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

Redefining Sustainable Fashion: Nancy Rhodes’ Journey to Innovation and Impact | Emily Blumenthal & Nancy Rhodes

• Emily Blumenthal • Season 1

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Nancy Rhodes shares her journey from aspiring designer to leader in sustainable fashion. With experience at Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, Nancy gained insights into consumer behavior before designing footwear for brands like BCBG and Kenneth Cole. Through Alternew, she’s revolutionizing fashion care by digitizing alterations and repairs, making sustainability accessible. Her approach highlights how technology can enhance satisfaction, reduce waste, and promote eco-friendly practices. Nancy’s commitment offers insights for emerging designers and established brands integrating sustainability.This episode offers a fresh perspective on sustainable fashion, inspiring you to rethink possibilities for handbags and beyond.

Key Takeaways:

  • Community Support: Building a sustainable brand thrives on collaboration.
  • Tech & Sustainability: Digital fashion care enhances satisfaction and promotes eco-friendly practices.
  • Balance Cost & Responsibility: Sustainability requires balancing affordability with environmental impact.

About Our Guest, Nancy Rhodes: Nancy Rhodes is the founder of Alternew, a platform digitizing fashion care services like alterations and repairs. With over 20 years of experience in retail and footwear design, Nancy has worked with brands like Kenneth Cole and BCBG. She is dedicated to integrating sustainability into fashion, blending innovation with eco-friendly practices.

Host Emily Blumenthal is a handbag industry expert, author of Handbag Designer 101, and founder of The Handbag Awards. Known as the “Handbag Fairy Godmother,” Emily also teaches entrepreneurship at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is dedicated to celebrating creativity, craftsmanship, and the art of building iconic handbag brands.

Find Handbag Designer 101 Merch, HBD101 Masterclass, one-on-one sessions, and opportunities to book Emily Blumenthal as a speaker at emilyblumenthal.com.  Buy Emily’s Books: “Handbag Designer 101” & “Savvy Suzanna’s Amazing Adventures in Handbags”

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Speaker 1:

biodegradable versus recyclable, and if something's biodegradable but when it seeps into the soil, is it actually creating more toxins than had it just been made to be recyclable or to be in a landfill? There's a lot of different questions. I think the good news is that there's a lot of awareness and there have been enough questions asked to support really getting to the core of the solution where it's. For the last couple of decades it's been a lot of kind of spaghetti against the wall, not to say anything is wrong with that, because you start somewhere years in this space that today the ideas that they had wouldn't be thought of. They would be greenwashing, but at that time they were so innovative.

Speaker 2:

Hi and welcome to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast with your host, emily Blumenthal, handbag industry expert and the handbag fairy godmother. Each week, we uncover the stories behind the handbags we love, from the iconic brands and top designers to the creativity, craftsmanship and culture that define the handbag world. Whether you're a designer, collector or simply passionate about handbags, this is your front row seat to it all.

Speaker 3:

Welcome, nancy Rhodes of Alter New to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast. Welcome. Welcome, nancy. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. This is amazing. So we became LinkedIn friends. I hang out on LinkedIn often. I think I feel more comfortable. They're actually there in Substack now. Those are my two safe places because people are much kinder there and very much into being supportive. But I think you connected with me and then I went down a rabbit hole looking at what you do and was like, wow, we need to have her on. So why don't you start from the way back, like how you ended up into the industry? And then we can absolutely talk about your amazing brand, which I'm just blown away that it's just so cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, you did ask me to go way back, so we will go back to my three-year-old self, who was dying to be a designer. I did art classes. I was always kind of drawing and wanting to be part of the industry. My babysitter invited me to her college fashion show and this green, velvet, ethereal cape floated down the runway and I'm like that's it, that's what I'm doing. And I was lucky enough to have parents who let me do these art classes and supported my journey. And somewhere in my teen years I decided I wanted to focus on footwear. Why I thought I should like niche myself at that age, I don't know. And so spent most of my you know, early years in retail, learning the consumer experience. Like now I can go back and really value what that experience was when did you work?

