Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017)

In 1983, Eileen Fisher signed up for a fashion trade show with no experience, no garments, no patterns or sketches – nothing but a few ideas for a women's clothing line focused on simplicity. Within three weeks, she came up with 12 pieces, a logo, and a name: Eileen Fisher. Today, the Eileen Fisher brand is still known for its elegant and minimalist designs, but it has grown to more than 60 locations and makes over $300 million in annual revenue. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Glenn Auerbach who invented nICE mug, a container made entirely from ice that keeps drinks cold. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  So today's story isn't just about a clothing brand that's had a huge influence on fashion and the business of fashion. It's actually a story about overcoming fears and deep, personal insecurities. Because back in the early 80s, Eileen Fisher was extremely introverted and even terrified at the idea of speaking to buyers and customers about her clothes. How she overcame that, it's a pretty cool story. It first ran in 2017, and I hope you enjoy it.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  I was so freaked out. The first day, I literally couldn't speak. I just stood there. People would ask me questions like, how much does it cost? What's the style number? And I, like, froze. And other people in my booth would help me out and say, you know, oh, you know, why don't you come back tomorrow, shall I help you out? I was like a deer in headlights.

• 1:05Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:16Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how an introverted interior designer got over her stage fright to launch Eileen Fisher, a multimillion-dollar clothing company for women.

• 1:30Guy Raz?

  So if you know a little bit about the clothing industry, the giants, especially for women's apparel, are brands like Chanel and Versace and Prada, and of course, H&M and Zara. So given that Eileen Fisher does about $300 million a year in revenue, it's comparatively small, but in women's fashion, the brand is also incredibly influential. And not just for the designs, but how Eileen Fisher started her company. To be precise, with just $350, she never took a dime from outside investors, and she still owns about 60% of her company. Her employees own the rest.

• 2:12Guy Raz?

  Now, if you've seen the clothes, you'll know that they're pretty spare and minimalist. Low-key, but also elegant, which is sort of how you might describe Eileen Fisher.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  It's funny, because lately, I've been kind of calling myself a shy extrovert.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I think, I don't know that I'm wired so much that way. I just think that something, I was kind of shut down when I was young. And, you know, the classroom, I remember there were like 60 kids in my Catholic school classroom. And it was just always safer to hide and to be small and not speak.

• 2:47Guy Raz?

  Eileen grew up in a middle-class family in Des Plaines, Illinois, in the 1950s and 60s. She had five sisters and a brother. Her dad worked as an accountant for a local company, and her mom spent her days at home doing laundry and cleaning and making dinner for all nine of them.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I think what I mostly remember is my mother, you know, her kind of unhappiness. I think it was hard raising seven children. And I think she felt it was her job to do all the hard work. And my dad felt, you know, his job was to go to work and make the money and come home and be taken care of after that. So she would pretty much kind of, we used to call it ranting and raving all day long. And then my dad would come home, and just before my dad would come home, she would get dressed and get the meal ready and sometimes even put on lipstick.

• 3:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  And I just remember, I was about 16, and my mother had a breakdown. And my father said that the next day, he was driving to work, and he had to pull over on the side of the road, and he broke down crying, realizing that he had thought only a few days before that these were the happiest days of his life.

• 3:59Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  But they were happy, you know, there were a lot of happy moments. Yeah, we played, the kids played, you know? We had the neighborhood, suburbs, and bicycles, and we'd play kick the can at night, and the good-humor truck came down the street, and we got ice cream, things like that. So, you know, it was pretty much your typical suburban experience, I think.

• 4:23Guy Raz?

  Eileen went off to college at the University of Illinois in the late 1960s without any real idea of what she wanted to do. She started out as a math major, but eventually she decided on interior design.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  You know, I just loved fabric and color and playing with the shapes and... Back to my mom for a second. I had sewed with my mother when I was younger. So that was some of my happy memories with my mother. I used to have these pictures in my mind of the clothes I wanted to wear. We would go shopping and I loved being in the fabric store. That was one of my favorite places to be.

• 4:59Guy Raz?

  In her early twenties, Eileen moved to New York with a friend, but with no real plan. Now, this was 1972, when you could actually find an apartment in Manhattan for a hundred bucks a month. So to pay her rent, Eileen started doing some freelance graphic design gigs. And eventually, she got a job working with a Japanese graphic designer named Roy Yoshimura.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was an assistant, so I'd started just doing whatever needed to be done. And we designed logos and we designed packages, things for banks. And then we did stuff for Japanese clients, Kirin Beer and things like that. And after a short while, we were like working together and, you know, we ended up getting into a relationship, which was like, oh, no.

