The Blonde One

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1:50Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo line sheet. And today with me on the show is Veronica Swanson Beard, co-founder of Veronica Beard. We're talking the value of clothes, the power of a great store, Dickies, and so much more.

2:11Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called line sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount.

2:46Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you're having a great week. I am headed to Paris for a few days to see some couture shows and hopefully see many of you as well. It's a quick trip, but I'll be back there in a few weeks, which I'm very excited about. This week, online sheet, Rachel Strugetz previewed the Pat McGrath Labs fire sale. So the brand is going up for auction next week. And she kind of explains why and how and what it all means. It's a cautionary tale, but also whatever, it's fine. And maybe Pat McGrath will get it back and reinvent it that we'd love to see.

3:31We love a reinvention. Personally, I looked at the top contender for the next editor of GQ. You need to be an inner circle member of Puck to get access to that piece. And then on Friday, our buddy Bill Cohan walked everyone through the Saks bankruptcy filing and what it says about how things will play out at the stores themselves over the next few months. You may have heard that longtime Saks fashion director Rupal Patel just resigned. I'm sure we'll see a few other departures like that, but it's going to be more about the closing of stores, a reimagining of the business, then HR changes. I don't think it's going to be super crazy on that front.

4:09Anyway, let's get going with Veronica and I hope to see you this weekend.

4:17Veronica Swanson Beard, welcome to Fashion People. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. What'd you have for breakfast this morning? I don't eat breakfast. I have coffee. Have you ever eaten breakfast or is this a new thing? No, I used to eat breakfast. I was like a big eggs and bacon and avocado person. And then I had to do a lot of a lot of health stuff about five years ago. And I found out that those were like incredibly bad for me. Eggs, I'm like allergic to them. I have thyroid issues. And so I took out breakfast and started intermittent fasting. It really changed my life. I love it. I agree.

5:02I also do it not as – I still eat a lot of eggs and avocado and bacon. I love it, but I just don't eat it. It's so good. Yeah, I mean, sometimes your body wants the thing that's not good for it. But yeah, I feel like the intermittent fasting thing comes up with this question quite a bit. And to me, it's just the thing of like, your body feels better if you don't eat a lot before bed and you wait a little bit in the morning. I don't know. It's true. Although I will, I'm lying to you because it is International Bagel Day and I did have a bagel. I just forgot. Oh, that's allowed. I mean, I mean, Papa Bagels.

5:48Have you had Papa Bagels? No. Are they good? I've had Apollo in New York. Well, Apollo's like, I mean, Apollo's incredible, but Papa Bagel, they are warm all the time, like just out of the oven constantly. And so you don't toast them and you just rip them off and dip them in cream cheese. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah. It sounds better than avocado and bacon. Yeah, it is. It is. so I've known you for a long time yeah I know you've seen this journey yeah yes you're one of the co-founders of Veronica Beard and you are also the creative director is that your title or is it like chief creative officer or something we're co-ceo and co-founder I mean I like Veronica and I don't really I mean we have so many we're so many different hats that yes but um you know I love anything creative.

6:42So got it. Okay. So yeah, I remember the first time I interviewed you all and, and that was, and we can kind of get into that because co-CEO, co-founder, those relationships are, everyone is so different. Some people sort of split it down the middle, some people it's, it's a little bit more fluid, but I know you've told the story a million times. Do you want to kind of tell the origin story in a bite size? Yeah. Yeah. So Veronica and I are married to brothers and that's how we have the same name. And we, you know, have different backgrounds, different career paths. Veronica was in finance. She worked in many different finance positions.

7:30But right before we started, she was helped to found CO2, which is an incredible hedge fund, tech hedge fund with Philippe LaFont. And Veronica is smart and incredible with all the things that I am very afraid of and not fluent in. And I have a fashion background, have wanted to do what we're doing since I was four years old. I think really since I can remember. I've been obsessed with fashion, the way that fashion makes you feel, style, women, expression, all that stuff. And after I went to Tulane and then after Tulane, I moved to New York to go to Parsons and was doing the merchandising program at Parsons, worked there for a year, and then started interning at Narciso Rodriguez.

