Tough as Leather

One day a shop owner asked if Duren could make a purse to match the leather jackets. Sure, Duren responded, having absolutely no idea how to pull it off.

"You use different tools for jackets than for handbags," explains Duren, "so I designed a handbag almost like a garment. I kind of stumbled across something nobody was doing."

This first bag was well-received. Duren developed more styles and began pulling in $6,000 a month in sales. By 1984, she had attracted an investor, a friend of a friend of a--well, you get the picture. The cash infusion allowed her to set up camp in a cushy studio and hire five employees. Soon, $6000 per month became $25,000. "This is too good to be true," Duren thought.

She was right. Soon the investor hit financial troubles and took them out on her. He yanked all her new equipment and accounts receivable. Worse, he liquidated her inventory, telling clients they were getting the merchandise at a last-chance, going-out-of-business discount. He was going out of business, but Duren wasn't; nonetheless, she now had no equipment other than what she'd started with years before, and with no materials to work with, no money was coming in. After releasing her employees, Duren was back to where she started.

Fortunately, Duren found out what her investor was up to and managed to convince her clients that she was still in business, though she was again a one-woman show. To make things worse, she was dealing with a more personal dilemma at the same time. On a day shortly before her investor pulled out, Duren was in San Francisco delivering her goods to a fashion show when she received a phone call from a hospital emergency room. Leila had been run over by a car. Chasing after a ball at her baby-sitter's house, she had run into the street.

Leila was in a coma for seven days, and Duren remained by her side the entire time, talking day and night because the doctors said the mother's voice might awaken the little girl. "It was so scary and surreal," says Duren. Keky had witnessed the accident, felt responsible and refused to go to the hospital. Aside from a friend who brought over some food, Julia Duren was all alone.

This article was originally published in the April 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Tough as Leather.