• 5:46Guy Raz?

  And were you traveling? Were you, did you go to Japan with them?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Right. Right. So this is exactly where the clothing idea came from. So I, we started traveling. We took two trips together to Japan.

• 6:01Guy Raz?

  I'm just trying to imagine, like, this is the, I guess, the sort of mid to late 70s.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Right. Mid to late 70s.

• 6:09Guy Raz?

  And you're flying from New York to Japan.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  It must have been pretty glamorous, right? I mean, that was a big deal.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess so. It was also kind of stressful, you know? I felt pressure and, you know, I couldn't speak the language, so tried hard to learn it. So there was glamour, yes, I guess, you know? But I'm not, I don't, I'm not so attracted to glamour. I'm always more uncomfortable with glamour. So I say, I'm this uncomfortable person. That's why I had to make these comfortable clothes.

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  What struck you about design that you came across in Japan?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Just how simple and beautiful things were. Simple, really simple. Like, you could really see, like, with the kimono, for example, one shape, you know, for thousands of years. And, you know, they would just do, you know, use different fabrics and different techniques to make it different every time. And, you know, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. And, yeah, that inspired me.

• 7:13Guy Raz?

  How long did you work with? His name was Ray, right?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Ray, yeah.

• 7:17Guy Raz?

  How long did you work with him?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  About four years.

• 7:22Guy Raz?

  And, I mean, of course, any time there's a professional and personal relationship, this can also always, often causes some complications. Was that, did that sort of begin to unravel? Your personal relationship begin to unravel your professional relationship?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Yes, definitely. It was all connected.

• 7:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  We thought we could split up and work, continue to work together.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  But that became quite clear within a few months that that was just not going to work. But, yeah, so I ended up separating, getting my own little loft eventually, after about a year of bouncing around and finding a little space in a loft in Tribeca.

• 8:05Guy Raz?

  And... Where you lived and worked?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Where I lived and worked. And I was stumbling around doing still, you know, a few, you know, some Japanese clients still. And then some other work I was stumbling around and getting. I don't even know how and if I look back, because it was really day by day.

• 8:23Guy Raz?

  And it was just freelance, like, design work?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Right, right. Apartments, I did a few apartments, a small office, dentist office, things like that. Just whatever I could get.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And trying to survive and pay the rent and, you know, keep working as a designer and not go back to working as a waitress. That was my one commitment. I wasn't going to end up waitressing again. I hadn't done that in many years, and I didn't want to go back to that. And then I met some people, and that's when, although I had been kind of cooking on this idea of the, you know, the clothing business.

• 8:58Guy Raz?

  You'd been cooking on this idea already in the early 80s?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was in my mind for probably five years before the first garments appeared.

• 9:07Guy Raz?

  To make your own clothes or to try and design clothes, that was in your mind?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Right, to try and design clothes.

• 9:12Guy Raz?

  Where did that idea come from?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think some of it was that when I was trying to get dressed for the Japanese clients and the different, I wanted, I needed to look like a designer and...

• 9:28Guy Raz?

  What did that mean?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  What did it mean to look like a designer, to look, you know, put together and know...

• 9:34Guy Raz?

  Sophisticated and...

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, clean and elegant and simple. I wanted to reflect my own style of my own aesthetic. You know, I wore a uniform when I was young and...

• 9:45Guy Raz?

  At Catholic school?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Catholic school. And so when I was trying to get dressed as a designer, I kind of, I never really liked the uniform, but I liked the concept of making, getting dressed simple, just get up and, oh, I have enough to think about, enough to worry about, just get, put the clothes on and go, you know? I wanted to make it simple, but I didn't want it to be so confined that it had to be exactly like, you know, the uniform or, you know, one, only one particular shape. I didn't want to wear the same thing every day. And I just had this idea that I could make these simple clothes. No one's really doing it. And the images would come to me. I would see these simple shapes.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  And the first one I remember was I called a box top. It almost had a, you know, quite straight lines, like a kimono sleeve, and it was about the way it would drape when you had it on. So that was kind of the first picture that came to me. And others were, you know, the simple little widely pant and, you know, there was a vest and a shell. And these first few pieces, it just started to come to me. And I was talking to people because now I had artist friends in Tribeca and other people who were designing clothes and jewelry and things like that.

• 10:58Guy Raz?

  You were saying to them, which often happens when people have an idea, you were saying, I have this idea to design these beautiful, simple, you know, pieces of clothing for women. And were your friends saying, you should go for it. You should, you should do it?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, definitely.

• 11:14Guy Raz?

