Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons

Transforming The Sustainable Luxury Handbag Market with 1 Atelier and Stephanie Sarka

• Emily Blumenthal • Season 1

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Get ready to meet Stephanie Sarka, the brain behind 1 Atelier, who took a remarkable journey from the high-stakes world of Goldman Sachs to revolutionizing the luxury handbag industry! Stephanie opens up about her transformative experiences in mergers and acquisitions, her educational journey through Stanford and Harvard, and her invaluable time at Coach under the mentorship of Lou Frankfurt. Hear how these experiences shaped her vision for sustainable and thoughtful production practices that are carving a new path in luxury fashion.

In our conversation, we uncover the secrets behind sustainable luxury production. Stephanie discusses the emotional connection to artisan craftsmanship and the thrill of working with materials like leather. We tackle the significant issues of overstock and waste, exploring how 1 Atelier's 100% on-demand production model changes the game. From the differences between custom and bespoke to the pitfalls of offering too many options—highlighted by the rise and fall of MonPurse—this episode is packed with insights into how technology and a passion for fashion can drive meaningful innovation.

Stephanie's entrepreneurial spirit shines as she shares her journey from Coach to the digital frontier with Idealab, where she played a role in creating the paid search business model. Discover the strategic and creative forces behind 1 Atelier, including their "Farm to Arm" approach that promotes transparency and sustainability in luxury. From the intricacies of pricing bespoke items to the environmental impact of regenerative agriculture, this episode is a comprehensive guide for anyone fascinated by the intersection of fashion, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.


Connect with Stephanie: 

https://1atelier.com/


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Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to the Handbag Designer 101 podcast with your host, emily Blumenthal, handbag designer expert and handbag fairy godmother, where we cover everything about handbags from making, marketing, designing and talking to handbag designers and industry experts about what it takes to make a successful handbag. Welcome, stephanie Sarka, to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast. Stephanie, you are the co-founder and CEO of One Atelier. I see that lovely one and some nice leather bags behind you. Is all this correct?

Speaker 2:

That is correct. Thank you, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. This is our pleasure. I love having this conversation. What I love is that what we're doing is a vessel for change, and it's just an exciting time for us, so I'm really happy to be with you.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, gracious me, how old is one Atelier? It's five years old now. Oh, it's a tad more.

Speaker 2:

We started in 2015 at some point and then really started to gain speed in 2018-19. Slowed down a little bit in 2020. Not your college speed bump, not your fault, and now it feels like we're back on track. It's been an exciting year.

Speaker 1:

So, before we get into the changemaker, that is one that's hell yay. Can you speak a little bit about what your history and background is within the handbag market and history, because that will take us all the way through who your other co-founders are and what the changes you're making in terms of thoughtful production? I'm sure there's probably a better way of saying it, based on what you're doing. Thoughtful production I'm sure there's probably a better way of saying it based on what you're doing, but in my opinion, it's much more conscious, conscious, better Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Would love to. I think one way to know about me is to start with the fact that I actually started my career at Goldman Sachs and I was in mergers and acquisitions. So that's a positive because it gave me the chance to see lots of companies and really go in, kick the tires and understand how these businesses are run. And within a very short time it was crystal clear to me and I mean crystal clear, Sometimes things aren't this clear that I am a builder, not a banker I really need to have my hands on. I want to build companies, build brands, build you know, lead teams and have an impact. And I just felt like I was totally transactional on the banking side and I personally didn't always feel like the choices we were making in terms of who bought who or what company got divested, were being done for the right reasons, and I experienced that and I just really was uncomfortable and complicit with that.

Speaker 1:

So did you go to school like? Your university background was finance.

Speaker 2:

No, I was at Stanford and I was in economics quantitative economics but you know, it was just Goldman Sachs was one of the cool jobs to get, so I went after it and required no intelligence whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

So it's done.

Speaker 2:

But even then I decided, before I went to business school or somewhere else, that I would try something in industry. And while I was gallivanting around France trying to sell a French perfume company, I met some folks and after I left Goldman, someone brought me in to be the head of marketing for International Flavors and Fragrances, which is an American company. But I was working for their fragrance center in Bois Cologne, right outside of Paris, At the best year of my life, made the least money in my life, and you know I was like this is where I belong. I need to be in the heart of things, where we're. You know, building stuff and making stuff Went on to HBS and then I actually at that point, Harvard Business School.

