Samsonite announced this week that it’s acquiring 85 percent of Béis for $178.5 million, valuing the company at roughly $210 million. Shay Mitchell is rolling over about half her existing equity and keeping a 15 percent stake going forward. Beach House Group, the brand incubator that held the majority 70 percent stake since Béis launched in 2018, is selling out entirely. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, pending regulatory approval.

The Deal, in Plain Terms

Samsonite is paying $178.5 million in cash, funded through cash on hand and its revolving credit facility, for 85 percent of a company it values at $210 million. That valuation reflects Béis’s approximately $210 million in 2025 net sales, at what Samsonite has described as attractive margins. Mitchell isn’t walking away. She’s staying on as Founder and Head of Creative and Design, and Béis will keep operating as a standalone brand within Samsonite’s portfolio, led by its existing CEO, Adeela Hussain Johnson, and management team.

For Samsonite, a 113-year-old luggage company that already owns Tumi, High Sierra, and Gregory, this is explicitly about reaching a demographic it doesn’t naturally have: younger, predominantly female shoppers who’ve built Béis into a two-million-plus-follower brand across Instagram and TikTok. For Beach House Group, it’s a clean exit on the incubator investment that got Béis off the ground in 2018. For Mitchell, it’s what most founders would call a genuinely good outcome: real liquidity now, continued creative control, and a real ownership stake in whatever Béis becomes next.

Why the Timing Isn’t a Coincidence

I don’t think it’s a stretch to connect this directly to the story I told you last month. The Weekender redesign wasn’t just a fun marketing case study. It’s a genuinely good window into the kind of brand discipline that makes a founder-led company acquisition-ready in the first place, the kind of discipline Samsonite is now paying to preserve. A company that publicly owns its flaws, fixes them in front of its customers, and turns the fix itself into a celebration isn’t just generating goodwill. It’s demonstrating, in the most visible way possible, that it understands its customer better than almost anyone else in the category. That’s precisely the kind of asset a company like Samsonite pays a premium for: not just revenue, but a brand relationship that’s proven itself resilient in public, under real scrutiny, more than once.

The acknowledge-fix-celebrate playbook I broke down in July wasn’t the reason Béis got acquired. But it’s a genuinely good window into the kind of brand discipline that makes a founder-led company acquisition-ready in the first place. You don’t build a brand relationship like that by accident, and you don’t build it in the month before a deal closes. Béis had been doing this consistently for years before Samsonite came calling.

It’s also worth noting who advised the deal, because it signals how seriously both sides treated it. BofA Securities advised Samsonite, with Ropes & Gray as legal counsel. Béis had its own separate financial advisor, and Mitchell retained her own dedicated legal counsel independent of the company’s. That’s not a formality. It means Mitchell had representation negotiating specifically on her behalf, distinct from the company’s broader interests, which is part of how a founder ends up with terms this favorable instead of whatever a single set of advisors decides is reasonable for everyone at once.

What Actually Makes This a Good Outcome

It’s worth being specific about why this deal reads as a win for Mitchell rather than a brand quietly getting absorbed and diluted, because plenty of acquisitions in this category don’t look like this one. She kept a real ownership stake instead of cashing out entirely. She kept an actual operating role with creative authority, not a ceremonial advisor title. And the brand itself stays intact as a standalone entity rather than getting folded into an existing product line or platform. Those are deal terms a founder has to actually negotiate for, and they’re not guaranteed just because a brand is popular or profitable.

That contrast, between an acquisition that preserves what made a brand work and one that quietly erases it, is worth understanding in more depth, because it’s not really about deal size. It’s about what a founder builds and protects long before an acquirer ever shows up. That’s exactly what Thursday’s paid post digs into: what actually separates a founder-friendly exit from the kind that hollows a brand out.

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The Part Worth Sitting With

If you're building a brand right now, the lesson isn't "get acquired by a bigger company." It's that the brand equity you build through hard, public, unglamorous moments, actually addressing what your customers are saying instead of managing the narrative around it, compounds into something with real financial value, whether or not an acquisition is ever on the table for you. Mitchell built Béis with clarity about who the brand was and who it was for. That clarity is exactly what let her handle a redesign controversy in public without it reading as risky, and it's exactly what made Béis an asset worth $210 million less than eight years after launch. It's also the same foundational work I go deep on inside Branding Mastery— because once a brand’s foundation is actually solid, moves like the one Béis just made stop feeling risky and start feeling inevitable.

If you missed the original piece on how Béis handled the redesign, it’s worth reading as the first half of this story here.

Have a great rest of your week!

— Stephanie

Last week I walked through why August is the month to lock your Q4 inventory decisions instead of reacting to them in October. That advice still holds. But if you’re locking a production run this month using landed costs you calculated back in the spring, you’re planning against numbers that no longer exist.

Monday’s post covered what changed: a new 50% tariff on Canadian apparel effective August 19, and a Section 122 replacement that quietly reset the math for anyone sourcing from Vietnam, Bangladesh, or China. This is what to actually do about it, in order, starting this week.

Step One: Calculate Your Real Landed Cost, Not the Sticker Tariff Rate

The tariff rate you see in a headline is never the number that hits your P&L. Your actual landed cost is unit cost, plus freight, plus every duty layer that applies to your HTS code, plus broker and customs fees, plus insurance. For a lot of small brands, that last group of line items adds up to more than people expect, and it’s the part most likely to get left out of a back-of-envelope estimate.

Illustrative example only — your actual landed cost depends on your specific HTS code. Talk to your customs broker for exact numbers.

Here’s the shape of it, using rough figures to illustrate the gap rather than exact numbers for your product: a $12 unit garment sourced from China, once the current duty layers are stacked, is likely landing somewhere north of $16 before freight and fees. The same garment sourced from a CAFTA-DR country, which remains exempt from the Section 122 replacement, could land closer to $13 to $14. That’s not a rounding difference at scale.

Your exact number depends on your specific HTS code, and that’s a conversation for your customs broker, not a blog post. But this is the framework to bring into that conversation, and it’s worth having this week rather than next month.

Step Two: Sort Yourself Into One of Three Buckets

Not every brand needs the same response, and treating this as one-size-fits-all is how founders end up either overreacting or under reacting.

