From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Were you selling this under private label, or was it still retail?

Stephanie Madesh: We were selling it as the Kalon brand. It was our own design. We were still a boutique. But if you can imagine Forever21 when they started, they had their own label and all the labels that they carried.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very common in the fashion business. They start with selling other people’s brands and then pick up categories in which they offer their own brands. Your strategy is exactly in line with what retail companies do.

From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2010?

Stephanie Madesh: We doubled that year. We were at the $300,000 level. That was two-fold. We had started a print-on-demand. That had its own website. That drove the other $150,000 in sales.

Sramana Mitra: What were you printing on demand? T-shirts?

From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was the age group you were trying to go after your own age group?

Stephanie Madesh: Yes. I was going after the 20- to 30-year-old market back then. As it evolved, my customers base were more in the 20- to 60-year old category.

Sramana Mitra: How did you acquire the customers?

From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your business is the plus size?

Stephanie Madesh: From 2x up, we run about 30%. Men’s is higher – about 35%. We go up to 4x for men’s. For women’s, we go up to 2x on a knitted item and 4x for the rest.

Sramana Mitra: What other categories are big winners for you?

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Did this come to a complete standstill or was there still a business?

Kish Vasnani: In 2020, we did just under a million. Of that, about 70% came from the first three months of the year. The rest of the year was really tough.

Sramana Mitra: Are you still in Bali?

Kish Vasnani: No, we moved to Miami in August 2020.

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This email list where you got pre-orders from, was that just your email list from before or did that include Indiegogo crowdfunding email list?

Kish Vasnani: It was a combination of all. We were able to segment the list. We also had a segment of people who were very interested in the bag but had a bad experience. A huge segment wanted to buy directly from our website when we had a formal return policy in place.

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Could you summarize what you learned? What were the wins and what were the mistakes?

Kish Vasnani: On the wins side, we figured out product-market fit. It reached a critical mass of people. As soon as people saw the product and imaging, they resonated with it. That is thanks to Vanessa’s background. That part was great. It was our first time going deep into the manufacturing process. That’s where we did have some slip-ups. Our samples looked great, but when it came to mass production, we had bags that were defective.

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Crowdfunding campaigns, in general, work well when you have an email list or a community to promote your campaign to. It sounds like you already had an email list. How large was that community that you had brought together?

Kish Vasnani: It was around 5,000.

Sramana Mitra: How much revenue had you brought in from the previous accessories business?