Transcript
0:05 it's a great honor to present to you Miss Tory Burch Tory Burch as CEO and designer of Tory Burch you opened a small Manhattan Boutique in 2004 that has since grown to a global business and brand with more than freestanding stores and specialty stores in online area at Tory burch.com as one of
0:37 America's Premier fashion entrepreneurs you've earned Awards and accolades from magazines such as Glamour and Vanity Fair and you've been named as one of Forbes most powerful women in the world after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in art history you then moved to New York City working in public relations and marketing to prestigious American
1:08 designers including Ralph luren and Vera Wang you then took the risk in 2004 to set out on your own your journey as an entrepreneur which began from your kitchen table has now grown into an influential international company and celebrated brand with more than 2,000 employees and a style that that cannot be imitated as your business has grown your commitment to thinking and acting with an entrepreneurial mindset remains at
1:38 the core of your personal and company Philosophy you've created a corporate culture that prioritizes Innovation the use of technology and social media to engage your customers to ensure that their input is incorporated into your vision and your inspiration for your company's future a key part of that vision is using your success to help others by combining social responsibility with the power of Entrepreneurship you're a dedicated
2:10 philanthropist launching the Tory Burch foundation in 2009 to support promising women entrepreneurs and their families across the United States Babson College has been fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with you in partnership with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses program extending access to entrepreneurship education mentoring and financing to small businesses to promote economic growth job creation and social value today we honor celebrate and
2:44 welcome you as a member of the Babson College Community by virtue of the power granted to me by Babson College and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and by the authority given given to me by the Board of Trustees I do hereby confer upon you Tori bur the honorary degree of doctor of Humane letters with all the rights Privileges and responsibilities here and everywhere appertaining to this degree
3:19 congratulations ladies and Gentlemen please join me in congratulating Tory bur and I welcome her to the podium thank you wow thank you so much for the warm welcome my fellow entrepreneurs it is a privileged to be among the first to congratulate you for completing your time at Babson I'm especially honored here because I've had the privilege of working with the Babson community and I'm Bas in awe of what you do there are
3:51 many incredible colleges that teach business but there's only one school that has focused its curriculum on entrepreneurship for the past 35 years there's only one school whose gradu whose undergraduate and graduate programs are ranked number one in entrepreneurship and there is only one school that has literally written the book on the new entrepreneurial leader the path you have embarked on is
4:21 truly exciting it can also be incredibly challenging here's what Babson has taught you being an entrepreneur isn't just a job title it isn't just about starting a company it's about a state of mind it's about seeing connections others can't seizing opportunities others won't and forging new directions that others haven't it's about being entrepreneurial wherever you are and in whatever you do it's about having the courage to give
4:53 into a passion for an idea that makes your heart race and if it doesn't scare you the idea isn't big enough here's what I've learned we may live in an age of instant messaging instant gratification and Instagram but there is no way to Short Circuit the path to success it takes hard work tenacity and a lot of patience there are many things you can do overnight you can write a decent paper you can put finishing touches on a
5:25 fashion show I hear you can even have a pretty good time at Roger's Pub but there is no such thing as an overnight success it is a myth that glosses over what being an entrepreneur is all about as bizone one of the founders of twitters put it timing perseverance and 10 years of really hard work will eventually make you look like an overnight success
6:00 the good news is that you're if you're willing to pursue your passion put in that hard work and believe in yourself you will succeed that's something I didn't know when I was your age when I was sitting where you are today I had no idea what I wanted to do I had grown up on a farm outside of Philadelphia I was a tomboy spent all my time outdoors with my three brothers and my interest in fashion was limited to say the least in
6:28 fact I didn't put on a dress and till my junior year for prom but fashion was definitely in my DNA my parents had impeccable style I channeled their love for beauty into a love for art and design and I went to University of Pennsylvania to study art history I applied for many jobs my senior year of college but there was one designer a Yugoslavian designer that my mother wore his clothes his name was zorin and three days before graduation I
6:57 cold called him and I said can I have a job he said yes on one condition that I had to start in a week so when I was sitting where you were all that I was thinking about is how to find an apartment in New York it was a whole new world Zoran was a true eccentric he had a black beard long enough to make the Red Sox team very jealous he was a minimalist everything in his office was white there were no
7:23 chairs no desks there were masks on the floor and the Vodka started flowing at 10:00 a.m. as his assistant I did everything from getting coffee to running interference people would come and visit him and zor would run and hide in the bathroom and I'd have to pretend he wasn't there it was a fantastic entree into the fashion industry and I was exposed to all elements of a designer's world from designing a collection to managing press to learning about the business side
