Episode 7: Alexa Buckley of Margaux

Come on into the room. The Room is a series that lets you get a view into the room where it happened.

I'm Claudia Laurie, and I'm Madison McIlwain, your co-hosts.

Over the past couple of months, both Madison and I have been asked if we knew about this incredible up-and-coming D2C brand with insanely comfortable and beautiful shoes. We both immediately knew the brand our friends were thinking about— Margaux, founded by Alexa Buckley her senior year at Harvard alongside co-founder Sarah Pearson. If you have paid attention to Instagram posts of influencers wearing handcrafted ballet flats in every color of the rainbow, then you've probably seen a Margaux shoe. Alexa and Sarah realized the pervasive shoe shuffle where working women would have to swap their walking shoes with their office shoes under their desks due to lack of style in the former and comfort in the latter. Alexa and Sarah began to ask themselves, why wasn't it possible to have both? They then decided to disrupt the shoe industry. Since Alexa and Sarah decided to make the leap and go after what they were passionate for, Margaux has since become a strong player in the D2C landscape and has even landed Alexa and Sarah a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30. In this episode, we explore themes such as what it means to be both a heritage brand and a startup. Navigating the changing DDC landscape and what it means to GAUX for it. Yeah, that's spelled G-A-U-X. Alexa, thank you so much for joining us today. You founded Margaux, which is currently my favorite shoe brand. I have just gotten the cerulean ballet flats and they're officially my favorite.

Oh, that makes my day. I'm so glad.

And I actually, just for context, I was getting brunch with a friend a couple of months ago and I was like, I love your shoes. And she's also a fellow Harvard grad. And she was like, well, they're from this brand Margaux. You have to like go buy everything. She's incredible.

Oh my gosh.

So we have quite a sort of a fan community out in the Bay Area for your shoes.

So kind. We had a pop-up in San Francisco and absolutely loved being out there and have dreams of getting back there. So that really makes my day and week. Thank you so much.

Before we kind of jump into sort of the founding story of Margaux, would love to sort of zoom out a little bit and start a little bit earlier. Margaux was founded, you were your senior year at Harvard with your co-founder Sarah, which is not normally what comes to mind for a typical senior spring. At Harvard, you studied history and did internships in finance and venture. Did you always know you wanted to be a founder?

No, I did not always know I wanted to be a founder, and it was definitely not the plan when I started my senior year of school. I grew up in an environment, I think, that was very entrepreneurial because my dad was an entrepreneur and my uncle and my grandfather, and so I was around it quite a bit. But I think it was really when I got to Harvard that I fell in love with sort of the world of startups and entrepreneurialism. I, like you said, interned in venture capital for 2 summers, and so was on the other side of the table. I worked for the sort of competition on campus and for a professor who really kind of worked with students at the college on building companies while they were in school. But I didn't ever really have an idea that I was working on or thinking about behind the scenes that led me to believe that I'd be a founder anytime soon. But it was during our senior spring that Sarah and I dreamt up the idea for a year ago, and it was, as so many startups are, born out of our own personal kind of recognition of an issue that we faced, and this was this trade-off between style and comfort in, you know, the everyday lives of women, and this takes so many different forms, but for us, it was so obvious in footwear, where women wear a pair of shoes to get them somewhere, and then they shuffle into another pair when they get there, and have extra, you know, shoes under their rack. We would see during our internship summers, women in the subway changing into their, from their commuter shoes to their dress shoes, and this felt so unbelievable, incredibly inconvenient and outdated, and that, you know, we really felt like women deserved to have shoes that made them feel as beautiful as they do comfortable, and that did both. And that this paradigm in luxury that, you know, comfort is sort of at odds with style needed to be challenged. And so that's what got us excited and inspired us to sort of dive into creating the idea for this business.

I'm a fellow history major, so thank you for all history majors everywhere telling us we can be founders.

Exactly, exactly. Oh, I'm so glad that I studied I think, you know, so many people are, are sort of shocked to hear that, but I feel like it's prepared me to be able to think like cross-functionally, to synthesize and to like think creatively in a lot of ways. So I don't know if I would change that.