If you’re mid-contract with a single-country supplier and locked into volume commitments, you’re a renegotiate case. If you’re still building out your supply chain or have a production run coming up that isn’t locked yet, you’re a diversify case. If your volume is small enough that switching sourcing would cost more in disruption than it saves in duty, you’re a hold case, at least for this cycle.

Knowing which bucket you’re in changes everything about what you do next.

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Four days later, at 12:01 a.m. on July 24, Section 122 tariffs expired. A replacement took effect in the same minute: new Section 301 duties on textiles and apparel from roughly 60 countries, tied to forced-labor enforcement findings rather than the blanket rationale behind Section 122.

Two tariff regimes changed in the same week. If you built your sourcing plan any time before July, it’s already describing a market that no longer exists.

This is a U.S. story, but not only a U.S. story. If you're sourcing globally and selling into the U.S. market, this changes your landed cost directly. If you're not, it's still worth tracking: U.S. demand is already reshaping where global factories put their capacity, and that pressure tends to show up in lead times and minimum order quantities everywhere, not just for brands selling stateside.

What Actually Changed

The Canada tariff is the more dramatic headline, and it’s a real one, even though it isn’t apparel-specific. It’s a sweeping measure covering everything from furniture to cement to wine, but textiles and apparel (essentially every knit and woven category) are fully caught inside it, and as of this writing there’s no exemption for goods that would normally qualify under the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement. Officials have left the door open to adjusting the rate or scope before August 19, but nothing has changed as of today.

The Section 122 replacement is quieter but touches more brands directly. For many garments coming from Vietnam or Bangladesh, total duties now commonly land in the mid-20% range once the standard import rate is combined with the new Section 301 layer. Many apparel categories sourced from China face total duties exceeding 30%, once existing Section 301 measures stack with the new layer.

These aren’t theoretical. They’re the duties importers are now paying on qualifying entries.

Why the Map Moved So Fast

Trade policy has become the thing fashion executives can’t stop talking about. The BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2026 report found that 76% of executives now say trade and tariff response will be the single biggest theme shaping the industry this year.

That’s an unusual thing to sit at the top of an industry survey. It’s also accurate.

The Two Ways Brands Are Responding

A meaningful share of small brands are choosing to raise prices, in some cases by as much as 15%, and passing a large portion of the new cost directly to customers. Others are doing something slower and less visible: renegotiating supplier terms, splitting orders across two or three countries, quietly rebuilding sourcing relationships that were built for a completely different tariff environment. (If you’re in that second group and need a starting point, here’s the manufacturer sourcing list I put together.)

Both are legitimate responses. Only one of them buys you time.

The Real Risk Isn’t the Tariff. It’s Moving Slowly.

Brands that had already diversified their sourcing generally found themselves better positioned when tariffs shifted again this year. Not because diversifying is inherently smarter, but because it meant nobody was caught flat-footed when the rules changed.

They will change again. That’s the part worth sitting with.

On Thursday, I’ll walk through the actual math: how to calculate your real landed cost across sourcing options, when renegotiating with your current factory beats switching entirely, and a script for that conversation if you’re mid-contract right now.

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Why August Is the Month That Actually Matters

Most small brand owners treat August like a quiet month. Summer’s winding down, back-to-school is someone else’s problem, and the holiday season still feels far enough away to ignore. That instinct is exactly backwards. August is the last month where you can still make structural decisions about Q4, the inventory you order, the campaigns you plan, the ad budget you set aside, before the calendar starts making those decisions for you. By October, you’re executing. By November, you’re reacting. August is the only window left where you’re still actually planning.

This isn’t a seasonal-content-calendar post. You don’t need another list of “Q4 marketing dates to know.” You need a sequence: what to actually do, in what order, starting now, so that the biggest sales quarter of your year doesn’t quietly become the quarter you spent playing catch-up.

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On July 30, Reformation started trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker REF. Shares priced at $15, the bottom of the marketed $15 to $17 range, and closed their first day at $15.08, valuing the sustainable womenswear brand at approximately $886 million.

The offering raised $210.9 million, and while those numbers made headlines, something else quietly caught my attention.

It wasn’t the valuation that fascinated me—it was the way the company chose to introduce itself to Wall Street.

Reformation’s S-1 filing sounded exactly like… Reformation.

Most companies treat regulatory filings like legal exercises. Necessary, but stripped of personality. Reformation took a different approach.

As of June 22, 2026, the company disclosed approximately 4 million social media followers and 3 million email subscribers. It also highlighted celebrities the company has consistently spotted wearing the brand—including Taylor Swift, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber—before adding a simple parenthetical:

“Thanks ladies.”

That’s not something you expect to find in an SEC filing.

The personality didn’t stop there.

Its investor roadshow reportedly adopted a The Big Short-inspired style, with a model explaining Reformation’s investment story from a bubble bath while walking investors through what the company called its “sexy math.”

Even one of the most formal documents a company will ever produce couldn’t completely smooth out Reformation’s personality.

And that consistency is worth paying attention to, regardless of whether you’re interested in the stock itself.

The Business Underneath the Brand

Of course, personality isn’t why Reformation reached the public markets.

The brand voice gets attention.

The business fundamentals earn credibility.

CEO Hali Borenstein told CNBC that Reformation has delivered 20 consecutive quarters of double-digit net revenue growth through the first quarter of 2026—an unusually consistent performance for a direct-to-consumer fashion brand during a period that has been challenging for much of the retail industry.

The numbers support that story.

In 2025, Reformation generated $507.1 million in net revenue, up from $438.2 million the year before. Around 90% of sales came through its own direct-to-consumer channels, and by the end of the first quarter of 2026, the company had approximately 1.14 million active DTC customers.

The business is no longer purely digital, either.

As of June 2026, Reformation operated 70 owned stores across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, while its website attracted more than 120 million visits during 2025.

Founded in Los Angeles in 2009 by Yael Aflalo, Reformation has spent more than a decade building a business that combines physical retail with a strong direct-to-consumer ecosystem—something many fashion startups from the 2010s struggled to achieve.

