FROM FASTCO WORKS AND SAP - Growth Agents: How Pink Lily went from a side hustle to a multimillion-dollar company
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Hey, this is Yaz, host of Most Innovative Companies. Here's a special custom mini-series from FastCo Works and SAP. Enjoy. Welcome to Growth Agents, a special mini-series in partnership with SAP. I'm Matt Robertson with FastCo and Ink Studios. Our guest today is Tina Hatzor, Director of Finance for Pink Lily. Thanks for being here today, Tina. I wonder, could you just give to someone who doesn't know anything about Pink Lily, like the quick elevator pitch, or you meet someone at a cocktail party, what would you tell them about the place you work?

So Pink Lily is an online women's clothing boutique. We have accessories, makeup, and our goal is to make women feel confident in what they wear every day at affordable prices. And one of the big things that we try to do is engage with our customer through social media platforms.

and the retail experience, which we're hoping to expand within the next year. And one of the things that's just amazing about Pink Lily is that it started out as a side hustle for our founders, Tori and Chris, literally in their living room. And now, 10 years later, it's grown into a multimillion dollar company. - Yeah, I'm curious. I was looking around. The one thing I don't understand is the products you sell,

Does Pink Lily design and manufacture? Are they outsourced from vendors? Is it a combination? So our products are designed by Pink Lily's merchandising team, but we use outside vendors to actually make the product. So we have some fabrics that are custom, some designs that are custom to Pink Lily, but

we don't produce those items in-house. So our merchandising team will work with our outside inventory vendors on cuts, styles, basically those samples are going back and forth. We have both domestic and international inventory vendors. So that team is going to LA several times throughout a year so they can feel the product, see the product, and work with those vendors to get it exactly how we want it.

Got it. But all of your product is specifically Pink Lily. You're not curating from different designers and manufacturers and lines. This is purely, if I'm shopping at Pink Lily, I'm getting something I can only get from Pink Lily. Is that correct? Yes. All of our product is Pink Lily product.

Could you give us a little context about where we are? We're at the headquarters here and kind of how your operations work on a kind of a global scale. I'd love to get kind of under the hood of the infrastructure of how this company works. We are headquartered and based in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is where our founders are from. That is where our corporate offices are, photo shoot studio, and then also our fulfillment center as well. The only locations that we have outside of Bowling Green are some of our remote employees.

that are on the SG&A side, such as like director of growth marketing, customer service, and that sort of thing. And all the designs are created here as well? Yes. All of our designs are created here in Bowling Green by our merchandising buying team.

What drew you into this type of work? I really always thought I would be an elementary school teacher because I love kids, I love summer vacation. But when I was in college, I took my first accounting class and I just, I loved it even more than apparently summer vacations.

I've always loved math, and it just makes sense. Accounting, like, there is one answer, and that's where you're going to get whenever you're doing anything in this line because GAP tells you that you can have one answer. IRS tells you you can have one answer. So it's just getting there. I actually began my career in public accounting, which I think is great, really.

for people that have an accounting degree. It exposes you to a lot of industries and really shows you the heart of the financials. But I also know that most people that start in public accounting, they make that decision, hey,

I don't want to work that many hours. I'm going to go into private accounting. I don't want to travel as much. And that's ultimately where I got in my career. And so I decided to go into the private sector. So how did you end up getting involved with Pink Lily? Could you give us a little bit of context for how you landed here?

I actually grew up in Bowling Green. I went to college at Western Kentucky University and was here most of my life. I had twins about 11 years ago, and right before they were born, my husband and I decided to move away. And we were gone for about seven and a half years and made the decision, we wanna get back to Bowling Green.

And at the time, I was working a remote position so I could easily get back to Bowling Green. But my husband found this position and it was just perfect. I think there's a lot to be said for a founder-run company as opposed to working for a big corporation. There's a lot more red tape. It's harder to make change. It's harder to drive process improvement. And so this just looked like the perfect opportunity. So I interviewed.

I loved it here. We actually hadn't even put our house for sale, hadn't bought a house. I moved down here before my family did. Stayed with a best friend for a month and just have enjoyed it every minute since. And how long ago was that? That was a little over four years ago. What would you say, could you share some of the biggest challenges and complexities that you face as a director of finance for a company like this?

Really just making sure that we are set for success and the rapid growth that we've experienced. From a cash flow perspective, when you're growing a company and you don't want to have to have a lot of outside financing, you have to be really smart with how you invest money.

your earnings and so that you can maintain that growth. And so before I worked at Pink Lily, they outsourced their accounting function, which can be great for smaller companies that really can't support an in-house finance team.

