Sarah LaFleur, Founder and CEO of M.M.LaFleur, joins Cheddar News to discuss the state of womenswear at work, her milestone in achieving a successful decade in business, and how to achieve the 'power casual' look.

The Evolution of Womenswear at Work

This segment is brought to you by jpmorgan Chase celebrating Women's History Month and empowering all women to thrive in the workplace, is evolving at an extremely fast paced and sometimes it's simply hard to keep up, especially when it comes to your wardrobe after a few years of remote work. Well, my next guest is on a mission to help women take the work out of dressing for work. And then lafleur is a female founded startup builds on a core belief of helping women succeed. So joining me now is Sarah lafleur CEO and founder of M M lafleur. Sarah. It's so good to have you on the show, especially on this International Women's Day. I know your company celebrating its 10th anniversary. So congratulations. Thank you so much Christian. Thank you for having me. We're happy to have you. How is your brand evolved alongside this ever changing workforce? For sure. I mean, it has been a tumultuous couple of years. I will say the mission of the brand since day one is been that the world is a better place when women succeed. And 10 years in that mission remains very much the same. I will say, I think the way our customers are thinking about work and dressing for work these days has especially changed during the pandemic. And we have definitely seen styles lose Up a little bit more. A lot of our customers are saying that they are now doing hybrid work. So they're working from home and working from the office and we've seen dress codes relax as a result. So we're definitely noticing that and designing into that and offering her a new wardrobe from what we were selling back in 2019. Well, a decade in business as certainly is a success. Sarah, what does that milestone mean to you as a founder? Sure. I mean, it's, you know, it's quite emotional, I would say, um, you know, there, there's a statistic that only 90 only 4% of businesses make it to their 10 year anniversary. And so 96% of businesses fail. And, um, if I just think about venture backed companies as it stands, only 2% of venture funding goes to female led startups. And I am one of the very fortunate ones that have received venture funding. A lot of what I think about right now is how can I share the knowledge and the wealth and the network that I've accumulated over the past decade. How do I bring other women along on this journey? I'm definitely thinking about that and trying to pass it forward. I think a lot of women grateful Sarah for what you just said there and let's talk styles because I know power casual seems to be a popular style right now. What exactly does that mean from your fashion perspective? And how can women achieve this look? Sure. So this current power casual is actually a phrase that we coined in 2020 when we saw that the pandemic was changing the way women think about dressing for work and to put it simply, it's a new dress code that sits between business casual and truly casual. Um, business casual is what we were, what a lot of us were wearing before the pandemic. You know, think a skirt with a jacket or a blouse with a pencil skirt, um, and casual is jeans and a T shirt. Power casual is the new dress code that sits somewhere in between. And I think it's very suited for this hybrid lifestyle that many of us are leading right now where you might be working from home in the morning, but you might have a meeting in the office in the afternoon and it's an outfit that seamlessly takes you from day to night. And so hopefully you're not having to change out of your outfit depending on, you know, where you are that day. Absolutely. It feels good to be comfortable and powerful at the same time. I like that. So a decade in business, Sarah, congratulations again. And as you look forward to the next 10 years. What's your vision? A lot of what I think about is, of course, I care about being a successful company financially. I want us to keep growing. I want us to generate meaningful profit. You know, I think those things have always been important and will continue to stay important. This has been a life, you know, a life mission for me. This is very much my passion and I do want to keep running the business 10 years from now. And so I think beyond revenue, beyond profit, what I'm really thinking about right now is how do we begin become a force for good. One of the ways in which M M Lafleur has really tried to change the conversation about being a good employer um is we started sharing all of our compensation across the entire team. Uh And we make one completely transparent and this has really gone to address some of the disparities that exist between men and women in compensation. Um And we've actually reached out to a wider network of our professionals to say, hey, we, we want to help you and your come Company also achieved full transparency in your compensation so that there is just no disparity between what women and men are getting paid. Another way that we were thinking about how to be a good company is around sustainability. One of our biggest goals as a business is to get to climate neutral by 2030. Um we've started to swap out a lot of the fabrics that we've been using over the past decade. Fashion is notoriously a polluting industry. It's actually considered the second most polluting industry after oil gas. Um But I do think the power of fashion, the power of people being able to think about themselves differently based on the clothes that they put on the power of costume that will never change. And so both being a good fashion business and being a truly good business for the environment. That is something that I'm thinking about. Right, Sarah lafleur's CEO and founder of mm LA Flora. Sarah, thank you so much for joining on this International Women's Day. Jpmorgan Chase is committed to advancing financial equality and empowering all women to thrive. So visit jpmorgan chase dot com slash W O T M to learn more.