Stacey Fraser: Founder & CEO of Pink Chicken

Episode 838

On today’s episode, we welcome Stacey Fraser, Founder and CEO of Pink Chicken — a brand that proves you don’t need to overcomplicate things to build something meaningful. Sometimes, it starts with a needle, some fabric, and a point of view.
What began during nap-time sewing sessions for her daughters has turned into a multi-channel lifestyle brand with 400+ wholesale partners and a growing retail footprint. Not bad for something that wasn’t supposed to be a “business” at first.
In this episode, Stacey breaks down what it really takes to scale a brand rooted in creativity without sanding off the edges that made people love it in the first place. We get into building with instinct vs. data, why retail still matters (yes, even now), and how to stay disciplined while keeping things joyful. She also shares the reality of going from corporate fashion to founder life—and why sometimes stepping away is exactly what leads you to something bigger.
If you care about building brands that actually connect—or you’re sitting on an idea you haven’t acted on yet—this one’s worth your time.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be, we just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Have you ever stopped to think about how some of the most successful brands don’t actually start with a business plan, but with a moment? So our next guest didn’t just set out to build a fashion brand. She followed a passion for color and storytelling and amazing textiles, including the one that she’s wearing right now, that started in her childhood and turned into something much, much bigger and in this case, brighter. But what began as sewing pieces together during her daughter’s nap times evolved into a lifestyle brand with a loyal following, hundreds of wholesale partners and a growing retail footprint. And today we’re going to hear how Stacey Fraser built a brand rooted in joy, creativity and family, and what it takes to scale that vision without losing what made it so special, and I’m so excited to have her here today. Stacey is the founder and CEO of Pink Chicken, and she’s based in New York City. We were just chatting about how she was walking on the river today. I missed that place so much, so it’s so much fun. So Stacy, welcome to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to finally meet you.

Stacey Fraser 2:04
You as well, Kara, thank you so much for having me. And that was such a nice intro. It touched me. It was very nice, yeah, but it’s really great to be here. Thank you.

Kara Goldin 2:14
Awesome. So for listeners just discovering Pink Chicken, how do you describe the brand and what makes it truly different.

Stacey Fraser 2:25
So Pink Chicken was or is, is all about prints and color. We design all of our prints and patterns in house, and we always kind of look to the past for our inspiration. So you’ll get a feeling of a vintage vibe, and it has a bohemian ease to it, so it makes it really easy for kids to get dressed. And we always like to say, no fuss. Always stylish, because it’s not fussy. It’s really comfortable kids clothing that kids and moms love. And we also like to say it’s a spirit of a sunny day, as in everything that we design. So hopefully you feel confident in the pieces that we make.

Kara Goldin 3:02
So I read a story about the early days when you were making the move to actually start Pink Chicken, actually, before we even get into that. How did you come up with the name Pink Chicken?

Stacey Fraser 3:16
It’s a Pink Chicken. I have to give that credit to my husband, but it was, it was something we used to say in our house when our daughter was little. She was, I think, four at the time, and it was how we got her to eat chicken. So it was like, what’s for dinner? Pink Chickens for dinner. So it meant something to our family. And it’s incredible that, like, 20 years later, almost 20 years later, it’s the brand that it is. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 3:41
I love it. So take me back to those early days when you were sewing during nap times. Did you think it could become a business and the business that it is today?

Stacey Fraser 3:53
Yeah, you know, I I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t imagining that for myself. I was had spent many years in corporate design, like I worked at Ralph Lauren and Baby Gap Tommy Hilfiger, Old Navy, and we were working like crazy hours back then. It was like back when we were 60 hour work weeks, we were on a plane all the time. And I was really hoping, after my second daughter was born, that I could create this, like little collection on the side that could fuel my creativity, and maybe, you know, earn some money for our family. And it just, I think I didn’t have a business plan in mind, and I think I’ve seen where you call yourself an accidental entrepreneur. I feel like that’s a little bit my story, my story as well. So, yeah, I didn’t set out. I didn’t have a business plan in front of me. I just kind of started creating pieces that I really loved and and made a few dresses for my daughters. And then people stopped, started saying, like, Oh, where did you get those dresses? And, you know, then I started thinking, well, maybe, maybe there’s something. Here. Maybe I’ll just do a little wholesale business and and have this on the side. And then little by little, I was like, Wait a minute. I think there’s a bigger opportunity here. And that’s when we really I started paying a little more attention.

