Nordstrom

“You can imagine we were renting current season designer inventory for five to 10% of the price at the exact same time that it was at Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and Saks and Net-a-Porter for sale.”

“Our most profitable business became Nordstrom. And our second most profitable were our retail stores, and those two businesses' profits were funding losses from the e-commerce business, which is a wonderful paradox to the way that we conceived of the company.”

“We would peddle our wares, and we sold to Nordstrom, and we sold to the hardcore rock climbing shops, yet we didn't really ever make money”

“We launched in 47 stores. So I had full distribution in Sephora and 47 Nordstroms”

“I remember having a conversation with Nordstrom at the time, and they were a big customer, and they were challenging the fact that we had all these stores, and I would show them quantifiably how every mall that we had a store, where they had a store, they did …”

“And our second most profitable were our retail stores, and those two businesses' profits were funding losses from the e-commerce business, which is a wonderful paradox to the way that we conceived of the company.”

“I got there, and they pulled it out of storage, and it was just dilapidated, beat to hell, and they said they wanted 5000 dollars for it, and I wouldn't have given them 500 for it.”

“We sold into five doors at Nordstrom and it didn't do well. You know, and it didn't do well because we were just too early to market and we hadn't built a community around the brand. We didn't have like a group of advocates and influencers and celebrities that…”

“Well, that first year when we shipped to Nordstrom, I visited every single one. It was 10 different Nordstroms across the country, and I did a version of what Sarah did.”

“Where we saw the initial success was in these sort of smaller specialty stores where, you know, think of this story. It's an owner who buys the product. He's the number one salesman. He knows all the customers. So he's got to sell what he buys. And so my job w…”

“If we were near a limited to store or children's place, we did way better than if we were near Nordstrom.”

“Nordstrom's, by the way, is very sophisticated in that regard. They're very careful. They're not going to build a following and then just hand it off to the vendor. If they can avoid it, they will.”

“Our margins, they vary between 35 and 50%, and then obviously we plan for them to have a 60% markup on top of that, so we are able to make money that way, I think, because of our flexibility.”

“In 2023, we also launched with Nordstrom. And so they right now are our biggest retail wholesale partnership.”