How a Mother-Daughter Duo Built Luxeire from Scratch

0:00We are designing for our customer. We aren't designing things just to be like, this is cute. Let's see. It's like we're designing for a specific group of women. We're designing for ourselves and we want to create wardrobe solutions. And people like interacting with the people who started the brand and as a mother-daughter team, people always, I think, appreciate that. And I think it's really cool. I mean, part of our brand story, but I think it reflects our values as well. Welcome to the DTC Insider Podcast, where online business owners come to find actionable tips and tactics to grow their businesses.

0:44Now, here's your host, Brian Roizenthal.

0:55Hey, welcome to another episode of the TDC Insider Podcast. I'm Brian Grayson, your host, and today I'm super excited to be joined by Margot Adams, co-founder of Luxair. Hey, Margot, thanks for being here on the pod. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. Did I pronounce the brand name correct? Yes, you did. Perfect. Great. So why don't you start by telling the audience more about what you guys do at the brand? Yeah, so Luxair, we are a mother-daughter owned clothing brand that is designed and produced out of New York City using Italian technical fabrics that are also sustainable.

1:38And we primarily focus on making tailored technical apparel for women who lead busy lives, mostly professionals who want to feel confident, look great and look professional, of course, but also just want to feel comfortable. And we want to make getting dressed easy while also looking very sleek. And so yeah, that's our focus. All of our clothes are washable, wrinkle resistant. They have the same technical properties as athletic wear. Personally, I feel like our clothes are more comfortable than athletic wear, but they look like a high-end designer suit, basically. By manufacturing in New York, we are able to have really great, sleek, and fitted tailoring, and the quality is really unmatched.

2:37so you know something that caught my attention with when i met you and your mom as well uh it's that i typically meet you know you know business partners to be couples but probably never at least i have never interviewed a mom and a daughter or met a founding team that looks like that so could you please tell me and the audience more about that beautiful story about how you guys and start of the business and, you know, the ups and downs of working together, of course. Yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic when you become a literal business partner and build a brand with a parent. And I'm sure she could say the same with building a brand with her daughter.

3:24A lot of times you hear about like a parent or a grandparent starting a brand and then it's kind of passed down or a like their son or daughter joins the brand kind of thing but it's often set in stone whereas we literally were building this together which is also just an interesting dynamic because you have to kind of put aside at times your mother-daughter relationship and focus as partners and equals and value each other's strengths and respect each other in just a different way. So it's been amazing being able to do this. I think it's really improved actually our relationship. We've always had a pretty solid relationship, but I mean, if you ask my mother, I was like the most defiant high school student on the planet.

4:17So always like wanted to have control of the situation, would just do what I wanted, which now, you know, it probably helps with our business. But at the time there was more, I guess we had a little bit more friction. And then now as an adult, we have a really great relationship and she's an amazing mom. She raised four of us. And my dad mostly worked overseas. So I have a lot of respect for her as a mother and now as my business partner. So with Luxair, I'll give some backstory there. So my mom actually started Luxair when I was still in high school. I was a senior. She was a school psychologist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up at the time.

5:08And really, she just wanted better basics to wear under her dry, clean only clothing or things that were uncomfortable and couldn't find what she was looking for and she was starting to go more part-time with where she was working so she decided to make this kind of a like passion project and at first it was all innerwear and I wasn't really a part of it because I was I would help here and there like I was our model for a couple things and would help with different things but overall I was still in high school and I was going to be heading to Parsons in New York the next year. But again, it was really more of a passion project.

5:51She started selling in like a couple of small boutiques. But again, it was also sold more as intimate apparel. And the thing is, she had zero business background, almost like comically so. And so the reality is, it was a very expensive passion project. And then my dad ended up taking a job in China. And so they moved to New Jersey while I was in college. And my mom stopped working as a school psychologist and was focusing more on Luxair, but still with a business background. So then in 2019, I was going into my senior year of college. And my dad had just left this job and was going to be taking like a year off from working.

6:35And basically came to me saying that we could not keep draining our family's savings into Luxair unless it had like real potential. At the time, my mom was developing our now best-selling product, the classic button-up. And I was going into my senior year and I was working at a direct-to-consumer women's shoe brand. And so when my dad came to me, he was like, could this actually be a business? It's like, did she create a good product? And with the classic button up still in development, but getting there, I was like, you know what? I think we could really make this into something. And so I quit my internship and started working with my mom on Luxair, which was definitely a risk because I knew my internship could become a full-time job.

7:37I had been there for two years almost. But given I had worked at such a small, it was a small startup, I felt like, okay, I have enough experience and can teach myself the rest. So then that fall 2019, we did a couple pop-ups. But really what I wanted to do was take us online. But my mom, she's a different generation, was like, no, that's not what we're doing. And so we didn't. Then in 2020, COVID hit. We stopped everything. I finished up school. And that was actually funny enough, doing some accounting for my dad, who had started his own business at that point, also in shipping. And then I started looking for other jobs.

8:23And I was like, I don't want another job. I want to do this. And like, I want to actually build Luxair. And I mean, the job market was also trash. So I was like, let's see what we can do here. And basically went to my mom and said, I want to redo the website. I need a small budget. We have, we had basically zero budget. Zero. 2020, right? I graduated in 2020. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you a quick question before you can discuss. It's super interesting. I don't want to interrupt. There's some part of the story that I want the audience to know more about and me too. Because it's those little moments that define the rest of the story.

9:10Yeah. You first said that your mom was trying to figure it out and selling, of course, things online and building the current Hero product back then. And your dad came to you to ask for help or for advice and to tell you that. So I want to ask you first, why do you think your dad came to you to tell you that? That's a good question. I think because I often, which it'll be funny when my parents listen to this, but they would 100 % agree, I think, or at least like 90%, that I'm a lot like my dad in a lot of ways, but I'm also a lot like my mom. And so as the oldest of four, I think I helped them out with my younger siblings a lot.

10:05And in the end, like my dad knew that I could be a good sounding board for this and knew that I was working in the apparel business or I guess fashion business, I was in shoes. And really didn't have someone else that he knew to talk to about this. and knew what skills I had. I don't know if he assumed like Argo's going to quit her internship and join her mom, but that is what I ended up doing. And I'm honestly really glad that he came to me and trusted me in that way. And that really ended up turning, like that turned the entire business around in the end. And actually, I guess, created the business.

10:54And but what's scary when you do something like that, especially with your parents, knowing it's like we were we were very much like standard upper middle class household. It's not like we had like tons of money to just throw into something. And so I knew that stakes were high. And I was like, we I refuse to fail at this. Like, we're going to make this work. I'll do what it takes. and so yeah that's I guess yeah no no stakes were high as you said and it's it was a lot a lot of pressure for you as well absolutely always and what what was the biggest challenge back then was the lack of the current hero product was the lack of distribution and what back then what did you see that you know was missing from from that business i guess in 2019 i felt like we were going to different like very niche boutique stores and because everything was innerwear it's a lot harder to advertise even like to a boutique being And like, this is, yes, here's a bunch of different ways that you could wear it, but really it's easier to do like ready to wear.

12:22And so when we had started doing the classic button up, we did a pop-up and that sold the best. And that's when I was like, okay, this is probably going to become our hero product. But again, then COVID hit. And at that point I was really just like working for my mom. And again, it was a very different company. And so then in the fall of 2020, I noticed I was reading up on different stories about like how online shopping was booming. And I thought this is by chance. And so then given we weren't selling in stores, we had like basically closed down. I was like, let's basically relaunch without like I had no connections in PR, nothing.

13:12Um, and basically I said, I'm going to teach myself how to run meta advertisements. I will retake all of our photography. We got like a backdrop to put in our house. And I sat there with a tripod and just took a ton of photos, um, of literally myself wearing the product. And at that point, I think I was 22 because I just graduated. and then so I rebuilt the site and then started running meta ads primarily of our classic button up because it was just it became the easiest to advertise but I literally had like it was an iPhone video that I took of myself talking stretching the shirt and after just about a month, we probably started running ads in December of 2020.

14:10And my mom was like, you get basically zero budget. We have no money to do this. And yeah, like good luck. But like, if this doesn't work, no. And so it took a lot of convincing. But then within maybe even a few weeks, we started seeing some sales. Well, we started seeing a little bit of sales pretty quickly. But then once I realized which ads were working. And this is also keep in mind before all of the privacy settings changed, which was later in 2021. But then it really started taking off. And like with that video of me literally standing in my bedroom, stretching the shirt and talking. And we had like the highest ROAS we've had to date.

15:05and so the good old days of meta ads i know literally and to the point where my dad was like oh my god what is gonna work he started like giving us his business credit cards to so so one thing i noticed is that you can it kind of can we say that you are let's say the face of a brand or at least you yes it looked like uh you are right if you all check out you know their Instagram, you know, social media, you know, website, they can see you all over the place. And we, I can stress enough, the importance of, you know, being, you know, as a founder saying, you know, if you want to tell everyone that your products are great quality, the mission, the vision and everything that you want, why not doing that yourself?

15:54Like if you have many other people do that, then great. Otherwise, it's going to be just, you know, flyer style statics or it needs to be somebody and who better than the founder to tell the story in a way. When do you, if you remember, when did you go from doing that as a need to do it because of a strategy, let's say? I would say it's always a little bit of a need because we have to spend money. Our production is expensive. There's a ton of other costs that we have. And we have a small team. But I, at one point, was getting different advice from people. And now, given I was young and didn't really have that much experience, I would take it.

16:46And by now, what I've realized, I'm like, trust your gut. you know your company the best and people would said like you should find other models to talk about it you should find this that the other thing and so I did that and they and I had them like I tested basically like four different people and myself talking about our product and mine performed the best by far by far and i think it comes down to and people what's funny is people because we've talked to customers now and people had no idea because a lot of people don't go into like what's their story on the website they just thought i was a model that wore also wore the product and loved the product they didn't know that i was involved in every aspect of the business and also helping develop the products.

17:43And so, but I spoke, of course, like from the heart about our products because I believe in them. And I joined my mom in this venture because I believed in the mission and the product. And I think that really shows in our advertising. and I was lucky enough to have some modeling experience and loved always loved taking pictures loved like creating videos growing up even so it was something that I enjoyed doing and was pretty good at and so it was not only a need and still kind of is a need but it was just it's what worked and to this day it's like it's been almost five years and our best advertisements are either me talking to the camera my voiceovers I even now have tried like the AI voiceover where I talk and then it kind of changes my voice doesn't perform as well so it's just funny even though like my voice I hate listening to it again because then I'm editing this and I have to list and do it again and again and again and like what a nightmare but yeah it works i mean ai i have a lot to talk about that in a few minutes but before going there you know you were mentioning that you call your customers and again it's something else that i always tell businesses that they need i mean this is not rocket science but we need to do the simple stuff because that's support pool you know and it's related to ai as well because many people want to use ai for everything and i'm not against ai i use ai but we need to you know lose sight that ai replace you or or what you do in your business the most important thing is to again use your size to your advantage your business size to your advantage so if you're a small team do the things that bigger brands won't do.

19:48So you mentioned calling your customers. Well, we didn't technically call them. It was more of like when we've actually met them now in person or even like, I guess my mom has always something she's really good at as, as like, as a woman with a PhD in psychology, she still runs all of our customer service. And so when a customer reaches out there directly interacting with the founder and until recently like I think six months ago we started automating returns because as you grow for her to be online constantly doing that is too much but in general before like all of our returns too were coming directly to her and they were interacting.

20:37And I think our customers have really valued that. I think they feel like, okay, she actually cares and she does. She cares about every single one of them, anyone who purchases from us. And we always want people's feedback because in the end, we're, we are designing for our customer. We aren't designing things just to be like, this is cute. Let's see. It's like, we're designing for a specific group of women. We're designing for ourselves and we want to create wardrobe solutions. So I think by having such a experience or shopping experience, that's helped us not necessarily grow, though through word of mouth we have grown, but it helps with customer retention for sure.

21:25yeah i mean just in case i it gives you or somebody in the audience ideas you know something that are of a client at the agency and some people we talk to on this podcast as well or everywhere on linkedin like but mainly through through the the previous two you know it's that some some companies regardless of the size you could be you know six figure brands all the way to nine or even bigger, you know, figures. What they do is you can keep it as simple as you can, right? But some divide the, let's say, people, because not all of them are customers, in three packs or three cohorts, non-customers, but those who are subscribed, let's say, to your email list and never bought from you.

22:15Those who bought once and never again. and those were, let's say, your VIP customers. If you engage in a conversation, whether it's a call, a survey, or something, you can pick only a few of them per quarter, per month, or again, when you can do that, it gives you different insights. Those who never bought from you are going to tell you different things from your VIPs who are going to love everything. Those who bought once and ever again, probably there were some issues or probably not. They were just, you know, trying to try new stuff, get back. So all of those conversations are going to give you different insights.

22:52And then some companies go beyond. Of course, you need a bigger team for this. But one mid-8th year company, I think it's like$60 million. They say it publicly. What they do is they have like the CX team, basically, doing what, you know, Are you familiar with the win back email flow? Yes, we have one, but I really need to make some edits there. Yeah, so they do that on the phone too. So they sell a subscription box of survival gear, blah, blah, blah. And when people turn, they call them to ask for feedback. And then if there's a fit, they have a script to transition into, you know, getting them back as subscribers, blah, blah.

23:42smart they have a they they they measure that and they recover or so they say they recover a lot of people from that so everyone is so obsessed i'm saying this because everyone is so obsessed about automating stuff and that's fine we need to automate stuff and do the highest lever task but those highest those those high lever tasks are not the same for every company so bigger companies different levers than smaller companies and i think i think personally that the strength for the smaller companies are probably not to automate the same things that the bigger companies automate it's to be winning that territory that space by being a human like the human touch what they don't have they automate that so do we need to automate that too i don't know but that's just an example of that the long way goes like only just call your customers once a month just choosing 10 of them and maybe record that on camera with their permission like some people like have their clients calling on speaker and with their permission they record themselves like this you know and use that for the ads and that's according to what they say some of the best performing ads they have because it shows many things at once it shows that they care about the customers it shows a live testimonial you know and yeah it's amazing that the power of reaching out to somebody yeah i love that i'm literally taking notes yeah something else is that you know you said that you do you know these pop-ups where you back then you used to do that if you keep doing those.

25:27But it goes a long way, you know, not only for you guys, but for anyone listening or watching this, why not? You know, founders here on the podcast has said that, you know, they went to Central Park with a sign saying, ask us about our blah, you know, bags or whatever product they sold. In their case, it was bags. And of course, that's a non-scalable action. However, these days, as you know, with the phone, everything scales because it can go viral. And they did on TikTok, Instagram, blah, blah. So you can do this kind of stuff everywhere. Plus the human touch connection of engaging with your customers in real life and trying to gauge, you know, their interest on what you sell as I'm sure you experience in the pop-ups.

26:12Yeah, absolutely. I think like for us, we again started by doing some pop-ups. What was challenging is that actual return in those moments because certain people will buy, certain people won't, and it's hard to measure. And when you don't have any revenue coming in separately, which at the time we didn't, it's difficult to spend all of your time doing that and then not see a large amount of sales. And then throughout the past few years, we've been so lean with A, people and B, budget that we haven't really focused on that as much. But especially we've done a little bit more, not only the summer, spring, but even this fall, we plan on doing more curated events, etc.

27:08etc because in the end what really sells our product is the fabric and the feel and of course the fit and the look and everything but that's what differentiates us and so when people feel the fabric like their reactions we actually went to Hudson Yards with our shirts and did a little bit of that I want it was like 97 degrees outside so I want to do a little bit more this fall but it's not quite as hot, but had people feeling the fabric and reacting. And even at one of the pop-ups we did this summer in the Hamptons, people would come by. We had a sign that said, like, please touch the fabric. And people would come over.

27:46You could see and hear their verbal reaction being like, wow. And seeing that and having people come over and actually do it, I realized, I was like, okay, that we really need to be doing more of this now that we have a couple more people on board and can, I guess, yeah, we don't need to put all of our focus on meta ads and emails as just two people. And really it was just me doing it. So, and if we were to do a pop-up, I have to create all of the marketing materials and I have to be there, all the things. And so now with a couple more people, I'm really excited to be able to do more in-person things.

28:28And people like interacting with the people who started the brand and as a mother-daughter team people always I think appreciate that and think it's really cool I mean part of our brand story but I think it reflects our values as well yeah so I think that every founder listening to these will feel you know the same because as founders we all wear many hats right especially when we start out, but I was very surprised in the first interviews that I did with, you know, let's say mid eight figure brand to learn that they were under 10 people. It was like, what? Like the first time I interviewed Opi, you know, Opi is a huge settlement brand.

29:20They're amazing people in the community, in the commerce community. And when I interviewed Ronak Shah back then in 2022, I think it was, he said that they were nine or so or 10. So he was like, what? Wow. Yeah. So we wore too many hats. And then, of course, we grow. But I hope he's your team now, more or less. As of literally this summer, like as of right after Memorial Day, we now have, including my mom and myself, four. And the two people we hired are kind of more contract workers. So ours are a little bit dependent, but the goal is to have them by this fall be more full time. And we're focusing on like social media and like just creating more creative because that stuff takes time.

30:18And so, yeah, right now there's, I guess, a total of in-house people four. But that's, again, as of the end of the day. What's the role they say, I wish I had someone like this working with us because it takes so much time. And why don't you do it? Well, I guess, what was, was that a question? Sorry, I missed something. Yeah, sorry. What's, it's because of my language, you know? I would like, what's like the role you wish you had right now, but you don't and why? I guess the role I wish I had. It's a good question. I think I mean, I love the creative aspect of our brand or like building a brand.

31:11I like I always have. And so a part of me likes still being so involved in that and even like editing videos and all of that. And again, because I've been doing it by myself for a while, I still I'm very nitpicky. and so I'm still very involved there but the goal for me would be more of a like I guess management role while also remaining I guess the face of the brand where I have which we're starting to get there where it's like okay I'm the one being filmed I'm doing like I might be modeling, I might be doing random things and I'm being filmed, but someone else is actually editing all of that or having someone literally manage my schedule.

32:04But I have a bunch of different things promoting our brand and someone else is doing all of the backend work would be fabulous. Where right now I have a little bit of that, but for the most part, I am hyper-involved and all of the back end while also now trying to manage our two new employees. All right. So going back a little bit, you know, in the company story, I wanted to ask, you know, about the first moment that you saw that there was a product market fit. You mentioned earlier in the conversation that back then you ran meta ads and you discovered that you were getting sales online. But then when did you notice for the first time that those sales were consistent and there was some huge thing going on?

32:59So I noticed, I would say, in the spring of 2021 that we were starting to really pick up some traction. The issue then became we were running out of fabric because we had done such small runs before. and we couldn't get enough fabric from Italy because the mill was closed down. So that created some issues at that time. But eventually we got the fabric. And I would say, I guess a big moment was probably, I'm trying to think. I mean, every year I would say we're growing. Like we had a huge jump, I would say, from 2021 though to 2022. Um, we started expanding our button ups to more colors. And really, at that point, we only had top, we only had tops actually until fall of 2024.

34:00But I think, as we started seeing actually very like recognizable names of high profile women purchasing from us based on them seeing and clicking on an ad of literally me with a tripod filming myself with these shirts. I was like, wow, okay, this is working. And we're reaching a target market of professional and busy women who have been looking for this. And what was awesome is when someone places an order and then you see like literally either the same day or like the same day they received the product or a few days later, they place an order for double the amount or triple. And we started seeing that and seeing a lot of, as we're again, expanding colors, expanding just different styles, seeing that repeat customer rate.

35:02Like our repeat customer rate, I think on average is about like 45%, which is pretty good. And then when we, during the months when we have like a new product launch, especially one that's like really hitting or during sales, it's upwards of 60%. And so I think that just speaks to the loyalty and us really finding our target. And again, like the women who buy from us are some of the most like hardworking, successful women in the world. so that's it's incredible honestly it shocks me to this day but i'm proud i mean it must be a huge feeling a beautiful feeling you know when you see that there's an order from someone you know or you admire you know so that is how did you feel back then like the first time it happened or someone probably specifically admired and he was like whoa can you believe this mom I guess I would say, because what's funny is, even though I am the face of the brand, because of the price point and the style of our products, our customer skews more my mom's age.