. And this interview is sponsored by Toptal. Later on, I’ll tell you why if you need a developer, you should go check out Toptal. But first, Emilie, it’s good to have you on here.
Emilie: Thank you so much. This is exciting. I love when I can have people who understand what I’ve been going through.
Andrew: Yeah, most people don’t. So you were in an environment where you weren’t surrounded by entrepreneurs before you started this business. You were working at a big company. You opened up their branding guidelines book and you saw what?
Emilie: I saw a lot of rules.
Andrew: Okay.
Emilie: A lot of things I couldn’t do. As someone who grew up in a Catholic school environment, I didn’t want to continue in that path.
Andrew: What kinds of things are in a branding guideline book?
Emilie: In this particular one, there were a lot of rules about the use of color, space, placement, very, very specific guidelines on how the logo can be placed, how you refer to the brand, tense, that sort of thing.
Andrew: I see. And you were a marketer and so why did that bother you so much?
Emilie: I think that it was . . . I think that I was very young, for one. So in my mind, I was ready to show the world what I knew and what I could do and I didn’t want to be limited by colors or fonts in that way.
Andrew: I get that. If you want to be creative, why be limited to that degree?
Emilie: Right.
Andrew: Meanwhile, your mom, [Kathy], came to visit you in Washington D.C. where you lived and she brought a few things along that helped change the course of your life. What did she bring?
Emilie: She brought me a pair of jeans as a gift, which is not a typical gift that you think of receiving.
Andrew: Why did she bring you a pair of jeans?
Emilie: She is also sort of an entrepreneur. We come from a family of entrepreneurs, but at the time in her life, she was looking for something different to do. So she was actually exploring Brazil. Her background was in apparel so she was looking for unique apparel opportunities down there. She was visiting an organic, naturally-colored cotton fabric manufacturer, and just met with a guy down there who was making jeans, and she just bought them as a gift, not knowing how that was related to my life at the time.
Andrew: So you are actually part Brazilian, right?
Emilie: I am. My dad is Brazilian. They lived in Brazil when I was a child, but my mom is American.
Andrew: Okay. Are your parents still together?
Emilie: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: They are? Okay. And so is he also in the apparel business?
Emilie: No, he is an engineer. He likes to call himself “a spreadsheet guy.” Obviously, anybody who’s in arm’s reach of an entrepreneur is involved in some way, I feel like.
Andrew: Yeah, and I see that over the years, he’s given you a bunch of advice on what to do with the business.
Andrew: So now, your mom comes back and she says, “Here. A pair of jeans. I like it. Try it on for yourself.” Did you like the pair of jeans?
Emilie: I did and it was on the heels of a frustrating shopping experience that my friend [Catherine] and I had. And so it was interesting because I had kind of given up on finding jeans that fit me and this random pair that she bought without me there fit me perfectly. They fit my friend Catherine and we had very different body types. So it was a light bulb moment, if you will.
Andrew: Why is it such a big deal to have jeans that fit so perfectly?
Emilie: Well, it’s our uniform. It’s kind of the international uniform. There are definitely ebbs and flows to the denim business and jeans, but it’s one of the most consistently popular pieces of garment in your wardrobe.
As people become more casual and people like yourself can wear whatever you want to work now, fewer people are in the corporate world, jeans are becoming even more important. So not being able to have any that fit you and that you feel comfortable in was disheartening.
Andrew: I remember meeting a guy named Richard Wolpert in LA. He’s a venture capitalist who had done really well for himself in business before that. He worked with Steve Jobs, had the life. And now he decided he was never going to wear anything other than jeans. I just thought that was such a gutsy thing to stand up and say, you know? I thought, “I could do that. Maybe not to weddings, maybe not to really formal events.” But, other than that, I’m really going to hold my ground just like him. And sure enough, the world is okay with it. Maybe it’s my world that’s okay with it.
Well, fashion and what you wear is all about how you carry yourself. If you feel good in what you’re wearing, it doesn’t matter what it is. That’s something I learned from my mom, that the most important thing is when you’re confident. And we just want to help women feel more confident.
Andrew: How does having better jeans help them feel more confident?
Emilie: Well, I think that jeans are personal in the sense that it’s a tailored garment. You can borrow a friend’s shirt or jacket, throw on a jacket if you forgot a jacket, but you can’t put on a pair of pants. They have to be almost designed for you. So there are a lot of people out there that are wearing pants that don’t fit them and they kind of know it. I think that’s where . . . when you feel like your clothing is ill-fitting, it comes across.
Andrew: I like how in the apparel business, it’s not just about selling the thing you’re wearing; it’s about selling you a feeling, selling you confidence, a worldview, an outlook. We should all be doing that with our businesses. I should be saying that about Mixergy. It’s not just about the idea, it’s about the confidence you get from knowing all this information. People want to buy into confidence.
Emilie: Definitely. There are some many goods and products and services right now that I think people are feeling bombarded by the offerings. Now, with the digital world, you have even more offerings. You have online subscriptions. So when we look at any product and when we want to separate ourselves from any money in our wallet, it has to go beyond just a basic human . . . it has to meet a basic need.