Speaking to CNBC on listing day, Borenstein said:

“Reformation is ready.”

She added that the company had spent years building a business designed to redefine retail and now had “a foundation that is ready to scale.”

Why This IPO Matters Beyond Fashion

Reformation’s listing is notable because consumer retail IPOs have become surprisingly rare.

While the broader IPO market has started recovering, much of that activity has been driven by technology and industrial companies rather than consumer brands. Reformation was one of only a small number of U.S. retail businesses to go public this year.

The shares also priced at the bottom of their expected range, a reminder that today’s investors remain selective.

Growth alone is no longer enough.

Public market investors increasingly want evidence that revenue growth can translate into sustainable profitability.

Reformation has shown impressive top-line momentum, but like every newly public company, it will now face quarterly scrutiny from investors looking not only at sales growth, but also at margins, profitability and execution.

Its timing was notable for another reason as well.

Reformation began trading on the same day as Jersey Mike’s. Because Jersey Mike’s hosted the NYSE opening bell that Thursday, Reformation held its own ceremonial market celebration the following day.

It was a small detail, but it reflected a broader reality: consumer brands have become rare enough in today’s IPO market that two retail listings in the same week became a story in itself.

The Real Lesson Isn’t About Going Public

Most people reading this will never file an S-1.

That’s not the lesson.

The real lesson is consistency.

Many founders accidentally create multiple versions of their business.

There’s the website voice.

The Instagram voice.

The email voice.

The investor voice.

The wholesale voice.

The “professional” version that suddenly appears whenever the audience changes.

Reformation shows another way.

Its tone adapts to the context, but the brand never becomes unrecognizable.

If you’ve worked through Branding Mastery, you’ll probably recognize this principle already. Consistency isn’t about repeating the same words everywhere. It’s about building a brand that’s so clearly defined it remains recognizable, whether someone is reading your Instagram captions, your wholesale deck—or one day—even your SEC filing.

That isn’t about trying to make legal documents funny. It’s about ensuring that every interaction reinforces the same identity people already associate with your business.

Because consistency compounds.

Customers begin to trust it.

Partners know what to expect too.

Investors see a business with a clear identity.

Most importantly, your own team starts making decisions through the same lens because the brand becomes unmistakably clear.

That said, it’s important not to confuse branding with the reason Reformation reached the NYSE.

The company’s personality made people remember the IPO.

Its operating performance made the IPO possible.

Twenty consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, more than half a billion dollars in annual revenue, a predominantly direct-to-consumer business model and years of disciplined execution are what ultimately earned the company a place in the public markets.

The brand voice simply ensured the story was as memorable as the business itself.

And that’s a lesson every founder can apply, whether you’re preparing an IPO someday or simply writing your next customer email.

Reformation now enters its first holiday season as a public company, with Wall Street watching every quarterly report more closely than ever before.

Most founders won’t have Wall Street scrutinizing their numbers. But Q4 is still the biggest test of the year for many businesses.

That’s exactly what we’ll cover in Thursday’s paid edition. I’ll walk through the practical steps founders should be taking in August to build momentum before Q4 arrives—from planning inventory and marketing campaigns to preparing launches and protecting cash flow.

Become a paid subscriber if you’d like access to the full breakdown.

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Images from Reformation and NYSE

I’ll say it plainly: I still can’t get enough of this World Cup, even weeks after the final whistle. As someone who is half Dutch, football isn’t a hobby, it’s culture. I grew up going back to school after the holidays in whatever new gear my favorite team had put out that season. Mine was Ajax. And every two years, when either the World Cup or the European Championship came around, I’d sit in front of the TV hoping this would finally be our year.

It never has been, and the actual stat is more interesting than the one I usually tell people. The Netherlands has reached the World Cup final three times, in 1974, 1978, and 2010, and lost all three. No other nation has made it to that many finals without ever lifting the trophy. We are, officially, the best team to never win it. Yes, it’s football, not soccer. Sorry to my American readers.

So no, I’m not a new fan riding a summer wave. I’ve watched these tournaments my whole life.

But this one felt different. Not because of what happened on the pitch.

Looking back, I don’t think this World Cup will be remembered only for who won. I think it’ll be remembered for what it revealed about where culture, fashion, and branding are heading.

It Wasn’t Just a Tournament

The World Cup exists on social media now. Qatar 2022 did as well. But this one felt different. It wasn’t just fans sharing goals or match reactions. It was creators documenting stadium arrivals and hospitality experiences, lifestyle and luxury brands hosting events, celebrities flying in to attend the matches, and fashion accounts dissecting kits like runway collections, right down to the players’ handbag collections (shout out to Haaland for having the best Birkin collection!). The tournament wasn’t just being watched. It was being produced.

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Looking back though, I realized something else.

I’ve now spent more than sixteen years building businesses.

I launched my first jewelry brand back in 2008 while I was still working a regular nine-to-five. At the time, entrepreneurship wasn’t nearly as accessible as it is today. There was no Instagram. No ChatGPT. No online courses teaching you how to launch a fashion brand. Most things were gatekept and you learned by making mistakes.

That jewelry brand eventually led me to launching a clothing brand in 2010 that grew internationally and had Rihanna following and wearing it. Then I started a garment manufacturing studio in 2013 because I couldn’t always find the production partner I needed for said clothing brand. Working with hundreds of startup brands eventually led me to create Start Your Fashion Business in 2020, because I realized so many founders were making the exact same mistakes before they even placed their first order.

Looking back now, none of those businesses were random.

Each one solved a problem I experienced in the business before it.

I think that’s actually my first lesson.

Lesson #1: You don't need a "big idea" to start. You need a problem you've actually lived.

We tend to think entrepreneurs wake up with some brilliant, out-of-nowhere idea. In reality, most great businesses are just solutions to problems the founder has personally experienced.

If you’ve already started building something, you’ll notice this in hindsight that your next business often reveals itself while you’re still working on your current one. But if you haven’t started yet, the same rule applies looking forward: stop waiting for a lightning-bolt idea, and start paying attention to the problems you keep running into yourself. That’s usually where the real one is hiding.

The second lesson took me years to truly understand.

