Fashion Mogul Says Working Moms Need to Stop Apologizing

0:05Last week, we hosted a live show in New York City in front of a great audience of journal superfans. On stage, I sat down with fashion mogul Emma Grede. She helped found a number of businesses, including the apparel brands Skims and Good American, with Kim and Khloe Kardashian, respectively. Emma and I talked about starting successful businesses, working with celebrities, and saying no to mom guilt. You can watch the interview on Spotify.

0:37Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. Coming up on the show, Emma Greed on the business of fashion, making millions, and the trade-offs it takes to succeed.

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2:40Well, Emma, I'm so glad you're here tonight. I'm so excited to talk to you, partly because I think you're the perfect guest for us. I've read your book. I've listened to your podcast. You heard the tagline, money, business, power. I feel like this is your jam. This is my area. This is it. This is my area. All the things I like the most. Well, I want to start with the fact that we're in New York City at a time when, you know, the power brokers of fashion are coming into town for New York Fashion Week. As somebody who's like really plugged into the industry, I am curious, where is the money in fashion going right now?

3:12The money in fashion? I mean, that's a really great question. Well, where should it go? I mean, where should it go? It should go to the things that we all love the most. You know, it's really interesting, actually, because being somebody that came from more the business side of fashion, I started my career in production, working for the great and the good of the European fashion business and quite frankly spent my entire 20s going, where's the money? Like, what is happening here? So decided to come to America, where the money was, and sort it out with feverish intention. And so I'm coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Good American, which for me is just crazy to think about.

3:55And I think about how many companies in that time have come and gone and how many things I did before that company, how many things I've done in between that. And you get this kind of one golden goose moment, which for me has been really around skims. And so it's kind of amazing and quite interesting to look back on the last 10 years and understand what has actually happened. And I actually want to talk to you about both those companies. As you said, they've both had real staying power in the industry. And you built these companies by partnering with celebrities like the Kardashians. And not just partnering as an endorsing, which is typically what we see, but bringing them on as business partners.

4:36Can you talk about that distinction? Like, why was that so important to you? Well, it's not even a distinction. It's the way those partnerships come about, right? And I think that anybody that believes that, you know, putting talent together with a brand is an opportunity either to make money or create a credible brand will learn very, very quickly that that is just simply not the case. I think we can all count way more businesses that have failed than have succeeded. And so you have to come back to what it really is. Talent can be an incredible accelerator to popularity, to visibility. It's a marketing.

5:12Well, I wouldn't say just marketing. That depends on the individual. And I don't want to be overly pedantic about it, but I think it is an important distinction. What you can do with talent to accelerate the knowledge and the visibility of a product on one hand is incredible. But to make a real product work, you need a business partner. And if you're going into a partnership, the partnership has to equate to more than somebody's following. and I'm really lucky that I found partners who are capable of that. And so how much of it, okay, I know you can't really like show me the recipe for this, but like how much of it was partnering with the right person, and then the right product, and then the timing.

5:49You know, you came out with Skims at a time when this maybe was something people were looking for, and the same with Good American. I think the timing is everything. You know, one of the things that I've always thought about whenever I started anything is almost taking aim at the competition. And so I have an acute awareness for what's happening in the business, for what's downtrending, for what might be needed. And actually, when you think about these businesses, they were answering a consumer problem. They were looking at a space which was devoid of any innovation and taking something like the plus size space, which for most fashion businesses and brands is a complete afterthought.

6:25You know, it's something everybody's like, okay, we're doing this in the main part of our business. Here's what our range looks like. And here's this extra 15 % that we're going to put no thought into. Especially in 2016 when Good American launched. Yeah, I mean, you think about it, we didn't even have the vernacular that we have today. The industry wasn't what it is today. And so going out on a limb to create something in this space where there was not much that was incredibly appealing, not really much understood about that customer and doing things completely differently and rewriting the role, that's what made those companies really, really successful because you have to endear yourself to customers.

7:01as celebrity talent can drive you to a product once, but it can't keep customers coming back over and over again. Only fierce loyalty for an excellent product can do that. And on that note, on the product, how do you think about product as trends develop? What do you look out for? How do you decide this is going to sell? Well, that's something that I can't really put my finger on because when people talk to me about trends, I'm like, what? Like, it's just, it's not something I ever think about. We're not looking at fashion week. I'm not looking at trends. Like, no one can tell you to make, you know, a size 15 and invent a new size.

7:40No one can tell you to make one-legged shapewear or a bra with a nipple on it. Those things didn't exist. They were innovations. And great products and great companies are born out of doing things differently. So, yes, there's an element of running a fashion business, which is always going to be, let's look at what worked last year and let's iterate on that and bring something similar into the market. But if that's how you're led, you will die pretty quickly. And so it's hard to say like we're looking at trend because instinctively the way I do business is to go left. It's to look at what's happening and go, OK, that's great.

8:13But like, what can we do that's never been done before? So I ask this too in part because I'm looking at your sports apparel brand off season, which you've partnered with Kristen Ushik, the wife of Kyle Ushik of the San Francisco 49ers. And, you know, I went to the website. I was like, this is really cool. It's it's very street wear. You know, it's like the kind of thing that you as me as a woman, I'm looking for something cool to wear to a football, maybe football game. It's a stretch. Go on. But no, but like it's cool. It looks great. But I was going through it. You know, my household, we're a New York Jets household.

8:48And I was looking at your website and I noticed, you know, there weren't as much merch for the Jets as there were for like the Eagles or the 49ers. And I... Did we upset you? Did you not? Just my husband probably was more upset. He's in the audience right now, a little bit. I mean, everything's down on a curve. But that's what I mean. It's like you... I assume that it's on purpose. You're thinking about what merchandise to sell, who the audience is, who's going to buy this. Yeah, I mean, look, I think with any business, there's an element of math and science and art that has to meet, right? And in any business, especially one like Off Season, which is a company that I love so much, because it is a company that exists in a space, again, where women are massively underserved.

9:30And if there's any type of, you know, trend in the businesses that I run, it's doing things where I think that customers are overlooked. It's where there's a solution to provide, where there's some piece of the audience that is, for whatever reason, forgotten about. And in that lies a massive commercial opportunity. And so when you think about fan apparel and you think about going to a game and, you know, the same old hoodie and an oversized T-shirt and nothing that you would look moderately cute in. and yet you look around the stands and the customer and the fans that are there, it's full of women.

10:05And women hold all of the purchasing power for the rest of their family. And so it makes sense that catering to that customer would be something that would be incredibly lucrative. Now, on the other hand, going and signing, you know, licensing deals with the, you know, LMB and the NBA and the WNBA. Costs money. And, you know, it's like, well, not so much that it costs money, but it's really difficult to do. And so I think where I get excited and where I see opportunity is doing the things that take enormous effort that will hopefully yield enormous results. But it's not something that you would do without really understanding what the opportunity is and really honestly, like just not being lazy.

10:44Because I think that what happens is there is a turnkey and an easy way to approach everything if you want that result on the other side of it. And my point of view is that if you do better, if you approach everything with excellence, if you go the other mile, customers intrinsically feel it. They understand, they know, they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel represented. And with that comes a lot of loyalty and as a result, repeat customers. After the break, Emma agreed on why women need to talk more about money.

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12:10well in the two decades or so that you've been in the fashion and retail business you've mostly been behind the scenes but in the last year that's quite changed a lot you launched your podcast aspire you came out with your book in april um and one of the points that you make over and over in the book in the podcast and over what do i say i'm very repetitive i'll tell you that well i think it's a superpower because everybody knows what i want from them but go ahead well this in this case this is something i'm really excited about is you want women to talk more about money I do. Why? Because we don't.

12:44And listen, here's the plan. I'm going to talk to you in the audience. Listen, I tell you what it is. When you have, you know, gone out and raised hundreds of millions of dollars and you sit on the boards of lots of companies and you run companies and I have hundreds and hundreds of staff, men and women, you start to notice behavior in the workplace specifically and what happens when you avoid conversations around money is that the money avoids you and what I've seen over and over and over again is that as women it's just that we weren't necessarily raised and trained to have those conversations and what happens with men is that they just speak so freely about money and they do it everywhere they don't wait for a special like secret moment to share it with their best mate they are in constant interaction about every single thing whether it's uh the you know a mortgage or it's the rate on a credit card or it's an investment opportunity or whatever it is big small medium in between and women don't have enough of those conversations with enough specificity and so I think that what happens is that the stories that we grow up with our own money story stays with us and there's nothing to break the spell unless you know differently and so my point of view and the reason that I started the podcast and the reason that I wrote the book is because I wanted to be honest about what it's taken for me about the conversations that I've had and the sacrifices that I've made and the ways that I've done my deals because the the idea of me getting to this position is so that I can do the opposite of gatekeep right it's like I want to share so that you get more and you get more and you get more and you know by default someone's got to get less but maybe that's the boys and that's fine because they've been getting for the longest time so the point is that the more we speak the more we share the more open we are the more this information actually impacts what we're earning well in the spirit of talking candidly about money emma greed how much did you make last year i would never tell you only because you'd be so jealous i'd be like oh uh well forbes reported 405 million uh is what your net worth last year which is i am jealous um and i think they missed a bit i was like that was last year so you know it's been a whole year it's been a year it's been a good year but i ask that too in part because you do talk about you know growing up without much money and so i'm curious like are you proud of your net worth today is your relationship with money more complicated than just like making more of it?

15:27That is such a good question because when you grow up with very little, you know, I was raised in East London, raised by a single mom, I'm the eldest of four girls and so there really wasn't a lot to go around but in that way I was extremely focused on what I needed to live the type of life that I wanted and it's not that I shy away from telling you an amount, it's very well publicized the value of my companies, how much I own of those companies and and and the net worth that is somewhat attributed to that by the way you know my my my favorite saying is that like who cares about any of those valuations you know it's like I really I really try not to think about it very much what I do care about however though is the path to ownership because the reason that I have those numbers attributed with what I've done is because I did.

16:16Because on paper, as a school leaver, as somebody with very little education, as somebody that only came here less than 10 years ago, most of that shouldn't really be the case. The point is that I put myself in that situation purposely, deliberately. I took a lot of risks. I made an enormous amount of trade-offs, which also I don't shy away from talking about. And so again, I think it's really important to say, yeah, great, like I made a lot of money and the cost of that was. and the reality of that is and the way that my day is is as follows because again I think that we're in this crazy moment in the culture right now where you know the kind of default path for women is that I'm just gonna like manifest my way into like millions I'm like really like I don't think that works like I don't think that that's possible I've been trying to manifest it for a while yeah I'm sure like it doesn't happen and so I think there's an element of like coming clean that's really required in popular culture specifically as it relates to women supporting women women's empowerment and women and entrepreneurialism and again I do say women three times because it doesn't exist in the same way for men nobody thinks like he manifested his way to it we're like good on him he rolled over a few people and it all worked out like pow do you know what I mean and somehow we have to like you know like share our profit all along the way to get there.

17:38I'm like, absolutely not. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Well, talk about trade-offs. You know, you're a mother of four, your oldest is 12. Is that right? How do you think about the space that work takes up in your life? I think about it with a great degree of pride, you know, because I worked very hard to be able to work this hard. And I don't try to hide it from my kids. You know, I am, again, I think that part of that is my upbringing. And I think for so many of us, that guilt is a story that's passed down from other women, from our grandmothers and from our mothers, because the prevailing wisdom is that if, you know, I'm in New York and away from my kids, which I am right now, that somehow I should feel tremendous guilt.

18:20I mean, the truth is, I absolutely love it. Like three nights in a hotel, I sleep diagonally in the bed. I'm like, woo! It's a Tuesday, let's go out! You know, like, but I say that in jest because again, I think a lot of women feel actually all right about leaving their kids for a few days. It's just not so cool to say it. And the truth is that we all, when you get and work yourself, as I have, into a position of great privilege, the idea that I have the childcare and the infrastructure and I married a good person and I'm able to do that is not something that I'm going to be in constant apology mode for.

18:57And so I've just kind of wiped that behaviour from my thoughts and from my vernacular and again in doing that I hope that some other woman would be like yeah like I'm good I'm going on that trip because I was asked to do that trip because I'm so good at what I do like there's no shame in the game proud yeah like good at what you do 100 % that isn't about motherhood 100 % and I feel I feel totally fine about it so long as we can all just be honest about what those trade-offs are and you have to choose them and I think I've chosen quite purposefully I'm not missing a day when my kid is performing or has an art show it's like am I missing that mom's coffee morning like yeah I didn't want to go in the first place right and this this goes back to be planning the trip on that day I was like I'm busy actually sorry about that I'm like PTA meeting back I mean honestly but but this is also like this is what you meant I think when you kind of went viral earlier this year and you said you were a max three-hour mom you've also called yourself a core memory mom I feel like that one maybe was said for me but max three-hour mom thing was just a level of honesty because I think when you work all bloody week you know Monday through Friday and I don't do a nine-to-five no one that runs businesses does and so many that don't run businesses don't either but by the time you get to Saturday like I'm not sitting down playing with my kids all day I'm not evolving the entire weekend around my children the reality is by 12 o 'clock noon I'm like oh I'm done with you lot you know and so what I was doing was being facetious but also by the same token saying it's okay like let's give ourselves permission to have a level of honesty about how different ways of parenting doesn't mean that you're a good or a bad mom and I think there are all of these labels and all of these things and it's just such a big distraction I think that there's so many other things that we could be focused on there's so much more to glean from me than how many hours I spend with my kids and actually the better question is Emma what don't you do and what are you spending your time on and I guarantee for any single woman that will be a million times more valuable than thinking about the time that I'm not spending with my kids well so this idea right like women women cannot have it all 100 % of the time there are trade-offs we have to we have to make trade-offs that's just the reality of life like this idea kind of reminds me of Sheryl Sandberg's lean in a little bit kind of reminds me of the concept of girl boss in some ways we've been having this conversation for a while so I just want to drill down on what you're offering that's new that's different I don't know that I'm offering anything new and different I think that I'm just telling my truth I know you know I never wrote a book to talk about anything other than the truth of what my journey is and And actually to have an opportunity to take that outside a 30 second reel.

21:51Because when your story is so publicly visible. And I am spoken to by so many women on the street every day. And the idea that I turn up to work like looking great and put my feet on the desk and tell somebody what to do. I was like that's just not been the reality of my journey. I think the reason that the conversation prevails in popular culture is because we can't accept it. Because the rules that we have laid out for women are constantly judged and constantly discussed and constantly debated by us. And I think there's some responsibility in that. I think that all the men in the room have no idea what I'm talking about.

22:34They're like, so? Okay, like, great, like, moving on. and yet we will have a conversation for what when did lean in come out like 20 years ago exactly that and so I think that we owe it to ourselves to accept it and to say that we can accept that your way might be different from my way but there is a commonality in the goal I think that we can all accept and we can all appreciate and we can all agree more importantly that more women in positions of power would be a pretty good thing in this world well can't argue with Right? It's a fact. It actually is a fact. But we have to also accept the responsibility that we have in that perhaps not coming to fruition as quickly as it should.

23:19Thank you so much, Emma. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you, my darling. That's all for today, Sunday, September 20th. And here are the credits, read by two of our listeners at the live event. Thank you very much to Cyrus Atiyah and Autumn Billiter. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Woo! Nice job.

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