For us, this emotion of it is something that came naturally, authentically. We have actually seen women who come out of the dressing room and we’ve solved a problem for them. We’ve saved them time. A lot of times, women spend countless hours. That can be the most frustrating part. You can go try on 25 pairs of jeans and still not find one. So it was also about the time saving, not just about the garment. But it’s about the experience of an easy shopping experience.
Andrew: All right. I get that. But that kind of feels like it’s much more natural to the product than it’s going to save you time and fit better. The idea that it’s also going to make you feel confident feels like it’s connected, but not obvious. I feel like we should all be looking for that in our products. What’s a feeling that we give our customers that’s connected to the product and is authentically connected to it, but it’s not obvious? And for you, it’s confidence. That’s one of several feelings, it looks like, based on your site.
So now, your mom presents you with this new pair of jeans. They fit great on you. She’s looking for a new business. At that point, you say, “All right. Screw this whole Corporate America thing. I’m going to start a business with my mom,” or does it take a little more time?
Emilie: Well, I definitely said that. I can remember being in my DC apartment saying, “We should start a jeans company.” And I remember her laughing a lot because it was kind of a crazy idea. But we did know we wanted to go into business together. Our dining room conversation growing up was talking about business. So for us, it was something we always knew we wanted to do. The research basically was our diligence that led us to say, “Okay. Maybe this is a good idea. And that . . .
Andrew: What kind of research? I see. So you were saying you got the idea, your mom was looking for a business, you said, “Screw it. Let’s do it.” But unlike Richard Branson, he’ll say, “Screw it. Let’s do it and then do it.” But you said, “But first, let’s do some market research.” Right?
Emilie: Yeah, because you’re not going to just quit your job.
Andrew: I get it.
Emilie: I was like a very common American. I was a paycheck-to-paycheck person, so I had to prove it. And we’re talking about investing our sweat equity and basically our financial obligation into it. So basically, my mom went to Brazil and it all aligned. She realized in her travels there that Brazil actually was the second largest denim manufacturer in the world. So they had the capability for sure. We realized, after doing further research on patterns, that the Brazilian patterns within the apparel industry were unique. They were different than what we were seeing.
Andrew: What do you mean? I’m looking at my jeans. What’s the pattern that I’m missing? What’s the pattern that I’m not even noticing?
Emilie: So in our jeans, at least, there are 30 people that go into making a pair of jeans. There are a lot of details from how the fabric is cut, at what angle, how many pieces of fabric are cut at one time; that can change the way the pattern is done. The stitching, there are so many different types of ways that . . .
Andrew: I see. That’s really outside the scope of this interview. Now I get that there’s a lot that goes into a pair of jeans that I’m not noticing. Tonight, when I get home, I might take my pants off and take a look at the patterns on these compared to the others.
But what I’m wondering is this: so I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, Emilie, who will start a business and then see someone come out with a similar product, or go into the same market and go, “Who needs me when there’s this other person out there?” You started a jeans company in a world that has a billion different denim companies, it feels like. What kind of research can you possibly do that tells you, “Yes. The world needs one more and there’s room for one more, and we can make enough money”? What’s the research that goes into that, because I think that could help other people too?
Emilie: First it was focus groups. We were able to . . . we literally started our business by doing home shows. We continue to do that and we continue to have small focus groups of women . . .
Andrew: Before you got into business, you did home shows?
Emilie: We did.
Andrew: You did. What was a home show like before you were fully in business while you were still working at the company in DC?
Emilie: We invited . . . this was before we had really developed our own design. This was more testing existing Brazilian jeans. Invited a bunch of our friends. I have a large family so we tapped into cousins and aunts and invited them to our house and said, “Hey, try these on and see what you think.” Looking for mostly feedback, we were actually able to convert people into sales.
Andrew: I see. And so they actually bought right there?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: At a home show.
Emilie: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: So when I think of focus groups, I think of seven people in a room with a moderator and the C.O. sitting behind a glass, two-way mirror. That’s not what you’re talking about. You just had people come over to your house and said, “This is what we’re planning to do. We love these jeans. They come from Brazil, or they’re made . . . ” were they all made in Brazil?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: “They’re made in Brazil. Do you want to try them on? Do you like them? And if you want to buy them, you can buy them right now.” That was what the original home shows were like?
Emilie: Well, no. The original home shows were literally in my mom’s home and we invited people we knew over to try them on and give us their feedback and they wanted to buy them. So we didn’t know we were going to market when we were actually going to market with something.
Andrew: I see. So how much research had you done before you decided to quit your job?
Emilie: I would say three months, probably.
Andrew: Three months of these kinds of shows?
Emilie: Three months of conversations, shows. My mom visited lots of factories. But a lot of our research was just personally . . . I joke that it was an expensive way to find a pair of jeans that fit myself. It really was very personal.
Andrew: Okay. So know you’ve got this whole idea, you know what it’s going to be. Did you know what your marketing was going to be?
Emilie: No. I came from an advertising background, though, so I always believed in a creative brief. We did know that we were targeting a woman who was not finding what she needed. So that has always driven us. If you have jeans that fit you and you have a pair that you love, great. That’s not really who we have been targeting.
Andrew: It’s the person who’s frustrated. So how do you find that person?
Emilie: We talk a lot about the solutions that we have in the product, which is the no gap waist, the curve thinly. Our number one Google search that has converted for us has been athletic or larger legs. These are the kind of things that we’ve been able to see through our data and our own personal experiences.
