Leslie Voorhees is the co-founder and Head of Product at Anomalie, a company that creates custom wedding dresses online starting at $1000.
Early life and education
Leslie Michelle Voorhees Means was born in 1987 and the daughter of John D. Voorhees and Ann L. Voorhees of Portland. Leslie graduated from Beaverton High School in 2004, earned with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Duke University in 2008, and attained her MBA at Harvard Business School.
While Leslie was still attending at Duke University, she was part of the NCAA D1 Varsity Track & Field (Pole-Vaulter), American Society for Mechanical Engineers, Alpha Delta Pi, Engineering Student Government, and Presidential Committee, including Athletics Council, Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Pratt School of Engineering Student Ambassador, Senior Gift Committee, Undergraduate Admissions Ambassador, Undergraduate Admissions Interviewer, and Young Alumni Peer Network. Leslie was the Co-President of Allies Club and Section A Social Chair while attending Harvard Business School.
Early career
Leslie was a Global Engineering and Manufacturing Intern at Nike for three months. Leslie got improved upon a commercialization tracking tool by revising a list of failure codes; consolidated redundant codes and designed more precise codes containing failures that were previously undefined. Then Leslie became the Product Engineer at Nike in June 2008 and lasted until 2013.
In March 2014, Leslie worked as an Operations Intern at M.Gemi, where she helped launch the supply chain in Italy. M.Gemi releases new, limited edition styles every week, and sells straight to consumers, which lets Leslie’s team offer their shoes at surprisingly attainable prices. After seven months, Leslie left the job.
In July 2015, Leslie worked at Apple as a Product Operations Manager in China, and after over a year, she quit the job to pursue her first venture.
Anomalie
In 2006, Leslie Michelle Voorhees Means and her husband Calley Larkin Means co-founded Anomalie, an online custom wedding dress company. Anomalie came out of Leslie’s personal experience with wedding dress shopping. At the time, Leslie was still working for Apple in China for the Watch. Leslie then discovered that the city nearby the Apple factory produces 80% of the world’s wedding dresses.
Leslie then visited on the weekend and used her connections to locate some of the top workshops that the factory makes dresses for the expensive boutique brands. The idea came out when Leslie saw a dress she identified that markets in the US for thousands and realized it cost only hundreds to make one. That factory made her dress and revealed it to a couple of her friends. Within a week, Leslie received 30 emails from friends of her friends, requesting her to make them a dress on her next flight to China.
Leslie and her husband Calley became fascinated with wedding dresses and realized a brand with extensive operations and supply chain management, inclusive design support, and prominent technology could bring more customization, content, and transparency to this market. The couples resigned their jobs, and the day after their wedding, they flew to China to start the production.
In December 2018, Anomalie announced the launch of their new semi-custom veil product line. Estimated to launch on December 10, 2018, Anomalie is now offering over 30 different veil styles available in their online store. Anomalie is taking the wedding dress shopping experience to the next level for the modern bride by increasing their offering to semi-custom veils that can be ordered in just minutes.
This collection occurs at a time of transition for the wedding dress industry. Using their expertise and resources to provide luxury veils at a portion of the expense of their competitors, Anomalie is severing boutique overhead and designer increases to achieve handmade veils via a more stylish layout.
Currently, Anomalie is composed of 50 employees from companies like David’s Bridal, Vera Wang, Apple, Airbnb, Uber, and Stitch Fix. Anomalie has offices in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and have raised money from early backers of companies like Stitch Fix, Warby Parker, Glossier, Allbirds, and Casper.
Funding rounds
In November 2017, Anomalie raised $4.5 million in a seed round of funding from investors SoGal Ventures, Signia Venture Partners, Sam Lessin’s Fin, Maveron, Liquid 2 Ventures, Lerer Hippeau’s BN Capital fund, former Stitch Fix CTO Jeff Barrett, and ThirdLove underwear CEO Heidi Zak. In June 2019, Anomalie raised $13.6 million in a Series A round, led by Goodwater Capital.
Anomalie has raised a total of $18.1 million in its two rounds of funding and is funded by nine investors.