The Guess & Check Approach
Able Made’s founder, Suzanne McKenzie, shares insights to building a strong startup foundation
A couple months ago, I met Kate Gremillion, the founder & CEO of Mavenly + Co. In our initial conversation, we discussed her company’s focus on providing young women with resources to design a career and lifestyle with purpose. I explained to her the work that I have been doing at Backstage Capital and she came up with the idea of having a special podcast series on her Women, Work & Worth podcast. In the series, Kate & I would interview successful women founders that could provide the greater community with insights on how to build a successful startup.
The following is an excerpt from the first installment of this mini-series within the WWW podcast, where Kate and I interview Able Made’s founder, Suzanne McKenzie, to discuss how her startup transition from an idea to a business model. To hear the full episode on Suzanne, check out the podcast here. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Earnest Sweat (ES): You have shared a lot about those early days and it reminded me of a key point in a startup’s life. After entrepreneurs have come up with an idea, identified a problem pain point and created some solution that they feel filled those customer gaps based on their assumptions — I call that point in time “Guess and Check.” Could you go back to those moments before calling the different brands and pitching what became Able Made? What was going through your head and how did you prepare for those moments? Also, how were you able to be flexible on with iterating on what the model would be.
Suzanne McKenzie (SM): That’s a great question. I think the biggest takeaway goes back to this “No idea,” but if you never ask the answer is always no. So I cold-called Vogue.
Kate Gremillion (KG): Wow.
SM: Yea, I didn’t have a contact there. A lot of the brands that I admired and some of them that I didn’t even have a relationship — I called them. Some of them I went to a bar and pitched some of the people. I think taking that risk helped me develop that “guess and check” experience and helped me go through the pathway. The model didn’t really shift that much during that early stages I think we had a pretty strong vision of where we wanted to start. And we were getting a lot of traction early on in regards to people jumping in and helping. So we think the biggest questions were really about distribution, our customer, and just trying to get to know which pathway was the best. We discussed whether we would launch with mobile first or do we know do direct sales or do we try to do a wholesale channel. Then we thought about who are our customer was and really tried to figure out the landscape of cause marketing. And how do we talk to our customer? Do they care more about the message about the cause versus the product? Those sort of questions were more of gray area versus the vision for the actual brand and what we were going to deliver.
KG: And you identified obviously design as one of your main strengths. Did you find that it [design] was something you were doing a lot during the beginning days of your startup? I guess I think a lot of us have this fantasy that we’ll spend all of our time at our startup doing the thing that we really love and enjoy. And I don’t know what that experience was like for you but I’d love to hear, what those beginning days were like for you. Were you leveraging your strength or the skills that you already had?
SM: That’s another great question. I really was drawing on some of the places I was most comfortable in terms of branding. Designing an identity for the brand and what was our voice and things like brand building I think were areas that I have the most experience in — so I got to play in that space a little bit which was great. Also, I love collaborating. Working with IDEO, who was helping us with our launch, was a great experience. We had some of their amazing designers at the same table and watching them sketch out and go back and forth on whether the product is going to be a bag or not was exhilarating. They also helped us determine how does the product support the charity from a concept standpoint if it’s education — should we do a bag where you can put your book bags. So that was awesome.
That was really really fun but we actually didn’t get into product design until just recently. We just launched her own namesake collection which has been a lot of fun. But I think at the beginning too, I was still trying to find my voice. I was still going through a grief process and not really being able to tell my story which is ironic because Able Made is a storytelling brand and all about people’s passions. But at events I didn’t really even want to talk about why I was doing what I was doing but it was the first question everybody asked me. So now, I think I’m at a different point. Just in my own process where I’m able to actually find my voice or my own story. But at the beginning I don’t think I was quite there. I wanted to do something but I didn’t see it personally for our brand. I was probably in the right place but I think it’s evolved for sure.
ES: I would love to hear about how you found your unfair advantage. It is my belief that every founder should have an unfair advantage when they’re embarking on these ambitious goals. How did you quickly identify that it was design and did that help with your pitches with partnerships with IDEO as well as pitching to the brands themselves? We’d love to just hear about your self-awareness or the self-discovery that you did to come up with the iteration of your story and messaging.