Andrew: All right. Okay. Let me do a quick sponsorship break and then we’ll come back and I want to find out how you actually got your first set of customers once you were in business.
The sponsor, of course, you all know is Top Tal. Since we’re talking about denim and we’re talking about designs, you might want to see a really handsome model. To see that, go to . . . are you in front of . . . you are. Do you have your browser up?
Emilie: Me?
Andrew: Yeah. Emilie. You want to check out Toptal.com/Mixergy. You tell me. You’re a professional. You’re in the apparel business. Is that a handsome model, or what? Beautiful. While she does that, you guys are all welcome to go check it out. I will tell you what Top Tal is. Imagine you need a developer. I shouldn’t say imagine. We all need developers from time to time. You need a developer to help build out your site. If you have a team, maybe your team is too busy. If you don’t have a team, maybe it’s going to take you too long to go and hunt down the perfect person. Well, instead of going and hiring a headhunter or putting a bunch of help wanted ads and spending a long time trying to find the perfect person and maybe, or more likely, not going to find the perfect person, instead of doing all that you can just go to Toptal.
Toptal is a network of top developers. They will ask you questions about what you’re looking to do, what your corporate culture is. They’ll ask you questions about where you’re going as a business, all kinds of things that will help them understand what you really need from a developer. Then they’ll match you like a matchmaker would if you were looking for love. They’re going to find the right person for you. You can get started, if you like that person, within a couple of days and they can get started building out whatever you need right away.
It’s incredibly fast, it’s incredibly customized and all you have to do is go to Toptal to get it. If you go to Toptal.com/Mixergy, not only will you see a really beautiful model on there, but you will also get 80 free Toptal developer hours when you pay for 80. So 80 free developer hours is huge, and of course, they’re going to give you because you are a Mixergy fan, a two-week, 100% satisfaction guarantee that you will not be billed if you are not happy. But don’t worry. Toptal will still pay the developer.
These guys are fantastic. They made an offer just to Mixergy listeners. They came back as sponsors because it’s been doing so well for them with the Mixergy audience. So I urge you to check out Toptal.com/Mixergy. See the model and love the offer. What do you think, Emilie? Did you see the page?
Emilie: I have not.
Andrew: You have not. Maybe it’s for the better. Chrome sometimes even slows down Internet connections and makes Skype a little wonky.
Emilie: And just how do you spell it again?
Andrew: Oh. Toptal.com. “Top” as in “top of the heap,” “tal” as in “talent.”
Emilie: That was my issue.
Andrew: And I keep thinking I’m saying it slowly enough, but I’m such a fast talker that connects five words into one that I have to really slow it down. Toptal. I bet I didn’t even say my name very clearly at the top of the interview. That’s why Joe puts the [Inaudible 00:17:24] up with my name underneath it because I say it so fast: My name is Andrew Warner Founder of Mixergy.com. Who can hear that? Nobody. I got to take it slower.
Emilie: No, I think it looks great. Great model.
Andrew: These guys also know how to fit a good landing page.
Emilie: You can be our model.
Andrew: Imagine me, with jeans, my legs kind of bent up in a coy way on a couch like that women in the sweater. Talk to someone on my team, Sachit.
Emilie: Your agent?
Andrew: Yeah. Believe it or not actually, Sachit is selling photos of me. I’m cracking up with this. It’s ridiculous, but it works. Sponsors can pay extra to use my photo in their ads. Then they do that and target my audience online. As a result, they end up reaching my audience in a way that’s more familiar and they end up getting more customers. That’s not my idea. That’s Sachit.
Emilie: That’s awesome.
Andrew: So if you need me in a pair of jeans, talk to Sachit. Sachit Gupta. All right. Anyway, back to the business here. So now you have your whole model. Was it hard to manufacture the pants?
Emilie: It was easier than you would think. It was hard to get it the way we wanted it. That just took time, trial and error.
Andrew: What was the difference? What did you have to do?
Emilie: Well, you just learn. You learn some things just aren’t going to translate. You have to take it from those personal likes and dislikes to broader reach. So I think that we got so excited in the beginning that we had 30 different styles of jeans. We realized, “Hey. The customers can’t look at all of these.” They’re not going to have the same excitement we have. So that was one thing.
Andrew: So it seems like there are a couple of issues there. One is you don’t want to have too many options because people are just going to be driven crazy by indecision. And the other one is how do you make the jeans that fit you and your friend so well, how do you make them fit other people? Let’s take that second one first. How do you make a pair of jeans fit for more people? Do you just start having people come over your mom’s house and trying them on and keep adjusting?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: That’s it. Just over and over.
Emilie: You think that . . . I hesitate sometimes to talk about the simplicity of our approach because it seems crazy that other brands don’t do it, but I just saw that some of the top premium denim labels use one lady, one body type for their fit model. So that’s why they only fit one body type. That was something that we had a more democratic look at our fit models.
Andrew: Can you remember one big change that you had to make only because you had a fifth person come in where a big denim company would only have a first person come in? What’s one big change?
Emilie: It’s interesting because my mom and I kind of have similar have body types. In the body type world, we probably have what you would consider “hourglass.” My sister doesn’t. My sister is more of that petite, more straight figure. I just look around. There was one silhouette that we designed for my sister that ended up getting us in Oprah Magazine. Yeah, there are definitely . . . I feel like I’ve identified all the body types out there, but we definitely haven’t. There are definitely women that we’re not fitting that we want to fit. So that’s part of our continuing education.
