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Founders: #389 The Founder of Jimmy Choo: Tamara Mellon

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When Tamara Mellon’s father lent her the seed money to start a high-end shoe company, he cautioned her: “Don’t let the accountants run your business.” Little did he know that over the next fifteen years, the struggle between “financial” and “creative” would become one of the central themes as Mellon’s business. Mellon grew Jimmy Choo into a billion dollar brand and her personal glamour made her an object of global media fascination. Vogue photographed her wedding. Vanity Fair covered her divorce and the criminal trial that followed. The Wall Street Journal reported on her relentless battle between “the suits” and “the creatives" and Mellon’s triumph against a brutally hostile takeover attempt. But despite her eventual fame and fortune, Mellon didn’t have an easy road to success. Her early life was marked by a tumultuous and broken family life, battles with anxiety and depression, and a stint in rehab. Determined not to end up unemployed, penniless, and living in her parents’ basement under the control of her alcoholic mother, Mellon honed her natural business sense and invested in what she knew best—fashion. In creating the shoes that became a fixture on Sex and the City and red ca

[00:00] David Senra: One of the reasons that Tamara wrote this book and this story will shock and surprise you, but one of the reasons that she shares her story is because she wants future generations of entrepreneurs to learn from her experience. And there is a warning in this story, and the warning is always retain control of your company. This is also something that John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, told me. I got to spend seven hours with John over two days and I read his autobiography twice. And it was one of during one of our conversations that John told me one of the craziest…

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