1. Starting a company is a lesson in humility
2. The process must be the reward
3. The only failure is quitting
4. Do it even when you do not feel like doing it
5. It’s idiots all the way up, so you might as well be the idiot calling the shots

I’ll go deeper into each of these, but, for now, I will start with the first lesson : Starting a company is a lesson in humility.

When I began forming the vision of Martindale exactly two years ago, I knew nothing about the full design cycle required to create just one piece of clothing, but I knew I wanted to launch for Fall/Winter 2023. That’s right, Fall/Winter 2023… It seemed so reasonable at the time : I had a full year to develop styles, find a manufacturer based in the US, create patterns, find high-end fabric suppliers, finish samples, launch production, and on and on and on.

As some of you may have noticed, it is currently Summer 2024, and I have sold exactly one coat to my mom (thanks, Mom!) and the website (our primary forum for selling product) is not yet live.

This is where the humility piece joins the story : the speed of development set by the fashion world (did anyone know it takes 6-8 weeks for a mill to produce and ship 150 yards of wool? Me either…) and also the speed at which I could move while keeping up with my much-more-than full time job and children and spouse was drastically slower than I had projected. And, I was wildly inefficient in this new world of design than I could have imagined. It was a punch to the gut the day I realized I would not be launching in time for Fall/Winter 2023.

Instead of quitting, I pivoted : “I will launch before Christmas, just in time for holiday shopping!” And then the manufacturer I was using came back at DOUBLE the cost I had budgeted for Season 1 production.

And then I pivoted again : “I will find a new manufacturer and soft-launch in Spring 2024, with a full launch in July for F/W 2024!” And then it took me eight weeks longer than expected to get all the necessary trims and fabric in hand to begin production.

And then I pivoted again, again : “I will launch for F/W 2024!” And here we are, three days out from the official website go-live.

The launch is not going to be perfect. I have spent many evenings and weekends combing through the website, updating photos, editing descriptions, adding content. There are gremlins still hiding in there, but perfection is the enemy of good. I am humble enough to know now it will not be as fast or as easy as I expected, but in three days, it won’t matter that it took an extra year to get here, so long as we did.

Here’s to the lessons learned when you start something new thinking you probably won’t be very good at it and finding out you are so much worse than you could have imagined.

Bisoux,
Elise