  And you would have these conversations for, you know, for a long time with many people, like over a period of five years?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  People probably thought I was really obsessed.

• 11:24Guy Raz?

  So this is what I'm curious about because this is the point at which 99.9% of people do nothing. They have a great idea and they do nothing, either because they decide not to do something or just because of bad luck. What was it that switched that idea into something you actually tried?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Wow. Okay, that's good. So I think what happened is that I'm seeing these pictures and I'm trying to imagine, where do I start, you know? And how would I make this happen? And I couldn't picture myself, you know, like, what if I made these clothes? How would I do that? And then I couldn't picture myself, how would I sell them?

• 12:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  You know, would I go to stores? Other people were telling me they were going to, like, Henry Bendel and waiting in line for hours and the buyer would go like, nope, I don't like it.

• 12:18Guy Raz?

  And you did not, that was not you. You were not a, you're not a hustler in that way.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  No, I was a shy introvert, I think at the time. But I knew I couldn't. I was definitely not a hustler and I could not have done that.

• 12:33Guy Raz?

  The idea was mortifying to you to have to go and try to, what do you think was the, would have been the hardest part of that? The rejection, somebody saying no, or trying to articulate what it was that you?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Both, both. I think probably it was still rejection at the time, you know? But articulating was and still is a kind of an issue for me. Just thinking today about trying to tell the story very hard.

• 13:01Guy Raz?

  You're doing great.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Thanks, I need encouragement.

• 13:03Guy Raz?

  This is an incredible story. So you're thinking, all right, I want to try this, but I cannot even imagine what I would do after I would have like a sample of this.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Right. And so what ended up happening is I had a friend who took me to the boutique show and...

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  This is like a famous show, like a trade show?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  It's a trade show.

• 13:27Guy Raz?

  In New York?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Right. But it was a show, a big show, that catered to the small boutiques around the country. And a lot of small designers and small companies would come there and show their things. And so I remember going to the show, just out of curiosity.

• 13:43Guy Raz?

  Just to check it out.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And kind of floating through and going like, oh, I can do this. I see how to do this, you know? Like, I just looked at these different booths and saw how the designers were presenting their clothes. A little rack here, a few things hanging. You know, oh, I knew how to do a logo. I could do that. I'd need a logo, wouldn't I? I'd need a name, you know? So I could picture a whole story. So it wasn't just like one garment. It was that I had to, people had to see a kind of a whole to understand that it went together and that it was a little story somehow.

• 14:18Guy Raz?

  And by going to the design show, you thought, well, hey, I don't have to be a carnival barker. I can just stand here and wait for people to come to me?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the people who like it will come and write orders or, you know, give me feedback. And the people who don't like it will just walk by. So then I committed to a booth, a small section, just like a one wall of a booth.

• 14:42Guy Raz?

  For the same designer?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  For the next show, for the next show.

• 14:46Guy Raz?

  This is in like 1983, 84?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Must have been 83 because I think it was 84 that I, at the show, that I first introduced the line.

• 14:54Guy Raz?

  You thought, I'm gonna go there and show my clothes?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna show my clothes, right.

• 15:00Guy Raz?

  And did you have?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  No, I had no clothes.

• 15:02Guy Raz?

  Did you have a name for the company?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  No, I had no name. I had no clothes. I had no fabric. I had no styles. I had nothing.

• 15:09Guy Raz?

  You had designs though, right?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Just pictures in my mind. I had nothing.

• 15:12Guy Raz?

  So how much time did you have?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Three weeks.

• 15:15Guy Raz?

  You had three weeks to come up with a clothing line, a fashion line?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  No, don't get carried away now. It wasn't really a fashion line to start out. It was four garments.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but still, that's all.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  But still. But I had sewn, you know, as a kid, so I knew, you know, that it wasn't that complicated. But I was lucky and this is how, this is kind of weird how things happen. But, you know, again, one of the friends I'd been talking to said, I have a friend who's a pattern maker. She works in a clothing company. Maybe she can help you. So she came and she worked for me at night and on the weekends, those first three weeks.

• 15:48Guy Raz?

  This woman just volunteered?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And she, well, she said, "You can pay me. I know you're good for it. You can pay me when you get paid."

• 15:57Guy Raz?

  Did you draw a bunch of designs and give them to her to sew? Or did you sew them?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Well, I pretty much talked my way through it. I scribbled them, you know, my little sketches. And she said, "Whoa, those are pretty simple." "What's special about them, Eileen?" And I was like, "Well, it's special that they're simple." And she said, "Oh, OK, but I'll help you." And so first I had to find fabric. That was kind of the hardest thing. And so she helped me, you know, figure out where I could go to get fabric.