Lesson #2: Done really is better than perfect.

I know it’s cliché, but clichés usually become clichés because they’re true.

One thing I notice with new fashion founders today is that they spend months researching, watching YouTube videos, buying courses, asking for opinions, redesigning logos, changing color palettes, and waiting until everything feels “ready.”

The problem is, businesses aren’t built in Notion.

They’re built by doing.

Ironically, I think having less information and distractions when I started was actually an advantage. Nowadays founders are bombarded with information online and the next scroll tells you something different than the previous one, and then you find yourself overloaded with information too overwhelmed and confused to even apply it. Back then I didn’t have the luxury of overthinking every decision because there simply wasn’t endless information available.

Sometimes ignorance is a blessing. If I had known every obstacle waiting for me, I probably would’ve talked myself out of starting altogether.

Another lesson?

Lesson #3: Don’t quit your job too early.

People love telling entrepreneurs to “go all in,” but I think there’s a difference between betting on yourself and gambling.

I didn’t quit my job on day one. I waited until my business could realistically support me. Once I knew I had enough momentum, then I went all in.

Being strategic doesn’t make you less ambitious. It makes you more likely to still be in business five years later.

Speaking of staying in business….

Lesson #4: Learn your numbers.

I know. Margins aren’t exciting. Cash flow isn’t exciting. Bookkeeping definitely isn’t exciting.

But fashion brands rarely fail because the designs aren’t beautiful. They fail because the business behind the designs isn’t profitable.

You need to know your margins. You need to understand pricing. You need to know exactly how much money you’re making on every product you sell. And yes, you need to stay on top of the boring admin too.

Those boring things are often what determine whether your business survives.

Lesson #5: Never stop learning.

Even after all these years, I’m still taking courses. I recently signed up for the Inside LVMH program simply because I believe there’s always another perspective to learn from.

Experience is valuable. Curiosity is what keeps you relevant. The fashion industry changes constantly, and if you’re not learning, you’re slowly falling behind without even realizing it.

Lesson #6: Your personal brand matters more than you think.

Even if your dream is to build a luxury label where you’re never the face of the company, people still buy into founders. Your reputation follows you. Your network follows you. Your credibility follows you.

I’ve built multiple businesses over the years, but the one thing that’s remained consistent is me. Businesses evolve. Industries change. People pivot. Your personal brand is the thread connecting all of it.

Lesson #7: You don’t need to be good at everything. You need to know enough to make good decisions.

If content creation isn’t your strength, learn the basics before outsourcing it. If finance isn’t your strength, understand enough to ask better questions.

And today we have something previous generations of entrepreneurs didn’t: AI. I don’t think it replaces entrepreneurs — I think it makes good entrepreneurs faster. As someone juggling motherhood, content creation, and multiple businesses, I use it to brainstorm, research, organize ideas, and challenge my thinking. It’s become another tool in the toolbox, just like Canva or Notion once did.

Lesson #8: Your network will always outperform your follower count.

Some of the biggest opportunities in my career didn’t come from going viral. They came from conversations. Introductions. Coffee meetings. Industry events. People recommending my name in rooms I wasn’t sitting in.

Network before you need something. Build genuine relationships. People can tell the difference between someone who’s interested and someone who’s only interested in themselves.

The final lesson I’ll leave you with is probably the one I’m thinking about the most as I turn 39.

Lesson #9: Stop acting like you have forever.

Ideas have timing. Markets have timing. Opportunities have timing.

I meet so many founders who say they’ll launch “next year.” Sometimes next year is too late.

That doesn’t mean you should rush blindly into business. It means don’t let fear disguise itself as preparation. At some point, you have to press publish. Place the order. Launch the collection. Send the email. Start.

Looking back over the last sixteen plus years, I realize I didn’t build one successful business. I built a collection of skills: branding, marketing, product development, manufacturing, storytelling, content, community. Those skills have let me build businesses in completely different industries, and I have a feeling they’ll keep opening doors I can’t even imagine yet.

So if you’re reading this while you’re still sketching your first collection, looking for suppliers, or wondering if you’re really cut out for this…

Remember that you’re not just building a fashion brand. You’re building yourself. And trust me, that’s the business that compounds the most.

If you want to be around other founders figuring this out in real time — asking the questions, sharing the wins, comparing notes on the numbers nobody tells you about — that’s exactly what the Brand Hub is for. No need to learn everything the hard way, alone, like I did.

Here’s to another lap around the sun, and hopefully many more years of building things worth talking about.

xo

Stephanie

P.S. If this resonated and you haven't subscribed yet, this is exactly the kind of reflection I'll keep sharing here — subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

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If you found me on instagram you would likely know that I mentor founders and I consult on brand strategy. I’ve worked in fashion for years having built my own brand and then my own garment manufacturing studio. And although I don’t do those things anymore I still work with people in the industry on both sides. Now if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that the minute you think you know enough of the industry or market you’re in is usually the minute it starts moving without you. But we can get into that as a whole other topic.

The thing is, fashion today doesn’t look anything like it did when I launched my first business pre-Shopify days in the early 2010s. Consumer behaviour has changed dramatically since then too. Technology has changed with how we now use social media not just to post photos but to discover brands, be part of communities and shop. The way people even interact with brands has changed and we now have more brands at our finger tips than ever. Even though the same luxury brands still exist, the way they have to connect with customers have shifted too.

So I joined the course mostly out of curiosity and because you can and should never stop learning. I also love LVMH and have been covering their foray into F1 on The Grand Prix Life since they took over from Rolex last year.

One Chart Changed Everything

Then a few weeks into this 4 part course, one chart completely reframed everything else I was about to learn.

It was a Bain & Company chart showing the EBIT margins of personal luxury goods brands from 2007 through the projected numbers for 2025 and I like geeking out on charts.

It clearly shows that margins climbed steadily throughout the 2010s, peaking at around 23%, and staying remarkably healthy for years until it dipped to its lowest point in 2020… and then rising again briefly until it quietly started falling after 2021.

The estimate for 2025?

Around 15–16%.

That’s roughly where the industry was in 2009 which is not exactly the direction you’d expect from an industry famous for selling €10,000 handbags.

