Parachute Home: Ariel Kaye

In 2012, Ariel Kaye saw a tantalizing opportunity, but wasn’t sure she was the one to seize it. She’d never started a brand and didn’t think of herself as an entrepreneur, until she noticed how frustrating it was to buy bed linens in a big box store. Taking inspiration from Warby Parker and Everlane, Ariel quit her day job to launch a brand of DTC luxury sheets, made in Europe but exuding a California vibe, with photos of models lounging in semi-rumpled beds. As a solo founder, Ariel had to figure out everything herself, from manufacturing to supply chains to how to get through to investors. Today, Parachute Home offers a wide range of home goods and has expanded beyond its website to 26 physical stores across the U. S. This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Katherine Sypher. Our engineer was Josephine Nyounai. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. 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?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:12Speaker 01

  I went with my pitch deck. I went with some pillowcases. I had like a Mary Poppins box of fabrics. I mean, I was, I felt like a traveling saleswoman.

• 5:21Guy Raz?

  And what would you say in the pitch, basically, what you're describing to me now?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say you spend a third of your life in bed. There is no brand in this category. I'm going to start with sheets, but I'm going to build a massive brand. We're going to be a billion-dollar business, and there is no one doing this. This is like, this is special. And no one wanted to give me money.

• 5:49Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:01Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Ariel Kay realized she could cut out the middlemen and sell European-made luxury bed sheets online, and eventually grew her idea into Parachute Home.

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  Here's a scenario a lot of founders face. You have this awesome idea. You can't shake it. It's so good. You stay up nights and weekends working on it. And finally, just when you launch, someone else with the same exact idea launches their own brand. Now, if this sounds like you, do not despair. There is plenty of space for more than one brand doing the same thing. If you don't believe me, just look at bottled water. But still, the experience is anxiety-inducing. And this is what happened to Ariel Kay just weeks after she launched her bed linen brand, Parachute, in 2014. The same month, a competitor

• 7:03Guy Raz?

  called Bowlin Branch also launched. And then, that same year, Brooklinen came around, all of them trying to build direct-to-consumer bed linen brands. Things would eventually work out OK for all three brands, but it would also mean that each one of them would have to work harder to differentiate from the others. Ariel spent almost a year researching the idea before she was ready to start. And part of that journey was trying to find textile factories in Europe that would be willing to work with her. At the time, Ariel had some experience in advertising and marketing, but she'd never really sold anything or ever run a business. But with a few very smart marketing strategies, including some strategic

• 7:47Guy Raz?

  podcast ads, Ariel figured out how to build Parachute into a formidable national brand. Today, the company is much more of a home goods brand. It sells towels, bath accessories, and even furniture. And it's no longer just an online brand. Parachute has close to 30 physical stores across the US. But as you'll hear, Ariel accomplished much of this while facing some really daunting personal challenges.

• 8:15Guy Raz?

  Ariel Kay grew up in Los Angeles and from a young age, she sang. In fact, for a while, she was on a path to becoming a professional singer.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I certainly had a moment where I thought, wow, I would love to be a pop star.

• 8:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah, you have a good name for it, Ariel Kay.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, thanks.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  You don't need to change your name. It's like Taylor Swift, that's your real name.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I know, and you better believe that my daughter has a name that I think could be a stage name.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  But I think I quickly realized that that really wasn't going to be my path. And once I got to college and thought about music as a major, I realized that I was good, but I was not excellent. And so I pivoted away from music as part of academia and just continued my music as a passion.

• 9:11Guy Raz?

  You know, it reminds me a little bit of like being a really great high school athlete and then being good enough to go to a D1 school and play there. But then like to get to the professional leagues is like operating at a different level. And it's probably there's similar parallels with singing and music.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and look, I am having a ton of fun going to karaoke rooms these days and-

• 9:37Guy Raz?

  And just blowing everybody away?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And singing every Disney song with my daughter at the top of our lungs. I mean, music is still a part of my life. It's just in a much less professional capacity.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  All right, so you end up not studying music in college. And I think you started out at George Washington University in Washington DC. But you end up transferring to NYU. And I know you also spent a year abroad, studying abroad in Italy, which, you know, would sort of have kind of an influence on what you would eventually do. Because it was sort of the first time you were exposed to Italian linens. But I assume that when you were studying abroad as a, you know, 19 or 20 year old, you weren't thinking, oh, this is my future business?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I was not thinking that. However, I just was blown away by architecture and art and the people that I would meet who were makers and had been, you know, doing their craft for centuries and had been passed on from generation to generation. And I found myself just thinking about how cool everything was and how beautiful everything was and how even the most simplest products like a napkin or a bed sheet were made with such attention to detail and pride. And you could feel it. You could taste it in the wine. You could taste it in the olive.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  You know, it was just this real difference. I mean, it was, it was so cool for me at that age to just be exposed and dive into this different type of lifestyle.

• 11:18Guy Raz?

  So after you graduated from college, I guess you did a lot of different things like people do in their twenties, right? You, you spent some time at a PR agency and you did some digital marketing. And then I guess you eventually decided to go back to grad school for media studies in New York. But during that time, I think you also started like to blog about interior design.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:44Guy Raz?

  Where, where did that even come from?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  So I always have loved home and design.

• 11:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  I grew up in a house that was always the house that was hosting friends. And that, that desire to host and, and create a welcoming environment just really stuck with me. And so when I got my first apartment in New York, which is, you know, such an exciting moment, I took a lot of pride in that space. And I was constantly decorating and redecorating and doing DIY projects and.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I started to document them on this blog while I was in grad school because I had some time. And I started helping friends decorate their apartments. I had a sister who was working in the government at the time and was moving to a new city every year. And so I'd, you know, go set up her apartment for her. And I just, I was really enjoying this art of creating beautiful spaces. And I just put it together on a blog. I mean, this was 2006, '07 ish, so very early days of blogs.

• 12:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And, you know, started getting some comments on the blog. And I got some of my projects featured on much more prominent blogs and it was fun.

• 12:59Guy Raz?

  And, and clearly you had a talent for it. Like, I mean, when, when did you start to think, realize that you were pretty good at this? Like, you were pretty good at, at helping people figure out what bookshelves to buy and what colors to, schemes to use in their, in their rooms?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I think it was really when I got this first apartment in New York City. You know, I, I went out and designed it myself and friends would always come over and be like, this looks so great. And, you know, and it wasn't fancy. It was just, I think, the way that I pulled it together and the, the way that I just had this eye for it.

• 13:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And at that point, I also, it felt too late to go and learn how to be an interior designer. So it was just gonna be one of these things that I did on the side for fun as I continued to, um, study media in, and in grad school.

• 13:47Guy Raz?

  Um, you graduated from, from that program in media studies and then you went to go work at a, at a marketing agency, Digitas. What did you do there?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So at Digitas, I was really identified as the millennial advocate.

