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As contrarians like Steve Jobs will tell you, it pays to think different. And while Jobs and the rest of his crew have received plenty of praise (and bags of money) for their outside-of-the-box strategies, the truth is that there are plenty of other entrepreneurs whose independent thinking has led to significant success for themselves and their companies.
Take, for example, Corbin Church, the CEO of Miche Bag. His company’s core product is a women’s handbag with interchangeable “shells” that turn the bag into, say, a leopard print purse. Miche sells its products through a multi-level marketing model, which includes an e-commerce website, authorized distributors, and “home party hosts” who sell the products to their friends.
From the very beginning, investors said Miche was doomed. Handbags are status symbols, why would women buy one from a brand they had never heard of? And didn’t home parties go out of style along with the Tupperware that were traditionally sold at such venues? Besides, companies like Pampered Chef employed similar models and were floundering.
But Church saw things differently. If the handbags were made with the same quality materials and attention to detail seen in other luxury bags, customers would buy them, particularly if they were at the right price point. And the multi-level marketing model wasn’t broken, it just needed a makeover. By replacing products like Tupperware with high-end handbags and empowering the sales force to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, hostess parties no longer seemed so dowdy.
That type of independent thinking has paid off. Radnor, Penn.-based private equity firm Milestone Parnters took a “significant minority stake” in Miche at the end of last year.
And those bags of money? Well, let’s just say that they now come in leopard print.
This series is brought to you by Saab. At Saab, we believe in independent thinking. It’s in everything we do. Learn more here.