Launching a luxury sustainable fashion brand with funding and a kickstarter! It’s VENIM (episode 382)
Leslie Fong has been in eCommerce since 2009, and in 2018 took the leap into founding her own fashion brand. VENIM launched with a super successful kickstarter in 2019, has been awarded grants by Spanx, SIA Scotch, and Facebook, AND been nominated in FGI’s Rising Star Awards.
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Getting Started In eCommerce
Leslie has always worked in fashion.
While attending fashion design school, she worked with a business owner who ran eCommerce sites for her brands. That was Leslie’s first experience in eCommerce, which also set the stage for her future career with Venim that combines both eCommerce and fashion.
About Venim
- Based in California
- Sells globally but with majority of their customers coming from the United States
Venim’s hero product is their 100% cotton denim trucker jacket. Its main features are its genderless sizing and customizations, which are like works of art.
What’s coming in the future for Venim is its expansion to knits.
The Team
The internal team is made up of just two people — Leslie and her co-founder, Kaycee Houchin. They do the branding, design, and production in-house.
What they outsource are engineering and marketing tasks like paid ads, public relations, and social engagement.
When asked about the co-founder piece, Leslie says it’s working for them because she and Kaycee have known each other for a long time. They play off each other’s strengths, with Leslie doing branding and eCommerce and Kaycee handling technical product development.
She does mention being a solo founder and working by herself for about a year before onboarding Kaycee, so she could first understand her abilities as a CEO.
Venim’s Sustainability Component
The brand’s focus is making luxury, quality, genderless denim jackets but it was important for Leslie that their production methods also centered on sustainability.
Venim uses deadstock denim materials — raw materials that have never been used. These materials are used to produce Venim’s jackets, which also pass through wash houses in Southern California that have sustainability systems in place.
Launching The Business
Leslie’s background working for other startups showed her that while the companies were small, they had great funding.
She believes that this allowed the startups to create their products in a more thoughtful way before launching.
Because of this insight, she took her time before she launched Venim doing focus groups, running it in beta, and crowdfunding. It was during this pre-launch period that she was able to figure out if there was demand for the product, and if she could attain product market fit.
The Key To Venim’s Success
Leslie says that the key to their success is their customization piece.
It has given them a competitive edge, and a lot of the brand’s success is due to this component.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Leslie says their agency wants them to create more video content and to get into TikTok because that’s where everyone is.
Tool Top Tip
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Any split payment method; Venim uses Klarna
Growth Top Tip
- Accept that there is single winning channel. Everything is going to ebb and flow, and you’ll figure it out along the way.
Interview Links
- Business
- Sign up for Venim’s newsletter and you’ll get their quarterly secret Spotify playlist and 15% off your first order
Related episodes
- 381: The Fashion Business Model of the Future? This is Unfolded with Cally Russell
- 373: How Sustainability and Community are super-powering this fashion brand with Katie McCourt from Pantee
- 354: Building a Sustainable Fashion Brand with Partnerships and PR. Gergana from blonde gone rogue
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