Kara Goldin 5:13
So you came from big corporate. Did you always think you were going to be an entrepreneur? Did you always like think I we have a lot of of university students and business school students who listen to this podcast as well, and I often get that question myself, Where did you always know you were going to be an entrepreneur? Or did it take actually working in a corporate environment to get the courage, to get the idea that you could actually go and launch your brand,

Stacey Fraser 5:47
yes, I mean, and I had, I hadn’t, you know, back when I started, 20 years ago, there wasn’t entrepreneurship. Wasn’t as as talked about. There weren’t as many entrepreneurs. There weren’t phones. Back then, there was not social media, so it was less of a something that I thought I wanted to reach for. And I really, I really enjoyed working for bigger brands in corporate. I learned so much, and I love, like problem solving and like how to really dig in and understand your customer and design to a brand, and how to elevate and reach your customers, and so I learned a lot in corporate design, and I feel like that really gave me the tools and the experience to be able to start Pink Chicken, but I didn’t have this like, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I can’t wait to start my own brand. That wasn’t really what was in my mind when I started,

Kara Goldin 6:39
and when you first launched Pink Chicken, how many SKUs Did you launch with? And was there a focus on one thing in particular that you felt like you needed to nail before you actually continued to add SKUs to the mix?

Stacey Fraser 6:56
Yeah. So we started with three dresses, which is just so crazy. I actually had saved this fabric over the years and made these three dresses myself. I made these like protos, and I took a pink pillowcase that I had at home also and made it into a little garment bag and started like bringing these dresses around. And somebody introduced me to Stephanie Greenfield from scoop, and I think was my friend Anna, who introduced us. And I went to show her these three dresses, and she put an order in on the spot. And so I was like, oh gosh, now I have to, like, figure out how to make this, like, this is, this is a business, but it was really amazing, because being in scoop as my first wholesale account really gave the business credibility. And so when we went to do our first trade show, they’re like, Oh, what, what stores are you in? Like, oh, well, we’re in scoop. And it was like, Oh, okay. Like, let me take a deeper look. But yeah, it started with just three dresses, sizes 246, and now we have, each season, we have hundreds of SKUs and 1010, sizes, baby girls, boys, women’s, lots,

Kara Goldin 8:13
a lot of different ones.

Stacey Fraser 8:16
Yeah, yeah,

Kara Goldin 8:17
I miss scoop. So for sure, I mean, such a great, such a great brand, and what a great, you know, connection to make and place to kind of launch it. What was the point where you decided then to launch with the the adults, the mommy pieces as well?

Stacey Fraser 8:39
Yeah, I would say it was, you know, maybe it was, like 10 years ago. I would like, we’d start getting emails from customers saying, like, God, I wish I had that in my size, or I’d love to match my mom. And then I think Instagram kind of came around where people were showing a lot more of those family photos, kind of through social media, and it really kind of became a thing. And so I think one of our things that we do really well is we listen to our customer, and we’re really here to serve them. So when they said we want this, this is also in a girl’s dress, but if we want to match our daughters, we were listening to them. And so it’s really become a big part of our business. And it’s like such a privilege to be a part of those, like, joyful family moments, because there’s, there’s a connection with a mother and a daughter, and also we do for sons, also shirts and like, there’s something really fun imaginable about matching, matching clothes and taking, you know, and then capturing it within a family, family photo. Yeah, that’s like 10 years ago, I think

Kara Goldin 9:47
10 years ago, when you launched that is there a season that is kind of the, the season that you feel like you really have to nail, or obviously, with with clothing. There’s. A seasonality to it, not every industry and category, but for sure, in the apparel industry. But is there kind of a season that you feel like really is representative of who Pink Chicken is?

Stacey Fraser 10:15
Gosh, we do so many seasons. I mean, I always want each collection to be I we always strive to like surprise and delight our community, and we think, you know, a lot of what our customers buy us for is special moments. So whether it’s first day of school outfits, so this is our back to school collection, we need to nail it, because they’re depending on us to have a really fantastic dress to put their child in for their first day of school. Holidays are also really a big, a huge thing for us, especially around the Christmas hanukk season. Like, that’s probably one of our most anticipated collections of the year, I think. And so like, we really like, there feels like pressure of like, we really want to like, excite them, and it surprised them. So holiday, we also Valentine’s Day, Easter, we do a really about to launch a really big red, white and blue collection. So, and then springs, I mean, I’m like naming all the all the collections, but they all, they all, they all mean something to us. Spring break is a big thing, so we have a big swim collection. So, yeah, so I would say all of them.

Kara Goldin 11:24
No, I love it. Your swimwear is just adorable, too. And I love so many pieces. I mean, you’ve just really, really nailed it. What, what has been some of the biggest challenges of scaling from, you know, just an idea here, you had been inside of large companies so you knew how to create and make I’ve interviewed, yeah, some founders who, who you know, had no experience in the apparel industry. That wasn’t really your issue. But surely there was challenges along the way in growing your own company.

