Rosa Bellei: The right moment for investment is when you don't need money
The investment banker and therapist knows more than most about the complex psychology behind financing a brand.
By India Birgitta Jarvis
We need new roadmaps in fashion. Leaving school with a mountain of debt and a dream is a strategy few designers can rely upon in 2026. As fees at prestigious design schools continue to climb, we’ve partnered with AZ Academy, a free Milan-based fashion course born out of the late Alber Elbaz’s AZ Factory – his brand turned fashion incubator – and overseen by Richemont, Creative Academy and Accademia Costume & Moda (ACM), to democratise access to fashion business education and a roster of esteemed industry figures.
Rosa Bellei has been making investment deals in the luxury space since the early-noughties – a time of enormous growth and business consolidation that feels like a far cry from the unstable economic climate of today. Luckily for the students of AZ Academy, Rosa is taking the lessons from this career – which has seen her lead cross-border transactions for the world’s biggest brands, and advise on more than 300 mandates, as part of J.P. Morgan, Dyens & Co and as a private consultant – and using them to support a new generation of fashion designers as they take their first steps in business.
The realities, requirements and risks of the high-stakes world of finance is just one side of the coin though. In 2024, Rosa went back to school herself, ‘for a little intellectual nourishment,’ as she puts it, and undertook an MA in Psychoanalysis – a move prompted by long-term love of Lacan and a desire to understand why we make the decisions we make, particularly those decisions which have nine-figure price tags attached.
Since graduating, Rosa has combined these two areas of experience, styling herself ‘The Finance Shrink.’ Not only does she advise leaders and stakeholders on strategy, valuation, fundraising, mergers and acquisitions, and governance – she also helps them to understand the motivations and impulses which drive them, knowledge which ultimately will create a more stable and focused business.
For those designers who are just starting out, this kind of knowledge is imperative, after all it’s never been so hard to survive in the fashion industry as it is now. Here, Rosa explains some of her hacks to help navigate the quagmire of business growth, clarifies how valuation can help map out future decision-making, and shares a biodynamic exercise to guide you out of feeling stuck.
What level of financial literacy do you observe in the designers you work with?
There’s a real mix of those who are right at the beginning of thinking about their business plan, and those who are already a little way in. But, in all cases, I think the financial side of things is not really their main interest, or area of expertise, so they are very responsive and receptive to the fact that this is a useful area of study for them. My goal is not to turn a designer into a banker or an accountant, it’s to help them understand the big picture, the terminology, and then to encourage them to surround themselves with the best advisors they can get.
What do you think are some of the most common financial mistakes designers make in the early stages of starting a business?
I don’t know if I can qualify them as ‘mistakes’, as such, but I think a lot of people at the beginning of their business journey don’t realise that the financial plan, or business plan, that they write is going to be read by other people, and not just them! Therefore, they need to be speaking the same language that an investor or a banker speaks. That’s one of the first things we go over – how will the word that you use, as a designer, be interpreted by someone from a different discipline? Words in the financial sector have fairly fixed definitions, and while, of course, some things are very sophisticated, ultimately it’s really driven by common sense and logic, so the designers I work with need to harness that logic in order to express themselves in a way that will be understood by business people.
Are there any financial challenges unique to the fashion industry compared to the other sectors you work with?
Oh absolutely, the momentum in fashion is not as favourable as it used to be even 10 years ago, let alone 20, so it’s very hard to grow a fashion business right now. It’s not as compelling for investors to put their money in luxury fashion, compared to tech or food or even beauty. There are different nuances for different geographies of course, but globally speaking even the big groups are struggling. You have to be particularly audacious to start a business in this field right now, and so I have a lot of respect for those who do it.
And those who have done it successfully, within this climate, what do you think their secret is?
Well talent, of course, you have to be supremely talented. But also resilient, entrepreneurial, convincing – to be able to convince people that it’ll pay off to work with you, even if you don’t have the money right now. In my experience, the most successful business people are those who manage to get themselves in the right rooms and surround themselves with people who are better than themselves, and that takes charisma and charm. Truthfully there’s no mathematical formula to success, but don’t underestimate the soft skills, the human touch.
A large part of your mentorship role at AZ is around business valuation – could you describe in layman’s terms what this means?
At its most simple, it’s how much a business is worth to its investors. But it’s not just a sum you can do. There are lots of different valuation criteria that people use, and every methodology has its own logic, it depends what it is you want to underline. For example, Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) is very analytical, and will often come out at a lower number. Investment funds tend to use this metric. Then there is the Multiples method, where you are guided by similar transactions that have already happened in the market, ones that are publicly available to read from listed companies, and then you apply those numbers to your own business. Of course, one of the big problems with this strategy is that your business is probably a lot smaller than the one you’re comparing to. But that’s where negotiation comes in. Business valuation is a bit of an art, not just maths, and the first criteria for you to get a great valuation is to find someone who is super passionate about what you’re doing. The financial modelling is important, but so is the life behind it.
