Veronica Beard Founders Talk Business Growth, Working Dynamics

Working with family can be confusing enough — let alone when you share the same name as your business partner.

But for Veronica Swanson Beard and Veronica Miele Beard, sisters-in-law and cofounders of Veronica Beard, their business is built off of that duality, which they refer to as “two perspectives, one vision.”

In conversation with WWD news director Lisa Lockwood at the WWD CEO Summit, the pair outlined their left-brain, right-brain superpowers and how it’s fueled their business, which was founded in 2010.

“I worked in fashion for designers — Narciso Rodriguez, Alberta Ferretti and then I became a buyer,” Swanson Beard said. “Veronica and I met at a friend’s wedding. Veronica was married, and my now-husband was just my dinner partner, and it was the most fateful night of my life because I met my husband and I met my work wife.

“Veronica and I have had a great friendship before we started this business — mutual love, obsession and curiosity about fashion always, and nonstop talk about different ideas,” Swanson Beard continued. “We had a lot of bad ideas before we had a good idea, and decided to start with the Dickey jacket. The idea existed in menswear, but didn’t exist in womenswear, and it certainly didn’t exist with interchangeable, removable pieces.”

Miele Beard, on the other hand studied to become a veterinarian before entering the finance world. “I was the CEO of a hedge fund for technology. How does that work into fashion and what things can I bring to the table to work with someone who was in fashion already but didn’t know how to build a business?” Miele Beard mused. “Veronica is a dreamer, I’m a realist, and when you’re in finance, you learn how to take risks and you understand what you’re buying before you’re buying it, and you are all about supply and demand.”

From the Dickey jacket came a slew of complementary categories. “If she needs the Dickey jacket, she needs jeans to complement the jacket,” Miele Beard continued. “And if we’re getting into jeans, she’s going to need shoes, too, so we’re going to get into footwear. All of this comes over time.”

She also sees the business as driven equally by product and emotion. “You’re selling product, but you’re also selling a feeling,” Miele Beard said. “How does she feel putting on this uniform that we tried to create for women that already existed for men? We work together by thinking about the customer, what she needs in her day and how she’s going to feel wearing it.”

The brand started in wholesale, and moved from the designer floor to the contemporary floor. “We owe everything to our wholesale business,” Swanson Beard said. “We were able to learn how our business stacked against all the other businesses. We started in opening designer, and we realized we were somewhere between designer and contemporary You’re relegated to this area or that area, depending on your price and offering and whether you’re luxury or not.”

The two noted that they saw more traffic on the contemporary floor around three years into business, “and we made a big decision to switch to contemporary and pray that the supply would come to offset the price difference and margin, and it did. It’s just been explosive growth since then,” Swanson Beard said.

That growth has since become more diversified as the brand has opened its own fleet of stand-alone stores.

“It was explosive for our brand because it is the physical manifestation of our story and of what we do,” Miele Beard said. “It’s where you can see the entire collection, you can understand how it all works together, all the pieces. I always say that you understand a person when you step into their home, and we design all of our stores to feel that way.”

They’ve taken a localized approach to each door. “It’s supposed to reflect the local community, it’s supposed to be really beautiful, very elevated, and we spent a lot of time designing each of these stores. We are informed as to where to open based on the heat map of our customers,” Miele Beard said. “It’s looking at online and wholesale sales, really understanding where she is and how she can be met. The whole relationship of the omni experience with our customer — a woman wants to shop however she wants to shop.”

Recent and upcoming markets for stand-alone stores are Palo Alto, a San Francisco reopening and Montecito, Calif. “We’re bullish on retail and it’s been wonderful,” Miele Beard said.

Elsewhere, the brand is bullish on accessories too. “We are really, really, really focusing and investing in handbags,” Swanson Beard. “Most brands are known for their accessories, and Veronica Beard was only ready-to-wear. We have a huge ready-to-wear business, and we are betting on the fact that our accessories and handbag business can be as big, or even bigger. That’s where our big growth vehicle is.

“If she is going to buy that jacket and be forward-facing with her clothing, she’ll probably buy the bag, and the bag is also priced really well compared to luxury and it’s a beautiful product. We really pride ourselves on our finishings and how and where they’re made. It’s price, value and trend and we’re trying to be cutting edge,” Swanson Beard continued.

These expansions have also lent themselves to the Beards becoming better acquainted with their customers. “Since Day One, we got on the road and pressed palms with women across the country and saw what they were wearing,” Swanson Beard said. “We were very New York-ified, but women want to be relevant, they want to look good, feel good, do good. It’s just a little different in Aspen — she might buy a cowboy hat over a pair of jeans she’s wearing in Miami — but we have to cater to her.”

The focus right now is on international expansion, and the company is eyeing real estate in Paris. “It’s the gateway to Asia,” Swanson Beard explained. In the U.K., “Harrods is huge for us right now, and Selfridges is expanding and growing.”

All of the brand’s stores are profitable, she said. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges to building Veronica Beard, though.

“We’re really aware of the competition, but I think it’s important to keep blinders on a little bit — focus on who you are, who your customer is, what you’re doing. If you look outside a little too much, it starts to water you down. When we’ve done that, we need to correct it. It’s about staying true to the brand,” Miele Beard said. “It’s scary to have a great, thriving business and introduce new categories and pray that they do as well as they’ve done. But I think we’re on track.”