Elena Bonvicini didn’t set out to start a multi-million dollar denim brand to be worn by the likes of Taylor Swift. Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner. She just loves thrift shopping.
As a teenager, the Southern California native would visit her grandparents in Wisconsin every summer. She would scour thrift stores in the area, sifting through denim, looking for Levi’s that could be turned into cutoff shorts for herself and her friends.
Originally, it wasn’t supposed to be a business. Bonvicini enjoyed making cuts and, as she told CNBC Make It, “always liked having something that no one else had.” But that changed when she returned to high school and someone asked about her shorts.
“I got stopped by a girl two levels below me and she said, ‘Oh my God, where did you get these shorts?'” Bonvicini, now 25, explained. “I said ‘Oh, I made that!’ and she said ‘Can I buy a pair?’
Bonvicini had never sold clothes before, so she relied on her best “guess” to price her first sale at $30. More and more girls started asking Bonvicini about the pants, and the young designer realized she had a business on her hands.
This was before Depop or Poshmark, so upcycling and buying clothes from thrift stores and making them cute was a new idea.
Elena Bonvisini
Founder of EB Denim
Bonvicini was soon selling hundreds of pairs of repurposed vintage pants to classmates at her high school and other schools in the area. Every Friday, she sets up shop in her gym locker room, selling jeans for $10 a pair.
“I would lay them all out on the dressing room floor and the girls would come to the fitting parties,” she said. “This was before Depop or Poshmark, so upcycling and buying clothes from thrift stores and making them cute was a new idea.”
Even by charging friends and classmates $10 or $30 for a pair of jeans, Bonvicini made a tidy profit.
“In the Midwest, I buy[jeans]for 50 cents. In some places, you can buy a garbage bag filled with anything for $8. I could probably fit 20 pairs of jeans in a bag, ” she said. “There’s huge profit margins there.”
When shorts were out of season, she asked her mother for a sewing machine so she could try to turn vintage boys’ jeans into something she and her teenage customers could wear. Her mother agreed to buy her a $300 machine, but on one condition: They would take sewing classes at the local Joann Fabrics.
As she neared her high school graduation, Bonvicini was determined to grow her brand. She created an Etsy account on her 18th birthday and began using social media to help EB Denim become the next big thing.
Taking EB Denim to the next level
Elena Bonvicini started out making cutoff shorts just for fun, until she realized she had a business on her hands.
EB denim
Bonvicini knew early on that the best way to get more attention to her designs was to have popular people wear them.
“I decided to reach out to people on Instagram who I thought were cool, message them, find their emails,” she said. “I don’t care if they publish it or not. I just want them to see my design.”
The gift-giving strategy paid off. The teen founder was shocked not only to receive responses from influencers and fashion icons like Chiara Ferragni and Danielle Bernstein, but also to see them post photos of themselves wearing her clothes.
“She’s like the Italian Kylie Jenner,” she said of Ferragni. “I didn’t expect her to get back to me. I contacted every email I could find and eventually her assistant responded.”
The exposure proved to have immediate benefits for her business.
“I started seeing traffic to our website and an immediate return on investment,” she said. “It was just an instant sale. That’s when I really knew I did have something.”
I want to reach out to people who I think are cool. I don’t care if they publish it. I just want them to have my design.
Elena Bonvisini
Founder of EB Denim
While in college, Bonvicini worked hard to expand EB Denim. She hired an assistant to help her ship orders received through her website. Her weekends would be spent at Melrose Trading Post or the Rose Bowl Flea Market buying hundreds of pairs of jeans and building relationships with vendors.
She added several new designs to the redesigned Levi’s, increased her inventory, and continued to give away jeans to celebrities and influencers. She also continued to market to classmates—this time to USC sorority sisters. The $10 jeans are gone. Now, she charges $220 for her more sophisticated products.
“I would have a wardrobe show at the sorority house and invite all the girls,” she said. “I did this thing where if they posted a story on Instagram, they got 10% off at checkout. So every girl would post it, put it on their feed.”
Bonvicini purchased each pair of jeans for about $20, spent $14 to rework them, and then washed them in a home washing machine. To keep up with such demand, Bonvicini hired tailors to custom-make the jeans to her specifications. On her best day, she said, she sold $12,000 worth of pants in just a few hours.
As her brand continued to gain momentum, she hired a PR agency to help her expand her reach and reinvest profits into her company.
“I don’t want it to be a money-making machine,” she said. “I always knew that in order for it to grow into this vision, I needed to put everything I could into it.”
The 25-year-old added: “There’s a huge world out there with a lot of people that I don’t have access to and can’t touch. “Why would these people react to a 19-year-old? In the first place I’ve been really lucky (my company) has gotten me Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid.
The exposure also brought EB Denim into high-end retailers such as around and selfridges department store. By the time she was a junior in college, EB Denim had more than $1 million in revenue and had a handful of employees and interns, she said. In fact, the brand is doing so well that she’s considering leaving USC entirely.
“I wanted to drop out,” she said, “but my mom said, ‘You’d better stay in school!'”
Instead, she focused on learning and trying to apply everything she learned to her business.
“Whenever we have a startup mission, I make it about my brand,” she said. “It made me think about everything in a more professional and complex perspective, and I think that helped me in a lot of ways.”
Taylor wire effect
EB Denim continued to grow over the next few years, adding dresses, T-shirts and jackets. It remains a favorite among influencers and tastemakers.
Everything came to a head after the 2023 Video Music Awards.
The Bonvicini team has been notified by Taylor Swift’s stylist that the pop star will be wearing an EB Denim piece, but they don’t know which one or when. Then, while she was out attending a Fashion Week party, Bonvicini’s phone started buzzing.
“I remember looking at my phone at three in the morning and someone sent me a picture of Taylor Swift walking out of the VMAs wearing this dress after a party,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.'”
“The next morning, I woke up hungover and saw (so many) Shopify notifications,” Bovincini continued. “Mind you, this dress was about $500. I was stunned.”
Thanks to these reminders, the brand is ready to send press releases to stores, as EB Denim has countless article and a roundup documenting Swift style.
EB Denim expects to do $3 million in revenue this year, a far cry from the $30 in revenue it started the year with. Despite Bowencini’s success, it’s sometimes hard to believe how far he’s come.
“I suffer from imposter syndrome,” she laughs. “I guess I don’t feel like a businesswoman now either.”
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