Speaker 1:

Just Harvard Business School, just, you know acronym. You had a small school in Boston, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I would say, you know, one could have a whole conversation about that.

Speaker 2:

But I think what I learned was to have confidence in my instincts and not be as analytical on the front end but rather start with my hypothesis and build it up with the analytics.

Speaker 2:

And that wasn't where I came from, wasn't where I came from and I sort of put my foot in venture capital that summer because I thought, okay, maybe I can straddle what I did at Mergers at Goldman and what I'm doing you know what I love in building businesses and what I experienced at ISS and in the end I just had to go full throttle. So my second year I only talked to companies that were building businesses and brands and, very happily, lou Frankfurt yeah, I just you know you had to put a blinder on because the folks from consulting investment banking are really good at bringing you into that conversation with their shrimp cocktail parties and a little bit. I just, you know, closed my eyes to that and I said I have to be in a brand. And I reached out to all of them, both here and in France, and I was fortunate to be invited by Lou Frankfurt to join Coach at a really seminal time when Coach was just acquired by Sara Lee and was really starting its massive growth.

Speaker 1:

Oh wow, into Japan and being the first American luxury brand and just the origin of the leather, when it was bought by Sarah Lee and sold by Sarah Lee. And I spoke to Andrea who was their head of I can't remember the woman who heads up all the finance and investor relations head of investor relations and it was just so fascinating, especially when Lou was there, moving into mixed materials and trying to do all these really interesting things and making the price points more affordable and changing the leathers and to this day most people aren't even aware. But any flea market you go to, the most valuable, highest possession that will be sold is a coach bag, because the original leather, being of a baseball mitt, will always stand the test of time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, it's been very interesting for me to watch how coach has evolved over the years. I was a mentee of Lou Frankfurt. He's an amazing man. He taught me everything, literally moved me through the organization. Ultimately, I was handbag designer but he had me selling across the counter at department stores. He threw me into tanneries. Ultimately, I was handbag designer but he had me selling, you know, across the counter at department stores. He threw me into tanneries. I was on the production floor.

Speaker 2:

Ultimately, I was given Mark Cross, which we had acquired a former life of the many lives of Mark Cross which I led the turnaround of and was leading for Coach to start to divest itself so they could prepare themselves for their eventual IPO.

Speaker 2:

To divest itself so they could prepare themselves for their eventual IPO. And I learned so much of things to do and, quite frankly, in many ways is what inspired me to start Winatelier. And then I actually, as a side note, had also been on the board of Tanner Kroll in London, so sort of an AirMaze equivalent that was founded in London and it's a space I love dearly, but I think, as we probably would both say, it's a really broken industry. And so what I learned when I went off to start GoTo, which was another company after I left coach and Mark Cross, where we co-invented the paid business model that today powers Google, was just the power of technology as a disruptor. And how could we so when I left that, after sort of long, hard years of taking the company public, I wanted to come back to an industry that I knew and loved, but wanted to do it in a different way and think about how technology could be a fulcrum for change and disruption.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy. So do you think, had you not ended up at Coach, your path would have been totally different? I mean, that is pretty lucky to be a mentee of Lou Frankfurt. And for those people who are completely unaware of who Lou Frankfurt is, who is Lou?

Speaker 2:

Frankfurt, lou Frankfurt was working actually as the head of business development for Miles Kahn. He and his wife had started Coach with a designer whose name I'm escaping now but it was a 60s 70s designer. It'll come back Bonnie Cashin and some of the original bags that were designed by Cashin. Those are really coveted and at some point he brought in Lou to really kind of help propel the business.

Speaker 2:

When the Miles and his wife left the business at the sale of coach to Sarah Lee, lou became the president and I guess eventually CEO and I mean he's just an icon in the industry and he really grew up behemoth and it's been interesting for me to watch it because I was there when you know we talked about first, I got there around a hundred million and I left about a billion. So you can imagine when I experienced over seven years and they hadn't quite gone public yet but I think they were already grooming it, which is one reason why they just divested of Mark Cross just to kind of, you know, clean up their balance sheet. But I was there when it was still, you know, a real commitment to the glove tan leather, when it was still we will always be made in America. I mean, I remember the team rallies, you know, but things change and it's a very different brand, but it's a very successful brand still.

