Elyce Arons is the co-founder of Kate Spade and the co-founder and CEO of Frances Valentine. Elyce joins Adam to share her journey and her best lessons and advice. Elyce and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: entrepreneurship, leadership, team building, innovation, marketing, branding, and more.
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Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Elyce Arons.
Episode Summary
Elyce Arons is the co-founder of Kate Spade, the co-founder and CEO of Frances Valentine, and the author of We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade. She tells Adam how the youngest of four daughters on a Kansas farm went on to help build an iconic American fashion brand, and then a second fashion company.
Elyce describes a childhood on a farm outside Wichita, Kansas, where her family raised wheat, corn, soybeans, and Angus cattle. Her mother, a design student from the East Coast, turned the farmhouse into a successful restaurant after studying at the Culinary Institute and interning at Le Bernardin. The farm taught Elyce hard work and persistence, including her mother’s reminder that “the cattle don’t know it’s your birthday.” At the University of Kansas, she met Kate Brosnahan, later known as Kate Spade, two doors down in the dorm.
The conversation traces how Kate Spade began. Kate had spent years in Mademoiselle’s accessories department, rising to head of accessories, and noticed a gap in the market for chic, accessible American designer handbags. The founders took a $2,500 booth at the Javits Center, tucked in the back by the hot dog stand, and Barneys, Charivari, and Intermix placed orders. Elyce walks through the milestones that followed, including Kate’s 1995 CFDA award, a Vogue shoot, orders from Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s, and interest from Japanese companies, all while the four partners met every week to make decisions together.
Elyce shares candid lessons on working with a best friend. She would not necessarily recommend it, because the friendship ought to survive, and she credits transparency, a shared goal, and not taking business disagreements personally. She explains what she looks for in hiring, namely talent, a sense of humor, and graciousness and kindness, and advises young employees to prove they are willing to do any job.
On marketing and branding, Elyce says it has to be authentic. At Frances Valentine, her team creates its catalogs and marketing in-house, and she finds organic social media more effective than advertising. For aspiring founders, she recommends learning every job at a company or from a person they admire first, believing in themselves, and getting out there to sell their own product, because, she says, you are the only one who can do the best job.
What You’ll Learn
- Do the work first, every day: the cattle do not know it is your birthday, Elyce’s mother told her, a farm lesson that taught her hard work and never giving up.
- You are your best advertiser, Elyce tells young entrepreneurs, because no one knows your product as well as you do, so get out and sell it yourself even when it feels uncomfortable.
- Keep partners aligned through transparency: the four Kate Spade partners met every week to talk through each decision, and when it was three against one, the three explained their reasoning to the fourth.
- Keep business decisions from becoming personal, a lesson Elyce says she learned from experience; she doesn’t recommend going into business with your best friend, because the friendship ought to survive.
- Make your marketing feel authentic: Elyce says influencers who already love Frances Valentine’s products get a great response because it feels real.
- Learn every job before starting your own business: Elyce advises aspiring founders to work for a company or person they admire for several years, learn every job, and refuse to take no for an answer.
About Elyce Arons
Elyce Arons is the co-founder of Kate Spade and the co-founder and CEO of Frances Valentine. She grew up on a farm outside Wichita, Kansas, and met Kate Brosnahan, later known as Kate Spade, as a freshman at the University of Kansas. After moving to New York and working in marketing for several fashion companies, she helped launch Kate Spade as a handbag company with Kate and two other partners. She is also the author of We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade.
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