Harvard in Tech Spotlight: Sarah LaFleur, founder of M.M. LaFleur
I spoke with Sarah LaFleur (Harvard College Class of 2006), founder and CEO of M.M. LaFleur, a fashion company creating practical, inspired wardrobes for the modern, professional woman. M.M. LaFleur offers online and in person stylist guided shopping for women to find personalized outfits to empower them in the workplace and beyond.
From an early age, Sarah was exposed to high end fashion through her mother who worked in the industry. When Sarah graduated college and started shopping on her own for work clothing, she realized the experience was very lacking. The options on the market were generally of poor quality, fit, and style all while still commanding a premium price. Consequently, Sarah found that a significant portion of her income was going toward overpriced clothing she did not care for.
After starting her career at Bain as a consultant, Sarah moved to private equity but left abruptly because of cultural problems at her firm. It was an immensely difficult decision for her because she was terrified of ruining her resume by leaving the prestigious industry. Worried that no one would hire her, Sarah decided to create opportunities for herself. She was young with no mortgage or children and felt it was the best time to take a risk and explore something different through building a business that filled the gap in the professional women’s fashion market she had experienced first hand.
Sarah started by creating a simple ecommerce site featuring nice dresses at affordable price points. When she first launched, growth was quite slow. While her prices were reasonable, they were still not cheap, and with ecommerce, price was a huge factor. Since customers could not touch, feel, or see the clothing in person, the value and quality of the pieces was hard to convey online. online.
Faced with slow sales and excessive inventory, as a last resort, Sarah reached out to the 1K people on her team, sending them inventory and telling them to pay and keep whatever they wanted. To her surprise, the business made more money in that one week than all prior weeks combined. This dress selling practice was later refined to become M.M. LaFleur’s signature Bento, where stylists sent clients a customized box of office attire. (M.M.LaFleur recently evolved their Bento Box offering to launch Omakase, capsule wardrobe collections with items that can be mixed and matched to create different outfit combinations.)
Reflecting on this experience, Sarah underscores the importance of selling in the right way. Frequently, product market fit alone is insufficient. The sales channel, mechanism, and strategy are equally crucial components. One of M.M. LaFleur’s key value adds through its products like Bento and Omakase is resolving customer’s choice paralysis. With the numerous options in fashion and life, busy, working women are looking for fashion savvy people to tell them what to wear and how to put their full outfits together.
Looking back on the incredible growth of the business since then, Sarah underscores the difference between early stage and growth stage CEOs. In the early stage, she was very involved in every operational nuance of the business. In the growth stage, her focus has been much more on building an incredible team to manage each core aspect of the business.
Beyond their apparel, M.M. LaFleur also has an incredible content and community platform, The M Dash. Even before starting the company, Sarah found that there was no content site dedicated to professional women. So, while building the core product, Sarah simultaneously launched and grew the content and community side as well to fill this gap for working women and build trust and understanding around the brand.
When asked for her best advice for recent Harvard graduates, Sarah says, “Your 20s are a really challenging time where you are focused on finding yourself. Rather than trying to network or do superficial things, really lean into the thinking part of your brain and spend more time reading, writing, and reflecting on your life’s calling.”
