Phillip Lim | Photo: But Sou Lai

NEW YORK, United States — “I always believed in making clothes with affordable prices,” said Phillip Lim, one of the many young designers to have emerged in New York over the past few years. But unlike his peers, when Lim launched his label back in the autumn of 2005, he made a conscious decision not to compete in the high-end designer category. Instead, Lim’s vision was to offer his customers beautifully made, well-designed clothing at a contemporary price point.

Lim’s fashion journey began with Development, a Los Angeles-based line he started with partners in 2000. But four years later, after relationships turned thorny, Lim walked away from the label. Soon after, a friend he had met in Paris convinced Lim to come to New York, just to ‘hang out’ for the week. That friend was Wen Zhou, who would soon become chief executive of Lim’s new brand and his new business partner in an entrepreneurial venture that is on track to turn over more than $60 million this year — not bad for seven years of hard work.

When the two connected in New York, Zhou had already been courting Lim for some time and had even offered to buy out his partners at Development, a deal that fell through. But Zhou was relentless, she never gave up. Lim arrived in New York on a Thursday. “By Saturday night, she said to me, ‘I have a plan; let’s start a company,’” said Lim. “I couldn’t say no, because she wouldn’t let me,” he continued, smiling. “She was a bulldog.”

Lim and Zhou are a formidable duo; a potent mix of creative talent and business acumen. “I am in charge of anything creative and she operates,” said Lim about their partnership. “I have to give her something to operate with and she gives me resources to create with.” While this kind of partnership isn’t unique in fashion — Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and Marc Jacobs and Robert Duffy, are amongst the most well-known examples — Lim maintains that theirs is different. “It’s just two kids who had a lot of love for clothes.”

But Lim and Zhou launched their business with a simple yet powerful idea: to offer irresistibly cool clothing that was also accessible and practical. “This was intentional from the beginning,” said Lim. “It wasn’t because we lived our lives in an ivory tower that we wanted to create clothes for people down there — we are those people!” he explained. “It was more like: I want an amazing trench, but at the same time, I’m on a budget. I’m a young professional and I have bills.”

Although many young designers may contemplate creating more affordable clothing, most lack the necessary connections with manufacturers — such as those in China, where Lim manufacturers his goods — that are able to produce a high quality product at low cost. “How do you keep the type of margins that make everyone happy and deliver goods that look impeccable with a certain type of quality?” Lim asked, rhetorically. “We were lucky because Wen had those relationships with the factories.”

But alongside partner, price point and production, there is a critical fourth “P” that has made the 3.1 Phillip Lim business successful: positioning. Indeed, by creating directional pieces alongside more practical clothes and showing his collections amongst luxury-level brands at New York Fashion Week, the designer has been able to cultivate a brand image that makes his fans feel like they are getting high-end fashion, only at a more affordable price. “You need the foundation, which are the basics, to work with the eccentricities,” said Lim. “So in every collection, there’s always the classic pieces [and] a sense of madness.”

The approach has proven highly successful. “It’s incredible, right away we were an international company and the first season we were in 20 countries,” said Lim. 3.1 Phillip Lim has also expanded from its beginnings in womenswear into menswear, childrenswear, swimwear, accessories and lingerie.

Although Lim has a robust wholesale business and has shop-in-shops in Hong Kong and Japan, he is a strong believer in opening his own retail stores. 3.1 Phillip Lim now operates directly-owned stores in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore. The brand has yet to launch e-commerce, but Lim anticipates that over time, more and more of the company’s revenues will come from direct to consumer channels, citing better control over brand experience and more favourable margins.

“As a young company, when you are working with wholesalers, a lot of times you can be victimised,” he said. “[Direct to consumer retail] is a way we ensure that the family we have built can move on tomorrow,” he continued, using an endearing term for his employees.

Asked if he has any advice for would-be fashion entrepreneurs, Lim offers a few words of caution. “I jumped into it and thank god it worked for me,” he said. “But if you have something to say, make sure you say it at the right time. Anna Wintour said to me: ‘Phillip, it’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.’”

