The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, where we're not just talking about growth—we're making it our mission.
At TGO, we understand that success isn't a fixed destination; it's an ongoing journey with twists, turns, and unexpected detours that take us to new places. Those moments are our Third Growth Options, where we throw away binary choices to create our own path.
Hosted by Benno Duenkelsbuehler, O.G #GrowthNerd, we're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside of business, one episode at a time. From humble beginnings to Fortune 500 companies, our stories are not just about business—it's about the relentless pursuit of greatness in every aspect of life.
With each episode, we don’t just want to share insights—we want to empower business owners across all frontiers to carve their own path to success, their way.
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The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Staying True to Your Passions with Kira Grace
Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?
What if staying true to your childhood passions could create a successful, authentic brand? In our latest episode, we talk with Kira Karmazin, founder of Kira Grace, about building a strong brand identity. Kira's journey, from her childhood sketchbook to creating transformative clothing, is a masterclass in following one's inner vision. We discuss her transition from finance student to merchandising expert, illustrating how early passions can lead to professional success.
We also explore the balance of customer-centricity through compassion and candor. We discuss the philosophy of "candor is kindness," explaining how direct communication strengthens relationships within a team and with customers. Discover how Kira maintains customer intimacy in an e-commerce world through annual surveys, direct feedback, and heartfelt conversations. Additionally, she offers insights into navigating supply chain challenges during the pandemic and the importance of local manufacturing to her brand’s success. This episode offers actionable insights for anyone looking to build and sustain a resonant and authentic brand.
Always growing.
Benno Duenkelsbuehler
CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN
Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast, where we talk about all things growth, yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth Sherpa and OG hashtag growth nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.
Speaker 2:I'm Kira Karmazin, I'm the founder of Kira Grace and I am chatting with you from sunny San Diego, California.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much for hopping on. You have an 11 year old brand, um, a wonderful I. I checked out the website and you and I have chatted um I. I want to make this episode around branding and um customer intimacy some topics, uh, that you are both passionate and knowledgeable about, and, because this is a podcast for business leaders, we want to teach them. Leave them with some takeaways. I also want to invite you to ask me any question, you know, as it pops into your head, so it's more of a two-way conversation maybe, but yeah, I was intrigued by a story you told. I don't know if I read it or I heard you say it. When you were a 10 or 12-year-old girl, you had a sketchbook with fashion. Well, I thought that that little tidbit helped me understand why branding and merchandising is in your DNA, and maybe that story of you know. I came across an awesome quote, a Wordsworth quote the boy is father of the man, so the girl is mother of the woman Right.
Speaker 2:The girl is mother of a woman right.
Speaker 1:So I think, it's in that spirit that I'm asking about 10 or 12-year-old Kira, and how has that affected your path as an adult, merchant, business owner? Founder of Kira Grace. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you discovered that. That's amazing, I mean just that conversation I had. So my father recently passed away a few years ago, and we were going through yeah, thank you, but we were going through books and just things that he had stored over the years and I found that sketchbook and I couldn't believe the things I was sketching. At such a young age I had never thought of myself as a designer but I've always loved clothes and I absolutely love the idea of clothing and apparel and how it changes the way you feel. I mean it's really transformative.
Speaker 2:And I understood that at a very early age and I was designing and making clothes and my mother was running her own business and I was putting together outfits for her when I was in middle school and high school and I mean like creating them, designing them, sewing them, putting them on her. I kept that as a hobby and I thought it was a hobby and I went in to study finances undergrad but I always had a business on the side. And then I went to graduate school at the University of Michigan and I had a business on the side with my roommate selling clothing and we did University of Michigan fleece, but at that time it was still merchandising. It was like how do you really get to know your market, what's the right colorways and the right branding, and all of that. But again, I was finance.
