From classroom to market: Creating a sustainable bridal accessory rental service
Starting a business is more than just having a cool idea — it’s about identifying a real-world problem and crafting a solution. This is what Evening & Weekend MBA alumnae Pauline Kulka ’23 MBA and Aly Schreck ’23 MBA learned as students in the course New Venture Discovery taught by Professor Jeffrey Eschbach.
Eschbach's course required students to engage with 100 people in their target audience providing Kulka and Schreck with an understanding of how to initiate a company and define their focus. Their subsequent journey became a testament to transforming theory into action.
As women in their late 20s, Kulka and Schreck found themselves immersed in the dynamic world of bridal events for close friends. The pair engaged in dozens of conversations with a goal of understanding the core values and concerns of brides. Though dressing up for wedding events such as bridal showers and bachelorette parties is primarily a cherished tradition, common pain points among brides revolved around price points and the industry's environmental footprint.
The outcome was Aveil, a bridal rental service specializing in accessories for all wedding occasions. Their mission for the brand is to meet the immediate needs of brides but also aligns with a broader vision of financial and environmental sustainability.
In celebration of National Entrepreneur Day on November 21, we had the privilege of sitting down with these co-founders to glean insights and advice for aspiring business students. Their journey from classroom discussions to market success offers valuable lessons for students exploring entrepreneurship.
What are three pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
- Take action: Don’t spend too much time dreaming about your idea — go for it. We learned this lesson from Anya Cheng, the founder of Taelor. She emphasized that having everything figured out ahead of time isn’t a prerequisite. It’s important, of course, to evaluate risks ahead of time, but just taking that first step to gauge market interest is often the most crucial. She inspired us to get our website up and running, which resulted in women trying to Venmo us to rent accessories before we had even officially launched!
- Learn from your network and mentors: Make the most of these resources. Professor Eschbach connected us with entrepreneurs who helped us learn the ins and outs of areas like legal contacts, operations and market research. By talking to experienced entrepreneurs, we better understood how to take what we learned in the classroom and apply it to Aveil in real time.
- Define your brand image: Develop your brand intentionally and focus on what makes you different. We found that modern brides resonated strongly with our cool and edgy aesthetic. This approach made us stand out from many of the pink and cutesy bridal brands already out there. We’re also currently staying focused on our niche — accessory rentals — with the aim of becoming the industry experts in this area.
What has it been like starting a business with a co-founder?
- Startup Branding: This five-week course focuses on identifying your target customer and building a brand around that. This class showed us how to effectively identify our brand identity, understand our target audience and craft a unique value proposition. We learned that it is crucial for all actions and messaging to be aligned with the brand. The inclusion of many female founders as guest speakers made it even more insightful and relatable. We also applied lessons from this class during our process of rebranding from our original name, “Something Borrowed,” to what is now Aveil.
- Launching and Leading Startups: This class provided essential frameworks that we used in developing our value proposition, operating agreements, and mission statements. The practical insights were instrumental in laying the groundwork for Aveil and starting to scale it.
- Operations Management and Negotiations Fundamentals: Core classes in subjects like operations and negotiations are valuable for any business founder or leader. As a rental business, we continually revisit skills we learned in operations to build efficiencies in our packaging, shipping and inventory management processes. We also leverage the tactics learned in our negotiations classes to always strive for mutually beneficial agreements — whether it's with vendors, partners or even customers. Being armed with this foundational knowledge from Kellogg has helped us lead a business that's not only more efficient but also better equipped to build key relationships, avoid common pitfalls and scale quickly.
Starting a business with a partner has been invaluable. Especially as busy part-time students who were balancing full-time jobs with our education, we don't know how we would have done it without each other.
It's crucial to be strategic about finding the right co-founder. Some say that if you pick the wrong person to start a business with you might as well have done it alone. Seeing how we complemented each other's strengths and work ethic in classes made us confident in our partnership. Additionally, having someone to provide a gut-check and offer different perspectives to solving a problem is indispensable.
In addition to New Venture Discovery, what are some classes that you would recommend for Kellogg MBA students who want to start a business?
Get a sneak peek into life as an entrepreneur:
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