AMSALE ABERRA
Business strategy: Offer a unique quality product and control distribution and growth.
by Cassandra Hayes
To many new or about-to-be brides, Vera Wang is the standard-bearer in simple and elegant wedding dresses. But before there was Wang, there was Amsale.
The custom-order bridal house nestled in New York's fashion district is the brainchild of its founder and president, Amsale Aberra, who started her business on sheer gut instinct and necessity. While planning her 1985 wedding to former HBO programming executive Neil Brown, Aberra surveyed all the rhinestone, bead and lace laden gowns that abounded and saw nothing that whetted her appetite for a minimalist bridal gown. This prompted the Ethiopian native to design her own. A year later, she turned something old into something new.
By shunning the overly ornate wedding gown designs of the past and bringing forth classic, clean and sophisticated versions, she fulfilled the wedding dress dreams of many women. “There were questions in my mind about whether there was a demand for such a dress. I thought, was I the only one who wanted a simple gown?” says 44-year-old Aberra. “I took no formal surveys, but asked married people and those in the bridal industry who showed an interest.” It all began with a $13,000 full-page ad in Bride's Magazine featuring only a photo of one of her dresses, her name and phone number. The phones rang off the hook the week the magazine hit the stands. In 1986, Aberra—with the business insight of her Harvard M.B.A./J.D. husband and $50,000 of their own money—launched Amsale.
Aberra, who now has an 11-year-old daughter named Rachel, developed her penchant for stylish clothes as a child growing up in Addis Ababa. She and her sister regularly made their own clothes. The daughter of an Ethiopian government minister, Aberra left home in 1973 to study political science at Green Mountain Junior College in Vermont. When the Ethiopian government was toppled only months after her arrival in the U.S., her father was imprisoned, abruptly ending her flow of funds.
She moved to Boston, which has a large Ethiopian population, and worked several odd jobs to raise money to continue her education. In 1981, she completed her studies at Boston State College and then pursued her love of fashion by enrolling in New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. After graduating in 1982 with a degree in fashion design, Aberra became a design assistant at Harve Benard. Her defining moment came in 1990 with her first account with the country's largest wedding dress retailer, Kleinfeld's in Brooklyn, New York. “I remember the excitement of the merchant who ordered all 12 pieces of the collection and said that if I didn't have the money to fill additional orders, they would provide it,” recalls Aberra.
“We partner only with the stores that put the customer first and have a history of high-quality servicing,” she says. Customers order gowns— which range in price from $2,000 to $4,000— from the retailer, who then puts in the order with Amsale. When the dress arrives at the store, the retailer tailors it to the customer's specifications.
“Out of 12 vendors in our bridal salon, Amsale ranks among the top three,” says Beth Sperling, bridal manager at Bergdorf Goodman in New York. “Her clean, simple designs and rich fabrics appeal to our type of bride in her late 20s to early 30s, and we've seen sales double over the past two years.” Producing quality garment is paramount at Amsale, where Aberra designs all the gowns herself. Her 46 employees work out of two floors of a fashion district loft and do everything from cutting the 10 yards of Duchess satin, four-ply crepe or fine silks that can go into each gown to shipping the garments to retailers.
Today, with 65 accounts in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, Amsale projects sales of $15 million for 1998 and plans to maintain a steady annual 30% growth rate for the next year. This is a conservative estimate considering the response to the eveningwear collection she previewed in Hollywood last October. Within one month of hitting the stores, her new collection—which ranges in price from $500 to $4,000—had a 55% sell-through. Several of her pieces were also immediately scooped up by celebrities such as Kim Basinger, Vivica Fox and Vanessa Williams.
Despite the celebrity draw, gaining widespread popularity and fame is not Aberra's focus. She will fill some 6,000 orders next year for retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Her strategy, just like her gowns, is simple: steady growth and exclusivity. “We don't want to grow beyond our means,” states Aberra. In fact, on average no more than two retailers in a big city carry her dresses, hence the Amsale brand maintains its quality and cachet.
Early last year, Aberra opened a 1,500-sq.-ft. boutique on New York's Madison Avenue. “We always wanted a presence there, and it will become our ‘laboratory' where we can find out what the customer wants in order to help us with future collections.” Aberra does not offer the same designs in her boutique that are available in retail stores. Her advice for fledgling entrepreneurs: “You must be committed and do it with passion. If you don't enjoy it, get out.”
