This CEO turned down her dream job to build an email newsletter into a business with $28 million, 25 million fans, and a clothing line at Target
- Katherine Power turned down her dream job at Condé Nast to start a fashion newsletter called Who What Wear.
- The newsletter led to a blog, which eventually led to a clothing deal with Target.
- She is now the CEO of Clique Brands, which is composed of websites, a marketing agency, and the Target line.
Katherine Power worked for years to land a dream job at Condé Nast, but when the offer came she turned it down.
"I thought about it for literally two seconds and I said, 'You know what? I'm on a different path now, and I'm going to keep going,' and obviously I'm so thankful I did," Power said. "But that was a moment where I could have really turned another direction."
That other direction was joining with a friend to start what became Clique Brands, which began with simply an email newsletter. It includes a mix of companies, like fashion blog Who What Wear and a clothing line at Target. Since 2006, Clique has grown to 220 employees and raised $28 million. It has a total audience of 25 million people.
But before she managed a fashion and media empire, Katherine worked as a dancer in the first "Austin Powers" movie. And that's when she made her first big business decision, legally emancipating herself from her parents at age 17.
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Transcript edited for clarity.
Katherine Power: I was a very serious dancer when I was young, from the age of 4 through my teenage years, and I did a lot of film and TV commercials as a dancer, and one of the projects that I did was "Austin Powers." Mike Myers and the director, Jay Roach, came to our dance studio and they offered me a job dancing in the opening sequence with Mike and they said: "The only problem is you have to work as an adult because these are adult hours. So we'd only be able to hire you if you were legally an adult." So my mom took me - I was just about to turn 17 at the time - and she took me through the whole court process to get emancipated. So it was very much supported by my parents, but it was really just so that I could work.
Rich Feloni: At what point did you decide you didn't want to stick to dancing full-time?
Power: As a dancer you understand there's an expiration date on what you do. So, for me, dancing was my passion but also my vehicle to kind of enter Los Angeles, into the movie and film industry. Growing up I really wanted to be a director or producer. Specifically, I loved the idea of putting a bunch of elements and people together around a story to make a product. Which if you look at what I do now, it's not that unlike that idea. But now that I've been in the internet for so long and we move at the speed of light. I actually can't imagine now going back and making a movie, which takes, like, five years to even get to a point where you have a script to use.
Feloni: You're saying as a kid you wanted to create something as a director and producer. What was behind that?
Power: Definitely what drives me is creating. And usually it's creating something that I need myself. That's kind of been something that we've done throughout our business, is look for the white space and also what do we need in our lives. And that's kind of what drives me.
Feloni: And so you worked at Touchstone and you also worked at Bolthouse Production.
Power: Yeah. I got my first exposure to working, really, with my grandmother. She had a retail store and she let me go to work with her and work the cash register and the credit-card machine and answer the phone and work with the customers. I mean, she really treated me like an adult, and I was probably 9 years old. And I remember just being so inspired by that and realizing the first time I helped someone with some apparel or a pair of boots, and I remember realizing kind of my selling style in that moment. My great-grandfather was an editor at Paramount, so when my mom was growing up, he was heavily in the business and I grew up kind of hearing stories about him and being exposed to all these great photographs on the set of these really classic movies. And so that was always intriguing to me, and then just the idea of getting people in a room and entertaining them, and what does it take to get to that place to make that product was always fascinating to me.
Feloni: So did you consciously want to jump into the business instead of going to college?
Power: My plan was to go to Santa Monica Community College, and then I wanted to transfer to USC Film School. But at Santa Monica College they warn you to get there at least an hour early before your class, because it's really difficult to park. And I thought, "I'm never going to waste an hour of my time." So I'll show up a little late and get somebody who's pulling out and I'll take their spot. And so I did and I drove around and drove around. A bunch of other people had that idea. And so cut to 45 minutes later, I'm still driving around, and I thought: "You know what? This is not for me."
I pulled out of the parking lot, and I called the office at Touchstone, where I was interning and I said: "You know, I'm available to work Monday through Friday if you'll have me." And so from then on I went in at 9 o'clock every day and worked until 6 or whenever the office closed, literally every day. And I think I would have paid them to let me work there.
Feloni: So it was fateful, that jammed parking lot.
Power: Yes. It was a combination, and it worked for me. It definitely doesn't work for most people, probably, but I have, since a very young age, just wanted to work. I just want to create products and make money.
Feloni: And when you look back at your time in show business, what are some things that experience taught you?