Stacey Fraser 11:59
It’s so many, how much time do you have? Yeah, I mean, and one thing I should mention is that we have never taken in any outside investment, so the company has been bootstrapped along the way. So, yeah, I would say there’s a lot of even just financial hurdles. When you look at the production cycle and you know, you have to produce your goods before you sell them. And so, you know, in the beginning, we had to pay for everything up front before we then got the goods here, and then we were able to sell them. And now that we’ve gotten a little bit, we’ve been with the same vendors for, you know, 1015, years. And so we’ve been able to have a really strong, trusted relationship now where we can kind of move some of those payments out. But I think that having those cash flow discipline early on, when we started gave us really good financial discipline so that some that’s one strength of being bootstrapped, but another, another part is, you know, like being able to hire skilled headcount. And so it’s like, what comes first? Like, you need, you need somebody in marketing, but like, you don’t have the budget for it yet, but the person, if, when they come, will help drive revenue so that you have the budget. So it’s really, like, it’s a little inching along when you’re bootstrapped, and I think that we have really thoughtfully added people to the team, and always hired for outside skills that I don’t have, which we didn’t hire our first marketing person until about 12 years, I mean, 12 years into the company. So it was all just, isn’t that crazy, like that was one area, I mean, that I didn’t have the expertise I’d always been on the design and the business side of of a company, and so we started with a consultant, and that’s what we’ve done a lot, too, is before we hire somebody full time, as we hire consultants to help us through, set up kind of processes and efficiencies and teach us about something, and then they help us hire, hire somebody. So we did that. We’ve done that along the way with planning, marketing operations a few areas

Kara Goldin 14:14
along the way, you’ve also used community a lot in in really growing the brand. What do you think has been the most effective way that you’ve used community to really grow Pink Chicken?

Stacey Fraser 14:29
Yeah. I mean, I think that our community has a connection to us, because they see that we’re authentic. I think that we really, truly care about our customer. And I makes me, like, tear up every time I think about it, but we have a real connection to the customer. We care so much about them and put giving confidence to little girls and boys. And I think that i i hope that our our community, can feel that, and I think that’s another thing about. Not having outside investors, is that everything we do is kind of just kind of from the heart, like we don’t have an outsized kind of advertising spend that we have to go and we buy these customers, and we’ve never really paid influencers. It’s always been people who’ve connected to the brand, and I think then they given more authentic representation of what the brand means to them. And I feel like, I know people say authenticity a lot, but truly it’s, I think, what sets us apart from the other kids brands

Kara Goldin 15:35
definitely. What did you get wrong early on that you do differently today? It’s funny, we had the founder of Bowlin branch on and Ed, he answered really quickly. He said bed skirts. That he always thought that bed skirts were like the thing that every we need to, like, make sure every bed has a bed skirt. But what he didn’t realize is, like, people don’t really change the bedskirts? Yeah, that’s so funny. Ever I know I thought it was so funny, and that

Stacey Fraser 16:08
is so funny.

Kara Goldin 16:09
Did you have any bedskirt stories along the way that you thought for sure that people would just everyone needs this?

Stacey Fraser 16:17
Yeah? I think, you know, yes, so many things I can think of. I can think of so many styles that didn’t hit when they when we thought that they were but one, one thing, we used to have a tween line. So as so when I started Pink Chicken, my daughters were one and five, and as they grew older and got into the tween age, they were kind of growing out of Pink Chicken. So we started this tween line, and we called it poulet Roset, which we thought was such a great idea at the time. We even like copyrighted we got the website. We did all these things that didn’t work. I think that tween market is a really hard market to capture, especially, you know, not knowing that you we shouldn’t really be changing the name of the brand. But, yeah, I would say that was one thing that nobody really wanted back then from us. Now our girls now we we increased our size run to size 12, and then our women starts at an extra small so our girls actually can transition right from our girls line into our women’s line. So there wasn’t a need for this, like, quirky teen thing. I love it, yeah, not to mention the fact that you’re building another brand right when you’re calling it a different name, so that which is a whole other, you know, expense, and, and, and really, it’s almost like another startup to It’s like another startup. You’re, you’re so right, and I didn’t really know that at the time. I mean, luckily, we didn’t spend too much time on it, so, but I think it was a few seasons. But, yeah, definitely it was a great if you know, how else am I going to learn about that? That was really great way to learn. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 18:05
definitely. So when you think about the growth of Pink Chicken, I mean, you have over 400 wholesale partners. You’ve got your direct to consumer business. You just, you have just amazing distribution, but apparel is hard, right? What do you think about the future and ways to make sure that Pink Chicken continues to grow and stand out?

