How Long-Distance Cycling Helped This Founder Keep Her Business Going for 25 Years

Welcome to Out of Office, a series that explores the extracurricular activities of entrepreneurs—from passion projects to full-blown side gigs—and why what they do in their downtime helps them level up as business leaders.

As the oldest of six children, Sarah Davis learned the value of finding balance amid chaos early on. And as the founder of luxury resale company Fashionphile, her adult life is, perhaps, even more chaotic. Davis has led Fashionphile from its first sale in 1999 to its first fundraising round in 2019, and is about to celebrate her 25th anniversary at the company—a feat for any founder. Davis has kept her sanity throughout it all by investing in another long-term passion: cycling. —As told to Annabel Burba

My dad was a competitive cyclist and rode his bike to work every day. We lost him in 2017 to brain cancer. So, it’s this thing that keeps the family together: We all cycle. That’s kind of the family I grew up with.

We do regular big rides. We don’t even live in the same area, but we’ll get together a few times a year. We’ve done this race called LoToJa, which is a 200-mile race. It starts in Logan, Utah, you ride through the state of Idaho, and then it finishes in Jackson, Wyoming. It’s a gnarly race. And it is so much fun because I [do it] with my brothers. I love training for it, I love the gear, I love the camaraderie of the group texts, and I love the ride. Even though it is hard, I do enjoy that type of challenge.

They say that when you’re running a company, it can be a lonely thing. I can’t meet my girlfriends for lunch. I’m in a group text, and I’m never there because I work in the office every day. But if I’m prioritizing exercise, I meet my friends. Cycling is a really fun way that we all stay connected.

The weird, really cool thing about exercise is, if you can get yourself to do it daily for like, a month, the endorphins kick in and it’s a self-rewarding process. It becomes almost like an addiction—your body just really enjoys that feeling. In my family, we have addictive personalities. When I get into stuff, I get really into it.

I always joke with my husband that if I do worse this year, if my time is worse, then I’ll hang up my LoToJa cleats, and I’ll do other things. But I shaved 45 minutes off last year’s time this year. I’m getting older, but every year I’ve done it, I’m getting faster and better. 

When there’s something that’s super hard and you can get through it, it’s so satisfying. [Fashionphole was] bootstrapped for 20 years until 2019, when Neiman Marcus joined as our first investor. 

That whole thing was so hard. Pitching, pitching, pitching so many different investors, getting told no, getting told yes, and then going through the whole diligence. And at the end of the day to end up with Neiman Marcus as our investor? It’s kind of like a baby. You’re like, “I can’t remember the pain and all the agony, because look at this baby, it’s so cute.”

I’ve had times in my life when I work really hard at something and it just doesn’t happen. There are people who did LoToJa with me who were three-quarters of the way through, and they have something happen with the bike, and it’s just over. You’ve got to take a lot of shots and do a lot of different things, because then you can have those successes—you’re hung up on the ones that don’t work out.