SM: I think in terms of timeliness I think customers are really calling for authentic brands with real stories behind them. I think because of the place that we’re coming from in my own personal attachment to the story and my own personal passion for making something work for the cause that it’s related. That came through in many of my pitches — from cold calling Vogue to partnering with IDEO or any of the amazing brands and designers that we’ve gotten onboard so far. I think that they understand that our mission is authentic and they in some way or another relate to the passion for design or making a difference. The design community is a very caring community and they want to make an impact. They want to do good for the world and not only care about the actual end product. So I’m really proud to be part of that community. I think they’re amazing and like I said I’m so passionate about that community just because of the experience I’ve had with them.
I think our community might be our unfair advantage and the focus on design in our few years in the market. I’ve seen a lot of cause product brands cease to exist because they were really just picking products because they could give back a product — which I think is very honorable. But if that product isn’t well designed or doesn’t look good, people aren’t going to want them even if they have a very socially minded consumer mindset — that’s something that we’ve certainly found. I’ve seen dozens of other brands who weren’t focused on the actual product and design not be very successful so I think that focus for us has been our advantage throughout the whole time and I see that as being an advantage as we grow.
ES: You mentioned a little bit about the next steps with product development and moving into that. Could you share some of the lessons that your team has learned? And I would love to also hear about how Able Made is a startup that is really creating an experience. What is your thought process around that? How do you create a product that resembles some experience and really aligns with the ever changing preferences of the end consumer?
SM: Hindsight’s always 2020. We’ve started on a small scale, which has been helpful. We haven’t grown too fast. We haven’t done huge production runs. So we’ve been able to keep it pretty contained, which has been amazing. We have a very smart team who’s very experienced in product and branding. I think we’ve been very fortunate to not make many hiccups. In some cases, as with any fashion label, the cash flow can be tricky to figure out. Because a lot of times you have to spend the money before you have the money in the door. So that’s been tricky — especially being self-funded at the beginning. I think that’s been the biggest thing and how do you navigate that.
As far as lessons learned, what team members you need around you and how can you begin establishing funding relationships before you actually need the capital is hugely important. So I think that’s one of the biggest losses. But in terms of production and design partners, I think we’ve been super fortunate and have had really good experiences in regards to that. Now I think our biggest challenge is just this cash flow management as well as growth.
KG: And I think that’s a really important point that you made about the discipline at the beginning and kind of starting small and staying small. I think since the subject of startups is such a hot topic now, there are a lot of myths around what is essential and what is non-essential. In your opinion what are some of those resources or mindsets that were essential for you? What was totally not essential for you that you thought was going to be really important to launch a startup?
SM: Excellent question. I think with starting small, you see the landscape as you’re going and you’re looking at like-minded brands who are also launching. We didn’t do a capital raise. We didn’t raise $750,000 like some of the brands that were launching around the same time. We didn’t start with that amount of capital but I think that allowed us to be really frugal and strong. With every decision, we had to decide if this was absolutely crucial to our growth. We had to be very selective about where our money went and where our time went. But I think that discipline has paid off and we’ve gotten to know our consumer at a very very very low cost. We’ve gotten to know where our distribution channels have worked for us at a very very very low cost and that has been invaluable. I think one topic that is really interesting is the value of PR. We’ve been really fortunate to have a lot of organic hits with some top tier media outlets — which has been amazing but I hear a lot about fashion brands needing or wanting PR. I think that’s an interesting topic for sure and it might be an area where a only small amount is what we would be willing to pay for.
But other than that I think starting as a bootstrapped company has been not so fun sometimes. And in some instances forced me to ask myself “Am I going to pay my rent.” It’s really stressful at times but in the long run, I definitely believe it was a great move. We’ve actually just opened up fundraising round because now we’re informed about: this is our customer and these are our 3 main distribution channels. We have all this data now that we can actually move to scale in a smart way and not just be guessing.
Suzanne McKenzie leads Able Made as Founder and CEO, focusing on product development with her creative leadership partners. Suzanne is an award-winning designer with over 12 years of experience in the advertising and design consultancy worlds. She has worked with and helped launch numerous national and global products and brands.
Kate Gremillion is the founder of Mavenly + Co., “a community of young women having honest conversations about college, career and life and helping them create a lifestyle by their own design.” Mavenly + Co. has a podcasts, blog, interview series, and two-day workshops.
Earnest Sweat is an Entrepreneurial Engineer for Camelback Ventures and an Investor in Residence for Backstage Capital. If you have any questions or requests please connect with Earnest through LinkedIn or Twitter.
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