WEEKEND
STYLE AND SUSTENANCE
incredible group of brands, and said, what if we create this multibrand retail site with doing good built into every purchase, and they loved it. We launched with 12 brands about a year ago. CC: Do they create special items just for the site? SB: We are working on exclusives for the Olivela site. The best way of thinking about us is, we’re really Saks or Net-aPorter, but with a portion of the proceeds going to nonprofits. CC: So, the growth potential is incredible, and yet you are one of the few brands that are doing brick-and-mortar, too? SB: We are doing a combination. About 90 percent of luxury shopping still happens Stacey Boyd, offline, surprisingly enough. Our founder of stores are an experience. It’s Olivela an opportunity for us to tell our story, and people respond differently to a brand when they know the story behind it. Both in Nantucket and here in Aspen, we have been able to do some great storytelling, and I think that’s really resonated. CC: Where are you based? SB: London is home. A lot of our team is in New York, but we are building a global brand. We have grown, and so has our impact. We gave away 50 times more in December than we did in January of last year, in one year. CC: Wow. How do you decide what charities you’re going to partner with? SB: We currently are working with Malala Fund, Too Young to Wed, and CARE, all of whom have an incredible track record in working with girls around the globe. We may expand from there in a small way, but I feel like we have a really great group of charities that we are able to work very closely with. CC: And then you offshoot Olivela, and create partnerships with charities like the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where proceeds will go directly to those charities.
CRISTINA CUOMO: Before you came up with the Olivela concept, what were you doing? STACEY BOYD: I’ve started a number of different organizations and companies. I launched a middle school in Boston two weeks after I graduated with a joint degree from Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School. That then turned into a software company, helping parents and teachers communicate more effectively. From there, I launched Schoola, the used-clothing brand. It was my experience with Schoola that gave birth to Olivela. Schoola is still a brand that we run. It’s very different from luxury and what we do with Olivela, but it’s a powerful way for schools to raise money. CC: Tell me about the root of the name, Olivela. SB: Olive for olive tree, the symbol of growth and wisdom. Vela, which is Latin for ‘sails of a ship’—with the idea being that we can help set girls on the right path, the world forward on a better path. CC: What was the concept behind it, initially? SB: The idea was really simple. I got off a plane with Malala [Yousafzai] and her father, whom I adore, in Dadaab, Kenya, and reached into my bag to take a picture of this incredible group of young women who were getting a distance education through Vodafone and I realized two things: one, that talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not; and two, more importantly, that a fraction of the cost of the bag that I was grabbing my phone out of could send a girl to school for a year. It was this moment, when I reached into my bag, and I was running this other brand and we were processing up to 10,000 units a day, that I thought of Schoola. If I could sell $500 to $5,000 items and get to 10,000 units a day, imagine the good I could do. So, I came back and talked to Stella McCartney, Givenchy and Jimmy Choo, an 92
Courtesy of Olivela
Business whiz Stacey Boyd teams with 350 (and counting) leading fashion brands on Olivela, a luxury e-commerce site benefiting children around the globe. BY CRISTINA CUOMO