TEACHING & LEARNING
A
Meeting Across the Pond
OUTREACH
Profiting
from Pregnancy
Brand Equity for Private Equity
Faces of Wharton Entrepreneurship
PLUS:PE Trivia Quiz
RESEARCH
Drinking
in Knowledge
Does Sun, Burned by Competition, Need a New Business Model?
Outreach
Profiting from Pregnancy
Mothers Work founder saw a business where others simply saw inconvenience and ill-fitting clothes.
Rebecca Matthias knew she wanted to start a company before she got pregnant; she'd been toying with the idea for years. It took having a baby to tell her what type of business to open.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Matthias had degrees in engineering and architecture and had worked in the construction industry. But by the early '80s, she had quit to help her husband, Dan, start a computer company in Boston.
That meant going on business appointments. And when she did, she found that none of the maternity clothes she owned would pass for professional attire. Mathias is petite, so she was able to make do by going to shops that cater to professional women and buying bigger sizes. But the experience made her realize that professional women couldn't get decent maternity clothes. From that insight, her company, Mothers Work Inc., was born in 1982.
Today, Mothers Work (NASDAQ: MWRK), which is based in Philadelphia, Matthias' hometown, has annual sales of nearly $500 million and 1,000 stores around the country. The company designs and distributes three lines of clothing — A Pea in the Pod, Mimi Maternity and Motherhood Maternity employing about 5,000 people.
Matthias is president and COO. (Her husband, Dan, is chairman and CEO.) She's also an author, having published a memoir called Mothers Work in 1999. She'll visit the Wharton School as Entrepreneur in Residence on Oct. 28.
In the beginning, she never imagined her company would grow as big as it has. It started out of her and Dan's apartment. The first outfit she created was modeled after the store-bought clothes that she'd worn to the computer company's business appointments.
To put out her first catalog, she purchased the same blue blazer and gray jumper and dyed them dark gray. That way, they appeared to be navy-blue in her black-and-white catalog. She then found a sample sewer in New Hampshire and worked with him to create a pattern and the first suit.
"It cost me about as much as I sold it for — $250," she recalls. "But now I had a pattern. So the next order that came in was easier, and I made a little money. I ended up with half a dozen orders. Then I took the plunge and bought six of them."
By then, she was going on her own company's business appointments, including frequent trips to the garment district in New York City. She remembers getting ready for one and putting on one of her suits. The phone rang. It was an order for a suit. The only one she had in the right size was the one she was wearing.
"So I took off the jacket and the jumper, folded them up, put them in a box and wore something else," she says. "What class would ever tell you to do something like that? But you do whatever it takes to move your company to the next level."
Early on, she and Dan moved back to Philadelphia, where they'd met and Matthias' parents owned a three-apartment townhouse. They rented one of the units. Soon, the business had grown big enough that they moved it into the third. (Matthias' parents lived downstairs.)
In her book, Matthias
compares life in the old house to a commune.
"At night, we'd all fill the orders and send catalogs out. My parents
would watch the kids, and we'd all eat dinner together.
If I had to go out of town, my mom was right there. I don't
know how working women do it without their mom."
Not all the memories of the early years are pleasant ones.
Young entrepreneurial companies often burn through cash. Mothers Work was no different, and not every potential investor liked its concept.
"People are always nasty when they turn you down. They're like, ‘Your business sucks.' My favorite was, ‘If this were such a great idea, somebody would've already done it.' It's very hard, but you have to go back and try again, or you'll run out of money."
Today, running out of money is no longer a worry. Over the last several years, Mothers Work has restructured, getting rid of some expensive debt and cutting its manufacturing costs.
Its headquarters and fulfillment warehouse near downtown Philadelphia, where 1,000 of its employees work, hum with activity.
Matthias, for her part, can carve out time to mentor other entrepreneurs, as she'll do at Wharton.
"I think everybody should start a business. Especially for moms, it's just a great solution for having a career and having family. You won't have a balanced life — I don't have hobbies or lunches with friends — but you control your own time. I'm very passionate about women starting businesses."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .