Top Secret

Your mother’s maiden name is still considered the height of security. It’s used by banks and credit card companies as the most obscure question you could ask someone. A secret no one would every guess. I doubt that’s been true for the last 20 years and it certainly is not true for my two sons.

Their ‘Mother’s maiden name’ is plastered all over the internet. It is signed to thousands of public documents. It’s now the name of a luxury handbag brand.

On the final day of start-up weekend, my three remaining teammates and I discussed the merits of a name. We wanted something either French or Italian. Knowing that the challenge is picking something not already being used, I offered up my maiden name. It met the ‘Italian’ criteria. Although I never thought of it as glamorous, having had to spell it all my childhood as ‘F” as in Frank ‘oss’ as in Sam ‘ati’, they thought it had cache.

And so my handbag brand name became ‘Fossati’.

Startup Weekend Ann Arbor June 2008

‘Startup Weekend is a community building startup event.’ It’s like a mini Ycombinator, but 2.5 days instead of 3 months. And you get to go home at night. Local Ann Arbor businesses donated food and space. We were well fed and had 5000 sq feet to play around in.

Friday night, business ideas were pitched and then everyone gravitated into groups of their choice to work on an idea. 38 ideas were pitched that June evening from tracking and reclaiming stolen metals like copper to providing travel advice on an iphone as you visit a new destination. By Sunday 4 or 5 viable businesses launched. That’s amazing. Pitch an idea, form a team of talented motivated strangers and launch a business in 2.5 days.

It’s polite to bring something to a party. I brought homemade cookies and an idea to create a high end handbag business based on the threadless.com business model. I felt kind of like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. It was at Startup weekend in June of 2008 in Ann Arbor that Threadless for high end handbags was pitched to an audience. Not only did 6 people join my group but one guy stood up and said ‘I want to use the threadless model to make low end bags and if Cathy doesn’t want to then I’m going to.’ Hmmmm.

That made things interesting because I wasn’t sure whether people were joining me or him. As it turned out, most people had something in between a $30,000 and $10 handbag in mind. Something maybe around the $700 mark. Fortunately for me, this guy turned out to be a little Hitler, and the group shrank from 8 to 4. We became a much more productive team.

By July, a lot of those businesses had fizzled out. You have to wonder how viable a business is when it can be built in a 2.5 day weekend by a bunch of strangers thrown into a room together under time constrained pressure. It was a really great exercise in social and group dynamics. You got to see how people act under pressure really quickly. My team drifted away by late July too.

Startup weekend is where Fossati handbags began to take shape.

Time Traveling

Time travel is possible.

You know you’re time traveling when:
• you call someone and ask if you can email them a handbag design and they say ‘email, nooooo. I don’t use computers. I got no time. ’
• you ask if you can email a handbag design to someone and they say ‘I don’t do email, FAX it to me’.
• ‘someone insists you work side by side with them through the month long handbag design process’ And you live across the country. Or in another country.

It’s been a blast traveling to the past to find a high end handbag manufacturer in the US. Fortunately, I found one of this era. And She’s really good.

Have you done any time traveling?

FossatiUS

In the Pursuit of Happiness

The last 19 months I've transitioned from being a corporate executive to an entrepreneur. It's a hard story for me to tell because I'm still in the transition. My April 6 launch of Fossati US marked a new stage of my transition. It seems time to start to tell the story in case it helps someone find the courage to start something new when they find the way they've known, the path they've followed, for years is gone.

Last Career: Automotive Executive: Twenty plus years working in the automotive and automotive finance industry. Most recently employed as Interactive Marketing Director, Chrysler Financial. Responsibilities included overseeing all aspects of the interactive marketing initiatives from policy, strategy, planning, execution and maintenance.

New Career: Entrepreneur. CEO and Founder of Fossati , a boutique luxury brand specializing in exquisite limited edition handbags.

I left Chrysler along with a number of colleagues on the day Daimler signed over ownership to Cerberus, August 3, 2007. Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t too different from directing chryslerfinancial.com except I have no employees, no multi -million dollar budget and high short term personal risk. In the long term the risk is much lower because when I come through this, I’ll have many revenue sources.

