"I'm All In." How Elisa Yip Is Building Her Dream Company In Her Forties
written by Team Liberty Road
“I had nothing to lose. I knew I could sit here and wait for a miracle or I could go after it.”
Often, our quantum leaps come after a significant change, a significant hard change. Elisa Yip launched her sustainable knitwear company, SSKEIN, in the fall of 2020 after dreaming about it for "the longest time" but never putting anything into place, as she says. Then came the jolt: Her role as a longtime knitwear designer at Nordstrom folded due to the pandemic, opening room for her inner entrepreneur to flourish. "When I lost my job, I was like, wouldn't it be cool to create beautiful knitwear made with high-quality fabrics in timeless and sustainable styles," she says.
So, Elisa got to work. Admittedly, she cried for the first 48 hours after losing her job; then, she rolled up her sleeves. She conceived the idea in the spring and launched SSKEIN that fall.
You read that correctly: It was four months from SSKEIN's concept to launch.
To say that Elisa, who is in her mid-forties, was determined would be an understatement. There was finally the time to launch her brand. She had expertise in the fabric, vision, and contacts. But she also had something that tends to get pushed down inside us: A compass for seeing the glimmers even in the darkest times. "I'm just going to go for it.” she says of her mindset then. "I had nothing to lose. I knew I could sit here and wait for a miracle or I could go after it."
Chatting with Elisa Yip
You launched so quickly. How did your experience in knitwear and the fashion business, about 20 years' worth, come in handy?
I knew a lot about construction and yarn. I worked in Hong Kong for 18 months next to a master knitter. I was able to learn about the machines and yarn from the knitters. So, I've learned a lot about how a garment is made from start to finish.
The beautiful thing about knitwear is that it is already sustainable. You're creating a piece of garment with a piece of string. Whereas in a woven jacket, you have a roll of fabric, and you have a pattern, and you cut around, and you sew. With knitwear, you take a piece of string, put it on a machine, knit it into a shape, and put all the pieces together. How crazy is that concept? The possibilities are unlimited. So I was in Hong Kong for 18 months, had an incredible time, and learned so much. In my previous job, I worked with Liz Claiborne in New York, and that was on the wholesale side, where I was learning about price points. Then, when I moved to Seattle with my family, I worked at Nordstrom, where I designed cashmere. That was the dream job for any knitwear designer: to create luxury materials with luxury materials. I got to travel to Italy to the shows. I got to work with Italian yarns. I learned a lot about the luxury market.
What was important to you when creating SSKEIN?
When I started my brand, I wanted to create something new, different, practical, and ethically made. So, it just made sense for me to try a new luxury fiber that was more sustainable. I needed to educate customers on Alpaca because people tend to ask if it's scratchy. The first thing they ask is if it's scratchy. But it's soft and it's very warm, too.
When I design a collection, it needs to be intentional. I have been trained to keep creating the same thing but different month after month to give a reason for a customer to buy something. I don't think that's necessarily true. I need to make one great item and maybe refresh it in new colors or patterns. I don't need to reinvent something that's already good. So, that's why we've been running our jumpsuit for almost two years now; I update fresh colors, and customers love it. They have a black one, and they'll buy a grey one, too, because they know how it fits and how comfortable it is. We don't need to keep reinventing.
When you lost your job, did you know it was a blessing in disguise?
For the first 48 hours? No. The first morning, I was crying. So sad. Because it was a chapter of my life, it was an important part of my life, and I had to say goodbye to it. And then, I just got working. I was like, This is it. This is the time to fulfill my dreams.
As an 18-year-old trying to fulfill a dream to become a fashion designer, doing this has always been on my radar. And I never got a chance to do it on my own because I was always scared of failure and disappointment. I grew up in a Chinese family, and failure is tough. You want to make your parents proud all the time. So, I always had a comfortable job that paid well. I always wanted to be a fashion designer and have my own brand. That was always the case.
Would you have done it if you hadn't lost your job?
Probably not. I would keep dreaming about it. I think losing my job was the fire I needed. Also, COVID and losing my father in January 2020 gave me a different perspective on life, and I think for a lot of people. Life is too short. You still have a chance to do what you love. It's time to do it now. My father had a huge influence on my life as an entrepreneur because he was one himself, as an immigrant from China. I look at him as an example. If he can do it without speaking English, I can too. But I always had that fear. But when you got nothing to lose because I already lost my job, I felt I had nothing else to lose. It was my only chance to make it happen.
Despite all that experience under my belt over all those years, I was still scared. A lot of people feel the same way. It was a fire I needed. And it's about taking one step at a time. I know that sounds very cliche. I've taken the experience of running a marathon. I've run two, and I'm training for my third. Every day, if I run a little further, I'll get closer to my finish line. And for SSKEIN, I'm still running. I'm still running that marathon.
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We pulled this conversation from our original chat with Elisa on The Liberty Road Podcast. Listen to her full conversation with Nada here. To learn more about Elisa, visit sskein.com.
“This is it. This is the time to fulfill my dreams.”
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