Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu

Twenty-five years ago, when Mei Xu emigrated from China to the U. S., she loved going to Bloomingdale's to gaze at their housewares. She eventually started making candles in her basement with Campbell's Soup cans, an experiment that led to the multi-million dollar company Chesapeake Bay Candle. 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  We registered for the New York Gift Show, which is the holy grail of trade shows. And we thought that this is going to be the ticket to our success. But we were wrong. Wow. It was a complete disaster.

• 0:24Guy Raz?

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

• 0:35Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, the story of how Mei Shi left China for America, used Campbell's soup cans to make candles, and turned that into a multimillion-dollar company.

• 0:50Guy Raz?

  So almost everything about the way Mei Shi's life turned out is improbable. The fact that she started a business, that she makes candles, that she even lives in America. None of this was supposed to happen. And as she describes it, growing up in China in the 1970s was kind of like living in a movie without much color.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  When we grew up, there was absolutely nothing. Everyone wore the same thing. Everyone would be eating the same food. Everyone had the same small apartment. Life was very happy in the sense that you don't have to be jealous of each other. You don't have to be wanting things you could not have.

• 1:28Guy Raz?

  In the 1970s, China was still a black box, closed off to much of the world. But eventually, the government realized it needed better diplomats, people who spoke foreign languages well. So around the time Mei turned 12, this is 1979, the government decided to open up some boarding schools to train that next generation of diplomats. And Mei Shi was one of the lucky few who got in.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  So we learned Western culture, American studies.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Renaissance art, all in English. And I knew more about Smithsonian and the locations of each art than many Americans. And this was the thing about learning a language. A language is really living it. I remember, it was very funny that I was watching Godfather at 14, which has a lot of violence, a lot of sex, and a lot of murders. But we were enjoying it. We thought it was, you know, something that everyone in the United States do on every given day.

• 2:30Guy Raz?

  It was a pretty charmed life, especially compared to other Chinese kids. Mei was on the fast track to becoming a diplomat. But there was one problem. In the spring of 1989, Chinese students started to organize demonstrations calling for more reforms, what we now know as the Tiananmen Square protests. And after six weeks, the Chinese government cracked down. Now, Mei Shi wasn't an activist at the time, but that didn't matter. The government decided that educated young people like her were a threat. So they were sent out of Beijing.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  They assigned me to a northern city, very cold, not even a city, a suburb. My job for the whole year is going to be watching a warehouse for minerals that are going to be for export. So I have a clipboard. I have two highlights of a day. When the truck comes to pick up one load, I put a check. And then it came again in the afternoon, I check. That would be the day for me, for a whole year.

• 3:34Guy Raz?

  You must have been miserable.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  I was beyond miserable. At that time, I was already dating my first husband. His name is David. So we were very close, and being far away was obviously not a good arrangement. On top of that, what I worried the most is that for 10 years, I was practicing and speaking English. And language is very easily forgotten, and I barely speak.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Chinese, let alone English, because my boss does not like to talk to me. He's a man with few words. He smoked most of the time, and that's my life for a year.

• 4:12Guy Raz?

  So Mei, she decided to quit. She and David thought about what to do. He was a trained geophysicist, and she spoke great English. So they decided to apply for temporary visas to come to the US. And after two years of waiting, they got them.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  So I flew to Washington DC. When we arrived at Dallas Airport, I was very sleepy because of the jet lag. And I saw two signs. One is American citizen.

• 4:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  And the other is aliens.

• 4:42Guy Raz?

  This just as you arrived at immigration?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Yes. And the word aliens was kind of confusing to me because I remember aliens from Star Wars or from, you know, those science movies. And I was so excited. I said, wow, they actually have a section for aliens. And so I got very excited. I said, let me see. I'm certainly not American citizen, so I guess I'm going to have to go to the alien part, and that's great because I can see them. I never knew that the word alien means the non-American, non-green cardholders. I guess they realized that, too. They changed the name now.

• 5:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  To something a little bit more human.

• 5:20Guy Raz?

  What was it like to adjust to the US? I mean, you had sort of immersed yourself in American culture your entire childhood, but then you finally arrive here. Did it surprise you? Did it disappoint you? Was it lonely?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Well, I don't find it particularly difficult to adapt. What I find interesting is that in Washington DC, people kind of avoid eye contact. That's something I still think was my first impression of the city. I was riding the subway, and I found it very interesting that as quickly as I look at someone, they immediately change their eyes and they try to focus on reading. And I said to myself, I said, wow, this is a really deep city because everybody's always reading very big volumes.

