What are your biggest challenges now?

Timo: Money.

Alan: Budget, preparing for the future and always making sure that your future is aligned with your ideals.

Timo: Deepening sales accounts and relationships. Not necessarily just more dollars, but more categories and deeper into each category.

Alan: Its not really a worry, but kind of an idea – the fact that we have to create an amazing quality product every single season that wont confuse our customer, that our customer will understand, that our customer will want.
Who would you say has helped you the most along the way?

Timo: We have to say, creatively, completing the circle, Donna has been integral.

Alan: Even just from a knowledge standpoint. Donna comes from houses like Carolina Herrera and Adam Lippes. She has tremendous amounts of schooling and knowledge and she is always teaching us something. She knew how a very successful house was run – from a design organization standpoint, to a business standpoint, so we’re always taking cues from her. And Megan Maguire Steele [their PR rep] is awesome. It helps to have someone like your pr manager giving you clues every now and then.

Timo: Also my mother, Alison Weiland, has obviously been a huge support.

Alan: Your mother’s also helped on an emotional level. Your mother is amazing.

Do you think it’s really important to have a PR team behind you as a young designer?

Timo: Absolutely. First and foremost, from an organizational standpoint, i think it is important, depending on how small your collection is. I mean, if you’re only doing one very particular niche, then it would probably be fine [without PR], but for us it’s menswear; its womenswear; it’s knitwear; it’s outerwear; it’s dresses – and we’re doing bridal, shoes, accessories.

In order to try and keep track of everything and in order to help develop relationships, there needs to be someone helping. We don’t have any other employees to help or interns that really have the capacity to do it, so for us i would say yes [it’s important].