Richmond's own locally and nationally recognized Need Supply Co. just got another feather in their cap. The RVA fashion hub's creative director Gabriel Ricioppo was interviewed in a long-form story about the boutique's success and how they've managed to do so much with so little. Here's an excerpt:
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Racked: Going back to the start of the e-commerce site 2008, that was a harsh time in the American economy. What was your thought process back then? What did you expect to come out of e-commerce site?
GR: The economy was suffering and it was a really tough time in retail. The way we did it though—with the store already being in place and with my background and everything—we didn’t outsource anything. We didn’t have to hire companies to design things for us. I had a design studio at the time—that’s what I did—so that small little studio basically became Need’s in-house studio. And having that and being able to leverage that allowed us to do what we did at a really, really low cost.
I talk about how there’s a couple different ways companies are started. We came from the bottom up. We just slowly have grown, and we funded it all ourselves. And then there’s companies—really great ones like, you know, a Mr. Porter—but they started, obviously, at the top, were funded, and had all the money they needed to start their business. So we were the opposite of that. We were this little guy that kind of just started one step at a time. And I would tell my friends, “just wait ‘til next season, just wait ‘til next” season because I knew this great product was coming in. We did it very slowly, month after month.
And there wasn’t a heavy, heavy expectation right away. There wasn’t a we had to hit certain numbers, or we had to do this or that. It was all kind of positive.
You can read the rest of Need Supply Co.'s Gabriel Ricioppo: 'Do the Most With the Least' HERE