Unfortunately, Mandy Wang doesn’t have an interesting story. I know this because she told me: “I don’t have an interesting story.” Then she proceeded to tell me this story.

Born and raised in mainland China, Mandy traveled to Toronto for business school. It was there, near graduation, that she thought she would drum up some business for her family manufacturing enterprise. So, she trudged over to the reference library and found a book: Canadian Apparel Directory, not exactly a best-seller, but the kind of thing that she had never seen in China. She paged through it and started contacting every company one-by-one to see if they’d like some clothing manufactured in China.

She found one, which was just barely better than terrible. They ordered two styles and 3,000 pieces of each, which was a very big deal! She hand-carried the order back to China after graduation and started working in the company business. Being her first big project, she hadn’t yet learned all those hard lessons. Somehow the labels got mismatched and no one noticed until the product arrived in Canada. No more orders came from Canada.

So, Mandy tried Hong Kong. If it worked once, maybe it would work twice, so she got the apparel directory and started making calls. Again, she had some hits, and then she got an order from a high-profile Hong Kong association. They wanted sheets, which wasn’t what she normally did, but she complied, and it went well. They ordered more sheets, and again she performed. Then she suggested that they order something that she had experience making. So, they ordered skirts, and that was the beginning.

A few orders from a prestigious association gave her credibility. Mandy reached out to the United States and landed a few more contracts. But, in 2008, the economy was down, and Chinese clothing manufacturing was maturing. She realized that they were at a crossroads. They could pursue a low cost strategy, but that would require moving the manufacturing to a lower-cost region and chasing thinner and thinner margins. Or, could she relocate to the United States to get closer to the big customers and compete on a different dimension - design, quality, nimbleness, market intelligence? Something like that - the path wasn’t exactly crystal clear. 

In many ways, it was a big leap. It’s 7,000 miles in distance, but there’s also the language challenge, plus the whole strategy uncertainty. And, there’s the family. She moved with her two sons - leaving her husband temporarily behind to run the manufacturing - while she launched herself into the apparel business in downtown Los Angeles. 

She started her own brand and hired a designer. Her first order was for 24 pieces - a shared order of six pieces from 4 boutiques. She mailed the boxes herself at the post office. Not long after she hired a salesperson, and shortly after a production person, and then a warehouse guy, and then an ops person. By year's end, she had a staff of 10. 

Then Nordstrom placed an order, and then another. That improved her reputation, and soon Bloomingdales and Anthropologie were customers. TJ Maxx and Marshalls came calling - they wanted some, too. But that would have undermined the brand, so she made a second brand. Daniel Rainn was reserved for Nordstrom and the like, and DR2 targeted a lower price point for TJ Maxx and Marshalls. 

By 2017 she was in 30 chains, and those chains had hundreds of stores. She started from zero during the credit crisis, and within nine years was moving from a manufacturer of woven top category to a company with 2 branded collections. She long ago outpaced the capacity of her family’s manufacturing and had to outsource all of her clothing production. Her family’s business still provides a valuable service, however. They make samples and collaborate on design, which allows her to turn around new styles faster and provide better and faster price quotes. 

She uses consultants to research and forecast trends, and that enables her to be on fashion’s leading edge. She focused on fit and quality as essentials in her products. It was part of her strategy puzzle: being fashion-leading, easy to work with, good fit and quality. Not included: having the lowest price.

Maybe more than most industries, it’s always a negotiation in apparel, and her customers always wanted better prices. Many complained and negotiated, but her products always moved, and she held firm, so they came back. Others, however, demanded that she guarantee their margins. She started to take a hard look at those customers. If they had financial trouble, she could end up in line for a share of the bankruptcy proceeds, so she cut them off. When they eventually ended up in bankruptcy, her prudence was vindicated. 

Most clothing startups are the partnership of a salesperson with a designer. Mandy is neither of those, but she’s intimately familiar with both. Her husband is an artist, and her oldest son sings Opera while attending USC. They exercise the same right-brain styles as designers in the fashion industry. However, her youngest, who is a competitive tennis player and started at MIT last fall, exercises her left-brain, which she relies on when working with operations and accounting. Mandy herself is neither… or both…  she’s the glue that holds them together. She speaks both languages: design and operations, but also art and logic, form and figures, and English and Mandarin. And what she built with Daniel Rainn, which started as a clothing manufacturer, has evolved into a creative fashion company that provides high quality, flattering and delicate designs for women that enable them to feel their best in life, which is the most rewarding part for Mandy.