Welcome back to The Code of Style, and today, I want to share with you this interview with Jenette Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Jenette Bras.
Jenette Bras has an array of bricks and mortar boutiques in LA and Atlanta, as well as an online store, and Jenette is a leading bra fitting expert.
In the context of COVID-19, she’s pivoted to offering expert bra fittings – remotely – where women log-in virtually and get one-on-one time with an expert fitter (just like they would in a real fitting room.)
Jenette is only too well aware of the problems women face when buying a bra, as she herself was neck deep into her forties when she got her first proper bra-fitting. And, she discovered that like many women above a C cup, she had been wearing the wrong bra size!
Since she comes from a long line of women who are big on bosom and short on patience, she decided to take matters into her own hands and Jenette Bras was born!
Exclusive interview with Jenette Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Jenette Bras.
Jenette, please can you share your story with us? When did you launch Jenette Bras and what was the inspiration behind it?
We (my husband Aaron Noble and I), opened the first Jenette Bras in our own neighborhood of East Hollywood in April 2009. Opportunities in my acting career had been drying up as I entered my forties—not unexpectedly—and I was casting around for a second career. When I discovered a bra store in England that catered to women like me, with a full bust on a small ribcage, I was gobsmacked. An actress from the town that invented Jessica Rabbit, and yet I had never been correctly fitted!? I complained to my husband, as I am wont to do, “Why doesn’t someone open a store like this in Los Angeles?” “Why don’t we do it?” he airily replied, as though he hadn’t just firebombed his own peace of mind for the next twenty years or so.
Can you tell us a little about your background/ career path prior to launching Jenette Bras ? Have you always been involved in the fashion industry?
In fact, I started Jenette Bras with no knowledge of the fashion industry or any sort of business at all. I worked as an actress, mostly in movies and TV, through my twenties and thirties. That, and raising my kids, constituted the bulk of my work experience. My husband is an artist, so between us we were pretty well unequipped for the business side of entrepreneurship. We believed in the value of our idea, though, and it turned out that my fascination with people and his aesthetic sense were strengths we could leverage.
What has been the biggest challenge/ hurdle you have faced so far?
I’m tempted to say COVID, just because the wounds are still bleeding, but really the biggest challenge has been scaling the business. Our Mom & Pop approach took us through opening a second store in Pasadena, and then to getting a third store open in West LA, but at that point the wheels were coming off the bus. We simply didn’t have the managerial skills to handle the increasing complexity. We joined a business coaching program (Maui Masterminds, run by David Finkel) which launched us onto the steepest and most unexpected learning curve of our lives.
What has been your biggest milestone / achievement so far ?
In early 2020 we opened our fourth store, in Burbank, and, two weeks later, our fifth store in Atlanta, GA. Both stores looked like successes right out of the gate. We had a well-earned vacation booked. The risk of opening on the East Coast was so considerable that we had gamed out a list in advance of every possible thing that might go wrong. We had seventeen items on the list. Global pandemic was not one of them. A week after we opened Atlanta, all five stores were shut down for a month. Nevertheless, it’s now a year later, the business is stable, we still have five stores, and Atlanta is the busiest shop in the chain.
Where do you source the majority of your bras from?
Nearly all of our stock is European: France, Belgium, England, Germany, and Spain provide most of our inventory. The culture and tradition of fine corsetry there is unmatched anywhere else. When you sell bras, as we do, to women who really NEED bras, you cannot stint on quality.
What else should we know about you? What sets Jenette Bras apart from the competition?
The fact that we sell bras is slightly incidental to our business model. We build long-term supportive relationships with our clients. You don’t see racks of product when you walk into our store. You enter a beautiful space for women to work on their relationship to their own physicality.
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our lives today. Can you tell us what are the biggest challenges you are facing as a woman in business during this pandemic? And how are you overcoming them?
The internet has never served us as anything but an educational channel. Our business is 100% rooted in the real world. There is simply no substitute for the in-person experience of seeing and handling and trying on the garment under the guidance of an expert fitter. When we had to stop fitting it was devastating to the business. Subsequently we resumed with a limited number of fittings by appointment only. In order to provide the best service we could under these constraints, we developed our Remote Fittings for women who couldn’t come in, and these have also allowed us to serve women who live too far away from the stores. Unlike online companies who use fit quizzes or get you to measure yourself, we put you on a Google Meet with a real bra-fitter who is working from a real store. She can look at you, size you up, discuss your needs, pull stock to show you, and so on. It’s the closest thing to an in-person fitting.
On a more personal level, can you share your strategies about how to stay calm and sane during these difficult times?
I’m mainly just watching cat videos like everyone else. We do a lot of walking and a little volunteering at the local vaccination center which is not too risky and it’s nice to talk with a variety of people who are all pretty happy to be getting their shots. The other day we added up how much money we’ve saved by cooking at home all year. That made us feel richer!
The Code of Style is all about representing and empowering dynamic women everywhere : What does women’s empowerment mean to you? How can women be empowered while maintaining their femininity?
I was a tomboy as a girl, but I never thought that I was not “feminine”. It’s just one of the styles of femininity. As a young woman I had the good fortune to be featured in a movie involving a mixed-gender marine combat unit. It was set in the future, and nothing was ever said in the film about the fact that women were fighting alongside men. It was just presented as an everyday fact. That’s real empowerment to me, when it’s not even worth mentioning.
What are your aspirations for the future? Where would you like to see your company 5 years from now and are there any imminent plans for the company that you’d like to share?
We’re probably going to need a year or so to recover from this year’s losses, then our plan is to continue our expansion in the South, from our new base in Atlanta. Nothing crazy, two or three more stores probably (we fuss over each one).
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Jenette Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Jenette Bras, and I’ll be back to share some more articles with you again soon! In the meantime, you can see our other features here.
Julia x
Website: JuliaReesCoaching.com : Instagram: @julia.rees_