• 16:25Guy Raz?

  What kind of fabric was it?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  It was a linen and cotton blend.

• 16:29Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  So what did you, what did you end up making?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  I made the box top, the little cropped pant, kind of based on the flood pant

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  from Japan. And I made a little shell, a vest that kind of went over the top. And then I made a little shell so you could wear it, just a shell with a simple pant. Oh, my God, do you like the pieces on my line today? It's so amazing to just see the pictures.

• 16:54Guy Raz?

  And what colors were they?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  They were like a teal color and kind of a burgundy, not quite burgundy, salmony, pinky, red, you know, and ivory.

• 17:05Guy Raz?

  So after three weeks, you had four pieces of clothing samples, and that's what you were going to take to this trade show?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Well, I made them in the three colors, so I had 12 pieces. And that's what I took with my little logo. And I was, I spent probably as much time obsessing about the graphics and the name because I didn't want to call it Eileen Fisher.

• 17:26Guy Raz?

  Why not?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Because I didn't see it as so personal. I thought it was something that, you know, people would make their own, that it would, you know, that it wasn't so personally me. It was, you know, strange.

• 17:43Guy Raz?

  So what did you end up calling it for that show?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  So I called it Eileen Fisher because I couldn't think of anything else. And I was working as Eileen Fisher as a designer, so I had to. I already had my name registered as a business, so I guess if I was going to take checks, I better have a business name, and so that sort of worked for them.

• 18:00Guy Raz?

  So like when they make the Eileen Fisher story movie, like feature film one day, and they have this scene in there where you're at that first trade show. Is there like this, is this like this amazing moment where designers are like, "Oh, my gosh, this is life changing. I have never seen anything like it." Is that what was going on?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. I was so freaked out. The first day, I literally couldn't speak. I just stood there. People would ask me questions like, "How much does it cost? What's the style number?" And I like froze. And other people in my booth would help me out and say, you know, "Oh, you know, why don't you come back tomorrow, she'll help you out."

• 18:42Guy Raz?

  "I just want to give you a hug and say, 'It's gonna be okay, Eileen. It's gonna be okay.'"

• 18:49Speaker 01

  I was just like, I was like a deer in headlights.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  So did you eventually get over the stage fright and start selling?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  I did, I did. I sold to eight stores. I sold about 100 pieces.

• 19:02Guy Raz?

  So a couple thousand bucks?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, 3,000 bucks.

• 19:06Guy Raz?

  So were you like skipping home, saying, "Ah, I got 3,000 bucks"?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I was thrilled. I was thrilled. And it was the right amount, because anymore, I would have never been able to deliver. I wouldn't have been able to get enough fabric. I wouldn't have been able to figure it all out fast enough or get the money to make it happen.

• 19:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so that was a pretty, that was pretty good. You walk away, $3,000, and these are boutiques around the country?

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 19:31Guy Raz?

  And presumably, you filled those orders. You made most of them yourself?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Cut every one myself on the floor in my loft in Tribeca. And then carried them in garbage bags down my stairs, onto Subway, and out to Queens.

• 19:46Guy Raz?

  And did you sew your name, Eileen Fisher, in the tag, like in the clothes?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  The label, I had a label made that the sewers, the tiny sewing company out in Queens, sewed them.

• 20:00Guy Raz?

  So at this point, this is like 1984. You've got 3,000 bucks. And are you like incorporated? Do you like do an LLC and all that stuff?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't think I did that until I got my next round of orders.

• 20:15Guy Raz?

  Oh, so how did that happen?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Well, I came up with eight styles and went back to the next boutique show. And this time I had this new fabric that I found. It was a very textural, French terry, very kind of lush fabric.

• 20:31Guy Raz?

  Like a thicker cotton?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Like a thicker cotton, like, yeah.

• 20:34Guy Raz?

  I think of terry, I think of towels.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  More like an elegant sweatshirt fabric. And came back with three different colors, peach mint and white, I remember. And this time, people stood in line to write orders.

• 20:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, my God, I knew something was happening.

• 20:59Guy Raz?

  When we come back, how Eileen Fisher took her clothes from trade show floors to department stores across the country. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 21:20Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So at this point in the story, Eileen had just sold $40,000 worth of orders in her second trade show, and things seemed to be looking up. The only problem was she now had to figure out how to put together a real, functioning business.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  But I was even further back figuring out just how do I get the money to buy the fabric? And, you know, how am I going to produce this?

• 21:49Guy Raz?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you had $40,000 worth of orders, but not $40,000 in cash. They just made the orders.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:57Guy Raz?

