The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
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When Tim Brown stepped away from his role as co-chief executive at Allbirds in May, the footwear retailer that he co-founded seven years ago was losing its sheen. In its first full-year results since its Nasdaq flotation in November 2021, the sustainability-focused, direct-to-consumer darling that once enraptured investors revealed a series of setbacks, leading to net losses of $101 million.
Indeed, the Allbirds’ team has been tested relentlessly since the IPO, yet according to Brown, it’s been an opportunity for him to draw on inner strengths to excel as a leader, a lesson he learned from his time as a professional footballer.
“Rising and falling is just a part of the journey,” he wrote in a recent post on LinkedIn in which he also shared an article by a team of business reporters that laid bare Allbirds’ challenges. Rather than criticising the article, he said he saw it as a reminder that “you are never as good or as bad as they say you are and that all of my best work has come when I’ve been written off.”
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This week on The BoF Podcast, Brown speaks with BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed on how his journey from the football pitch to the corporate boardroom prepared him to lead with resilience.
“It’s a funny thing with success — you have a little bit of it and then things get harder, and that’s good,” he says.
In London, where independent labels have been hit hard by the implosion of key stockist Matches, brands like Clio Peppiatt, Marfa Stance and Completedworks have grown direct-to-consumer businesses that peers can learn from.
Apparel start-ups founded on the promise of offering men the perfect T-shirt are proving resilient in an otherwise dreary DTC sector rampant with fire sales, bankruptcies and steep revenue declines.
Apparel brands Knot Standard and Billy Reid are teaming up in a move investors say we may see more of as fashion start-ups seek alternative funding routes to grow their businesses.
Warby Parker, Everlane and other brands are partnering with small, but buzzy fashion labels as an inexpensive way to find new customers, and regain some status with shoppers who have moved on.