Erin Lichy.
Taylor Hill/FilmMagicThe Real Housewives of New Yorkis Erin Lichy considers her previous bag business a learning experience.
“I don’t look at it as a failure, but we lost a lot of money,” Litchie, 37, said on the Monday, Jan. 20 episode of Jason Tartickis “Trade Secrets” podcast. “Technically speaking, it kind of failed.”
Litchi said she lost “over $100,000” on the venture. (The “Bravo” star later noted that she put “more” than $100,000 into the business, noting that it was “probably” the seed amount.) “We just kept pouring money in,” Litchie said.
From Litchi’s point of view, the fashion business is “impossible” unless you have previous experience in the industry or “are backed by someone big”.
“You screw up on minimums in Asia, or if you’re doing somewhere overseas, you screw up on minimums. Then you start doing it in New York and screw up the labor costs,” Lichy asserts. “It’s very difficult. We actually really believed in making things in New York and in our studio. We used to do them in China and I felt very uncomfortable for many reasons.
Leachy recalled visiting factories that she claimed were “not what they say they are.” She added: “They are not working properly. Not all of them, but the one I went to.
Litchi is looking at production in New York, but said everything is “slower.” She added: “You have to go buy materials from Italy that are shipped to New York and then you pay the brokerage fee on top. And then it costs a lot of money and then you can’t make up for it in markup.
Litchi called the process a “never-ending battle.” Asked if she had raised capital, Litchi said: “No, and that’s what I’ve learned never to do again.”
Erin Litchie has revealed she is nowhere close to nesting after announcing her fourth pregnancy last month. “I didn’t do anything,” Litchi, 37, exclusively admitted to Us Weekly on Friday, Dec. 13, while attending iHeart Radio’s Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Real Housewives of New York star revealed that she was “not prepared (…)
Although the business didn’t take off the way he’d hoped, Lichy noted that he has “no regrets” in his life.
“I ended up selling the name, but on the other hand, it was the best learning experience of my life,” she said. “I would never know how to build a business the way I’m building it now if that didn’t happen.”
Erin took the lessons she learned from the bag business and applied them to her venture husband Abe Litchiher co-founder of Mezcalum. “This time, Abe and I took on a sales partner, consultants, raising capital,” she said.