Power: Being in the industry in Hollywood teaches you incredible resilience. There's literally no such thing as rejection to me. It's like a normal part of life to have a change in course. So we were constantly going on castings and auditions and putting ourselves out there, and that was something that I just have a lot of comfort in, having gone through that experience so much. Now, let me be clear: I don't like the word "no." But yes, I don't think of "no" as a dead end. I think of it as a change in course. And I think that has a lot to do with just sort of learning to roll rejection off your back. It's always for a specific reason. You're going to end up in the right place one way or the other.
Feloni: Is the only way to do that through the experience of it?
Power: I mean, I think some people are born with that kind of natural ability. I'm sure it has a lot to do with what the mood is in your home or how your parents treat your successes and failures. So whether it's on a level of, say, you're performing three times a week and auditioning three times a week, or whether it's just maybe how your family helps to handle your experiences at home. I think it can certainly be something you're conditioned for.
Feloni: And so then how did you end up at the women's magazine Elle?
Power: I was, at the time, working for a special-events producer in LA named Brent Bolthouse, and he was kind of the hot nightlife impresario. Every hot nightclub was his. Every big, huge party that everybody wanted to go to, he was responsible for. And my job there was to create the crowd at these events. So I'd invite all the celebrities, I'd call all the modeling agencies and get whatever new girls were coming into the city. And so as I was there, I started to develop just as a hobby, I was super into fashion. I always have been. And so I was reading a lot of fashion magazines and just finding myself obsessed with them. Specifically teen magazines, because they had sort of a more approachable voice, a more real take on fashion. And I one day just thought to myself, "I'm so obsessed with these things. How can I make this a job?" And so I looked at the masthead of every teen publication, because I was very young - I was in my very early 20s at this time. And I emailed everybody on the masthead of Teen Vogue, Teen People, Seventeen, Elle Girl. And three people wrote me back. And one was the former West Coast editor of Elle Girl. And she said, you know, she was really nice in her response, and she asked me if I'd like to go to lunch. And I said, "Yeah - I'd love to." And I thought to myself, "Great. I'm going to get to pick this person's brain." I know nothing about the business. And I sat down with her and she started to explain her job to me and she said, "I'm actually leaving the magazine to go work for a startup called Daily Candy. And so we're looking for a new West Coast editor for Elle Girl." And she must have done her research on me and sort of understood that I was very immersed in celebrity pop culture and well connected on the West Coast. And so she said, "Would you like to meet about the job?" And I said, "Yeah. I would love to. The only thing is, I'm not a writer." And she said, "Well, that's OK, because the primary job of the West Coast editor is to book the celebrity covers and feed us any kind of new information that's coming in through the West Coast." Which I definitely had my hand on the pulse. And so from there I met the editor-in-chief of Elle Girl and they said, "Elle's looking for someone too." So I flew to New York, I met with Nina Garcia, who was the fashion director at Elle at the time, and they ended up hiring me to be the West Coast editor for both magazines.
Feloni: So even though you were immersed in the culture, had you run a team before?
Power: No. And in that position I didn't have any employees under me. So it was, frankly, a little sad. I was the only person on the West Coast. There were a couple of salespeople, but they were always out on sales calls, and it was a very lonely time because I was literally the only one there and that's I think why my partner now, Hillary and I, hit it off, is that she was at Elle in New York.
Feloni: So that's Hillary Kerr?
Power: Correct.
Feloni: Your cofounder.
Power: My cofounder now, and she was at Elle in New York for about four years. And her sort of last job for Elle was to cover the "Project Runway" casting. So when they were involved in that, and I was one of the judges on that episode. So we met on the set of "Project Runway," and it was so nice for me to have somebody who was in the New York office who could tell me all about the politics and what was going on and this and that.
Feloni: How long did it take for the two of you to decide to create something?
Power: It was about a year after we met that we decided to launch Who What Wear. And I remember thinking, "She's not been my friend since I was born. So if something goes south, it's not that big a deal. Because we've only known each other for a year."
Feloni: That's very pragmatic.
Power: And so then as we started to see a shift in our own behavior, spending all our time on the computer, not getting the kind of content we wanted, that we were getting in a print magazine on the internet. I said to Hillary, "I think I would love to create what is sort of the new version of media for women like us that exists online. But I'm not - again - I'm not a writer. You're a great writer. Do you wanna write it?" And so she said yes, and she is to this day my favorite writer. She created a very approachable and friendly voice at a time where all of the major fashion magazines felt really exclusive and when we thought they kind of spoke down to women. And she coined this sort of fashion-forward best-friend voice that we basically grew Who What Wear off of.
Feloni: Were you running a newsletter while you were still at Elle?
