Designer Inspiration: Juicy Couture

"How can you be inspired by tracksuits Chay?" Just wait I'm going to tell you! I'm on this wacky sleep schedule having just come from Tokyo and so I've been up in the middle of the night reading tons of random (often fashion related) articles on the internet. I came across this article in the NY Times "Profile in Style: The Juicy Girls" and I thought it was very inspiring and wanted to share some interesting tidbits:

1. Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy the designers and best friends that wake up at 6:30 am everyday, they drive to work together and work a few feet from each other. Must be love :).

2. Started Juicy Couture as a maternity jeans line in 1996 - 13 years later they have a menswear line (Juicy Men), a new womenswear line (Bird), accessories, fragrances, a Maclaren stroller and a canine line.

3. They started the company with $200 - during the early part of 2008 they sold $258 million in merchandise. (Source)

4. Smart product placement: To promote themselves they sent Madonna a sweatsuit with the word "Madge" embroidered on it. The rest is history.

What really drew me to research "how they did it" was two things I read in their profile I can personally relate to:

1. I am a "wacky thrift-store girl": "It blows our mind that Juicy is a part of popular culture. When we started out we were just wacky thrift-store girls." - Pamela Skaist-Levy

2. Starting a company with a little bit of $: They started with $200 look at them now.

Just another reminder that if you work hard, believe-in and enjoy what your doing it will pay off. I hope that anyone out there (like myself) starting a clothing line/ business got some inspiration to keep creating!

Until then, :)

Chay$