Bill D’Alessandro ’04

Entrepreneur

In 2019, when Bill D’Alessandro ’04 was named Small Businessperson of the Year by Charlotte Agenda (now Axios Charlotte), his business, Elements Brands, had 24 employees working out of their Charlotte warehouse. The company, which Bill started in 2011 at age 25, buys small retail brands, beefs up their e-commerce capabilities, and makes them bigger and more profitable. Since 2019, the company has nearly tripled its work force and quadrupled its annual sales.

While the pandemic has brought challenges, it’s also been very good for business. “We already had a strong 2019 and had just purchased what is now our largest brand, Natural Dog Company. I feel very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time,” says Bill. “The right place being e-commerce and the right time being the 2020 lockdown when online shopping really took off and 11 million people got new dogs.”

But the tailwinds Elements Brands caught also have a lot to do with Bill’s entrepreneurial business skills. In early 2020, through connections in China, he came to realize ahead of many others “maybe this COVID thing is real.” So, in February, he pulled forward a year’s worth of inventory and sent as much as possible to Amazon to piggyback on their logistics should Charlotte get locked down and his warehouse be unable to ship. Those two decisions put Elements Brands in a strong position to weather the pandemic.

“But there was still a lot of uncertainty,” says Bill. “Yes, we doubled in 2020 both in headcount and revenue, but it’s been a real challenge figuring out how to keep our in-person warehouse employees safe and how to bring on new employees on the administrative side when we are still operating primarily remotely.” The plus side is that Bill now recruits talent from across the nation, but he also sees the value in teamwork, collaboration, and the stronger relationships that come from working together in an office.

And for Bill, “the people” are the most rewarding aspect of running Elements Brands. He proudly recounts the story of a graphic designer he hired five years ago straight out of college who now leads a team of 17 people. “Just watching people like her come along and be able to lead others and make good decisions without my help is really cool. It used to be that Elements Brands was me and I was Elements Brands, but now there are other people also at the center of gravity. It’s fun to watch.”

That ability to see his employees’ potential and give them space to grow is something Bill appreciates about his teachers and coaches at Country Day.

He points to people like his advisor Marsha Newton-Graham. “She treated me like an adult very early in life, which I think helped me to become an adult. My teachers knew me and knew what I needed. They allowed me to pursue my interests in a way that maybe colored outside the lines a bit, and that allowed me to strengthen that entrepreneurial muscle that now guides my life.”

For example, he points to teachers like Anne Edwards who recognized that his constant mucking around with the settings and software (mild hacking) on the library computers was not something to be punished, but rather an interest in technology to be nurtured. He and his friends were set up with a computer in a closet that they could mess around with. That experience led to AP Computer Science with Erin Springfield who helped him “stoke a love of computers and programming,” which he majored in at Wake Forest University.

Similarly, Darrell Bach taught Bill to love math. And he and his friends were fully supported when they broached the idea of entering mathematical modeling competitions. Admittedly, as a teen he liked the idea of getting out of class for the day, but also appreciates that the school administration trusted him and his friends to sit in a room in the library for eight hours trying to solve a mathematical problem. “We felt totally independent and couldn’t ask for help. There are parallels to entrepreneurship in that.”

On the athletic side, Bill says he learned about the value of teamwork, ethics, and sportsmanship from Coach Bob Witman, and values the safe space to hang out provided by Stephanie Miller and Mary Beth Luxton in the training room.

Now at 36, with a wife, two small children, and a thriving business, Bill is feeling blessed with his life and all the potential ahead of him.