Speaker 1:

While you were there? You were there for seven years, as you said. That's a long time to be at a company, especially in this day and age. Was that kind of exposure? Did that give you a love of handbags, a love of leather? Did it tie you into the ethnography, the needs and wants of what this customer is? Because the coach customer, if you look at it from like a narrow cast perspective, it's small but it definitely has a wide range. So, yeah, how did all this affect you?

Speaker 2:

I mean I first invalidated for me what I had always had instinctive pull, which was towards building businesses and building brands, and that process and how you integrate and interact with people. I mean I always tell this little story which was just such a great lesson. At one point Lou brought me in very early into my time there, as I'm probably walking around, you know, a little cocky, notwithstanding the fact that I probably took the lowest paying job of anybody in my graduating class from Harvard Business School. But notwithstanding that, he pulls me and he goes. No one here cares that you went to HBS, he just rips those stripes right off, he goes you're going to earn your way on substance and you're going to show that you know what you're doing and I'll help you do that. But it's up to you to take advantage of the opportunity. And that was. I mean I went home with my tail between my legs in a big way, but it was a lesson and you know, I dug in and I got my nails dirty and literally, literally. And for me I've often said and this is not true today I just like building brands and businesses, regardless of the product, but at the end of the day, I actually do care about the product. I've always loved fashion, I love solving problems and I love bags. And, yes, if I walk into a tannery or a showroom in Italy, my heart starts to beat strong and you'd hear the, you feel the, you smell the leather and you hear the machines and it's just an environment that I'm now really happy in, Like when we come to our studio here. It's definitely a happy place for me and I walked away thinking okay, but this is a really broken industry and I have so many stories of, and especially around, forecast.

Speaker 2:

Two things that I really struggle with in the industry. One is this notion of forecasting and producing, when I am convinced, after having hand built with a technology team, a very precise forecasting software and having a system that I think is better than anything you know that was out there at the time that the only thing you know at the forecast is that it's wrong, and we can talk about all the reasons why that's true, but you know, despite how good our forecasting was, I also spent many hours selling off overstock to TJ Maxx, and that is heartbreaking, and I'm just convinced that this whole notion in fact, we've seen a lot of posts about this recently in blogs and in social media. You know like that is such a core part of our sustainability problem. There's everything upstream the supply chain, your partners how are they bringing the materials and making or sourcing materials. There's everything downstream, which is what I call the re's resell, refurbish, recycle, re, re, re, re. But then there's just like what are we making and why are we making so much?

Speaker 2:

And I fervently believe that that was really at the heart of why we started when Atelier was this notion that custom was a beautiful thing to offer consumers because they were getting precisely what they wanted.

Speaker 2:

When we heard from focus group after focus group that people were buying bags that sat beautifully packaged in the dust bag in their closet for one of many small reasons and I guess it's a high class problem, but nonetheless they just weren't wearing them. But on the back end of custom is on-demand production, and so we are today the only luxury brand that exclusively practices 100% on-demand production. I mean, what you see behind us and in our showroom is virtually all we own, and so we have no product in distribution centers or warehouses or in the stock rooms at department stores, even when we've had retail partnerships, as we've had with Nordstrom, which was a concession. Yeah, that was a concession, and so we operated the boutique. We were on a lease contract with a very, at the time, favorable rev share, and we hired our people. We had a whole customization experience punctuated by some product for people to try on and a beautiful screen for them to design their bags on. We merchandised it, but we just had that product right there on the shelf.

Speaker 1:

There've been other companies and other handbag brands. There was one a few years back out of Australia Lawn Purse Yep, and that one how about they combusted Australia Lawn purse Yep and now they come busted Exactly. And it's funny. They had a shop and shop in Bloomingdale's and I went there and spoke to the floor staff and I said do you think there's too many options? Do you think that this will create an issue for production? Because at the end of the day, I call this the Baskin Robbins conflict.

Speaker 1:

Assuming you're customers of the mindset of a four-year-old, you take them in to buy food, buy ice cream, and they see all the samples and they get really excited. Then you see, as a mom, you're getting more and more frustrated because the kid is getting more and more frustrated. In the end you end up offering chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and you either have a kid leave crying because they got what they wanted, or you have a kid crying because they're not getting what they want at all. So that's a challenge of offering too, too much. Because whenever I hear a brand well, especially a smaller brand saying it's bespoke because we want to avoid wastage, the read of that is that it's bespoke meaning limited edition, because they don't know how to produce it or reproduce it.