• 14:04Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  It was my job to understand what millennials were interested in, what they were inspired by, how to get them involved in brands, how to speak to them. And it was really fun. I mean, I loved it. It was so intuitive because I, I am a millennial. And, um, I also got a sense of what was really happening on in this growing startup world, both in New York and, um, across the country. I famously loved to run my, myself that I, I worked on American Express in the Membership Awards program and I- Was in charge of sharing a project about alternative currencies as we were thinking about how to talk about membership rewards as a real value proposition.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And I presented on a little thing called Bitcoin that at the time was worth five cents. And, you know, stuff like that, which at the time I, you know, could have put a few bucks behind it.

• 15:01Guy Raz?

  And become a multi-billionaire.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And become a multi-billionaire.

• 15:03Guy Raz?

  Had you done it?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  But I did not. So that's a fun lesson.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you're doing this work and probably it was a good job. You were probably paid well and could, you know, afford your apartment and, you know, all those things. But I imagine it wasn't like you weren't jumping out of bed every morning to get to work.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  You know, I was and then I wasn't. I think, you know, over the years, it became harder. There was a lot of turnover and I started looking around and realizing that I, at one point, thought that, you know, my goal would be to climb this corporate ladder and to be at the top of this agency. And then one day I said, no, that's not what I want. And I was watching friends join startups and start their own companies and I was seeing this passion and this fire and desire to work all night long.

• 15:58Guy Raz?

  So you're, the gears in your head are starting to turn. And do you remember thinking, because this is before you had an idea, but do you remember thinking, I want to join a startup? Or did you think, I want to start a startup?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. I wanted to join a startup. I had this idea that I wanted to join a startup that was somewhat in its infancy stages. Like I wanted to be at a company that was figuring it out. I wanted to be part of figuring it out. I never thought I was going to start a company. That wasn't part of my, I didn't think that was part of my DNA. Like I didn't think that I was that person.

• 16:32Guy Raz?

  You didn't think you were the founder type? That was somebody else?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and I mean. I didn't, I didn't see myself as a visionary.

• 16:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you're, you're surrounded by all these friends of yours who are joining startups. And I mean, did you start to actively look and actively talk to friends and say, hey, are you, have you heard anything, have anything, let me know. And is that, were you doing that?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, this was, we're now in 2012. In the middle of 2012, I decided that by the end of the year, I wanted to figure out what my next move was.

• 17:05Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And I had this idea that if I could merge my interests in home and design and in building brands, there could be this convergence of my interests. And together I would find, I would be me. It would be perfect.

• 17:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And so, you know, this, again, we're in 2012 and the D to C world was just starting to really become significant. There was, you know, Warby Parker and Everlane and brands that were so inspiring to me. You know, here they were creating this new vocabulary around cutting out the middleman and going direct to consumer and quality at an accessible price. And I was just blown away by this concept, originally just as a consumer.

• 17:59Guy Raz?

  And Everlane was one of those examples. Of course, we've done them on the show. That was one of the companies that you were like, oh, this is cool.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would say Warby Parker and Everlane were two of the companies where I was just like, huh, so smart.

• 18:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  And so I started to think more critically about direct to consumer because, you know, this was at a time, and this continued for many years, where it was like you could, the Warby Parker for X, the Warby Parker for anything. People were trying to make the D to C model work for truly any product that existed.

• 18:30Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And. You know, one day, I was walking through Bed Bath & Beyond and I looked around and said, "What is going on here? Um, there are floor-to-ceiling stacked products, under fluorescent lights, in plastic packaging. Why am I buying this? Like, this is what I'm buying. This is what I've been buying for years."

• 18:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And so, I looked at the home and I thought, you know, hmm, your bed.

• 19:00Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's so important. You know, you, you're spending a third of your life in bed. Sleep impacts everything. It impacts your health, your productivity, your happiness. It's intimate, it's cozy. Yet, here we are, buying no-name products wrapped in plastic. Many of them have toxic chemicals, synthetic finishes, formaldehyde coatings. Like, I mean, it was unreal to me. And I thought, this could be life-changing for the customer. Like, this is not just another thing that I buy because I need to. I mean, you need to, but maybe you even want to.

• 19:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. There's a lot of sort of budding entrepreneurs often ask me, and I'm sure ask you, like, how do I come upon an idea? And I will say, walk through the aisles of a store, you know, a, a consumer brand store, or a department store, and just look at things. And try and figure out, you know, where the opportunities are. And, and that is essentially what you were doing. I mean, you're, you're walking through the, the sheets aisles, and usually, most people will look for thread counts, like, "Oh, it's 800 threads per inch," or, "Oh, this says Ralph Lauren on it. You know, this must be nice." And that is essentially the world that you saw in 2012, 2013.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, this is really end of 2012. And so, I started talking to friends and asking people what sheets they slept on, and what sheets they had on their bed. And no one could name a single brand.

• 20:25Guy Raz?

  Like, nobody thought of, like, bedding and a brand. It was just, yeah, I just get the sheets that have the highest thread count, or whatever.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Right. And, and then I realized that thread count was a marketing gimmick. And so, it was just like, as I dug deeper, I was like, oh, my gosh. This is a $30 billion market with these products that had no name. There was marketing gimmicks like thread count, which have no indication of quality whatsoever.

• 20:48Guy Raz?

  Just to be clear on that, like, because my understanding is, it's how many... Threads are woven into a square inch of fabric. So you would think the more threads, the softer it is or the more, right? And it's not true?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Let me explain it to you.

• 21:04Guy Raz?

  Please, yes.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  So anything over 300 is a result of manipulation of the fabric. So 300 is that number. It is the square inch. That's how many weaves. But about, I don't know, maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago, Sfera launched high thread count sheets. They created a fiber that was extremely thin that allowed them to create a higher thread count. And the rest of the world saw this and said, oh, my gosh, we need higher thread count. However, they didn't have that fiber. So in order to get that higher thread count, they would double weave, triple weave. They would fold the threads together to create this extremely high number.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Now, mind you, there is no regulation at all. So you could literally say any number. And brands got in trouble with that in the past. But what happens is it's actually not softer. It's coarser to the touch and it's thicker. And so the way that they compensate for that is by using synthetic finishes.

• 22:08Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, you come across or you come upon sheets and you start to think, this is an opportunity. And by the way, a couple of years ago, we did, you may know, we did this story in Brooklyn and on the show and interviewed Vicky and Rich Phillip. And similarly had an experience around sheets. In their case, it was at a hotel where they were like, wow, these sheets are amazing and went on to found their business. Was it something that just like you couldn't let go of? You were like, like you just got super excited about this? And you would talk about this with anybody you could?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  You know, I, I started having conversations with a friend of mine who is very much involved in my business today and sits on my board. And he's a serial entrepreneur.

• 22:48Guy Raz?

  What's his name?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Eddie Kim.

• 22:50Guy Raz?