Speaker 1:

in retail, because the day I was able to I started working at Nordstrom and then so Nordstrom, I've worked in kids' shoes, I've worked in the like BP, I've worked in different apparel departments and then when I finished school, like going into kind of another program, I did my bachelor's at University of Oregon Art and Business and then I started an associate's program at FIDM in California and was working at Nima Marcus. So I had worked at Nima Marcus in San Diego and so was learning more about this like higher end. And so now looking back, understanding the retail experience for like a Nordstrom customer versus a Nima Marcus customer, and now we'll get into the actual being a footwear designer. So I did get into footwear designing. I started with a company called Genkel. I met someone. It was Charles David, charles Malka and David Malka their brothers one of the sons had his own company in Beverly Hills. I started working there.

Speaker 1:

I was building kind of this, my first example of what private label looks like, what white labeling looks like. So first shoe ever designed was a cowboy blue mule with an embossed PU upper and it ended up at BCBG outlets. So that was a very exciting moment for me. And then I was building product for Rave which was like a kind of a Contempo casuals or wet seal to anybody from the millennial age of that was of the time. And then finally found myself in New York, started working at Kenneth Cole. Was building product, not only for their reaction, kenneth Cole, but product for Target and Marshalls and Ross and Burlington. Then went into some bigger licensees. Was building products then for Costco and BJ's like really getting to this point where the opportunities were more lucrative. The amount of pairs I was making was higher and we can get into the stories of economies of scale versus small.

Speaker 3:

You're talking all of my language. That's a conversation for a different day. Well, if anybody's watching this on YouTube, I'm currently at FIT in a classroom with a mobile light, so if all of a sudden it goes dark, my light ran out of juice. So, fyi, because the lighting in the classrooms are never that good, you should see it. When I teach I'm putting on a dog and pony show. It's funny like you've touched on so many cool things where I always say you'd never.

Speaker 3:

Someone gave me sage advice saying you'd never open up a clothing store if you didn't know how to shop. And understanding how to shop for your customer and what they're looking for and the makings of what buyers look for, that mindset is gold. And having that opportunity from an early age to be able to then have a sense of what will sell and what won't sell, and designing into trends versus not designing into trends, and which retail stores would take a certain color, a certain style, a certain material, a certain price point versus another, and all of those things. Especially going back to this term economies of scale, which you know I use the Costco versus Walgreens that you know, when you look at the unit price, economies of scale, the more you produce, the less it costs.

Speaker 3:

And that's the problem with smaller brands, emerging and independent designers because they lack the orders, they lack the ability. They get stuck in that circle of like, okay, I can't make my prices lower because I don't have the orders to support it, and how am I going to do it? So all of those things are so important, even though you know, footwear handbags are adjacent and anybody who has worked with any footwear brand bags are designed based on the hero shoe. That's just how it goes. Any license, any partnership I know, having worked with enough footwear brands that have handbags it's like, okay, here's our best selling shoe, design a bag collection around it. And it's one of those key points, actually, that I tell designers that look at what the biggest trend is, look at what's being sold in footwear, look at what's being sold in auto, pull the color from auto, pull the trend from footwear and look at where the inspiration should come from the runway, from footwear and look at the where the inspiration should come from, the runway.

Speaker 1:

So one of the biggest brands I worked for, where I learned about kind of licensees and really understanding the assortment, was I worked for Beyonce's Darion, and so Miss Tina Knowles was the creative director and I worked a lot with the handbag designers because especially, you know, in different environments there are certain like demographics that prefer like a matching bag and shoe and then certain ones that don't. So we are really connected, building these like aligned footwear to handbags, same colors, same patterns, taking the same hardware from one to the other. So it was really fun to do. And, yes, I did get to meet Beyonce a couple of times. I did get to go to her childhood home one time in Texas. Yes, and Miss Tina could not be in New York that I was flying in from San Diego from the footwear license to do the assortment. She could not be there York. That I was flying in from San Diego from the footwear license to do the assortment. She could not be there.

Speaker 1:

So we went to Houston and we presented the collection on her pool table and it just so happened that Beyonce had like some sort of pyrotechnics incident at her concert. So she was there. And so she walks into the room and, I kid you not, there was like a fan blowing on her. It was invisible, I didn't see it, but like something was making her like just float into the room and she was wearing this house dress which I call a house dress, but it was. It probably was more than my rent and she just looked, she was barefoot and I'm like how is this my life? My sales rep and I were just like standing there, like okay, we're totally cool right now. This is fine, but it was an experience, to say the least.

