“Did you see the hats at Marc Jacobs???” oozes Karen Giberson, President of the Accessories Council, barely concealing her giddiness at the amount of fabulous accessories on this season’s New York Fashion Week catwalks. Handbags, hosiery, jewelry, belts, and scarves are a fragmented lot but big business representing almost $90 Billion of the $250 Billion luxury goods industry. And if each sub-genre in the world of accessories were a train car, Karen’s role is that of conductor, speeding this industry train forward.   Read More »

Gracing the New York catwalks since 2005, the Academy of Art University brings the best of its MFA class – to NYC for a group show – and every year new talent is discovered by the fashion press. In many ways, it’s the real Project Runway with the top of the class “winning” the opportunity to show their designs to the most important fashion influencers in the United States. The year 2 women were the stand-out students with collections, and one has even become the Fashion Week Love Story…  Read More »

“Forever Young” designer Kathleen Kirkwood has taken her decades-long experience designing + selling bras and shapewear and has now directed her focus towards the industry’s environmental record and the amount of waste produced when a bra comes to an end of its usefulness. In 2010 Kathleen founded the Bra Recycling Agency or B.R.A. for short – as a way to remove billions of bras from the nation’s landfills and to raise money for breast cancer.   Read More »

Meet Karen Griffith Gryga-CEO of FashInvest, Wharton Business School graduate, venture capitalist, wife and mom of two (Morgan, 14, and Griffin, 10). Whether it’s a new way to shop online, an accessory label ready to explode, or a fresh way to track and ship product, it’s through FashInvest where she brings together budding fashion brands with some of the most influential people in the fashion, technology, banking + investment worlds. FashInvest – where fashion meets funding.  Read More »

Some women set their sights on luxurious designer bags like Hermes, Vuitton & Fendi. Other women choose more contemporary bags from fashion houses such as Dooney & Burke, BCBGMaxAzria and Coach. And then there’s Mariagrazia LaFauci – her focus on bags is a tad more pedestrian – plastic baggies to be specific. It’s easy to understand fantasizing about being the next Kate Spade but the next Ziplock? That is exactly what Mariagrazia is setting out to do. She has successfully launched EcoZip – a new type of disposable, split plastic bag featuring two compartments to store complementary product.  Read More »

When women discover they’re pregnant for the very first time it often sends many into a tizzy of self-education – turning to the Internet and books written by experts as to what to do, what to eat and how to dress. But no one warned Linsey Ebuen + Lili Yeo that their kids would be born with nails so barbed that simple baby movements would leave their face and body scratched. Who knew kids were born with claws?  Read More »

Lisa Detschermitsch woke up on Christmas Day 2010 to find that her husband had built her a mid-century modern bed with attached side-tables. It was the one thing she had asked Santa for and her husband Jesse, whose design sense matched her own, tapped into his woodworking skills and built them their dream bed. Upon looking at that new bed Lisa knew this was something they needed to pursue as a career.  Read More »

Tracy Young is no ordinary DJ. Not only has she made it into the top ranks of a heavily male-dominated DJ booth, but she’s also managed to spin her way into creating a brand that reaches beyond last-call in a night club. In fact, she has a clothing line, owns + controls her own dance events, mixes music for internationally renowned talent, hosts her own radio show that can be found free on iTunes, has her own record label and is a music celebrity in her own right, racking up 40 #1 hits on the Billboard charts  Read More »

Picking up where we left off last week in sharing the collective wisdom of women entrepreneurs we showcased in 2011, this week we focus on two more areas these ‘Smart Women’ seemed to have in common when laying the groundwork for creating a successful business.  Read More »

The silver lining in this recession has been the rise of the entrepreneur—many of them women. The lesson of the fiery phoenix is that often from the depths of necessity the most interesting opportunities arise and those with the foresight plus the wherewithal find themselves creating, innovating and enjoying success from great ideas. With Smart Women, Smart Ideas this year, I have covered numerous successful women who have offered us both example and words of wisdom about starting and running businesses…   Read More »

Shien-Ru Tsao came to the United States from Taiwan when she was just two-years old. From Taiwan to Tennessee, she was raised by immigrant parents who taught her about bootstraps and the lifting of oneself through the use of them. Now inventor of a new kind of bootstrap, the KUZA Strap, and founder of Project 116 (a program helping low-income, middle-school aged entrepreneurs learn the marketplace, product design and sales), she has not only reinvented the bootstrap but is also determined to teach a few kids how to lift themselves up by them too.   Read More »

From the death of her dad to the birth of her son Dash in 2008, platinum selling songstress Sophie B. Hawkins has lived through a few relatable ups and downs since her 1992 mega-hit song “Damn I Wish I Were Your Lover”. What many do not know is that she split from her record company a few years back and started her own record label. She’s as much businesswoman + entrepreneur as artist…  Read More »

Soy was unknown even a decade back to mainstream consumers so Austin based Christy Bell, founder of Soy Delites, had her work cut out for her when she started selling votives from the back of her truck 8 years ago. She went from a handful of votives off the back of that truck to now selling 50,000+ soy candles a year…  Read More »

Imagine if you were born with the inability to smile. No one knows more about this than Lisa Lori – owner of Lisa Lori Communications and mother of 3 young boys, all born with facial paralysis. Lisa, rising to the occasion, has launched the Give One, Get One campaign this holiday season with Operation Smile – raising vital funds for children like her own all over the world.  Read More »

Did you know that in 1843 Sir Henry Cole commissioned John Callcott Horsley to illustrate the very first Christmas card? Millions of Christmas cards later and the greeting card industry exploding to include every major occasion yet there are few who are able to name even one greeting card illustrator. From her kitchen table in 2002 to a small business with ten employees, Bonnie Marcus Designs is now a million dollar company and she is one of the most sought-after designers in the greeting card industry.  Read More »