Speaker 2:

It's an apparent point. But so we're not bespoke. We do bespoke and we have people who come in and we will design a bag from scratch.

Speaker 1:

And the difference between bespoke and custom, if you can, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

So for us and I think this is a pretty ubiquitous definition Custom is where you can come and select from an assortment of existing models or styles, you know, as the shirt companies often do. But then you can select materials, in our case leathers and skins. You can select colors, you can even select some functional features shoulder strap length, interior functionality options but we're not designing a bag from scratch. We also do bespoke, where someone will come in and bring her three favorite bags and say I want to design a bag that has the best of all three of these, and you know we're literally creating a new animal and that's a $10,000 plus proposition. And we do a lot of them.

Speaker 2:

It's amazing post the pandemic, and the reason is because at some point women just want the perfect bag and they're sick and tired of dealing with, you know, all these compromises for $2,000 here and $2,000 there, so thousand dollars there. So rather just buy one and now those patterns are theirs. And then they come in in. The second and third and fourth are basically like a regular handbag in the early thousands, because now we've invested our business and product development into that original purchase and it never gets sold to anybody else.

Speaker 1:

So I mean we'll get into one atelier. But going back to MonPurse, and the one who started it is now very much involved in the NFT space and so forth, if she's been able to pivot. But why do you think that product? Because that was more of an affordable price point. Why do you think that model was not successful? Because many, many, many, many people have tried what you're doing and will continue to try what you're doing, and I know that your customer and you having a very deep understanding of he she, their needs, they have considerable wealth, they can afford to drop this money, they have the time to invest and make this investment. Do you think the problem was that they were trying to do it at an affordable price point? That was just not realistic.

Speaker 2:

So I've done a lot of analysis and, quite frankly, when they first came out and I saw them blow up not blow up, but pop up this huge store in Bloomingdale's, new York, and then I go to Bloomingdale's San Francisco and even more beautiful boutique right across from LV I literally called one of my co-founders crying I'm like, okay, what am I missing here? The designs aren't that attractive, materials are definitely nothing close to what am I missing here? And it turns out they would just say two things. One is they were really trying to, I think, produce in a more mass way, but custom product offshore and that's one reason why we produce onshore is it's just not possible to outsource custom pieces, one of a kind, which does not mean one at a time, but one of a kind, when you know to Europe or even China.

Speaker 2:

I'm not a big fan at all of wholesale, but definitely our brand. We cannot do wholesale because of our cost of labor. We can get a healthy margin if we sell directly to the consumer. It could be inside a Nordstrom's or a Saks or a Neiman's, but it has to be a concession and that is a new trend that's coming, is going to have its day, but for a long time we were fighting upstream, whereas they were at a quite a low price point, they were selling wholesale and I just don't think it was ultimately profitable. But the other thing is they just invested way too much. You know, they had the two stores, or maybe there were more here. They had some in Australia, I think they were in Selfridges. I mean, they just blew up. They got a lot of money too, yeah, and they just spent it all. And in our case we've been more cautious and I'm sure they ran in.

Speaker 2:

Yes, the headwind is definitely that with consumers, and we're solving this in a lot of ways, women mostly, and we have men clients too. Number one you're right, there is a tyranny of choice, or I guess it's called the paradox of choice, and we are learning how to work through that, because in some cases some of our bags do have many choices, and how to scoop in on a client who we think is having, you know, spinning a little bit. The other thing is just confidence. We sell confidence.

Speaker 2:

We are really about teaching women that they actually have the right and the ability to create something beautiful and it doesn't have to be farmed off to, you know, the designer of some other luxury brand and that's probably as big an issue as you know giving them the comfort and confidence in making these choices to design something beautiful, that they can do something beautiful when they get the piece in their hands and this exquisite masterpiece, we've seen women come to tears because it's like when you and I watch our children when they were little doing ceramics. It's so empowering, this sense of mastery. So we've taken a slower approach and a more organic approach, I might even say, and we definitely haven't invested as much money, but I think we've been more thoughtful and, hey, we've had the staying power. And the reality is there really isn't another custom brand out there anymore of substance in any way. We've kind of outlived all of them.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

One was that first observation that women weren't getting. There were three observations. One is women weren't getting what they wanted and, again, a high class problem, that a lot of women were buying bags as they became increasingly expensive. You know, we're talking like the early 2000s and we did a lot of research and focus groups and categorically they would tell us that you know, three out of four bags they were just leaving in their closet. They just shoulder strap, the leather, the hardware, color, one of a myriad of things just did not make it a comfortable go-to piece. And someone actually in the focus group said you know, if I could just take this bag and change this? And I was like, well, I mean, how does that not exist already? And that was sort of the original germ of the idea.

