At the age of 14, Cara Landy ’03 combined her love for design with a talent for sewing into the manufacture of handbags.
By Vida-Wynne Griffin ’67, M.A. ’72Photo by Michael Salerno
At the age of 14, Cara Landy combined her love for design with a talent for sewing into the manufacture of handbags. A local boutique in her hometown of West Hartford, Conn., carried her designs, which sold briskly.
Today, says Landy, she still occasionally sees former customers sporting one of those Cara Landy designed bags actually stitched together by Cara Landy herself. “They have stood up pretty well,” says Landy modestly.
The lucky owners of those originals should hold onto them for Landy, who just turned 24, is now a New York City designer with her own line in boutiques and department stores across the country. Should she become an international star, those handmade originals would become collector’s items.
Landy graduated from URI in May 2003 with a degree in textiles, fashion merchandising, and design; by October 2003 she had started her own company, Cara Landy, LLC. “I knew what I wanted to do, so I just went ahead and did it,” she says. Today her bags are available in boutiques and department stores in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and Philadelphia at prices ranging from $99 to $600. They are also available on line at caralandy.com
No longer hand sewn by Landy herself, they are manufactured at a factory in New York’s garment district under her close supervision.
On a raw, windy day this past March, Landy was back on the Kingston Campus with an assistant and boxes of her bags to talk to current TMD undergraduates about her experiences as both designer and business woman. The lecture, which was open to the public, was part of Professor Susan Hannel’s “Seminar in Textiles and Clothing.”
The students, only a few years younger than Landy herself, were engaged by both the colorful, sophisticated designs of the bags and by Landy’s business savvy. There were plenty of questions and debate. Here, in her own words, is Landy’s take on how you create a luxury product and grow a business.
♦ On Starting A Business: Take business courses! There are plenty of creative designers out there, but they know nothing about running a business. Pay attention to the vocabulary of business—you must sound as though you know what you are talking about. Have a lawyer research the name you have chosen for your business. It turned out no company had used my name, so I could trademark Cara Landy but not my initials, CL, because they were already used. Next find seed capital—I required $200,000 to create my first samples. You start small and do everything yourself. And don’t pay yourself a salary for at least five years—reinvest your profits into the business.
♦ From Design to Handbag: The idea for the shape and size of a new bag is in my head when I wake up in the morning. Then I go to work with a ruler and color swatches to figure the dimensions and texture I want. Next I make a model out of paper followed by a model that the factory uses to construct pattern dies. The fun part is selecting the materials,—deciding what type of trim, snaps and, zippers to use. You must carefully consider every detail right down to the paper used to stuff the bag and the plastic that wraps it when it’s on the shelf.
♦ Materials: I use leather from Italy and fabric and trim from California. I’m fussy about zippers, so I buy mine from Japan even though they are more expensive. Sometimes friends are curious and want to visit my suppliers with me. I tell them, ‘sorry, you’ll be looking at animal skins!’ I prefer to work with cowhide and my favorite is lambskin. Even though it’s cheap, I don’t like or use pigskin or goatskin.
♦ Factories: You love them because they make your bags, and you hate them because they have so much control over your business. They create the dies—a dozen per bag—that stamp out the shape of the leather. They know where you get your material, so you need to be very nice to them—all those knockoff Gucci and Prada bags get out on the street because someone gave out the dies. Nothing is more important than a good relationship with your manufacturer, but you must show them that you know how to make a handbag and that you understand your materials. I’ve found frequent gifts of chocolate also help!
♦ On Manufacturing: It’s important to me that my bags are manufactured in the USA. Not only is the quality better, but because my factory is in New York, I can really be on top of production. If something goes wrong—last week there were 40 bags with flaws!—I can correct it. Yes, my bags would be cheaper were they made in China, but I could not assure the same quality. By the way, I was recently approached by a factory in Argentina about manufacturing my bags.
♦ Calculating the Price: Take your total production cost, multiply it by 2.2 to get the wholesale price, then again by 2.2 for the retail price. But that may not be the price the store charges—items can be marked up at least four times!
♦ Celebrity Promotion: Celebrity exposure can definitely help your product. A friend of mine designed the bag Cameron Diaz was carrying when she got into a well-photographed altercation with her boyfriend, Jusin Timberlake. Pictures of that bag were everywhere and sales sky rocketed. So yes, you do send free samples to celebrities. That’s the exception to the rule that there is no such thing as a free bag. If nothing else, there is always the cost of the materials—even I don’t get a free bag!
♦ Getting Bags into Stores: Buyers place their orders six months ahead of the season so selections for fall 2005 were made last spring. I tally the orders and contact the factory, ordering each style in three to five different colors or patterns. I also get orders by showing samples at trade shows all over the country. For me, boutiques are the first line of sales because they are small and attract shoppers looking for exclusiveness. That’s how it all began, when the owner of a boutique in Hartford agreed to sell my bags!
Vida-Wynne Griffin is the managing editor of QUAD ANGLES.
