INSIDE THE VISION: CARLY BURNETT ON ESSENTIALISM, INSTINCT, AND THE POWER OF A PRIVATE BRAND

Inside the Vision: Carly Burnett on Essentialism, Instinct, and the Power of a Private Brand

While TKEES operates on a global scale, its heartbeat remains entirely personal. Co-founder and Creative Director Carly Burnett shares her uncompromising approach to design, why she still chases inspiration down the street, and how keeping a business emotional has become their ultimate strength.

AMBG: Carly, you describe yourself as an essentialist. How do you decide what earns its place in the TKEES lineup?

Carly: The ultimate filter is always: does it feel authentic to the brand? Does it hold our core DNA of being minimal and exceptionally well-made? I usually visualize the silhouette in my head first – I have to see it happen organically. If it feels forced, it’s simply not right.

Over the past sixteen or seventeen years, we’ve definitely made some funky designs and gone off-track a little. But we learned our lessons. We were quite young when we started. You learn, you grow, and now we know our DNA intimately. We have more data and we know what works, so we make much wiser decisions from those foundations.

AMBG: Speaking of inspiration – where does that first spark typically come from?

Carly: Everywhere. I have literally chased women down the street before; I’ve been that creepy person. Once, I went under a table in a coffee shop just to take a quick photo of someone’s shoes. You get inspired by a silhouette, and it comes to you when the time is right—you just need to stay open to it. It can be an article, one of my daughter’s friends coming over, someone passing by, or a website. If it feels right, the team and I just riff off of that.

AMBG: What comes first in your process – the silhouette, the color, or a specific feeling?

Carly: Silhouette, always. Then we think about whether it fits perfectly, whether the feeling is right, and then we sample it. Color is always the very last step. We absolutely need to master the silhouette and the fit first. I still get incredibly excited over new products and immediately want them in ten different colors, but my team is very good at holding me back.

Jesse: There was actually a point when we had seven different shades of dark navy. The factory called us and said, “Guys, it’s getting tough to keep up with the different dark navies.»

“People assume TKEES is huge—that we’re owned by some giant corporation. But it was built by a husband and wife from our kitchen table, and it’s still run that way.” — Carly Burnett

AMBG: You are building TKEES together – Carly as Creative Director, Jesse as CEO. What makes that partnership work so well?

Jesse: Well, the last time I was invited to a design meeting was about ten years ago. I get to see things when they’re completely done. I might occasionally say, “Hey, we should make this,” and a lot of the time the team will politely say, “Oh, yeah, great idea» and then absolutely nothing ever comes of it.

Carly: Jesse is a businessman, but he’s incredibly creative – he’s a true hybrid. And on the flip side, I don’t really enjoy looking at spreadsheets.

Jesse: Early on, we definitely had more friction. When you build a business from scratch, you do everything yourself and you’re still figuring out your roles. Over time, you fine-tune your lanes. There’s nothing about my role that Carly actually wants to do, and she knows to keep me far away from design. Too many cooks in the kitchen ruins the soup.

Carly: It took a little bit of time to get there. But once you find your lanes and don’t cross over too much, it’s pretty great. We’ve been doing this since the day we met – it’s all we know.

Jesse: Carly is incredibly specific about her vision. She’s usually already looking five years into the future at any given point – we’ve often joked that we’ve been two or three years too early on certain trends. There are styles I’ve asked her to re-release because the market timing was just slightly off the first time.

The Julia kitten heel is a perfect example. I was pushing for a kitten heel for years, but Carly kept saying no – she insisted we do flats, not heels. I even went behind her back once and brought a sample to the house when her mom was visiting, and the two of them picked it up and just said, “Ew.” So I dropped it. Years later, the team came up with a kitten heel design on their own, and Carly finally said yes. It took ten rounds of samples to get it right – minimal, just like our classic Lily, but elevated. Now it’s one of our most desired styles.

Carly: It’s been beautifully received. We’re coming out with a Croc version for 2027, and it’s already heavily booked. Everything we introduce shares the exact same DNA. Even with our platform sandal, we simply thought: what can we add to the Lily that our community is actively looking for? A platform. It sold out instantly. We launched it as a small fashion test, but demand was so strong it’s now a core part of our assortment. We just push the barrier a tiny bit while staying true to the foundation.

AMBG: What is something about TKEES that doesn’t exist yet, but you hope to realize in the next five years?

Carly: I would absolutely love an immersive TKEES experience. When you put on a pair of TKEES, you immediately think of vacation, ease, and sunshine. It would be incredible to translate that exact feeling into a physical space you can actually walk through.

Jesse: Modern consumers want experiences more than they want physical products. The real question is how you provide that experience while keeping it entirely authentic to the brand. History is full of companies that failed to take off in new chapters, but it’s also full of incredible brand crossovers. That is the ultimate showcase of an amazing brand – when you can become something bigger than your retail footprint and your revenue, and truly become woven into the fabric of society.

AMBG: Is there a message you’d like to share directly with our community who are discovering TKEES for the first time?

Carly: For me, it comes down to community and a feeling that goes far beyond the product itself. Because Jesse and I are very private, we tend to stay behind the scenes, so people often assume TKEES is a massive corporation. When they find out the truth, it surprises them: TKEES was built by a husband and wife right from our kitchen table, and it is still run that way today.

Our team is like family; most of them have been with us pretty much from the very start. We are small and mighty, and everything we do is driven by genuine emotion. People always say to take the emotion out of business, but I refuse to do that.

Jesse: I’ll add to that. Who Carly is as a person has made its way through the entire company and directly into the product itself. She has a boundless, genuine energy that permeates everyone around her. She has the kindest heart, but also the spirit of a warrior – easygoing in almost every regard, except when things are truly on the line. She is a true visionary and a company leader perfectly blended together.

Carly Burnett is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of TKEES. Jesse Burnett is the Co-Founder and CEO.

AMBG is proud to be the official partner of TKEES across Russia, the CIS, and Central Asia.

Interview by Ekaterina Aleksandrova, Brand Marketing Manager, AMBG.