While everyone else was going through the traditional recruiting machine, what was a moment that you realized that no, this is something that you really wanted to do and you were going to take a different path?

It's, well, I mean, we kind of went through the recruiting process. We both accepted job offers after school and it was during the springtime that we started kind of started dreaming up this idea. And at that time, you know, senior spring, things are pretty casual and fun, and Sarah and I were taking secret trips to New York City instead of going to so many parties to work on prototypes for our product and explore kind of what this could be. And it was, over the course of that spring, very much exploratory and kind of understanding what was possible or what we could at least dive into. It was at graduation, Sheryl Sandberg was our Speaker, and she sort of opened her talk with by asking the crowd what they would do if they weren't afraid. And I think it was in that moment that Sarah and I kind of looked at each other and knew the answer to that question, and it was to take that leap of faith into starting this business that we were so passionate about and so excited about and had absolutely no business getting into, and not take our corporate job offers and just kind of go for it. And so a week later, we had both let our employers know that we had fallen in love with this idea and wanted to go after it. And from there, we moved to New York City. We got a 2-person office in SoHo, and we dove in.

That is such an inspiring story. So we actually had another guest in our first season, Coral Chung, the CEO of Senreve. And she was sort of talking through a very similar story of sort of her, you know, going on the subway, realizing that like she wanted this designer bag, but there was no way that it would fit her laptop and the straps would break. And she was kind of going after that more practical, but still very dreamy and fashionable sort of fashion accessory. And it sounds very similar to kind of the thought process that you had for going after the shoe market. Tell us more about some of those early insights and kind of your market discovery and realizing that this was something that no one was really doing well and you were really well positioned to go after this market.

Yeah, it's a great question. I think at the very beginning, you know, this idea of attacking the intersection of form and function and creating something that did both was That was the starting point, and what we discovered after diving into it was that so much of comfort hinges on fit in footwear, and fit was a larger question that so few players had attacked in the industry to date, and there are many kind of obvious reasons for that. I think the historic dependence on wholesalers kind of meant that these wholesale, you know, buyers didn't have the budgets to buy into extended sizing or, you know, alternative options, and that they were really squeezed to just kind of provide the bare minimum, and a direct-to-consumer model allow us to offer our customers exactly what we wanted in a much wider breadth of optionality. And so that kind of gave us one strategic advantage in attacking fit in an industry that is so historic and kind of surprisingly hasn't. And in a moment when size inclusivity has become so topical in ready-to-wear, it was sort of mind-boggling to us that it hadn't yet been addressed in footwear. And kind of as we explored that, we started with a made-to-measure model, which meant that our customers measured their feet and we made their shoes to their measurements. And what we learned from that kind of starting point of the business is that we gathered enough data on our customers to understand what the trends were in fit and that we could accomplish, you know, 90% of this extended size optionality through ready-made widths and extended lengths and provide customers, you know, an easier path to purchase in a higher kind of volume business. And so that's what we did. We dove into kind of being one of the only players in our industry that offers narrow, medium, and wide width. Widths and an extended range of lengths and have gone sort of silhouette by silhouette from there, perfecting each staple of the footwear wardrobe through this very kind of dedicated focus of style and comfort.

It's so apt that we're both history majors, cuz I'm about to wow our listeners with some history knowledge. I think it's funny cuz the modern consumer doesn't really have a concept for bespoke fashion, but it wasn't until actually the 1800s after the Civil War where the modern concept of sizing came into the consumer's purview because that was the first time anyone had taken a standard inventory of sizing to create their military uniform for Civil War Army individuals. And so kind of extrapolating that, it wasn't really until after World War II that consumers from you, such as you and I, even could buy off-the-shelf clothing. And so buying clothes that is not custom or not bespoke, so to speak, is actually a 20th century phenomenon. It's just insane to me that we now are conditioned to buy clothes that way, but that's not how people for 2,000 years have worn garments. So it's so cool that Margaux is taking us back to our consumer roots and allowing us the opportunity in an economically viable way to purchase clothes that actually fit our bodies and our feet. You mentioned the different staples of footwear. I think you started first with ballet flats. How did you settle there?