Andrew: And the early marketing, was it more house shows or what are they called? Home shows? Or was it more Web?
Emilie: Well, we had a website. But because my mom came from such an old . . . she came from a traditional retail fashion background. She was always hesitant to compete with the retailers. So we held out on e-commerce until we realized that there were just a lot of customers out there that wanted to buy our jeans, but didn’t have a specialty location in their area.
Actually, the real thing that got us on e-commerce was the media opportunities we were having, like O Magazine or People StyleWatch, said, “Look. We have to be able to give our readers a place to buy your jeans. If they don’t have a specialty store in Montana, they need to be able to buy them.” So then we started putting our own URL . . .
Andrew: Your own site together. Let’s spend a little time on the home shows because I think there’s something new here that I can learn from. How do you get so many home shows put together for you?
Emilie: Well, it was all word of mouth. We based it off of some traditional kind of Tupperware-style businesses, multi-level marketing without the multi-level marketing.
Andrew: So just one level, meaning one person brings in their friends, you or someone at your company goes out and introduces everybody at the party to the jeans. They get to try them on, they get to talk. If they buy, then the homeowner that invites you in gets paid a commission.
Emilie: A discount. We just did discount in the beginning.
Andrew: Just a discount to the homeowner who had you in, or to all of them?
Emilie: Just the homeowner. So she would basically own a discount if she opened up her house. She automatically . . . if no one came, automatically we gave her a discount.
Andrew: Just for having you guys in.
Emilie: Right.
Andrew: And then did you evolve to the model that I said with the . . .
Emilie: No, we actually evolved to a more traditional model, specialty store network, ecommerce, and then having our own brick and mortar stores.
Andrew: Why did you stop the home shows?
Emilie: That’s a good question. I think that the scalability of it, finding people to replicate it, I think the retention rate is a big issue in these kinds of home show brands because it’s something a person will get excited about and they might not get as invested because it’s not going to be a meaningful part of their compensation.
Andrew: I get it. And it’s harder to keep finding more and more people.
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: And can’t you turn some of the guests into party throwers?
Emilie: Yeah, we did do that. One time, we had developed three or four people that were booking parties in different areas. It came down to . . . a lot of things that I face in this business are that one idea isn’t necessarily better than the other. It’s what fits with our lifestyle, what fits with our own time constraints and our money. So this was before you had Kickstarter or all these kinds of crowdfunding websites. We had limited cash and we had limited time in the sense that we couldn’t invest a lot of time in something. So looking back, maybe, you never know.
Andrew: I’m curious about the funding. You guys had no funding back then, right?
Emilie: No. We basically funded it with credit cards.
Andrew: You did have a lot of experience in retail. In fact, your family on both sides were entrepreneurs, you told our producer. Your grandmother bought an existing women’s clothing store back in 1979 when she was how old?
Emilie: She was 60 years old.
Andrew: Sixty years old. And she kept working at the store?
Emilie: She did. I was born in 1979. So I was born, my mom brought me to the back of the store. She jokes that she actually had to do payroll from the hospital bed once I was born.
Andrew: Did she really have to do that?
Emilie: Yeah. My grandmother brought her the payroll books, the ledger if you will. So there is definitively something within my own heritage with a merchant background. So on both sides of my family, I have grandparents that were merchants. I think it’s fascinating that my grandmother at 60 decided to start a new career. She had eight children so she’d definitely done a lot already in her life.
Andrew: How much money were you able to start up the business with?
Emilie: I want to say . . . I don’t know the exact because you just keep putting money in. But less than half a million dollars for sure.
Andrew: I see. It seems like you were just really pressed for cash at times.
Emilie: Yes. A lot of times.
Andrew: Doesn’t that suck that you worked and your mom worked for so long and you still don’t have enough money that you don’t have to sweat that? That it’s still an issue?
Emilie: Well, you have to remember too, the time we started, it was not the best time to start a business. The banking industry, nobody was giving any sort of loans.
Andrew: Around 2005.
Emilie: Yeah. So we had to be very creative. One thing we were very lucky with was that we really considered our manufacturer in Brazil a partner. They were flexible with us.
Andrew: Meaning they said to take a little longer to pay, which gave you time to collect your money from the retailers.
Emilie: Exactly.
Andrew: So we talked about the home shows. The next thing you did is you started going out to bigger shows, existing shows, right? Consumer shows of some kind?
Emilie: Actually, after the home shows, we decided, “Okay. We’ve proven this. We’ve got a good product here. We’ve got to go to a trade show.” We spent a lot of money, went to our first trade show. I can remember my mom saying, “I hope we don’t sell out.” That’s become a running joke, the fear of selling out. Well, we didn’t sell out. We didn’t sell anything.
Andrew: Not even one?
Emilie: I think we had one guy place an order, but not enough to cover the expense of the show. So we decided, “Look, we have inventory. We already bought inventory. My mom’s dining room table was filled with jeans, and we decided we had to go sell these. So somebody told me about these consumer shows, kind of like holiday markets, junior league shows where you set up a booth, almost like a craft fair type of thing. And we did it. We got into this network of these shows and we were literally on the road setting up these booths. That was kind of how we moved that first round of inventory.