  You had to go and buy all of the material. And I'm assuming you didn't have $40,000.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I would have needed about 20 to do the production. But I got some good adv- Actually, while I was at the boutique show, that I deliver a small order first. So I did white just for like February delivery. And then I did the other colors for delivery a couple of months later. So that let me spread out the delivery and I could produce part of it. While I was starting to turn the money, I did the orders on COD. So then when I delivered, the boutiques would write a check and

• 22:32Guy Raz?

  They had to pay right away.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  They had to pay right away. And, you know, at the show, when they were standing in line, it was kind of easy to ask them to do COD.

• 22:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Because I could sort of plead with them, I'm a small designer and need this to be COD. And they were, they accommodated me.

• 22:45Guy Raz?

  But, but did you also try to get like a loan at a bank?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  I tried and, and, um, you know, I went to the bank, I remember, you know, with my stack of orders. And they were like, well, how long have you been in business? I'm like, ooh.

• 22:57Guy Raz?

  They just looked at you and they were like, you have no track record, you're not a business.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I'm like, how do you get it? How do you do that then?

• 23:02Guy Raz?

  But did you say, look, I've got $40,000 worth of orders here?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Right. And they said, the first thing that person at the bank said, which was great, is how do you know they're even real orders? How do you know these? I'm like, whoa. He said, if you check credit on the orders. Checked credit on the orders? Whoa. Okay. No, I haven't done that. That's a good idea.

• 23:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  What, what does that mean? How do I do that?

• 23:22Guy Raz?

  Were you stressed out about this or were you, because you don't sound stressed out about it now. You sound like very chilled out and I think maybe it's just kind of your, your, your demeanor. You're, you just seem very calm and

• 23:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:35Guy Raz?

  No, it was, you were nervous?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, was I nervous, you mean during the days when I was trying to make this come together? No, no, no, I wasn't nervous then. I was nervous at the show. I was nervous when I had to present myself, but I was never nervous, you know, trying to solve the problem. I loved solving the problem. I love, okay, how am I going to get the money? How am I going to do this? You know, uh, who's going to help me? How am I going to ask? What, what do I need here? You know, and I did little shows in my, you know, in my loft and I had friends come and they brought friends and they bought orders. And they, you know, they paid me upfront and then I could deliver, uh, things like that.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

  Anything you had to do to just get

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Anything. It was like puzzle making kind of and, and it was fun and just figuring it all out. I like, I like, I guess I'm a math major somewhere. In my soul, you know, I like solving puzzles and problems and, you know, trying to, you know, make things right.

• 24:26Guy Raz?

  So you would make some, get the cash, and then use the cash to buy more material, and then just continue to kind of fund it that way?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Right, right. Scrambling day by day, you know, how to make this work. You know, then go to the next show and sell $80,000 worth of orders. And then it's like, oh, my God.

• 24:45Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Here we go. Wow, you know?

• 24:48Guy Raz?

  So at what point did you, did you actually say, this is real? Like, I'm not just going to trade shows. This is a company. I need to hire somebody.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I hired my first official employee. That was Siggy, who still works for the company today. And I don't remember thinking I'm a real business or anything. I just remember thinking, I need help. I really need some stable help.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  And did you start to go to department stores and do the thing that you were mortified to do earlier in your, in your design career?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  No, I never did that. But eventually opened a store on Madison Avenue. And buyers from the department stores would come.

• 25:30Guy Raz?

  So you opened this, this store on Madison Avenue in 1991. And how did it do?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Really well. Again, similar experience to that boutique show where, you know, people just stood in line and bought clothes and stacks of clothes. And they were so delighted to find the store. I remember that's when, I think it was a buyer, somebody from Bloomingdale's came in because they'd been looking at the line and curious. And they would say things like, um, you know, great clothes, but, you know, they're just going to get lost at Bloomingdale's. And they're too simple. I was that same thing, too simple, too simple, you know? But I knew that was the idea. So I had to hold that peace. Anyway, so when they came into the store, they knew, they didn't understand it, but they knew something was happening.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  And so they wanted to open a shop, a small shop in Bloomingdale's.

• 26:23Guy Raz?

  In Bloomingdale's.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was a kind of, I think that catapulted us to another phase.

• 26:28Guy Raz?

  Who were your customers? Were they, was it a certain type of woman? Was it a certain age? Was it a certain profession?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the early days, I described them as artists, therapists, and teachers. And it seemed like they were people who, you know, I used to say they helped people find themselves, something like that, you know, or that they could figure out how to make their own style with these clothes and they could, they operate in a, you know, not in such a corporate world. They didn't have to dress a certain kind of way.

