Hayden Harnett vs. Rebecca Minkoff

[dcblam]

holy she-at....you guys write too much....LOL!!!!!

I'm gonna have to take some "REAL TIME" to read all of your comments before I chime in.......

hugs n' kisses and Happy 4th

[mockinglee]

Ooh, I have to chime in, too, because RM and HH are my 2 favorite brands at the moment. I think they have a very different overall "look" from each other -- RM is more simple and clean (boring?) while HH is innovative and artsy (complicated?). *Takes a deep breath*.....

I think that RM has been very smart AND lucky in that she has managed to use her celebrity friends and connections to increase her brand's visibility. But there are times when I feel like she is trying almost too hard to break into the luxe market that she is about to price her bags out of the leagues of the "average" consumer. I disagree that RM is not "creative" just because there are not as many styles -- each season she debuts brand new designs, but at the same time has maintained the staple shapes because are the most popular. If new stuff doesn't get much talk, then she will discontinue them, so it only seems like there are only 4 RM styles. Also, it seems like with each new line most of us fans clamor not mostly for new looks, but new leathers. There is much more excitement about new colors and textures than new styles. I appreciate the clean look lots of her bags have, opting for the gorgeous leathers and colors to do the talking rather overloading on details. I agree that the RM website is terrible. It doesn't even showcase all of her bags, the ordering process seems unnecessarily cumbersome, and the store's photos are horrible and often don't even show the correct bag. It is a problem when most of your customers would rather buy through ANY ONE ELSE rather than buy directly from you. There IS a new beta site that hasn't gone live yet that seems promising, though, so hopefully they get that up and running soon.

HH, on the other hand, seems determined to establish and maintain their indie cred. I love that I could possibly dress head-to-toe in HH and yet each piece would still have its own individual style and not be too "matchy-matchy". I love the range of styles that they continue to offer and the myriad ways they reinterpret their designs each season. But, it makes it hard for them to establish a recognizable brand identity because they seem a little schizophrenic; not much connects their lines from season-to-season. Sure, they still have Havanas, Lorcas, clutch wallets, etc., but I don't think those are strong enough as "signature" HH (well, maybe the Havana is getting there). And while I love the organization, multiple pockets, interesting straps and details, sometimes it seems overly busy, or that they are trying too hard. For me, personally, it seems each season is hit-or-miss...either I love everything about a line or none of it appeals to me. Lately I've been much more drawn to their clothes and accessories than their bags. I will say that HH is one of the only brands that I have ONLY ordered directly from. I don't know why this is, maybe it's their killer sales, but nothing HH that I have has ever been purchased through another retailer.

I love both brands -- between the two of them I can find a bag to suit whatever mood I happen to be in. Sure, improvements can be made in quality and customer service from both, but I have yet to experience anything that would turn me off either.

Phew. Wow, I think that's the longest post I've written. And I could probably still go on...

[tonihacker]

hi, everyone- happy 4th! i was told by a kindly tpf'er that some really great discussions were going on today in this thread and that i should check it out. wow! i'm really glad that i popped over here...there are some really great insights and really good points being made.

in the spirit of this open discussion (and please don't feel that i'm on here all the time nosing around in secret...i'm not). i just wanted to add my insights and points as the designer/creative director and founder of hayden-harnett.
here's my about hh novella.

hh's bkgd:
i started hayden-harnett because i wanted to create a brand that was continually evolving and offered great quality/style/price. as an industrial designer with a studio art background who then moved over to fashion accessory design in 1999, let's just say that i don't come from a traditional "fashion" background. i wanted to really innovate and create newness each season, while keeping a core group of bags that we launched with (and still have): the havana, the lorca, the ibiza, the erol totes, the sonia tote, and the hh clutch wallet. ben harnett, my love and partner in business, luckily happened to be an IT genius. we made a good pair and decided to launch hh in april of 2005 after we had been together for one year.

our first canvas with leather trim bags landed on our website in july'05. i designed and did all production, shipping, sourcing, photography, and graphics from our bklyn apt. ben kept his full-time job as IT director at a nyc fashion company, but built and maintained our website at night and on weekends. we started hayden-harnett with luck, tireless effort, high motivation to work for ourselves, and a $15k loan from my grandmother billie jean in kentucky. my grandmother was and is still the only investor that hh has ever had. we have had to seriously hustle each season to pay the bills and keep our dream alive. thankfully, i was at least somewhat correct when i launched hayden-harnett under the following ethos: whatever it is that i'm looking for, at least 1000 other women exactly like me are looking for the same thing.

fans of the line, like you, have really given us so so so much! you have made hh into something that 4 years ago, ben and i could never have dreamed of (and still can't wrap our brains around). we've grown from 5 leather handbag styles (yes, we started out with only 5...) into a company that in 4 years has designed and produced over 200 UNIQUE styles (not including the variety of colorways that most styles are available in). i'm rambling, but i do want to just lay it out there that indeed i am a creative, not a business person. i have to create or i'm miserable. ben is actually a creative too...his paintings, poetry, and love of literature are why i fell so hard for him. we guess at the business side of things...it's all intuition and learning from past seasons. there's no roadmap we adhere to closely.

could we have played it safe with only ever making those 5 leather handbag styles- yes. would ben and i work much less, have fewer bills/headaches, and enjoy our personal time much more- oh, heck yeah! BUT we love what we do. i'm an industrial design...a product designer. i am not from a fashion school that has trained me to do one thing well. being a product designer means that you handle any design concept or project that comes your way. if you don't know how to do it, you figure it out. with that said, i guess hayden-harnett is really my public drawing board. i'm not afraid to try something...to try anything. why not? why shouldn't we?

i really love that we now have two small DIY stores where you can see every item that we make. who would have ever thought we'd make it this far! two stores that i designed/decorated myself and our bklyn neighbor, tom blodgett, helped us build out. what a dream come true! thank god for IKEA, paint, and thrift stores! thank god for helpful people! thank god for all the people who totally get what we're trying to do and continue to support a small independent company that has grown really quickly, has to support itself entirely, and is trying to play ball with major brands.

the specifics of why ben and i run hh as we do (to date):
-we have no investors or backers...there is not an MBA in sight at hh. we are a company hq'd in brooklyn of 18 people (including store staff) that ben and i need to make sure get paid on time for the work they do and the immense talent they have. to pay our staff and vendors is our goal and our obligation. ben and i have no need for a yacht or personal masseuse, but we certainly need to go to bed at night knowing our peeps are getting paid.

-to date, we have always ran our own showroom for wholesale sales. we have not been part of a group showroom...this is probably why the direct to customer side of our business has grown very quickly, but we did not take the traditional route of our peer brands and head into major dept stores after our first few seasons out within a group showroom format.

when you sell to major dept stores, there's great money/volume business there, but you need to be willing to take some hits and have lots of cash available for the production...i mean a LOT of cash. also, when the majority of your business is wholesale to retailers, they control how you price your goods. designers who rely on the wholesale side of the business cannot compete with their retailers. we rely on direct to customer sales as we feel this is best for hh...ben and i both felt in 2005 that the face of retail was changing and that it would be best to design and sell directly to our customer.

we started out with the intention to try to sell to our customers directly via our website, because the web is really the future of the business. i look at how i shop as a woman with voting $'s...i order nearly everything online. i'm really darn busy. my free time is spent with ben, at home, or out with friends catching up. i'm not generally out in boutiques shopping AND the majority of boutiques seem to only want to sell apparel to those sized 8 and under. what's up with that? savvy consumers, like me...like you, know to search everywhere online and find the perfect thing at the right price. shopping is global. women now are not afraid to buy higher-end fashion online IF the web retailer's reputation for quality and customer service are good. We all talk/blog/gossip to each other about these things...you know a good deal and a perfect item when you see it. Whoever offers the best deal wins your $ vote.

to date, hh has only sold to small specialty boutiques with the exception of the few items we sell to anthropologie/Nordstrom each season. for the record, anthropologie is an amazingly great company for small designers to work with. they are easy to work with, they "get" what you do and really support good ideas, and the large orders they place pay the bills. for a large retailer, they are more than fair. support them. we sell a very very small amount of good to Nordstrom each season. you can find us on their trend floor in select doors.

contd in next post...

