Q. You’ve spent much of your career helping consumer product startups to scale and major brands like Williams Sonoma to expand their footprint. What two or three key ingredients do founders need to build a successful brand?
KR: I would say, first: You need to hold fast to your vision. It’s easy to get lost, especially for startups with small teams that are eager to move fast. Your vision is your true north, to keep you and your team focused, inspired, and marching in the same direction.
Second, fail forward fast. Take risks. You will make mistakes, and that’s where the learning happens. But don’t dwell on them. Learn from them, and move forward.
Finally: Seek out smart people. We’re all smarter when we surround ourselves with great people. If you can’t afford to hire them full time, then look for great advisors, mentors and board members.
Q. What are some of the tangible ingredients that are essential to scaling a brand?
KR: The most important thing a consumer business can do is to protect its brand. Aim for great and don’t compromise on your product or service, which is the essence of your brand. Everything you do should enhance the brand. Building a brand includes what you choose not to do. Don’t say yes to an opportunity just to get to the next sales milestone. For example, in deciding where to put your brand, don’t place it in places your customers wouldn’t expect to find you. And, while collaborations can be great, make sure they are with like brands so that your brand isn’t lifting another’s while compromising your own.
Q. Why is the “where” of a brand as important as the “why” of it?
KR: When I ran the gift card business at Williams Sonoma, I took it into different channels, including grocery stores. But we didn’t expand our reach into other places like extreme discount stores, because our customers wouldn’t expect to find a high-end specialty brand there. And while you might be able to purchase a gift card in a Safeway, you wouldn’t find any Williams Sonoma-branded food products there. Those were exclusive to our channels. And that exclusivity was a key component of our brand.
A brand also has to stand for something. An important part of any brand is its ethos. Today’s consumers, especially younger ones, want to know what your brand is doing for the environment, for advancing equality, for giving back to society in some way.
Q. What is trending in the consumer products category? What markets do you predict tomorrow’s successful startups will be targeting?
KR: The key to the success of any brand–and this may sound obvious–is that it serves a real need, and solves a real-world problem. There is a lot of room for winners. I am tracking home furnishing closely as the category has been in a tear, along with clean beauty, healthy food and food cultivation, pets, fitness and women’s health. I really like products and services with an emphasis on zero-waste and closed-loop lifecycles. These, in fact, describe many of the companies in the GingerBread Capital portfolio.
Q. What was your career path as an operator and now, as an investor in women founders? Are you fulfilling a childhood dream?
KR: Well, once I realized I wasn’t going to be a tennis pro, anyway! [Ed. note: Katherine was a high school tennis champ and captain of her team.] It’s interesting, I was a communications major at Vanderbilt University and thought I would build a career in media. I was inspired by my father who worked in finance and pursued a job on Wall Street, as a financial analyst after college and later as a management consultant. I loved building and scaling businesses and set off to be an operator, spending over a decade at Williams Sonoma and working with consumer businesses to grow. Now, back in finance I feel I have brought it all together by supporting founders and helping scale businesses. I feel lucky to get to do what I love while supporting women founders.
Q. You got your start in investment banking with Kidder, Peabody before going back to graduate school for your MBA at Stanford. A lot of women we know who have built careers in finance have followed a similar path [including GBC Founder/CEO Linnea Roberts and Partner Ita Ekpoudom]. Why was it important for you to get an MBA?
KR: When I first went into investment banking, I was not prepared! It was a rude awakening, coming from a communications background, to dive into this male-dominated, high-paced, highly quantitative role. I learned a ton on the job. I also realized I liked banking. It was a challenging environment that I thrived on. And I did want to be an owner/operator. I realized an MBA would allow me to learn about strategy, and how to run a business, and that I would meet incredible people and broaden my network. I chose Stanford for its entrepreneurial focus and collaborative environment, and I liked that it was away from the East Coast grind (and the cold weather!).
Q. How has the investment banking industry changed for women since you first started your career?
KR: In the early 1990s, there were not many women in investment banking. Being a woman I felt I had to work harder to compensate. There were even fewer women at the top, which people would always attribute to women’s desire to have a family. But men want families, too and you never heard that about men. Women continue to leave investment banking because they don’t have enough role models. My analyst class was around 20% women, today that’s more like 50%. Women have more access, but it’s still hard to retain women. That’s why it’s so important for any woman in a leadership role to mentor other women.
Q. How do you personally mentor women?
KR: First, I keep in touch with people I’ve worked with through the years, especially during my time at Bain & Company and Williams Sonoma. I’ve also advised students in entrepreneurship classes at my alma mater, the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And through my current position as partner at GingerBread Capital, I am an advisor to our portfolio company founders, and especially those in the consumer products space.