Decided on ballet flats because we felt like it was sort of the epitome of the wear-everywhere shoe for the modern woman and was the shoe and is the shoe that you can run around all day in. Made well, but also a shoe that you can feel dressed and beautiful in. It wasn't a heel, and that we were kind of challenging also what it meant to feel dressed, and that you don't have to, you know, be uncomfortable in a high heel if you don't want to be. The ballet flat was and is our signature. It's our hero, our little demi ballerina now. But I think what we learned through our first product was that our customers were really excited to have their Margot comfort in that shoe, but then they wanted it in the other silhouettes, and that's what they were asking for from us. And so very slowly but surely, we've kind of mapped out and continue to map out what those staples are for her. I think as the world evolves, those staples continue to evolve, and that's been a really interesting product for the past year, 6 months in particular. And we're really kind of listening to our customer and trying to stay in conversation with her to continue to figure out what those next silhouettes will be.

That's awesome. So you found what many people in our industry call product-market fit, in this case, literal fit. You mentioned you had these prototypes that you're shuffling between Boston and New York before graduation, and then you've decided to go in on this idea, but did you know how to build a physical product? And go through production?

Oh my gosh, no, we did not. I think the beauty and the silver lining of being as green as we were was that we knew what we didn't know. We were humble in that way and willing to kind of go find the experts who did. And so that was sort of the first step after graduating, which was sort of assembling a team of advisors, mentors, and experts around the business and kind of every bucket of the business, whether it was digital and web or social media and PR or you know, product development and design. And product obviously came first. We found an unbelievable duo who had built tremendous careers in the footwear industry. They've launched brands, built brands, worked with brands, created their own, and they have been with us since the very beginning. We heard no from many, many, many people before we met these husband and wife duo, and we pitched them on the dream of Margot, and we were so lucky that they were willing to take a chance on us. And they did, and they were kind of our access to what is sort of an opaque industry of manufacturing. They took us to Spain, which where we produce now, in a tiny town that's pretty known for kind of working with some of the greatest brands in the world. And that kind of education in development and design in that first year with the two of them was a huge unlock for our business, and I don't know if we would be here today without them.

You're touching on something we like to talk about here, which is who is in the room with you when you're building. It. So you had Sarah and you had these individuals who were helping you navigate the muddy waters of shoe manufacturing abroad. Who else was there with you?

We have an incredible set of advisors. My dad was one of the people. He's an entrepreneur, and that, even though he's, you know, not at all related to the fashion or consumer world, I think just knowing, kind of having other entrepreneurs that have been through the roller coaster of it is so powerful. We had an advisor on campus at Harvard who was hugely instrumental in giving Sarah and I the courage to just jump and take the leap of faith to do it. We started to meet other entrepreneurs that summer, that first summer, in the New York startup ecosystem. And I think what we found is that it's wonderfully tight-knit, especially among female founders, and that there is this sort of pay-it-forward notion in, in the startup world of people who are so willing to help for no other reason than someone else helped them. And I think it was a really fantastic combination of a few very key advisors professors, a few other entrepreneurs, and, you know, a few people from college that were, were and still are really important sounding boards for Sarah and me.

You have this amazing network of people who's been helping you build this brand, and I imagine you had a lot of friends, women especially, who were excited to buy your shoes. But kind of inflection point is actually having your friends not be the customer. Who was the first person that you know of that wasn't a friend or a family who bought a Margot shoe, and what was that story?

Oh my gosh, that's a great question. So we launched So we graduated in May of 2014, we launched the business in May of 2015. We launched with an online article on Vogue.com that the editor said would go up at 6 AM if it went up and your business would be live. And we'd kind of given them the exclusive launch and we said, "Okay." And so, you know, as things in startup world go, the night before launch ended up being a very late night in which Sarah did not have enough time to get home to her apartment before said 6 AM launch. And so she slept in my apartment and we set an alarm for 5:40. We were up and we were ready if the story went live. Here we were, and if not, we were going to send an email and announce our launch anyway. And sure enough, at 6:01, it was the first article on Vogue.com, and that was a huge pinch-us moment. It was very surreal at the time. We started seeing orders pretty immediately afterwards, and that was a really memorable day. And every kind of May 15th, we do something really fun as a team, usually at our Roundup Bleaker Street store, uh, still now. Yeah.