Speaker 2:I thought I was going into mergers and acquisitions, so that was my goal. But then I was discovered by my roommate. My roommate's aunt came to visit us and she was the president of a specialty store chain and we were just talking and she was like you are a merchant. You're a merchant, like what are you doing in business school? So I started looking at that career path and I hadn't really understood it until I started to discover it and I interviewed and I really aggressively went after this job with May Department Stores. It was one of the few companies at the time that offered an MBA track and I convinced them that they should hire me for that and that's how I started. But it really is about tapping into the things that you love and the things that you've been doing your whole life. I just it took me a long time to figure out how to translate those early passions into a career.
Speaker 1:And you know I find it. I mean, the reason this quote resonated with me is because I find myself looking back into my life, back into the decades, as a 10-year-old or 25-year-old or 40-year-old, and there are truths that we have come across that we end up forgetting. And I think you found a truth early on in that sketchbook that ended up being part of the brand DNA of Kira Grace. Is that? Am I overstating that?
Speaker 2:or Well, what's interesting to me is the aesthetic of the designs that I saw. The sketches that I saw were very similar to some of the looks we launched with, and so I do think that aesthetic was in terms of graceful dressing, elegant dressing how to look very comfortable, yet elegant and confident has always been part of the way I think about clothes and the power they can give to women when we wear them. I've always thought about clothing as costumes, so to speak. I mean, in my career days, I would wear a very different outfit when I went to the market to meet with vendors versus making a presentation to the CEO. Those are different looks and you dress for the part, you dress for the presentation, you dress for the confidence, or going out on date night. That's a different look altogether. But I think in terms of the aesthetic, yeah, that's probably been part of me since the very beginning.
Speaker 1:And I think you know, as a merchant and as a brand visionary, you know it's all about point of view and staying true to that point of view that gets so easily diluted by pressures from customers, pressures from you know, new trends, oh, you know, everybody's doing this, so we need to do that too, or versus? No, we are about this. This is our lane, and sort of reinventing within that box a little bit right. To stay true to what you're known for, how do you see point of view as a sort of a guiding light to, to your brand?
Speaker 2:I would say it's one of the challenges as a merchant, because as a merchant, you love clothes, you love apparel, you love trends in fashion and you have to be on point. You have to be on trend and you have to innovate and you have to keep moving forward. But how do you do that? Through the filter of your customer. So we serve a category of women and they're busy women and our goal is to make their lives simpler. We want getting dressed to be the easiest part of their day. We want them to feel comfortable and confident throughout the day, and so everything that we do has to go through those filters. Is it something that she'll feel elegant in? Is it something that still provides comfort? Does it have four-way stretch? Is it the right target customer? So we have brand filters. We have an entire, probably 30-page, brand book on guidelines for the brand. What's a print that we would do? What is a print that we would never do? What are colors that we would do? What are colors that we wouldn't do? So because as we grow, we bring new people into the brand and we want them to understand what are the overall guardrails. But it's really important to have a point of view If you don't have a point of view, you get lost in the noise and you don't stand for anything and then you're no longer serving that customer the best way.
Speaker 2:Back in my career days I was really influenced by Victoria's Secret and the CEO that I was working for at the time, grace Nichols. She had said we could sell a lot of things with this brand. We can sell a lot of things, but we have to be very careful about what we choose to provide through the brand. And that really stuck with me because the brand was always powerful and it was very big and there are a lot of categories that we could have gotten into but it would dilute the name. And, of course, victoria's Secret's gone through a lot of changes over the years, but back in the prime of the brand it was, yeah, the guiding light. I think was really important.
Speaker 1:And you used the word filter, which I think is a very useful image to think about branding and point of view.
Speaker 1:The better a job you do describing it, the easier it is to use it as a filter that lets through the things that are on brand and discards the things that are not on brand, and I think you do that also through. You know you sent me a document around your core values as a company, and one of the things that struck me on that document were the editing notes that showed me that you are looking at those core values frequently.
