How Still Here Tailored Its Growth Without Outside Capital

0:00Oh my god, they don't know Jean's here. They need us. I felt like they need still here. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan. In an era when retail closures dominate headlines, one denim brand is still here. And they're thriving. We shipped to them and they sold out within a week and a half. With only$20 ,000 and a single rack of hand-painted jeans, husband and wife founders Sonia and Maurice Mosseri launched Still Here, a vintage-inspired denim label that has been turning heads and profits in New York and beyond. So about four weeks from now, we'll have our third store.

0:45And third baby. Same due date. Sonia and Maurice are here to share how they've won over fashion editors and bootstrapped Still Here to a multi-million dollar brand. Welcome to the show. Thank you. We're excited to be here. Thank you for having us. Very, very excited to chat with you both. Sonia, why don't we start with you? There has been so many different denim labels on the market, but you felt something was missing. What inspired you to start this line? So my father was born in Egypt and came to America in the 60s. His family was prosecuted out of Egypt and had to leave everything behind. They came to New York with practically no money.

1:30And his parents gave him a couple dollars and said, go buy jeans for school and size up. They're going to have to last you a long time. And he bought this incredible pair of Levi's that he actually wore throughout all of his schooling. And so eventually, years later, when he had kids, he gave them to me as a memento of his childhood. And of course, they meant the world to me. I still have them. They have markings of ink stains and acid stains from his chem class and patches that my grandmother sewed on for him. So so much memory was captured in this pair and it definitely sparked an incredible inspiration and journey for me in my career.

2:13I had a dual career kind of coming out of college of wanting to be in fashion but hating the industry and also loving fine art and you know about to embark on a master's program in fine art and I decided to just start taking my vintage jean collection which I had gathered over the years and start painting on them and it was an interesting time on Instagram where you know know, you could get a lot of traction online on Instagram. And so I, you know, these jeans were getting a lot of exciting, just notable people wanting them. And there was a lot of excitement around the product. So as a New Yorker, my fingers were on the pulse of fashion.

2:59And I was, you know, a young consumer in my 20s. And all my friends were buying products and fashion. And they would go to department stores and not find any jeans at the time. This was 2016-17. And then they would go to the vintage twin or these overpriced vintage stores and spend upward of$300 on vintage jeans. And so I felt that there was something missing in the market, which was this incredible classic blue jean that I think there was amazing products coming out of the industry in the late 90s and early 2000s and something, you know, the ball was dropped. So I felt very inspired to, you know, pick up that ball and continue that conversation of the American uniform, blue jeans and a white t-shirt.

3:44And so that's sort of where the journey started. So Sonia notices something was missing in the industry and she has this incredible idea. Maurice, how were you able to help her launched Still Here in a scrappy way with, I believe, just$20 ,000? Or some of the initial things that you guys invested in? Yeah. So when I started working on Still Here with Sonia, I actually had a full-time job at a wholesale company. And I was helping Sonia to essentially figure out the nuts and bolts of production and bringing a product to market at night. So I was working a full day of work and then coming home, popping open the laptop and basically, you know, working through some of the initial challenges with her.

4:32But the money that came for the first production run was actually money that we got as gifts from our wedding. So we had gotten married in 2017, both right out of college. Sonia and I actually grew up together. So we know each other since we're children. High school sweethearts. Oh my goodness. I love the backstory. story. If only I could run a life and business partner podcast, but this is incredible. Wow. Okay. So you get married right off of college and you actually use your wedding gift for building up still here. Yeah. What were some of the initial things you did? Yeah. So, well, first and foremost, Sonia had a vision and it was challenging for me to wrap my head around it, just knowing that, you know, it was going to be an expensive undertaking and understanding what she wanted to do was very inspiring.

5:25And so for me, looking at the business from a macro perspective early on, I was just trying to help create the foundation for something small, honestly. And as we continued to build together, we found our rhythm and the momentum them started to pick up. And so I had to, you know, dedicate more time and energy towards the business and really helping build some more foundation. And I didn't have experience in the clothing industry or fashion in general. And so, you know, there was a huge learning curve for me as well. And I found it to be both challenging and satisfying to do right, which took some time.