• 6:05Guy Raz?

  So were you able to find a job?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Yes. So I found a job in New York. It was a job for American medical device companies to export equipment to Chinese hospitals.

• 6:17Guy Raz?

  And was it interesting work? Did you enjoy it?

• 6:20Speaker 00

  It was boring. I have to be honest with you. It was a lot of paperwork pushing, a lot of import-export documentations, working with, you know, different factories about. SKU numbers and pushing line of credit through the banks. But what's interesting out of all these not so interesting things is that they put me in a hotel next to Bloomingdale's.

• 6:43Guy Raz?

  Why was that interesting?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Well, imagine a bird out of cage. I have always been interested in fashion. Many people wonder, you know, if you grow up in a country without any fashion, how can you really have an eye for it?

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  And when I was growing up in the foreign language middle school, China at that time already started exporting fashion and they would have those rejected fashion and they put them on sale near the, you know, bus stations. So we would be jumping from one place to another, looking for cheap fashion, you know? So that was always something I'm very interested in. And when you're put next to a Bloomingdale's, that was the best thing that can possibly happen.

• 7:27Guy Raz?

  So you would just go and hang out at Bloomingdale's?

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Every day I would go, starting from the first floor, which, you know, all these sales ladies that they spray.

• 7:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Fragrances and everybody hate them, not me. I love them, so they spray on me. I like being sort of in the middle of something they're launching and be able to tell what's in the fragrance that I like and dislike. And then look at the packaging. Packaging is always fascinating to me because I grew up in a country with no packaging at all. But what interested me the most is the fashion floor and it's usually the second floor and just being amazed.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  And I love the women in New York, the way they are so confident and they dress in those colors, in those shapes and they look great. And then I would always end in the home department and it would always give me a lot of question because it would look like it's in the 1920s.

• 8:23Guy Raz?

  So what would it look like?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Furnitures were very ornate. It has a lot of very, you know, gilded finish. And then the plates are like Laura Ashley prints, you know, very small grandma's wallpaper floral. And I'm just wondering, the person who is so confident walking on the street will go home to see this. It's so disconnected. So I keep saying that to David.

• 8:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  When we talk on the phone.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  He was living in DC.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  He's in DC. I was in New York and I would get up at five on Monday and took the first train. And I'll get home at nine o'clock on Friday. So it's not really a very good quality of life. And I was calling him about what I discovered was very exciting. And then I continually bring up how disconnected the fashion and the home departments are. Finally, he said, May, you seem to be really upset about this commute.

• 9:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  So he said, maybe we should start something.

• 9:25Guy Raz?

  So you quit and you, and then what was the plan? What was the business you guys were gonna do?

• 9:31Speaker 00

  So we knew it's gonna be home because we know.

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  Homewares, home goods.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Home goods because the fashion business is dominated by brands. And we feel the home business is left without brands. And that's where we see the opportunity. So it closed the gap between home and fashion. So that's our idea. We don't know what product.

• 9:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  We just quit, both of us at the same time.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  And you just like started brainstorming in your apartment or your house at the time? Like trying to figure out what to do?

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Not only without each other, but we really reach out to our friends. So we brainstormed with our friends. And as a result of that, when we started the business in the middle of 1994, we quickly got a lot of feedbacks. People sent me samples, sent me pictures. And we zoned in on about four categories.

• 10:19Guy Raz?

  And what were they?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  The first, you would be surprised, is silk flowers. I don't know if you know them. They're fake flowers that never die. The second category is accessories for your car. So seat cushions, something to make you feel comfortable when you drive for a long distance. And the third category, because I noticed American Doll was so popular, is a kind of doll that can rotate with music. And the last, something that I didn't even think is interesting, but I think it might have an opportunity, is a candle.

• 10:49Guy Raz?

  Candles.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Every category I mentioned is a huge business in this country. There are billions of dollars that are in each of those categories.

• 10:57Guy Raz?