Andrew: Kind of like people who are selling jars of jam that they make at home.
Emilie: Exactly.
Andrew: Specialty craft, personalized. I see. You know, though? That stuff doesn’t scale. You can’t build a major jeans company by going out on your own to those little shows. Why did you do them?
Emilie: We had to sell the inventory. We had to get our money back. That was our first goal. We also felt like this was . . . I think we had just started our website, so we actually saw it as a way to grow the brand awareness throughout the country. And it did. We still have customers who we met at home shows in Virginia that are our online customers today. In that sense, it worked.
Andrew: What about as a marketer who was working at a company that was so big, they have to have a whole book on how to manage the brand? Do you go back to then the smaller business and say to yourself, how am I ever going to get to be that big? Why am I now out there selling one pair of jeans at a time when before I was working at this big company, having these big opportunities?
Emilie: Well, I don’t think like that anymore. I don’t think that there is . . . there’s never a moment where you . . . you’re either working in a very specific job and that’s going to be your limit or you’re working in a job like mine, where you’re doing something different every week. We can’t have it all ways. Everybody has to settle in some way and compromise.
Andrew: I see. And so the place where you have to maybe settle or adjust is you have more work to do, smaller sales, but in return, you get much more creativity and no one’s creating a book telling you what to do.
Emilie: Well, it’s funny because now I’m starting to see the value of the book. No, I think that it’s all about balance. I really have enjoyed the experience of being creative and seeing my own potential and the potential of the brand. I look at things less as . . . I saw a chart the other day that said, ” A lot of entrepreneurs go into business because they want to be their own boss.” And then they had above the line was, “Their new boss is basically the vendor, the bank, the investors. So to me, now I’m focused on getting the word out about my product and worrying less about my role.
Andrew: I see now that you’re really getting out there. You hired a PR company. That’s who introduced us, right?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: You also got because of the PR company, it looks like Fashion Times had an article about how to find the perfect pair of women’s jeans, and it’s you basically telling people how to find the perfect pair.
Emilie: We’ve gotten . . . PR has been a huge part of our growth. We were on the Today Show, we’ve gotten some major . . . we were in Vogue. Vogue was a big thing for us. That happened in September. So that was always a goal as we grew. “Next year in the budget, we need to have PR,” and that sort of thing.
Andrew: So you just kept waiting to be able to afford PR.
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: What are you guys paying for PR now?
Emilie: I don’t know if I can say that exactly, but well worth it.
Andrew: Roughly. Twenty thousand a month?
Emilie: Oh, no. No, no, no.
Andrew: Ten?
Emilie: Under 10.
Andrew: Wow. Oh, all right. Getting your money’s worth right here with Mixergy. Not just that, but did the PR company get Rachel Ray to wear your jeans? Or did that just happen?
Emilie: Yes. That happened, yeah.
Andrew: How does a PR company get Rachel Ray to wear your jeans?
Emilie: I have to . . . the PR company is amazing and they’re a huge part, but good PR is only going to work if you have a good product. I think that she can get us the introductions, but the jeans have to close the deal.
Andrew: What do you do to get an introduction to Rachel Ray? I don’t want to obsess about her, but it’s a good example.
Emilie: Honestly, you just find who her stylist is, or who does wardrobing and, like with anything, you just keep trying and keep communicating and try to get a chance to be in front of them.
Andrew: I see. Wow, I would like to make Mixergy so big that people just start . . . that, first of all, I have a stylist, and second of all that people keep sending me jeans to make sure my butt looks good in them.
Emilie: It’s interesting that you’re saying that because if you look at the power of celebrity, when we started, it was all about Oprah. Now, it’s all about a stable of different influencers. You are one of those influencers. You probably could talk to a shirt company about what shirts you’re wearing. That’s all I really can see.
Andrew: Sachit. Sachit’s got to get on that. Can you imagine?
Emilie: Start tweeting about it. That’s one thing I’ve learned from our PR firm is that there is so much collaboration that can be done. As a small brand, you have to do that sort of thing.
Andrew: So going back to the thing that I said earlier about being small, selling one on one at these little shows. I get the value of connecting with your customers and frankly, when I started Mixergy, I didn’t appreciate that. I was really too hung up on the fact that all I was doing was reaching dozens of people a day, maybe 100 if was lucky. That was a depressing number to me considering that at my past company, I did half a million greeting cards sent a day. Half a million greeting cards to just a few dozen people coming to my site. That was really depressing. And what I should’ve done instead was say, “I want to get to know as many of those few dozen people as I possibly could because that’s the foundation. This is the time when I can actually talk to every single one of my customers, every single one of my listeners.” There was nothing being sold at the time. And you did that.
Emilie: That’s what makes the product so great because we had that direct connection with them. That’s part of the reason that we opened our own brick and mortar stores now: We always want to be as close to the consumer as we can. Otherwise, you lose focus. You forgot what your original mission was. Our original mission is to sell jeans one by one. That’s how we’ll grow.
Andrew: What’s this . . . where was that? You did a consumer show where you set some kind of record. What was that?
Emilie: I want to say it was between . . . I think we sold . . .
Andrew: It was 2007. Consumer show. You sold . . . do you remember how many?
