Taking Vintage to the Next Level

CEO Susan Gregg Koger started her annual fifteen million dollar profit business in a small dorm room when she was only seventeen years old. Her wardrobe inspiration began when she was a little girl; playing with her grandmother’s unique vintage wardrobe from the 60’s and 70’s. As a teenager, she became more interested in fashion as she shopped in Southern Florida malls. Koger showed little shopping interest for department stores—such as Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Bloomingdales—and favored more retail stores, much like Pacsun and Hot Topic, though they offered little to suit her type of style. Yet it was her lack of money that really contributed to her shopping preferences. Therefore, she began shopping at vintage shops and thrift stores where she could find unique pieces of clothing that suited her style, all at low prices. She became so enraptured with the thrill of finding extraordinary vintage pieces, at the time, however, it was merely a hobby.
As Koger started to purchase vintage clothing, she began to even buy things that weren’t here size or style, only because she couldn’t pass a great bargain on “one of a kind” clothing pieces. Soon, her closet started filling up on all sorts of vintage items of all styles and sizes. This young vintage enthusiast was encouraged by her husband-to-be, Eric Koger, to start a business out of her hobby when she was only seventeen. Koger and her boyfriend started their business in their cramped dorm room at College of Mellon University. Koger’s boyfriend helped build a website so she could sell her vintage clothing online. She called her clothing line of vintage-wear Modcloth. She began doing everything on her own—from designing the web page, writing descriptions of the clothing, taking photographs of the clothing, and packing the orders. Though the business began in 2002, it didn’t launch until January of 2003.
Even now, she laughs and recalls the shaky start of her business in her interview with Power Your Future from Yahoo’s Shine blog. Laughing, she admits how she first started she using her cell phone number as the customer service line for Modcloth and would answer customers phone calls personally. At that time, she saw Modcloth as a mere part time job and a hobby in college; Modcloth was only making her five- thousand dollars in annual revenue. It wasn’t until 2006, when she graduated from CMU, she decided she wanted to expand Modcloth and make it her career. Through the years of 2006-2008, Modcloth started to make many improvements and higher profits. Koger stopped buying stuff from thrift stores and vintage shops and started hiring independent vintage-inspired and indie designers to provide clothes to Modcloth. They moved from their small dorm room to their brand new house were they worked Modcloth from with the help of sixteen employees. During those two years, they started to make six times more the revenue from when they had started and they were finally seeing Modcloth expand.
Now Koger is the CEO of Modcloth and Chief Creative Officer of Modcloth along with her Co-CEO partner and husband Eric Koger. They no longer run their business from their house but from their large warehouse in Pittsburg and their offices in San Francisco. They went from having sixteen employees to two-hundred and fifty employees. Modcloth is now supported by First Round Capital, Floodgate, Accel, Harrisonmetal, and Jeff Flour, the CEO founder of Stub Hub. Modcloth has now become an e-retailer of independent lead designed fashion and decor. They have hired seven hundred independent designers for Modcloth and carry indie labels like: BB Dakota, Tulle, EC Star, Stop Starring, Gentle Fawn, and Jeffery Campbell Shoes. They now use social technology like Chictopia, Tumbler, Twitter, Polyvore, Good Reads, and Facebook to communicate with their customers and receive feedback. By using a new program on their website called “Be The Buyer,” customers may look at new merchandise and choose what they like and dislike. In 2009, they recorded earning 15 million dollars of revenue. In 2010 Koger and her husband were listed in Business Week’s 2010 in the “Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs” category. Furthermore, Incomediary.com listed them as number twenty-two in the Top 30 Richest Young Entrepreneurs. Koger is now a proud entrepreneur who is glad to say that her new branch of the fashion industry doesn’t enforce trends on customers, but offers them options for their own unique style.