California-born sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland founded Dôen in 2016 with every intention of creating a lifestyle brand. With a major investment round under their belt and a 10-year anniversary on the horizon, the co-founders are gearing up to flesh out the Dôen world more wholly than ever before, far beyond the printed tops and milkmaid dresses they’re best known for.
In the nine years since its founding, Dôen has scaled fast to a $100 million-plus revenue business. E-commerce has grown 40 per cent year-on-year, and wholesale bookings are up 110 per cent year-to-date, according to the brand, which launched with $480,000 from friends and family. June’s series A raise is reportedly in the realm of $25 million, though the brand was unable to comment on specific figures. The investment round was led by Silas Capital, which has previously invested in beauty brands including Makeup by Mario, Oak Essentials and Ilia (it’s now exited the latter).
The investment doesn’t signal a shift in strategy, the co-founders insist. Instead, Dôen will continue on its current path — only bigger. “The fundraise and the use of proceeds doesn’t at all represent a new strategy change or any significant new initiatives,” Margaret, who is CEO, says. “It’s really to continue doing on a bigger scale what we’ve always aimed to do, which is [to] create the world of Dôen.”
The investment comes at a trying time for fashion. Silas Capital’s keenness to go in on apparel — Dôen is the firm’s first fashion investment — at this moment, tariffs and all, was a positive signal. For president Holly Soroca, this was key. “Prioritising [the] brand first is something that not all investors put high on the list,” she says. “We’ve got an incredible business that maintains profitability and growth, but we’re brand first, we’re customer first, we’re product first. Finding that in a partner, having all of those things align, was a priority for us.”
Dôen has, after all, found success in high-growth periods during what should be tough times. In 2020, the brand saw such fast growth and high demand that the founders had to shut down the site for a few days to catch up. Now, even amid tariffs, they are feeling confident. For one, they’re better positioned — at the current scale, they can work with factories with higher minimums. For another, the brand remains primarily direct-to-consumer, meaning it’s agile, Soroca says. “Having that ability to be nimble in situations like tariff uncertainty, in situations like Covid, it’s a huge benefit.” Even growing significantly since the pandemic, the brand has maintained its flexibility, she says.
The last two years have seen solid momentum across various touchpoints, Margaret says, from an uptick in store openings to two sell-out collaborations with Gap. (Is there a third on the way? When asked, all three simply smiled coyly.)
Same same — but bigger
Dôen’s goal is to continue its existing growth trajectory — just on a larger, slightly faster scale. “[We’re excited] to be able to finally dig in and know that the retail strategy that we have is incredibly successful; the product strategy that we have has been incredibly successful; [they’re] super margin-feasible and there’s more demand in certain categories than we can keep up with,” Margaret says.
When Dôen launched in 2016, it fast became known for its peasant blouses and billowy dresses. But, that same year, the brand launched a suite of other offerings, including kidswear, knitwear and footwear for Spring 2016. “When we had our first vision for the brand, it was very much always a lifestyle expression,” says Katherine, who leads design. “It was never just like ‘we want to make this one item or category’ — we could already visualise what the stores would look like, what the website design would be.”
It was for this reason that, even in the early days, Dôen went beyond its core offerings. “For us to launch as a tiny bootstrap brand and to be able to deliver knitwear and denim and footwear and kids — in addition to our bread and butter tops and dresses — was kind of an insane proposition,” Margaret reflects. “What it meant was that we were only able to do it lightly. We’re only able to offer a few silhouettes of fashion denim, or a knitwear offering that we knew was super special — but maybe not checking a lot of the boxes of what our customer buys over the course of a season.” Now, with higher capacity (via higher funding), Dôen will go all in on these categories with serious room for growth, from denim to footwear to occasionwear.
Beyond category growth, the investment will primarily go towards expanding Dôen’s retail presence. It currently has seven stores, all of which have exceeded expectations, the team agrees. “[Physical retail] has outperformed anything we thought, over and over and over,” Margaret says. “We keep waiting for our comp store sales to plateau a little bit because we just can’t imagine the sustained growth we’ve been seeing in a limited square footage.” It hasn’t slowed yet; retail sales in aggregate have grown 80 per cent year-over-year, while comp store sales are up 46 per cent, including 65 per cent growth at New York’s Bleecker Street location, which opened in December 2022.
Physical stores have played a larger role in customer acquisition than anticipated, Soroca says. When the Bleecker Street store opened, over half of the shoppers were new to the brand. “We’ve seen a similar trend when we opened in Sag Harbor, when we opened in Nantucket, and even in Marin.”
To date, all of Dôen’s stores are in California or New York. Now, the brand is looking to venture beyond the coasts. Soroca flags Texas (Dallas, Austin and Houston), Charleston and Georgetown as top priorities on the list of 25 targets. “[Places] where we know the customer is there, but we could definitely afford to have more brand awareness,” she says. The goal now is to open three to four stores a year, so long as they can find the right locations and deals. This is where Silas’s funding comes in.
Alongside its owned retail growth, Dôen is doubling down on wholesale, which it first entered in 2019 with an exclusive Net-a-Porter partnership. Saks was just over a year ago; Nordstrom this year. “For us, it was really about cherry picking the best retail partners in the best locations,” Soroca says. “There are customers that are finding us in a local Nordstrom store in a location that it could be years before we would have a local store there, because they’re smaller trade areas.” Coupled with the big players, as of 2023, Dôen is stocked in about 150 speciality boutiques. Now, this wholesale strategy will take the brand international.
A mega American brand
Dôen is on a mission to establish itself beyond the “California brand” moniker. “I do feel like there’s a little division between West Coast and East Coast fashion,” Margaret says. “There’s not a huge unity.” The explosion of the Bleecker Street store was a signifier that the brand is indeed expanding beyond the confines of its Californian roots, she says. They’re ruminating on New York Fashion Week down the line, too. “On a global scale, as the brand expands, I do also want to take that position in American fashion,” Margaret says.
Though the brand’s investment is about expanding what the co-founders have already been building, from wider sartorial offerings to more physical retail spaces — it will also make room for new ventures that further build out Dôen’s world and impact.
Beauty and fragrance are on the cards, the co-founders tease. (Dôen collaborated with RMS Beauty in 2023 and 2024, but doesn’t have any standalone products as yet.) “Many decks exist for many different things we’re going to do,” Katherine says of the brand’s beauty plans, but won’t share any more for now, except that fragrance will be the first priority.
As Dôen’s 10th anniversary approaches, the team is also taking stock of the journey to date. February’s capsule collection will feature re-designs of Dôen’s top performers and favourite designs over the years. “We’re taking our best sellers from the past and making them the most exciting, over-the-top versions of themselves,” Katherine says. It’s a sign of what’s to come for the next 10.
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