Eileen Fisher: Keep it simple to make it timeless

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0:41That's why over 3 ,000 firms trust Affinity, the CRM platform purpose-built for private capital. Affinity's relationship intelligence reveals your team's strongest paths to founders, investors, and decision makers using insights It's hidden in emails, calendars, and meetings. With powerful AI tools like Affinity NoteTaker and Deal Assist, you'll spend less time managing data and more time closing the right deals. Learn more at affinity.co slash marketplace. Imagine you're a kid visiting a library for story time. Once you get past the stuffy, dewy decimalization of the grown-up shell, you find yourself in the wonder-filled world of the children's section.

1:33There are dragons painted on the wall. Plush owls are posted on tables. And Saturn hangs from the ceiling. As you gather around with the other kids, your excitement builds. Are you about to hear a heartwarming tale about a hungry caterpillar? Or perhaps you're going to launch into a space rocket adventure. Or maybe you're going to shiver your timbers on a jaunty pirate adventure. Beat him to the sharks. So imagine how you react when you learn that this story time is going to be all about financial literacy. I will have my revenge. That may sound like a hard sell to a bunch of hyperactive six-year-olds.

2:19But for one superstar entrepreneur, there was a finance-shaped hole in the world of children's literature that he felt compelled to fill. There are so many great books that talk about getting to know your feelings and the differences of others. And there were no books about financial intelligence or entrepreneurship. So I just figured, why not me? That's Damon John, the founder of the game-changing streetwear brand, FUBU. and one of the original sharks on ABC's Emmy Award-winning Shark Tank. Most of the challenges we have come from the lack of money and the lack of information or what to do with money.

3:04He'd need to tell a simple, relatable story to capture kids' imaginations. So he looked to his own childhood for inspiration.

3:16really rooted in a version of Damon at 20 years old and a version of Damon at six years old

3:30I did sell pencils when I was young and stuff like that to make money my passion was hip-hop Damon titled his book Little Damon Learns to Earn telling the story of a six-year-old who creates a t-shirt business so he can buy a poster of his favorite hip-hop artist. At its heart is a simple refrain that every little kid can get on board with. To get kids to participate in it, studies have shown that they feel very strong about counting to five. I can count really fast to five. One, two, three, four, five. So when you see the Chris Dollar Bill laid out and you're reading that in the classroom where the mom or dad is reading it to a kid, they go, one, two, three.

4:18I know you're thinking about the count right now. One, two, three, four, five. I know you're thinking about the count right now. One, two, three. It's all, you know, there's certain methods and ways to communicate with children that are easier because they're absorbing information in a certain way. The aim of this simple idea is to give kids a lifelong interest in building their financial literacy. And there's something that even the most seasoned leaders can learn from keeping simplicity at the heart of their businesses. Every single business has to have clarity and simplicity. And so, you know, when you say Nike, just do it, Fubu Forest, Bias, White Castle, What You Crave, TNT, We No Drama, TBS, Very Funny.

5:09You know that you are getting to the core of something. That's why they say the great people know how to do what they call an elevator pitch. 90 seconds. You should be able to convey whatever you do on the back of a business card. So you better either have a huge-ass business card, write very small, or you get it. Put it in a couple of words. You got to convey what you do. There's nothing more important than simplicity and clarity. The challenge is keeping things simple, but not letting that keep you behind the times. One, two, three, four, five. I know you're thinking about the count right now.

5:56That's why I believe if you want your company to stand the test of time, you need to keep things simple without letting them stay the same. You've got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I'm supposed to know what to do. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working as a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls.

6:29Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it.

6:36This is Masters of Scale.

6:44I'm Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host. And I believe if you want your company to stand the test of time, you need to keep things simple without letting them stay the same. Stop for a moment to ponder this simple yet vitally important question. What's the greatest pizza topping of all time? Is it the unadorned understatement of the margarita? The perennially appealing pepperoni? the indulgent depths of a Chicago deep pan, or perhaps something more avant-garde, like a duck liver and raspberry supreme. It's a contentious question, and one I don't expect to solve here, mainly because there is no right answer.

7:37Here's why. The beauty and essence of pizza lies in how it's a simple, timeless idea that has been iterated upon throughout the ages, from the flatbreads of ancient Rome to the emergence of its modern incarnation in 19th century Naples and right through to today. This idea of simplicity leading to longevity also applies to your product, business, and brand. I wanted to talk with Eileen Fisher about this because she's made clarity and simplicity the a hallmark of her namesake clothing brand since she founded it in 1984. Eileen's long-lived label has maintained its relevance over four decades of changing fashions, shifting and evolving with the times while still staying true to core essence.