6:08I think the biggest problem we faced initially was figuring out production. and we were flying back and forth to California. You know, Sonya was jumping on red eyes and coming back the next day, you know, spending six hours just at a facility doing some testing. We spent a lot of time there for our first few production runs that we were doing in LA. So that was a big part of it, putting together pricing. And then because we had initially launched with a major retailer, figuring out the kinks and all of the necessary information and details required to work with a major retailer. And that was something that luckily I had some experience with from the business that I was working at, but in a completely different category and a completely different price point and with very different types of buyers.

6:55So that was most of what we began working on initially together. Yeah. Building the groundworks to make sure that production and logistics can happen. While that's one part of the business, Sonia, there is this big break with how you've initially started with painting on vintage jeans to actually transitioning to still here. So talk to us about that experience and also how it led you to that big retailer that Maurice was hinting at. Yes. So on Instagram in 2017, it was it was an exciting time to just get attention with the right people. And so we got invited to the capsule show in New York to paint on jeans.

7:38So someone was bringing vintage jeans and I was there just like painting these stripes that became signature to still here. and Maurice and I being, you know, native New Yorkers from Brooklyn, we were like, yeah, we're going to skip the line. And, you know, we're just going to bring a rack of samples and pretend we bought a booth here. So I think we got married like a month prior to this. So we're like newlyweds and this business was taking off. And anyway, I was sitting there painting jeans. And by the end of the show, we actually had about 250 interested retailers that were requesting line sheets and, you know, just giving me their business card.

8:16And just there was so much excitement around what was happening with their stripes on these vintage jeans. And the owner of the capsule show actually came up to me and said, you know, you're the most exciting vendor here. I want to see you back here in a year from now. And I was like, okay, you know, I was naive. I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it. And then the night of the last day, Maurice and I received an email from Barneys, New York, requesting line sheets. And so being, again, being from New York, that's the greatest email that can ever come into your inbox. They at the time were the movers and shakers of fashion, which felt like across the world, honestly.

8:59And Maurice and I had our aha moment where we really were digesting that there is something here, something worth building. And we had to figure out how to do that. So we responded something like, you know, yes, working on it, we'll get back to you shortly. And we actually spent a full year in R &D, figuring out how to scale this, you know, very, I would say mom and pop, you know, unscalable also business, business plan, which is hand painted stripes on vintage jeans. So it's like hand painted, number one vintage stock which is dwindling by the moment and so we were like in this funny place so it really took a year for us to figure out like hey we actually think that the the beauty in in the concept here is actually in the jeans and so I spent really about nine months with a pattern maker figuring out what I felt like was missing from the marketplace and so there's so much detail that from a design standpoint I can speak about but it was the first fit, it was called the Tate.

10:05What was novel about the Tate was that number one, we were approaching the denim industry with this idea that we want to return to 100 % cotton jeans. That isn't crazy. And at the time, comfort stretch was such a huge thing. So it kind of was crazy. And it makes sense that Barney's was the only one that was really interested in this idea because they were, you know, the hub of avant-garde fashion. So that was number one. And number two was I think that there was this feeling that I always grew up with that when you feel a pair of vintage Levi's and you just feel like they're it's substantial and like this is gonna last and you could do life in them I really was looking for a fabric that felt that way and then in terms of fit there was so much just work that went into making your tush look great and I think when it comes down to jeans you know you look you look at yourself in the mirror in the front and then you quickly turn around and there are certain elements that are undeniable to jeans and so I really was taking all of those things into account and building something I felt was missing from the market even just with one skew and then figuring out how to you know scale the painting so that was all happening still at home and so finally after a year responded to Barney's email with line sheets saying like, hey, like if you're still interested, we figured this thing out and they were interested.

11:33They said, come in. We brought in our samples and they were still excited, you know, but it was kind of this double wears Prada moment where like everything's black and it's kind of scary and we were shaking and everything we said felt like the wrong thing. And by the end of the meeting, they were like, great, how many units do you have? We'll take them all. And so we walked out of that meeting, had martinis and then said like, okay, great. We have to figure out how to hand paint 250 jeans. My mom and I spent three months in a basement studio apartment on Canal Street, painting jeans, heat setting them, doing all the things, then, you know, tagging them, doing everything on the wholesale side, which Maurice was so tremendously helpful with on how to actually ship to a retailer like this.