7:52 fashion quickly became my passion while at Zoran I was offered a job at Harper's Bazaar from there I moved to work in PR and marketing at Ralph Lauren and then Vera Wang and then for a Spanish company named Lev an lvmh brand what I learned is what you what bapson has taught all of you even if you're not yet an entrepreneur you can be entrepreneurial in everything that you do you can if you view each stop as an
8:24 opportunity to learn something there is always something you will take away from every experience while at Lou I was offered to be job of President around the same time I found out that I was pregnant with my third son I realized I couldn't do that job and be the kind of mom that I wanted to be so I had to make a very difficult situ decision and that was giving up my career to be a full-time mom it was
8:49 very hard but I knew that it would be part of my life again it was during that time that I began developing the concept for my company it's started when I noticed a void in my own closet it was a pretty simple idea classic pieces that didn't cost a fortune it wasn't it ended up not just being a void in my closet it ended up being a white space in the market I started working out of my apartment with
9:15 a team of two who helped me turn my concept into a reality around my kitchen table for two years like most startups we had to fund raise I asked a lot of people I knew to invest including some people who did didn't have a tremendous amount of money so I told them only invest if you're prepared to lose it I was so scared in the end over 100 people invested with that money we ra with that
9:41 money and a personal investment we set up an office in Hong Kong for sourcing and production and I traveled there often when I was home we talked every evening given the time difference I was on the phone till 3:00 and 4 in the morning on those nights my definition of success was just not falling asleep on the other end we also leased a small space on a low rent corner of Manhattan and we ordered we had enough money for
10:08 to do our first collection and to put products in it to fill it I was warned time and time again not to start with retail everyone had an opinion of what I should do and what I shouldn't there were a lot of naysayers who thought I should start with a wholesale partner build the brand from there but I wanted a unique experience I wanted to do something different I wanted to Boutique to be warm and inviting retail was very
10:32 minimalist at the time it was also unusual to launch with multiple categories it was also unusual to start with e-commerce 10 years ago but from day one it was a LIF it was a lifestyle concept and brand we opened our first St in February 2004 during New York Fashion Week my stepdaughters and I worked through the night we opened the store without the doors they hadn't arrived I was afraid no one would come thankfully it was so jam-packed that
11:03 women were changing in the middle of the store my brothers were thrilled they had no it was it was it was almost as if we were giving things away by 6: p.m. we were sold through most of our inventory a few months later I got a call from Oprah Winfrey I thought one of my brothers was playing a joke on me so I said sure I'll miss spring break and come on your show it was 8 months after
11:28 we started the business it turned out it was true and she picked us for the next big thing we went on her show the next day we had 8 million hits on our website the media called us an overnight success I guess if you don't count the 20,000 hours we put into building the business up to up until that point or the combined hundreds of thousands of hours that we all had together and and months of learning the
11:56 business today we are global brand with more than 120 stores we have a presence in 3,000 boutiques worldwide from the beginning one of the reasons I wanted to start a company was so that I could start a foundation social responsibility was always part of the business plan that was always that was not always viewed as a positive there were many people who to told me never to mention the words social responsibility in the same sentence as
12:27 business this obviously only made me more determined I knew our foundation would benefit women and children one thing that we thought that could benefit as well is the way we learned about startups and how to build a business so we wanted to do the same in 2009 we launched the foundation to support the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs and their families it has been an incredibly meaningful it's been incredibly meaningful not only to me but to our
12:58 customers and the employees and our business partners they all care about helping women and and giving back in 2012 we partnered with Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses to offer a nine-week Women program for women entrepreneurs with no formal business education I'm proud to say that the school that helped us design that program was Babson
13:30 this January in partnership with Bank of America we launched Elizabeth Street Capital it was named for the location of our first store through this initiative we are providing women entrepreneurs with access to lowcost Capital and the mentoring support they need to launch and scale their businesses I do hope some of you will come to us when you're ready today it has been 10 years since we launched and in many ways I think we're just beginning the one thing I can say we never could
14:03 have gotten here overnight one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten was from my parents they always taught me to think of negativity as noise that I should believe in myself and what I'm doing and remember if the most unique ideas were obvious to everyone there wouldn't be entrepreneurs the one thing that every entrepreneurial Journey has in common is that there are many many steps on the road to success I want to thank you so much for
14:33 the opportunity to allow me today to be here to be part of yours and I wish you all the best thank you