  And, and he was just a friend that you had met in New York?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  He was a friend that I had met in New York through the startup world. And he had started many different companies. And he was like, yes, this is a great idea. But I will say at the time, I also was like, this is a great idea, but like, who's going to do it? You know, like I, I, I had this idea, but it hadn't really dawned on me that I could be the founder. And my friend looked at me and he said, you are a founder.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  And I said, what? No, I'm not. Um, what do you mean? And he said, I've never said this to anyone else, but you are a founder and you are going to start this business and you are going to be the CEO. And, you know, sometimes there are these moments that are so transformative. And this was one of them for me because he saw something in me that I did not see in myself. And I, all of a sudden, believed him. I was like, you're right, I'm a founder. And I remember calling my parents saying, um, I'm gonna found a company and I'm gonna be the CEO of this company. And my parents, I think, fell off their chair.

• 24:07Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, the tyranny of the top sheet and what Ariel decides to do about it. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 24:26Guy Raz?

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• 25:08Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale and people bring taste, judgment and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 25:53Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 26:38Guy Raz?

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• 26:57Speaker 02

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• 27:28Speaker 03

  Hi, Guy. I'm Daniela from Atlanta, Georgia. One of my favorite episodes of How I Built This has to be RJ Scringe of Rivian. What an inspiring and mind-blowing story. He was such a visionary from the get-go, always laser-focused on his bold dream. His journey is a powerful testament of what happens when we identify our life's purpose and then we pursue it with every ounce of our soul. It's definitely inspired me to not only dream big, but also chase my dreams with every ounce of my being.

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why, a lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at [email protected] and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you, guys. You're the best. And now, back to the show.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013 and Arielle has decided to start a direct-to-consumer bedding business, but has no idea where to start. And one of the people she reaches out to is her friend Eddie Kim, who knows a lot about launching startups.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And one of the people he introduced me to was a friend that lived in Paris whose family was in textiles. And so I did all this research and I planned this trip to Portugal and Italy. I decided that basically the next step would have to be to visit factories. Like, I was just like, I don't know what's going on. Like, I mean, I can do all this research, but I need to see firsthand how a single fiber becomes a sheet. And I need to understand what that means. I had already also decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to manufacture in Europe. Because as I was talking to friends and really figuring out that absolutely no one knew a single brand that was on their bed, they could just tell me what store they went to purchase, and they hated the experience, end to end. The only brands that they could reference were these super-premium brands like Frete or Sfera,

• 29:45Speaker 01

  the ones that were made in Italy that were, you know, $1,000 for a sheet set that no one could afford, but, you know, they'd heard of them. They were that pinnacle of luxury, but... Not accessible and not really modern, you know? I mean, that wasn't like what my peers were looking to buy, even if they could.

• 30:00Guy Raz?

  But you knew that you wanted to focus on European textiles rather than, you know, maybe get a cheaper version from an Asian factory?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So I felt like in order to build trust, I had to prove that this was a quality product. And some of that came from my experience in advertising, you know? It's like there's very fundamental things that you need to do to get people excited about a product and trust is one of them. And, you know, it also was looking at these successful D to C brands, you know? They are creating premium quality products at a more accessible price by going directly to the factories. And so I was like, surely I can go to Italy and find a factory. And if I'm going to sell it online, I can cut out all of these markups and all of the pricing, you know, inflation things that happen and I can just sell a great product for less.

• 30:49Guy Raz?

  All right, let's talk about some decisions you made, right? Because you, you sort of end of December 2012, you are starting to get really excited about this. January, February, you are fully in and you leave your job in February of 2013. This, this, you know, probably a pretty good job. You were probably paid, do you know how much you were paid? Like $80, $90,000 a year?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:13Guy Raz?

  Something like that. So you were making pretty good money.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was making, it was great. I could afford my life. I was, yeah.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  And you were like 28 at the time. So, you know, it's, it's not super risky. You can definitely recover from a failure at 28. You can recover from a failure at 40 or 50, but still, I mean, in that period of time, January, February, when you were like, I'm leaving my job, I'm going to do this. Did you ever hear from anybody who was like, you know, it's tough to do, this is a category like that's dominated by four players and like, you're just going to get into it and you're going to be crushed? Like, did anybody say that or was everybody encouraging?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think probably more people should have said that. Um, I mean, I felt there was a moment where I started telling people that I was gonna do this.

• 31:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Not because I had so much confidence. It was more like I wanted to hold myself accountable. You know, I was like, if I put this out in the world and I say I'm gonna do this, then people are gonna check in with me and they're gonna say, how's that thing going?

• 32:13Guy Raz?

  Exactly.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna be like, well, um, but yeah, so I was fully consumed and in March I went on this trip to Europe.

• 32:20Guy Raz?

  You quit your job and you're like, I'm gonna go to Europe and this was to visit?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Factories.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

  Factories. Okay. And, and you just emailed them?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  I emailed them and then I had this, our friend Arthur in Paris, who was, you know, able to call some of these factories. He had some contacts.

• 32:38Guy Raz?

  How did you know Arthur?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Through Eddie.

• 32:40Guy Raz?

  Oh, this is through Eddie?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is Eddie's friend and they had done some business together and so he was helping me set meetings up and he had offered to drive me through these countries.

• 32:50Guy Raz?

  Wow. That, and, and this was, and, and you were basically saying, hey, I'm gonna, I'm starting a company in the US and I'd love to meet with you. That's what you would say to them?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:01Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  At that point I was like, there's nothing that's gonna stop me. I'm gonna figure out 15 factories to visit. I know I'm gonna go to Portugal and Italy because these are the places where there's heritage. There's factories that have been around for a hundred plus years. This is where I can tell that quality story and it's gonna be great. I mean, I was just so excited. You know, I think there's like this like-

• 33:21Guy Raz?

  I can hear it now.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was so excited and I maybe was slightly ill-prepared because I just was like, I'm gonna figure this out. Um, and I also had this idea that I wanted to create the first bedding brand that wasn't just sold as sets. Cause if you went to any big box retailer, you could buy a pillowcase, but beyond that, you're buying a fitted sheet, a top sheet and two pillowcases.

• 33:46Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  And I personally don't use a top sheet. I know that that's a very- Triggering statement for people.

• 33:55Guy Raz?

  You just use the bedspread, the duvet and that's it.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And a fitted sheet.

• 33:58Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  That's it. That's my style.

• 34:00Guy Raz?

  No judgment.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Thank you. Well, people do judge.

• 34:03Guy Raz?

  I'm secretly judging you, but no judgment.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Okay. So, but one of, one of the things that I learned is that about 40% of people do not use a top sheet. And so I was like, huh, this is just another opportunity for me to do something different and better. And then if you go to Europe, they don't use a top sheet.

• 34:19Guy Raz?

  They just use a duvet.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  They just use a duvet or a comforter or quilt. Yeah.

• 34:23Guy Raz?

  And, and by the way, I get that because many times in the middle of the night, I'm trying to move and my wife is on, sleeping on top of the sheet and under the duvet and I'm under both and I can't. Yeah, it's annoying and I have to wake her up and say.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I'm sure she loves that.

• 34:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you're on top of the sheet.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and then in the morning, no matter what, no matter how you sleep, that fitted sheet is curled up in a ball at the bottom of the bed.

• 34:50Guy Raz?

  Oh yeah. It's always the bottom.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so then you're making your bed. It's an extra step. For me, it was not, it was not the vibe. So, you know, I found myself, when I was living in New York, as I bought sheets, I had this like stack of top sheets that were in my closet. And I realized I was paying for that material because you're paying for the set. So, you know, I had this idea that I was gonna go and create this new way of buying bedding. And my point here is that when I went to Europe and visiting these factories and I said, I want to sell a new type of set, they were like, yes, yes, finally.

• 35:24Guy Raz?

  Because they were used to selling these full sets to American brands.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're like, who, why are you doing this? What's the top sheet? It's just not, it's not a European way of sleeping. So there were certain things and I was like, and I don't want to talk about thread count because I know that thread count isn't what matters. And so they, they were intrigued by my desire to package products differently and to create an option for a top sheet instead of a mandatory top sheet. So we did, we did have a nice rapport.

• 35:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, and did you in, in that, on that sort of tour of these factories? I have to imagine that most of them were like, well, the minimum order is, you know, 500,000 or 200,000. Like, were any of these factories like, yeah, I can, I can start with a small order?

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yes, so there, there were probably two. But, you know, I had to pay upfront with the PO. You know, it wasn't like they were like, gonna talk about payment terms or like any sort, you know, it was like, okay, give us money and we will make you some sheets.

• 36:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm wondering about that because you were going to these factories, as you, you mentioned, these like, you know, multi-generational factories and probably mostly men and, you know, I imagine they were nice, but you were, you had no business, you had no money. You had, you were, I mean, even the fact that they were kind of showing you around is almost implausible to me, like, that they would give you the time. It reminds me a little bit of Sarah Blakely trying to start Spanx. Like, she, you know, was around the same age and would go to these textile, you know, mills in North Carolina and, you know, most, most people were like, I just, I'm not, you know, I don't have time for you.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Oh, by the way, I work with many of these factories now. And let me tell you, they love to remind me of how ridiculous I was in that first meeting and how little, and how they cannot believe that Parachute is actually a real company and that, you know, they most definitely laughed at me and thought that I was ridiculous and, and never thought that they were going to hear from me again. And it's, it comes up every time we talk.

• 37:27Guy Raz?

  All right. So, so you are going to come back to the US and really start to work on this project in earnest. Let me ask you for a moment about design, right? Because I imagine, you know, sheets are just standard. There's a standard design, right? I mean, so what, what kind of, you know, imprint could you put on these sheets that you were ordering? I mean, the colors, maybe, and the fabric they used. But, but, I mean, you were trying to create a brand for sheets that really wasn't out there. Like, nobody was like, oh, yeah, I buy, you know, Cheetos sheets or, you know, Coca-Cola sheet. Like, no one does that, right? So how are you going to make that come alive?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, there were a few different things. So one was being able to package a set without the top sheet.

• 38:14Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  So that was one differentiator. The other was my knowledge of thread count. So I was going to just go with Good old, like, true thread count, because that is actually the best quality. I wasn't going to use any toxic chemicals, artificial dyes, or synthetic finishes. And then I had this idea that I wanted to create a more polished, clean, modern pillowcase. So normally pillowcases have a side opening, which leaves this flap of fabric, and the pillow can kind of move within the pillowcase. And that always bothered me. So I decided to create a back envelope pillowcase.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  I'm not the inventor of a back envelope pillowcase, but it's something that you saw more used for, like, shams. And so that was, those were some of the differentiators.

• 39:08Guy Raz?

  All right, so you get back to New York. And the idea was to, to do what at that point? I mean, you had to find the money, you had to... There are lots of things to do, but what, tell me what your plan was at that point? This is like, you know, March, April 2013.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  So I decided to move back to Los Angeles.

• 39:29Guy Raz?

  Which is where you grew up.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Which is where I grew up. And so I, I came back to LA and I was like, okay, now I need to raise money. Because I don't have any money and I can't actually buy this inventory. And companies with good ideas raise money, like, that's what they do. They go talk to an investor and investors like, yes, this is a great idea, here's the money. And so I, I started to get some introductions.

• 39:51Guy Raz?

  And you went with your pitch deck and everything?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  I went with my pitch deck, I went with some pillowcases. I had like a Mary Poppins box of fabrics. I, I mean, I was, I felt like a traveling saleswoman.

• 40:02Guy Raz?

  And what would you say in the pitch, basically, what you're describing to me now?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say, you spend a third of your life in bed.

• 40:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  There is no brand in this category. I'm going to build a home brand for today's modern shopper. And I'm going to start with sheets, but I'm going to build a massive brand. We're going to be a billion dollar business and there is no one doing this. And these are the products that you touch and use every day. This is like, this is, this is special. And no one wanted to give me money.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  But I mean, this was the summer of 2013, like sort of the beginning of the the big boom in direct to consumer. And there was a lot of money pouring into that space. So, so when you talk to investors, was there, was there any excitement about what you were describing?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was. I mean, for some more than others. I mean, I got a lot of, oh, let me talk to my wife about this. Oh, I never bought sheets before. People buy sheets. I'm like, well, do you sleep on sheets? I think you, I think you might. So yes, people are buying them. You know, I was a sole founder. So like, there was, there were a lot of questions about, why don't you have anyone doing this with you?

• 41:15Guy Raz?

  Right. I mean, this is a common question, right? That investors, and by the way, in their defense, it's a good question to ask. Why aren't you doing this to somebody else? Because solo founders statistically fail more than co-founders do.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the questions I kept getting were, why don't you have someone doing this with you? And, and I can't invest unless there's a technical co-founder or a technical partner.

• 41:36Guy Raz?

  Because you were gonna be a D to C business.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Because I was gonna be a digital business.

• 41:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  And so in those early days too, you know, I, I thought I was supposed to play it cool, you know? I'm sure that I did not walk into those rooms with the intensity that I felt inside. You know, I walked in being like, I've got this great idea. Like, come on, we're going for a ride.

• 41:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  So what I kept hearing was like, cool, keep it up. Let's talk in a month. Let's talk in a few months. Why don't you show me a model? Why don't you do this? Can you show me a site? Can you, how can you show that there's interest here? Like, can you put up a website and drive some early sales?

• 42:12Guy Raz?

  They were saying, you're pitching us too early.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:14Guy Raz?

  Because at that point, you hadn't had inventory, you hadn't had a website. I mean, you had no money to do these things. You needed them.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was hard. You know, I mean, there were days, you know, I would have a great meeting and be like, I'm on top of the world. I'm the most successful person ever. This is gonna be amazing. And then I'd, you know, have another meeting and I'd be like, I quit. And it was, it was exhausting. But I finally did raise $30,000. My good friend Eddie brought three friends to the table and I got $30,000 from them collectively.

• 42:41Guy Raz?

  It's a start. It's, you know, it's a decent start.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I started working on a website.

• 42:47Guy Raz?

  And by the way, I mean, I imagine when you were going in, because you were like 29, you know, maybe 30. And I mean, I remember being that age and, you know, just naturally, you're not as confident as you are when you're 40 or, you know.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:02Guy Raz?