Speaker 2:I mean it's not a one and done Right, right, okay, yes, yeah, I know I remember sending that to you. You, no, okay, so those are our internal team values and, um, yeah, yeah, we spend a lot of time on that. We meet quarterly as a team and we review those and do they still feel right? Does the wording still feel right?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, it's a dynamic process right, right.
Speaker 1:I see so many companies that use, you know, value statements or mission vision statements as this sort of perfunctory thing that is on the checklist oh yeah, we're supposed to do that. And then they have core values. They frame it, put it in an eight by 10 picture frame in the lobby and nobody knows what they are. Nobody uses it, and that's good. It's good that you have customers calling or somebody's calling, it's all good. But talk a little bit about how. The core values I mean you say you guys look at them every quarter. Core values, I mean you say you guys look at them every quarter, and how much do you change them? Or is it just wordsmithing at this point? Or do new things come? Do new words come into the picture? Do new values come into the picture?
Speaker 2:So we started the core values about probably 18 to 24 months ago. We did it as a leadership team and we got together. Actually, it wasn't even a leadership, it was the entire company. I mean, we're not big, but it was the entire company got together and it was a process we used through the Entrepreneur's Operating System. I'm sure you're familiar with it to some degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we went through the EOS determining the core values and there's really a wonderful guideline on how to do that work. And we work together as a team and we evaluated each other. What are the values that we see in each other, what are the things that we really the different attributes as a team that make it work? And through that iterative process we came up with the original values. And then we do meet quarterly, still as a team, and go through those and, I'm really sorry, through those and I don't think we've adjusted any of the values other than refining the tone maybe or a word here or there.
Speaker 2:But I don't think values are firm. They have to be dynamic, right, I mean they have to flex with your company and the environment and things that are going on. Our values became very different during COVID, for example. I mean it was before we had defined this set of values, but we've always had a value statement that we've worked with and things changed quite a bit during that time where compassion became one of our core values. At that time, because of what we were going through as a company, what the world was going through, and compassion felt like it was the most important value to be working within from an emotional space and professional space important value to be working within, from an emotional space and professional space.
Speaker 1:The word. Let's talk about this value of compassion. I don't know if I found that in the materials that you had shared with me, or it just made me think of the term radical candor, which a fellow Vistage member of mine uses. The term candor is kindness is kindness. So when people think of candor certainly in the Midwest part of the country, maybe different from the coasts candor scares people, right, because how can you be candid and diplomatic? Right, and those two are sort of, and being compassionate and candid can feel jarring the opposite, but I think the fact is that to be compassionate, you have to be candid. Does that ring true to you, or does that that ring true to you, or does that?
Speaker 1:Um, right, because in, in order to bring people into the process, um, yes, you have to be compassionate for their perspective, but, but as a company, you're trying to do things that the company is trying to do, so it's a balancing act to me. Uh, to be compassionate for both, for both sides of the, for both parties, right, you have to be compassionate for both sides of the, for both parties, right? You have to be compassionate about your company and the team members. You have to be compassionate about the company and the customer right. So it is a balancing act. Always Does the concept of candor is kindness. Does that ring true to you? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:I hadn't really thought of it that way. Candor is kindness. I think that in order to be effective, it's probably important to be kind when you're delivering candor or working within a feedback environment. I think what you're saying is what you were illustrating is directness, right? So, like I think, like my New York days, there's a directness to the culture in New York that can feel less kind.
Speaker 1:It doesn't translate in California. I found that out when I moved from New York to California.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too, actually, because, although I'm raised in California, I spent a long time in New York and I was very New Yorkified when I came back to California and that directness doesn't fall very well here, or it doesn't, you know, set well and it took me a while to kind of unravel that New York side of myself. I'm still working on it, probably. But, um, candor so back to your question about candor is kindness? Um, I, when I think about compassion, I don't think compassion means it's it's exclusive for meeting your goals or achieving your company goals or working with clients.