8:25Eileen is also one of the early pioneers in the concept of namesake apparel businesses, employee ownership, sustainability, and social responsibility. The Eileen Fisher brand has made its name for its minimalist garments that can be mixed and matched to create simple, stylish outfits. Yet, its understated ethos has its roots in the outlandish fashion trends of the 80s. Here's Eileen. The 80s, when I started, was a pretty crazy time. The clothes were kind of wild. Women wore, like, shoulder pads, and there was something extreme about a lot of it. I would go shopping, and I would just be overwhelmed.

9:11Finding a few things that I liked, but then how do they go together? It was just too much. At the time, there were two main options for buying clothes. The large department stores or small, exclusive boutiques. Big box outlets and, of course, online shopping were a thing of the future. Boutiques were interesting. I could find some of what I wanted, but it was a search. It wasn't easy to find the simple things. In fact, Eileen didn't find a simple aesthetic in her search of the five boroughs. Instead, she took a trip to Japan, where Eileen came across a piece of clothing that altered her perspective on design.

9:53The whole aesthetic of Japan inspired me. The kinds of shapes and the fabrics they used. Just the general simplicity of everything. Something about the kimono really fascinated me. I liked the timeless and the simplicity of it. You're likely familiar with the traditional kimono of Japan. It's an iconic, T-shaped, unisex garment that is often made from one piece of fabric. It's at once simple and elegant and long-lived. tracing its roots back to 8th century Japan. And in all that time, it has maintained its relevance. I liked the movement of the kimono. The way they draped. The lines and the way they moved and just fascinated me that fabric could do that.

10:42Eileen began to put the simplicity of the kimono together with the demands of modern fashion. I was also a little bit jealous of men because men had such a simple kind of system, a way of getting dressed. Simple shirts and simple pants and even dressing up with ties and shirts. I wanted to create this kind of a system. The idea isn't to just wear the same thing every day, but to have things that work easily together so that you can switch it up and dress it up and dress it down. This simple concept needed simple designs. It came to me in shapes. The flood pants, the little box top, these simple sort of architectural shapes was how it started to kind of land with me.

11:34I wanted to create these puzzle pieces.

11:43I often talk about how entrepreneurs are the only ones crazy enough to make a counterintuitive idea a reality. So it's important here to point out just how much Eileen's vision for clothing went against the prevailing fashions of the 80s. But she felt there was a huge unmet need for simple, unadorned clothing that could be effortlessly combined into different outfits. The first step in proving this was getting our idea out of her head and onto paper. It was just one problem. I don't really draw. I was making these random weird sketches, just fussing around a little and trying to think about it and how it might work.

12:21To anyone else, these doodles wouldn't have meant much. But they helped Eileen form a clear idea in her own mind of the clothes she wanted to make. Like a writer working on the first messy draft of a manuscript, this is an important initial step in building any company or product. Because if you don't have a clear idea of the business you want to build, you're more likely to trip over unexpected and complex problems down the line. Now, Eileen was ready to produce the first pieces in her new clothing line. It was a square top, almost like a box. And then the little flood pant, the little wide-leg pant.

12:58And then there was a vest piece with a v-neck that just dropped over all of it.

13:05That was the first outfit grouping. I made them in three colors, and you could mix and match them.

13:22Eileen took those first iterations of her simple idea to a boutique show. Eight small stores bought my clothes, and they all said they sold. So it was an okay starting point, but I needed to do it better. Eileen took the feedback from those purchasers and iterated on her design, iterating without adding complexity. The fabric was a little too stiff for what I was trying to do. They also weren't right in terms of color. The colors I picked were too dark for spring at the moment. Then I went back to the next boutique show and got a different fabric, a little more drapey that was more appropriate for my shapes.

13:59People stood in line to write orders, and it was just an instant hit. Changing the clothing while still hewing to the idea of simplicity paid off. The orders totaled$40 ,000, far more than Eileen had hoped for. As the business grew, Eileen made sure to keep her focus on keeping her designs fresh without getting too far away from their core simplicity. I sold to these boutiques, and I did the boutique show and the coterie, these shows that happened in New York for small stores around the country, a few international stores. The designs were making Eileen Fisher a hit among the fashionistas who frequented boutiques.

14:38However, it wasn't playing so well with the department stores. Remember, this was a time when department stores were the big-scale opportunity. Department stores, they were just confused about us. We were too simple. Our clothes would sort of disappear or something in their stores, and they didn't quite understand it. Getting her clothing into department stores would help grow sales, awareness, and passion around her clothes. Nowadays, I'd expect Eileen to get around this roadblock by setting up an online store. But that wasn't an option back in the 1980s. However, Eileen had been quietly developing a way to sell clothes that circumvented the boutiques and the department stores.

15:19I had so many seconds and damages and samples that I couldn't sell, and it just seemed like a waste. And so I opened a tiny store on East 9th Street. Customers would just see the clothes in the window in this tiny little store and come in. I realized that I also had a retail business. The success of this small, out-of-the-way store selling damaged products gave Eileen the confidence for her next move. I just ran the numbers and figured out that we needed to sell about$3 ,000 worth of clothes a day. And I was like, well, we're already doing that on 9th Street. I think we should be able to do that on Madison Avenue.