Speaker 2:

But, as I was also saying, the other germ of the idea was I really had an allergy to inventory, based on some of my learnings and experience at Coach and Marc Cross, and I think something that perpetuates this inventory is the basic wholesale model. And I know I'm zooming upstream here, but I just had somebody turn us down for an event recently because they want 2.5 markup. I'm like that's insane. We're the creator, we're the innovator, We've built the damn thing. At least let's go 50-50 on the profit, because we're selling it to them at maybe a 50% margin, but at a much lower level. And I said we're just not doing that. We don't run that way.

Speaker 2:

And in order to support wholesale, it propagates the whole forecasting and production cycle because you need to have the inventory on the shelf to sell it, and then you need to have it in the backstock and then it's traveling all over the country and it's just not a game we're playing. So those were things that we set out to solve on the back end as well, which is that we wanted to do on-demand production. We wanted to eliminate the curse of the forecast. I definitely didn't want to deal with wholesale. I mean, wholesale has killed many a brand, all the operational setup and requirements, and you make a lot of money up front, but as you push out all this inventory and then, oh gosh, you got to buy half of it back. Don't mention the you know markdown money and everything else, and it's just. You know, in my age, we're building a brand for the long term and we're doing it right, Did you?

Speaker 1:

leave coach to do this, or was your time at coach? And how did you with the two other co-founders? How did this all come to be? Was it like I knew you? I mean, I know you know one of them, obviously we which connected us. I, he probably met him at coach. How did all this like? Was it the changing of the guard? And you're like that's it, I'm done, I can't deal with another wholesaler, I can't look at another markdown, I don't want to deal with another shop and shop like right, what puts you to the subversion?

Speaker 2:

Because most people, when they leave, this, they end up going into real estate Totally. I mean, actually, I started one atelier eight years after leaving Coach. So I left Coach because once, mark Cross, as I said, they were going to divest it but actually divest is probably an euphemism, for they decided to close the brand, which was really heartbreaking for me because we had built a beautiful brand, we were getting into really important doors, but we had a lot of assets and in the end, you know, we talked to all the major luxury players and I was the one pitching and they all did their discounted cash flow analysis and said, yeah, we got to invest a lot in this brand to get it where it needs to be, and I think Coach made the decision that they were going to be. It was more cost effective for them just to close the brand and take our leases, which were amazing. You know, bell Harbor, Fifth Avenue, yada, yada and you didn't hear this here, except that everybody's watching the podcast but a lot of the product sort of got reinterpreted as Coach product and yeah, there was a lot of nefarious stuff that went on, but it is what it is. Those were their assets and they got to do what they wanted with it, but then it was just I was offered the opportunity to stay at Coach and I think I just thought, you know, I'd done my time.

Speaker 2:

I want to build something next time. You know, like it felt like failure, but we had been a success and I didn't like that feeling, for'm going to win on my own terms. I'm going to fail on my own terms, but it needs to be on my own terms up, because we're not part of a bigger, bigger picture called Sara Lee. So then I actually went out to. I decided this was where the internet I mean, this is late nineties, okay, so I'm dating myself, but I went out to. I wanted to move into the internet. And then I was invited to LA from a group called Idealab to basically invent paid search. So the four of us I have the worksheet still where we locked out the business model for price, you know, price per click search and the paid search business model and we had a great ride. Listen, I was never more intense in my life and we took it public a year after launch. It was just freaking crazy. I launched us in several European countries and it was an amazing ride. It was very digital, you know. So I had no thing and I was used to having a thing. But I learned so much and I made a lot of mistakes and I did some really important things. I mean, search Made Simple came out of my mouth first, you know. So I'm proud of what we did. Google ended up. We told it to Yahoo a couple of years after we went public. Google ended up. You know, borrowing, let's say the business model, and you know the rest is history. But I'm very proud of what we did in those few short years, growing to over a billion dollars and having it go public and selling it to Yahoo for almost $2 billion.

Speaker 2:

So I came back to New York and I have to be honest, I kind of faffed about. In fact I said seven or eight years, but that is just not right. I left coach at 97, actually, and we started in 15. So what's that? Seven, some years? Yeah, let's just say, and I was just kind of trying to figure out. Yeah, it was almost 20 years actually where I wanted to spend my time and in the meantime I was building an apartment and I was just kind of sprinkling fairy dust, as I call it. You know, that kind of advisor investor I don't really do anything for a living thing, except it turns out I was working really hard, I was advising, investing on boards of a lot of companies and I was gallivanting between China, london and the United States.

Speaker 2:

At some point I was like, wow, you know, this is really a lot of work, but none of it's really mine.

Speaker 2:

And I was trying to have a child and you know, giving myself the shots in airplanes, and it just started to become untenable.

Speaker 2:

So you know the way luck would have it, this idea started to formulate, as I said, in my mind. Same time I magically got pregnant and my daughter always says how did you start a company when you were just saddening me with all those years? You were like partying and I'm like, well, it wasn't really parting, but yeah, I get it. And to your point, so, frank. So I started actually conversating with Anthony Luciano, who is a custom luxury brand here, based in our same building in fact, and he was really one of the remaining, or the remaining old school custom luxury handbag, you know, craftsperson in the city and in the country, and so learned a lot, started talking about this idea. We thought it might be fun to try to hook arms. He brought in Frank because he and Frank had gone to FIT and together and he wanted another opinion. And as we started talking, you know, it started making sense like it was a trio Right, and that's sort of the origin story.

Speaker 1:

When you've started, though, were you like okay, well, haven't worked in handbags per se in a few years, haven't had my hands on a tangible product. What was? And I know you're very much into research and very much into making you know all the homework is done before you actually move forward with a product. How did you decide what the brand strategy and product strategy would be before you actually had a physical handbag in place?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, One of those great questions. First, you know, frank and Anthony were still very involved in various aspects of the industry. So, on many levels, frank came in as creative director and designer and Anthony was master craftsperson. And Frank had a great and Anthony, because he'd been in retail as well a great sort of understanding of the whole landscape. And so I would say they were really, you know, carrying that piece of the responsibility more than myself, and Frank understood what sold.

Speaker 2:

So, when we were thinking about merchandising and what our overall look and feel needed to be as a brand and as a product which, as you probably have seen, it's a very modern, clean American aesthetic, frank was largely driving that and Anthony and I was the CEO, bringing the organization together, harnessing resources, funding, making sure and then bringing the technology piece in, so working with the technologist to build the first, you know, really beautiful, proprietary, and it is proprietary, completely homegrown, although we're now, you know, our version five or six customization platform. And I think our broad sense was there was a price gap that we tried to hit First of all in that kind of thousand dollars and a little bit up. We wanted a style. That was a price gap that we tried to hit first of all in that kind of thousand dollars and a little bit up. We wanted a style that was a beautiful vessel, not too overly designed, because we really wanted the client to be able to put her impression, her thumbprint, on the bag, and so the styles weren't meant to have lots of hardware, lots of bells and whistles, unless at some point they were an option for them to add the bells and whistles. But we weren't going to start with that and when I it's interesting I just went to a trunk event that we did extremely well at in San Diego and most of those silhouettes still have real legs. You know, they're just great classic American pieces our universal satchel, our universal tote, our hobo and we might evolve them over time.

Speaker 2:

But we take much more of an evergreen strategy. We don't bring in a collection every season. We bring in another style and some colors or leathers and we keep building and then we'll trim where we need to. But remember, our investment is in the digital assets. So at that point, once it's on our site, we don't really invest in physical inventory. So we have. There's no reason for us not to keep the style. Like our backpack. It's not the best backpack in the world and it's not our best seller, but until we design another one, there's no cost to keep it on the website, because when someone wants a backpack, we have it. We already invested in putting it on the site. We have digital assets, not physical inventory, and so, whereas most brands and I remember this at Coach every quarter we had a finalization, what are we going to call, what are we going to add and clear out all the inventory, so we didn't keep carrying all the inventory. For that Our business model is very different.

Speaker 1:

Are you, let's just questions about the bum bag, or however you want to call it became very much on trend and the clutch is now making a comeback. How are you integrating that silhouettes that may not necessarily even lend themselves to your kinds of materials and integrating them into your assortment?

