Designing Woman

Supplying Nordstrom with her line of bags and accessories in June 1997 was a dream come true for the then-20-year-old, but it was only the first leg of her plan. "I knew I didn't want to just do scarves and purses," she says. "I wanted to get into clothing."

Working 40 hours a week at the Nikko Hotel, plus 40 hours a week growing Rudwear, was tough. "I was driving myself crazy," Hamm remembers of returning dozens of Rudwear voice-mail messages during her Nikko lunch hours every day. But she was soon rewarded: "When I pitched my [clothing designs] to Nordstrom [in early 1998], they bit," she says.

It was all systems go, and now Hamm needed to devote every minute to making the product line a success. "Eventually, Rudwear started supporting itself, and that's when I left Nikko," says Hamm. "That was a big scare for me because I wasn't going to have the $600 a week [paycheck]. But I knew I had to take that risk because business is a risk no matter what you do."

Before long, Rudwear faced the very problem she'd feared: the cash crunch. Turning to a factoring company brought relief. "I didn't have to wait 30 days to get paid to [be able to] make my goods," says Hamm.

As the up-and-coming clothier's cash flow increased, so did her business acumen. When a manufacturer closed shop and left town without filling one of Hamm's orders, she didn't panic: She had another contractor ready and able to step in. Says Hamm, "I always have a backup plan."

This article was originally published in the January 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Designing Woman.