15:56It seems like a simple move to make to open her own branded shop on New York's famed Madison Avenue. But it was also an astounding one for the times. In the 1980s, it was almost unheard of for a fashion designer to open their own store. I don't think I understood that it was unique for designers to be doing that. I don't think I understood that. So we opened a store on Madison Avenue and it was a huge hit. I remember customers like banging on the door, like pulling the door handle, trying to get in. People stood in line to buy clothes and bought stacks of clothes and they were so excited. And I was like, whoa, this works.

16:41Now, it's commonplace for brands from fashion, technology, and even cartoons to have their own stores. Think Burberry, Apple, or Hello Kitty. But at the time, opening our own store was a counterintuitive move. It also highlights something important to note. Keeping things simple does not mean doing things the same as everyone else. The popularity of Eileen's store had another effect. When we opened our own store, the department stores could see the whole. And I think the line is so much about the whole. It's like you're making a puzzle, but if you don't see the whole picture, you just see a few pieces.

17:19It's not so meaningful. So when they saw the whole and they saw customers standing in line and buying stacks of clothes, they were like, they still didn't get it, but they wanted a piece of it somehow. For the department stores, the success of the store was a simple demonstration of the scale potential of the Eileen Fisher line. So they made an offer. We need to open a whole department for you. We can't just bring in a rack of clothes. It needs to be a whole department so people would understand the concept. The store within a store is common now, but back then it was a rarity, especially for a little-known brand.

17:57And as the department store sales took off, so did the success of Eileen's branded stores. It seemed like the model worked, And so we opened a couple more in New York, and then D.C., Boston, Chicago. Every year, two, three, four more, something like that. And then the department stores started layering on. With a foothold in the market and a devoted customer base, Eileen was ready for the next scale step.

18:26Throughout the 1990s, Eileen opened stores across several cities, along with a new distribution center, and hired more than 300 employees. She had created a simple business model that worked. But as the company scaled, Eileen found it harder to keep true to the simplicity that had made her clothing line so successful. It was like we lost it and things just kind of went too far. We'll hear what happened next after the break. Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high. They innovate, they push forward, and then they take the stage at the Masters of Scale Summit. Join us in San Francisco, October 7th to 9th, to hear from the CEO of the New York Times, scientists using cutting-edge technology to find cures, the leader of crypto powerhouse Coinbase, a retired four-star general, and many, many more.

19:22Apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply25. That's mastersofscale.com slash apply25.

19:57aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one. So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. We're back with Eileen Fisher.

20:45To see exclusive clips from my interview with Eileen, head over to the Masters Scale YouTube page. Before the break, we heard how Eileen built a clothing line focused on simplicity and began scaling her sales from boutique shops to department stores.

21:05The brand grew through the 1990s, and by the end of the decade, was shipping over one million items a year. In 1998, Eileen saw a way to further expand the scale of her simple outfits. We wanted to do higher-end, little more expensive fabrics and little more beautiful kinds of things and not just casual. At the time, it felt like the logical extension. Eileen Fisher had made a name for itself as casual and chic. Now Eileen wanted to add a little more emphasis on the chic, keeping it simple without letting the fashion line stay the same. However, Eileen was still determined to keep to the core simplicity that meant you could combine any Eileen Fisher piece with any other.

21:48We see the line as a whole. So the dressy things, the silk pieces go with the linens and the cottons and the wools, and it all goes to work or dresses up or dresses down. In keeping with the system of the Eileen Fisher ethos, the pieces all still need to mix and match into different outfit combinations. However, the department stores had a proposal that would add complexity. The department stores like to separate things. They proposed the idea that we would put the silks and the more expensive things in the higher-end department. So against her better judgment, Eileen made a separate range of clothing.

22:30So we tried to do what we call the New York line, the higher-end line. We had to recreate core pieces in higher-end fabrics and more casual things and some dressy things to go in the casual department. It's like we doubled the size of the line. Once again, the way department stores operated didn't fit with Eileen's vision. This time, though, she adjusted her business to match their way to try to capture the next scale wave. Because we had to ship to two different departments, it seemed like this massive expansion of the company. And we hadn't tested a lot of those fabrics, and they didn't work quite as well, and so we had just exploded.

23:12It was like we kind of lost it, and things just went too far. Eileen's move to appease the department stores badly backfired. This was a key inflection point. She had to return to the simplicity that made her clothing successful without going backward. Whenever something feels wrong, I gather a group of people, like the core creatives in the company, and just start dialoguing. What is it? What do you think? What's not working here? The beauty of adding the silks and the dressier things is that they worked with the cottons and the knits and all the different pieces. The thing is a unit. How it works is how it works together.

23:55And we decided to abandon the New York line.