In today’s shaky economy, where fashion consumers are seeking value like never before, it couldn’t be a better moment for a brand that’s carefully and sagely positioned at the top end of the contemporary market. Indeed, timing is everything.

Robert Cordero is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion.

The post First Person | Phillip Lim’s Four P’s: Partner, Price Point, Production and Positioning appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

Anya Hindmarch | Source: Anya Hindmarch

LONDON, United Kingdom — “I started my business when I was 18,” said luxury handbag designer Anya Hindmarch. On her gap year in Florence, Italy, she saw a bag that was all the rage among the cool Italian girls and she bought it. “I took it to London and everyone loved it,” she recalls.

The reaction, it seems, helped her identify a business opportunity. “I found a factory, had a similar bag made and took it back to the UK.” Her first break came when she persuaded Harpers & Queen to offer the bags to their readers, resulting in 500 orders. These initial sales sparked demand among the cult London stores of the time, and soon, orders came in from big New York stores too, including Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel.

Although success came early for Hindmarch she admits that it was a difficult time, replete with growing pains. “You don’t have the volume for the factories to give you much time. And the designs have to be the most special to win the customers over. Basically, you have to sweet talk and sell to the suppliers as much as to the customers,” recalls Hindmarch. “You have to be determined, beyond sense almost, to get through that phase.”

Hindmarch moved some of her production to the UK, to a facility she still uses today. “I needed to control it so I could really make sure that the products were really special,” she explains. “I can drive there everyday and make sure that we really get it right.” And once production was in place, the brand enjoyed a steady pace of growth. “The business grew with wholesale,” she recalls.

“But it was the first store [opened in 1993 on Walton Street in London] that was a big stepping stone for us. Suddenly, you get to speak with your customers directly. You learn a lot of what you need to do design wise if you listen to the customer,” she says. “The business grew very fast from that point on.”

In 1995, Hindmarch was approached by a Hong Kong-based franchise partner, which gave the brand its first presence outside the UK. And in the years that followed, Anya Hindmarch began opening stores all over the world, in New York, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

In 2007, in the midst of a rapid expansion, the designer took on a private equity investment from Kelso Place Asset Management, the London-based firm who also invested in Smythson. “I wanted someone who understood what we were trying to do… I felt that chemistry was incredibly important because you want to sit down and enjoy being with them while your ambitions are aligned, otherwise it becomes too difficult,” says Hindmarch. “Equally, I wanted to get on people who wanted to push us forward and not micro-manage their investment.”

But it was a product called “I’m NOT a plastic bag,” an eco tote bag create in partnership with not-for-profit We Are What We Do which aimed to reduce the use of plastic bags, that made Anya Hindmarch a global sensation. In London, the canvas bag, retailing for only £5 and available at Sainsbury’s grocery stores, sold out within a matter of hours and quickly fetched over £250 on eBay. In the US the eco tote became the official goodie bag at the 2007 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, securing its must-have status. “I didn’t do it as a business success thing. I did it because I cared,” says Hindmarch. “Of course, we planned it carefully. I planned for it to be a success, but you never know.”

Indeed, the bag also generated an unexpected backlash. “What [the media] were saying was that it’s made in China,” explains Hindmarch. “But there was never any pretense about that… They said that it was made in dodgy factories, but they were made in American-audited factories that made the most incredible brands. You just have to explain to people and get the correct message out there,” she says.

Last month, the brand, which posted just over ₤20 million of revenue in 2010, hired James MacArthur, former CEO of Harrods and Balenciaga, to take the reins — a hugely important milestone for the growing company. MacArthur will help define and execute the brand’s aggressive expansion strategy, which includes opening 11 new stores this year. He also has his sights on emerging markets, e-commerce, and a soon-to-launch Anya Hindmarch Bespoke web experience.