Speaker 2:Um, compassion is really for us it's meeting people where they are, whether that's someone on the team or a customer, uh, vendor that we're working with. But it's being able to understand where they are at that time and take that as part of the conversation and include that as part of the conversation. It doesn't mean changing our goal structure or changing the things we want to accomplish, but it's a way of working with someone, I think. And so I guess in that respect I understand candor, in order to be most effective, should include that piece, the compassion side. I think that that's important. It's not always easy, though, I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, look, I'm a growth nerd and I'm a nerd for things like core values and vision and mission statements and being strategic and it's all a balancing act, and so this core value of being compassionate, just it. It got me thinking around. You know sort of different ways of looking at that, but you said you use the term meet people where they are and you need to. You know that applies to your customers as well. You talk about customer intimacy. Actually is, or being customer centric is, one of your core values, and we had talked about the challenge around staying close to your customer right, doing customer research, asking customers. Talk a little bit about how you do that and how it varies from core customers to new customers. I mean, there's so many. To me that's a fascinating topic around. How do you stay customer-centric while staying on brand?
Speaker 2:Yes, and how do you stay customer centric and get that information? That's the really the, the nuggets of information. When you're a direct to consumer and you're not seeing her, you know in in her space trying to close on we. That's one of I would say one of the biggest challenges in running an e-commerce brand is that you you don't have that face-to-face interaction. You know, back in the day when we were starting, we used to do a lot of festivals. You know, in running an e-commerce brand is that you don't have that face-to-face interaction. You know, back in the day when we were starting, we used to do a lot of festivals. You know we would present our clothes at different conferences and festivals and we would do trunk shows and things like that. But that's really shifted for us over the years and certainly with COVID, a lot of that changed and we became almost exclusively e-commerce. So how do you build that feedback loop and that intimacy? We have a couple of things we do. We have an annual survey and we send that out in around late summer every year and that's to our entire audience, so getting a lot of the same questions we've asked before, and so then we can position how. How have things changed overall. Um, but that's one data point.
Speaker 2:I read every customer review that we have. Any, any product review comes through me. So I do read everything, um, but I the most important conversations that I have. So those are really just one way right. The most conversation, important conversations I have is directly with the consumer. So we reach out to our customers.
Speaker 2:I reach out to our customers at every holiday and ask them to book time with me, and I get lots of conversations over the holiday and the holidays are a great time to get to chat with people because it's not as busy as a typical day-to-day. Things are a little bit slower and our customers will give me a little bit more time with them and we just talk. And we talk about life and what's going on and the things that they're thinking about, and not just about our brand how are they wearing at Kira Grace but really what's going on in their lives and what are the issues that they're concerned about, what are their priorities, how are they taking care of themselves. So that gives me insight to who she is, the whole person, and I've been trying to do that. I've been trying to do that quarterly now.
Speaker 2:It started as a holiday thing and it's just honestly, it's just so much fun and I love these conversations that I have with our customers and I learn so much Sometimes. Sometimes we talk about product like I love this pant, I don't like this top, but a lot of it is just getting to know them, you know interesting so it's so valuable um, so you reach out to the top, maybe is it.
Speaker 1:I mean you, are you going out to all customers in your customer database and you're waiting for who answers, or do you just go after, maybe, the top 10% of the customers?
Speaker 2:Or how do you choose that. So in the holidays, we reach out to our top customers and we ask them if they'd like to book some time with me, and my assistant does that directly and we send personal emails. You know, it's not a form, it's not, you know, and those are our best customers, and but sometimes it's for a different thing. Maybe I want to hear feedback on a pant that we've launched, and so we'll email the customers who've purchased that pant recently, yeah, and I'll say do you do my sharing some feedback with me?
Speaker 2:I just need 10 minutes, you know, and I'll give them the. So it's, it's a. Those are different objectives, but it's still 10 minutes. They usually last 30 minutes, but it's like 10 minutes. Can you give me 10 minutes of your time? Just tell me how that went? And and it's absolutely the most critical part of, like, our product development and getting to know her, I've asked customers if they mind if I videotape them because they start saying such incredible things. I'm like, can I videotape you Because I want to be able to share this the way you're saying it to our team because it's so meaningful.
