Member Spotlight: Toccin - A Clothing and Lifestyle Brand on a Mission to Make Women Comfortable, Confident, and Effortlessly Stylish

Convene makes spaces and experiences that draw people together to bring out their best. But we’d be nowhere without the remarkable individuals from our vibrant community. In this series, we shine a spotlight on the members and companies who inspire those around them with their extraordinary work.

Member: Alex Toccin

Company: Toccin

Location: 530 5th Avenue, NYC

Husband and wife duo Alex and Michael Toccin launched their first clothing line in 2019 with one simple mission: create fashion that would make women feel comfortable, confident, and stylish. Since then, Toccin (pronounced “toss in”) has expanded from effortless dresses and jackets to a fully developed lifestyle collection including trousers, skirts, blouses, and knitwear. Today, their clothes can be found at Saks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Bergdorf Goodman, among other stores.

We spoke with Alex Toccin - company co-founder, fashion influencer, and mother of two - about building a brand, making adjustments during the pandemic, and what it’s like running a business with your husband.

How did Toccin come about?

We decided to start our company with a blog called Stylists to a T (in 2016) to see if a community would appreciate our styling sense. And the focus of the blog was really to tell women what to wear, how to wear it, and where to buy it. At the time, this blog was a virtual styling space for women to come to get that styling intel, whether they were a working woman, a mom, a young girl, an entrepreneur, whatever it might be.

At the same time as creating this platform, we recognized that there was a void in the marketplace for women to have dresses that they could wear from meetings to evenings and everything in between. So we decided to make it our mission to create our first collection called Toccin, which launched in September of 2019. We also designed two jackets that women could wear back to the dresses. And we hit the ground running. We started off selling at Rent the Runway, Neiman Marcus, and had our own DTC.

And then the pandemic hit. How did you adjust?

We had in our plan to always extend into other ready-to-wear pieces, such as knitwear tops, bottoms, other things. So we pivoted a little quicker than we thought we were going to. And we have extended the collection into a full ready-to-wear line.

We have also created an exclusive collection for Rent the Runway, part of the Runway collective that launched this past year. It’s similar to Toccin. It's just a little bit more of an exclusive brand for them.

Our second brand, called LDT - which was named after our daughter, Liv Dakota Toccin - is a little bit different. The Toccin brand is streamlined, put together, classic color palette, whereas LDT is a joyful and fun, and a little bit more youthful as well.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen these past couple years?

A challenge initially was that we started off, and we had such a great run being able to cater to the woman who needed those dresses to wear from work to evening, and we were in a much dressier society. And then the pandemic hit, and everything kind of became more casual. The woman's wardrobe has changed so much. Being a large start-up company as we are now, we've been able to pivot, and we've been able to make changes that have been a little bit quicker than other fashion companies. Also we've been very fortunate to have wholesale opportunities to continue to expose our products and brands.

Today - which is what is so wonderful - people are getting dressed again. We're seeing a lot more people getting dressed up, and they have a lot more occasions to go to.

How big is your company?

We have twelve full-time employees, and a handful of freelancers who don't necessarily work at the office.

Convene is where we started off as a startup company, and we've grown. We've grown in people, we've grown in the brand. What attracted us to Convene is finding a working space that could help us display and show our brands within our company, and then also help us, as we grow, to be able to house our employees.

How would you describe your company culture?

Half of our employees have been with us from the beginning, so they've been watching us grow. We do have that growth-mode mentality and value. We have that flexible mentality, but also we definitely have the discipline to be able to continue to move forward as we grow and make sure that everybody feels a part of it and a part of the community within our company.

What were the biggest milestones from this past year?

We’ve been continuing to build distribution for Toccin and LDT which has been super exciting to us. Additionally,  Rent the Runway has been a wonderful wholesale partner for us. We've been able to grow with them and come out with this new exclusive collective brand.

What’s it like running a business as a husband-wife duo?

My husband, Michael, always says that if you believe something will happen, it will happen. There are often times you believe that “I really don't feel like it's going to work, or maybe we shouldn't do that.” What works for Michael and I is that we're both very different personalities. He's more of the creative aspect of our business. I'm more of the business side and financial focused one. I'm a little bit more conservative, and he's very optimistic. He teaches me and guides me that if we continue to believe that something will happen, it will come to fruition. And I feel like that has definitely been what has happened to us since we started the business.

What are the biggest challenges you think you might face in 2023?

Community is the most important thing. We are in the office at least three days a week and out of the office the other two. It's super important to us to continue to have that discipline within our company, to make sure what everyone's doing is still fun and focused, making sure everyone understands the goals and the expectations so that we can all get to where we want to be in ‘23.

How did you hear about Convene?

We found out about Convene prior to the pandemic. I believe it was May of 2020, we were finally able to lock in our space. It is the business class of a co-working space. It provides us with a great office space but also the community space outside of it. We've been able to utilize the common spaces for different meetings. We’ve been really pleased with Convene and being able to grow our company while having a space that is good for our employees to work.

How do you use the Convene space?

We use our office space for everything. We have fittings in the space. We actually show (pieces) in the space. We just redid our showroom. It’s a nicer space to bring store buyers into to come see the collection. Our team definitely utilizes the meeting spaces. When we have meetings of two or greater, we use the common spaces. All employees use phone booths. Some employees even just sit out in the table space just to have their own space and to spread out. We love the cafe. We've definitely utilized some of the larger spaces for meetings.

What’s it been like working with the Convene team?

It’s been really nice to have stable contacts that we're able to reach out to just to ask about meeting spaces if we have a meeting. Having that customer service has been really wonderful.

As our team has grown, we've had to change the space around a lot. Being able to utilize your design team, who's been able to help us - you guys have wonderful services. We obviously have a lot of clothes. We have to bring it to our archive and storage unit. So you've been able to have wonderful services that have been able to help us to be able to do that rather than having to wait until after office hours to do it.

You guys help to alleviate a huge headache of being a business owner - whether it's the cleaning services, just all those small minutiae. You've been able to bring that community sense to our team by not having to have all the headaches that we would if we had our own space that we would have to manage. We've grown so much over the past years. It’s a nice space that we can continue to grow in as we continue to move along.

What is your favorite secret spot at Convene?

I'm a working mother, too. Being able to get out of the house and come to our office is my creative break. It’s a place to come to work and for everyone to get out of their house and to feel that community sense of our team.

For more information on Toccin and to shop the brand, visit their online store.

Curious to know more about what it’s like to work at a Convene space? Head over to our WorkPlace solutions page. And please feel free to connect with us directly if you’re ready to join our Membership Community.

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