“The big change for me is that I’m going back to the creative side,” said Hindmarch. “I really wanted to get someone on board who understand luxury businesses, what were about, and who I really like, and has that aggressive energy in running the company.”

When asked how she’s managing the speed and scale of her company’s growth, Hindmarch, who is now 42 and has five children, says: “I love it. I get bored very easily. I enjoy it and I will get very restless if I don’t have 100 things on the go.” Clearly, having this kind of drive is one of the secrets to her tremendous success.

Robert Cordero is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion.

The post First Person | Anya Hindmarch Says You Have To Sweet Talk, and Sell appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

Yigal Azrouël | Photo: Claiborne Swanson Frank

NEW YORK, United States — “For me it’s all about longevity,” says designer Yigal Azrouël. “You see a lot of brands out there becoming stars over night. And then they disappear. I am building it slowly, slowly. It’s much deeper. It’s much stronger.”

Growing up in Israel, where he would later work occasionally as a stylist, the young Azrouël believed his prospects of becoming a fashion designer nigh on impossible. But when he came to New York to visit his sister he was immediately seduced by the romance of fashion. “I was dreaming about it,” he says. “I wanted to be part of it all, this glamorous world. I had a fantasy of it.”

And it is with the determination of a fantasist who doesn’t care to awake from his dream that Azrouël has built his company on firm footing, reinforcing it every step of the way.

Twelve years ago, a 26 year old immigrant with no formal training who was deconstructing vintage pieces for himself and for his friends, Azrouël put together his first line of ten pieces, only jerseys. “My first client was Barneys New York,” he says with the élan of one who hit his stride early in life. “I showed it to them and they really liked it.” But the creative wunderkind didn’t exactly have a business model in place. “I kind of started doing it without thinking too much,” he says, and then reflects. “My father was doing a bit of business in Israel so I guess I picked up something from him and then figured out how to do it myself. I think I was very lucky because I met people who really helped me and could direct me.”

The main person of whom he speaks is Donata Minelli, the CEO of his company, formerly of Ittierre where she worked on both the Dolce & Gabbana and D&G brands. After meeting Azrouël through a colleague, Minelli became intrigued by his work and the opportunity she saw for his business. They began working together almost immediately and this week celebrate 12 years of partnership.

Says Minelli, “It was a very different landscape then. There wasn’t really a platform for emerging designers. There wasn’t a space for it in the market.” Minelli says she instructed Azrouël to open a showroom and corporate offices, “where people can see the world of Yigal.” For Minelli the key was expanding on the unique voice she’d discovered in Azrouël, and finding a greater stage for him. “He started with jerseys,” she says. “So the first thing is, how do we start to grow this collection into more than that? And we had really great campaigns—strategic partnerships with Neiman Marcus and Saks from the inception.”

Azrouël’s first runway collection debuted at the Fall/Winter 2000 fashion week in New York. In 2003, he opened his first retail store in the city’s Meatpacking district. A menswear line followed in Fall 2009, and Cut25, an entry level women’s wear line, launched this Fall along with new e-commerce functionality on his website.

Why launch the entry level line now? “We looked at the market,” he says, “and I don’t think it exists in the market, what I do—a more feminine, a bit more sexy top or sportswear.” Minelli adds, “We’re looking to build a stronger vertical retail environment. We believe in the support of major retail stores and boutiques we do business with, but creating our own retail space in a much bigger landscape than exists now is our main goal. With Cut25 we are thinking everything from major urban areas to high end shopping malls. To give an example, for a company like Tory Burch, the wholesale and own company retail are both really important. Cut25 is a different aesthetic than that but we believe there is a customer out there craving Yigal’s aesthetic and that’s not really being satisfied at the [signature line] price point.” The main line too will likely find another retail opening in Midtown in the next year, she says.

Azrouël, who has collaborated with several other brands including Manolo Blahnik and, most recently, K-Swiss, is strategic in his partnerships. “We talk about who to collaborate with,” he says. “What’s the right thing to do for the longevity of the brand?” He is very proud of the showrooms and press representatives he works with around the world, acknowledging that the quality of the people in his network is as vital as the materials in his much-coveted architecturally draped dresses.