• 27:02Guy Raz?

  How were you able to finance the stores and the production, just through existing sales?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yes and no. We found, we were able to get a line of credit of our fabric manufacturers because we bought fabric in bulk even though we were small because we, I was very dedicated to a certain fabric. So, you know, I built around one fabric and then I had, my brother-in-law came and was helping me and he got me a small line of credit, $50,000 line of credit. Then I got a new accountant who, you know, helped me tap into the banks and how you had to put business plans together. And so it was a combination of credit lines and loans and, you know, self-funding because it was growing and it was profitable. It was always profitable.

• 27:47Guy Raz?

  From there, were you, I mean, was the growth just off the charts? Were you just, was that what was happening?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  You know, it was kind of strong and steady, you know. It was not exactly off the charts, but it was exciting. And sometimes it felt like, you know, like horses in a carriage, like kind of out of control a little bit, you know, like it was pulling me somehow. And, you know, mostly it wasn't too out of control. You know, it was mostly organic. There was never like an attempt to make it ever bigger than it was. It was more like, okay, it's working, so let's open two more stores, or it's working, so let's open four more stores, you know, or now, you know, you know, other department stores want to buy the line, you know, Saks and Nordstrom's and, you know, that kind of thing.

• 28:41Guy Raz?

  What was your revenue at that point?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Oh, different moments in time, how much, I can't remember. I remember my dad came to visit me one time in the early days and he sat back in the chair. He was an accountant. He was going over some of my books. He wanted to make sure I was getting paid and things were working out okay. It was so adorable. And he sat back in the chair and he said, Eileen. Do you know how much money you made last year? And I said, no, I really don't. And he said, $200,000. That's incredible.

• 29:13Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  That was gross sales, of course, and there were plenty of expenses, but, you know, it was still pretty, pretty shocking.

• 29:21Guy Raz?

  How did you, I mean, as the company was growing in the 1990s, how did you deal with being a CEO? Did you, did you like that part of the job?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Oh, CEO, no, no, no, no, no. No, I, I think CEO is a word that I've always, I'm always been sort of uncomfortable and not actually held that title. I used to call myself Chief Creative Officer. That was sort of the closest I could come. But I did know that sort of the buck stopped with me. You know, sometimes I had to make important decisions, you know, which were, would have been, would be hard. But I always kind of held the business and sort of from a leadership standpoint, pretty, pretty loosely. And so I like the designers being with it and making it, you know, their own and working together and, you know, in a, in a sort of collective way. And I feel that way about the leadership. And even today, we're a leadership team.

• 30:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  It's pretty complicated and we're really working to streamline it and we're getting better. We're getting a lot better.

• 30:23Guy Raz?

  But in that period of time, when you really, I mean, really just started to explode in, in your growth.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Guy Raz?

  I mean, did, did you find yourself in a position that you were reluctant to be in?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I would say that's accurate. I saw myself more as a designer artist rather than a business person, even though I wasn't bad at it, in terms of maybe not so much the managing of people. I guess I never liked telling people what to do. I, I, and I never liked working for other people, you know, when they would sort of tell you what to do.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't like being told. I liked, give me the problem and let me do it my way, kind of thing.

• 31:05Guy Raz?

  Aline, did you, I mean, I know that in the 90s, it was a, an incredibly, just

• 31:14Guy Raz?

  Active time for Eileen Fisher and would continue. And also personally, I mean, you were, you'd been married, you had two children in a four year period of time, two young kids, you were trying to run this company. And your marriage was kind of falling apart to, how did you, how did you manage the personal and the professional?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  I would say that was the hardest, hardest ever. And if I look back, man, if I could do anything differently, that'd be, now, I'm not, not going into regret, but that was incredibly hard. God, I think about all the women out there trying to start businesses and work in the business world and just how hard it is to manage families. I just, oh. So I really had to rely on the people in the company. I tried to, again, you know, sort of lead loosely and just, but I struggled a lot with being in two different places and wanting to be at work when I was at home or worrying about work, you know, and reading reports and trying to understand is this working

• 32:21Speaker 01

  or not, and what's working and what's going wrong. And at the same time, worrying about my kids when I was at work and just, you know, I guess the, the thing I say to myself now is that if I look back, I would, I would have just worked harder on being where I was and just doing what I was doing in the moment and stop trying to be two places, just, and stop taking the work home and just do the best you can.

• 32:45Guy Raz?

