You're a boss babe, a single mom, and a rockstar. You don't have time to shop, yet want to look put together. Fear not! Founder, and CEO, Sarah LaFleur plans on breaking the glass ceiling one dress at a time by creating wardrobe essentials for the modern working woman. Behold, MM.LaFleur. With the introduction of the Bento Box, Sarah is revolutionizing merchandising and customer experience through MM.LaFleur's personal stylists and kick-ass lifestyle brand because you have #betterthingstodo.

A graduate of Harvard University with a major in Social Studies (yes, clearly our majors have nothing to do with what field we end up in), Sarah LaFleur grew up in Japan to an American father and a Japanese mother. “By 9th grade, I had forgotten so much of English due to being taught in a Japanese school and only speaking Japanese...that is why I sympathize with immigrants who were doctors, teachers and what have you in their home country but are treated as though they were idiots when they moved over to the U.S., and I had experienced a miniature version of this in high school.”

After working at Bain & Co. for four years, Sarah identified a gap in the fashion market and decided to quit her job in 2011 to set out and find a designer to launch in 2013, what would be known as MM.LaFleur.

“I had this idea from when I was at Bain & Co. and I saw that so many of my friends hated shopping for work. I actually loved dressing for work and found it a very empowering process. The ideal result? To look effortlessly cool.”

“I was very clear from the beginning that I did not want to be the designer. Even though people told me that it was not hard to design clothing, I felt that we would not create something special if we did that. I really felt like there was something missing in the market and I needed to bring someone in who really knew what they were doing and not just someone fresh out of design school. I went to several headhunters and through my network came across Miyako Nakamura at the very last minute. She was very weary of me because I had never worked in fashion before and yet intrigued. Miyako had spent 7 years at Zac Posen and seen the highs and lows of the industry. We instantly clicked and today she is our Creative Director.”

Sarah tells us how she had $70,000 to test out the market. $10,000 went to Miyako, $10,000 towards branding (although she feels she spent way too much on this and moved too quickly) and the remaining towards pattern making, sample development, and fabric orders. At this point, she didn’t even have a website up and running other than a cover page saying “coming soon.”

“We launched via trunk shows.”

MM.LaFleur launched with their first trunk show at Soho House since it was the cheapest to rent. They started out with friends and expanded to friends of friends. By the third show, the audience existed of random individuals. “The funny thing is that we had no advertising money and we were not talking to any fashion editors. So it was all through word of mouth marketing.” MM.LaFleur would also pop up at places in the financial district such as Goldman Sachs as these women were their prime customer (talk about interesting locations!). Inside information: Don’t pre-make all of your garments. It took Sarah 8 trunk shows to ultimately sell through all of her fabric and what she thought would be her best selling dress was actually her worst. Lesson learned. Planning is very difficult.

The Modern Woman

“I used to think that the customer was me.” Through trial and error, the MM girl is someone who has graduated from the likes of Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, and Theory and is looking for high-quality essentials to build out her “adult” wardrobe. She is a boss babe, a divorcee, and even a stay-at-home mom who recently re-entered the workforce to battle P&L statements, baby spit up and coffee stains. From flights to nights, MM clothes can handle it all. (Yes, they’re wrinkle-free and machine washable. Talk about perks!).

“Our product only really found its marketing fit when we figured out Bento and the importance of a Stylist.”

As a fashion brand, choosing your distribution method can make or break you. “We always felt like there were two products being sold: the physical clothing itself and then the way in which we sold it. I decided that I wanted to be an apparel manufacturer/designer and a retailer. However, it wasn’t until October 2014 that we launched the concept of the Bento Box to push out merchandise (similar to Trunk Club). It wasn't enough to just sell a dress online. By adding a Stylist and personal approach to our customer experience we were beating the competition and creating a better way to sell clothes.”

Sarah also saw the importance in creating a lifestyle brand by launching the editorial side called The M Dash. “Our blog has been up and running before our e-commerce site even launched.” The M Dash focuses on celebrating inspiring professional women while highlighting the conversations that take place by the water cooler from 9am-5pm (without the office creep lurking around).

The Advice:

To be great CEO you need to be a consistent player.
Break away from competitors by not following them. If your competitor is doing something different, you shouldn’t do the same.
Travel the road less taken.
Unlike SaaS products, with fashion, if there is a problem, you need to fix it asap.

Switching careers or looking for wardrobe essentials? MM.LaFleur is going to be expanding into shoes and handbags soon. Curate your personal look according to your body type by ordering a Bento online today for free.

Photo Courtesy of MM.LaFleur.