After Many Years in Corporate, She Finally Found the Courage to Quit & Start Her Dream Denim Brand - Grace Na, Founder of Pistola

Behind Her Empire

Grace Na is the founder and creative director of Pistola, a LA-based premium denim label offering contemporary ready-to-wear collections designed by women for women who are going places.

Grace started her career in fashion as a planner at the department store Mervyn’s and quickly climbed the ranks in the industry, eventually landing an executive role at BCBG. Along the way, she realized there was a big gap in the market for denim designed for women that was stylish, functional, and accessible. She left her corporate career and launched Pistola in 2013 to fill that void. Over a decade later, Pistola is now an eight-figure business with a growing direct-to-consumer channel and has placement in top retailers like Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Shopbop.

In this episode, Grace shares her journey growing up with immigrant parents, the valuable lessons she learned, and how early career rejections led her to pursue a job in the fashion industry. We discuss how she ideated the concept for Pistola and the key factors that fueled its year-over-year growth since they launched. Grace also reflects on the brand’s hypergrowth during the pandemic and the many challenges that came with it. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of self-care in sustaining the life of a founder and mother of three, as well as the leadership skills needed to manage a growing team. We also chat about how to build an authentic brand, what people get wrong in entrepreneurship, the importance of community when building your business, and so much more.

In this episode, we’ll talk to Grace about:

* Grace’s upbringing and early fascination with fashion. [03:07]

* Career path: from finance to fashion. [07:07]

* How early career experiences shaped Grace’s entrepreneurial mindset. [10:52]

* The first steps in building her brand. [17:47]

* Taking the leap and going all-in with Pistola. [21:09]

* Building self-confidence in the early stage of business. [23:42]

* Challenges faced in running a family business. [27:26]

* How to market & create brand authenticity. [32:45]

* Transitioning from wholesale to direct-to-consumer. [35:21]

* Navigating hypergrowth during the pandemic. [37:55]

* The importance of self-care. [42:01]

* Key entrepreneurial lesson: nothing in life is perfect. [49:45]

* Pistola's spotlight: Greta Gerwig wearing the pink jumpsuit on the Barbie set. [52:22]

* Lessons learned in leadership and resilience. [55:05]

* Future plans for Pistola. [59:49]

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Follow Yasmin:

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yasminknouri/

* Website: https://www.behindherempire.com/

Follow Grace:

* Website: https://www.pistoladenim.com/

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pistoladenim/

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grey_slim/

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