“All of these things have an impact in the big picture,” he says. “How we do things, meeting the right people. My dream is to be the next big fashion house in the world. When I think about Ralph Lauren, I can’t see anybody else out there in the world making it. For me, this is my goal.”

Chris Wallace is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion.

The post First Person | Yigal Azrouël Advises, Build Slowly and Be Strategic appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

Victoria Bartlett | Source: VPL

NEW YORK, United States — “It was almost like an experiment,” says Victoria Bartlett, of starting her much-loved underwear-as-outerwear line VPL in 2003. “I felt like a scientist going in and I really didn’t know how it was going to go.” Seven years on, with a CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund nomination (2007) under her belt and a recently opened retail presence in New York’s SoHo, we can fairly say that the experiment has been a success.

The road that got her there is paved in equal parts with Bartlett’s adventurousness and the shrewd discipline that has proved a boon for her line. Fresh from the London College of Fashion, in the late ‘80s the British-born Bartlett launched a line called BC, which, as she says, “failed because I was too green and too young.” So the young designer went in search of other avenues to pursue her love of fashion. “I took a sabbatical and decided to take a venture into styling,” she says, “which wasn’t as prevalent as it is now.”

She still speaks passionately about the tools she learned working as a stylist, and the way they inform her life and work now. “You learn how to create clothes,” she says. “A lot of designers (I know from consulting for them for years) get very tunnel-visioned — they start with a skirt or they start items and they don’t know how it all goes together.”

Throughout the ’90s, Bartlett was a star stylist, in fact, shaping fashion editorials for some of the most cutting-edge magazines in the business, before being tapped as the fashion editor for Allure, and then, famously, as the fashion director at Interview.

But having editorial connections wasn’t just peaches and cream when she launched her own line. “It’s a double-edged sword,” she says. “In some ways it’s great because you know all those people and it is exciting and you get a lot of press. On the other hand, not everyone likes it when you change over — they think, alright, you’ve made the jump, now prove it.”

Indeed, having dressed Madonna made no difference when it came to writing a business plan. Bartlett is coolly cavalier about having had little idea about the brass tacks of business. “I think in life, often you are not prepared and the best way is to just amble in to things. I hate to say it, but sometimes it works. And I kind of did amble into this.”

But she didn’t come in totally unarmed. She was full of passion and decisiveness, driven by a clear vision. “I didn’t start with a full collection, I started with this concept,” she explains. “I was sort of obsessed with creating this new arena between lingerie and sportswear, which hadn’t been bridged. I love gym, I love the body and anatomy, the whole geography of it. I’m also in love with the whole architecture of it, looking at old vintage stuff, and I wanted the idea that you were accessorising, like putting on jewellery or a necklace, that you don’t feel it is this naughty sort of under-secret like lingerie for the bedroom. I wanted to take it almost into liberation of women, you know, burn your bra. And we did the breaker tank, which was almost my answer to burning your bra, that you could wear this bra tank on its own or under things and you weren’t exposing yourself. So it was really about creating this new arena that was really exciting for me.” Ergo VPL — Visible Panty Line.

Bartlett speaks of the celebration of the human form with the fervour of a visionary and about Paul Poiret, her fashion idol, with the passion of an undergraduate. Poiret called himself the “King of Fashion,” but we don’t really get a sense of how he ran his company. “I think that’s true,” says Bartlett. “I actually think that’s why the world is divided — right brain, left brain — and I think that’s why creatives are creatives. I think back in the day, way back, it didn’t matter because people revered the artist and the business would just sort of organically happen. In the last ten years though, the business of fashion has changed. It’s really became an industry and that was the death of a lot of creatives. At some point you have to manage and it requires a lot of strategizing.”

