Susan Gregg-Koger, a CMU alum, is the CEO and co-founder of Modcloth.com. She began this business over 15 years ago in 2002 by collecting and selling vintage clothing online. This company all started the summer before her freshman year of college, as a way to support her passion for thrifting. Here we see the idea of how one can use their passion to start a unique business.
Throughout college, Susan continued to develop her website and process orders. This requires a lot of discipline and hard work, 2 qualities of a good entrepreneur. Her current husband/boyfriend at the time really helped transform the business by enhancing her website. Modcloth.com grew tremendously over the past several years. In fact, now the site has over 300 designers, creating unique clothing. The business has reached $100 million in annual sales.
In an interview, Susan and her husband discussed the difficulties of being an entrepreneur. From their experience, they learned that it is important to try or test new ideas before committing to them. For example, when they decided to expand from 2 to 3 cities, they didn’t realize how expensive and complicated things would get. However, they learned from their mistakes and made things work. It is important to understand that entrepreneurs will experience obstacles and hard times that they have to overcome.
Susan’s passion seems to have been a profitable one for her. It is always inspiring to see that one can make a sizable profit off of what he or she is passionate about. We can also learn from Susan the process of trial and error. Although they took a misstep in expanding the company, Susan bounced back to sustain a great company that began by using the adjacent possible to innovate the world of clothes.
I think that’s a key attribute of entrepreneurs that a lot of people miss. Entrepreneurs need to be the kind of people who learn from their mistakes, and also people who don’t give up. Not every mistake equals a failed business. Susan and her husband demonstrate that well. When they hit a roadblock, they didn’t throw in the towel. Rather, they learned from their experience and used it to make their business better.
I especially liked how they shared their difficulties and I will definitely learn from them. To test the waters before jumping in. Of coarse though sometimes one has to take a risk every now and then. This gives me hope that someday I could follow their footsteps and make something out of myself by the time I leave college.
Susan is truly an entrepreneur who has found her niche. I love how ModCloth was formed out of her love for thrifting. What a niche market that definitely has a following. Now ModCloth is a leader in online fashion merchandising. I think entrepreneurs can learn from Susan by really digging into those niche markets and finding a way to innovate in those markets. Great article!