Do you find there is a gap between what a founder thinks their brand is worth and what the market says?
Yes, a founder has access to a lot of information that people on the outside don’t have, so they’ll naturally see more potential for growth than an external partner will. Therefore, when you’re presenting to potential investors, it’s essential to make sure that that information is disclosed to them too. They can’t input data into their financial modelling if they don’t have the data to start with.
Is it always that way round though? Do you find there are founders who grossly underestimate the value of their business?
At the very beginning, yes, but as your business brain becomes sharper you then tend to overestimate.
Is a great investment offer just about money?
There’s always money involved, it’s not utopian, but selling your company to someone like LVMH compared to some nameless, unknown investor in a different part of the world, has a very different meaning. Even if they are offering the same figure – although LVMH would tend to pay more – the reputation, cache, synergy, the sexiness, the strings attached, whether or not the whole value is paid up front, the conditions outside of the price tag … those are the factors that can make an offer go from good to great. Every deal is so unique, and every transaction is tailor made. The money is really just the tip of the iceberg.
What can valuation teach a founder about their business?
It can teach backwards – if you want to reach a certain goal you can start from the end and work backwards and it could help you avoid the bad surprises. There are no guarantees that things will work out exactly like you planned, but it’ll really help inform your strategy. For example, if you know that every investor in the industry is interested in profitability and margin then you know that you need to design a business plan where you do not lose money. The business has to be sustainable. That necessity isn’t applicable to every industry – it’s different in tech, for example – but generally it does apply in fashion and luxury. In fashion, the best deals go to those who don’t need money to survive. If your gross profit margin is negative then your valuation is going to be shit. You need to know the metrics that matter the most to the people you are trying to sell to in order to make sure your business model is aligned and you can work towards that goal efficiently.
What are the most common mistakes founders make when they try to value their own company for the first time?
They have no clue! More often than not they are plucking a number out of thin air! ‘I heard that a friend of a friend took this amount of money and my product is better than his …’ Doesn’t matter! This is where a lot of people need a reality check. There is a story set by the numbers on a financial statement, and there is a story set by the brand, by the product, the aesthetics and so on. Those things are more ambiguous, more subjective – but numbers talk facts. And so, when they pick a number that they think the business is worth but it’s not actually based on what’s in the statements, it’s just, like, how good they think they are, they are not using the same logic that a banker would use. My role is to show them the way to accurately assess the very objective side of the story.
Can a small, independent fashion brand with no outside investors still benefit from understanding its own valuation?
If you don’t have an outside investor, it means you are the investor. There’s a formal process that is a requirement if you want to raise money, but even if you don’t want to or need to, it’s important that you, as the founder, understand if your model is sustainable, if your strategy is successful, if your product is profitable. For most founders, the business is a big chunk of their wealth, so valuation is just as important if not more important for them to understand than it is for third parties.
Is there such a thing as a ‘right moment’ for independent fashion brands to raise investment?
The right moment is when you don’t need money. You’re doing well, everyone wants a piece of you, you’re super hot, and you can be choosy. My advice is to try and raise money when you’re not absolutely desperate. Investors will feel the fear, and make an easy business decision that ultimately won’t be at the benefit of the creator. Find investment when you need it to help you expand, or to get a particular thing to market, or to launch a new distribution channel, or open in a new country. But not when without it you’ll die. If your survival as a business depends on it then it’s not the right moment. You have to be sustainable without external investment.
Money is a very emotional subject and people will often make financial decisions based on social or psychological forces. You’re also a therapist – how much does that feed into your role as a mentor?
I always do some exercises to help people connect to the place inside themselves where decisions get made. It can be very moving to unpack, because we’re essentially trying to bring unconscious processes into consciousness. We do a kind of social theatre in small groups, where individuals must try and represent with their body an area of their business where they feel stuck. They don’t have to disclose the details, but just hold a position that communicates this concept of stuckness. Then, they physically represent a more comfortable, sustainable, unstuck version. Afterwards we debrief on what we saw and how we felt, and we always land on the fact that being stuck is in itself unsustainable. Nature just doesn’t allow things to be stuck, there’s always a way out, and it can be graceful and be beautiful and actually very straightforward. Acting it out in the body helps to unblock things in the mind. It comes a bit from dramatherapy but we’re just applying it to business problems.
Money is also in many cultures quite a taboo subject – are there any stigmas you wish you could help undo to make this more straightforward?
I would say that money can be used as an excuse to play small. We don’t have it, we don’t deserve it, we can’t ask for it – this lack being the thing that is holding us back. But money has more to do with shame than finance! Talk about it all the time, make it a part of your day-to-day conversation and eventually that shame will disappear, and then the sky is the limit. Break the invisible ceiling that you’ve built yourself and, if you’re going to play small, do it because small is beautiful, not because you feel like that’s all your worth.