  You were trying to be the best mom you could be and, and also run the company. And you, I must, I mean, it, it, it kind of sounds a little bit like what your mom went through, where she was kind of overwhelmed, right? I mean, she was, it was relentless. Every day was this hamster wheel.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  I did the best I could. I had to let go a lot. I had to trust a lot of people, which worked and didn't, you know. It worked in places and then there were moments that I felt, you know, sad about. I let go too much over here. You know, I'd go into a store and see pieces I didn't recognize or feel like the line didn't look right, or I couldn't find the clothes I wanted to wear, or it wasn't really the concept. It was gone. Where was the soul of this company? And, you know, what happened?

• 33:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  You know, um, once I got divorced, it was, my kids were four and eight, and I said, I am, I'm gonna stop working on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at three o'clock. I worked in my home a lot and I would, you know, let the people keep working and I'd close the door and go and, you know, and be with my kids. And, you know, my husband would have the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays and we'd share the weekends and things like that. So it actually worked better for me. I don't think it worked so well for them. They didn't really like the going back and forth stuff and, and I guess kids never like divorce.

• 34:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  But I think that, you know, over time, I sorted it out and things got better. I got, I got stronger. I, I started doing things like yoga and meditating. I had some time to myself, which my mother never had, you know.

• 34:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I didn't have to have a breakdown, actually, to, to get a hold of myself.

• 34:35Guy Raz?

  I mean, was there a point, Eileen, where you thought, because your business was, I mean, it was, by this point, it was already huge. Like, you were

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:43Guy Raz?

  Successful beyond your wildest dreams. And this is the late 90s. It's not even where you are today. And did you ever think, maybe I should just cash it in and sell this company to somebody and just, just wash my hands of it?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, no. I never, never thought that. No.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  Never thought that? Never, never crossed your mind?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  That would be like selling my firstborn child. It just really felt like that.

• 35:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but you were under so much stress and you had, you, you did have that security blanket. You could have done that.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Oh, right. It was never about the money. No. I mean, probably in the very beginning, when I didn't know how to price the clothes, it wasn't about the money, but. It was personal, I guess. I wanted it to be how I wanted it to be, and I think it's still true. And actually, what I did do was sell part of the business to the employees. So we are 40% ESOP, employee owned. And I always wanted that collective idea. I wanted the people who are a part of it to participate and feel like owners and be owners.

• 35:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I think Eileen Fisher has like 55, I'm talking about you, but Eileen Fisher and the company. Your company has like about 60 stores around the world now, is that right?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Right, right, roughly, yes.

• 35:58Guy Raz?

  And thousands of employees, probably.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  1,200 direct employees, but many, probably 10,000 people work daily on our, making our clothes.

• 36:09Guy Raz?

  And presumably, as the company became bigger and bigger, it became more corporate, more corporate because you just had more people. You had to, it was a big company. It was like a lot of revenue. You were doing 100-plus million dollars a year at a certain point, and of course, much more today. But was that, was that weird for you? I mean, you're the person who didn't want to work for other people. All of a sudden, you are, your name is a corporation.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 36:35Guy Raz?

  Was that weird?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It is weird. Yeah, it was weird. It's still weird. Someone suggested I write a book called How I Became Eileen Fisher. I don't know, sort of like, it's a strange thing.

• 36:48Guy Raz?

  I keep thinking, I like, I keep thinking of your dad coming to visit you in New York in your early days and saying, you know, doing, like, looking through your books and saying, "Eileen, you guys made $200,000 last year," just being so blown away by that. Eileen Fisher does like hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year. I mean, is it strange to you that you became rich even though you never wanted to or that wasn't your intention?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. I'm still very uncomfortable with that. That's something that I have to do some more work in therapy on.

• 37:33Guy Raz?

  Especially because you grew up with like seven children in your house.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:37Guy Raz?

  This very middle class.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I put myself through college.

• 37:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  My father said, no, women don't need to go to school, so, you know, like that.

• 37:46Guy Raz?

  Did your parents ever see this level of success? I mean.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, my mother did. My father was utterly, totally impressed by $200,000. He didn't need to see anymore. But my mother did. I don't know that she understood it quite. You know, my sister's a work in the store out in the Midwest, and so she'd go in there. She was so adorable. She would go in and even as the company got really big and she'd see damages, we'd have a section of damages that we'd sell in the back of the store cheap. And she'd go to the back of the store and pick out those damages and say, I can fix this. She'd take them, take them home and fix pieces and you could sell this, it looks good as a first burst. Put it on the main rack. But I think to her, you know, it could have been $200,000, it would have been just fine. It didn't need to be this big.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Nobody, you know, that didn't mean so much to her, you know.

• 38:38Guy Raz?

