Fashion designer Tory Burch maynow be a household name with a $3 billion company, but when she started out, she faced the same criticism often leveled at women starting a business.
“People thought it was a vanity project,” she said of her eponymous brand.
She spoke of her early challenges on Thursday at Forbes’ Power Redefined Women’s Summit in New York, where she joined hundreds of influential womenincluding first female Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and supermodel-turned-humanitarian Christy Turlington.
Burch was dismissed as just another socialite when she launched her line in 2004, she toldForbesWoman publisher Moira Forbes during a wide-ranging interview.
Her parents, she said, gave her the most important piece of advice back then, when critics believed she’d be a flash in the pan: “Thicken your skin.”
“I never imagined how hard I would work,” she added. “My resilience was tested, then and now.”
Burch spoke of how important her toughness has been even now that she’s a success (she oversees 2,000 employees, 80% of whom are women, and a company with revenues over $800 million).
“Anything negative that happens with the company comes back to me,” she said, adding that whether there’s a problem with a store in California or her supply chain, it’s her own butt on the line. “That’s my name. It’s very difficult. You just really have to thicken your skin. It’s part of the business.”
She spoke on the importance of mentorship for entrepreneurs, citing Google billionaire Eric Schmidt as an influencer. “He’s on our advisory board,” she said. “He taught me a lot about the importance of repetition and messaging.”
Fellow Forbes rich list member Oprah Winfrey did her fair share to help propel Burch to where she is today. In 2010, talk show queenmaker Winfrey included Burch’s Reva shoes, a $195 pair of leather ballet flats in every conceivable color with her signature ‘double T’ medallion logo, in her final Favorite Things episode.
The publicity helped elevate them to wardrobe must-haves. They’re now her best-known product — and named after her mother.
“I really thought it was a joke,” Burch said of Winfrey’s choice to champion her brand on national TV. “The next day after our show we had 8 million hits on our website.”
Today, Burch acts as a business mentor herself, holding at least 10 events a year, including one this coming Friday at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (she’ll also be attending her 25-year Penn reunion).
She offered her advice to young entrepreneurs getting their start, telling the gathered audience of women, many of them millennials: “Buckle up and know it’s going to be tremendously hard work, but embrace it. Have a unique vision and the tenacity to follow through.”
Burch joined the 2013 Forbes World’s Billionaires list in March as one of a handful of women who made their fortunes rather than inherited them, including Oprah Winfrey and Meg Whitman. The 46-year-old former fashion PR is now the second youngest self-made female billionaire in America; Spanx inventor Sara Blakely, who joined the rich list in 2012, is the youngest at 42.
In the nine years since her start, revenues have climbed to an estimated $800 million a year — enough to land Burch on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people. However, it was her ex-husband Chris Burch’s sale of 25% of his stake in the company following the couple’s divorce and his ouster from the boardthat cemented both as billionaires.
Chris Burch has made some canny investments of his own over the years, including stakes in phone gadget manufacturer Aliph, which owns popular Bluetooth handset Jawbone; pricey Norwegian artesian bottled water brand Voss and wireless charging outfit Powermat. His most recent outing, fashion chain C. Wonder, was long a bone of contention between the two, with lawsuits flying back and forth and Tory Burch LLC labeling the line “a knock-off brand.” The two parties have since settled.
forbes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment