Mixed Messages
October 12th, 2008
Some time ago, Tamar and I had a great conversation with Dr. Lois Frankel. “Your company has serious legs and you are on the verge of something huge” she said “but you have to make the necessary provisions to allow for your success.” Translation: get the office space you need, expand your staff and, most importantly, pay for capacity: hire somebody experienced and top-notch to help with you growth. “You will soon reap the benefit of your investment and it will pay for itself many times over” she promised.
Bobbi Brown, some two weeks later, had almost the opposite advice for us: her emphasis was on conservative and controlled growth. And she had the success story to back up her advice. She started her company in 1991 with nothing but a great concept and several lipsticks. She managed to keep expenses low by working out of her home office and soliciting family members to help with the business. Remarkably, she had never raised outside financing when she sold the company five years later – all because she grew at her own speed, always taking in more money than she was spending. The rest, of course, is history. Bobbi Brown has built a beauty empire and her name and brand are world-renown. I, myself, am one of her first and best clients.
So what to do when two such bright and well-meaning mentors give you such seemingly differing views?
Tamar and I have been talking these issues over a lot – after all, they cut to the very core of our company and our day-to-day lives. But we have come to the realizations that these approaches are not so different after all. I think what both Bobbi Brown and Dr. Lois Frankel were saying is “Look at yourselves and look at your company. What are your needs at this time, what is your outlook and what is the best way to get to your goal? Do what’s right for you and a company of your size at every step of the way.”
It’s obviously not a great time for taking risks or making out-sized capital commitments. But the demand for our product is strong enough and the feedback so positive that we both feel we need to move full force ahead. We have out-grown our current space and need to upgrade. We have our hands so full, even with the help of friends and family, that the time has come to expand our team.
Of course, we are doing all this in the most economic way possible: Tamar’s husband is sharing some inexpensive warehousing space with us, instead of hiring headhunters, we are working through friends in retail and with the advice of mentors to locate talent, for PR – we are using my cousin’s agency and getting a “family rate.”
It’s a time of great uncertainty, but Tamar and I have placed our bets on Dapple.
