The Kahani Of: Sarah Sukumaran, Founder + CEO of Lilith NYC
A couple weeks ago, we had the amazing opportunity to chat with Sarah Sukumaran, founder and CEO of Lilith NYC, a global luxury sneaker brand based out of New York City. Sarah was a force to speak with, leaving the both of us inspired to do more work that we strongly believe in. With an interesting background in business, starting a career in designing and building software analytics platforms,and then pivoting to become an entrepreneur, Sarah has followed her passions in every form - but has faced hardships along the way that many South Asian women of color go through on this journey.
Born and brought up in Queens, New York, Queens was the inspiration for Sarah’s aesthetic, style, and the motivation behind Lilith. However, her background was never in fashion or footwear. She pursued a career in tech because she realized it was stable, financially lucrative, and that she had a knack for it.
While at a tech startup, Sarah’s boss pushed her to begin blogging and share her love for fashion and sneakers. She’d spend endless hours looking for sneakers catered to women consumers - and never had any luck. Sarah took it upon herself to create Lilith NYC- a brand for women sneakerheads and enthusiasts around the world.
Her technical prowess ended up bringing her to Nike, where she joined a data and engineering team that was acquired by Nike in 2018, as Director of Product, managing product and engineering teams. While at Nike, she realized the landscape of women’s footwear still hadn’t evolved from footwear’s roots and focus around male sport and athletes. She also realized as much as she wanted to reap the benefits of a stable and cushy corporate job, she knew she was a startup person at heart. Sarah wasn’t able to move at the pace that she wanted to at Nike and saw they were ignoring the data that proved the market gap between what women desired out of the sneaker market, and what actually existed.
Fed up with this realization and believing in her knowledge of sneakers and technical skills, Sarah set out to make Lilith NYC come to life and become a solution for a problem she had been experiencing for decades. As time went on, Sarah read more articles and spotlights about women sneakerheads that were making it big in the space. Sarah saw herself as the exact consumer she was creating for - she experienced the struggle and knew all the pain points and just could not stand to go on any longer without doing anything about it.
Knowing there was an opportunity to fail, Sarah still committed because this was something she was immensely passionate about. She quit her job and set out to build Lilith full time. However, little did she know, the Covid-19 pandemic was just around the corner and would bring even more challenges than anticipated for a first time entrepreneur. Sarah continued to tell us about her grueling - yet exciting - journey with Lilith, and her team with individuals located around the world, including Medellín, Colombia and Sri Lanka, where Sarah’s family is originally from. Interestingly enough, Lilith’s aesthetic, visuals, branding, and style appeal wildly to folks in Sri Lanka, India, and Europe. The US market, still fixated on ‘hype’ trends, has yet to catch up with international markets, which is something that seems to be recurring for people within the fashion space who are shaking things up.
We talked more about being a South Asian founder in the US, and how the “need” for an online presence deeply impacts founders around the world. Not only is it difficult to get communities to support your business, but building an online presence is no joke either. Sarah finds it quite unfair how women founders have to show up as their brand, specifically on the social media landscape - women’s personal accounts become an extension of their ventures and they are forced to be “on” all the time due to representing their company at all times. She considers herself an introvert and values her privacy as a founder and doesn’t like that the success of her brand is in tandem with her having to be some type of “influencer” online.
Lilith’s customer demographics are quite interesting - the supporting customers are mainly white women who do not identify as sneakerheads and interestingly, male sneakerheads. When it comes to Sarah’s fundraising experience with VCs, it has been men who have been the most supportive and responsive. There are still glaring issues within VC spaces and where funds really go - women receive nearly less than 2% of all VC funding. We’re sure you’re able to make assumptions about the lack of funding founders of color receive, especially women of color.
One recurring theme we encounter while speaking to South Asian women is the need and deep desire for South Asian women to truly support others - especially those who are misrepresented or discriminated against in our communities. This doesn’t mean leaving emoji comments on Instagram posts - it also means speaking each other’s names in places or rooms of opportunity, spending money on each other’s services and products (without the expectation of a discount), and advocating for each other constantly, not only when something unfortunate happens. The barriers of entry for us are already quite high - and when individuals come from underserved communities, they’re even higher. The self doubt is just as high and it’s harder to get your foot in the door. We hope this is a reminder to support all your favorite founders, entrepreneurs, and creatives. It’s not easy out here. It is so inspiring to be surrounded by incredible people - and we are only trying to support them wherever we can by running these interviews, and encouraging folks to write for our blog.
As for Sarah, we admire her tenacity and are elated to see a South Asian woman in the sneaker space. As South Asian women, we are pigeon-holed into an array of stereotypes and it is always a win for us when one of us breaks out of the preconceived molds society puts us in. South Asian women, like all women, are multi-faceted and diverse and deserve to take up space and be supported in whatever they choose to pursue wholeheartedly.
You can shop Lilith NYC at lilith.nyc or follow them on instagram at @lilith.nyc!