Stacey Fraser 18:33
Yeah, I think that, you know, if we stay true to who we are, like, that’s always, that’s always what we think about, like and keeping our customer close, right? Like making sure that we’re listening to them. I think you can never go wrong when you listen to your customer. But we’ve really we opened in the last two years, we opened another six retail stores, so we have 11 retail stores now, and we really believe that customers are craving in real life experiences, and our stores are like little community hubs. And it’s it’s amazing we do. We hold events there. We really make our stores welcoming So kids, we put things on lower levels, so kids can touch and play, and moms have fun. And so I think that the retail rollout is going to continue to be a part of our growth. We’ve really finding success there, as well as online, like we want to meet our customer where they are, they’re not only stopping shopping in store or only shopping online. So they might see something online and pick it up in store, they might see something in store and then pick it up online. And I would say Wholesale is also a really big part of our business. Like we love our wholesale partners, and they’re so much a part of our our growth. And so they’re like little mini like grassroots marketing too, for the brand, it kind of helps us as well. And we just. And we’re in also in Bloomingdale’s, and we just onboarded Dillards, which we’re really excited about this spring. So, yeah, kind of like really looking at growth through all channels ahead. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 20:12
I love it. So I’ve heard you talk about everyday joy and in your brand. So what does that mean to you, and how do you translate that into product?

Stacey Fraser 20:23
Yeah, I think that, you know, when we’re designing, we we think about the little the little girls wearing our dresses, and like is, Oh, do we have enough dresses that have sequins on them? Do we have enough to have shimmer to them? Do we have are they twirl worthy? Like we really kind of, and we and we look at what, what has been resonating with customers, too. So we try to, we’ve tried to cover all the bases so that our our girly girls get what they want. Our kind of we have these LeMay dresses that are kind of like a shimmery gold, silver, different colors. We make sure that we have them for her. And actually one of the best stories is, I remember, this was probably 10 years ago, and we go, we love to be out in Amagansett in the Hamptons. We have a store there that was our, actually our first retail store. But I remember seeing a little girl in one of our long sleeved LeMay dresses, which LeMay is like, like nylon, like it doesn’t breathe. And it was like an 8590 degree day, and she was waiting in the line at the beach hut to get something. And I thought she must really feel great in that dress, because it’s so hot out, she must have been sweating. And I just thought I always think of, you know, we always think of the kids and how to to make them feel great. So I don’t know if that answered your question that,

Kara Goldin 21:47
no, I love, yeah, that’s great. So when you think about the the I guess it’s the summer that’s coming up for for your line, is there any pieces that that you would recommend say you’re not in the store when somebody’s making this decision that you just are so excited about that everyone needs to have.

Stacey Fraser 22:11
Yes. Well, so we launch our, oh, I guess it will have launched, but we have our summer delivery, which is a red, white and blue themed delivery that’s great for Memorial Day weekend and and Fourth of July that’s coming out. So that’s going to be really exciting. There’s some really fun conversational prints and that. And then we always do this Draper collection, which is, this is from our Every Mother Counts the shirt I’m wearing collection, but it’s an Indian block print our our Draper collection that we just launched, also is just made of all Indian block print. So it’s really perfect for the summertime. It’s really light and easy and breezy, and you can lots of Mommy and Me pieces. We have a really sweet collaboration that we’re launching in July that I’m excited about. And then towards the end of the summer, we’re going to be celebrating our 20 year anniversary. So we have so many fun events like ways to kind of show our community how grateful we are for their support, our wholesale partners, our team. So that’s something to look out for. We’re really we can’t wait.

Kara Goldin 23:18
I love it well, Stacey, thank you so much for joining today. I love your story of building Pink Chicken, and it really, I mean, you’re a brand that is has grown really nicely and is a solid brand, and is definitely something that really has, has a story behind it, and something personal, but quality and recognizable. Definitely, I’ve been in that am against store, and it’s so terrific, and you’ve managed to scale it into something so meaningful. And I love that you’ve done it without outside capital. I’m sure there’s a lot of founders who are listening to that are like, How in the world did she do that? You could probably have a whole other session on that. But everyone, for everyone listening, definitely check out Pink Chicken. It’s it is such a great brand online, or go into one of their stores, and we’ll definitely see you next time on the Kara Goldin show. Thank you so much Stacey for joining us today.

Stacey Fraser 24:25
Yeah. Thank you so much, Kara. I really appreciate it.

Kara Goldin 24:27
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and, of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book on. Daunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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