12:25And we shipped to them and they sold out within a week and a half. And we actually hit their denim sell through records on the floor. And so they were like, okay, we need more jeans. And that kind of marks the moment where Maurice and I looked at each other and we were like, okay, we're in business. We need to go to LA. We need to figure out how to scale this thing. There's something viable here and it's really exciting. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of like the dream moment for so many founders, right? It's also an inflection point of, I think, stress as well. So yeah, Maurice, kind of take us through the next steps, right?

13:03You have a great success with Barney's. Everything is sold out. Now you actually have to figure out how to do this on a larger scale. What are the realities of getting such a large PO? Yeah. So it's funny because every time we had one of these great breakthrough moments, there was a challenge that was immediately following it. And so when we got that second order from Barney's, that was a larger order. I think it was 400 jeans. And like Sonia said, we flew out to LA and we met with the factory and we bought the fabric and we bought the trim. And you know, we came with the, with the PL in our hands, like it was just like this very, um, crafty moment where we were, Sonia and I were super excited by the traction we were getting, but also recognizing that this required, you know, management that we both didn't have a lot of experience in and that we would have to be on top of.

13:59And, you know, I was working a full-time job. And so we, we recognized, you know, being in business was going to be a challenge and we accepted that. But what we didn't see coming was that when we delivered the 400 jeans eventually to Barney's and, you know, wrapped the pallet ourselves in Sonia's parents' garage and did all the routing and like helped the truck driver put it on the truck from her parents' house, like literally involved in every detail. We didn't foresee that Barney's would, you know, soon after we delivered about three weeks later, go bankrupt. So yeah, so that was, that was interesting.

14:38And we immediately had to pivot. So you have this financial discipline that's laying a great foundation for the business. And Sonia, on top of that, you're able to build an incredible brand, one that so many top fashion editors are referencing as their favorite jean. How are you staying ahead of the curve and staying inspired to create even more for the customers that love you so much? Well, I would say that we have a very positive and faithful view of life and especially business. I think even in moments like that, we were constantly reminding ourselves that we just don't have the full picture yet.

15:18And which was the case, we were able to break Net-A-Porter right after Barney's before they went bankrupt. And we started getting interest because of Barney. So it really opened up the door. And so for us, it never really marked a bad moment in our careers. It was actually the start because it really catapulted us to the exposure that we needed to have at that moment. You know, wholesale came to us. Net-a-porter was interested. Browns, Farfetch. Maurice, you could speak to this part. Yeah, so we had some traction in wholesale. We had this great sell-through. And so I started immediately cold outreach to other major retailers saying basically like, here's the sell through of, you know, the product that we had on the floor at Barney's.

16:09And when they saw that, we were able to get the meetings that we were hoping for. So we were on our own, like bouncing around to offices and like renting breathers just to show product to, you know, major retailers. and we were able to break Net-A-Porter, Farfetch'd, Browns Fashion, Neiman Marcus, Sacks, you know, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Fred Siegel. So like some of the greatest department stores and luxury boutiques in America and internationally. And from there, we were so excited because we started to collect, you know, a bunch of orders from retailers on this season and really go into a larger production with the factory who was so happy to receive that big order.

16:48And we went into production, got all that product made for retailers. And when it was time to deliver the product, the retailers started to slowly reach out to us, letting us know that they couldn't accept the product because they were considering closing their warehouses because of COVID. It's incredible to hear because both of you view these turning points not as moments of negativity, but moments of opportunity. So I'm sure this is the start and inflection of direct to consumers. So talk to us about facing this new chapter of challenge and with great success of wholesale, how do you transition and sell directly to your fans?

17:29Well, at that point, we had to get the product out of the warehouse because it was in California and they were having restrictions very quickly. And so we shipped all the product to our apartment in Brooklyn. And we were sitting with a bunch of product in our Brooklyn apartment. And Sonia and I were looking at each other saying, what are we going to do? And we were like, okay, all these retailers are going to close. We have all this product. We basically locked up all of our available cash flow into this and went to be scrappy. So we looked at each other and said, it's got to be direct to consumer.

