We know, most men are lazy when it comes to our favorite word: shopping. Let’s face it, you would rather have your girlfriend or mother show up to your house with a bunch of garments than you having to go to a store and try everything on. Founder, Jorge Cosano realized this and launched ÉCOLE to provide a mobile friendly digital experience for the Millennial man by showcasing emerging designers and style tips.

A philanthropist at heart, Jorge Cosano introduced ÉCOLE in March 2015 because he wanted to see men dress well. ÉCOLE sells a mixture of known and emerging brands priced between $100-$300 per piece. “We supply fashion with an edge, but it has to be wearable of course. We noticed that when most guys go to an e-commerce website, they get overwhelmed. The way I see the future of retail and how we play into that is by being an emerging platform for true designers.” You can think of ÉCOLE as a combination between etsy and Uber. Their proposition lies around customer service and experience. “It’s the Blue Apron for fashion: all about convenience.”

Why The Name?

“I saw a sign in Paris that said ÉCOLE in 2006 and I really liked the word because it means school in French. So I decided to buy the domain name and ended up using it in 2015. It took me many years to figure out what it would be, but I knew I wanted to do something around men.” ÉCOLE acts as a fashion school for men by guiding them to find their look based on their personality test. Luckily, you can’t fail in this class. As for their marketing, Facebook has been their most successful platform. They also engage in a lot of pop-ups in NY and L.A. “When we launched in L.A., we saw a huge spike.” Inside tip: never limit yourself to one market.

“I think curiosity is an important skill that is extremely underrated.”

Born and raised in Spain, Jorge majored in environmental engineering from ETSIAM in 1998. He then got his Masters in Landscape Design in Dublin, followed by his MBA from The Wharton School at Penn years later. An avid believer in failing fast, Jorge realized early on that architecture wasn't for him. “I always liked business so I decided to apply for a leadership program and ended up working with IBM.”

Way ahead of his time, Jorge was working on a mobile e-commerce project for IBM in 1999 and was doing everything from coding to marketing. He learned everything on the spot in a very short period. However, the market was not ready as cell phones could not support mobile payments as easily as today. Imagine trying to enter your credit card info into your old Nokia triple click keypad, yeah right!

Because Consultants Know Best

Fast forward, Jorge worked at McKinsey in Madrid after graduating from Wharton and decided that consulting wasn’t for him either. “I love working with very smart people and engaging in challenging problems, but I needed to touch physical products. I don’t like services because they are not tangible and I needed to create things that are.” Jorge feels that there are two powerful ways to influence the economy: either you are close to the consumer or up high in the chain and are a power player like Goldman Sachs. “I like being close to the consumers.”

Jorge then joined L’Oréal and managed a team at the age of 30. He moved to Paris to launch Armani Beauty fragrance and by the end understood how to turn around businesses that are in bad shape or not growing fast enough. He also realized that consumers’ perception was changing around this time, in 2009, and presented an idea similar to Birchbox to L’Oréal, but they never bought into it (Birchbox launched the same concept later on). Frustrated by corporate constraints, Jorge wanted to oversee the incubation of new brands and build something worthwhile. Boom, he quit in 2014.

“A CEO’s job is not to be the smartest person. It is to assemble the best team.”

Need to build your team? Don’t use a headhunter! You want to find people who believe in your mission, philosophy and don’t treat it like another regular job. “I see a lot of startups stealing high-level people from corporations and trying to match their salary. Trust me, this person will leave you as soon as things get hard because they didn't sign up for the idea, they signed up for a job.”

RADICHE GUIDE on drafting your star players:

Understand the key roles you need
Talk to as many people as you can via LinkedIn, Facebook and your network to find out what the roles are about and then draft the job description
Hire based on culture fit before skillset
As a CEO, you should understand every job function and what it takes to make a team work

Want to look cool, but not like you tried too hard? Mention promo code Radiche for a $50 discount on any purchase of $100 or more at ÉCOLE.