After graduating from Yale with a degree in fine arts, Orange County-raised Eunice Cho (FEMBA ’14) headed for New York City and wound up working for a high-end lingerie company. There she took on a number of creative roles while whetting her appetite for the business side of the fashion industry. She decided to go to b-school.
That epiphany led to a realization: She had nothing to wear.
While interviewing for schools, Cho says it became apparent that the casual and comfortable clothes she wore to work in the anything-goes environment of fashion didn’t meet the expectations of the buttoned-up business world. In classic entrepreneur fashion, when faced with a problem, Cho decided to find a solution.
That solution is AELLA.
AELLA is an online retailer offering women a full line of pants, blazers, and t-shirts. Launched in the fall of 2014, AELLA is an L.A.-based company with an office in downtown’s fashion district and a warehouse in South Gate. The company has now made its foray into brick-and-mortar sales with a pop-up at Bloomingdale’s flagship store in New York City. We’d tell you more, but it’s probably better if Eunice, whose titles include “founder and creative director,” fills us in on the details.
Eunice Cho: I studied fine arts as an undergrad and worked in fashion in New York afterward, and I never had to dress up for work; I was always in jeans and leggings, just whatever I wanted to wear. Once I started interviewing for business school, I had to start looking for suits.
And that’s when I realized that suits were so expensive and they were very conservative and sort of devoid of personality. Wherever you go, it’s sort of a cookie-cutter, wool-suit look, and for me that was really frustrating because I do believe that clothing has a huge impact on your confidence and how you present yourself — and showing up for an interview in a wool suit is not necessarily confidence inspiring.
UCLA Anderson: And that’s when you decided to seek a solution?
EC: That’s when I thought, “Why can’t there be more comfortable options for something like this?” And at the same time there were a couple of options in high-end street fashion labels like J. Crew that people really gravitated toward, with stretch pants for women. The problem was that a lot of these clothes, especially dressy clothes, were dry clean only, and especially for pants, you wore them a couple of times and they get stretched out and get baggy so all day you’re hiking up your pants. So you have to either wash it or get it dry cleaned to make it look fresh again. Once I started business school, I really got into fiber and fabric research because my family is in the textile business.
I wanted to find a material that had a lot of functional benefits, something that you could machine wash and didn’t have to dry clean, something where the color didn’t fade even if you washed it a lot, and something that didn’t stretch out by wearing it just once — something that’s also very durable because a lot of dressy clothes tend to be made in these delicate fabrics that wear out or rip if you are a very active person. That sort of was the beginning of the journey. I really just wanted to identify a type of fabric that could do all of this, but still looked very dressy and was really, really comfortable. If I could find this fabric then I could probably make something that fits the need of anybody who has to dress up for work.
UCLA Anderson: Did you have the basic concept of AELLA in mind at that point?
EC: At that point I didn’t have a clear awareness that I would want to start something like AELLA, but I was definitely already interested in this product and solving this problem. The reason why I decided to go to business school is that I had very creative-heavy training in school. I studied fine arts. I had a concentration in painting and, afterward, I worked for a fashion company where I did product development and visual merchandising.
So everything was very creative and visual, but as I started working more in that fashion company, Kiki de Montparnasse, I got to work in a lot of the different departments there. I had my hand in operations; I did wholesale for a little bit, I did warehouse management and inventory management and visual merchandising and package design. Pretty much every single department that the company housed, I got involved in. And that’s when I really got interested in the business side of fashion. So I was thinking, “This is an interest that I have and I want to really round out my education and my experiences. I’ve always just been in design and I want to sort of move over to the other side.” That’s when I decided to go to business school.
I was actually originally planning on going to business school full time on the East Coast. And I happened to be out here in L.A. visiting my parents before I went back to school, and that’s when my dad said, “Why don’t you just work at our family business and you can do some research since you have this idea for your product, and maybe you can get somewhere with that.” Once I got started and got the ball rolling, I didn’t want to stop developing this idea — the initial idea for AELLA and go to school for two years. I just wanted to find a program where I could go to school and work on this idea that I had at the same time. So then that’s how I found the FEMBA program.
UCLA Anderson: Take us from graduation to the official beginning of the company.
EC: We launched the current version of this business, our digital presence and our brand, in the fall of 2014. Until then, I had been working on the idea of AELLA and testing products, testing the business model, doing a lot of focus groups and very small-scale selling events. Once I graduated I was ready to work on this full time and I really put all of my efforts into incorporating everything that I learned in business school, and then launching what we see now.
So what we make are office-appropriate essentials. That means your wardrobe essentials, your staple T-shirt, your staple jacket, your staple pants; and pants are our biggest focus because that’s how we started. We started out with the idea of the “perfect black pants that any woman needs,” whether it’s for work or for errands, for going out, for meetings — just anything in your life.
UCLA Anderson: Where does AELLA fall on the fashion scale? I know you’re an online company, but if there were an AELLA store in the mall, where would it fit in?
