Having spent her Saturday morning redesigning window displays, folding inventory, and following up with a supplier who seemed disinclined to take back an entire shipment she felt was unacceptable, Alison Barnard, 27, was finally settled at her desk in the cornerfully intending to make some progress on her growing management task list. Chief among those neglected missions was getting up to speed on her software system for monitoring sales and inventory. , her upscale jeans and t-shirt boutique in Bostons North End, was attracting professional and wealthy women from Maine to Rhode Island. As one of many satisfied customers wrote, Alison has an uncanny ability to match up the right person with the perfect pair of jeans. If you have ever gone jean shopping you know that that is not an easy thing to do! Experience In-jean-ius for yourself. You wont shop for jeans anywhere else again. March 2006. Alison looked up from her work with a weary smile. As it had from the very beginning, running her hit venture continued to consume nearly every waking hour. The creative, high-energy founder was far less concerned with burning out than with having the day-to-day concerns usurp her ability to plan and manage for growth. And with only one full-time employeenot yet fully trainedAlison couldnt expect much relief anytime soon. Her attention was suddenly drawn to an exchange between her salesperson and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman who was favoring a sleek pair of low rises. From where she sat, Alison could see that the woman was built for something a bit less daring. When the associate began fishing for the correct size in that style, Alison left her desk (and her task list) to steer the sale toward a more conservative brand that would ultimately prove to offer the best fit. Another satisfied customer . Like many rural-suburban American teens, young Alison Barnard had been an avid shopper. But there was something more. The daughter of a serial entrepreneur and an enterprising mother, she had developed an eye for opportunity and value-add that she ceaselessly trained on the business of creating a unique upscale shopping experience: trends, service, selection, presentation, decor. Despite her keen interest in retailing, she headed off for college with a more conservative career track in mind: In May 2002, Alison received her undergraduate degree in business from the University of Richmond. Back in the Boston area, her first job was with a dot-com startup. She left there for an interesting opportunity with another high-potential venture. While the work environment there was most definitely not for her, that mistake would have a major impact on her career trajectory. red as part of the seminar development team at a medical device company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alison quickly discovered that her talents werent exactly appreciated: Alison began the One-Year MBA at Babson in the spring of 2003. Since she was still brainstorming retail store concepts with anyone who would engage, her moms hairdresser suggested that as a next step she ought to get some floor time in the real world. That summer Alison started work as a part-timer at an upscale boutique near Boston. Although she still had no immediate plans to develop a new venture, her MBA studies melded well with her exposure to retailing: Nothing Alison and her team members discovered in their research surprised her in the least (see ). When asked what pain point she expected her store to relieve, she didnt hesitate a moment: When she graduated in the spring of 2004, Alison was offered an opportunity to learn even more: Alison accepted their offer. She soon discovered, however, that they would be delivering far less than they promised: It wasnt long before Alison was certain that she could run a shop of her own. She was still drawn to the $6.3 billion womens denim market, a highly fragmented space with hundreds of manufacturers and inconsistent retail offerings, from boutiques, chain stores, and department stores. Still, she felt that she would have to jump on it right away before anyone else didit was now or never: Based on her projections (see ), Alison expected her retail store would have first-year sales of just over $375,000. She had also calculated that startup costs, including build-out and inventory, would be in the range of $125,000. She was confident that she could attract investors, but first she wanted to secure a location that would be acceptable to what she was sure would be her toughest constituency: Alisons boyfriend, Bryan, was active in the Boston real estate market. On weekends, Alison
often accompanied him as he made the rounds to various properties he was managing. One icy morning in early 2005, Alison fell for a corner location in the North End: Soon, they were talking hard numbers: In late February, Alison signed a three-year lease that included a few months of free rentshe now had until September. All along, her father had felt strongly that she should have lined up the capital first: , Before she went the equity route, Alison wanted to investigate other avenues. The news was not good: With the clock ticking on her lease, Alison went ahead with the investor plan she had crafted with her closest advisors: Her father was in for one share; all equity. He uncle let her choose, so she set him up as a debt/equity investor. She had a Babson woman (who had always liked her idea) in for all equity and a private investor in Denver for all debt. The final two shares were to be all equity: Armed with a bit of cash and some solid commitments, Alison charged forward to make her vision a bricks-and-mortar reality. Having initially envisioned a space in the range of 1,800 square feet, Alison found the 600 square foot shell to be a significant creative challengeso much so that she hired an expert: She added with a smile that she had been able to attract effective talent to the task of building out her vision: To monitor her sales and margins, Alison invested in a high-end software inventory system. The trouble was that the salesperson had yet to train her, and he wasnt returning her calls. But that challenge would have to wait; it was time to buy. With investors in place and the build-out moving along, Alison flew to Los Angeles and New York to haggle (and sashay) for permission to play: , The denim reps that did sell to her demanded full payment up front. Using bank cards secured with her mothers credit, Alison pulled together a $75,000 inventory of jeans, tops, and accessories like trendy shoes and jewelry. Thats when she was given a bit of a scare: Despite her angst, Alison decided to sit tight. Things were moving along nicely, and it wasnt long before she realized that shed be able to open her store without the additional capital. A week before her opening in July 2005, Alison hired a friend of a friend as her first employee. Her mom was there to help out, along with her 17-year-old sister. The plan was to be open from around lunchtime to just past dinnertime, six days a week, and stay open a bit later on Sundays. Alison explained that it was soon evident that the location required a flexible approach: As a new retailer in town, she attracted a few of the usual suspects who thought they might be able to take advantage of the young proprietor. They thought wrong: , Soon after that, Alison was in hot pursuit again: Over the next few months, Alisons total loss to theft was a single pair of shoes and a pair of earrings. The other good news was that sales continued to track far ahead of her estimates. In the first six months, the store had generated a net income of $20,307 on sales of $294,061. Alison explained that, although word of mouth was an important factor in her early success, attracting the imagination of the local press had been key: While the young entrepreneur was thrilled with how things were going, she was ready to start spending less time on the sales floor and more time with strategic and management challenges. Easier said than done. Since the local press always seemed to focus on skills and story, Alison wondered how that might impact her ability to replicate her concept: One of her many priorities was to develop a training manual that, in addition to describing the particular fit characteristics of various brands, would clearly articulate her vision for customer service. She thought of contacting the Ritz-Carlton in Bostonto her mind a master of customer serviceto see if they might let her review their training materials. Until she did have some documentation in place though, shed have to communicate her philosophy on the fly: Now that she had a full-time employee nearly up to speed and a sharp former classmate from Babson working on weekends as a fun job, Alison had begun to carve out some time each week to recharge: Her other challenging relationship was with the numbers: It had been one of the best-selling days to date. Alison closed her shop at 8:30 that night and returned to her desk with the absurd idea that she might have some energy left for paperwork. It wasnt just that she was tired; she now had a brand-new challenge on her plate: That day her one full-time employee had given her two-week notice.