Speaker 1:So that's been a wonderful exercise. How much time? I mean, is this like a few days over the holidays, or is it? A handful of calls, or is it dozens and dozens of calls?
Speaker 2:It can be 20 to 30 calls and I book an hour. We book a half an hour, but most of them run an hour and those are just what, like I said, some of the most wonderful conversations I've had at all ever like in life. The women that the women that we serve are just incredible women and I love them so much and I love getting to know them, and so it's really precious time and I'm very flattered that they'll spend that time with me. And then if we're doing the smaller calls, like the, you know the 10 minutes, maybe a couple of days, you know, and I'll book like 10 to 20 of those, you know, if we want to get some information around a product. But to me that's the best way. I mean, we're e-commerce right, so otherwise we're just a storefront and it's really hard to know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Right. I love that because you know people are mystified by customer research and consumer research and there's so many different kinds of consumer research from you know sort of the broadcast 10,000 emails and see if you know qualitative way and really having a meaningful conversation, that where you get you know little nuggets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we pull all this information together, right, so it's the conversations and the product feedback loops and the annual surveys and just really understanding the whole person. You know that we're working, trying to serve the best way we can, so I think it's the only way to really understand her needs, because we want to anticipate what her needs are and how we can best meet them and really, you know, delight her with those options. But yeah, so we take it's all taken all together, though.
Speaker 1:Right, so you started the business 11 years ago. You have a nice following, a nice group of both onsite and offsite people, right? I mean you're not all sitting in an office together, you have a sort of a virtual team as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really shifted over the years also. I mean, we used to warehouse and ship out of San Diego and we had an office here and everyone went to work there. And then as we grew, it became something I didn't really want to I didn't want to run a warehouse so we moved that to Salt Lake City. So everything is shipped out of Salt Lake City. And then we moved to a small office environment and then COVID hit, and then when COVID hit, we all moved home, as everyone did, and she kind of liked it, you know, and our team dispersed right. So some people moved to San Francisco and then, as we were filling new roles over time, just being open to remote employees has really opened our opportunity to to really find people that are a perfect fit for us. So well, yeah, right now we do have I'm here and my assistant is here, but other than that, every other employee is remote and we've got people Texas and East coast, northern California, colorado, east Coast, northern California, colorado.
Speaker 1:They're all over. I always tell our clients that the ones that are still sort of old school and know everybody has to be in the office. Well, if you're insisting on everybody being in the office, your labor market is in a 50-mile radius, right. Everybody being in the office, your labor market is in a 50 mile radius, right. If you can go offsite and hybrid, you know your labor market is like 1000 times bigger. Absolutely Right, yeah, so did you start out as a made in America brand? Out as a made in America brand? Um, uh, or did you start uh? Talk a little bit about the sourcing base of uh made in the U? S versus. You know what? What are the challenges and the rewards of focusing on made in the USA?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, when I first developed the brand, you know, 11 years ago, um, I worked with um, a woman from my team at Lucy active brand. She helped me source it and we sourced through a domestic resource here in California and he took a chance on me because factories have to um evaluate, right, do they want to do business with the startup? Do they not want to do business with the startup?
Speaker 1:Because it's expensive right.
Speaker 2:It's business development, and so Peter his name's Peter. Peter took a chance on us and worked with us over the years and developed a. We have a wonderful relationship with him and it's he has been our main factory the entire time. We have alternate factories that we've worked with over the years as well in Los Angeles, two other factories that we've worked with in Los Angeles, but one of the biggest challenges for us has been was COVID. You know, being in California when all of our factories and all offices were closed.