Power: No, we both stopped. Hillary would take a couple of freelance projects here or there and then ultimately it got to a point where she couldn't do it anymore, and I remember I really, really wanted to work for Teen Vogue. And that was kind of like my North Star at the time. But Elle and Elle Girl were obviously amazing. I remember I got a call - I was thinking about this on the way over - shortly into launching Who What Wear, I think we were just about to close a seed investment, which was literally months, maybe two months into putting out the first newsletter. And the head of HR called me from Condé Nast and said, "We know you've always had your eye on this job." It was the entertainment-editor job this young woman was leaving and they said, "Do you want to come out to New York and meet with us?" I thought about it for literally two seconds and I said, "You know what? I'm on a different path now and I'm going to keep going," but that was a moment where I could have really turned another direction.
Feloni: In that moment you let go of your previous dream and decided you had a new one.
Power: Yeah. And please understand, this was a time where the internet was not cool. I mean, it was like people thought we were crazy.
Feloni: When was this?
Power: This was 2005. Myspace was the big social network. In fact, they were our first distribution partner for our video series. But, I mean, no iPhone. We were getting no respect from anybody. We had to work very hard to fight for publicists and fashion brands to take us seriously. But one thing we had from the very beginning was the support of Young Hollywood. So we took a very friendly approach to covering celebrities, and they responded really well to that. So we had, from the very beginning, a strong celebrity following, and they talked about us in the press, and that really helped to catapult and to legitimize us as a business. But we were looked at as very not cool for a while.
Feloni: How did you take an email newsletter into a full-fledged business that ended up becoming Clique?
Power: The only reason we started with an email newsletter was that the only example that existed for us to base a business off of was Daily Candy. That was really the only digital-publishing business geared toward women. At the time Elle.com was a splash page to collect print subscriptions. There were no content sites by any of these.
Feloni: So was Daily Candy just like an early blog?
Power: It was a daily newsletter that sent out, and it had so much power. They would talk about a restaurant and then that restaurant was just set for life, or they would talk about a product and it would sell out. It was later bought by Comcast and folded after a while, but it was the hot ticket at that time. So we thought, "OK. Let's copy that model." And by model I mean like there was no business model, but just kind of what they were doing and broad strokes. And so we sent a newsletter out to about 200 friends and family. And it really took off from there organically and we built our business on one story a day until 2013, which is crazy if you think about it. Because now we all produce so much content. And so that's what we did. We started expanding the website, we put a shopping section in there because we noticed that people were coming to us for product recommendations, we built our affiliate business, which is like where you refer sales to retailers and get a cut of the profits and then coming from print. We did advertorials. And so when I started this business, it was very natural for me to create kind of content that was an advertisement but looked like editorial content, and now that's called "native advertising" or "branded content." But we were doing that in 2007, really holding the hands of many of these retail, luxury, beauty brands through this transition of advertising on the internet.
Feloni: How did you take on running a business and growing it so much without having experience in this?
Power: It was honestly the best business school we probably could have gone through. We bootstrapped the company from the time we launched 2006 until the very end of 2012, which is when we took in our first real round of funding. I think we probably would have raised money in 2008, but that's when the economy crashed and so we thought, "You know, let's just run a very lean business, use our profits to fuel our growth." So for that reason we've always been really focused around profitability. Which was also not cool for a very long time. And now it is. So we really just learned along the way. I didn't become CEO until the very beginning of 2014. I was encouraged by one of our board members to take the position when we were sort of looking at outsiders for the role and certainly glad I did. I think it's been the best thing for both myself personally and for the business.
Feloni: When you made that decision, what went behind saying that, "OK. I can do this job instead of bringing in someone else?"
Power: You know, I think it's interesting because being a founder of a startup, you sort of do every role at the company. So I could very easily sit with our head of finance and understand our spending and our lines of revenue and what we should be doing and what we shouldn't. Because I know exactly how much time something should take, I know exactly how much it should cost. So having that experience at the company was really helpful. And then I just think I have a natural sense in me in that I love fashion but I love making money off fashion more. So it's more of the science in putting the pieces together, the deals together, going back to that idea of being a producer. That's the kind of thing that excites me, so I think I had a natural passion to do that.
Feloni: In 2016 you made a deal with Target to launch the Who What Wear fashion line, and that expanded your reach into retail. How did that come about?
Power: It's funny: Hillary and I had wanted to launch a clothing line at Target since the very beginning.
Feloni: Why Target?
Power: Target was the first retailer to bring trend fashion to the masses, which really excited us. When we started the company, there was no fast fashion in the US. You had to go to Europe - you'd go to Topshop. We didn't really have that until Target launched their Go International program, which was the designer collaborations. And so that was really exciting for us to see that you could give these women everywhere access to the latest trends or hottest designers and they didn't have to live in a big city and they didn't have to have a really big budget. And so we thought, "Wouldn't it be amazing." Who What Wear's doing the same thing: We're bringing fashion to women everywhere.
