Why I Burned Everything to the Ground, Restructured My Company and Started Over

From Paris to LA and $30mm to $100mm...

I don’t even know where to start. the last five months feel like a blur— as if I’ve been in a psychosis or a daze. But also not at all, because I’ve never had to use my brain THIS much and find solutions to a zillion problems all at once (oh how nice it would be to be dumb and have nothing to worry about or stress over). If you hadn’t heard, I restructured my entire company and moved our headquarters from Paris to LA. It’s something that had been on my mind for years and that I always avoided, but knew I would inevitably have to do for the future and health of both myself and of the company. There were a few events and reasons that triggered the sudden course of events which I won’t get into because I’ve signed a strict NDA however, I wasn’t entirely happy with how my company was being run, and I just knew in my bones that it was time for me to take everything back into my own hands and be the sole leader and controller of the brand.

Before going into this, I had no idea what it would take and not even the slightest clue at how I was going to do it, so I went in blindly and trusted that I would figure it out like I always do. With a little bit of faith in myself and the advice and guidance of people much smarter and successful than me, I made it happen and now here we are. To make a long story short, I parted ways with my old CEO and Vice President and let go of more than half of my Paris team and started hiring an entirely new team in LA whilst taking over all of the operations of the company and overseeing the day to day at a granular level. There’s something that only founders truly understand and it’s a simple fact that no one will ever care as much as you do, work as hard as you do and be as dedicated and passionate as you are because it’s no one’s baby but your own. It’s like expecting a babysitter to worry about your child as much as you do— they’ll never care the same way and you can’t expect them to.

Anyway, back to my restructure, I hired a new team in LA, some of which were incredible and some of whom didn’t work out, but that’s to be expected in a scenario like this. I had to let go of some people who helped me build this company from nothing to where it is now. I didn’t take any of this lightly and as hard as it was for them to lose their jobs, it was hard for me, in different ways I’m sure, to let them go and start over with complete and total strangers. My team had been the backbone of this business since the beginning, and I relied on them for almost everything, and some of them were incredibly talented people who contributed in ways that I will forever be indebted for. But despite my wish of having things stay the same and being “comfortable”, I just knew it had to happen, so I put my head down, turned my emotions off and went full steam ahead (I’ve since felt what I needed to feel so don’t worry about me I’m fine— I think? I hope?).

I can happily say that things are in a much better place than they were a few months ago. I can finally see the light at the end of the tumultuous tunnel and the company is now based in LA. I don’t have to fly to Paris every other month and work with a team that’s 9 hours ahead. For the first time in 6 years I can actually build a life where I live. I’m proud to say I’ve designed the life that I want to live and built the company around that rather than the other way around. Right now, we are at a turning point of this brand and it’s a point where some brands either fail or make it to the next phase. We’re already in the beginnings of that. I truly can’t wait to share what’s next for the brand and to continue building something that I hope people resonate and connect with while also inspiring others to build their own dream, exactly the way they want it. If you want to own a business you will have plenty of make it or break it moments and you will come close to breaking and giving up. It’s those moments that define who you are and just how much you’re willing to do and sacrifice for your dream.

I think that being an entrepreneur and a business owner is an incredibly lonely and isolating career path because there aren’t a lot of people who understand what it takes to build something from nothing, to take a sliver of an idea and turn it into a multimillion dollar business with 30 employees, two flagship stores, over 100 wholesale accounts, a 600 SKU collection plan, etc. I love my friends and the people in my life dearly, but I can’t talk to all of them about how hard this job is and what I go through— the struggles and feelings of worry, inadequacy, comparison and fear that one day it might all come crashing down and if you’re like me, you don’t have a back up. You don’t have a Plan B. You don’t have a safety net.

It’s easy for people on the outside to observe what has happened and to see things that either I’ve written, or that other people have written online about the situation and make their own judgments, but I know that I did the right thing for the business and that is always and will always be my focus and my number one priority even over myself. I don’t need to justify my actions to anyone, but as a founder who genuinely wants to help other founders and see other businesses succeed, I feel the need to share these thoughts and feelings. Someone once said to me that the team that gets you to 10 million isn’t the team that gets you to 30 million and the team that gets you to 30 isn’t the team that gets you to 100 million. I really think this is true and as sad as it may seem, getting to the next stage of your business, whatever that may be requires a different skill set and different expertise and I think that that’s OK. I’m truly grateful for the team that I had and for the new team that I’ve brought on who have been instrumental in this process and helping me start over from literally Ground Zero all while the business still needs to run and function on a daily basis. That was the most challenging part of it all, going through the restructure firing, and hiring while we still have drops, orders to fulfill, campaigns and events to produce and collections to develop. Things don’t pause and you can’t put them on hold just because you’re going through a transition or a difficult time. Now that we’re at the end of the road, the stress, the sleepless nights, the anxiety, the high cortisol, the endless worrying have been softened slightly, and I’ve finally feel like a normal person again.

Some of the most important things I learned along this way is to be honest with yourself and with other people and that radical transparency is the only way to operate. I don’t do super well with difficult conversations, especially in a work environment and I tend to be more avoidant than confrontational. I’ve had to learn and grow from this experience in a multitude of ways that I know have made me such a better founder and leader than I would’ve been without it. Another important thing I learned is to find people who believe in your mission and who want to build with you, not people who just wanna clock in and out like it’s an ordinary day job. I think it’s on the leader and founder of a company to inspire your team to feel this way, and to have this mindset and to be someone that they believe in and to build something that they see the potential in. You also can’t take too much time to be emotional about anything and have to be quick to make decisions. I think that’s one of the most important qualities of a good founder and CEO— making decisions and being decisive, because that’s all your job is. Some people live in indecision and become paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong one, but the only thing worse than the wrong decision is indecision. I make choices with my value system and experience in mind, and don’t look back.

When people ask me what my advice is for starting or building a brand it’s a really difficult question to answer, and I almost would rather not answer it because I don’t feel like any answer would be helpful. There are 900 million different ways to do this and I don’t want to tell people which way is the right one because it’s dependent on what your situation is— what your resources are, what you have access to, what your strengths are, what your priorities are, what your aspirations are, what your dream is, how you want your life to look, how you wanna live, how you wanna spend your time etc. There are so many things to consider when building your dream and I think that’s why I love what I do so much because it’s like a lifelong puzzle. You have a goal and there are endless ways of achieving that goal and the decisions you make will dictate what that path looks like, and it will look different for everyone. I can only share my biggest lessons and takeaways from doing what I do and hope that it helps someone someday but if it doesn’t, you’ll figure it out, we all do eventually.