  It sounds like you are in a pretty good place in life professionally, personally. You sort of, you don't have to do the logistical, operational stuff with the company. You can have like vision and big picture stuff and you seem like you're really happy.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, not every day, not all the time. But I know how to work with it. You know, I watched my mother, she was depressed. And, you know, I remember having this insight even before I started the business, when I went through kind of a dark moment in my late twenties, I remember going, you know, having this revelation that I can make a different choice. I don't have to be depressed just because my mother was depressed. I might have to be overwhelmed because my mother was overwhelmed, but I don't have to be depressed. I didn't, I didn't understand the full impact of the different choices I had to make, but I realized that I could choose. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't get the better of me some days, but I also know it doesn't last long.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  So I would say happy, I'm happy. I'm also really sad sometimes. I'm also really. You know, scared like before I came in here today. I'm really anxious. I'm really excited. I'm really more feelingful than probably ever in my life.

• 40:01Guy Raz?

  I love that you-- because everybody listening to this is going to say, Eileen Fisher, hugely successful, you know, created this amazing company and brand, has, you know, made it beyond her wildest dreams. And yet, she has bad days. She gets sad.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's different is now I know that. And I can look at it and I can just be with it. And so if I'm anxious, I can just say, hey, I'm anxious. And it's OK. You know, I don't have to try to pretend I'm not. I can just be who I am. And that's OK.

• 40:42Guy Raz?

  Eileen Fisher, the founder of Eileen Fisher. By the way, Eileen still oversees all of the designs for the company. And in recent years, she launched a program called Green Eileen. The goal is to eventually reuse or recycle almost all of the clothing the company sells.

• 41:08Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're updating a story we ran over a year ago.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  My name is Glenn Auerbach, and I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I've created Nice Mug.

• 41:21Guy Raz?

  And the idea for Nice Mug came about totally by accident. It was on one of those freezing winter mornings in Minnesota when Glenn went outside to his backyard, and he picked up a jug of water that had frozen overnight.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Nature freezes water in a jug from the outside in and from the bottom up. So you get kind of a hockey puck type freeze at the bottom. But there's this really interesting cavity that freezes last. And that's an iconic shape.

• 41:50Guy Raz?

  And that shape was a glass, like the kind of glass you would put on your dinner table, perfectly formed, made of clear ice.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  So being the resourceful people that we are, with a beer in our hand, we poured a beer in, and Nice Mug was born.

• 42:04Guy Raz?

  I mean, can you say USA any more clearly than a cold beer in a glass made of ice? Anyway, the first thing Glenn did, naturally, was to take the ice mug into his backyard sauna. And it held up pretty well until, you know, it melted. So then...

• 42:22Speaker 02

  I started messing around with different molds and different ways that we could freeze ice.

• 42:26Guy Raz?

  And as he experimented, Glenn came up with a plastic mold that seemed to do the trick.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  But it was a massive challenge for me to make clear ice. And without clear ice, you get leaks, and leaks are no fun.

• 42:40Guy Raz?

  The leaks actually come from air bubbles in the ice. And Glenn tinkered for years to come up with a mold that would make a mug without the bubbles. And finally, he nailed it.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  It never leaks, and I'm really proud of that.

• 42:54Guy Raz?

  The way Glenn's mold works is pretty simple. Fill it with water, freeze it overnight, then pop out your own ice mug. He's now selling molds all over the country. And just a couple of years ago, some executives at Coca-Cola in Egypt actually called him up and said, "Hey, we want to use Nice Mugs in one of our ads."

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was quite a rush. You know, the biggest beverage company in the world, making nice mugs, putting Coca-Cola in there. We just had a great time.

• 43:20Guy Raz?

  Business has tripled since we last spoke with Glenn, but Nice Mug is still a side hustle. And he's still assembling and shipping the molds from home. Eventually, he does hope to quit his day job as a salesman, just not yet.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You know, if we could send our kid through college with the proceeds for Nice Mug, wow, I couldn't be happier.

• 43:41Guy Raz?

  And if you're wondering how long the ice mug actually lasts in your hands before it melts...

• 43:46Speaker 02

  We can have Nice Mugs that last like 30 minutes, 45 minutes. I mean, I suppose the one thing that's cool about Nice Mug is when your ice has melted, you're done drinking.

• 43:58Guy Raz?

  That's Glenn Oerbach of Minneapolis. He's the founder of Nice Mug. And if you want to learn more about Nice Mug or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Rund Abdelfatah with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Mia Venkat, Julia Carney, J.C.

• 44:39Guy Raz?

  Howard, Noor Kudsi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.