Want to Break Into New York Fashion? Study This Precedent First

This is the well-worn story of an Asian girl who started with nothing and broke into New York fashion on her own. The story is familiar, but many of its details are worth borrowing.

That's right: what you are reading is the well-worn story of an Asian girl who started with nothing and broke into New York fashion on her own. The story is familiar, but many of its details are worth borrowing.

"OTTE" comes from the Korean word for "clothing." In 1999, when Kay Lee, a young Korean woman, stood in her boutique in New York, looked around and tried to think of a name for it, this was the first word that came to her.

Before she had a boutique of her own, Kay was a Korean student studying in the United States. She graduated in fashion design from Parsons School of Design in New York, and for her first few years out of school she worked as a designer at a design firm. By her own account the work was exhausting. After a while she cut her design job back to part time and opened the OTTE boutique in Brooklyn. Once the shop was running, Kay quit the part-time design work and gave all her time to the store. Running a boutique is not easy, and she was starting from nothing. She did everything herself, seven days a week, "without ever taking a single day off."

As she gained experience and heard more from customers, and drawing on her own Asian background, Kay settled on what the store would be: she wanted to sell elegant, feminine pieces.

With that in mind, she began choosing the brands. She picked American designer labels and some big names, such as Isabel Marant, Acne Studios, Kenzo, Carven and Sophie Hulme. Where a brand is rooted matters, and because she was in New York, Kay built ties with local jewelry suppliers and began selling independent New York jewelry brands such as Catbird, Poupette and LionetteNY. Every day, she and her staff sifted through a large number of brands for the pieces that best expressed a New York look.

Later, in New York, Kay Lee met her partner, Nancy. Nancy is a Wharton graduate who spent four years in finance and then a year as a key account manager at Google. When they met, OTTE had only three stores and a small online shop. Kay asked Nancy whether she would join as a partner and help her grow the business. Nancy's parents, second-generation Chinese immigrants and strict people, would never let their daughter study fashion and wanted her to concentrate on business. But since childhood she had dreamed of owning a fashion company. After long thought, she gave up her steady income at Google and joined OTTE as vice president and COO. On the side, she also teaches as a guest lecturer at FIT (the Fashion Institute of Technology), and she has sharp views on running both boutiques and luxury e-commerce.

Many small boutiques, in their early days, team up with big luxury e-commerce platforms to widen their reach and sales channels, because those platforms spend heavily to promote individual items, which brings exposure and influence. OTTE did the same at first. But as the boutique grew, it built its own e-commerce site, otteny.com. Later OTTE also launched a private label, OTTE New York, built around basics and inspired by its customers.

In fashion, being well liked matters enormously; luxury and fashion are, after all, an insiders' game. After all these years, OTTE is well liked. During New York Fashion Week, OTTE and Jimmy Fontaine, a photographer and the photography director at Atlantic Records, threw the Fashion Week opening party at the SoHo Grand Hotel. The actor Hugh Jackman came too.

Kay Lee's years of work have paid off. OTTE has grown from one store to six and sells more than 200 brands, covering clothing, bags, accessories, shoes and jewelry. In 2009, Bazaar named OTTE "the best boutique to visit in Manhattan." In 2015, the women set their sights on the huge prize of China's fashion market. They drew up a full strategy for Chinese shoppers who buy from overseas websites. For shipping, they partnered with FedEx: for US$45, goods ship directly to China and arrive in 3-5 days. Import duty depends on Chinese customs policy; where duty applies, they mark each item with its tax-inclusive total price. These details were their first steps into the Chinese market.

The OTTE storefront

OTTE

A corner of the store

OTTE candles

The team

QDaily: How did the store begin, and what did you do before? If you had to complete the sentence "If it hadn't been for ..., the business would never have worked," what would you say?

Kay: I'm Korean. After graduating I worked as a designer for a design firm, and it was truly exhausting. Gradually I realized that if I was going to work this hard, I should have a business of my own that was worth the effort.

Later I opened OTTE's first store in Brooklyn, quit my part-time design job and put everything into the store. I worked seven days a week and never rested.

"If I hadn't worked this hard, the business would never have worked."

Nancy: I graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a major in marketing, and I worked at Google before joining OTTE. I was willing to give up a lot because I believe in Kay's eye and taste, and Kay trusts me one hundred percent.

Even though I had no experience in fashion, within three years I helped OTTE grow to six stores and build an e-commerce business of real size. We have grown especially fast in China. At first, hiring Chinese-speaking staff in New York to handle our fashion promotion and PR was a risk, because I didn't know what return we would get. A year later, we found the response in China was even better than we had expected.

That convinced me: "If we hadn't trusted our own eye and judgment, we would never have succeeded."

How big is the team now, and how is it organized? How often does the store's stock change? Which fashion weeks do you follow or attend?