But it was the time with their growth to bring it in-house, make sure they were in compliance, make sure that they had somebody dedicated to the company. So really, when I started here, it was just building the department from scratch. And that can be extremely complex when you are a company making sales all over the nation and there's constantly changing regulations that you want to get compliant with and get compliant with quickly. And are there any...

successes that you've been able to achieve and sort of share in?

I feel like I have my little world. So, you know, I have my success with, you know, when we first started, we did not, of course, have a finance team. We did not get an audit. We now have had an audit for two years. It's always clean. We have no issues getting our sales tax, nexus compliance, leasing regulations. So just from my little finance world, we've accomplished so much. But because

Because we are such a small company, overall, when you look at our director team, we're 10 strong. And so we work very closely together for everything. So I know more now about marketing than I ever thought I would know. I know more about merchandising than I ever thought I would know. It's exciting to be able to help them work.

win because they're the face of the company. They're the ones that are making sure that we have product that customers like. They're making sure that customers see us and engage with us on social media, but they need me as the finance lead to make sure that, hey, are we getting good deals on our products? So, you know, or do we have good vendor terms as products coming in in time? It's fun to be able to share that success with them because they're

I always say I think I have probably the boring-est job here because I'm not touching product. But, you know, I get to be there when they're touching it and help their vision come to life. I'd love to hear, is there anything you could share as somebody who works in finance that might surprise people from your perspective? I feel like

a lot of finance-minded people, they like to have control. Like, they like to have control of the finances. They like to have control of just whatever situation they're in. And thinking about working for a company that is ran by founders, I think that that could put off a finance person because the initial thought is, hey, that founder wants things their way. And that's one of the great things about Pink Lily and about

Tori and Chris, they identified that their company was growing way too quickly and that they needed to build a team. And that's what they did. They don't have finance experience, accounting experience. They don't have customer service experience. So bringing in leaders in all those different areas to help them grow the company

has been something that I've found really surprising and reassuring. And they trust us to do our job. Like, they respect our opinion. And I think that's why we've been able to be so successful. Anything but more about from your perspective that people wouldn't expect that you get to do or that goes into your job? I think when people think of accountants, they think of tax returns. They think of...

audits and they think of numbers and it just sounds really boring. And I believe my job is anything but boring. Like I get to look at the product with people, like I get to brainstorm marketing ideas. I get to talk about how we're going to make collaborations work. So yeah, so not something that people think of when they think of finance. They don't think of clothes.

everything, beauty, accessories, and just getting to have that hands-on experience with the merchandising and marketing team to make Pink Lily's vision come to life. - What's it like to help lead a company that's doing something so innovative and ideally

I think probably sees itself as pushing certain boundaries in this industry. - Pink Lily is a very fast-paced company. When we think about the industry, I mean, obviously clothing, everyone has to have clothing, but when you think about how we market to women

online, they don't have that in-store experience, and we have to make them feel comfortable in purchasing clothing because everyone knows it's hard for a woman to buy a shirt and know that it's going to fit. So we do fit videos. We make sure that we try to connect with the customer so they feel like they know us and they want to shop at Pink Lily. How would you view your role as a growth agent for this company?

When I came in, we were still so small. There were no processes in place. There was no accounting function in place, policies, procedures. And they were reaching the point where that was going to start being detrimental to their growth. And that's why they brought me in as the director of finance, so that I could help lead those changes and policies and process improvements.

and cash management. You know, when we started, our financial package was a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement. And there's no way that you can run a company and know how your company is doing just looking at two financial statements. So being able to assist them and help them understand different things

KPIs and metrics to make sure, hey, how are we growing? How's our average order value doing? How many new customers, returning customers do we have? So that we could really understand what we were doing good and what we weren't doing good and how we needed to change that. What would you say that the type or rate of growth would be essential to this company's success? And obviously it's experiencing that or we wouldn't be here. Yeah.

You know, I don't necessarily have any, you know, 25% growth is our goal or, you know, just talk specific numbers. But...

We really look at growth on not only a daily basis, but sometimes weekly basis, collection basis. So it's really looking at all those different metrics and having setting yourself goals, you know, with each sale, with each collection, with each season, and then seeing if you exceed those goals. And if you don't, then regrouping and seeing how you can reach those goals with the next season.

