Alala: A Decade of Fashion Entrepreneurship with Denise Lee
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This week on Mimir I'm featuring Denise Lee, the founder Alala. Alala has not only build a strong community following over the past ten years, but also boasts an impressive roster of department stores that carry her luxury athleisure brand including Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus. Even more, her products are favorites of celebrities like Gigi Hadid and Reese Witherspoon. Chatting with Denise felt like meeting a friend for coffee, rather than just an interview for the blog. I was inspired by her down to earth nature, how she's been able to grow her business, and how driven she is to create the best products for her community.
I wanted to start our conversation at the beginning and discover where her love of fashion emanated from. Interestingly, Denise has always run in the fashion sphere. Her dad's side of the family has owned a clothing manufacturing company for generations, and her first job was in marketing for fashion. After graduating from her MBA she worked under Chris Bruch, a serial retail entrepreneur, where she gained some insights into the fashion industry. From an early age, however, Denise knew that she would some day start her own business. “Both my parents were entrepreneurs,” she recalls, “and since I was a teenager, I knew, at some point in my life, I would do something on my own.”
Denise's lightbulb moment came as she was training for a triathlon. Just like many of us do when starting a new venture, she wanted to buy a new outfit. Denise recalls, “this was in 2012 or something like that, so there weren't a lot of options out there. It was just the big brands and I didn't really feel like I connected with any of the big brands. You could go buy a Nike top for $30 and it was black and fine, but it wasn't interestingly designed. And that's when I started thinking, 'Oh, maybe there's an opportunity in this space for something that reflects more of that New York lifestyle that I was living at the time.'”
Alala was a year in the making before their official launch in 2014. I wanted to dive deep into what that year looked like since I'm sure so many new entrepreneurs, like myself, don't know how to go from initial idea to a physical product on the shelves.
For Denise, creating Alala started with market research. She learned as much as she could to determine where the white space was for an elevated, chic, athletic brand. She started by “talking to people in the industry, reading Industry reports, digging through people's websites and things like that.” It was a lot of Googling, and not just looking at the big brands but becoming a detective to find the smaller brands too. One key takeaway from our interview that I want to be sure and leave the new entrepreneurs with, is when you're getting started, don't be afraid to ask for help. Denise recalls from her experience, “I was calling my old colleagues from my old job and just being like, 'can you tell me the basics about shipping stuff from China?' People are willing to give you ten, fifteen minutes of their time just to explain things and help you out, especially if you've been a nice person to them in the past.”
Once Denise felt comfortable that her idea was indeed viable, she started to work on what she called a brand book. “It was a lot of me pulling mood pictures that helped solidify Alala. This New York style, very clean and sleek and sophisticated.” By laying her idea out on paper in terms of how she wanted it to feel, what the vision for the aesthetics were, and how she wants her customers to feel wearing the products, it was time for the next step.
“And then I was like, okay, what do I not know how to do? I don't know how to do a collection, I'm not a designer. I'm more like a business person. So, now I need to find somebody who I can share this vision with and can execute it from the product standpoint.” This was a standout moment for me that solidified my admiration for Denise. What differentiates great entrepreneurs from average ones, is that they recognize their strengths and weaknesses and then create a team around them to fill in the gaps. After a thorough LinkedIn search, Denise was able to hire a freelance designer to help put her vision to paper. Luckily, she found the right candidate, a former designer for Champion, also locally based in New York. Something I didn't know before this interview was that a lot of athletic brands are based on the west coast, so actually finding a designer (at least in 2013) on the east coast in the industry was a challenge. “It was worth it to pay her to speed up the process. Because if I was trying to figure it out all myself, it would take me forever. She knows how to put a line together. She knows who to call for fabrics and for making samples and stuff. So it was super helpful for me to have her as a partner in this process.”
To this day, I haven't interviewed a true solo founder. Every founder I've talked to has had a partner in some way shape or form that has supported them through (at least) the start of their business, and I think this is an important takeaway for our new founders to understand. You must have a strong support system around you, and what makes Denise a great role model in this case is that she found someone who could compensate in the areas she lacked.
Once the first collection was designed and ready to be manufactured, Denise had to go and build relationships with factories. I was super curious to get the download on this because I had never interacted with someone in the fashion space so this production process was completely foreign to me. “Clothing manufacturing is still kind of an old school business. There's a lot of relationship based work. And so we worked with one factory out of Toronto to start with and gave them all our business at the beginning. That was important to me because I wanted to be able to go up and take a look at stuff to make sure we're in constant communication with them.” She recalls how she appreciated her first manufacturer because, “a lot of them just want big orders. It's not so easy sometimes to have somebody take a chance on you as a brand that has zero sales.” But this is another reason why she hired a professional designer. Having a pro by her side made those initial meetings easier. It gave Alala the credibility and professionalism to convince the manufacturer that they were reliable and someone worth taking a chance on.
This made me think about my first real job, working in construction. I had just left my role at Disney where I was selling tickets, so when I was suddenly working in construction and people started talking about the intricacies of electrical panels and rigging, I was totally lost. I wanted to get Denise's advice for new entrepreneurs about being in those kinds of meetings. Did she wait until after these initial chats with manufacturers and ask her designer to fill her in, or did she stop and ask questions right there and then. “I think you can do a little bit of both. I always like to ask because that's the most direct way for me to get answers. Yeah, it might be a little annoying for them to explain to you, but you're also showing that you're interested in what they're doing, right? That's their life's work.” As new entrepreneurs, I think we are afraid to ask questions for fear of looking like we don't know what we're doing. At the beginning of our journeys we are expected to be exerts on our industry but also be self-aware enough to know we don't have all the answers. It's a catch-22 in my opinion but it's part of the growing pains.
After officially launching the brand in 2014, Alala was quickly picked up by a selection of retailers, including Equinox, and they started to build their online community during the early days of Instagram. Within eighteen months Alala was pulling in seven figures annually. Since Alala is now almost ten years old, I asked Denise to reflect on these past years and highlight what is different about Alala and about her as an entrepreneur. “The whole journey you are learning the entire time. You are discovering who Alala is as a brand and ultimately learning who you are as a person and as an entrepreneur. We've learned about our customer over 10 years, and now I feel the same way that you might at like 30. I have a better sense of myself. I have such a clear perspective about who Alala is now. But that was because we were doing experimentation and trying out different things along the way. So it's changed so much, but that core vision has always been the same. I've always wanted to make women feel really great wearing our clothes but it's just been refined through the years.”
I look forward to seeing what Denise has coming up for Alala in the future. “For next year, we're more focused on getting very clear on our customer profile. Who is this woman? Let's really talk specifically to her so she knows Alala is a brand that she can relate to. And then we're actually going to focus in on some hero products. As a strategy, I think that'll be really, really interesting.” This got me jazzed because usually a company will start with one hero product and diversify over time. But for Alala, “we've had years of selling a bunch of different things and testing out different product families. We're now really confident about putting all our effort behind saying this is what Alala is great at and using it as an entry point for you to experience the brand.”
So, be sure to follow Alala on social media and check out their website to stay up to date with what this hero product will be. I'm so glad to have met Denise and I can't wait to see what she does next!
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