The Power of Design
“I was at the hospital giving birth to Zeke, and Serena walked in my door… she was an artist and a textile designer, and she was also a decorative painter who painted kids’ rooms and nurseries. And she had a line of textiles that she was block printing by hand,” Lily Kanter reflected on her relationship with Serena, in an interview with Goldman Sachs, that had started so serendipitously. While personally interviewing Lily she mentioned her first encounter with Serena remarking, “16 years ago… my manager said this woman left her portfolio. I looked through it, and it was gorgeous, and I loved all her work.” When Lily meets Serena, she immediately noticed “there was tremendous chemistry” as she mentioned an interview with Goldman Sachs, “We held hands, and we embarked on the journey, and we were shipping product roughly one year after that first meeting.” Lily continued as she explained the nature of the relationship was from the start giving her new brand, Serena and Lily, a kick start. The power duo of Serena and Lily quickly made a household name out of their brand.
Lily’s life and her work are the same, and this apparent looking around her beautiful house filled with the print designs that Serena and Lily are so famous for. In the corner sitting in a box are stacks of every catalog published since Serena and Lily was founded back in 2003, and she was enthusiastic about sharing her journey that lead her to fill that box with so many memories
This inkling for entrepreneurship began at a young age for Lily. She started a roller rink in her basement and provided amenities and wholesome entertainment for a small cost. Although she realized she had a passion for being her own boss, after college she didn’t go straight to pursuing her own business, “I started off in a very traditional corporate job of public accounting, which was a good basis for any person is going to be in business to understand accounting and financial statements…. after two years of that I was bored to tears.” Realizing she wasn’t where she wanted to be, she had the perfect segue into the next chapter of her life through the birth of her first child, “… I was in corporate America for 17 years, and then I had Max.”
She hit a crossroads and decided to create her own path, “I put Max in a stroller, and I strolled him down town to Mill Valley and open Mill Valley Baby and Kids Company… he went in the crib, and I helped the customers” and just like that the path was forged.
Lily was not on this path alone. Serena, the talented young artist, also was eager to learn a new trade which she mentioned in the interview with Goldman Sachs, “I remember picking up a book on Gorilla PR and having to teach myself everything that I needed to know about PR. We had to learn cut and so to get our production made, the challenge of those days, and the newness and the amount that we had to learn was my greatest point of excitement,” elaborating what it took from her end to help create the products her prints would be on.
Everything Serena was doing was new. Yet she tackled the learning curve with Lily who shared, in an interview with Goldman Sachs, the mind set that got them so far, “I think entrepreneurship is really about resilience because you do get knocked over a tremendous amount of times and you have to pick yourself up, and you’d have to brush yourself off and literally make the next thing happen.”
This power house duo face the world head-on meaning they are no stranger to adversity, “‘Oh yeah, guys (say): ‘so which one of you girls has run a $50 million company before’.. we’ve had a lot of discrimination from older investors,” Lily mentioned over the phone in my follow-up interview. This is an example of one of the common remarks she has received while in meetings, “I’ve noticed that old school investors that are say over 60 or 65 years old, they tend to, you know, kind of their instinct is to pat you on your head, which has happened to me in meetings…I can write a book about it” her tone of voice changed stressing this had to change and has started to, “(Some) also realize that there’s just been a lot of kick-ass female entrepreneurs at this stage,” she has liked some of the changes she has seen in younger investors. This doesn’t discredit the fact that this workplace discrimination is still happening, and she is not the only one experiencing this. Many women feel the “pat on the head” mentality that older males put forward in the workplace.
This is a significant problem, especially with promotions or higher place positions, “women have begun to make their claims for leadership but often encounter a workplace culture that makes the challenges severe” Dennis Jaffe, a writer for Forbes, mentioned in a recent article published on this issue. Many women obtaining these high ranking positions sometimes feel they are filling a quota or face diminishing comments that make them feel unworthy of what they achieved. Fortunately, once they get into these positions they started to make change, and this change in the workforce is noticed. Mr. Jaffe wrote about this change in a Forbes article, “(with) more women in positions of leadership, the workplace may become not just a better place to work, but also one that is more adaptive and productive.” Lily mentioned to me that having kids has contributed to creating her own businesses’ corporate culture and letting her kids to impact her lifestyle in the best ways using, it as a blue print for future corporate culture, “(having kids) really influenced my work-life balance schedule of wanting to create a company that kind of honored the spirit of having a family life and, you know, creating a culprit corporate culture around that. Being home for dinner or being able to go to kids’ games after school, you know, that type of thing.” She has not only pursued an undiscovered market but is trying to find a way to change the culture around it too. Her products reflect this mentality she was talking about.
During my interview with her, it was clear that her kids inspire her and have given her the insider view, “having kids opened up that door of knowledge that there was a hole in the market.” Sitting on her couch, Lily pulled out her computer, and tabs were already opened to her numerous projects she is working on. Her latest labor of love is a fundraising platform she has launched through her business called Boon Supply. It is different from traditional ones where you can only donate to one cause, “We, I mean, we just don’t care … you basically can come in here and start a fundraiser and then it’s five easy steps in, in five minutes you’ve got a fundraiser up and running, and you can share it with your friends via text, Facebook, Twitter.” She hopes to give people, especially kids, opportunities that they might otherwise not have. She talked to me as she scrolled through the hundreds of fundraisers that are growing daily, showing the pages and range of fundraisers you can find on her site. She thought back to her children’s experiences at Rustic Pathway, a summer program, as she mentioned these fundraisers don’t have to be for dyer causes, it can be for funding these summer experiences that she thinks has been beyond influential in her family’s life.
She opened up a browser on the side of her window and showed a sneak peek of the new line of products, “It’s positive, and it’s cool.” She has seen the impact of imagery on her children and wanted to make sure her company was making the right impact. She aims to put out positive and influential images and words on all of the school products she creates. Alongside school supplies, day-to-day bags, and necessities, Serena and Lily have created a line of reusable products for both home and mobile use. She has also been working to make the largest profit line for donations as well, giving back 40% of the revenue earned by Boon Supply. Her goals have opened up opportunities for many people, schools, communities, and people nationally.
The workplace, for many people can be daunting and scary to tackle. Serena and Lily have not only tackled it but are also working towards changing the mentality such as Dennis Jaffe perfectly describes in a Forbes article: “working women drop off their kids or show up for volunteering, they often receive critically toned comments such as ‘we haven’t seen you around in a while.’ Yet working men experience the opposite. When they show up, they get the affirming ‘wow, you’re such a great dad — so involved with your kids!’” These subtitles in response show the social norms put in place, and as more women penetrate the glass ceiling, such as Serena and Lily, they have been fighting to change this mentality. To have more women in the workplace means to make a more effective and cohesive lifestyle, and Lily has started to forge yet another path in creating new social norms in corporate culture. This has ultimately allowed Serena and Lily to connect at a deeper level with their customers and understand the wants and needs which are essential to people who live busy lifestyles. Serena and Lily is a life style brand but they don’t fit into on, they make a better one, both in corporate and consumers’ life.
