Not an Overnight Success Story…
Baby-boomer, Marla Wynne’s rise from out-of-work TV producer to hugely-successful fashion designer has been told and retold as a courageous Baby-Boomer reinvention story. It often sounds like Marla grabbed a sewing machine, pitched her creations to an investor and voila, a new line of clothing was born.
But the truth was a lot more complicated and the path to success more twisted than that, as I learned when I interviewed Marla for Out-of-Work to Making Money, 21 Comeback Stories Every Job Hunter Should Hear. Here is a fuller version of her entrepreneurial journey.
The story starts with Marla Wynne’s (Ginsburg) career in the entertainment industry ending when the writer’s strike began in 2007. Marla had been an Executive Producer of TV shows, Highlander, La Femme Nikita and “a bunch of shows you never heard of”
As Marla watched real estate values tank and her investments plummet, she tried to hide from her kids, age fifteen and twelve, just how bad the situation was.
She knew she needed a new game plan. “I always combined business with creativity,” Marla said. “I didn’t set out, oh, I want to be a designer. I set out thinking, my kids want to eat and go to college. I better figure this out.”
“I looked in the marketplace and I decided that there really weren’t that many brands in the…