Emilie: I think we sold 100 pairs of jeans in one weekend, between 90 and 100 pairs. That was amazing because that was right after we had just had complete denial from all the retailers at the trade show. We were able to go to a retailer in that community and say, “Look. We just sold 100 pairs in your backyard. You need to have these in stock in your store.
Andrew: I see. And they said yes, and that did it. What did you do to get that many pairs of jeans sold? And I know it’s the product that really sells it, but people don’t know about the product unless you do something to get them to try it on, to get them to stop by, to get them to consider it. What did you do? What was your process?
Emilie: We had a sign that said, “The search for perfect jeans is over.” We had two dressing rooms. It was very simply merchandised and everyone that walked by would say, “Really? Are you sure? What makes these perfect?” So that message just started the conversation. We call it the try and buy. We have a very good track record. If we can get someone to try them on, they’re usually going to buy them or eventually buy them.
Andrew: Did you do anything to close sales afterward? Do you take people’s email addresses? Build a list? You did.
Emilie: Yes, we did. And actually, at that time, that first season of those shows, we actually ran out of some inventory so we actually had to start just shipping. So a lot of them in the ends were like a demoing. We had a demo go on there and then we would drop ship them.
Andrew: Our producer asked you about the milestones in your business, and one of the milestones you listed was “getting a professional photo shoot.” Why was that such a big milestone for you? That you even remember the year that you first did it, 2008?
Emilie: Yeah. It should’ve come a lot sooner. I think that was . . . I’m sure in media there are “must dos.” IN fashion, you need good photography. That is the most important thing. For me, doing everything DIY, it’s something that . . . I always knew I shouldn’t be doing DIY, but it would’ve been a really large expense right off the bat.
Andrew: How much did you spend back then in 2008?
Emilie: I’m not sure what our first . . . it was probably only a couple of thousand dollars. But that was a lot of money.
Andrew: I’m sorry.
Emilie: But that was a lot of money.
Andrew: Yeah, I get it. When you’re really holding on to everything trying to make the business work, I get that that’s a lot.
Emilie: We’ve had photo shoots that don’t . . . it’s not a given that your photo shoot is going to turn out well either.
Andrew: Oh, I see. You’re saying that you could pay a couple of thousand bucks, get the photographer, they do a good job, but still it’s not right. Then you lose the money.
Emilie: Fashion photography is very tricky. A lot of things have to line up.
Andrew: Like what?
Emilie: The model, the relationship between the model and the photographer. There has to be a trust there. The location. The location could end up being . . . we weren’t fashion photographers, for one. We learned so much about presenting our product digitally like that and understanding what can be a distraction and that sort of thing. So it’s an art, for sure.
Andrew: And then also the same year, you got into Vogue, you got into O, Oprah’s magazine. You got into People StyleWatch. Is that when you started hiring a PR agency?
Emilie: We actually . . . no. We had hired the PR firm. That’s how we got into People StyleWatch.
Andrew: So it was really early on. We’re talking about three years into the business, you said, “Let’s start investing in marketing.” That means better photos. That means getting a PR agency, etc.
Emilie: Right.
Andrew: I see. When did you break even?
Emilie: I’m not sure of the exact date. I think . . . I’m not sure of the exact date.
Andrew: Roughly. Are we talking about five years into the business?
Emilie: Yeah, I would say about five years into the business.
Andrew: Five years into the business.
Emilie: At least.
Andrew: Really? That’s a long time.
Emilie: There are so many ways of looking at the break even. You know how financial accounting can go. We didn’t pay ourselves for a long time. That was probably the bigger milestone was when we started actually paying ourselves.
Andrew: When did you start paying yourselves?
Emilie: I want to say it was . . . and I’m horrible with dates. I’m not trying to be vague. I’m just terrible with dates, but I want to say it was three years into the business.
Andrew: Three years. So what did you do for the first three years, considering that you said when you had a job, you were living paycheck-to-paycheck? How did you live for the three years?
Emilie: Well, I got out of Washington DC.
Andrew: That’s an expensive city to live in I lived there before living here in San Francisco. Really expensive.
Emilie: Yes, and there is no margin, no room for error there. There is a lot of . . . we moved back down to South Carolina where I’m from because we realized there’s just a lot more cushion in our lifestyle here. But I was fortunate that my husband supported me, basically.
Andrew: I see. Did your mom get . . . she didn’t get a paycheck either. Her husband went out and supported her also.
Emilie: Right.
Andrew: Wow. And now it’s the two of you building this business together. There are all kinds of family dynamics involved with any relationship like yours, but throw in a business and sometimes there could be fireworks and you told our producer that there were issues.
Emilie: I was really talking a lot with the producers.
Andrew: Good. That’s why we do a pre-interview off-camera so we get you comfortable so you tell us this stuff. What was going on?
Emilie: Because we had such tight budgets and such little funding and little capital, every mistake we felt so hard, we felt it was an intimate mistake. So what happens when you make a mistake is you look to figure out who is to blame for this. So I think that anxiety and that tightrope way we were living just created this environment where a lot of times we would blame each other for things. I think that happened, a lot of conflict, and I think once we realized that we’re going to make mistakes, one of us is going to make a mistake, to support the other one when that mistake was made was a better route to take.
