![]() “This is a high-ticket item that thousands of people are searching for, and you could literally only find four to six pairs online,” he says. Mente noticed that high-end designer jeans had taken over his hometown of Los Angeles, but local brands like 7 for All Mankind (VFC) weren’t sold online. It was especially apparent for designer denim. It was easy to see what people were searching for on the Internet-and more importantly, when those people weren’t finding what they wanted. “We didn’t want to be at risk.”Īs the pair contemplated their next endeavor, they became fascinated by trends in online search. “Chasing revenue and growth without really understanding the guts of the business is something that venture capital will push you to do,” Mente says. They didn’t want to gamble on another high-risk company. Reeling from the experience, the Mikes swore off growth fueled by venture capital. NextStrat eventually went bankrupt and its assets were sold. The dot-com bubble burst shortly after they joined NextStrat, leaving them to watch the venture capital-fueled technology companies collapse around them. ![]() There was one tiny issue, though: Mente and Karanikolas were late to the party. Mente even dropped out of the entrepreneurship program at University of Southern California a year early to join NextStrat, a software company based in nearby Newport Beach. Mente and Karanikolas always had the entrepreneurial bug, influenced by their entrepreneur fathers and the startup fever sweeping across the United States in 1999. Donato Sardella-Getty Images From the Ashes Michael Mente, Revolve’s CEO and co-founder, attends the company’s fashion show benefiting Stand Up To Cancer. Twelve years in, they’re just getting started. It’s a winding one that eschews the traditional routes to business success. Simply, the story of how two dot-com guys carved out a sizable chunk of the women’s apparel industry for themselves hasn’t been told. And Revolve’s origin story, while full of twists and turns, doesn’t have the unconventional underdog narrative that Nasty Gal’s Sophia Amoroso benefitted from. Revolve doesn’t have a celebrity attached to its operations, like ShoeDazzle had with co-founder Kim Kardashian, or The Honest Company with Alba. They rejected big, impressive-sounding piles of venture capital money. They haven’t rallied tech blog hype or campaigned for South by Southwest keynote speeches. Co-founders Michael Mente and Mike Karanikolas, known as “The Mikes” to the company’s 500 employees, have kept a low profile since they started the company more than a decade ago. (“Gypset” is a portmanteau of “gypsy” and “jet set.”)īut for its customers, who include not only the gypset set but those aspiring to it, Revolve has a cult status. ![]() There’s no copy of Gypset Style, the handbook for self-styled bon vivants and “high-low cultural nomads,” on your coffee table-one piece of the perfectly decorated apartment in which you barely spend time. You aren’t a trendy twentysomething who can pull off a skintight white suit with no shirt underneath. If you’ve never heard of Revolve, you probably don’t travel in the right circles. The Revolve Hamptons House in Sagaponack, New York this summer. And Revolve is profitable, having grown more than 50% each year since 2012. It’s more than twice as much as Jessica Alba’s Honest Company, valued at $1.7 billion, is predicted to earn this year. That’s a multiple of what e-commerce peer Nasty Gal pulls in, and more than British luxury site Farfetch, which investors recently valued at $1 billion. Revolve is a Los Angeles clothing company on track to sell $400 million worth of dresses, hats, and other trendy young women’s apparel this year.
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