Speaker 2:Our factory was closed for over three months and we worked very hard trying to get a government contract to try and open and do masks so that he could open. And that was difficult for us as there was a lot of demand for online clothes at that time. But we couldn't serve it because a lot of our product we have product in the warehouse, but a lot of our product was still being made, so we make new clothes every month, so a lot of it was just under lockdown. So that was one of the hardest things we did, and during that time we did do business with a factory in Taiwan. It was Peter's sister and someone I've known before and she does a lot of activewear production for other brands in the United States. So we asked her if she would pick up some of our production while we were trying to recover and, as a favor, she did that, which was very helpful for us.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, the challenges I would say the challenges outside of COVID are trying to what other factories? I'm not sure if there really are any challenges. No, as I was thinking about it, I have such wonderful relationships with our factories. Some of the benefits are it's local. We can go visit. We can go quickly fly up there and see what's going on, developing really close relationships that you couldn't do otherwise and just having a long-term relationship that's built over time and really trusting each other. I think is part of the benefits as well. And it's quick right, so quicker turnarounds as well. If you're bringing things in overseas, it's really hard to understand like, what is the factory situation there unless you're flying out there constantly. But in addition, the lead times are really long, you know, in terms of making it and then bringing it, and the minimums tend to be higher.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure. Yeah Well, most of the time I'm there are factories who are flexible, you know. Um, even in country world, you know, I would say that's probably not the biggest issue. Um, lead time is, and to me that's really a constraint. I don't want to give up that kind of lead time. I like the flexibility that we have here.
Speaker 1:Right, kira, if folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, because I think again you have. I love how the brand came about. You've built it into a business. There's a lot of wonderful, you know. I love the fact that you are a well-branded business. That's a 30-page document of a brand filter. I'm sure there are people listening in that would just love to talk to you one-on-one. Where's a good place that they could find you?
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's.
Speaker 1:LinkedIn or your website.
Speaker 2:This is where you get to self-promote. Yeah, no, that's great. Linkedin is a great way to reach me. They can also just email me, kira, at kiragracecom. If that for some reason doesn't come through, try LinkedIn, because we have pretty aggressive spam filters on our email, Right? Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:So LinkedIn is probably. I found you, I got through, but you got me.
Speaker 2:No, you got me on LinkedIn, I think.
Speaker 1:I did. I think that's how we met. That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So LinkedIn is probably the best one. Kira Karmazin, k-a-r-m-a-z-i-n. Yes, okay, very good, kira, this was a lot of fun. Thank you for jumping on this episode, and you didn't ask me any questions. Are there any questions you have for me? Probably not, but maybe I'll just let that sit there for a second.
Speaker 2:We could let that sit. I mean, I think just, you're fascinated with branding, and where did that fascination start? How did that evolve to what you're doing today? How did you? How did that?
Speaker 1:evolve to what you're doing today. Yeah it, you know it. It came from working for very well-branded businesses early in my career. Right, I spent the first five years at Ikea and four years as a buyer at Pottery Barn. Both are very well, very different brands, but both very focused, well-branded businesses. And when you were talking about your boss at um, was it your boss at victoria's?
Speaker 1:secret yeah yeah, um, you know talking about. Just because people are selling, it doesn't necessarily mean victoria's secret should be selling it. My I, my boss at ikea, would come back every Monday morning from his competitive shopping. I mean, the guy had blue and yellow blood, we used to call it for.
Speaker 1:Ikea running through his veins. Every Monday morning he would come to my desk and say man, I was in such and such a store, we should sell this and we should sell that. I'm like Steen. Just because they're selling a lot of milk out there does not mean Ikea should be selling milk. I'm sure we could sell milk, but then we wouldn't be Ikea anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, right, exactly.
Speaker 1:So I mean, yeah, I think the discipline around branding to me is fascinating, the discipline that's required to build that filter and then to stay true. You know whether that's a business brand or a personal brand, or you know personal life and business life. I think it's all about defining what it is you want to do and be and then go be that. But let's leave it at that for today. Okay, I really appreciate you jumping on this episode, kira. Thank you.
Speaker 2:It was my pleasure. Thank you All right, take care.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, Benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email, benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing.