Once I’d seen that chart, every other module in the course started looking different and what initially felt like separate conversations around omnichannel, storytelling, experiential retail and digital transformation suddenly looked like pieces of the same puzzle.

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“I Half Agree”

Shay Mitchell posted a TikTok on July 10 where she read, out loud, years of mean comments about her own product. “My team has forced me to read all of the mean things that have been said about the Weekender,” she said, laughing but not really joking. “It’s like my first child. It’s like talking mean about a first child.” Then she read the worst one: the weekender is indeed going to rip your shoulders to shreds if carried by itself. Her response wasn’t a defense. It was, “Absolutely. I half agree.”

That video is the tip of something much bigger, and I want to make sure we don’t flatten it into the usual “brands should listen to their customers” takeaway, because what’s actually going on here is way more specific and way more useful than that.

Eight Years of Public Complaints

Béis, the travel brand Mitchell founded in 2018, has spent nearly 8 years accumulating a very public paper trail of complaints about its signature Weekender bag. The straps dug into shoulders when packed full. A rigid wire frame ate into usable space. Zippers felt insecure for actual travel. The bottom shoe compartment was sealed off once the bag was zipped shut. This was not hidden feedback or rare feedback. It was the most common genre of Béis-related content on TikTok for years, running alongside the videos of people gushing over how the bag looked on a plane.

The Complaints Became the Product Brief

What Béis did with that pile of complaints is the actual case study. Over a two-year internal process, the brand rebuilt its entire core line: 9 products in total, including the Weekender, Mini Weekender, travel backpack, dopp kit, packing cubes, and the full roller suite. Every fix maps directly onto a complaint that had been circulating publicly for years. Frame-free openings. Reinforced, padded straps. Internal rollback access to the bottom compartment. Upgraded zippers with anti-theft pulls. The product team didn’t just read the internet’s mind after the fact. They treated the internet’s complaints as an actual product brief, then went back and showed their work.

The Launch Was the Marketing

That’s the part most brands skip. The redesign didn’t launch quietly as a spec update. It launched as a three-day public exhibition in Manhattan’s NoHo: a physical archive tracing the bag from its original 2018 version through every complaint-driven iteration to today’s model, with hands-on displays of the actual testing and refinement. Guests could get complimentary embroidery on a new bag, trade in a worn Weekender for 20 percent off, build custom charms with local designer Susan Alexandra, or bring in an old bag to be upcycled into something new with Nicole McLaughlin. The first 200 visitors each day got a gift. There was an editorial-style portrait station, because apparently even a redesigned duffel deserves a proper launch moment.

Acknowledge, Fix, Celebrate

When you look at the sequence, the strategy is really clear. Acknowledge the criticism publicly and without spin, in the founder’s own voice, on the same platform where the criticism lived. Fix the product in a way that’s traceable, complaint by complaint, so customers can see their own words in the changelog. Then throw a party about it, one that turns the fix itself into content, community, and a reason to walk into a store. The Weekender has sold more than two million units since 2018, growing roughly 70 percent a year on average, and it anchors a business Béis has put at $250 million. That scale is exactly why the backlash mattered enough to fix in public: a bag that popular generates a proportional volume of complaints, and at some point those complaints end up being just as recognizable as the bag itself. “Béis luggage review” is its own TikTok genre. Ignoring that noise, or handling it quietly through a customer service inbox, would have meant leaving an enormous amount of earned attention on the table.

Why This Only Works for Founder-Led Brands

There’s a sharper point I want to pull out underneath all the fun of the pop-up and the charm bar. Founder-led brands have a real advantage here that big corporate-owned or licensed brands mostly don’t get. Shay Mitchell can go on TikTok and personally read the worst thing anyone’s said about her product, and it lands as honest because it is honest. There’s no legal or PR layer in between softening the tone into a corporate apology.

The reason this works for Shay is that she built Béis with such a clear brand foundation from the start that she can go do something like this on TikTok and it still feels on-brand, not off-script. That kind of clarity is exactly what I go deep on inside Branding Mastery, because once your brand foundation is actually solid, moves like this stop feeling risky and start feeling like the most natural thing in the world.

The Bigger Question

The made-in-public quality of the whole rollout, from the comments to the redesign to the pop-up, is a small blueprint for a much bigger question that comes up constantly in fashion business right now: what does a direct-to-consumer feedback loop actually buy a brand, beyond faster iteration? Béis’s answer looks like this. It buys you a story you couldn’t have written any other way, one where your customers are unmistakably co-authors, and one that converts a public roasting into a reason to fly to New York and get your name stitched onto a bag.

It’s a clean example of brand strategy done well by a founder-led business built from scratch. The next question is what happens when that same pressure, margins tightening and consumers demanding more for their money, lands on a brand that isn’t founder-led at all: one built on decades of heritage and passed between corporate owners through licensing deals.

That’s a very different set of incentives and a very different playbook, and it’s exactly what I’m digging into in this week’s paid post.

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What actually happened

If you missed it, Kylie Jenner and Francesca Aiello, the founder of Frankies Bikinis, dropped their second collab together called Fever Dream on July 14. Vintage swimwear feel, Old Hollywood LA glamour, leopard, cobra, chrome, Cloud Cups. The campaign was co-modeled by the two of them. And the thing that became the talking point in every article, the detail that everyone kept mentioning, is that they pulled pieces from their own personal closets as the starting point for the collection.

That’s the story you already know, and honestly, if I stopped there this would be a nicer version of the digest.

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A founder. Two years in. Shapewear brand with a loyal customer base and a real following. She wrote: “Stephanie, I just hit $10K for the third month in a row. I should feel excited. I don’t know why I just feel... SO tired.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

Because $10K months look like success from the outside. And they are. But they can also be the moment a business starts quietly breaking under its own weight — while the founder is too busy to notice.

There’s a stage in building a fashion brand that feels really good.

You’re not guessing anymore. You’re not begging friends to support the launch. You have customers coming back. Real revenue in your Stripe account. You start thinking: okay, this is working.

And it is working. That’s important to say. $10K months are proof your idea has legs. They are something to be proud of.