  And so probably that kind of chill, laid back approach you took was an attempt to show that you weren't like this giddy, young person, right? Like that you were actually confident in that. But it sounds like they wanted to see this like hustle, intense, kind of like, we're gonna, you know, crush it. And just a very kind of almost overconfident pitch.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there was a day where I was running really late and I was going for a meeting and I came in and I like had this like crazy energy because I was like, oh, my God, I was like trying to do this and I was that. But the feedback I got was phenomenal.

• 43:40Guy Raz?

  From that day. It was like, this is the person you need to be.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was like, so I need to be running late. I need to be like sweating profusely. I need to have bruises on my arms because I like dropped a box of product on me. I was like, oh, got it.

• 43:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, I think this is, it's an interesting idea because there's been so much talk in the last 10 years about authenticity, authenticity. And I actually think that word is a little problematic because what does that actually mean? I mean, in some ways, we're all performing to a certain extent, like all the time. It doesn't mean we're inauthentic, but there are different ways of presenting yourself and interacting with people in different ways. And sometimes you need to turn it up.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Totally. And I did need to turn it up. And it was the best feedback I got was, was turn it up because people aren't mind readers. And you learn that, you know, if you want something, you need to ask. And if you want people to know how you feel, it's important to tell them.

• 44:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Guy Raz?

  All right, so you raised this initial $30,000 from your friend Eddie Kim and a few others. And then I guess toward the end of 2013, you also joined a startup accelerator program in LA, right? And it was run by a friend of yours?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, my friend Sam Teller, who ran this accelerator program called Launchpad, and some really great companies came out of Launchpad. I was actually in the final class.

• 45:06Guy Raz?

  And basically, they would give you some-

• 45:08Speaker 01

  They gave $25,000 in office and resources, which by the way, when people ask me about raising capital, that was invaluable to me.

• 45:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  That $25,000, so I had raised $30,000, which allowed me to like start building this website. And then that $25,000 came in at the 11th hour and allowed me to buy inventory. And that is what allowed me to start this business.

• 45:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And I actually think that one of the biggest things that I learned in that experience was how to ask for help, which by the way, is a superpower.

• 45:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  You know, like it is one of my-

• 45:41Guy Raz?

  It is.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  -superpowers. And I think a lot of founders go through building companies, thinking that asking for help is a sign of weakness. But I was forced to ask for help and I needed help. I mean, I didn't, there was, I knew so little about what I was trying to do and I was figuring everything out on the go. And also being around other founders, I finally felt like I was like not crazy because I wasn't just like in a bedroom by myself. I like had people to talk to. And I think at that point, that was when I knew the amount of sacrifice that I was going to be making.

• 46:16Guy Raz?

  Which meant what?

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Work always came first. You know, like that this company was going to be my life. And that meant missing weddings, missing dinners, missing social events, missing parties. It meant this was going to be it for me for many years. Like this was going to be my number one priority.

• 46:35Guy Raz?

  But with that initial, I mean, the 30,000 plus the 25,000 you got from Launchpad, I mean, that's still not that much money.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 46:45Guy Raz?

  Right?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  It's nothing.

• 46:46Guy Raz?

  And with that money, you had to build a website, order some inventory. And do you remember how many you ordered? I mean, with, you know, you couldn't, it wasn't going to be all that 55,000 because you had to-

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I think I probably ordered about 300.

• 47:00Guy Raz?

  Okay, 300 sets. And- And in the meantime, as a solo founder, you know, you talk about, you sort of alluded to this idea that it was overwhelming. What was overwhelming? What was your to-do list?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  My to-do list was endless. My to-do list was everything. I mean, I actually remember one day, like catching up with a friend and my friend being like, so what do you even do every day? And I burst into tears. I was like, what do you mean? What do I do every day? And, you know, I think it's so interesting because that the phase of pre-build, especially when like no one around you understands what you're doing, is really dark. It's really lonely. I mean, being a founder in general can be really lonely and really isolating and feel like you're an island of one. But before you have a physical product to show someone, I mean, to be fair, it was a fair question, you know, like, what do you do every day?

• 47:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  I was figuring out how to import. I was figuring out how to get boxes. I was figuring out how to get a website. I was figuring out how to take pictures of products. I was, I mean, I did not know how to do anything.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah. While you're sort of building the website, first of all, the name, Parachute Home, was that easy to get? Was that a domain that was available?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  No. So credit goes to our design agency for coming up with the name Parachute. I walked into a meeting, we were eating a bunch of sandwiches, and we had been working on a number of other names, none of which were right, but at some point, we had had to incorporate. So we had like picked a name that, you know, to just use as a placeholder.

• 48:37Guy Raz?

  Parent company. What was the name?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so embarrassing.

• 48:39Guy Raz?

  You gotta tell me.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  It was saffron oak.

• 48:43Guy Raz?

  Okay, that's fine.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Well, so my rules were that it couldn't have an ampersand and it couldn't have any missing vowels, because that was a very popular thing at the time. And I, you know, saffron's like the most expensive spice. It was like luxury and oak is how you build a home. That's where it came from. Anyway, but I walked into the design meeting and the owner of the design company said, you know, I had this idea, what about parachute?

• 49:07Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Immediately when I heard the name, I said, yes. Actually, Eddie was in that meeting with me. We looked at each other and we were like, oh, my God. And it was inspired by, you know, the movement of the fabric when you make your bed and the sheet billows down like a parachute. And One of the other insights that I had going into starting this brand was that, you know, this was a predominantly female centric category, like women were buying sheets.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  And I felt like there's this huge opportunity to create a brand that appealed to both men and women.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was parachute. It was from that moment on, it was like go time. It was, I mean, it was a home run.

• 49:48Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you've got inventory and you launched this, this website. I think you launched it in, early in 2014, right? In like January of 2014?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, January 16th.

• 50:02Guy Raz?

  And how did you get the word out? I mean, you have a website, but there are lots of websites out there. So you need people to find your website and order your stuff. So presumably you started by telling your friends, right? Like you sent a blast email out to everybody you knew?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I sent lots of emails. I did a few like holiday trunk shows and gifting markets. And at that point, the website was finished, so I could like place orders and just fulfill there and.

• 50:33Guy Raz?

  Were you doing this on like, I mean, you were going to be D to C. And so did you like do Shopify or?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:39Guy Raz?

  Squarespace or no?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  So I, I worked with a design firm. And so the thing about these days was that Shopify and, it was like Shopify and Magento and, and neither of them had very sophisticated CMS platforms at the time. I mean, they did, but what I was told by the designers that I worked with was that we needed to build a custom platform. And so we did.

• 51:04Guy Raz?

  That's expensive.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Sure is. It was.

• 51:07Guy Raz?

  That must have eaten, eaten a lot of that 55 grand.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  It was the majority of it and, and it took a long time and it was complicated. And we built this custom CMS program and that's what we used to launch and about.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Three weeks after I, well, almost immediately after I launched, I realized when I was like, oh, I see this like error. We gotta fix this. We gotta fix that. They're like, oh, that'll be two weeks. That'll be three weeks. It'll take. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. And we actually quickly had to move on to Shopify. And it was, it was about a almost $40,000 mistake.

