Small Business Success Story: Punkster
Published August 30, 2007

Leanne Ford shares how she turned a unique idea into a successful new product launch.

By: MATT ALDERTON

Like most small businesses, Punkster started out as a seed in someone's head. That head was Leanne Ford's. A 22-year-old fashion graduate from Ohio University, the Pittsburgh-born entrepreneur was living in California when she started thinking about babies.

"I was on a walk," she says, "and I had this idea. There were all these cool parents out there, but there weren't a lot of cool baby clothes."

Tired of fawning over babies dressed in pink and powder blue, plastered with duckies and kitties and other "ies," Ford wondered if trend-conscious parents, who were buying vintage clothing for themselves in droves, would also buy vintage-inspired threads for their children.

"I was thinking about how we all buy this soft vintage stuff," she says, "and I thought, 'I should start making vintage shirts—like thrift store shirts—for babies.'"

Ford was inspired. She'd cut her teeth working for designers in New York and California, but she felt strongly that it was time to start her own fashion line—her own business. So, she did. She borrowed her childhood nickname—inspired by the popular 1980s television series, Punky Brewster—and set to work building a line of hip vintage T-shirts for the under-2 set. And so Punkster was born.

Nurturing a Newborn Business

Ford, now 26, launched Punkster in 2003 from her home in Long Beach, Calif. That was more than three years ago—and the journey hasn't always been easy.

"I started making Punkster [in my home]," Ford says. She dyed her T-shirts—which are adorned with catchphrases such as, "I Crawl the Line," "Born Yesterday" and "iPood"—one at a time in her kitchen sink, and then peddled them herself at local flea markets. "People started liking them, and so I had a Web site made."

With a newly minted Web presence, Punkster began seeing orders from all across the country. The kitchen sink wasn't cutting it as a production plant anymore, so Ford found a manufacturer and began having her T-shirts professionally made. From there, her business boomed.

"It kind of evolved from there," she says. "I went to a tradeshow in Las Vegas, and that was where I kind of turned into a real company. We had $7,000 in sales [at the tradeshow], and we were so excited. It was more than anyone else around us. Looking back, that's nothing, but it was exciting for something that's from your head."

Growing Pains

Once a homegrown designer who patrolled local markets and fashion trade shows in search of her next sale, today Ford is a budding businesswoman. No longer kitchen-bound, she has a business partner—her longtime best friend, Ashleigh Wells—an office, a warehouse, an overseas production staff in India, a lawyer and sales reps across the country.

She's also got lots of press. Punkster, which is now being sold in more than 200 stores, including Barneys New York and FAO Schwartz, has garnered plugs in People Magazine, US Weekly, In Style and Rolling Stone, among many other outlets, thanks to endorsements from celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, who was photographed at her baby shower with a Punkster shirt.

The attention, and the resulting business, has been great, Ford says, but her company's growth hasn't been without its growing pains.

"Sheryl Crow is ruining my life," Ford exclaimed recently on her blog, "or shall I say, she is about to be funding my life."

As Punkster has discovered, attention from the media in magazines and from buyers at trade shows begets a huge demand—which is a problem when you're too small to produce an equally huge supply. "It's a really scary situation when you're working with a business that has to produce something," Ford says. "All of your money is wrapped up in inventory. It's a huge problem."

Despite skyrocketing sales, Ford has yet to pay herself a proper salary. She puts everything she earns back into her business. "We're trying to grow slowly," she says, "but at the same time you're like, 'I either need to push it and go for it or get out.'"

How to Launch Your Own Product Line

The world is full of great ideas. What separates Ford's from yours? Action. If you're ready to give birth to your own Punkster-grade product line, consider Ford's eight tips for pulling off a successful product launch:

• Find a niche: Ford found a need—for cool baby clothes—and had the skill set to cater to it. Like hers, the most successful products find a void, then fill it.
• Build a prototype: The best way to find out if your product has potential is to build it. "You need to make [it] and test it out," Ford advises.
• Do some market research: With prototype in hand, Ford suggests going out into your community to see how everyday consumers react to your merchandise. "Show it to your friends," she suggests. "Sell it at markets. There are markets in every city in the country, really—flea markets or outdoor markets. Sell it there and see if there's demand for it."
• Price your product: When she launched Punkster, Ford spent hours on the Internet checking out her competition in order to make sure her shirts were priced correctly and competitively.
• Travel to tradeshows: Once you've built some initial demand for your product, Ford says, you're ready for tradeshows. "To turn yourself into a company, to make it legitimate, you need large volumes," she insists. "You've got to go to tradeshows [to get them]."
• Mass produce: If your tradeshow adventures are successful, you'll return home with your first large orders—and you'd better be ready and able to fill them. "If you go to a tradeshow, and Nordstrom orders 10,000, you'd better be ready to send those out," Ford says. "A lot of companies go under because they get this demand and they can't fill it."
• Protect your property: Once you've got a winner—before you've got one, in fact—you need to research intellectual property issues to make sure that you're not infringing on others' designs and to ensure that others aren't infringing on yours.
• Grow, grow, grow: The final ingredient in every solid product launch is not initial success, but continued success. Ford didn't stop with T-shirts. She sells onesies, too, and recently launched a second product line, Punkster Acoustic, that includes an entire collection of baby clothes. Her future plans include a line of baby furniture, too. "We want to slowly turn into a small little baby empire," she says.