Andrew: There’s got to be one thing that you blamed your mom for and you never said, “Mom, I was just looking for an outlet,” but you probably regret it now. It’s in your head from time to time.
Emilie: Yeah. I think that was product design products. I don’t think I appreciated how amazing my mom has done with product design and production. It’s one thing to design something, but then to have it come to our warehouse and it be right? That’s a huge process and there’s so much that goes in on the back. So I think . . . and I still struggle with this. We call it box fever. We open up boxes and we’re like, “Oh god, I hope this is right.” But at the end of the day, whatever is in that box, we’re going to have to sell it. So you’ve got to love it. I think if I could go back and be a little more lenient on that, I would.
Andrew: I see. So there were times that you had box fever and you blamed your mom because it’s her department and in reality, you should’ve been a little more understanding that these things just happen.
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: Do you want to apologize to her right now? She’ll be listening. I will apologize. Kathy, I am so sorry that your daughter was short-tempered with you.
Emilie: Sorry, mom. I did it as recent as last week.
Andrew: Oh, really? You blamed her when you guys had box fever?
Emilie: Well, we used to make a joke that any little flaw that comes in . . . because apparel is finicky. We’re not this mass-produced thing where it’s all being done by lasers. There are human hands. So we would make a joke like, “What lady . . . ” we had this amazing factory with amazing people and we’d be like, “What lady is making these mistakes?” There’s one lady. So we blame that lady. But it’s just part of it.
Andrew: My dad used to be in apparel and he used to make women’s clothing, lots of jeans too. And it really would be just stacks of denim and other material. He wouldn’t do denim. He said it was too competitive. So stacks of fabric and then a guy with this machine that would just . . . like a hand-held saw of some kind, would just cut into the denim into the pattern that you need, right?
Emilie: Mm-hmm. That’s how it is.
Andrew: It’s on him. And then that gets tied up and sent out to someone else who sews them all together and then you end up with your pair of jeans.
Emilie: Yeah. There’s a lot of . . . like I said, in our factory, there are 30 people. All 30 of those people need to do it right for the end product.
Andrew: Even as a kid, I just couldn’t believe it. I’d go and see this whole process and say, “There’s not some machine that you throw the fabric into and on the other side comes another pair of jeans?” There isn’t.
Emilie: Yeah. Unless you’re talking about seamless fabrics, when you’re talking about seams, there’s still a lot of work that has to be done by hand So it makes you appreciate and it makes you really question how they’re selling jeans for $20.
Andrew: Actually, I know how they’re doing it. They’re paying people 2 cents.
Emilie: Right.
Andrew: Right. How much do you guys charge for your jeans?
Emilie: One hundred and sixty-eight dollars is our best-selling jean.
Andrew: We talked about your mom. Your dad had a bunch of input into the business. Well, he had a lot of opinions, you told our producer. But you said that you’re learning to take some of his opinions to heart. One of them is to write it down. Why is writing it down one of the things that you wanted to isolate here?
Emilie: It is. It really is this simple idea that’s become so important. Now, as a manager, I ask everyone to do it because it forces you . . . I use the example of if you get really angry or heated, you can call someone and say something you regret. But usually, if you take the time to sit down and compose something, you’re going to think more about it. I think that that . . . the write it down is also about making a plan, taking the time, not rushing into things. It creates . . . it slows you down because you can get very amped up.
Andrew: He means to write it down when you have to communicate something to someone as opposed to just telling it to them.
Emilie: And if you have an idea. If you want to do some sort of new marketing campaign, you need to write up a presentation about it. You need to do a PowerPoint; you need to do an Excel spreadsheet. You have to . . . it can’t all be decided in meetings and off of your gut feeling. You have to do the work to prove it to yourself.
Andrew: I see. So writing down is a form of communication. Writing down is also a sort of persuasion. I thought you had something else in mind. I recently heard one of Richard Branson’s books where he had this whole chapter on writing things down. And I said, “This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I don’t need to be taught to write things down. Where are the bigger ideas here?” And it was kind of a mish-mosh of ideas, but this one thing that made me want to stop listening to the audio book actually ended up making a lot of sense.
He is known for having tons of notebooks because whenever he’ll talk to someone, he’ll take notes on the conversation. Whenever he has an idea, he’ll take notes on it and then he’ll act on those notes. But he says just writing it down forces you to be more aware of what people are saying, more aware of the ideas around you. So as a result, I started doing that and it really does help. If I have a phone call with someone, I’ll open up either an EverNote doc, or I’ll open up now my address book and I’ll just start writing down the things they say.
Emilie: I think that’s definitely in the same vein of what my dad says, keeping records. If someone says, “Let’s do a business together. Send me some jeans and I’ll sell all of these jeans.” Say, “Write it down. Propose it to me. Officially write it down.” So I think that for sure. It seems like a simple idea, but as a young entrepreneur, I just like to leap into things and I think I should’ve taken more time.
Andrew: Yeah. And I just like to be more in the moment, which means to talk it through in the moment, just listening in the moment. But I find that writing it down does bring me into the moment even more. It makes me really have to pay attention and process what you’ve said.
Emilie: My co-worker was just telling me actually that they’ve proven that doodling during a meeting can actually open your mind to a new idea or there is something to the way the brain and the hand work together.
Andrew: Doodling.