Speaker 3:

Did she look over there at the assortment?

Speaker 1:

She did she said things like cool, love it Right, yes, Beyonce has worn my shoes.

Speaker 3:

That should be your new tagline. So don't worry, it gets said a lot. Oh my God, that's amazing. So at this point, you've worked with a multitude of retail. You've done both brand side, retail side. How are you able to continue to, especially even from a lifestyle perspective, to support yourself? What put you into the place of saying like, okay, I've done this long enough, or I think I found a void in the market because I'd love to hear what took you to launching Alter New, because it's just so fascinating. What was that aha moment?

Speaker 1:

It's a funny story. Some people say they're like the reluctant entrepreneur. I actually say that not only did I follow the breadcrumbs, but I also had a pitchfork behind me just pushing me into this direction. It didn't feel so much as reluctant as like required. So I really strongly believe that our community and the people around us help support our growth. And so I ran into a friend from Kenneth Cole. I hadn't seen her in seven years. We got on a train together to Newark and she said she was working at this university. It was GCNYC at the time. It's now been taken over, now it's IENYC and the UN was giving out grants because it was aligned with their SDGs. So it was a master's in sustainability. Spoke with her. Three weeks later I was sitting down at my first master's class. Never planned on.

Speaker 1:

Getting a master's was, like you know, continuing to grow. My own experience in the industry, and it just from day one. I was like this is the right place, the right time. And again was a year later, doing an entrepreneurship class. Everyone would say to me you know what you should do. You should build a sustainable footwear brand. And the first thing I would say back to them is there's no such thing. The infrastructure doesn't exist. I do not have a science background. I cannot build the infrastructure and the hardware needed to support what will help create monomaterials and recycling and all of these things. Which is exciting to see what's being done in the space, but it was not the space I could support at the time.

Speaker 3:

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Speaker 3:

I think what a lot of people don't know that it's virtually impossible to have something that is 100% vegan, like either the glue, whether the upper, whether the interior. It's something somewhere. It's like saying you know to be 100% vegan, you're going to end up having something with eggs in it, whether you know it or not, one way or another. That bread that you ate, that you thought was vegan guess what it wasn't, and you still ate it. It is almost impossible to develop a product that's 100% without some sort of animal-based product. I applaud those who do I really do but it's something that you have to do that cost-benefit analysis of the time, value of money it's going to take you to put it together, in addition to trying to get the customer to pay for it. So I. So you know, in a perfect world it would be amazing, but I just think it's hard and expensive, right, and there's a lot about looking at life cycle assessment.

Speaker 1:

I've been to China over 50 times. I've been in factories. I've seen great factories and I've seen terrible factories. And I've been to the depths of China and like the more, like where great product is made and where you go to make the product that you just hope doesn't fall off as it like walks down the street. And what I found was it's all about sourcing and PETA aside, if we look at the life cycle assessment of footwear, the environmental impact of a well sourced animal product that lasts for a really long time actually has a longer lifetime value, actually has a longer lifetime value and I say that by years, not by days, like years and years and years over.

Speaker 1:

A chemically made product that is chemically made, that is vegan and I do applaud the brands like Stella McCartney that are really doing the research and development and it's that bowling pin strategy where you're creating something at its top so that it can have the development it needs to get to the masses. And if you're looking at what that looks like, say what you will look at Elon Musk and Tesla. The goal was always to make a Tesla be as cost effective as a Civic, but it couldn't get there unless he started by making it super expensive to build the R&D to get to the point where it's not accessible. It's more of like financial literacy and understanding business than it is like who do you like, who do you don't like.

