Jan 10, 2022 · 1h 8m · how-i-built-this
M.M.LaFleur: Sarah LaFleur (2020)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of NPR's How I Built This, Sarah LaFleur shares how she overcame corporate burnout, early manufacturing challenges, and near-bankruptcy to build M.M.LaFleur into a pioneering women's apparel brand through the inventive 'Bento Box' try-at-home model.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 30.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 1.3 Guy pushing back 2.2
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:03 Sarah rejects the 'niche business' label applied by VCs
Sarah passionately pushes back against the recurring venture capital dismissal that professional womenswear is a niche product by citing the multi-billion dollar size of the corporate women demographic.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 58:20 Guy questions the value proposition versus fast fashionGuy plays devil's advocate by directly challenging why a customer should pay over 200 dollars for dress slacks when alternatives exist at Zara and H&M.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:04 Sarah explains what pattern making actually means in fashionSarah recounts her initial ignorance thinking pattern makers created printed fabrics, illustrating the architectural reality of garment drafting.
Guy holds their own ▶ 1:48 Guy synthesizes decision psychology with the Paradox of ChoiceGuy demonstrates domain analysis by linking Barry Schwartz's psychological research on menu simplicity directly to Sarah's strategic positioning of corporate wardrobes.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Problem with Closets and Sarah's Upbringing | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Guy opens by framing the company's premise using Barry Schwartz's 'The Paradox of Choice' and explores Sarah's background growing up double-identity in Tokyo. The rapport is warm, biographical, and collaborative as Sarah details her mother's entrepreneurial influence. | |
| From Refugee Camps to Consulting and Wall Street | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Guy presses gently on Sarah's rapid transitions from humanitarian work in Zambia to Bain and her abrupt four-month exit from private equity. Sarah speaks candidly about feeling culturally mismatched and experiencing severe anxiety. | |
| Developing the Vision and Recruiting a Designer | 4 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Guy explores the seemingly irrational decision of former Zac Posen head designer Miyako Nakamura joining an unproven founder with very little capital. Sarah openly educates Guy and self-deprecatingly details how naive she was about core fashion industry concepts like pattern making. | |
| Perfecting the Fit, NYC Manufacturing, and Early Trunk Shows | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Sarah details garment construction, the taxi/bend-over fit tests, and navigating the Garment District. Guy inquires into the mechanics of early trunk shows and the hustle required before gaining digital traction. | |
| Digital Struggles, Cash Crises, and the Bento Box Pivot | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Guy and Sarah review the near-collapse of the business when cash went negative and male VCs dismissed office wear as niche. Sarah explains how clearing excess inventory by manually sending curated boxes led to their breakthrough Bento Box model. | |
| Scaling Up, Defining Power Casual, and Industry Reflection | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Guy asks a pointed devil's advocate question comparing M.M.LaFleur's price point to fast fashion alternatives like Zara. Sarah explains the specialized fabrication and utility before concluding on the humbling nature of startup scaling and attribution to luck. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Raz: M.M.LaFleur is closing in on $100 million in annual sales
“But since she launched MM LeFleur, it's grown into a business closing in on a hundred million dollars in annual sales.”
Raz: Over 10% of 'How I Built This' Founders Started in Consulting
“A significant percentage of people who've been on the show, I'd say more than 10%, worked in consulting for a couple years early in their careers, where you, you're basically paid to learn everything about a business in order to give them advice for how to be …”
M.M.LaFleur co-founder Miyako Nakamura previously served as head designer at Zac Posen
“Miyako, at the time, I think had just left Zach Pozen. She was their head designer.”
LaFleur: Luxury brands do multiple fit sessions while cheap brands do none
“Luxury brands can afford to do three or four fittings to really perfect the fit, whereas lower priced brands, they might be fitting it once or maybe never. They might just go straight to production.”
LaFleur: Women look to colleagues, not fashion magazines, for workwear advice
“Women always They're not looking to fashion magazines to tell them what to wear to work. They're turning to each other. They're asking each other, where'd you get that? Where'd you shop for that?”
LaFleur: Pitching 'you or anyone you know' gives angel investors an out
“And one phrase that I developed, which I started using in all of my emails, is, if you or anyone you know might be interested, please let me know. I think the you or anyone else you know gave the other person an elegant out if they weren't interested.”
LaFleur: M.M.LaFleur raised $400,000 in early funding over nine months
“We raised 400,000 dollars, and it took me nine months.”
LaFleur: Professional women's apparel is a $100B–$120B market
“There are thirty million women, age 25 to 45, who work in some sort of corporate environment, and these women spend, on average, for women making 75 K and up, 4000 dollars a year on clothes to wear to work, and so that's roughly a hundred to a hundred twenty b…”
LaFleur: Advising cash-strapped founders to avoid certain investors is unhelpful
“Telling other entrepreneurs, like, don't just take anyone's money, or be really careful who you take money from. That's all well and good when you've got cash in the bank. When you don't it's really unhelpful advice, because it's true, you really want to make …”
First Bento Box email drove record revenue in a single week
“18% of customers responded to that email saying, sure, send me something. I don't have time, it would be so great if you chose it for me. And we ended up sending those 180 boxes out, and making more money in that one week. Than we ever had in any month leading…”
LaFleur: Bento Box Pivot Tripled M.M.LaFleur's Revenue Month-Over-Month
“We launched it into official form October, 20 14. We suddenly went from not being able to pay rent to tripling our revenue, you know, oftentimes, month over month.”
LaFleur: M.M.LaFleur Did $8M in 2014, Mostly in Q4
“Yeah, it was eight million, but we had made more than half of that in the last 12 weeks of the year.”
LaFleur: M.M.LaFleur raised zero venture capital in its first four years
“Four years into it, to around 2017, a VC investor approached us and he said, hey, we're just interested in learning more about you. Could you tell us? And I think at that point I had a big, big chip on my shoulder because we had had total failure trying to rai…”
LaFleur: Publicizing funding amounts creates an unhealthy startup culture identity
“We don't disclose it, and it's so funny because I think there's a real dark side to talking about how much money you've raised, and I think what happens often in startup culture is that, that is what you become known for.”