While recognizing this, Bartlett happened on a bit of wonderful synchronicity that would ultimately put VPL on it’s present, sure track. While consulting for Theory, Bartlett met Kikka Hanazawa who was doing business strategy for the company. “She’d actually been following my collection and we met and got on really well and we started talking about things and she started getting involved in my collection. We were talking about projects, but she really wanted to be involved fully in creating something.” And so a creative-business partnership was born.

“I’ve learned a lot through Kikka,” says Bartlett. “It’s definitely important to have someone who understands the building blocks of business.” The two seem to really jive together, sharing the same ethos for the growth and disposition of the business. They both have clear ambitions for online retail and a flowering of VPL stores, but also maintain a rigorous sobriety when expanding. “You know what I think’s been great,” Bartlett explains, “we’ve never rushed anything. I think one of the important things is never to take a giant leap, but to take small steps at a time and be cautious in terms of growth.”

Chris Wallace is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion.

The post First Person | Victoria Bartlett Says Take Small Steps, Not Giant Leaps appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

NEW YORK, United States — “I want to own this whole thing,” Philip Crangi says of his popular jewellery brand. “I’d rather own 100 percent of something small that 10 percent of something huge.” The 2008 CFDA Swarovski Award for Accessories winner — whose jewellery is both intensely popular with editors and intensely personal to those who wear it — takes as much pride in forging his business as he does each golden amulet. “It’s more than a job,” he says. “It’s my baby. I want control over it. I believe in control.”

Growing up in Boca Raton, Florida, Crangi developed a fascination with the talismanic nature of jewellery, charms and trinkets. “I wanted to find the buried treasure in flea markets or in the attic,” he says. “I never did, so I have to make it myself.”

At the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied gold- and silversmithing, he hit his groove. “I had this kind of personal success with my senior thesis,” he says, “which was kind of groundbreaking for me personally … [but] when I came down to New York all high from the experience I remember meeting with prominent stylists and they all said, ‘it’s so interesting, but we don’t really use jewellery much in photo shoots,’ which was staggering to me. That was 1993 and I can’t imagine editorial now that isn’t almost totally based on accessories. The jewellery market wasn’t what it is today.”

But rather than force the issue in an industry that wasn’t ready for him, Crangi put his unique know-how to work for him in other arenas, doing restoration work, building custom lighting for interior designers, designing homewards and collaborating with Japanese artist Mariko Mori. “Basically I got further and further away from jewellery in the 90s. But I didn’t want to compromise. I wanted to do it my way.”

In 1998, Crangi’s sister Courtney moved to New York and began running his business. In 2000, Crangi’s long-time friend the clothing designer Steven Alan and Aurora Lopez opened Borealis and invited Crangi to make a line of jewellery to sell in the Nolita shop. “Within months,” Crangi says, “it was the top selling thing in the store. We had the perfect thing at the perfect time — the perfect opportunity. And we decided a couple months later that we would just go for it, and we just dropped everything and ran whole-hog into jewellery.”

In 2001, Crangi properly launched Philip Crangi fine jewellery and discovered a truth about the business of fashion. “Having a great debut collection is not nearly as hard as having a great sophomore collection,” he says. “It’s one thing to get in the door and get everyone’s attention, but then everyone’s like, ‘OK, what’s next?’”

Then, Crangi noticed another hard reality: a wave of copy cat pieces were popping up in stores and, with a lower price point, were well outselling his hand-forged gold and silver pieces. He responded with an entry level label of his own, Giles & Brother, which employed less precious alloys to make costume pieces in the same mold as the signature line.

“It was immediately a huge success,” Crangi says. “We were thinking we would be like a version of Tiffany. There is so much missing in the world. There is so much I have to make! Giles is such a great opportunity for it. I’ve always kept the Philip Crangi brand very special. I have Giles so that I get to do what I want to do with Philip Crangi, or not do anything until I feel it.”