- How do you balance keeping a lid on certain costs as director of finance? How do you weigh that against needing to fund certain growth strategies and do some spending? - Yeah, so we've implemented a cash flow forecast. Before I came to Pink Lily, it was kind of just spend the money if you had the money.

we weren't really looking at, hey, how much are we spending this season? What's our goal to sell? Will we be able to buy this inventory? Because the thing about clothing and beauty is you're purchasing that inventory potentially two to three months before you're selling it. So you have to be really smart from a cashflow perspective. And then also inventory management perspective,

Like, are you selling through the inventory? Like some things might seem real popular. Your sales might be really high, but maybe you purchased too much inventory. So finding that balance and understanding what you need to do to be successful. - Could you speak to some of the biggest challenges to your growth? - Making sure that we are spending our money efficiently and effectively in order to meet the need.

And so one of the things that my team did, like, hey, who are our biggest vendors? Who are we working with the most on the merchandising side? And let's see if we can get more favorable terms. So we're matching that cash outflow with the cash inflow. The other thing that is one of our biggest challenges, really just in growth in general and in Pink Lily and the business, is understanding trends.

You're not always going to get it right. You're going to purchase something, you're going to think it's going to be in for the season, and it's not going to be in for that season. So how are you going to either style that inventory so that a customer wants it, repurpose that inventory, or have a sale and, you know, sell it for cost? And that sounds like a much more creative influence you would have on those types of things that people might expect from a director of finance, right? Yeah.

It's really interesting to be in this line of business. When I started, I'm definitely not what I would call fashion forward.

So I had a best friend who had a daughter that knew all about influencers. I'm asking her about it because I have no clue. And so now it's like, I understand influencers. My daughter thinks I'm super cool because I work at Pink Lily. And, you know, I am in the finance side. So it's like I have the nerd in me, but then I work at a super cool company. And so it's amazing how different this is than any other position I have. I feel like I'd always just...

been kind of that accounting nerd that kept to myself, did financials, maybe did payroll, worked on payables. And here it's like I'm exposed to all areas of the business because we are such a small team that we really have to work together. And it's good to get ideas from different people and different perspectives.

Are there any other growing pains that you've, I guess, witnessed and helped navigate or lead the company through from your perspective? When I came to our primary warehouse location, we had just doubled the size of it. We quickly realized we didn't have enough racking for inventory. So we had this huge capital project to invest.

increased our racking here at the primary location. Before that racking was even complete, our growth was so rapid that we were looking at leasing another facility a half a mile down the road that's three times the size. So really our growth has just been a big issue from a space perspective and making sure that we're using our space as efficiently as possible. Could you tell me a little about some of the goals for the future of this company over the next five years?

One of our primary goals and one of the things that we're really looking at right now is to make Pink Lily a household name in the United States. We are very centrally located in the Midwest and the southern states where it's warmer. We have a lot of resort lines.

Swimsuits are very popular. So really just connecting with people all across the United States is one of our main goals. And I think one of the most brilliant things that our marketing team does is they capitalize on what is happening in the social media industry right now. We have an ambassador program where basically anybody, it doesn't matter what their following is, they're

They can post Pink Lily Clothes, they can post their link and they get commissions. And it's brilliant from my perspective as a finance person, we're not paying a fixed fee to an influencer because all of these micro influencers are just everywhere.

in social media and they'll post, they get their commissions and it's a win-win from our perspective. Right now, we have one retail store that's located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And one of the things that we're looking to do to connect with our customer more is to expand our retail store location. So that's

A very exciting thing that we're doing now, obviously very big from the financial perspective, but we hope to open what we will consider like our main retail store in Nashville next year. Could you share any more about kind of, I guess, what you're excited about or how you're feeling about the future for this company and your role at it? Absolutely.

As we have built our team, and we have such a strong team right now, and we're very dedicated, I really feel like we are going to be able to grow and connect more with our customer and become that brand that hopefully people think of in their everyday style and in their beauty needs as cute, affordable fashion that makes them feel confident.

How would you say, based on your experience, that the role of a CFO or a director of finance might be changing or evolving? One of the things that's expected of CFOs, director of finances, in this current environment is they can no longer just report numbers through a financial package. It's very important to be able to go to board meetings, to talk about the growth within the company, talk about things that are going well, things that aren't going well, and to help the team

make decisions based on what they put together from a financial perspective to help the company grow. So that's all for our discussion on growth agents. This custom episode is produced by Fastco and Inc. Studios in partnership with SAP. I'm Matt Robertson. Our producer is Avery Miles and our editor is Nicholas Torres.