So it took you a full year from leaving and graduating Harvard and the Harvard bubble to moving to New York and starting this. You've talked about some insights that you've had around the 80% mark of most people's feet, women's feet fit 80% of widths. What are other aha moments in that first year or shortly after the go-live that helped you to keep a data-first mindset in building your business?

I think one of the most interesting pieces of data was kind of in those initial first few months of kind of trying to just understand kind of who our customer was and what she wanted from seeing the pretty compelling patterns in the measurements we were getting from our customers for the custom shoes, that led us to realize that we could preemptively create these widths to service this need and this appetite for a more specific fit, but do so in a much easier way by manufacturing the widths ahead of time and having them readily available to ship to customers. So I think that was, you know, a huge unlock. Now over 30% of our orders are still, quote, non-standard sizes, whether it's whether it's a different width or an extended length. And so the appetite continues to persist and we're continuing to think about new ways that we can deliver on it as well.

So you've spoken about Margaux's goal to become a heritage brand. For our listeners who might not know what a heritage brand is, do you want to talk a little bit more about how you see that versus maybe your typical sort of like newcoming D2C brand?

I think the way that we think about it is creating a brand that has staying power and kind of lasting power by creating products that, though modern in their design and construction, are classic and sort of timeless in their aesthetic. In that way, kind of creating not only a staying power among the products that we— the brand that we create, but the products that we make. Something that becomes a staple in our customers' closets that they can turn to day in and day out. In our minds, This idea of heritage means something that lasts and something that becomes kind of a staple go-to for our community of women.

D2C, it's like all the rage these days. I feel like there's always a new brand with like the pastels and like the sans-serif font selling like all these different things. And especially given COVID, sort of e-commerce and D2C I think has taken off tremendously. What are kind of your thoughts on this changing landscape and how do you think sort of heritage brands are going to sort of evolve given today's current context.

Can I add one more layer to that question too, Claudia? Because I think, you know, D2C is direct-to-consumer, which also maybe sometimes our listeners are more tech versus, uh, consumer brands. Previewing that question, which I love, how come you decided to go direct-to-consumer versus initially selling into large department stores, which typically are who I think I go to for my shoes? And then kind of how do you think about, you know, heritage and everything?

Definitely. Um, so we, you know, decided to be direct-to-consumer from the outset for two reasons. I think one was we knew 1, because we knew that retailers weren't going to be interested in the range of sizes that we wanted and needed to offer to our customers to deliver on our promise. And 2, because we felt that there is a secondary value proposition to this brand, which is exceptionally beautiful luxury quality shoes at a more affordable price point. And that is the greatest benefit of a direct-to-consumer model, which is that you're cutting out the middleman of the retailer and selling shoes that, you know, might otherwise retail for 2 times the price. Nice at a fair price. And so, you know, our shoes are made on the same factory line that makes some of the most comfortable brands in the world, but we're really able to achieve a pretty compelling price because of our supply chain and because of the value that we place on hitting those price points. I think from kind of a new world landscape, it's really exciting for business like ours to see the sort of acceleration that's happened in the e-commerce space. I think customers have become more comfortable doing things in digital spaces that they've never been comfortable doing before. Obviously, it starts with ordering product. It extends to things like, you know, community building online. So we've done everything from virtual book clubs to focus groups, and all of these things have occurred on Zoom. And it's allowed us to do more than we could with more customers, but it's a very new way of doing them. And it's also allowed us to service our customers who can't come into our stores in a more intimate way. So we now have virtual fitting sessions that you can do over the phone or on video with our customer service team, and that has been a really interesting way to continue to think about how we can create intimacy without really being in a physical space with our customer. So for those reasons, I think this sort of changing landscape will have a lot of opportunity, will hold a lot of opportunity for brands like ours. When I think about 2021 and Heritage, I think the opportunity is as much about surviving and getting there and understanding kind of of what's on the other side as it is really taking this time to be in very thoughtful conversation with your community and your customers to understand, you know, what they need and what they want and how maybe that's changed in the past 12 months. And so I think that's been a really interesting exercise that we've taken advantage of and hopefully will continue to focus on, which is, you know, how have our customer needs changed and how can we deliver on them? I think the brands that are able to deliver well and quickly and thoughtfully, but still authentically, will be the brands that win.