His sister Courtney has an instinctive feel for business that Crangi trusts. “She is able to make the most radical decisions, from the heart, and every time she does it has been amazing for us,” Crangi says. “Like the decision to leave Barneys for Bergdorf’s. That was kind of a radical move and she just refused to be bullied. She’s a real brinksman.”

The siblings complement each other and make important decisions as a team, whether on internet sales or opening a shop in New York’s Meatpacking District. Joking about the “hokie, mystic” sound to his approach, he says, “We wanted to open a store but the opportunity never showed itself, until one day it did. And I really believe in that, if things are meant to be they’ll be. There is a balance between that and being assertive.”

Ten years on Crangi has rigorously maintained the integrity of his brand and the quality of the product. He continues to enjoy collaborating with other designers — including Phillip Lim, Vera Wang and, most recently, Jason Wu. “There’s a lot to learn from collaborations depending on how you do them,” he says. “Collaborations can be done for a lot of reasons — creatively they are amazing of course, they can be PR driven, they can be for financial gain obviously. For me, it is really interesting to go into these other companies to see people who know what they are doing run a business…comparing and contrasting. There is always something to learn.”

Explaining the secret to his growing success, he says, “We set a very, very high bar… we’ve been really lucky. Courtney and I have no business background at all, but we have good instincts, I’ve realized, over time. Especially with knowing what not to do. That’s what I discovered after winning the fashion fund and winning the Swarovski award — you are in a shark tank, and there are tons of people swimming around you trying to get a piece of you — and you look at it, and think, what am I going to get out of it. I was happy the success came a little bit later for me, so I had a little bit more experience under my belt about being taken advantage of.”

Looking forward, Crangi says, “I want to make things people want because they want it, not because they are told they want it. That’s what I want to be doing when I am 75.”

Chris Wallace is an editor and writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Dossier Journal, i-D, Interview, and T.

The post First Person | Philip Crangi says jewellery design was his perfect business opportunity appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

Viktor and Rolf | Photo: Philip Riches

NEW YORK, United States — “We had big ambitions,” says Viktor Horsting on creating fashion house Viktor & Rolf with Rolf Snoeren. “From the very beginning we wanted to start very high,” he says, indicating the absolute apogee of couture elegance: “Start at the top, and everything else would fall into place after that. It was a very emotional ambition, not just in terms of the size of the business or wanting to be like a certain designer. It was more about fulfilling creative ambitions and working at the highest level possible.”

In 1993, the duo, known for their immaculate constructions and the pop-sensationalism of their shows, gave the world a glimpse of their aims with an underground presentation of their first collection in Paris, which won them the venerated Grand Prix de la Ville de Hyères. Seventeen years and nearly 50 collections later, Viktor & Rolf’s dramatic vision has itself become a sensation — the awards continue to roll in and in 2008, around the time both of the designers were celebrating their fortieth birthdays, their work was the subject of a retrospective at London’s esteemed Barbican Gallery.

Today, as they celebrate the five year anniversary of their wildly successful fragrance Flowerbomb with a rare trip to New York at the start of fashion week, the elegant gentlemen from the Netherlands say they finally have all the pieces in place to realize their vaulting ambition.

Flowerbomb is, in fact, an important and instructive window into the successes of the brand, says Snoeren, breakfasting in a West Village garden home bedecked with sherbet coloured flowers. “It proves that you can be creative and do well commercially,” he says. “Flowerbomb proves that you can turn anything into something beautiful. It is like a modern day weapon.”

The duo have previously stated their aim of reclaiming terrain for the republic of beauty. “Transformation,” Horsting adds, “is a very important point in our work.” With that in mind, the pair, who label themselves as “reflective” and “maybe analyzing too much,” say they “set out to work with a combination of perseverance, stubbornness and naiveté and just went on and on,” according to Horsting. “There wasn’t a blueprint, but I think we felt what was necessary, we felt the priorities. We go by gut feeling.”

