How designer Rebecca Minkoff learned to stop overthinking and trust her gut

After two decades of building her popular fashion brand, Rebecca Minkoff has proven to the world that she is here stay.

But the road to success has not been without its obstacles — particularly as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Minkoff knew she had to pivot when 70 percent of her business went away overnight and department stores across the country cancelled their orders.

And pivot she did.

Minkoff shut down her brick-and-mortar stores and turned her business model to direct-to-consumer. And in early 2022, Minkoff (who was pregnant with her third child) made the decision to sell her company to Sunrise Brands, in an estimated sale between $13 million and $19 million.

 Minkoff, who remained at the company as chief creative officer, said it wasn’t an easy decision.

“I definitely cried the night of, but then three weeks later, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, a weight that we’ve been carrying for 18 years about every little thing that can go wrong… was lifted,’” Minkoff recently told me at the Retail Innovation Conference & Expo (RICE) in Chicago.

Selling a company can sometimes mean a founder can lose creative control, Minkoff shared, but the decades of building her brand — testing and trusting her gut — has prepared her to succeed in this new chapter.

Minkoff attributes much of her success as a founder for her ability to take risks, like the early adoption of innovation and technology, harnessing the power of social media. With the help of her brother and co-founder Uri Minkoff, she pioneered features like interactive dressing room mirrors, QR codes, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Being an early adapter to different tech platforms before they were popular didn’t always make sense to everyone around her. “We were one of the first companies on Snapchat. It was us and Taco Bell,” she said. But Minkoff went with her gut and forged ahead.

But it’s Minkoff’s own relationship to her customer that is perhaps her brand’s biggest asset.  

“AI [artificial Intelligence] will solve a lot of things. But it is still not human,” she said. “And it still never takes the place of that human connection.” Minkoff reflected on years traveling across the country and engaging with customers in department stores and pop-up shops.

“We would do meet and greets. And I think it was finding ways to talk to [our customers] and ask ‘Why did you make this choice? Why did you make your first [Rebecca Minkoff] purchase?’ And when you get back to old school marketing and being in that community you learn so much. And I think that that’s key for any brand.”

There were many hard learned lessons, however, as her brand grew. One of those moments happened years before she decided to sell. Around 2018, Minkoff had brought in a new executive team, who had different ideas for the branding of the company, including a new social media strategy and how they should speak to their customer. It called for Minkoff to be more hands off with her customer than she had been before.

In some ways, it went against what Minkoff had spent years building. From the inception, Minkoff had mirrored her customer in many ways, “I was the same age and sex as my customer when I was moving to New York City, looking for love, trying to find the right partner and being an entrepreneur, so I was mirroring to authentically connect with her. As she had kids, I had kids, and [we both] struggled with work-life balance.” 

The new direction required her to take a step back from the “best friend and mentor” image Minkoff had cultivated with her customer. It also brought a slightly different aesthetic to her line — one that deviated from the usual ‘rock and roll a little bit Bohemian’ that was signature to her brand.

“I was like, ‘that doesn’t feel right.’ But I was in doubt of myself [so I let the branding changes] happen. And when I finally began to see the writing on the wall I was like, ‘this is not good.’”

Minkoff’s hunch proved to be right. When the product hit the market under new leadership, it felt like a completely different brand — and it was reflected in the sales.

“We just went through — who is our customer again? What does she like? What does she expect from us?”

This wasn’t the first time Minkoff was tested and had to course correct. In the early years of her brand evolution, in 2012, one chief marketing officer, told her the customer didn’t “want to hear about your kids.” That advice proved to be a misstep for Rebecca and the brand, “There was a period of two or three years when I didn’t do that…[After that] we had to find her again,” said Minkoff referring to her customer.

Minkoff knew deep down it was her ability to connect with her community by sharing honest bits of her life, online and in person events, as a founder that gained her customer trust and engagement. That relationship had also helped with bringing the original brand back into focus.

Since then, the mother of four, has gotten better at trusting her gut. Minkoff has incorporated a full media ecosystem to connect and relate with her community. That includes her podcast: Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff, where she highlights female CEOs, executives and founders, her LinkedIn newsletter — where she shares honest experiences of balancing life and work, her new Substack, and her Female Founder Collective — a platform that grants access, resources and visibility to female entrepreneurs.

One of the biggest lessons she’s learned is no one knows her customer better than her. “You need to listen to that gut feeling. Now I’ll fight tooth and nail for what I feel as a founder, especially as it relates to our customer.”