[tonihacker]

*our crazy sales/why?/how?/are we stupid and/or crazy?/sales as brandkiller?:
-as iterated before, we are truly an independent company. we do not have any type of backer that we can ask for cash or for help. we're not opposed to having a backer, but the right person has yet to come along. we also do not operate the majority of our business as wholesale. this means we can control our prices. we can decide to run a really fun and crazy sale if we want to! hurrah! i would think that's a good thing...honestly, ben is the business side, but i am the marketer. i generally decide what a juicy hh sale should consist of. i try to make sales that would make me freak out and be super-excited...i love the frenzy and i love it when the sales are really, really fun. it makes me happy to know that we are paying our bills + so many people get either: a) what they wanted all season or b) they get to try hh out for the first time. you save money by hearing about our sales and by being part of our mailing list. we make some money to pay bills, you get what you want, we get what we need to keep going. i do apologize to those offended by getting a really great and super high quality bag that looks awesome for less money than our standard retail. sorry for that. i just wanted you to have a good time. you don't have to drink the tequila at our parties to enjoy the band. we do have seltzer available and quiet seats near the balcony.

*celebrity driven fashion:
personally, i have never looked to other people for my fashion direction. as a designer who dabbles in marketing for her own brand. i see this as "me-too" to an extreme. we do have really great celebrities who own and carry hayden-harnett. they deserve privacy and discretion as we all do. much of fashion is indeed connections and who you know. i will be really honest and say that ben and i are very normal and non-fabulous people who live in brooklyn with our bikes and two cats. we are not out at the most fabulous parties...we do not wish to have our cellulite photographed and posted in OK magazine. uck. sorry. we are normal. that may be really boring for some fashionistas, but it's not sad by any means. i like the fact that we've been able to take hayden-harnett this far despite the odds. hh is a recognized brand solely because of people like you...it's not because we have friends in high fashion places, that's for sure. sometimes i wish we did...i could ride my bike every day, get a weekly massage, and actually get to that yoga class on wednesday nights!

* ok- i'll name drop...who's famous and likes hh?
rihanna, alicia keys, shakira-shakira, taylor momsen, blake lively and the gossip girl crew, rachel bilson, anne hathaway, mena suvari, hilary duff, liv tyler, reese witherspoon (who is so down to earth and i love her to pieces), kate hudson, daryl hannah. each one of these women is totally rad and seriously stylish, talented, and ground-breaking. if you need the celebrity marketing reinforcement to prove hh's worth to you, there you go. beans spilled. i just want to reiterate that all of the above ladies are totally kick@ss and deserve their privacy as they are just like you and me.

since the objective of this topic is RM vs/ HH, i just want to say that rebecca minkoff is a fantastic designer that deserves major props. she's so stylish as a natural god-given talent, that she used to work as a professional stylist. i can also say that she's a very kind and decent person who has actually said that hh is one of her favorite brands. i can say the same right back to her. our approaches are different, but that's what makes fashion fun...there's something for everyone.

*hh classics/evolution of the brand into new categories/why so much stuff?:
we launched with 5 leather handbag styles and those major styles are still there. i build each season's concept and collection around those styles. our core styles do not go away. so, in essence, we have 4-5 styles (just like other designers) that are quintessentially HH. our lorca, havana, and hh clutch wallet are cores styles that also come in, oh, about 7-8 unique colors per season...if there is a particular color that you like, i am always open to suggestions. i think 7-8 leather colors p/season in our core styles is plenty and is the max we can afford to offer on our production budget. most of our other fashion styles come in 1-4 colors, avg. over 75% of styles are made in only 50 units p/colorway each season.

*why apparel? why jackets? why shoes?
because i have a great team of creative people and i want to offer a full collection each season. i love our apparel and our shoes are totally killer. i love that now i can show a complete design concept for each season and offer that to our customers. hayden-harnett has a story to tell with our design...this is my art. i do not paint pictures, but i love to design an imaginary world or character each season. i guess the storytelling is in my nature as i write fiction in my spare time.

creating living art is what thrills me about fashion. i don't want hayden-harnett to be like every other company...there's no purpose to my art in that. we are different. our customer likes to be different. she gets the art. she gets the story. she understands the craft within our logic and desire to be an antidote to celebrity-obsessed, "me too" fashion and tattle mag style.
each season at hayden-harnett offers a unique collection...the very word "collection" means to collect. our customer understands that you break off a piece of the collection and hold onto it. you hold a piece of the art.

*why non-hh stuff on our website?
because i have found these things and love them. we sell them in our stores also. if i love something, i think that our customer might like it too and enjoy finding out about this fab newness. our jewelry offerings i'm especially proud of since nearly all pieces come from friends and local bklyn designers.