18:04Well, the funny thing is right at the time that we actually pitched Barneys, Maurice and I had this idea because there's a chance Barneys does not respond to us, But we were still really excited about the business. And so we built a website on Shopify. And we announced on Instagram, like, website launching at 12 a.m. on this date. Meanwhile, like, 12 a.m., who's even awake? And we had, like, 30 followers. It was so funny. Yeah, like, we had a couple hundred followers. Like, who cares? But, you know, we announced that our website's going to go live. And I just remember this moment so clearly that Maurice and I, like 12 a.m.

18:47came and the website wasn't ready. And Maurice and I were like, oh, my God, you know, what are we going to do? People are waiting for the website to be ready. And we were fixing everything. And we realized we didn't name the product. And all of this is happening between like 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. And then finally at 3 a.m. it was ready to publish. And we published the website. And I just remember sitting on the bed with Maurice, like staring at the live views. And it was just like zero. And it marked a time that Maurice and I really decided to shift the business to focus more direct to consumer and all the things that comes with that.

19:26Because obviously, you know, you can't just publish a website and expect people to find you and believe in your product. But that's how we started the website and began our journey in direct-to-consumer. I love the cute backstory of like building that initial site. And it just also shows how much foresight the both of you had. So Maurice, maybe talk to us about how did you adapt the business to make sure that direct-to-consumer shipping to customers was running smoothly? Yeah, so direct-to-consumer was definitely easier. I'll start by that. because just when you're dealing with these major retailers, there's just a 70 page vendor guide that you have to go through and then you deliver the product and then there's chargebacks for things that were that were labeled the wrong way.

20:11And, you know, they just have so many regulations and guidelines that you have to follow. And with direct to consumer, there's just like so much more freedom to be the brand. And so we had a slow start and we tested a lot of different ways to work with our customers. So initially we were going out with no digital ads. It was just all organic. And so most of the traffic was being driven by organic social media posts. You know, back then it was easier to gift influencers and have them tag you and, you know, get sales from that. Now you don't see that as much or as often driving actual revenue. But back then it was it was a strong channel.

20:54And so we did a bunch of that and we continue to to build the following in that way. And some of the logistics associated with it is Sonia and I were just like picking, packing, pulling a product, shipping it out ourselves. You know, we had a little postcard that we would put in every single order. A lot of times we would handwrite a note saying thank you so much for your support. We hope you enjoy these jeans, you know, from Sonia or from Maurice or from the team. And we would throw in some goodies here and there, like a hat or whatever it might be, just like something to really give that personal touch.

21:24And it was very personal to us. Each flasher tag in the beginning stages was numbered. So each gene was numbered. The flasher tag would be the tag that was on the back patch pocket. So like everything was hand stamped and numbered and yeah, like handwritten note and just a ton of care in each package, which I think that we felt was part of the magic in direct to consumer and something that was obviously missing when you're working with, you get the exposure when you're working with wholesale. stores. But with direct-to-consumer, we were kind of invigorated at this concept that we could completely control the experience that the customer is having with our product.

22:07What an incredible journey and pivot. You have a few years where you are balancing more of a direct-to-consumer model. And then fast forward a bit to 2022, you also opened the first brick and mortar location in New York City. Why was this so important for the business? Yeah. So through the website, we quickly recognized the challenges of selling, like I said, 100 % cotton jeans online. There was this learning curve with customers for sizing that we really couldn't hack as creative as we were getting with our size guides and communication around sizing. We were seeing that a lot of the sales that we were getting were not sticky.

22:51It was like the exchange rates were so high. And across the board in denim, like they're just higher than other categories. And we were accepting that. But at the same time, we're trying to problem solve. And we looked at each other and we were like, we're in New York. We're New Yorkers. This is the hub of commerce. This is the hub of fashion. And our consumers are walking the streets. Let's do everything we can to open a store. Yeah. And I think the insight there was like, we were looking at the data and we were just seeing the return rates were so high on the product. And it was just like, because we were selling a hundred percent cotton jeans and we were doing it online.

23:26And because that was novel at the time, it was like, good luck telling a woman that she's actually a size 26 when she thinks she's a size 24. Yeah. We were also working against vanity, vanity sizing, which is just very commonplace, but with a hundred percent cotton jeans. There's no lying. It's really just right according to spec. So I think a lot of our customers were used to vanity sizing and comfort stretch jeans. And so we had that challenge. And then there's also this concept of like when you're a long-term fan of, let's say, frame, you know your size in frame and then you can order online.

24:07But it felt like it was clear that we needed to give our customers an easier way to buy the brand. And so it was still COVID and Maurice and I felt really strongly about this. And we started touring retail spaces. We were looking for about, I want to say a year, we were looking at spaces and just, we didn't even have money to do it. But we were looking at spaces and just trying to understand the landscape and And being from New York as a consumer, it really gave us an upper hand. But we were approaching it as also like, where is our customer? And which customer do we want? And so, you know, we were like, oh, do we want Nolita?

24:48Do we want Lower East Side? Do we want Bleecker Street? Like, who is she? And we ultimately found a space that we were so excited about. It was occupied. It was occupied. We were like, oh, we want this one. We told the broker, we were like, if this ever becomes available, this is the one we would take. And they were just like, of course, you guys, you know, are going to be difficult like that. And lo and behold, six months later, it was available. Yeah. And we got the lease in our hands and we signed it practically on the spot. Wow. We felt very confident about it and we signed it. I stayed up that night in the space with graph paper and a pencil, designed the whole space.

25:30The next day, met with a mill worker and we built the space in 10 days and we're open for business on the 11th day. Yeah. And we had negotiated some free rent for the build out. So the thought process there was, if we can get, you know, a month or two of free rent, when we can open in 10 days, then we can make up the difference to be able to pay them rent by the time we have to pay it. Yeah, we had no idea what kind of venture we were embarking on. And I should also say it was, it was at the tail end of COVID. So there was just so much uncertainty in the world, especially on the retail landscape.

26:07It was a bizarre business move on our end to be taking a risk like that. But we strongly felt and still do that in the realm of direct-to-consumer, like one hand feeds the other in terms of online and retail. And thankfully, that was what happened. I did want to dig in a little bit on the financial piece because it is quite a large investment and a lot of founders are excited about having a retail space, but it's also quite scary. Maurice, maybe talk to us about like negotiating that buffer of free rent. And also, what are some checklist items to make sure like as a founder, I am actually ready to invest into retail?

26:48Yeah, so I think just like backing it up a little bit, understanding where we were coming from, having launched with basically our savings account in product and then having the first retailer we worked with go bankrupt and not getting paid for that product. having to then launch with all these other major retailers, I had to put on a different hat and say, if we're not going to take on debt and we're not going to raise money to do this, then we have to figure out a way to cash flow the business. And so the insight was these retailers have money and I can probably just get a deposit from them for the orders that they're writing.

27:26So we had these major retailers that were placing these wholesale orders essentially financing the business for a year before we opened our retail store. So even with, you know, some of the warehouse lockdowns, we still had 50 % deposits from a lot of the retailers we were working with. And so we had to use that as the capital that would be used to open the first retail store. And so in the negotiation process of finding the space and, you know, really committing to it. I had a couple of non-negotiables. And the first one was that it had to be a COVID deal or else we couldn't afford to open the retail store.

28:10And we got that. Also, just having grown up in New York, we're lucky enough to have a large community of New Yorkers. And, you know, so many people we know that are involved in real estate, whether it's on the brokerage side or whether it's on the ownership side or whether it's just on the tenant side. And so we were able to get a lot of advice and help through friends and friends of the brand as well. So we had a leg up for sure coming to the market. We took a really small space, which I think was necessary considering that we were on a low budget. Our store is 350 square feet. And no one else was renting stores during that time.

28:52So I think just considering all those factors, we had the ability to have some flexibility. And so asking the landlord for free rent and being able to negotiate an option for extension and all the things that would eventually become pivotal parts of the reason why retail is profitable for us were in one way strategic and in another way being in the right place at the right time. Incredible. Yeah. There's such great financial discipline and a foundation for the business. But I think also on top of this is also, Sonia, your continuous eye and also continuous taste in the design and also shaping the brand.