8:33And at the end of my internship, they offered me a job. So I dropped out of Parsons to take the job because I was like, this is my moment. I'm getting into the fashion world now. And worked in wholesale. I went to IFA and worked in wholesale for Narciso in Alberta Ferretti. And then I became a buyer for Marissa Collections, which is an amazing specialty store in Naples, Florida. Yes. How did that happen? Did they and they were cool with you being in New York? So Marissa. So I grew up in I grew up in Naples, Florida, London and San Francisco. OK. And I had known Marissa my whole life. And she was sort of this like, you know, fashion fairy godmother in my life.

9:19I loved her store. Her son is still one of my best friends. She got me my first internship working for Oscar de la Renta. And she was just always this amazing, like, she didn't have a daughter. And I think that every time that we were together, we talked about this. And it was just a bond that we had. And when I started buying for her, you know, obviously her store is very designer, incredible. I mean, she was, you know, one of the first vendors of Michael Kors, but just had this incredibly loyal customer that was very, very designer. And Contemporary was just starting then. And I was obsessed with Contemporary because it was, you know, 2004 and 2004, 2005.

10:06And it was like, you know, Alex Wang and Philip Lim and all of this like amazing, you know, next generation of contemporary fashion. Helmut Lang, I mean, now I'm thinking like Scoop. It was Scoop and intermixed days and all of those things. And to me, it was just really, it felt so relevant and so important that she, you know, explore that more. So I became her buyer in New York and I was based here for those brands. And then I would go and do, you know, designer with her in Europe. But that's how that's how I started as a buyer. And I think for me, that was like the greatest to have both sides of the coin before starting this business.

10:53Yeah. And so interesting for you to kind of come up during the rise of that mid market. And or I mean, it's up. It's upper mid. Yeah. It's like mid market. Sometimes when I say that, people are like, no, J.Crew is mid-market. That's right. It is. But it's interesting knowing what you ended up going to do, how that must have informed your sort of view of the industry and what the customer wanted. Because those brands weren't like crazy expensive. No, but that was when we started. So in 2010, the hot thing was opening designer. And so that's where we started. That was our positioning. And it was right after 08.

11:39And we were, you know, with our, you know, producing in New York and our margins, we couldn't, we couldn't be advanced contemporary just because our pricing wouldn't come in at that, at that level. But we thought that there was just this little window that we could get in into opening designer, which was, you know, a lot of the brands at that time. What can you explain the difference between contemporary, advanced contemporary and opening designer and designer? And it's such a crazy thing because so it's really ruled that the the positioning of all these brands is really ruled by real estate in department stores.

12:17Right. So it's like you're on the designer floor and it's really like kind of a vertical situation more than it is a horizontal like real estate in a store situation. situation. So there's the designer floor, then there's a contemporary floor, and there was an opening designer floor, which was sort of in between the two floors. And, you know, it's sort of old luxuries, designer, younger, newer brands, or contemporary or opening designer at this point. And it was all about your price point, the clothes that you were making. And for us, At that point, we only had a jacket, our Dickie jacket. And it was$6.95 when we started.

13:07So it was expensive. I mean, it was expensive. We're still very expensive. You know, when you say, you know, mid-tier, it is at mid-tier for most. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about the Dickie jacket. And what was, because everybody kind of knows it, knows you all for it, But like, what was the response to it when you started? Oh, my God. Well, it was, I mean, we were a terrible lookbook that is like burned and taken off the internet and you'll never find it. So don't look for it. But we had, we started. So basically, the diggy jacket existed in menswear, that concept. There was a lot of, you know, European jackets that had men's wear jackets that had like zip out pieces, but they weren't sort of multifunction.

14:06There weren't multiple options and it didn't exist for women that we could find. We scoured the world. and it was just sort of this concept of like that piece like a man's suit that you put on and you are immediately dressed like you could be in leggings and sneakers going to a soul cycle class and you have on a blue blazer with a gray hood and you could you know drop your kids off run into a meeting at work um you know wear it through the day take the dickie off and you know be in jeans and heels at night. It was this idea, you know, Veronica always says it's our Wonder Woman cape. And, um, and it really was then when, when we, when we started, I think it was, it was so different and it was so tactile because you would see it on a rack and it was a Navy blazer, but there was this big chunky fisherman sweater coming out of the top.

15:03And at that point we had cuffs that also came out of it. And we've since removed the cuffs because it became sort of a disaster like you know for merchandising purposes um they get lost but funny but so it was this amazing piece that you know you wanted to go over and touch and see what it was all about and um so that first season um we had our our first market was held in in my apartment and And at the end of that market, we had eight accounts. One of them was Saks. And we were like, oh, my God, no, we have a business. We have to produce and we have to ship to Saks. Like, what is going to happen?