• 51:39Guy Raz?

  And how did you, what was the thing that you were telling people? Like, these sheets are better than anything else because they're made in Europe and they're really high quality? Like, what was the thing that, what was the message?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, our first tagline was like a designed in LA, made in Europe, delivered directly to you. You know, and in those conversations, I was educating people about thread count. And that was like a big, I mean, people love that story. You know, people love learning that thread count is a marketing gimmick.

• 52:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  And so that became a real hook for people. But, you know, and in December as well, I did a big photo shoot. So I, you know, I rented an Airbnb and I shot all these products and I hired a PR agency with my last $3,000.

• 52:21Guy Raz?

  You hired them to, to do like a blast?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  To do the launch.

• 52:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  So having worked in PR, I actually really did believe in the power of PR. I knew, and I knew the power of a launch moment. You know, it's like you only launch once. And especially in that moment, a new direct to consumer brand

• 52:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  in a category with very little, you know, innovation, or certainly never an online brand. I mean, that was unheard of. I mean, we were really first to market. And so I hired an agency and, you know, they took a chance and, you know, I promised that I would pay them more later, you know, once we had money. But we launched on, in January of 2014 with incredible press.

• 53:05Guy Raz?

  They got you guys' attention where?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Elle Decor, Harper's Bazaar, Apartment Therapy. I mean, we had, and then we got more press because of the press, you know? And so the first few weeks, all of a sudden, it went from, you know, two orders a day to three orders a day, to 10 orders a day, to all of a sudden, I'm looking at my order list and I'm like, I don't know any of these people. These are, I don't, I've never even heard of these towns. Like, what is happening here?

• 53:33Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Ariel makes some bold marketing moves like running photo ads that show beds with actual people in them. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 55:07Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. So it's early 2014, parachute is live, and orders for luxury linens are starting to roll in. As for Ariel, she's working out of the Startup Accelerator launchpad, but managing the entire business on her own, and she can barely take a breath.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  And so every morning I would get the orders from the day. I would print out my packing slips. I would print out the shipping label. I would fold the boxes together. I would take home these packing slips. I'd go directly to the storage unit. I'd pack my car full of the products. I'd come to the office, I'd pack the boxes, call UPS. And it was like, that was, and then in the middle of the day, I'm like doing customer service emails, I'm trying to pitch investors, I'm doing all these mentorship calls. I'm like, I'm, I am out of my mind. Like I am, it's like, but I, when I look back at this time, I can't help but smile ear to ear. Like this, it was incredible. And also, by the way, I'd been in this accelerator program for like three months at this point. And people were like, what's going on in that corner? Everyone else is building software companies. Like I am the only person that has a consumer product.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  And so everyone's, you know, making their websites and apps and things. And all of a sudden I launched this business and I'm like, Everyone out of the way. I've got boxes coming in. It was happening, you know, it was like I did not, there was not one minute of it that I was not loving.

• 56:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Do you remember how much you made in sales that first month?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't remember. I mean, maybe 30,000 or something.

• 56:36Guy Raz?

  I mean, it was pretty good. Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty good.

• 56:38Guy Raz?

  What was your price point? Because I imagine that had to be significantly higher than Marshalls or TJ Maxx.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think all in, if you bought the whole set, it was about 249.

• 56:50Guy Raz?

  So I have to imagine you weren't making that much money off that.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  No, our margin wasn't great. I mean, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. We weren't losing money. When all said and done, I mean, I wasn't buying anything at scale. So like, there was no economies of scale. There was, yeah, it was, you know, I wasn't losing money.

• 57:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And now you had something to go back and show to investors, but were you able to, I mean, you know, you tried in 2013, you couldn't really raise any institutional capital. Now it's 2014. Now are you having more luck?

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So one of the benefits of being, and one of the reasons why I wanted to join Launchpad, I mean, there were so many benefits. But one was that this was a time where investors reached out to accelerators and said, what's going on here? Like, how do I, we need to deploy capital. You guys have access to these companies. Who should we be investing in?

• 57:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And so as a result, I was getting meetings with the top investors in LA, San Francisco, New York. And I was able to run a process quite quickly because at Launchpad, they were able to say, you know, this brand just launched. It's a consumer brand. They got product market fit. You know, the press has been amazing. Sales are through the roof. You know, there's something really happening here. And, and they were a trusted resource for deal flow.

• 58:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  You know, I remember being at South by Southwest that year and I had brought about 2,000 eye masks that said, "Dream Big." parachutehome.com. I was wearing them like headbands, passing them out, running around to every party, throwing them at DJ booths, like, meeting investors there. I was able to close some additional investors there. And all of a sudden, I had raised almost a million dollars.

• 58:34Guy Raz?

  Wow. So this is 2014 and now you are, you've got some significant cash and you have this sort of PR machine and it's growing, right? Because people are starting to learn about. About what you're selling, but it's still D to C. I mean, you could only buy it from a website.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah. And then we sold out. I mean, we sold out really quickly. We had this blurb in the Wall Street Journal that really put us on the map. I mean, it was maybe three sentences in a larger story. And we sold out of everything. And then we put our products on preorder and sold through the preorders. I mean, it just, it became a bit of a disaster.

• 59:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  So we had all these orders on preorder and some of that inventory was going to be, you know, it was two or three weeks late. But then we had accidentally sold through the preorders. So I had to go and email, you know, 75 people and say, hey, you're not going to get your bedding for four months.

• 59:31Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's a good problem to have, but a bad problem to have because then people might sort of write you off.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  It was a good problem to have and it was a devastating problem for me at the time. You know, I thought that it was over. It was a good lesson in communication and just how to be transparent with customers and say, this is what's happening and we're growing business. And we sold through our inventory. It's getting made in Italy. We're going to give you a play by play and you're a part of this journey and we're so grateful. And, you know, I'd say about 90% of the people were like, congratulations. We're proud of you. And yes, we can wait four months for our sheets. You know, we got a few people were like, you don't know how to run a business and we're out and refund us. And, you know, of course, you know, you can expect some of that too. But there was a moment where, you know, we're out of stock and everything. And I felt like, you know, people are going to forget about us or they're just going

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  to move on or no one's going to trust us. And, you know, it was, it was really upsetting. But we made it through.

• 1:00:28Guy Raz?

  So I wonder like, as you were, especially in that year, you know, you raised a million dollars. It's encouraging. But, you know, some of these other brands, competitors, for example, Brooklinen and, you know, maybe Bowlin Branch and some of these other brands were just really growing and doing things like advertising on podcasts, which created a lot of awareness. You know, I didn't, and forgive me because I, you know, I follow brands and I try and buy stuff all the time just to be aware of what's out there. But I didn't know about Parachute at the time. Was that frustrating for you to see some of these competitors just like growing, growing, growing, growing?

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yes, it definitely caused some anxiety in the sense that I felt a little blindsided. You know, like here I was with my head down, building this brand and thinking I had this great, unique idea and all-

• 1:01:27Guy Raz?