Speaker 2:

I mean such a good question. A lot of it's around merchandising. We have I won't say every, but we have most of the classic silhouettes to have a nice assortment, merchandising assortment, and continue to add and then farm to arm, you know, as another capsule that has its own ethos, and we'll continue to do that as well. And so often it's really just about how we merchandise and present. So if it's, you know, a certain leather or a certain there was a whole Python thing going on at one point.

Speaker 2:

You know we pull that forward and that's what our merchandising is, both in our marketing as well as in our displays when we have retail partners. You know, with the clutch push now the same thing. We can show a myriad of clutches and all sorts of manifestations. You wouldn't even realize it was the same product because one might be just black on black and the other might be a wild python with a gold trim, and so the goal is to really show how you can make the clutch completely yours and we can weave into or lean into very easily virtually any trend, and if we are missing a silhouette, you know we build to that.

Speaker 1:

And there's a few things we're building to at the moment. What do you think having this customization model? Where do you think you know, with your experience based on how the market's been evolving, what are some key takeaways that you've learned in terms of the shortcomings of this model and also the pluses?

Speaker 2:

Yep, so much to say. So I mean, I'll start with the pluses. We started the business, as I said, to really address some of the things that the clients were telling us had become challenges in their luxury goods purchasing behavior, let's say, and what I really reduced it down to was that luxury had lost the joy you know, like, if you're going to spend this much money, you better darn well love the bag and have a great time wearing it. What do you?

Speaker 1:

find luxury in terms of price point. Sorry for interrupting.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's probably gone up a little bit. When we were doing original work it was anything north of $500. Just you know, by way of information, our average transaction is almost $2,000. And our range starts at about $600 or $700 for a very small bag in our entry price point leather, but all the way up to $10,000 in our largest bag in American alligator and everything in between. And it's all dependent on what style they choose but also how they configure the leathers and the materials. But we make sure that you can get a solid bag in our entry price point tumbled leather at a thousand dollars or just thereabouts, plus or minus. That was very intentional. We also make sure, just since we're talking about pricing, that we're right under the nose of the price of a completely comparable piece in a luxury brand. So same type of silhouette, same type of material, you know, but we'll give ourselves a little bit of a discount factor just to recognize that. You know, we're not yet Gucci Right. So that was one with delivering the joy.

Speaker 1:

Has anyone tried to acquire the brand? Has that come?

Speaker 2:

We get inquiries quite often but I would say I'm not ready because I don't think the brand's ready. I think, you know, we probably would have been ready a few years ago if we hadn't had COVID.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But we took a big back step and we have only more recently been starting to sort of comp where we were, and I think Farm to Arm was the offering that had to happen from us as the catalyst and as we further build on our kind of reputation, if you will, as a pioneer and sustainable luxury. So I think we have a few years to go still, but yeah, there's inquiries.

Speaker 1:

Do you want to talk a little bit about Farm to Arm and where one Atelier is today? Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

So Farm to Arm was the brainchild of actually Ava, our creative director, and myself. The notion was we love what we're doing, which is striking hard at the I'll call it the center of the sustainability circle. But what would we do if we wanted to move more upstream? And, like many, we first dove deep in the vegans. We had every vegan leather on our table, you know, pineapple and the dessert from the cactus, and you name it, we had it.

Speaker 1:

There is a vegan leather cactus and you name it, we had it. There is a vegan leather. I mean, I did a TikTok on basically the fruit salad of vegan leathers that you know there's orange, there's pineapple, there's the prickly pear, there's mango, there's a whole apple, yeah yeah, apple. There's potato there, like you name it. It's why I think potato was just doing buttons, but it's pretty wild. It Well, I think Potato was just doing buttons, but it's pretty wild. And then, of course, the mushroom leather is really hard, and so I've been told it's very difficult to work with, but obviously no better than I.

Speaker 2:

Well, and some variations on the mushroom were the only I wouldn't even call them leathers the only materials that didn't have a PVC or polyurethane backing to bond it Right, and so that's why the mushroom isn't so stable. And as soon as we saw that and we looked at the specs and we're like whoa, 40% of this leather, this material is actually fossil fuel derived. Yeah, we quickly dropped it and, to be honest, a lot of the brands, as we looked around it was being sold at a very commodity price and they were not being honest about the truth of what the material was and we just it's a liar's game, it's a fool's game and we didn't want to play it. So then we went back to leather and we're like, wait a minute, you know, leather is the first biodegradable, renewable resource and it's a byproduct of another industry. And it's what happens with the agriculture supporting cattle farming or cattle ranching from an industrial agriculture perspective, and that is destroying the soil and, you know, causing problems, and it's what happens in the tannery. So what if we just pushed all the way back to the very beginning in a very transparent and traceable way and did it differently?

