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.
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. In this episode of the Thirty Minute Mentors podcast, 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 in central 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 about seven years as an accessories editor at Mademoiselle 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 Barney’s, 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 authenticity matters most. 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 the more you do something, the better you get.
What You’ll Learn
- How growing up on a Kansas farm, where chores came before presents because the cattle do not know it is your birthday, shaped Elyce’s work ethic.
- How Kate Spade’s first trade show booth, which cost $2,500 and sat by the hot dog stand, still led Barney’s, Charivari, and Intermix to place orders.
- Why the four Kate Spade partners met every single week and explained their decisions to one another, even when it was three against one.
- Why Elyce says business decisions should not be personal, and why she believes the friendship has to be kept separate from the work.
- Why her company creates its catalogs and marketing in-house with its own team, and why she finds organic social media more effective than advertising.
- Why 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 in central 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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