  That nobody else had.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  That nobody else had, obviously, because it was my idea. And then three months later, other brands are popping up. And so, you know, presumably, we're all working on these products at the same time. But you know, I think the reality was, is that, you know, I looked and I was like, look, this is a $30 billion market. And when you looked at all of our websites, they all had a very different look and feel. They all had a very different value proposition. And while, of course, people are going to compare shop, we are all slightly different price points, I just decided that I was gonna keep my head down. I mean, obviously be aware of what's happening because that is your job. But the thing, when I think about this time, is that venture capital, especially at this time, thinks you can build brands quick.

• 1:02:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  That was the whole thesis. Brands can be built quickly. And I just didn't believe that.

• 1:02:19Guy Raz?

  And it's not true. It's very rare that a brand can be built quickly.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And so, I think for me, there were moments, like, yes, moments of deep anxiety and fear, and we're not doing this quick enough, and I don't have enough money, and I can't do this, you know, I can't spend $200 million on marketing to become a household name overnight. But when I could come out of that spiral, I could put myself back into a place where I could say with confidence, both to myself and my team, and frankly, my investors, that building a brand does not happen overnight.

• 1:03:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  And I think also because I had started this business after an early crop of companies had raised too much money and kind of crashed and burned, I, there was this cautionary tale. And I think I just like, I believed-

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  I wanted to grow with the customer. I wanted to build trust. I wanted to move into different categories. I knew that would cost money. I wanted to build the right team. I just, I don't know. And I had venture investors, but I think I only took their advice like 50% of the time.

• 1:03:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  And today, one of my biggest issues with the startup, venture, private equity world is that no one gives credit for financial discipline.

• 1:03:48Guy Raz?

  Right, right. Nobody, I mean, now, of course, everyone's like, well, we need you to be profitable. But then, then, you know, 2015, 2016, even up until recently, people are just like, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And then we'll worry about profitability later.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I just was like, committed to building a healthy business. Were we profitable every year from day one? No. Like, we were trying to grow and we had venture investors telling us to spend millions of dollars on marketing. And once we started to do marketing, and we did do some podcasts, we were actually the first podcast advertiser on Pod Save America, and that changed our business. That was one of the most successful advertising things that we ever did. I mean, it was crazy what it did.

• 1:04:32Guy Raz?

  Those guys were talking about how they loved to sleep on your linens?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were wearing our robes to their live tapings. I mean, we were one of their first, I think, two, maybe three advertisers. We were before they even launched. And we just had a hunch that because it was a political year, you know, and an election year, that that would be a popular podcast.

• 1:04:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And how did you, I mean, you really had no experience managing people in your previous job, which isn't necessary, but now it's like on the job training. Like, you are literally managing a team of people. How did you find that? Did it come naturally to you, or was it hard?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  You know, it came naturally. I mean, I think that the team of two to team of 20 is a really special time. You know, everyone is somewhat sitting around the table together. There's a lot of communication and collaboration. And of course, there's like, you know, various issues that come up. But there was just so much energy and excitement. I think what helped me the most, to be honest, is that my first few jobs out of college, I had pretty challenging managers and I worked at companies with pretty poor culture. And so while I didn't necessarily have a model of what to do, I had a very clear model of what not to do. And that went a long way.

• 1:05:57Guy Raz?

  Ariel, one of the things that you guys really leaned in on, I mean, you mentioned this early, early on, which is you never like to have a fitted sheet, right? And so the idea of like, you know, every time you'd go, like even today, if you go to a department store and you go to the bedding section, like the beds are crisp, like military crisp. And you guys were the opposite. You had this sort of like, laid back, I guess, like a lived in look, you know, it was like the beds were not, I mean, the, it wasn't like crisp sheets and a crisp duvet cover. It was like, you know, somebody just got out of bed and just kind of threw the duvet back over the bed.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of the things that I believed was an opportunity was to humanize this category because, you know, it was a brandless category. And I looked around and realized that there were no models, ever, in a bed.

• 1:06:51Guy Raz?

  No models, human models in a bed?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Humans, humans. Yeah, there were no, like, imagery of beds to sell bedding never had a human in them. There was never a family curled up. There was never a person snuggling with their blanket.

• 1:07:05Guy Raz?

  Never thought about that, yeah.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  And so I felt like, you know, while we, we weren't going to put the word parachute all over our sheets, we weren't going to brand them, we weren't going to make, we weren't going to move into parachute t-shirts, you know, as branding opportunities. But we did need to create a look and feel and an aesthetic that was recognizable. And so for us, that meant this art of the undone bed.

• 1:07:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  This effortless luxury, this very specific vibe.

• 1:07:35Guy Raz?

  Which is kind of Southern California, too.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  It's California cool.

• 1:07:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Which is where we're from. So it was very authentic to us, you know? I mean, and it was just like, this is all, this is how we lived, you know? It wasn't like we had to hire an outside branding agency to tell us how to do this. We were just like, but this is how, this is what our bed actually looks like. Why don't we take a picture of that? And then why don't we put a model in there or a person? In the early days, we just had friends and people that were real people because we wanted it to be really real, you know? And it, it worked.

• 1:08:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. So you, you guys were obviously primarily only direct to consumer, but with some of the success that you were having. And do you remember, do you have a sense, by the way, what your total sales were in year one, roughly?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  About a million.

• 1:08:26Guy Raz?

  Okay, so pretty good, a pretty good year. A million dollars in sales. And obviously, as you mentioned, not yet profitable, but that's okay because you could see a path to growth and eventual profitability. You decided, or I guess in 2015, you start to experiment with pop-up stores, which you had kind of done a version of early on when you were going to these like Christmas markets and stuff. But this would be, was, I mean, was the idea that it would be like dipping your toe in potentially opening a brick and mortar store?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  So I knew that retail was going to be part of our strategy from the beginning. I mean, it's in my first pitch deck. I, this is a category where historically 90% of purchases were made offline when I started this brand. So we were already doing something very different. And I knew that there was just going to be this consumer, that it was going to be a much harder shift in their behavior to buy online. And so we rented a window of a store, like a little window area in Venice. And we put some signage up and we just saw the way that people responded when they touched and felt our products.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  That it was a real selling point, like our products felt good.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  And you know, I think because we knew that everyone was buying offline, it just felt like, you know.

• 1:09:52Guy Raz?

  It made sense.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  This had to happen. It had to happen soon.

• 1:09:56Guy Raz?

  So, okay, you open up your first store in Venice. I think this is in 2016. And that year, you raised serious money. So, Series A, I think you raised about $10 million in that Series A round. So, you had some, you know, real heft behind you. And you're launching in different categories now. You start, and you knew that you were gonna, it was gonna be a home goods brand from the beginning, but you start with sheets and bedding. So, how did you, I mean, for example, what did you go to after bedding? What did you, did you go to towels after?

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  We went to towels. So, we were focused on bedding for the first two years. But then we also had an incredible customer base that were asking for more. I mean, and we were building that trust with them so that they would say, you know, I want this and I want that and can you, I'm having a baby and I want products that are also clean and don't have chemicals and look just like yours, but in a miniature size. And so, we were leveraging the customer feedback and over time, we started moving to their categories like rugs and window treatments and kitchen and pillow, like decorative pillows and then eventually into some furniture.

