Eloquent building itself is the ultimate destination for trendy plus size fashion
company based in New York and Columbus Ohio,
designing and selling fashion apparel and sizes 14 to 28
says it works to provide all women access to clothes
that make them feel confident.
Walmart required eloquent back in 2018 for $100 million.
And throughout March as part of women's history month,
better news will be highlighting trailblazers
that are making strides across industries.
Last week, I caught up with the founder and former CEO of l'aquila,
Mariah Chase at the female founders, Fund's Agents of Change Summit.
Take a look.
So let's start by just discussing advice that you
have on your own journey for founders out there,
especially female founders,
I think um just in this market for all founders,
but specifically for female founders, there's a level of grit and resilience.
You need both to operate in this kind of
market with these dynamics as well as raise capital.
The markets are not really friendly right now.
Um less than 2% of venture capital goes to female founders.
So you put these market dynamics on top of that
stat and you just have to have a lot of fortitude
And to keep going.
That's,
that's really the biggest thing is to stay in the game and your
journey is unique and successful founding your former company eloquent in 2014,
selling it four years later to Walmart
and a big deal. How did you tap into and foster that resiliency and grit?
I think it was a lot of adrenaline,
a lot of anxiety and as we were just talking about a lot of caffeine
um but I had in all um seriousness, a really great network,
our board was really supportive.
Um We had angel investors and early investors who, when things got really tough,
which they did, which they inevitably do, um who really were cheerleading.
And the reality is, is that all along the way in building eloquently,
we had a significant amount of strategic interest.
So we had a big box retailers like the Walmarts and Targets and the Coals, etcetera,
um as well as upper end players like Nordstrom really reaching out to us and say, hey,
we see what you're doing.
We think it looks interesting.
So even when investors were rejecting us or, you know,
I was having conversations where they, they were saying, you know,
what we're gonna pass on this round.
I was really buoyed by a lot of the respect and interest we were getting
from strategic and so every founder has to find what that is for them.
Sure. So for any of our viewers watching, who are not familiar with the L A qui explain
the market gap, the way that you are trying to disrupt the space. So
eloquently is the leading trend focused brand and
retailer for customers sizes 14 and predominantly women.
We really noticed a white space in the fact that these
customers were predominantly being given like
pretty shapeless monochromatic elastic waistband,
really pretty basic unappealing merchandise.
And we wanted to give them fashion. That's what we thought was missing in the market.
And that was our mantra the whole way through is we are a fashion brand.
We just happened to start at a larger size
And although it sounds sort of shocking to say it out loud,
that really wasn't being done at all when we launched in
2014 and that was our way to disrupt the market.
Well, you are now an investor yourself.
So you're on the other side of things when you look to invest in companies,
especially female founded companies,
what's the checklist that you look for?
To make sure that it, it does clear basically your guardrails.
Well, first of all, the founder, who is the founder, what do they believe in?
What are they setting out to do?
Do I believe that they have the grit and resilience to go the distance,
which is the subjective um and then
very much the unit economics and the fundamentals.
I think there was a heyday of raising money growth at all costs,
profitability and sound unit economics can be figured out later.
And that from my perspective is the first thing I want to figure out and understand.
So it's really about the founder and the unit economics.
Okay.
Very interesting as to hear Mariah Chase's take
their founder and former Ceo of Eloquence.