Moore Booth - The glitter plan: how we started Juicy Couture for $200 and turned it into a global brand

T his is a fairy tale about two nice girls who like stuff who managed to turn a dreamand $200into a $1 billion global fashion empire. We also changed the way the world dresses along the way. Not a day goes by that people dont ask us, How did you do it? Its one in a million, but it didnt happen overnight. Despite our lack of formal business experience or deep-pocketed family members to bankroll us, we turned a friendship, a love of clothes, and an endless entrepreneurial drive into Juicy Couture.

We didnt just create a brand; we created a whole rainbow-hued Fluffian universe complete with a visual vocabulary (pink power, purse dogs, and matching outfits) and our very own pink Latin, a language we call Juicy speak, with Smells Like Couture, Live for Sugar, Choose Juicy, and other slogans written on T-shirts and across derrieres throughout the land. First was our line of upscale T-shirts in juicy colors, buttery fabrics, and curve-hugging fits, then came the velour tracksuit, which turned sweatsonce considered full-blown slob wearinto something chic, making them stylish enough to go from carpool to dinner at Mr. Chow.

We put LA style on the map at a time when celebrity was becoming the driving force in fashion. By 2002, when Madonna was photographed wearing velour drawstring pants and a hoodie embroidered with her nickname, Madge, Juicy had become a full-fledged pop culture phenomenon and the fashion game had changed forever.

Juicy developed a cultish following, too. There are blogs and YouTube videos created by fans who collect our charms, our tracksuitseven our packaging. On Twitter, you can check out @GelaAndPamsArmy. Girls decorate their rooms in our distinctive pink-and-brown color palette and throw Juicy-themed Sweet Sixteen parties. Best friends send us fan letters about how they want to have a brand when they grow up and call it Fruity.

In this book, which is part memoir, part how-to manual, and part fashion industry field guide, were going to tell you what worked for us for the past twenty-five years (and, for the first time, how the word couture became part of our name). The chapters are our stories, our failures, and our successes. And weve listed the lessons learned at the end of each one.

From our honest-to-goodness fairy tale, beginning in the farthest reaches of the San Fernando Valley, to our early days of Dumpster-diving for used denim; from the time we marched into Fred Segal and made our first sale, to the 2003 sale of our company to Liz Claiborne, which netted us more than $200 million, from sitting in the front row at the Paris haute couture shows and on to our next big adventure, we want to share every Juicy detail. And were going to approach it the way we approached our business: with glitter and guts and stream of thoughtand together. We do everything together. We make the first phone call of the day to each other at six thirty A.M . We share not only an intense love of fashion, but an equally intense friendship. Were sisters from another mother, and its that sisterhood that has guided us.

We never believed in market research. We didnt need twenty people to tell us what was cute or wasnt, or if people were going to like it or not. We had one rule that we keep to this day: We both had to like it. If not, it was out. And, if we both liked it, we knew it was good enough for us. The truth is if you focus on product, create something people want, and find someone in your life who you have the right chemistry with, you can do it, too.

We didnt go to Harvard Business Schoolor any business schooland we never had a business plan. We didnt hire an MBA CEO to run the companywe did this with our own creativity and hard work and often by the seat of our pants. We just wanted to create something people loved and a work environment that made us happy. Thats our version of the American Dream.

Thats the glitter plan.