Being at a cross roads in my career and life, I realized I could do anything. I have so much at stake and am in such a risky position that doing anything is less risky than doing nothing. The job market is abysmal. My sister and I had joked about selling handbags and shoes for years. As it turns out handbags and shoes are lucrative. In fact, they carry most big brand names. I learned most big brands have sullied their brand by mass producing and manufacturing in China. Not only will you see your bag everywhere, but you can buy a knock off made in the same plant, for a fraction of the cost on the streets or at a ‘purse-party’. Terrorists sell knock offs because the profits are as high as selling hard drugs but the penalties are almost nothing. Your purses are taken versus years in prison. This has opened the door for people like me to enter into the market. There are a few successful examples of women without design backgrounds launching boutique brands specializing in handbags. I followed their path and created Fossati.

After nine months of planning and preparation, I launched Fossati, on April 6. Fossati is a luxury brand specializing in exquisite limited edition handbags. Each handbag is meticulously hand made in the USA of the finest materials. My factory insures all their workers and many have worked there for over a decade. We use only top quality ostrich and reptile skins and buy only from reputable sources that follow environmental guidelines. Our editions are limited to 100 bags in any design, material and color combination. Fossati is a socially responsible luxury brand, contributing to the US economy.

At Fossati, luxury means exquisite craftsmanship and materials, classic styling with an edge, exclusive, limited-edition handbags and personal service. From the convenience of ordering online to the knowledge that you will not see your purchase everywhere – all priceless, rare little luxuries.

Visit us at fossatiUS.com

Obstacles to Overcome: You’ll have a lot of bad ideas that don’t produce any income. You’ll work hard and not earn a dime for months. You’ll need a way to survive financially. You must be confident, independent, determined and persistent.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. That means most of your ideas will be bad. Learn to evaluate your ideas quickly and cheaply. Move on from the bad ideas.

I wanted to pursue an idea of creating a fashionable solution for mild to moderate hearing lose. My family has hereditary hearing lose. My mother is very hard of hearing; my sister is losing her hearing, as am I. It’s estimated that half of people over 40 have mild to moderate hearing lose. The only available solution is hearing aids. Hearing aids are expensive, not very effective (for my type of hearing lose) and have a social stigma. I wouldn’t want to be seen wearing a hearing aid. I can pass for 30-something but with a hearing aid, I’d look old and decrepit. Even the most expensive hearing aids look like you have a wad of gum stuck in your ear. I found the industry is moving in the direction toward fashion and function. In fact Siemens came out with a hearing aid in 2008 that has fun coverings and makes a fashion statement. It retails for $3000 per ear. I abandoned my idea to produce a mid priced digital Bluetooth hearing solution that filtered sounds and worked with modern gadgets because Bluetooth chipsets had not reached a small enough size to create something fashionable. There’s also a lot of competition and not much margin. Four months learning about consumer electronics and no productive outcome. That’s part of being an entrepreneur.

In January 2008, I had an opportunity to bid on Chrysler’s dealer web site initiatives. Unfortunately the bidding was limited to a small set of vendors and I didn’t make the cut. Having invested time into the idea, I tried taking it directly to dealerships. After months of talking to dealerships, it became clear that dealerships were stuck in a time loop somewhere back in the 1950s. I decided to pursue something that sounded fun; something not so serious and dominated by gladiator types. It was June 2008.

Advice for Others: Start your own business while you’re gainfully employed. Know when to leave. Some may consider it a conflict of interest to start your own business while earning a salary. That was a rule made in a different era. It may have been true in the days when you could count on your employer for a stable lifelong job. Times are different. It takes time to build a network of colleagues you trust and can rely on to deliver. Start building your network and client list when the stakes are lower.

As an employee, your employer can decide to ‘cut –you-loose’ at any time. They don’t need a reason. Usually the real reason is cost cutting. They can hire someone with less experience for less money that costs them less insurance. You’re most vulnerable after you’ve accomplished your goals. Especially if you’ve made it look easy because you are competent. The best time to leave is when you’ve accomplished your goals, and have the most offers. Leave, even though you want to enjoy the fruits of your years of hard work and dedication. Leave.