15:48And Veronica, you know, I always say those days were the best days because we didn't know what we didn't know. And we didn't know how hard it was going to be to do what we've done. And it's been the ride of a lifetime. and we've had the most fun. We've had the most incredible team. We've loved it. But thank God we didn't know then what we know now. And Saks, we figure out finally how to ship to Saks, deliver to Saks after shipments are returned to us because we don't have the right system. And I mean, all of the things. I wish there was video of us really building this the first two years because it would have been a funny show.

16:31But we had 100 % sell through at Saks our first season. And that's when we knew like, okay, this is going to be something. And it, you know, still to this day, the Dickie Jacket is our signature piece. But the brand obviously has grown into a full lifestyle collection. And it's, you know, it's just continues to evolve. And I think that the, you know, what's amazing is that Dickie jacket, the versatility, the lifestyle, the ease, you know, the efficiency of it, all of those things are like major brand pillars for us. And when we look at our marketing materials from 15 years ago, they're the same as they are today.

17:15Yeah. So that's pretty good that it's stood the test of time. So when that came out, did a lot of people copy it? And also, how do you think, because when I think of it, I think of this Dickie jacket or even like any women's clothing Dickies, I think of you all. And I can't think of another brand that has, like, that even offers it. I'm sure there are many, but how much, how quickly was it copied? And two, why do you think you've been able to sort of corner that market? Because it does make a lot of sense from a practicality perspective. Well, I think that it actually wasn't copied right out of the gate.

18:04There have been a lot of versions of our jacket over the years at different price points. And look, I mean, fashion is constantly reinventing the wheel, right? So it's it's it's OK. It's OK if if things get you know, if we're copied, things get copied. It's you know, it happens. But but I think that for us. it's so much more it's so ingrained in the brand like the the the value of the jacket and what it stands for is just a metaphor for our customer and the lifestyle and and this woman and you know she's this you know multi-hyphenate woman who you know time is money and she wants to look good and feel good and do good and get out there and do her thing and I think that that jacket the ease of it is what we look for in this brand in so many different ways.

19:01So I think it's so authentic that even if someone else does make a dicky jacket and there's plenty, I mean, even recently, there's, you know, Miu Miu, there's so many brands that are doing things like it and, you know, they all have their own version. But I think ours is so ours. In the same way that you look at a polo and you think of Ralph Lauren or a, you know, a, what's it called? A cable knit sweater. You think Ralph Lauren and there's certain, there's certain fashion pieces that are just so true to brands that even if you make it exactly the same, you can tell the difference, you know? Totally.

19:42Totally. Yeah. It's, it's because it doesn't have a logo. It doesn't have but it is something that you all really own.

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20:54How quickly from there, because I know you adjusted the pricing a little bit at one point, and that was a big turning point. I did a story with you all on that, I remember. That was a huge moment for us. That changed everything. So tell me about when you realized you knew when Saks bought in that it was going to be a thing. When did you realize that this was going to be like a big brand that wasn't just going to be on the racks of Saks, but that you were going to have many of your own stores? and that you generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue now and are a sort of go-to brand for a large group of women.

21:41When did you feel like, okay, this is, we can really do this? I mean, I think we hopefully are never there that we're like, oh, we've, we're done. We've it, you know? But I think that in 2013, that is when we changed our pricing from opening designer to advanced contemporary. And when we're talking again about the, you know, floor space in a department store, which is where we were sold, we were, when we started, we were 100 % wholesale. and um so our positioning was really dictated by where the department stores wanted to have us and we started out opening designer went to made the decision to switch to advanced contemporary because just from a footfall perspective the business was there was so much more traffic and business to be on that floor in that area.

22:42And at the same time, we had taken on our investors who are still our minority investors today, which are Andrew Rosen, Lou Frankfurt, John Howard, and Kajak Collegian. And they were - Kajak was Intermix, right? Yep. And so Kajak was our account. We sold to Intermix, had an amazing business with Intermex. And he and I had known each other from when I was a buyer. And so we had a working friendship and then we had a partnership with Intermex. And for me, I was always very, very, very aware of the players in the industry who was going, like I had a vision board of of what we needed for this business and it really included Andrew Rosen and John Howard at the time because those guys were doing all of the deals yeah and I knew like Andrew was and to this day yeah every week I said to one of their brands the other day I was like the only people I write about are Bernard Arnault and Andrew Rosen.

