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Some of the biggest brands in fashion are named after the designers who founded them. Fashion staple Chanel was named after its founder, Coco Chanel, and luxury label Alexander McQueen was named for designer Lee Alexander McQueen.
Founding a well-recognized brand that is synonymous with one’s own name seems like a dream, but it can also create its own challenges.
“I said if I’m going to work this hard, it’s going to be my name because I want everyone to know who I am,” designer Rebecca Minkoff told podcast host Elizabeth Gore on Yahoo Finance’s The Big Idea. “There has never been a time that I wish it wasn’t my name. There have been times where my name has been on product that I didn’t agree with.”
Before launching her own brand, Minkoff said she worked for designers for three years but was ultimately determined to get her own designs recognized. While working in the industry, she noticed that she “connected” best with designer brands named after their founders, which inspired her to pursue a similar path.
The Rebecca Minkoff label officially launched in 2005. It currently operates 13 retail stores worldwide and is distributed in hundreds of retailers internationally.
As the brand grew and changed, however, so did Minkoff. This meant she often faced challenges around how much of her personal identity would be wrapped up in the brand’s products and image.
She recalled, “There was this saying throughout the company for a long time, if I wasn’t in the room and a decision would be made: ‘Well, will Rebecca wear it? Will she like it?'”
Eventually, Minkoff admitted her identity couldn’t be at the forefront of every business decision. “It can’t always be what Rebecca would want,” she said.
However, she also noted a couple of critical moments when the brand’s commercial aspirations got in the way of the authenticity that she wanted to become synonymous with her brand.
“There was a time where many of our wholesale partners were coming in and almost playing designer,” she explained. “If you said no, they just didn’t buy … And so for a while we said yes, and it didn’t help us.”
“That’s the hindsight,” she added. “It didn’t help us to have a laptop bag that said ‘Nerd Alert’ on it.”
At another point in the company’s history, she detailed how the company decided to “freeze the customer” at age 26 and marketed to that demographic. But that decision didn’t reflect Minkoff’s experience at the time of “changing diapers, having a messy kitchen” that her customer base connected with.
“We froze the customer at 26, then I could no longer identify because I was having very different experiences,” Minkoff recounted. “My core customer was also becoming a mom, and we weren’t talking to her anymore. We were talking about going to the club. And so you have that disconnect.”
“You don’t have to be showing every part of your life to be authentic,” Minkoff continued. “But you have to be authentic about what you do show.”
Every Thursday, Elizabeth Gore discusses real-life stories and smart strategies for launching a small business on The Big Idea podcast. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.
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