ONE MILLION GOAL

You ever feel conflicted when your actions don't match your morals? That's me sometimes. We make sure our seamstresses in Nepal are paid well, but we operate in the USA with underpaid employees, volunteers, and interns.

Nobody on our team is pressuring me, and from what I can tell, the joy and purpose is motivating for everyone. This all comes to my mind though when I witness an intern eating only a banana for lunch. I used to be scrappy as a college student too, but I feel that I'm not being fair when I'm eating my $12 sandwich from the deli. 

Today I'd like to open up our books to give you a look at how our business actually is. 

Elegantees is still doing six-figures in annual gross sales. A little over half of our gross income covers the costs of the products (and now, tariffs also). This does not mean that we markup only 1.75x, but that's what our average selling factor is. The profits after that go mostly to photo shoot and website costs, credit card fees, shipping labels, and warehousing.

With the rest of that, I pay myself something. I know the company can't yet pay me what I should be getting paid. Not complaining or worried because I have faith. A few years back, I prayed about my lack of personal net worth, and my worry was replaced with peace through an audible “I will take care of you" for when I'm old and wrinkly. There's something about a promise from God that gives more peace than any net worth could provide. 

From time to time, however, I've tried to operate Elegantees without taking an income by working somewhere else. I thought it was a good idea so I could use more of the sales to invest back in, but I could not devote enough time to keep steady work going in Nepal. 

Part of why our profits are small is because we have a lot of fixed costs. For example, our new Waverly blazer cost $475 to develop it. We made 47 pcs, and unless it sells really well to justify replenishing it, it'll be a one-hit wonder. That's $10 per garment for the pattern, development, and sampling. The fabric, buttons, sewing, factory overhead, freight and tariffs make it more. The Waverly jacket is one of our highest for development costs, but if you like math, you know if we made 150 jackets instead, our fixed development and factory overhead would be slashed. The return on time for photo shoots and social media posts would be significant too.

I want to see Elegantees reach $1 million in sales in 2026. Then the fixed costs will be a smaller percentage of each garment cost. We could do things like renew our office space lease in August without asking for grants. I especially love the idea of taking care of our interns with a better stipend, and we can add more seamstresses thanks to the increased output.

I've got to delegate better, have collections ready more in advance to work with retailers and influencers again, and be consistent with marketing strategy. 

I'm excited to see what the Spring semester will look like for us as we welcome 16 interns into our loft. We'll be like a full blown company. All the interns are part time, but we have a shot if I can delegate wisely!

With Joy, Katie