• 1:11:11Guy Raz?

  When you introduced furniture, what was the initial idea that, you know, you could buy sofas and other furniture from Parachute?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  That was the idea. Yeah. I mean, we wanted to be in every room of the home. So, as we looked at the home and we looked at the revenue opportunities, you know, furniture is a huge lion's share of, you know, this home category.

• 1:11:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  And so, we started with bed frames, which again, made sense. But we decided that we wanted to do furniture in other rooms, so in the living room.

• 1:11:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  And it was successful in many ways and it was unsuccessful in others. I mean, the logistics were just so complicated and I think we were unprepared for how difficult getting the products from our manufacturer to the customer would be. And in an effort to focus on profitability, we've slowed that part of our growth down for now. I mean, we've got some incredible furniture in our. Office that we have designed and are designing and you know, it's, it's the category. We'll come back. We just are going to relaunch it with more information and a better supply chain.

• 1:12:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Ariel, you'd mentioned when you started out as an entrepreneur, you knew there were going to be a lot of personal sacrifices, you know, hanging out, family, friends, like you, it was heads down. But I guess eventually you did, you did, were able to have some time to focus on your personal life and you, you, you started a family, I think around 2018. Is that right?

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, in 2018, I got married. On my way to my rehearsal dinner, I signed a term sheet and

• 1:12:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Two weeks later, I opened a store in New York City and a week later, I found out I was pregnant.

• 1:12:57Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  May 2018 was a busy month.

• 1:13:00Guy Raz?

  So you were, I mean, and that's like, in the thick of it. I mean, you were six, you were growing and you were raising money and, but still, I mean, it was, I mean, at that point, I think you'd raised about 46, $7 million total, which is a lot, but, but with that money comes expectations and you were going to become a mom. You know, how did you manage, you know, all of these different huge changes in your life?

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  It was tough. I mean, it was a big change. And I think up until that moment of becoming a mom, my career and this role as leader and CEO and founder was my entire identity. And it was also important for my team. I mean, you know, at that point, I had some really strong leadership and it was great to be able to watch people step into these bigger roles in my absence and.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  I love being a mom. I mean, being a mom is one of my greatest joys and being a mom that can share my company and my success with my daughter and now son, you know, is amazing. I mean, I love bringing my kids to parachute stores and the whole thing.

• 1:14:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. We don't always talk about, you know, people's personal lives on the show unless it's relevant to the story. But sometimes we do because I think it's important to illustrate the sacrifices people take to start a business. And sometimes, you know, we don't always know what's happening in people's lives. You know, we show up at a meeting and we may not know there's a crisis going on. There's a sick parent or there's a marriage collapsing. I know in your case, your marriage split up, it broke up, while you were trying to scale this business and, you know, you had two small kids. How did you, how did you

• 1:14:58Guy Raz?

  deal with that, you know, the challenges in your personal life and also still, you know, come to work every day and just have the energy to do it?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  It was the hardest type of my life, honestly. You know, I think a lot about when things started to fall apart in my personal life and the gratitude I had for my professional life because while things were somewhat in chaos and crisis behind closed doors, I had this other door that I could walk through where things were seemingly perfect and where things were positive and there was growth. And even during some of our more challenging times at parachute, I was very private about what was going on. So, you know, most of my executive team members didn't really know what was even happening.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  And I felt very guarded and I felt very alone and In many ways ashamed of what was happening and also this real desire to show up as this like super professional human that could function and in reality I couldn't and I'm very pleased to say that in the past year and a half, two years, I've really prioritized a lot of my own personal development and growth and have done a lot of what we like to call in L.A. the work. And in retrospect, again, I wish I had asked for more help. I wish I would have said, you know, I'm going through this and I think what I would have found out is that I was not alone and I probably would have been connected to

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  a number of people who had experienced similar things. And, you know, I think people often tell me how strong I am, especially now knowing what I've gone through and I hate that word.

• 1:16:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Because it just implies this ability to ignore pain and not feel and not fall apart. And I think that there needs to be more space for people to fall apart in a way that is supportive, where people can say, I've got your back.

• 1:17:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. What got you to the point where you felt like you could give yourself time to focus on you?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  I made a choice in 2021 that I was going to make time.

• 1:17:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  I was going to make time at whatever cost. I had to. But then also at the beginning of this year, I actually stepped down as CEO and I passed the baton to our former COO. And it's also allowed me to get back to the parts of the business that I love, which is the creative side of everything. And so I'm spending all of my time now focused on the brand evolution and who we are and who we're going to be for the next 10 years and the creative and that's been really fun, too.

• 1:17:57Guy Raz?

  What does that mean for R L K? I know that you're no longer the CEO, but you're obviously involved with the company. But at the same time, you know, you're still young and you can do other things or you can step down and, you know, probably get a nice check and live a nice life with that check. I mean, you've been grinding away at this for 10 years. What do you, what do you think?

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  I love what I do. I truly do. And I love the people that I get to work with and I'm in it for the long haul. I mean, there's going to be exciting moments for consumer brands that have strong customer bases in the next few years.

• 1:18:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  And for me, as long as I'm continuing to learn and grow and feel challenged, like I am engaged and that has never slowed down.

• 1:18:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You've, you've kind of alluded to this a little bit in, in your answer, but I'm going to ask you it anyway, because it wouldn't be a "How I Built This" interview unless I did ask you this question, which is, when you reflect on your career and where you got to and the ups and downs and also the pain and the joy and, you know, and everything in between, how much of, of where you are today do you attribute to how hard you worked and, and how much you put into it? And how much do you think had to do with luck?

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  Luck is certainly a part of it. I mean, I think from a timing perspective, you know, being first to market, launching in 2014, you know, the market was not nearly as saturated as it was today. I mean, you could get to decent scale, spending relatively little marketing dollars. I mean, it's just a different world. And in some ways, it's so much easier to launch a company today. I've worked pretty hard. I mean, I've hustled, man. I, I've hustled, you know? But I've also been so lucky to have such strong people around the table. But yeah, I mean, this was it. This was the vision and it's.

• 1:19:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  It feels like it's been a million years and, and five minutes at the same time.

• 1:20:04Guy Raz?

  That's Ariel Kay, founder of Parachute Home. By the way, what's your favorite karaoke song?

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Um, I actually just went karaoke-ing recently and I started with Whitney Houston, "Dance With Somebody," which is not an easy song.

• 1:20:18Guy Raz?

  That's hard. How do you hit those notes?

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  It's a very hard song, but you know what? It really just turns it up. You know, the room gets excited. You need, you need some good fun upbeat musics to kick everything off and to get people in the mood.

• 1:20:31Guy Raz?

  You can hit that Whitney Houston high note. Wow. Amazing.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm not comparing myself to Whitney, let's be clear.

• 1:20:41Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Seifer. Our audio engineer was Josephine Nyounai. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agudelo, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.