PROFILE
MODE prides itself on being the "Home
of the $40 designer jean," a slogan that
the company even trademarked.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
By 2010, Stockeland knew that MODE was
much more than a mom-and-pop and she
was ready to expand.
"He said, 'You have a maternity store. I have
a load of product," Stockeland recalls. "'Can
we put it in your store, and will you sell it?'
And I said, 'Well, we absolutely cannot put
it in my store, but I can open something
next door to it.' And so six months later, we
opened a second store."
She called it MODE and she was sure it
would be nothing more than a pop-up shop
and a one-off way to make a few extra
bucks. Until it took off.
"It just appealed to everyone," says
Stockeland, who knew she'd struck gold, or
at the very least, silver. "Instead of that short,
four- to five-month customer with maternity, I
now had the masses."
Stockeland merged the concepts in 2008
and brought the outlet over into the boutique.
"My husband would always say, 'You
quit Mama Mia and you started MODE,'"
Stockeland says. "And I'd go, 'No, no, no,
we had them both and we merged them.' I
think it was my way of saying I didn't fail at
something.
"As an entrepreneur, you're always like, 'I
don't want to say I quit that.' Because that
means it didn't work or I didn't succeed at it."
"We said, 'Okay, we're ready to build this
brand. How are we going to do that?'" she
says. "Because owning stores three, six,
eight hours away and managing all those
employees with our young children is not
something I wanted to do. Having to hop in
the car and always be gone."
So she came up with another solution.
"We liked the idea of franchising and the
idea that local owners would know their
communities and have skin in the game,"
says Stockeland, who now has 11 franchises
in six different states and is aiming to open
75 within the next 10 years. "The storeowner
says, 'I'm invested. This is mine. I'm going to
grow it.' Instead of us going in, researching,
So what was the problem?
"I think it's a common mistake with boutique
owners, being stuck in what they like,"
Stockeland says. "We like this, but our
consumer is buying this. But we can't keep
buying this just because we like it. In any
industry, you have to be willing to adjust."
In a move that she now admits was an
attempt to mitigate any narrative of failure,
The floor of MODE's flagship South
Fargo location.
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