EC: In terms of how we fit in the marketplace, I would say we try to make really high-quality, designer-quality clothing for less than designer prices. In terms of where we sit in a mall, in terms of quality and pricing, we would definitely be next to the Nordstroms and Bloomingdale’s and J. Crews of the world.
UCLA Anderson: Who are AELLA’s customers? And how did it feel the first time you were out and about and you saw someone wearing something from the AELLA collection?
EC: Our customers sort of run the gamut in terms of age. They are either in their late 20s to late 30s or they’re the older ladies like late 40s and up. Our customer archetype is someone who really loves to look polished, but she has a very busy life that is full of transitions. Whether she’s a working professional or not, she’s in transition across a lot of different activities. If she’s a working professional, she’s traveling and has a lot of meetings and has a very rigorous working schedule. And these customers online shop a lot because they’re very busy and don’t have time to go shopping. They really do love the convenience of online shopping and what that brings, but at the same time, they don’t want to compromise on comfort.
The first time I saw a stranger wearing AELLA was an actress at LAX- just a month ago! It was a special moment. I definitely approached her to ask her about her AELLA pants. Another exciting time was when one of my friends in New York texted me from a tech conference. And she said the CEO of Rocksbox (Meaghan Rose) was wearing AELLA pants.
And that was awesome. We were like, “Yes, we’re doing exactly what we want to do!” Rocksbox is a very successful, visible Internet accessories brand. And, obviously, the CEO is somebody that’s very ambitious and hardworking and she’s wearing AELLA clothes at this tech conference where you need to look polished. So I sort of felt like our product had done everything that it needed to do.
UCLA Anderson: Even a novice knows that the fashion industry has “seasons.” Does AELLA follow this tradition?
EC: Because we’re an online company we have been fortunate enough to stay on our own schedule. The nature of our clothing is that it’s year round. They’re staples. And we want to keep it that way because I think that the problem with fashion and retail these days — there’s too much supply and too many seasons, so the buying cycle becomes shorter and shorter. If you start playing into that cycle, you have to start discounting your goods. And then it becomes very difficult to get your customers to buy at full price. J. Crew and companies like Gap are going through a really difficult time right now because of this problem, where their customers just don’t buy at full retail price anymore, so they’re heavily discounting their surplus inventory in order to move it out. And then it just hurts your brand.
Our cost of manufacturing is very high because we’re using really high-quality materials and we also manufacture in Los Angeles. We never want to get into a situation where we have to start discounting goods in order to get inventory out the door. So we operate on a year round calendar where we have things that you can buy any time of the year, and that allows us to also sort of bypass the fashion calendar and release things whenever we have new items. That normally has to do with our customer asking for certain items: we get a lot of feedback from customers who say, “Hey, I want this type of thing or this silhouette. I love the fabric but it doesn’t fit my body type. So, you guys have something like this?” And then we always fold in all of that feedback into our product development and we work on it. As soon as it’s ready we just release it to our website.
UCLA Anderson: You spoke of doing a lot of research into different fabrics while you were still at Anderson. Where did your research eventually lead to?
EC: We have one type of fabric that we developed and trademarked. It’s called Feather Skin®. It feels like a really soft jersey, but it has a dry-fit functionality on the inside, so that when you wear it and you get a little sweaty, it dries really quickly and keeps you cool. A lot of the very high-end T-shirts that you buy, they’re very, very soft but they tend to be really thin and delicate. So when you wash them in the washing machine they get damaged pretty quickly so you have to hand wash them. Or they’re so thin and delicate that they’re kind of see-through. With our T-shirts we try to address all of those problems so that you can really put this through the wash — it’s durable, it’s not see-through, and it has some performance aspect to it.
UCLA Anderson: AELLA employs five people, including yourself, not counting the manufacturing teams. How do you divide your time?
EC: I would say the whole development and design process in total takes up about 30 percent of my time. I would like it to be more eventually. Another 30 percent goes toward operations and production management. Then, basically, anything that has to do with marketing and sales (anything branding or web-related, or this new store that we’re going to be popping up in Bloomingdale’s, that is probably another 30 percent.
UCLA Anderson: We talk to a lot of Anderson entrepreneurs and many go into their businesses with an exit strategy in mind. Have you had thoughts about your future and the future of the company?
EC: This is something that business schools teach. I think it’s hard to build a company with long term value if you’re already thinking about the end game- like selling and getting out. I like to think about it in terms of where I want the brand to be in five years or 10 years. In those terms, I would like AELLA to be a global brand in providing the most comfortable clothing at prices that really make sense for women who are living increasingly busier lives. And I want us to have the reputation for the best fitting, most comfortable, and the best made pants.
I can't wait to try your clothes! I've shared your website with our HR manager for our Business Casual office. Best of luck to you!
Sue Zisko, MBA '81
Posted by: Sue Zisko | 06/01/2016 at 10:52 AM