Jessica Davidoff is a serial entrepreneur who has helped many companies grow to their full potential. She’s the founder of Easton Rae, which helps creative founders launch their businesses, and Cove, a company that produces hangers for long garments. She was previously the CEO of STATE Bags and has worked with companies like Violet Grey and Cadence. She was also the founder of Admittedly, an online college advisory platform.
We caught up with the entrepreneur to discuss her journey.
Tell us a little about your background and what brought you to this point.
I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire adult life. I started my first business a year after graduating from Princeton and have now founded five companies. I would say the common theme among all of my business is solving a problem for a group of people that I care deeply about. Personally, I have a huge appetite for risk, and really thick skin, which are truly necessary for any entrepreneur.
What inspired you to start Easton Rae and Cove?
I launched Easton Rae after my third business was acquired. I wanted to help creative founders launch businesses, avoiding a lot of the mistakes I made while starting my three companies. Post launch, we also stay on board to act as a strategic advisor or fractional CEO or Chief Business Officer to oversee the company’s holistic growth.
While incubating brands for other founders, I had the idea to create a hanger for long garments that would allow you to hang your long garments on the short rack of your closet, and patented it during the pandemic, and we just launched the brand — Cove — this spring. Our goal is to help transform the hidden spaces in people’s homes, starting with the closet. We believe that when all of your closets, drawers, medicine cabinets, etc. are in order, it creates a sense of zen that carries forward to other parts of your life.
Tell us about your business in a box service.
Business in a box is essentially an easy button for any founder looking to start a consumer brand, who doesn’t necessarily have a lot of business experience. We will take founders from idea to launch. We start off with business planning, which involves a deep competitive analysis, market research, and focus groups. We then move into creating the brand’s identity, and starting the prototyping process. Once we have the final branding and product, we move into production, and setting up the company’s infrastructure partners (i.e. fulfillment, customer service, website, packaging, accounting, etc.). The last phase is the go-to-market phase where we really plan out the company’s launch strategy.
Can you share some of the companies you’ve helped grow? Are there any great success stories that you’ve seen?
Some of my favorite companies to have worked with are Tropic of C, STATE Bags, and Violet Grey, but the company whose success has really blown me away is Cadence. When they launched everyone was saying how expensive the capsules were, but founder, Steph Hon, so fervently believed in the mission and value that she held firm on the price and just kept pushing forward and now they are doing just so, so well — with so many celebs and influencers using them and with so many great retailers carrying them.
Talk about how you work with companies on profitability roadmapping and fundraising.
There are a lot of incredible brands out there who have been operating under the “growth at all costs” mentality. When the market is good, and companies can easily raise money, it’s totally fine to be operating at a loss, but if a company gets itself into a situation where they can’t raise money, but are operating at a loss, we can come in and create a roadmap to get the company to profitability and sustainable growth.
Given the current economic climate, this service has become even more relevant. Part of what we’ve done is also fundraising — whether that is helping a soon-to-launch brand raise their first round of outside funding or helping an existing brand recapitalize the company after a restructuring. Storytelling is at the core of our fundraising service and we pride ourselves on really being able to help companies tease out the gems from their story to get investors excited about putting money in.
What should clients expect when they sign up for these services?
Clients should expect a true partner. Even though we’re often involved in companies on a consulting basis, we really feel as committed as founders. They should definitely not expect a yes-person. We will always call things out that we disagree with and ask really hard questions. But most importantly, as hard as we work, our #1 priority is always to have a lot of fun with every project we take on!
Any tips for entrepreneurs just starting out?
I think the biggest tip I can offer is to know for a fact that they will undoubtedly hear “no,” “this is a crazy idea,” “this will never work,” more times than they’ll be able to count over the course of their journey, and that it will never feel good to be criticized, but it is IMPERATIVE to never give up, put Jay-Z’s “On to the Next One” on repeat in their mind, and to just keep going.
