Any business can be boiled down to a series of choices. At first it’s the founder making the choices, but eventually the choices also might belong to the investors, employees or executives. But the difficult part is that, as a founder, it isn’t always clear which choices are the “right” ones. All we can do is hope that we’re making more good decisions than bad ones. Or at least that we catch the bad decisions and alter them before things get too far.

My favorite genre of books is the fashion brand founding story. I’ve listened to every book Audible has to offer in this genre, from high fashion brands like Chanel and McQueen, pop cultural sensations like Dapper Dan and Juicy Couture, streetwear like The Hundreds and Eckō, and sportswear like Vans and Nike. This is by no means an exhaustive list, because Audible has tons of books like these to fill my earbuds with a fashion-centered story and a cautionary tale about growing too quickly or the perils of taking the company public. I have learned something useful from every one of these founding stories, and learned a ton about fashion history over the past 100+ years as well, much of which I plan to reference in House of Caswell collections.