I love that. And as Claudia alluded to e-commerce has obviously seen massive tailwinds with COVID and everyone forced to shop online. But from your point around consumers and what's changed, oftentimes wallets and ability to pay really has been constricted in this time of economic uncertainty. And as you talk about heritage brands and you've mentioned having your main factory in Spain, I'm guessing this is a factory where other shoe brands we might know and be familiar with are making shoes. That was the story with Koral and Senreve's bag. And I'm familiar with other brands that are actually kind of anti-brand, like Italic would be an example. Of one. And I think there's this interesting question right now around disruption in luxury, around what is a brand, what does it mean to the consumer, and how are they valuing their pocketbook against a brand's reputation? How does Margot think about that?

It's such a good question. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I think at like a very basic level, if you think about it, a brand is everything that's layered on top of a product. And if it's just the product, it's almost like a white label offering. So if you go, you know, down the grocery store aisle or the if you're, you know, a drugstore and looking at deodorants, there could be sort of 5 different deodorants on the shelf, and then what compels you to choose kind of one brand over the other usually has so much to do about the layering they've done on top of that product. Whether it's your understanding of their, what they stand for, who they are, their supply chain, the story they tell around their development. And so I've been thinking a lot about kind of what is layered on top of brand and how that's changed and evolved in the last 6 to 12 months especially. And I think that this collective experience of a pandemic has kind of created this necessary vulnerability among kind of brands to consumers because we're all going through something that's very, that's the same. It's affected us all differently, but we're all going through a shared experience. And this is maybe the first time ever in this kind of new generation of brands that this has happened. And so I think the need for brands to be very honest right now and very communicative and not a one-to-many, but a one-to-one conversation with their customers is more important than ever. I think we've transitioned into a world in which that's expected from the customers, and they're expected to have transparency into who the team is, what they stand for, what the brand believes in, where they make their product, and how they make it. And I think the people who can deliver on this transparency and this real vulnerability in an authentic way will win, and those people who aren't able to kind of authentically offer that vulnerability will have a harder time.

When we zoom out and look at other sort of startups, typically the process is, okay, you have an MVP and then you go fundraising and you scale. And I think sort of fundraising in the context of selling product, physical product is a little bit different. Margot has not gone down the path of heavy fundraising that a lot of these other startups do compared to even other shoe brands such as Allbirds that has raised $200 million or Birdies. You've raised $3.4 million, if I have that correct, to date. A little bit more, but Yes. A little bit more. Okay. Amazing. Tell us about your thinking behind fundraising and how the strategy is actually helping you achieve Margot's goals.

Our strategy around fundraising has been twofold, obviously to raise capital to fund the business and also to bring expertise around the brand that we, especially as young and first-time founders, didn't have. And that has been the greatest result of what is a very difficult process of fundraising as two female founders creating products for one. But we've come out of it with incredible advisors and mentors who are either informally advisors or formally on our board. And I think we've kind of found that a common thread of most of these individuals, and then a few institutions, are all entrepreneurs themselves. And they've kind of gone through this entrepreneurial journey and understand the highs and the lows and are obviously there to celebrate the wins, but more importantly, in moments like the last 6 months, are ready to to kind of roll up their sleeves on a Saturday afternoon and say, let's figure this out. And that's something that Sarah and I are just so grateful for.

I have to add a little anecdote here. I was getting also brunch with a friend. There's a theme here, um, a couple weekends ago. And we were talking about like our Christmas lists and like what we were adding to them. She works in New York in consulting and she said, oh, I, I just got like the best new boots, like right before shutdown. Um, I got, I wore them all day walking around the city and I swear they didn't hurt my feet. I knew we had this coming up and I said, "Oh, is it Margot?" And she goes, "Yep, that's it." No way!

Oh my gosh. Sometimes those things, it's still so surreal to think there are people out there walking around with our shoes on. That makes me so happy.