“I think we were very trusting that if we did that,” Snoeren agrees, “and it works, the rest will come.” And come it has. In 2000 the house expanded to ready-to-wear, and in 2003 launch menswear line Monsieur. In 2006, Viktor & Rolf designed a special collection for the Swedish megastore H&M, broadening their appeal and reach. Subsequent collaborations have included work for L’Oreal, Dutch department store De Bijenkorf, luggage maker Samsonite and the champagne brand Piper-Heidsick — not to mention the duo’s striking costume designs for the opera, a jewelry line for crystal house Swarovski, couture eyelashes for Shu Uemura and a partridge in a pear tree.

These projects, Horsting says, “were very instinctive. We knew we had to do ready-to-wear, but we had no idea how to organise it all. But we knew it would be a logical follow up. We thought in a certain scale without knowing how to get there. We knew it wouldn’t be us organising it, we knew we would have to find a partner.” But through all the growth, the brand still maintains a succinct integrity and the designers have kept a clarity of vision that has served them well. Indeed, the label has a growing consumer base and their performances capture the pattering hearts of the fashion set who go wild for their theatrical showstoppers which have previously included guest performers like Tilda Swinton, Rufus Wainwright and, most recently, La Roux. But how? “It’s all about the details,” Snoeren says soberly.

That attention to detail has enabled Viktor & Rolf to get to a place where they can claim creative fulfillment, or, at least, satisfaction. This frees them up to turn their eyes of transformation upon the brand itself.

Enter Renzo Rosso, owner of Diesel and chairman of Only the Brave, who, in 2008, took a controlling stake in the company and announced a series of plans to expand the brand into new product lines and brick-and-mortar stores. The process of choosing a investment partner, which took two years of negotiations, Horsting says, came down to “a gut feeling combined with what is needed.” Snoeren adds, “after the success of Flowerbomb, we wanted to take the ready-to-wear to the next level.” Rosso, who the guys say is unique — a businessman who is also creative and would not interfere with their aesthetic and quality-control — appeared the perfect fit.

“It’s about opening stores, restructuring collections,” Snoeren says. “You can have a great show and be very good at it. But it’s a whole thing around it to make a business. It’s like a puzzle.” Forecasting the future he says, “We are kind of allergic to 5-year plans…” “But we are opening a store in Paris,” Horsting says, “and then New York.”

“For us, now,” Snoeren says, “it’s about building the business to it’s full potential.” Horsting adds, “creatively we are very happy, we’ve achieved many things and we have found a way of working that we love and we continue to do that. In terms of business we would love to develop more.”

“We feel we have to do that to become a real alternative for people to go somewhere that is a bit different,” Snoeren says. So, with Rosso’s wallet behind you and the creative carte blanche, do you have all the pieces you need? “Yes,” he says, “they are all there. It is a good feeling.”

Chris Wallace is an editor and writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Dossier Journal, i-D, Interview, and T.

The post First Person | Viktor & Rolf say Flowerbomb was their modern day business weapon appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.

Scott Sternberg at Lego installation at Opening Ceremony | Source: Selectism

Today, BoF brings you First Person with Band of Outsiders’ Scott Sternberg, followed later this week by the exclusive global debut of a new Band of Outsiders film directed by Debra Scherer for The Little Squares.

LOS ANGELES, United States — What made a 20-something junior agent at CAA, with no background in clothing design, think he could just up and create a fashion company and make it a viable business?

“Good question,” says Scott Sternberg, who in 2004 did just that, ditching his desk job to launch the LA-based Band of Outsiders with a limited collection of shirts and ties. Four years in, Sternberg won the CFDA Swarovski award for emerging menswear designer; last year he shared the top award with Italo Zucchelli of Calvin Klein. This September the hip brand, found at dozens stores around the world, will debut its fourth imprint, the entry-level womenswear line, girl.

Viable indeed. A runaway success, more like it.