We have an understanding of the fashion cycle, from doing this and sort of watching it for so many years. But when we were first talking about the idea of creating a clothing line, we said, "What if we take the same approach that we take when we're creating content to the product-development process?" So as a company we're incredibly data-driven. We take all the data that we have from our media audience - we're looking at purchasing habits, search terms, what women are searching for in any given point in the year, what trends are getting hotter, what's dying down, what conversations are bubbling up over social media. We were for the sales of about 20,000 products per month to about 300 different retailers just through our editorial content. So we're able to see what these consumers are purchasing, what are they putting in the cart together, what materials, what silhouettes, what price points, all of that. So we said, "What if we take all that information and we give that to our design team? And then also along the process of designing, what if we ask our consumers what they think?"
And so we pitched this idea to Target and they loved it. And to their credit they let us pull back the curtain on the design process a little bit, which I think hadn't been done before. So we'll be in a design meeting and we'll go on to Instagram stories and we'll show three or four different prints or patterns, and then before we even leave the meeting we have a few thousand responses that'll tell us which direction to go in. So not only does that give us really accurate data and allow us to make better bets, but it also really allows the consumer to become invested in the whole process, so that when that line comes out they're there to see what they help create.
Feloni: So it's really making full use of all the access you have to your audience and data.
Power: Exactly. Across social media we've got private Facebook groups where we're talking to people all day long about this stuff, we've got DM groups, we've got just a lot of different ways to connect with the consumer about product development.
Feloni: You told Entrepreneur magazine: "Teens don't have disposable income. But they do have social currency." How can you make that beneficial to a business?
Power: The idea of influencer has changed quite a bit since we started our business, but it still comes down to somebody influencing another to make a purchase, and it used to be the fashion houses influencing what we'd buy, or then it was celebrities, and who was on a magazine cover, and then it was a blogger, and then it was an Instagram star and a YouTuber, and now we're seeing a lot of conversion around peer-to-peer recommendations. So really the girl who's most influential in her friend group, the one you always go to, to ask, "You know, what lipstick are you wearing? Or where did you get that bag?" So we really focus on that consumer because we believe that's the best way to reach critical mass.
Feloni: Was there ever a point as you were building your business where you were questioning yourself?
Power: I mean, all of it's hard - all of it - and especially as an entrepreneur. It's very hard for that type of person to stop and appreciate what they've accomplished because you're already on to the next thing. It's kind of what makes you great and crazy. But I think the hardest part is also the most exciting part, which is you don't know what's coming. And so you don't know that your greatest challenge next year is going to be all around scaling your infrastructure or international expansion or ... those are all things you haven't been through before. So I think that is both what's hard and exciting.
Feloni: There was some hysteria when Facebook changed its algorithm, and all of a sudden it became harder for websites and publications to get out their content. With Clique, so much of your branded material is reliant on social media. What if something like that happens with Instagram or any other method where there's an algorithm change or taste changes?
Power: Algorithm changes are nothing new. We've actually been having to adjust to them for several years, and our team is really great at doing so. When you're a publisher who's so active with Facebook or Instagram, we actually have a great line of communication to them. So we have an understanding of when they're going to change something or if you can read between the lines, you can pick up on the direction they're going.
I think to our team's credit, we anticipated this almost two years ago. And so we really decreased our dependency on social media as a referral source. And now we use Facebook and Instagram in different ways. Like our private Facebook group: We have a beauty group of over 20,000 members. That's a private, invite-only Facebook group where there are a lot of really candid intimate conversations where we can get feedback on our products or stories and we vowed to them no advertising in that space. So it's just a really pure platform to communicate. We also have a message bot that has over 140,000 followers on Facebook where we're able to communicate one to one with the reader. We use Instagram DM groups all the time to talk about prints, patterns, and everything we're developing for the two apparel lines. So we're leveraging them in different ways on the platforms, and in ways they know that they're sharing the information with us and they're a willing participant.
Feloni: So there wouldn't be a fear of an over reliance on social?
Power: No. I think we have to work really hard to make sure that we don't over rely on any one source.
Feloni: Lastly, how do you define success?
Power: I always tell people who are looking for what they want to do with their life. I say, "Find something you love to do, and then figure out a way to get paid for it." I think it's success if you are able to wake up every day and go do something that you love to do. And if you're able to balance that with whatever else is important to you, whether it's your home or your family or your friends. To me that is success. And I feel so fortunate that I get to wake up every day and go do something that I would do for free, frankly.
Feloni: Thank you very much, Katherine.
Power: Thank you.