But they are also where I see so many brands quietly stall.

Not because the market turned. Not because the product stopped being good.

Because the business underneath the brand wasn’t built to hold what was coming next.

The Wrong Diagnosis

When growth slows at this level, the first reaction is almost always the same.

• You think you need more visibility.

• More traffic.

• More content.

• Maybe ads.

• Maybe a bigger launch.

• Maybe a new collection to shake things up.

So you push harder. You create more. You launch faster. You chase the next spike.

But when I look closely at brands stuck here, the visibility is rarely the problem.

The problem is structural.

Margins that haven’t been fully understood. Pricing that was set based on what felt fair — not what actually supports scale. Inventory decisions made from excitement instead of cash flow timing. Revenue that spikes without a real plan for what brings the customer back.

And underneath all of it: a founder who is still carrying everything herself.

The creative director. The operations manager. The marketing lead. The customer service inbox. The decision-maker on everything, every day.

That kind of scrappiness is exactly what got you here.

It’s also what starts to limit you.

I Know This Because I’ve Lived It

There was a season in my business where the numbers looked strong. Orders were consistent. The brand had momentum. From the outside, everything looked like growth.

But inside, it didn’t feel calm.

Cash flow was tighter than it should have been. Production felt reactive. Every opportunity to grow required more of my time and energy. I kept thinking that scaling further would finally make things feel secure.

Instead, the pressure increased.

The more revenue we generated, the more obvious it became that parts of the business weren’t built properly. Revenue was growing. The foundation wasn’t.

That is the hidden ceiling at $10K months.

Your brand works, but it’s still heavily dependent on you. You’re holding it together with energy, attention, and constant involvement. That’s sustainable for a while.

It is not sustainable at scale.

Scaling Asks Different Questions

The questions that determine whether your brand grows up are not the glamorous ones. They don’t get likes on Instagram.

• Do you actually know your contribution margin by product, not just your total revenue?

• Do you understand your cash cycle well enough to plan inventory without anxiety?

• If sales doubled next month, would your systems support it, or would you feel overwhelmed?

• Do you have a clear plan for what brings your customer back after the first purchase?

Most founders at this stage haven’t fully answered these questions.

Not because they’re not smart, but because they’ve been too busy running the brand to step back and look at the business underneath it.

Skims didn’t scale because Kim Kardashian had a big platform. It scaled because when the platform delivered two million dollars in sales in minutes, the operational system underneath was ready to absorb it. Inventory. Fulfillment. Customer service. Size allocation. All of it had been built before the attention arrived.

Most founders build in the opposite order. They chase attention before the foundation is there to convert it.

There’s Something More Personal Happening Here Too

At $10K months, you’re still proving something.

To your audience. To your peers. Maybe to yourself.

That energy is real. It got you here. But it’s also the energy that makes it hard to slow down long enough to fix what isn’t working.

Because slowing down feels like stopping. And stopping feels like losing.

But there’s a difference between pausing to build and stalling because you won’t look at what’s broken.

The founders who move through this stage and come out the other side aren’t the ones who pushed hardest. They’re the ones who stopped long enough to ask: what exactly is this business built on?

And then they fixed the answer before asking for more growth.

What This Means If You’re at This Stage Right Now

$10K months are a checkpoint, not a finish line.

What that checkpoint reveals is simple: are you building momentum, or are you building a business that can actually last?

Those two things can look identical from the outside for a surprisingly long time.

If you’re at this stage and you feel the gap between what your revenue looks like and what your business actually feels like, that gap is information. It’s telling you something needs to be built properly before you scale further.

The work of fixing that — your margins, your systems, your product architecture, your customer retention logic — is not glamorous. But it is the only thing that turns a $10K month into a $50K business.

That’s what the SYFB Ecosystem is built around. Not louder marketing. Stronger foundations. Brands that support repeat purchase, expand with logic, and grow without panic.

If that approach resonates with you, you can explore the 2026 programs here.

— Stephanie

They’re technically simple.

They’re easy to copy.

They exist at every price point.

There is nothing structurally revolutionary about them.

And yet, when you walk into a store by Gentle Monster, it doesn’t feel like you’re shopping for eyewear.

It feels like you’ve entered a curated installation.

That difference is the strategy.

They Didn’t Change the Product. They Changed the Context.

There was no breakthrough material.

No technical patent.

No shift in how sunglasses function.

Instead of trying to reinvent the product, Gentle Monster reworked the environment around it.

When I visited their stores in Bangkok — and there are several — what stood out wasn’t the frames. It was the space.

Most brands open one flagship per city. You go once, buy what you need, and that’s it.

With Gentle Monster, each store feels different. Different installations. Different mood. Different pacing. You find yourself wanting to visit another location just to see how it’s interpreted there.

You don’t walk in and scan shelves.

You move through the room.

Large sculptural pieces sit deliberately in the center of the room. In one Bangkok location, there was a giant dachshund casually napping in the middle of the store — not animated, not interactive, just there, calm and oversized, as if it belonged. In another, a towering Bratz doll stood taking a selfie, which ironically attracted a line of customers wanting to take one with it. The installation became the magnet. If you look up other Gentle Monster stores around the world, you’ll notice the same pattern: each location has its own central character, its own visual anchor.

You don’t move quickly through the space.

You wander.

And wandering builds memory.

In saturated categories, product alone rarely creates distinction. Context becomes leverage.

Retail as Experience, Not Just Transaction

A Gentle Monster store is built to be experienced.

People walk in without necessarily planning to purchase. They explore. They photograph. They observe.

The product sits within a larger world.

That changes how customers relate to the brand.

If retail exists only to complete transactions, it depends entirely on sales. If it exists as an experience, it builds desire even when no purchase happens.

You begin to associate the brand with a feeling.

Feelings travel further than features.

The Detail That Shouldn’t Work — But Does

There’s one moment that stuck with me.

When you decide to purchase, you’re handed a buzzer. You wait. When it vibrates, you’re called up to the counter — almost like ordering coffee.

For a $350 pair of sunglasses, it feels slightly procedural.

I remember thinking how unusual that felt for a luxury purchase.

And yet it didn’t weaken the brand.

By the time I reached checkout, the environment had already done its job. I wasn’t buying a frame. I was completing an experience.

Operational quirks don’t dismantle a brand when emotional equity is strong.

If your only differentiator is product, friction feels bigger. If your differentiator is atmosphere, friction becomes background noise.

Now Enter Disney and Formula 1

The recent collaboration involving The Walt Disney Company and Formula 1 has taken over social media.

The packaging alone is theatrical.

An oversized box.

A leather mask with Mickey ears.

Red frames shaped with the aerodynamic line of an F1 rear wing.

Some creators received multiple pairs.

The unboxing becomes part of the spectacle.

On paper, it’s an unusual alignment.

Disney guards its IP carefully.

Formula 1 operates within a tightly structured sponsorship ecosystem.

Gentle Monster sits in a design-driven luxury space.

But the collaboration works because each brand enters with a clear identity.

The product is not the interesting part.

The spatial translation is.

How will this live in-store?

How will racing mechanics or Disney nostalgia be interpreted as installation?

How will it feel physically?

That is where Gentle Monster historically excels.

What This Means If You’re Not Gentle Monster

You might read this and think: that works when you can afford multiple stores and sculptural installations.

But the principle isn’t about budget.

It’s about context.

You may not have physical stores yet. But you still control environments.

Your website is an environment.

Your product photography is an environment.

Your Instagram grid is an environment.

Your packaging is an environment.

What does your customer feel when they land on your homepage?

When they open your parcel?

When they scroll your feed?

Does it feel interchangeable with everyone else in your category?

Gentle Monster didn’t invent sunglasses. They reframed them.

That reframing made the category feel new.

You can do the same without spending millions. It requires clarity more than capital.

Most emerging brands default to copying what competitors are doing. Similar visuals. Similar packaging. Similar tone.

Gentle Monster stepped outside what eyewear retail looked like.

That shift changed perception.

The scale is different.

The principle is not.

Collaboration Doesn’t Create Positioning

Gentle Monster did not build its identity through partnerships. It built a strong standalone brand first.

That foundation allows it to align with larger ecosystems without losing coherence.

There is a difference between collaborating to find identity and collaborating from identity.

Before adjacency, there is positioning.

Before expansion, there is structure.

If you are still defining your positioning and product clarity, that work lives inside Start Lab.

If you are shaping your first collection and preparing to launch with direction, that’s where Launch Accelerator operates.

If you are already operating and ready to think about long-term leverage and ecosystem alignment, that is where Scale Lab exists.

Not because every brand needs a collaboration of this scale.

But because every brand benefits from building strength before visibility.

Sunglasses were never the innovation.

The innovation was in how they were framed, staged, and experienced.

And in crowded categories, that difference matters more than most founders realize.

But fast revenue at that scale tells you something more important than fame. It tells you the system underneath was prepared. You cannot process that level of demand unless inventory planning, size allocation, payment processing, fulfillment, and customer support have all been built to absorb pressure. Attention brings people to the page. Structure converts them.

That early velocity was not just hype. It was operational readiness.

Six years later, Skims is valued at roughly four billion dollars and reportedly nearing nine hundred million in annual revenue. It has opened a flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York. It has collaborated with Fendi, the NBA, Lana Del Rey, and Sabrina Carpenter. It has expanded into menswear. And it is still fundamentally selling essentials.

That word is important. Essentials.

Skims did not build a trend brand. It built a system around repeat need.

A lot of emerging founders misunderstand this. They chase cultural moments before they have built a product engine that can sustain them. Skims did the opposite. It built depth first.

Start with sizing. From the beginning, the brand offered XXS to 5XL and a wide spectrum of skin tones. Inclusivity here was not simply messaging. It expanded the total addressable market immediately and positioned the brand as relevant to modern conversations around body image. If you sell shapewear and ignore significant portions of women, you are choosing a ceiling for yourself. Skims refused that ceiling.

Fit drives retention. Retention drives valuation.

If a customer finds a bodysuit that genuinely works, she will come back. That logic sounds simple, but most brands complicate it by rotating silhouettes too quickly or failing to restock what performs.

Which brings us to the second thing Skims does well: it treats expansion as reinforcement, not reinvention.

Shapewear moved into loungewear, underwear, swim, and then menswear. Each category feels adjacent and supportive. Nothing feels random. This creates what I would call a wardrobe ecosystem rather than a series of disconnected launches. When a customer enters the brand, there is somewhere logical to go next.

Too many brands live in perpetual launch mode. Every drop is positioned as a headline event. There is urgency layered on urgency, countdowns stacked on top of early access, language that suggests everything is limited and everything is critical.

That rhythm is exhausting for both founder and customer.

Skims uses scarcity, but inside a broader system of reliability. Core products restock. Best sellers return. Customers learn what is permanent and what is seasonal. That balance protects trust. If everything feels like a one-time opportunity, the brand eventually loses credibility. If nothing feels special, desire fades. Skims understands the difference.

The influencer strategy follows the same logic.

Yes, Kim Kardashian’s personal platform creates extraordinary reach. But the brand does not rely on macro influence alone. A significant portion of its partnerships involve micro and mid-tier creators who demonstrate the product in everyday environments. When a smaller creator shows how a piece fits under jeans in natural light, it reduces uncertainty. Apparel purchases carry risk around fit, fabric, and durability. Micro content reduces that risk in a way glossy campaigns cannot.

That content is then repurposed across paid ads, email marketing, and product pages. It becomes social proof layered into the conversion path.

The advertising strategy is equally layered. High-profile campaigns, including television placements and collaborations with major creative agencies, elevate cultural positioning. At the same time, the brand invests heavily in targeted digital advertising and retargeting, particularly toward women aged twenty-five to forty-four interested in fashion and lifestyle. It communicates frequently through email about restocks, new tones, collaborations, and category extensions. Frequency only works when there is product depth to support it. Otherwise, it becomes noise.

Retail expansion reinforces permanence.

Opening a flagship on Fifth Avenue was not simply about prestige. It signaled institutional confidence. Physical presence reduces perceived risk. When a brand occupies prime retail real estate, customers subconsciously adjust how they evaluate it. Shapewear moves from online experiment to established player.