Well, suffice to say, I think you're cornering the market on comfortable, cute shoes with great colors that real women actually want to buy. And I think for many of us coming out of college, we're all kind of a little bit on the younger side than generally people and founders are. It's daunting to follow your passions out of college, and you had the amazing opportunity of having Sheryl Sandberg look you in the eye and tell you to go follow your dreams. But if you could take yourself back to senior year, Alexa, and what she was going through, what kind of advice would you give your senior year self as they're entering into their first job out of college?

So many things. I think the first thing that was a piece of advice that was given to me that I, especially in my first year out of college, thought about very often was that you don't need to be an expert in what you want to do in order to do it. You just have to be willing to work hard enough to figure it out. And I felt like that was applicable to me as an entrepreneur, first-time entrepreneur, as much as it was, you know, maybe a history major starting a job in finance that she or he didn't feel trained or suited for. And I think it's something that is very perfect for any entrepreneurial journey in particular because is there is no playbook to what will happen and for what will happen. And in this rollercoaster of building a business, so much of it is about testing and trying and failing and pivoting faster and kind of understanding and recognizing also that there is no perfect plan, whether you're building a business or starting a new job, and that course correcting quickly and pivoting faster is the most useful skill and kind of recognition of resilience. And so that's what I would think I would say.

There is no perfect plan. I'm going to put that on my wall because I think I need to be reminded of that every day.

It's so true. I was thinking about this for 2020. 2020 was our crazy hockey stick year as a business. We were ready for it. We finally had the inventory, we finally had the team, and obviously absolutely none of it went as we had planned. And I think about what we're setting ourselves up to do in 2021 and kind of going for it again and feel like we are such a better business and we are such a better organization, so much more ready to tackle this moment and this opportunity than we were if we hadn't gone through the last, you know, 6 to 8 months. And recognizing that the plan didn't go according to plan, but the broader plan is because of what we've had to go through to get here, it was also a really nice relinquish of control and recognizing that the path will be windy, but you will get there.

Claudia and I relate more than you know on that one. And I love you've just tiptoed us right into some of our final questions here on looking towards 2021 and both what you're excited about for Margaux and its growth and its pivots, as well as your own personal excitement in the next year.

I am so, I'm more excited than ever about the product that we have in the pipeline. I think we've been so hyper-focused on it and we've never stopped tinkering with our our, you know, core product, but the product that we've developed in the last 6 months that we will debut in the coming, I think is definitely our best efforts. I'm, from a business perspective, most excited about our product opportunity. I think I'm, you know, second to that, most excited for taking the community that we've built in this very unusual time and continuing to expand our understanding of what we can do as a community, what we can do as a brand through the content the brand marketing that we test. This last 6 months we've really stretched ourselves and I think it's been such a good exercise for us and we are in such a better conversation with our customers and so I'm excited to continue to do that. Personally, I'm excited to see all of the wonderful people in my life again. I think that is certainly the thing that's been hardest about this. I am a people person and an extrovert and so I miss them all dearly, but I do I think the extra family time has been something that I'm not sure I would've traded because that's been a wonderful silver lining.

We love to ask this question to all of our guests because we think there are important stories that are sometimes untold here. And that is, who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you?

I think one of the women in my life that has had one of the greatest impacts on our business, my career, me and Sarah as a founder duo, is one of our very first ever investors, our first female investor. She has had an unbelievable career as one of the first female partners at a major private equity firm to starting her own fund, investing in many businesses, writing a book, um, becoming a cyclist. And we were one of her first investments as she sort of started this new chapter of her life. And she's taught us so much about what it means to be bold in spaces where we are uncomfortable, what it means to go for something even when the world or the environment suggests that it's out of your reach, and that it will not be a perfect path and it will certainly be windy. But having her support and support of other members of our team and board behind us even through these very trying moments has been so impactful. And so I think it would definitely be her.

That's incredible. I'm so glad that you have someone like that on your journey to building what I hope is one of the best shoe brands we are all wearing over the next 5 to 10 years when we can leave our homes.

Exactly. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Alexa, for taking the time to chat with us today. It was so fun to have you on The Room.

Loved chatting with you both. Thank you again.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room. If you enjoyed our conversation, please like and subscribe. Stay tuned for next next week's inspiring guest airing Tuesdays at 7 AM Pacific. See you soon.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Five AC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]