Career Profile: Leslie Voorhees, Anomalie

When Harvard Business School classmates Leslie Voorhees and Calley Means were planning their wedding, they stumbled upon a problem they could fix and started their direct-to-consumer, customized wedding dress company, Anomalie, in 2016. Like many brides, Voorhees had trouble finding a wedding dress that fit her size, style and budget. The former product developer for Nike, M.Gemi and Apple took matters into her own hands and went straight to the source.

“After researching the wedding dress supply chain, I learned 80% of the world’s wedding dresses, including gowns for top luxury brands, were made in one Chinese city. I visited workshops there and learned that dresses that retail for thousands of dollars cost hundreds to make,” she says. After making her dream dress directly at a workshop, dozens of friends contacted her to make their own wedding dresses. Voorhees quickly realized that customization was as big of a pain point for brides as the price and that most of the wedding dresses in the U.S. are sold in brick-and-mortar stores, which offers brides limited selections. “By partnering with these workshops and selling direct to brides, we’re able to offer a much better price and almost unlimited customization,” says Voorhees.

Today brides use Anomalie to work with stylists to create made-to-order wedding dresses that the brand says are made of the same premium fabrics and materials as premier bridal designers — without the comparable prices. A dress from the Silicon Valley-based startup costs between $1,000 to $1,500 and is completed in about five months. Anomalie has surpassed $1M in revenue and raised $4.5M in funding, with primary investment from Maveron and Lerer Hippeau. I spoke with Voorhees about her career path and advice.

You previously worked in product development for Nike, M.Gemi and Apple. How has that experience helped you build Anomalie?

I credit these experiences to helping us think big at Anomalie. The factories I managed for Nike and Apple had tens of thousands of people working on one shift – and what most people don’t realize is that these products, even Apple devices, are made almost entirely by hand. My job was to create detailed process maps that would ensure production of shoes or complicated electronics could be broken down into simple, repeatable steps.

Our insight at Anomalie is that wedding dresses can be broken down into finite variables — limited silhouettes, bodice constructions, fabrics and colors — and that mass production of “custom” dresses is achievable with enough scale.

All other e-commerce wedding dress companies are online boutiques that sell limited, set styles of dresses. There are some great designers running these companies, but this model doesn’t solve core pain points around selection, customization and price. Our aspiration is to fundamentally change how wedding dresses, and eventually other garments, are ordered, developed, manufactured and delivered to women. As we are creating thousands of custom dresses in our second year, we’re increasingly able to spot trends and make operations more efficient to accomplish this goal of mass customization.

What has been the biggest challenge and, on the flip side, the biggest reward of starting Anomalie?

The existential challenge for our company will always be delivering incredible dresses on time. Our early employees and I knew each bride’s story and dress specifications for our first 1,000 dresses. We’re obviously creating more scalable structures, but the level of customer obsession from our early days must scale. Every dress is contributing to a moment our customer will remember for the rest of her life, which is an amazing privilege.

Our greatest reward, by far, is making a difference for our customers. We have been amazed at how broken the wedding dress industry is and how many women feel left out of the process. We’ve made dresses from women size 00 to 32 and our proudest moments are hearing from customers about how we brought them more joy on such an important day.

You’ve raised over $4 million in funding. What advice do you have for female founders raising venture capital for female-focused businesses like Anomalie?

It is the golden age to be a female entrepreneur – particularly in retail. So many of the most exciting, innovative retail companies right now were started by women for women – from Rent the Runway to M.Gemi to Glossier to ThirdLove to Zola.

Stitch Fix, a company overlooked early on by many venture capitalists, has been one of the most successful technology initial public offerings in recent memory. Retail is changing dramatically, and there’s an understanding from investors that there are many pain points, especially for women, that need better solutions.

For women looking to raise money – here are some lessons from my experience. First, make sure you have an unshakable conviction in your head that your idea will be a billion-dollar opportunity and will benefit from scale. Venture capital economics depend on this, and some businesses are better suited to bootstrapping. For Anomalie, we think vertical integration with significant scale is the only way we can achieve our vision of affordable “mass customization” for brides.

Second, you need to be comfortable with the fact that you will be prioritizing this startup above almost everything for the next decade. If you want to spend significant quality time with your family, children, friends or spouse – you shouldn’t do it. This is advice given by Y Combinator, and I think it is true: I don’t think there are many successful companies where the founders weren’t obsessed with success to an unhealthy degree.

What is it like to be a cofounder with your husband? How do you make it work?

I love working on this with [Means] and I couldn’t imagine any other way. We are spending most of our waking hours working on Anomalie, and it is fun and incredibly fulfilling to create something together. I think our challenges are similar to what any founding pair would face, except there is probably less of a filter when we give each other feedback, which can be tough, but I think is a good thing for the company and our development.

We’re starting to see more startups founded by couples – and think this will be an increasing trend as great couples are meeting at graduate school or at work.

What are the most important characteristics someone needs to have to be successful in your role?

I think it is important to maintain the long-term vision in the midst of inevitable short-term fires. Another important attribute is communication ability. I’m most comfortable working on product improvement in a factory, but it is clear to me the ability to effectively communicate is required for a startup CEO. We are trying to change a market, and early employees and I find ourselves constantly reiterating the vision of the company to the team, customers and investors. I never get tired of it! Other qualities I think are important are resiliency, resourcefulness and optimism.

What’s the biggest lesson you learned at work and how did you learn it?

Having worked at Nike for many years, one of my heroes is Phil Knight [cofounder of Nike], and a great lesson I’ve learned from his story that I think it very applicable to startups is “just do it.” His book Shoe Dog recounts how long it took to get Nike off the ground, how many seemingly fatal setbacks there were on the path to success and how many people told him he’d fail. There hasn’t been a transformative business idea that “experts”‘ in the industry didn’t initially dismiss as impossible.

When I discovered the workshops in Suzhou and realized how partnering directly could bring so much more value to brides, it was so clear that Anomalie would be a game-changing idea in the wedding industry if executed with enough skill and tenacity. We’ve got a long way to go to meet our goals, but I am so proud of our team’s dedication and resilience, and I’m more convinced today that we’ll succeed than ever.

What is one thing that you wish you had known when you were starting out your career?

I think the “stable” career choices are increasingly becoming riskier. I don’t think there’s enough appreciation for how aggressively artificial intelligence and globalization are going to decimate white collar jobs the U.S. In one generation, the roles of doctor, lawyer, investment banker or consultant are going to be largely done by computers or a worker in another country. I think there’s tremendous pressure at colleges and graduate schools to funnel people to “stable'” professions that many think will be wiped out in the next generation – and that in this context “riskier” choices like joining a startup are a way to differentiate.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Before college, my mom recommended that I should study engineering in college because I was good at math and science and could differentiate myself as a woman. This led to gaining a lot of experience in Southeast Asia, where so many of the world’s products are made and where the idea for Anomalie was formed. I am so impressed with the people I’ve met in China, and we’re very proud of being an international company.

What is your business advice for other young professional women?

If you have an idea and want to start a startup, spend every possible second creating your product and trying to sell it to your friends. If your friends aren’t paying money for your product, then you should rethink your idea because strangers probably won’t either. If your friends are buying it and telling their friends, you’re on to something.

Don’t worry about a perfect 40-slide business plan. This is irrelevant if people don’t want your product and cut almost everything out of your schedule that doesn’t involve creating the product or interacting with customers. I think the success of your company is probably inversely correlated to the number of networking receptions you are going to.