Speaker 3:

Who do you not like? Yeah, I think what a lot of people also don't know is that any chemically treated so-called vegan product has such a short life cycle that whatever goods are left over can never be really used as dead stock, and typically they're burned, they're disposed of, they don't disintegrate and they just sit there landfills for life.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's biodegradable versus recyclable, and if something's biodegradable but when it seeps into the soil, is it actually creating more toxins than had it just been made to be recyclable or be in a landfill? There's a lot of different questions. I think the good news is that there's a lot of awareness and there's been enough questions asked to support really getting to the core of the solution, whereas for the last couple of decades it's been a lot of kind of spaghetti against the wall, not to say anything is wrong with that, because you start somewhere, and so there's plenty of pioneers in this space that today the ideas that they had wouldn't be thought of. They would be greenwashing, but at that time they were so innovative, and so for me it's really important to kind of respect the history of how we got to where we are, both good and bad, because we wouldn't be where we are without those people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I totally agree. So I want to get to. You guys started taking these classes. You had this aha moment I assume you were still day jobbing whilst doing both and then what brought you to this idea of saying you know what I'm going to create? This network of alterations tailors, seamstresses, seamstress. Yeah yeah, that's like a flight attendant versus stewardess, I guess.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, it's funny because that was a long whiteboarding session of like what do we call because a tailor has a stigma of like being a man and being this, and a seamstress is like, is that the female version or is that just someone who is sewing versus tailoring?

Speaker 3:

And so it was all yeah, because one's low end and one's high end, exactly.

Speaker 1:

And it's so. How do you support an entire industry and there really isn't like a service provider would be the easiest way to describe it. But it doesn't really speak to these people, our specialists, and what they're doing. But I ended up I was in my master's program with a friend of mine who I now refer to as my guru and my muse because we were having this conversation. We'd always have these conversations around the industry.

Speaker 1:

She still is at a very, very large corporation in innovation and told me when she was in college she would do alterations as a way to make extra cash. And it was the first time where now I can say it very easily like products as a service, goods as a service. How do we support the future of this industry that I love so much, that you love so much, without making more product but still providing a way for brands to profit, for the industry to profit? And it was through alterations and repairs very quickly, like tested out. An LLC used it as a way of thesis. So my thesis was demarcating fashion customization, did a ton of research in the space, what kind of businesses had been made, what were other circular business models, et cetera, and it was really the green light I needed to build my business. So that was the start of me building a mobile tailoring business, and that's not what we do today, but it was my first foray into supporting this industry.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 2:

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Speaker 3:

I just know a lot of people who are in the restaurant business started with mobile trucks to have almost proof of concept.

Speaker 1:

So I think it's actually funny you say that because the way we speak to it and, as you say, restaurants, if we look at this industry as a category look at OpenTable, look at ZocDoc, look at Airbnb, and I know I haven't said what Alternew is and I will do that in one second but they also antiquated fragmented industries and modernized them through technology. That is what we are doing for the fashion care space, which is just the next industry that is ripe for innovation, and fashion cannot fully be circular without care and repair, and they are a wildly underserved part of the industry, and that's what we're trying to help navigate and support and grow.

Speaker 3:

So what exactly is Alternew at this point?

Speaker 1:

So at Alternew, we have a tech solution that helps brands see into the after sales journey of their customer by bringing alterations and repairs back to the consumer journey, meaning that a brand now has a way to digitize the alterations experience. They're getting a tool where they can match their customers one for one with a vetted network of local tailor shops, whether that's in-store, online, at concessions. Tailors get access to a full POS system. Think of like toast Toast you go to restaurants a toast for tailors. They're getting access to operational efficiencies, ways to manage their businesses more effectively and being able to support their customers through modern tools like digital ticketing, digital notifications, inventory management. So on both sides of this guided marketplace, everybody is being supported. So it's a win for brands, it's a win for tailors and, most of all, it's a win for consumers. Because the idea for consumers is how do you support, like?

Speaker 1:

You have consumers today who very much are like I go to a store, I buy something new and then I go and get it tailored immediately.

Speaker 1:

One of the things we talk about is how clothes are mass produced, bodies or not right, like we know that a brand's top customers are the ones who go to a store, love it so much that they're willing to buy it and getting altered. So not only does that help you know who your best customers are, because they're willing to spend the money, but spend more money to love your clothing. But second of all, talk about inclusivity. What is the best way to support inclusivity? Saying we don't care what size you are, we're going to support making sure this fits perfectly on you. And so it really speaks to a brand, not just in the social impact of social good, environmental good, but it's truly a return for them. It's customer acquisition, it's customer retention, it's diverting returns. So there is a bottom line reason for them to offer these services, but there's also a people, planet, profit. Right, they're supporting people, they're supporting a planet and they're supporting their profits.