*why so many different sales?
actually, we only have 3-4 MAJORLY massive sales during the year on our website: spring sample sale, the big bang sale, the fall sample sale, and the holiday sale we generally do to kick off the season around thanksgiving. i do think that almost all brands (high and low) have similar sales at similar times. the smaller holiday sales/events (memorial day, valentine's day lovers sale, etc) we might have are for fun and you get invited to that sale because you are part of our mailing list. typically you cannot just access the private sales unless you go through the link on the invite mailer. that's ben's job though...not mine. i just help him come up with killer sale ideas for all the ladies to enjoy. you elect to opt in for sales and special offers. you also opt out if you don't want to know. we never ever spam.

ok- enough rambling. time for a bike ride. i can also say though, if you're reading this, that the sales are something fun and for our fans. we're a little desperate, but not serious.

also there are some big changes coming up on our business side this fall i hope, so you may not get to enjoy our crazy, fun sales so much anymore.

please keep in mind that we do not put our collection on sale because it's cheap in cost or in thought and care...actually, our goods are extremely well made and with the best leathers out there. our first cost on our goods is quite high! hh can sell amazing product for a lower price than our peers because we don't have high overhead and fancy offices. we are not a large company with investors telling us what we're allowed to do (but maybe someone should really tell us what to do come to think of it). we're here for the art, challenge, fun and love of the craft.

ps- CS and QC issues need to be taken up with ben...seriously. he needs to know what's going on. he manages the CS team and our warehouse and i know he will listen to your comments. email him. email nitza. we just want our customers and fans to be happy, enjoy their hh goodies, and be surprised at the good deals we offer from time to time.

[tonihacker]

pss- sorry for the length of my post! marathon!!!

[slsk]

Toni - it's fun when y'all let us peek inside your heads. Thanks. I'm proud to be an HH woman! (BTW, I have had so many people stop and ask me where I got my khaki corcovado - I'm sending them all to your website, even though I know there are no more corcs - hope they'll find something else to love!)

[mosesposes]

hehe...I promise not to be offended if I get a totally awesome jaw-droppingly low price on a Clara

[siouxie]

Yeah that was an insightful post. I just wish production was done in brooklyn, too, but I know it's prolly far to expensive.

Would you ever consider bringing back that Catalina? I feel that I've found HH too late - I missed out on the mercer satchel, the Catalina, and others I see pop up now and then!

[lulu3955]

WOW toni!!!! Thanks for stopping by! Thanks for the post although long it was very informative.

Originally Posted by tonihacker

*why non-hh stuff on our website?

When are we going to see some brandish and oblik atelier on your website? These IRL series are killing me with the all awesome jewelry that I can't find anywhere....
If the cards are aligned It would be awesome if you dabble in housewares.... so I can have a labyrinth throw blanket. Or should I stalk a couple more scarves down and sew them together cuz it ain't gonna happen LOL
and why no more paule marrot? I can't imagine they ran out of fabric choices.

[Sybaryte]

Originally Posted by lulu3955

and why no more paule marrot? I can't imagine they ran out of fabric choices.

Licensing = $$

[dreamofpompidou]

OMGOMGOMG! can I just say its SO COOL that Toni H posted!
I LOVE HH even more now.
Still like RM too :)
I feel the handbag love!!! heaven! How did I just find TPF during the pomp order thing?

[tonihacker]

hi, ladies! cool! yay...i feel the love too :)

i really like coming on here when i have time...super informative and so fun to read all your posts.

RE: non-hh stuff on our website posted by lulu3955:
-AH reminder! yes, new jewelry coming asap to our online boutique. we'll send a mailer out when the goods get posted. new jewelry brands: oblik atelier, brandish, pade vavre, mifflin (the new stuff is SO amazing), and erica weiner coming for fall09.
-we are also possibly collaborating on a custom scent for our stores and website with DS & Durga. i want to do scent duo of some sort...light and dark.

[Ms.Lizardo]

WOW Toni....Totally Cool that you are posting!! BTW when are you coming to south Florida?

You soooooo need a boutique here!!

[aznanjl]

all i can say is that i love both brands, but i think i love HH a little more because i absolutely adore their clothing/accessories/shoes

[slsk]

An HH scent? Light: definitely rose and tea. Dark: amber and tobacco? What a fun project for you!