Stephanie Unwin

Wholesale first, retail later - use bigger partners' foot traffic as customer acquisition. Veronica Beard ran ~70% wholesale through Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom for years before ever opening a store, deliberately repositioning off the luxury floor onto the busier contemporary floor to capture volume. They let those partners' tens of millions of existing shoppers discover and validate the brand first. The lesson: don't fund your own customer acquisition when a bigger partner's foot traffic will do it for you.

Test the flagship bet SMALL before committing capital for years. Their first-ever store, on Madison Avenue, was signed as an 11-month sublet specifically so a flop would carry limited risk - not a decade-long lease. It became their #1-performing store, so they renewed long-term and later doubled the square footage. Now at 50 stores across the US and Canada, plus London and a first Paris location. Takeaway: prove the flagship works with a sublet before signing a decade of rent.