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: I don’t want people doodling in my meetings, though. I’d like them to take notes on me. You ever see Kim Il-Sung or any of the North Korean leaders? They always have five guys behind them taking notes. Not one of them is doodling.
Emilie: But I think that the whole point is you have to . . . everyone has to worry about themself. Someone taking notes for you might not be as helpful as you think if you were just taking the notes yourself.
Andrew: No, it’s definitely an ego thing. Frankly, who cares if someone is doodling? But I would like to think they’re just taking notes on my idea because they’re just so important. Hey, we talked about problems with opening up boxes and seeing that the result wasn’t what you guys expected and there’s some lady in Brazil screwing things up.
Emilie: There really is not.
Andrew: Sorry?
Emilie: The majority of our people are doing an awesome job.
Andrew: What about the other side where you get an order and you have all this stuff made for them and they don’t want it anymore? They can’t sell it or something? In fact, you actually had an issue where someone in New York ordered size 12, 14, and 16. Those are pretty big sizes, right?
Emilie: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And what happened to them?
Emilie: I think that we had a retailer that was one of our best retailers and we’re still great friends with her and she focused on that 10 and over sizes. So our numbers, our sales figures, were based on those orders, and then the next year she closed her business. We produce based on last year’s numbers. Then we had this influx of 10, 12, 14. But it just represents the one thing that happens in a small business is that the numbers are small. So you need to look at the numbers, but you also need to go beyond them and say, “Okay. Well, what are the outliers here? Why are we selling so many of this? Oh, it’s because of that retailer. Well, what happens if she wasn’t going to be around next year?” So those are the things that as we’ve grown and as we’ve hired more people, my mom and I have more time to do more deep analysis. Because the numbers do lie in some ways.
Andrew: What are . . . now you just said numbers lie and I’m about to ask you the most important number question I can. What’s the revenue?
Emilie: Well, we can’t share that right now.
Andrew: Give me a rough estimate. Are we talking about over $5 million in sales each year?
Emilie: I just really can’t talk about it.
Andrew: You can’t even say that? I know for sure it’s over a million, right?
Emilie: Yes.
Andrew: But that’s an easy number to hit when you’re talking about selling jeans like that.
Emilie: Yeah. We’re just in a really competitive environment. We have a plan, and we’re going to do it, and we want as many as women as are out there that can find out about us to find out about us.
Andrew: How long did it take you to hit a million dollars in sales?
Emilie: I’m just really not good with the numbers.
Andrew: Really? Okay. All right. I think, then, that’s everything. I’m looking at your site right now. This is going to be a tough one to send people to, to check it out.
Emilie: Are most of your listeners men?
Andrew: They might be. Yeah, they are. It’s like 60-40. I used to think it was more like 90-10, but I looked at the numbers and it was 60-40. Then I started looking at customer service emails and I realized there are a lot more women that will email us privately than will post comments on the site. That’s where I understood that what my analytic offer was saying, 60-40 was right.
Emilie: One of the things that we have become known for is our box program. It’s an at-home try-on program where we send a woman a box of jeans, no risk. They just have to give us their credit card on file. If nothing works, then they can just return all of it. But a lot of men end up buying that service . . .
Andrew: For them women in their lives. And you guys do free shipping, it looks like. Free returns.
Emilie: Free shipping, free returns. We have . . . I think it’s like 85% of the people that have done the box program in the past month have converted and bought jeans.
Andrew: That’s a really good program. So the website is beijaflor.com but . . .
Emilie: Beijaflorjeans.com.
Andrew: But you couldn’t get Beija Flor? Someone else has that? Good lord.
Emilie: I thought [Inaudible 00:52:53]. ILoveTheseJeans.com.
Andrew: And that’s what I was going to say, ILoveTheseJeans.com, that’s what you guys are using on your Yelp profile for the store. I love these jeans. Let me see who has BeijaFlor. Can we buy that from them right now? Let’s find out. They’re not even using it and they’re linking it to some kind of emoticon junkie website.
Emilie: I know.
Andrew: Have you talked to these guys at Beija Flor?
Emilie: I’ve sent emails. I had a phase of my entrepreneurial career where I just bought up domains. So I’ve emailed them.
Andrew: And they never responded?
Emilie: No one has ever responded.
Andrew: So strange. I’m going to look them up right now. Let me see who they are. You know, actually, Con Academy used to be ConAcademy.org, and then someone in the Mixergy audience said, “No, that’s no good. I’m going to get you ConAcademy.com. And he got it for them.
Emilie: That’s awesome.
Andrew: Yeah. Let me see, so. Beijaflor.com is owned by someone in England.
Emilie: Yeah, England. I remember that.
Andrew: I see his phone number and that’s it. Nothing going on there. Weird. All right, but ILoveTheseJeans.com is all yours. That’s a really good domain name, too. Emilie, it’s good to have you on here.
Emilie: Thank you very much. And I look forward to listening to more businesses. I always want to hear what other people think and things to avoid, things to try. So thanks for what you do for entrepreneurs.
Andrew: You bet. Thank you for being on here. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Keep listening to my interviews. If you like this one or if you don’t like this one, you should know that we have tons of others. You just have to go to either Mixergy.com or frankly, just subscribe to the podcast. When you do, you get every single one of them automatically delivered to you, but you know that. So all I’m going to say is thank you, Emilie. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye, everyone.
