Advancing from online sales to a fully operational Tribecca showroom in three years, sisters Neely and Chloe Burch operate their accessories line, Neely and Chloe, with the vitality and style of quintessential up-and-coming New York women. And yes, they are Tory Burch’s nieces.
Getting into the Family Business
Growing up in the Burch household was what any outsider may already expect from the famed name. The girls flourished from design and aesthetic inspiration. Outside of their aunt’s success, their father began his career within the fashion industry.
“I think that fashion has always been in our family. Our dad was in the fashion industry for a very long time, he started a women and children’s knitwear business. My mom worked at the company as well and that’s where they met,” Chloe explains.
Without a doubt, the sisters’ childhood influenced their determination to create their own brand. Neely and Chloe are born and bred fashion industry darlings, with fingers on the pulse of their millennial target audience.
“I think that it’s something that we’ve felt, as consumers. You want to know more and you want to know why the brand came to be, and there’s not always a great answer for that other than its an austere aesthetic or this concept,” says Neely. “We’ve really worked to create a brand that allows our audience to connect with us in a way that feels really approachable, that’s something we’ve tried to integrate into our brand as a whole.”
A Millennial’s Proclivity for Minimalism
When Neely and Chloe imagined an accessories brand, they imagined one for themselves. Their brand emulates what they believed was missing in the marketplace, something that sits between luxury and fast fashion.
“I think a lot of it just comes from being millennial women, being young women shoppers and feeling frustrated by the fact that the options at hand were skipping the Ubers or bringing your lunch to work so you could buy something that really you couldn’t afford that felt elevated and sophisticated and made you feel special,” says Neely. “Or the options were buying fast fashion that didn’t last or something that felt mass produced or over consumed.”
“What our hope was, and what this has really allowed for, was for women to leave our store or our website with their bag feeling more about them than it does about us,” says Neely.
Procuring Funding
Along the investment trail came the alarming realization that many female founders and business owners have faced. The sisters were given a list of contacts that had a history with investments. “You look down and you realize, it’s a bunch of men. There’s just no reason why a lot of these names shouldn’t be women’s names,” notes Neely. “It’s hard to sit across a table and talk about a product that doesn’t resonate with you because you’re never going to be the person to use it -if you’re a man and we’re talking about handbags.”
The Burch sisters realized that they had to approach their audience and embrace women investors. They had to create a way to reach their target audience, so they hosted a get together with women from their hometown, women who knew them and saw them as capable business owners.
“It was our first stop on the fundraising trail,” says Neely. “We wanted to present a product that was for women, by women, to women. We have a few investors that came out of that night who have become really great ambassadors for the brand.”
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