“It was very clear that I was much more of an entrepreneur than someone who services clients,” Sternberg says now of his time as a Hollywood agent. “I was thinking, what would be a company be if I started it—is it a product or a service? Just sort of soul-searching in my late twenties to see what I wanted to do with my life. I was working with a few entrepreneurs, one of whom started J. Crew, and she encouraged me to consider [fashion] as something to do because the way I approach the creative process is similar to the way a clothing designer would. In a short period of time it became clear that the apparel business is incredibly entrepreneurial—the barriers to entry are really low, probably even more so now. All these stores and magazines are desperate for new, great things. If you have something honest and interesting and personal and cool and relevant and well-made, you can at least get started.”

The first step, Sternberg says, was honing the vision. “It was about being specific. I had such limited resources and such limited knowledge of how to make clothes. So I made what felt right and felt like something I would want—which were shirts and ties at the time—that I could make at the level that I would find that the price and the product would align. It’s a wonderful industry for an entrepreneur who is creative and can make things.”

As interest began to grow and those magazines came calling, Sternberg says he resisted the pressure to act outside of his comfort zone. “It was really about being small and pure and not doing anything if I wasn’t sure what the next step was. From a product perspective, I can make these shirts and ties really well. I have access to the factories and materials that feel right to me and I can get it at a price where there is a market for it. All those steps are set in stone. In terms of business model, there’s rules and margins, and all of that is trial-and-error to some extent, but keeping things small and doing everything myself for so long meant no overhead so I was able to always profitable and never take on outside investors even to this day.”

So, beginning to feel grounded, secure in his new enterprise, the young designer allowed himself to experiment. “There’s a product delivery cycle that’s set,” he said. “You’re gonna deliver Spring at a certain time, you’re gonna deliver Fall at a certain time. You’re going to show at these times—you fall into the groove of that. That structure is liberating. It’s challenging and it never stops but it allows you to fail because there is always another season.”

Spreading his wings with this newfound freedom, Sternberg went on an expedition to Scotland, researched plaid, created a collection informed by his adventure, and picked up the prestigious CFDA hardware for his troubles.

On the marketing side, however, he needed no such incubation period. From the very inception of the brand Sternberg’s deft imaging of the company with the geek-chic Americana of a Hollywood insider has been a sensation, and correlation between that image and the success of the business cannot be overstated, even if it is difficult to quantify.

“Brand image is intrinsically tied to the product,” he says, explaining. “Because it’s your clothes and clothes are about self-image. It’s not just the shirt and the buttons and the fabric. At the end of the day I think, for the loyalty factor, people are entertained by the brand and feel a connection to it. I hope they are coming back because their shirt fits really well and they wear it every other day.”

And Band marches on. The growing business is moving headquarters, and Sternberg has his eye on expansion. “As a creative person, how can you not,” he says. But, as he points out, returning again and again to his touchstone of purity, the new developments are not overreaching.

“The focus now is how to expand—not to rule the world or make tons of money—but to make a bigger business, a more sustainable business. You’re looking at scale. I do a lot of work here, create a lot of product and you want to sell it more places, because it makes it sort of worth it and more interesting. You test: does this have legs? I don’t want to be the Gap or even Ralph Lauren. Women’s was a market that was obviously enticing.”

But that line, Boy., which he launched in 2007, was not a reinvention of the wheel, dropping instead out of his clear concept for the line as a perfectly ripe fruit falls off the tree—when it is ready. “I just had a notion of doing a really focused collection offering everything that women loved about my menswear but couldn’t articulate to women. Meaning, really well-made jackets and shirts. But at this point it is a full designer-, whatever-, collection. I thought there was something there that I could offer,” he says.

And you agree. So crystalline is Sternberg’s vision and his business acumen one imagines that if he were to design a car or a building, not only would he likely pull it off, but it would be immediately recognisable as an entity in the Band brand.

Chris Wallace is an editor and writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Dossier Journal, i-D, Interview and T.

The post First Person | Scott Sternberg says Fashion is Wonderful for an Entrepreneur who is Creative appeared first on BoF - The Business of Fashion.