Speaker 2:

And so we started learning about, and I have to say it's only been two, three years that we've known about regenerative agriculture and coming to really appreciate that this holistic approach to farming and grazing truly has a potential to solve the climate crisis. I mean, it's that huge, the fact that if we converted regenerative most farming both for produce but also supporting cattle grazing to regenerative agriculture where, by the way, the cattle are actually part of the process, instead of running a tiller destroying all the soil, you know, they tromp, they eat, they poop. You move them to the next pasture they tromp, they eat, they poop Like that's the mother nature cycle that was intended that we've completely destroyed. And so we just realized, wow, like we can be a small part of solution, like we can be on that far end of the supply chain, putting in people's hands and using luxury and farm to arm as a platform, as a catalyst for conversation, education, inspiration, how this can all be integrated in a much more I'll call it mass way. You know, across the industry it's not just about buying 100% grass fed beef that's been regeneratively farmed, but there's so many other ways, and so we started.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that was a moment I have to tell you, emily, I was like my God. I mean, I always felt like we were doing something important. I didn't think we had just built a handbag brand, because the world did not need another handbag brand. We really believed we were doing something unique and different and our consumers validated this every day and our lack of inventory validates every day. But when we figured this one out, we're like, oh my God, like this is like. I wake up every morning. I'm like we are changing the world one handbag at a time, and that's an amazing thing. So we went and worked with, we talked to a lot of farmers and that we're doing this regenerative. We work with partners who have really helped us map the whole process, because we have had to completely construct a new supply chain because this didn't exist and the farmers don't know when they have to hide. You know how to do it in a successful way. They don't get them into tanning fast enough, so they rot. I mean, on and on, we learned way too much.

Speaker 1:

And then it's wasted, and then it's wasted. Yep, yeah, we've spoken about that a lot.

Speaker 2:

But we've done it.

Speaker 2:

You know and we were just talking to our supply chain partners now, who are friends, you like Farmer Matt, who runs Thousand Hills Lifetime Graze and is going to come to our opening event and talk about because he is the regenerative renegade Like why.

Speaker 2:

And you know the tannery who invented veg tanning, Harween, who is really working hard with our partner from Other Half Processing to make sure that that whole continuum, you know, from the source all the way to us, is working. And we've had to build it. We've had to build it literally brick by brick and it has been harrowing at times but we're doing it and I think we're the, as I said, the sort of finnage of the sword to break this open. And for us the goal was to create a fully circular handbag that is net carbon zero that's the aspiration that is biodegradable, because there's no chemicals in the tanning process and we continue to produce it on demand, so virtually zero waste. And we're there insofar as building this. And now we're going to go to the next step, which is building in the validation of the outcomes to make sure that everything we're aspiring to do is in fact happening.

Speaker 1:

Stephanie, I am enlightened deluxe. I can't thank you enough for sharing this process, sharing your story, sharing the impact that One Atelier is aspiring and doing with your handbag brands. How can people find and follow One Atelier to shop, to reach out? How can they find you? Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Our website is oneateliercom, number one A-T-E-L-I-E-Rcom. You'll see our beautiful pre-launch video on the homepage and we are launching Farm to Arm on November 13th. You can also follow us at One Atelier Luxury on Instagram, and we really have been very transparent in documenting the story and shouting out all of our partners who are doing amazing work, because the only way this works is if all of us sort of grab hands together and try to amplify the message. It's really about all boats rising with the tide. Oof God, look at you with the one-liners. This is so cool.

Speaker 1:

God, look at you with the one-liners this is so cool.

Speaker 2:

I've been talking about Farm to Arm, in which I've already talked.

Speaker 1:

It's amazing. Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, stephanie. I can't wait to attend your event. By the time people listen to this, it will have passed. So definitely check out One Atelier Farm to Arm and everything and beyond, and try to get your hands on one of their beautiful custom leather, timeless handbags. Stephanie, thank you so much. It's really a pleasure.

Speaker 2:

Emery, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review, and follow us on every single platform at Handbag Designer. Thanks so much. See you next time.

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Emily Blumenthal

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