Speaker 3:

That must have been tricky, because I know one of the founders of I can't even remember one of those food delivery services, one of the biggest that started in New York, and I remember him telling me how difficult it was to get restaurants to become technical, to incorporate that in, because it was like the last thing and then the bottom of their list of things to deal with, saying I'm a restaurant, I'm not. Technology, don't make me be both.

Speaker 1:

It's funny you say that, because one of the reasons why we've brought brands into the equation is because it's something they really need and, I think, for tailors and for service providers, they're looking for new business. And so we actually started, as you know, once I had seen that mobile tailoring was an enabler or a feature, not a scaled business. Then we went into a marketplace. How do we connect customers to tailors? What we realized is, in going to tailors, they were saying, like I can barely manage the business I have I'm not able to like, deal with, like I'm either cobbling together a bunch of tech stacks to make sure they manage my business or I'm still going on pen and paper and I don't want to add something to it. And so that's when we decided to build Tech for Tailors. Okay, let's support how we can be this Toast for Tailors. This Open Table started up as management for restaurants and Open Table for Tailors and that they wanted, but there was not enough incentive. It wasn't a big enough carrot for them to adopt Same thing with restaurants. Once we started speaking with brands and saying, hey, we have this network and again, being in the footwear industry, having my master's in sustainability, being in New York. My network is, you know, executives at fashion brands in sustainability and they were like this is such a great way to support our circularity initiatives, our sustainability initiatives, great.

Speaker 1:

Then we went back to the tailors and said, hey, we can get you new business. In fact, you don't even need to pay for the tech. What we'll just do is any business we bring you. We take a small commission on. Any additional business that customer brings you is yours, so it becomes like a finder's fee for them. So it's not just passive leads, it's genuine lead conversion for them. So they're only paying for the business they already are getting. And if they do a good job, well, that customer now has used it as a discovery platform. Yep, that's new business. So it became kind of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And that's what we do.

Speaker 3:

So I know this is right now very apparel focused, but we were talking about before that, obviously bringing it back to handbags, that this is something that will be on the docket, moving forward, because you know handbags need care. Coach Topia was very clever, being, as far as I'm concerned, steps ahead of thinking, and now each brand as I know, zara is trying to bring we use product back in store. So it's not going on Depop or any of those places back in store. So it's not going on Depop or any of those places. So I think this is an opportunity for all brands to say, okay, you don't need to go and resell it, just fix it and continue to enjoy it. So that goes for handbags, that goes for everything. Handbags, as we said, typically are fixed by cobblers, shoemakers and so forth. Not only that, but leather jackets, exactly leather jackets, because the sewing machines are different. They need to have the different needles, the different machines. I'm assuming that's on the docket for the future.

Speaker 1:

What we hope to support is the continued use of soft goods and textiles right and then beyond that into jewelry care, because the idea is we're building an operating system to support the fashion industry and accelerating to a circular economy and in order to do that, you need to support the easiest access to care and repair for your goods and the things that you wear from head to toe and it's so hard to find one thing to another and there are other emerging players in the industry supporting these services that, like are all kind of helping us to validate the market and support all of our growth. But we're very excited because we were just named a top three finalist for an, a globally recognized award, so the next few months we'll get mentorship and networking and visibility. It's officially coming out on December 19th so I'll be able to share it then?

Speaker 3:

Okay, nancy, how can we find you, follow you and get more information on Alter New?

Speaker 1:

Yes, instagram alternew underscore official LinkedIn, either Alternew or Nancy Rhodes. I definitely we're a B2B solution, so there's a lot more on LinkedIn than there is on Instagram. But, as we were talking, we're definitely looking for social media ambassadors and support to help us bring our vision to life, and feel free to connect with me and share your thoughts, ideas, support. I'm always looking for feedback.

Speaker 3:

Fabulous, Nancy. Thank you so much. It was great having you Thank you Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2:

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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