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Two years in the past, whereas lots of her friends at Columbia College have been busy selecting majors, cramming for finals and working to part-time jobs, Cami Téllez was quietly constructing a multi-million greenback firm.
Téllez based Parade, a direct-to-consumer intimates model whereas she was an undergraduate at Columbia alongside her enterprise associate Jack DeFuria, who was additionally an undergraduate scholar on the time, with $3.5 million in seed funding. She had been finding out English and artwork historical past for seven semesters earlier than dropping out in January 2020 to be Parade’s full-time CEO and artistic director.
That threat paid off: Parade has offered over two million pairs of underwear since its launch and is presently valued at $140 million, with funding from buyers like Neil Blumenthal, Shakira and Karlie Kloss. Parade has discovered success by representing what the normal underwear market is not. As a substitute of imposing a well-liked customary of sexiness that depends on supermodels and costly lingerie, Parade has targeted on creating comfy, reasonably priced undergarments that remember all physique sorts. Parade’s underwear assortment ranges from $8-$15 and is available in sizes XS-3XL, they usually lately launched a line of bralettes.
Téllez, 24, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and Berkeley, California along with her mother and father, who fled their residence in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1994 amid civil unrest. She tells CNBC Make it that her mother and father’ willpower has empowered her to steer a fast-growing startup. “I see them as visionaries in pursuit of the American dream and making a greater life for themselves,” she says. “Their unbelievable grit instilled in me an actual sense of mission and objective that has been important for me in main Parade.”
The choice to drop out of college was particularly troublesome for Téllez, as her mother and father noticed an Ivy League diploma as the last word image of success in America. “I am certain different Latinx entrepreneurs perceive how difficult it’s to pursue entrepreneurship in a tradition that values following an institutional profession path,” she says. However watching her run a profitable enterprise has introduced them much more pleasure, and Téllez says they’re a few of her largest supporters. “My father as soon as informed me, ‘America is without doubt one of the solely locations on the earth the place you possibly can fail and it is not career-defining,'” she shares. “That opened my aperture, allowed me to swing for the fences and dream greater as I continued to construct Parade.”
A lot of Parade’s inspiration got here throughout journeys to the mall when Téllez was a young person, the place sizzling pink thongs and nude briefs have been marketed alongside one another by largely white fashions. “I felt very out of contact with the imaginative and prescient Victoria’s Secret and different shops had of femininity,” she says. “I at all times thought ladies deserved manufacturers that have been simply as daring and expressive as they have been.”
At first Téllez says buyers did not perceive the necessity for a brand new underwear model targeted on a youthful shopper. “However the strongest a part of my pitch was that I used to be, and nonetheless am, the shopper,” she says. “That permits me to foretell what the way forward for the class appears like and keep abreast of quickly altering shopper preferences.” With Parade, Téllez hopes to “rewrite the American underwear story” and grow to be a number one challenger to Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein and different huge gamers within the lingerie market.
As a substitute of dictating what’s cool, Parade has taken a “bottom-up” advertising method by tapping influencers on Instagram to showcase how Parade’s underwear matches inside their private types. The corporate’s advert campaigns, which characteristic younger folks modeling the brightly hued types, have attracted a devoted following on-line. Parade has 5,000 model ambassadors who promote Parade’s designs on their social media feeds and provides suggestions, some in alternate for compensation or gifted product. Téllez additionally estimates that “tens of 1000’s” of shoppers have posted about Parade on-line.
Although Téllez’s ardour to construct an inclusive underwear model is “basically formed” by her identification as a first-generation American, she notes that being a younger entrepreneur from a minority background is a “double-edged sword.” “It is troublesome for buyers to match you in opposition to the remainder of their portfolio,” she says. “However I believe buyers additionally understand that they should proceed to innovate their perspective on what sort of persons are going to assist construct the way forward for totally different classes.”
2021 has already been an eventful 12 months for Parade. Final month the corporate raised $20 million in Sequence B funding led by Stripes, a progress fairness agency that additionally invests in clothes model Reformation and plant-based milk firm Califia Farms. The funding comes as Parade prepares to open its first brick-and-mortar retailer in November in New York as properly.
In moments like these Téllez displays on the early days of Parade once they had simply 5 workers packing containers out of a 900-square-foot condominium in New York. “Earlier than each launch, our whole workplace would hand-pack over 500 containers to our group, write notes in each single one, and drive them to the publish workplace,” she says. “It took each single considered one of us and we might work till it was executed and nobody would complain as a result of they understood that it was for the individuals who cared about Parade probably the most: our group.” Parade has even created an organization worth round box-packing to honor the “all fingers on deck” mindset that acquired them so far. “I like to rent people who perceive that we’re not above something, and we love getting within the trenches to serve the mission.”
Although Parade has seen early success there may be nonetheless a rare hole in enterprise capital funding white entrepreneurs obtain in comparison with their non-white friends. In accordance with an evaluation by Crunchbase, Black and Latinx Founders represented solely 2.4% of complete enterprise capital funding between 2015 and 2020.
Téllez is hopeful to see extra younger and Latinx entrepreneurs break into the sphere and make the startup world a extra “simply, equitable enjoying area.” Her one piece of recommendation for aspiring CEOs? “As you proceed to take dangers, problem norms and re-invent the established order, keep in mind there isn’t any time for being self-conscious about what it’s that you just’re placing out into the world,” she notes. “All of us have one life, there are not any costume rehearsals right here.”
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