Since co-founding her online athleisure subscription brand in 2013, Kate Hudson's Fabletics has expanded to include 25 brick-and-mortar stores around the world and was valued at an incredible $250 million after the first three years of business. Stands to reason that she's learnt a few things along the way. Here, the actress and entrepreneur shares her advice for successfully launching your own company...
Be inspired by what you're passionate about and find a gap in the market
"I always wanted to do something fashion orientated but I didn’t really know what it was going to be; something in clothes. I didn’t necessarily think it was going to be in activewear, until there was this realisation that there was an enormous wide space. The clothes that I actually wear the most at home and in my real life with my kids is pretty much all activewear. I wear my leggings all the time with big T-shirts and sweaters and boots. I’m always in them. But they were black or grey or one hundred million dollars. The cute ones were always crazy expensive. So I thought, high fashion is great and I love it – and there’s always a place and a market for it – but I thought I would love to speak to a wider group of women of all shapes and sizes. Hence coming up with this idea for Fabletics."
Don't get caught up in competition
"Everybody does their own thing, and I really believe that there’s a place for a lot of different ideas. Some brands and some people are very competitive. I’ve never felt that competition serves anyone really well – I think just doing what you do really well is the best way forward. There’s a place for everything."
Know that you can't please everyone
"You can’t make everyone happy. When you come from a world as a performer, you’re very used to be scrutinised and criticised for a performances or for choices in the arts world. Your goal as a performer is to make people happy; you want to go out there and have people leave feeling like they’ve had a real experience. It matters. The same thing applies when you start a company – you want people to love what you’re doing and be happy with their experience. When you have a company that has incredible growth and gets as big as our company has, I think the hardest part for me was understanding that sometimes – I still don’t really accept it, which is probably a good thing but, if I see that someone’s unhappy then it’s upsetting to me and I want it to be fixed. But sometimes you’ve got to let some of them go. You just can’t make everyone happy – not everyone’s going to love it. I think I want everyone to love it like I do. Letting go of that was big, but we're still always striving to be as good as we can possibly be."
Trust your instincts and speak up
"The other thing I think I’ve learnt in business is to trust my instincts and to not shy away from things that I know or in my gut can feel is the right direction. Sometimes I haven’t spoken up – you have this idea or something that you think could be beneficial, or something that you think should be shifted or changed, yet sometimes you don’t speak out. I think speaking out and being upfront are super important in business – whether you’re right or you’re wrong."
Learn to listen
"I think that listening is huge. And being curious. If you’re curious – the idea of wanting to know more about your customer - that’s why we do this. Not honouring them doesn’t make any sense. Unless the only thing you want is money, money, money, money. Of course as a business you want growth but, for me, I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for reaching these women and creating a movement in this company. I would feel like I’d be letting them down if I wasn’t listening or curious about them."
Think carefully about your business model - does it service their needs?
"This platform, our model, allows us to reach so many different women. From the yogi to the runner to the dancer to the soccer mum to the 14-year-old. Because we’re monthly and we’re constantly changing things, and we have 28-31 different outfits and styles, we can cater to everyone. And because we’re digitally native, we’re really able to see what our customer wants; what’s working and what’s not working. What we have that they love, what we don’t have that they wish we had. We’re really connected to them and we listen to them and it creates way less waste and honestly more loyalty to the brand – because they know we’re listening. They can see it and feel it."
Think about how you can create an elevated customer experience
"It’s a challenging thing to create an all-inclusive brand that feels exclusive when you’re wearing it. How we’re able to do that is through the membership. So when we have members it is exclusive. You don’t have to be a member, you can just purchase online or go to the stores and buy whatever you want, but the members have this exclusive world that they get to be a part of and it’s fun and it’s motivating. So we’re able to feel exclusive and still have incredibly competitive price points."
Connect with your customer
"We’re really connected with the people that are inside our community, we have these VIP events where we bring in a lot of the members and we talk to them about what they love or don’t love. What's going on in your life? Who are you? We really want to bring them in and have their voice be heard and honour them as being a part of the community, but also it allows us to really be able to understand our customer. It’s so important. It’s the best. You get see who your core group of women are and who you'd like to target. [It allows you to] create a very diverse company where you can bring in women from all walks of life. When you have a price point like we do it’s amazing – we’re able to do that."
Ultimately, authenticity is everything
"I’ve had the honour now of talking to a lot of businessmen and women that I’ve really respected and you hear it a lot: authenticity is everything. When people are really passionate about what they do and it’s authentic and it matters to them, [customers] feel that and they understand that and it seeps into the brand. It becomes a part of the brand identity. It’s super important."
Shop online now at fabletics.co.uk.
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