BUD: The price strategy has to be part of the fun. If a customer is going to pick up a tag and say “This is uncomfortable for me, it's not fun.” So it doesn't have to be cheap – it has to be something that she expects it to be. I mean, I think that's probably the key. They come through a Nicole Miller awning knowing there is no designer price punishment. It's going to fun clothes – they are going to wear it and they are going to have a great time. It's as well made as anything – it's certainly original design.

We have runway shows just like everybody who charges 50 times the price. But, it's got to work for her the way she expects it. She expects to pay a certain price in there, and if we break that barrier, it is uncomfortable and she's likely not to buy it.

If you start out selling department stores, there's no feeling of anything. If there is a buyer there or a merchandiser or a controller, because you don't even have people selecting the merchandise anymore, you are selling into an office; you present and you don't know who the customer is.

The buyer half the time has no idea who her customer is because department stores deal in traffic. Where a small store deals in trade. She knows her customer, she knows Alice, she knows Mary, she knows Sally, she knows Joan and she buys for them. And that's a business.

This ambiguous stuff, where you just buy stuff for somebody or the trade or the people. There is no focus to that and there is no meaning to it. And it is much more difficult when you are buying by some sort of computer profile.

What Nicole Miller is today absolutely flies in the face of everything.

It is a young looking line at better than young cheap prices. It is not really very expensive and it's also a little bit longer waisted. That's what we do. And when department store come in here, their big question is, “Who do you hang with?” Because all our missy stuff is still conservative, and all our trendy stuff, they call it contemporary (they change the names all the time) is all on this other thing – it's cheaper, and it's flashier and it's not well-made but nobody cares.

I say, “But, this is what we do. This is what we do.” We are in the middle of the whole thing and we are not like anybody else, and we have been very successful doing it.