Kay: OTTE now has 65 employees. On the store side, two senior retail managers oversee all the branches, and each store has its own manager, sales staff and stylists. At headquarters, we have a (global) marketing team, an e-commerce team, a creative team, a buying team and an operations team.

Right now Paris Fashion Week matters most to us. We discover new brands every time. Our buyers attend the New York and Paris fashion weeks and buyers' markets every season. In the past two years, that relaxed, casual Parisian style has also been very popular, and Paris has the largest and most prestigious buyers' market in the world, so it still gets our top priority. We plan to go to London and Milan next, but Paris remains our main focus.

As Asians, what advantages and disadvantages do you have in fitting into the Western fashion world and reading American consumers' tastes?

Kay: Asian taste is more feminine and more elegant.

Korea is a country that picks up trends especially fast. The biggest advantage of our Asian background is that while we watch the hottest trends on the market, we can find the elegant, feminine pieces that fit OTTE's aesthetic. That is what makes us most distinctive.

We follow trends, but some trends don't suit everyday life and aren't right to wear on the street, so we don't pick them blindly. Our style is to be "trendy" while staying comfortable and confident.

Looking back, which stage of the business was the hardest?

Kay: In 2008 the New York economy took a heavy blow, and just then we were about to open our third store on Madison Avenue, where rents are sky-high. We really didn't know whether we would survive, because suddenly New Yorkers had no money and lost interest in shopping, especially for fashion. We changed our buying strategy: we avoided large inventories as far as we could and chose only the most distinctive pieces.

Many customers stopped buying luxury goods, but they started buying trendy pieces from cheaper mid-to-high-end brands. As a result, our business actually did well and even grew. The next year we opened another store in Tribeca, a very trendy neighborhood.

Which brands sell best in the store? Which do the owners like most themselves?

European brands are selling very well now: Isabel Marant, Kenzo, Carven, Acne, Vanessa Bruno, Larsson and Jennings, Meli Melo, Sophie Hulme and others are all in high demand.

Kay: My favorite is Etoile by Isabel Marant. Isabel is the queen of hippie style, with a touch of French elegance mixed in, and I love it. Right now our whole office loves a free, light style.

Nancy: Ryan Roche is a New York designer who makes only knitwear. Her designs are very distinctive, with a strong sense of layering, mostly in nude and pale tones. That such simple colors can be so elegant and rich is what I love about her.

Which Chinese brands do you like most? Do you have any special plans for the Chinese market?

We take the Chinese market very seriously, not only Chinese people in the United States but also the mainland. Our Chinese-language website has just launched, and soon customers will be able to pay with Alipay. We are also building ties with influential bloggers in fashion, art and design, both in New York and in mainland China. Next we will go to China ourselves to study the market.

When OTTE first opened, we supported many Chinese-American designers in New York, such as Alexander Wang and Phillip Lim. OTTE was selling them long before they became as famous as they are now. So we follow Chinese-American designers, and we understand and believe in their global influence.

Still, most of the Chinese designers shining on the international stage today make very high-end ready-to-wear collections. Few work in a modern vein like Alexander Wang or Phillip Lim, and their clothes are less wearable. We hope to find more Chinese designers who make modern, wearable, everyday clothes.

Does OTTE have investors?

No. All the money so far is Kay's and Nancy's own. We are both girls from ordinary families, not rich heiresses, so every penny we earn thrills us and makes us grateful.

There are so many boutiques and plenty of e-commerce sites. What is OTTE's core advantage over them?

Fashion is a fiercely competitive industry, especially online, where you can buy almost anything you want.

Honestly, when every international e-commerce player is racing to expand, investing in customer service and pushing harder on Weibo and WeChat, competing is not easy. But OTTE's buying style is very clear: trendy, yet elegant and feminine. We try to combine the hottest trends of the moment with what customers need day to day. Every season we watch shows by hundreds of designers, each with hundreds of looks, but from each designer we pick only a small handful, the pieces that suit OTTE best. We also put a lot of work into our creative output, and we hope customers find inspiration in OTTE's lookbooks.

Do you like New York? If a young person interested in fashion wanted to go to New York to study fashion and open a boutique, would you advise her to do it?

Of course. New York is our home. Nancy has been in New York for 8 years, and Kay has been here for 20.

New York is diverse, unrestrained and always changing. It is a deeply infectious city, where you are free to be yourself. New Yorkers are forceful and brutally honest, so all of us have to be the real thing; nobody will flatter you if you're faking it. At the same time, New York is a very accepting city: whatever your style, you can be yourself here.

New York is one of the world's fashion capitals, and honestly, succeeding here is not simple. The city has two world-class design schools, Parsons and FIT, and it is packed with talent from around the world, so standing out even as a student is hard. Once you graduate and want to open a boutique, the challenges only multiply, and many factors decide whether you succeed or fail.

First, you need an eye. Second, you must not fear challenges. Finally, you need the will to endure more hardship than everyone else. You need all three. With only two, you won't succeed in New York; but if you have all three, you may well realize your New York dream.