And this may be the most important lesson.

Skims operates as an operational business first and a cultural brand second.

Funding rounds strengthened infrastructure. Inventory forecasting appears disciplined. Category depth is intentional. The visual world is cohesive and consistent, whether the collaboration is luxury or sport. Even when the brand participates in cultural moments, the identity does not fracture.

Now look at where smaller brands struggle.

Many price at premium levels because production costs demand it. That is fair. But the world around the product shifts constantly. One week the tone is minimalist and elevated. The next it is chasing whatever trend is moving on social media. Launches feel reactive rather than structured. The product may justify the price. The brand world does not support it.

Customers do not articulate this mismatch. They simply hesitate.

Skims feels stable. Stability lowers friction.

I sometimes think founders admire Skims for the valuation when the more instructive lesson lies in sequencing. The brand launched with depth, embedded inclusivity into its product architecture, balanced scarcity with reliability, expanded categories with logic, layered macro influence with micro trust, invested in infrastructure, and only then moved aggressively into retail.

Nothing about that feels rushed.

If you are building right now, what can you copy?

You can build a product that solves a real problem rather than chasing aesthetics alone. You can restock what works instead of constantly reinventing. You can design categories that reinforce each other. You can treat inclusivity as commercial expansion, not just marketing. You can reduce purchase risk through clearer fit communication and consistent brand presentation. You can invest in structure before chasing spectacle.

You may not have a celebrity founder. But you can build discipline.

And discipline, in this market, compounds.

If you are building a brand right now, this is the difference that matters.

Most founders focus on visibility. Very few focus on sequencing. Even fewer build the infrastructure that allows them to scale without constantly manufacturing urgency.

That distinction is exactly what the 2026 SYFB programs are built around. Not louder marketing, but stronger foundations. Brands that support repeat purchase, expand with logic, and grow without panic.

If that approach resonates with you, you can explore the 2026 programs here:

https://www.syfb.co/2026program

— Stephanie

Here we unpack what’s shifting in the industry, what founders are navigating in real time, and how to build brands that last.

Let’s dive in!

Last week I received a DM from a founder whose brand has over 150,000 followers.

From the outside, everything looked solid but she wrote, “Sales are slow compared to last year. I don’t understand. People are just watching now.”

That line stayed with me.

Because this wasn’t a new brand. This wasn’t someone still figuring out their positioning. This was a brand with visibility.

Traffic was there. Views were there. The content wasn’t invisible.

What felt different was the space between interest and action.

I’ve noticed something similar in my own behavior. If I sense even a slight push in the direction of “buy this now,” I withdraw. Not dramatically. Just quietly. I scroll past it. Even when I like the product.

It’s not that I don’t want to buy. I just don’t want to feel steered.

That small reflex is shaping how fashion brands need to operate now.

The market didn’t get colder. It got sharper.

There was a time when urgency was enough to create momentum. Countdown timers. Early access codes. “Final restock.”

Those tactics worked because customers were still willing to take the brand at its word.

Today, customers have seen every version of that play. They can tell when “limited” is genuinely tied to production limitations and when it’s covering anxiety. They notice when a brand promises no discounts and quietly introduces one the next day. They notice when every drop is positioned as the most important moment of the year.

No one announces that they’ve noticed. They just adjust how seriously they take you.

Trust fades gradually. Sales follow.

If you’ve read any recent industry reporting, the message is consistent: consumers are more selective. Price scrutiny is higher. Growth is harder to secure. That doesn’t mean desire has disappeared. It means the bar for commitment has risen.

Pretty is no longer persuasive on its own.

Long gone is the period when strong campaign imagery alone could carry a launch. A clean studio shoot and a well-written caption were often enough.

Now every brand has access to aesthetic references, lighting tutorials, editing presets. Visual polish has become standard.

What makes the difference is context.

That’s why more fashion brands are operating like media companies to invite you into their brand world. They document factory visits. They show the team packing orders at midnight before launch. They share sample revisions. They let customers see what went wrong and what was adjusted.

That proximity builds something campaigns can’t manufacture.

Customers want to understand who they are buying from. They want to see faces occasionally. They want to observe how decisions are made. Not because they are looking for entertainment, but because familiarity lowers perceived risk.

If your brand page is only polished campaigns and product drops, you’re asking someone to commit without context. And if you don’t provide that, they will just got to the brand that will.

And that’s why you see founders on Tiktok creating personal pages alongside brand accounts, almost as a trust layer. I’ve also seen brands launch secondary accounts that function more like their own reality TV channel than storefronts, dropping episodic content that isn’t overtly selling anything.

At first glance it can look like distraction.

In reality, it softens the sales moment.

When customers feel connected to the world behind the product, the purchase doesn’t feel transactional. It feels like participation.

People still buy from people. What’s changed is how much exposure is required before trust forms.

Price fatigue makes alignment visible.

We are operating in a market where customers think harder before spending. Even those with budget are reassessing what they receive in return.

Aesthetic is abundant. Silhouettes are replicated quickly. What’s harder to replicate is your unique brand world and how you make your customers feel inside.

I see smaller brands unintentionally create friction here.

They price at a premium level because small-batch production demands it. But the world they present around the product doesn’t match that price point.

The visuals look cheap. The tone feels urgent. The launches feel reactive. One week it’s quiet luxury, the next it’s trend-led content because that’s what performed on Reels.

The product might justify the price BUT the brand world doesn’t.

And when those two aren’t aligned, customers hesitate.

Customers may not know your margin breakdown, but they understand instinctively when price and presentation don’t align.

When a founder feels sure about their product, pricing, and positioning, their brand looks cohesive and strong. When they’re unsure, it feels and looks chaotic. Customers can sense that difference.

This isn’t a small marketing adjustment. It also changes how you present collections, how you plan your launches, how you price your products, how you invite people into your world (strategically) and how you build demand before you ask for a sale.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about deeply as we prepare for our 2026 program launch on February 23. The entire framework is built around this shift: how to scale without relying on noise, pressure, or reactive tactics.

If this way of thinking resonates with you, you can join the list. I’ll share details soon.

— Stephanie