Chris Burch is best known as the fashion mogul who co-founded, with his then-wife, Tory Burch, the Tory Burch apparel line, worn by A-listers such as Michelle Obama and Gwyneth Paltrow. Now, the venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur wants to add style to a different category: office supplies.
Burch, with Ken Seiff, founder of Bluefly.com, and Noah Maffitt, a former executive at OfficeDepot.com, has been developing Poppin, an online store stocked with affordable yet well-designed office supplies in a palette of 20 bright colors.
Unlike Staples and other big-box office-supply stores, Poppin, which recently launched an invitation-only beta test, designs and makes its products. It also has a more personal approach to customer service. Customers are assigned a concierge, whom they can contact directly by phone or e-mail. "If one of our pens leaks on a customer's Chanel jacket, her customer service agent will have the power to…show more content… Again, it comes down to trust. If you hide something from your investors just to get the cash up front, it’s bound to go very poorly for you when the investors find out the truth. To begin, you need a sound and comprehensive business plan that’ll show your investors not only what the projections are for their return on investment but also how you plan to get there. You also have to be honest about how long it’ll take them to make back their investment to begin making a profit or find a positive exit.
Be Diverse
You will be more successful if you have the perspective of people from both different industries and walks of life on your investing team. Each person has unique experiences and can contribute something different to the enterprise. Also, when you’re diversified, you show that you have the faith of people in multiple industries, which will make it easier to attract new investment in the future, should that become