24:03And, and, and really, I mean, he was, you know, that article and he was a godfather of, of contemporary fashion and, and he, and he is. And, and it was just like, if we could get them, we were going to make it and we did. And, and we lowered our prices. We had the, like, the conviction and and the you know um the bravery to do it after they became our our investors and and i think it was probably a year after that when everything started to like really move um and then we opened you know our first store in 2015 that was a a pop-up which then became our Madison Avenue flagship. So 2016, we really started opening stores.

24:54And I think once we started opening the stores and the shift happened from, you know, majority wholesale to this mix of of direct and wholesale, and we were able to like, own our destiny in the conversation a little bit more. That's when I think we all knew this is this is gonna this is gonna happen. what's interesting about veronica beard to me is yes you two are smart you executed well you got the right investors lou frankford the other investor was the ceo of coach he's has a family office he sometimes invests with andrew and and like all all make sense to build like a big American brand. At some point, you all started to, it's like you created a market for, it's so hard to explain.

25:55The only thing I would say is that I went to the Chanel show in, I went to the Chanel show in New York and I talked, and there were a bunch of clients at the party after. And I talked to a bunch of them just like off the record to hear about what they thought about the new Chanel. And these are people who were invited to the show. So they, they buy enough to be invited or potentially buy it, could buy it. And so, and this one, I talked to probably someone, you know, honestly, I didn't ask her name. So I can't even tell you afterwards who it was. But I asked her like, what do you wear? Like, what do you buy?

26:36And she said, she said well I buy a couple things from Chanel she she wears vintage suits from another designer brand and she said during the day though I wear Veronica beard and she named two of your competitors and the your two the two competitors that she named which are great brands too they were founded long after you and I think that you all created this market for people day to day maybe don't feel comfortable wearing head to toe designer anymore, no matter how much money they have. And you created this market of contemporary always existed, but there's something a little different than like, say, another Andrew Brand theory, which is, was like very much for lawyers, or we buy your first suit from theory.

27:33It's very minimalist or something more casual like rag and bone or what have you, if you just want to name all Andrew Rosenbritz. But it was like the dress up woman who's an adult, what she wants to wear. And now there is, it's a more crowded market. But what do you think like psychologically you all got that made it hit so hard? Do you think it's because you were the customer yes but i think also any female designer founder would say that they're the customer i think what we've done differently is we are so obsessed with this customer's lifestyle with this woman all the and it's not yes ronica and i inform a lot of the brand but it's really this I always think of Chuck Close pieces of art like when you when you look when you stand far away from it it looks like one person and when you get up to it it's a million a million portraits right and I think that that is really how Veronica Beard is it is this army of women that that are busy, that like love life, that have a ton going on, have family, careers, their community, all these things.

28:55They want to look good. They want amazing pieces that are cool and classic that they're not going to be like, oh my God, I can't believe I bought that last month or last week or last year. You know, they're things that stand the test of time that have, you know, I think cultural and trend relevancy, but they're, you know, you look back at the, at like the great American brands and whether it's Gap or J.Crew or Ralph Lauren or, you know, Michael Kors. I mean, Michael Kors is, was for me growing up, my mother and, you know, we're, you know, working with Marissa, that was like that brand that you, that women went to, you know, for that same sort of thing.

29:44And I think women that can afford luxury are smart. You know, they're not wealthy because they're not smart. You know, it's like they're wealthy because someone's wealthy. I mean, someone's smart, you know. So I think women don't make stupid decisions about their clothes or about their lifestyle. and I think that for us it's really like outfitting this woman and it it it's our it's this intuitive relationship that we have with her like we know every season it starts off like what is she doing where is she going what does she need what's happening from a trend perspective that we can infuse in a way that that is going to feel now but not like regret that we did it later you know and and I think that there's so much out there you know today I mean god we're we were in a meeting the other day just talking about like the way the way in which you have to speak to a customer today.

30:58I mean, it's, it is forget, I mean, forget sending an email. You feel like that doesn't even work anymore because people's inboxes are so flooded that like you can hardly get through your email inbox, you know? So it is for us like being in her path, being in her community. We've, we have built this community of women that are so loyal that, that really trust us as a resource to give them the pieces that they need to get through their life. And that is the defining factor of our brand. And every design meeting and every marketing meeting and every business meeting is about that. How have you, you obviously started in wholesale and moved into more DTC.