  But you didn't have access to massive amounts of data and research then because the Internet wasn't available.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  No, it wasn't. And I don't really know what difference we will make, other than, you know, making it designed better. But I didn't even know how hard it was. It's actually good that you don't know everything, that you don't know how hard it is, that you just have a gut that something can be done to make it better. There's no amount of research that can prove an idea. But there's one thing you can always do, which is to take your product to the market. So that's what we did.

• 11:33Guy Raz?

  How did you get the products, by the way?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  They sampled us. They sent by FedEx or DHL.

• 11:38Guy Raz?

  From China?

• 11:39Speaker 00

  From China, yes.

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  So you got Chinese-made products and you imported them to the US?

• 11:43Speaker 00

  We haven't imported them. We just sampled them.

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  Samples, okay.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  So they sent by DHL, FedEx, whatever it is at that time is available.

• 11:49Guy Raz?

  Silk flowers, seat cushions?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Silk flowers. I think David brought some of those back by breaking his back also.

• 11:55Guy Raz?

  Oh, just in the suitcase, right?

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Just in the suitcases, yes. And by that time, it was September 1994. All the major wholesale trade shows take place twice a year. In January, when people replenish their goods after holiday, and in summer, when they are buying more for Christmas.

• 12:12Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  But it was September, so the only show we can possibly go to is in Charlotte, North Carolina.

• 12:18Guy Raz?

  And what happened?

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Ninety percent of the business came from the candles.

• 12:23Guy Raz?

  And what did the candles look like? Were they just candles?

• 12:27Speaker 00

  They're, you don't see them anymore. They're called glow candles. They're round, and they look like stained glass. And when you burn them, they're glowing from within.

• 12:38Guy Raz?

  So people came up to your booth and they were not interested in anything else? The silk flowers or the car seat? It was that stained glass-looking candle?

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Because it's holiday, and it was gift-giving season, and it's a great gift.

• 12:50Guy Raz?

  Okay, so then after the show, you know, you've got all these orders. How did you deliver them? How did you get them to customers?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  We rent a very inexpensive warehouse with an office in the front, and we couldn't afford many people for time, so we just have one part-time to help us. And we were able to use our savings and our family and friends helped us. So the first container was a 20-foot container, not even a 40-foot container. And then we shipped them very fast and we got reorders.

• 13:21Guy Raz?

  From the clients at the trade show?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  Wow. So what was the candle retailing for?

• 13:26Speaker 00

  $15, the most.

• 13:27Guy Raz?

  How much did it cost you guys?

• 13:29Speaker 00

  We probably will take 50% margin on them. So it was almost half a million dollars of business we did in four months.

• 13:39Guy Raz?

  That's insane. I mean, were you and David just shocked by the candle thing?

• 13:43Speaker 00

  We were taken surprised by that. We were not expected to do so well for the first four months of our business. And we were shipping every day. I was a sales manager. I was assistant. I was accounting. I was taking products out of the containers. I was everything.

• 14:03Guy Raz?

  OK, so you shipped this container from China and then you deliver all the stuff to your clients. And then what did you guys do after? What was the next move for the company?

• 14:13Speaker 00

  The second year, I decided, since the trade show, it's so important. We registered for the New York Gift Show, which is the holy grail of trade shows. So we went to the New York Gift Show. And we thought that this is going to be the ticket to our success. But the show, which is 10 times bigger with an international audience, told us that we were wrong. It was a complete disaster.

• 14:39Guy Raz?

  You are trying to sell these same candles that you're importing from China, and they're not selling.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  They're not selling. And I was devastated because it's a very expensive trade show.

• 14:51Guy Raz?

  I'm assuming at this point, I mean, you must have sort of thoughts in your mind that maybe this candle business, maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the fact that we did so well that first four months just had to do with Christmas.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Exactly. That was the thought. But I wasn't giving up. I was always more international minded. I was already scheduled to go to visit Frankfurt, Germany. Because every year in February, there is a big home product show called Ambiente. And in the, in my very depressed moment, I needed to go there to see what could potentially be the next thing. Because what I envisioned for home is already there. The design is very streamlined.

• 15:34Guy Raz?

  Of candles?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Of everything from home furniture to lighting and tabletop. The colors are very bold. They have oranges, lavenders, and they have those beautiful contrasts with white. And I was so happy that I went there because it confirmed that home and fashion could be in sync.

• 15:58Guy Raz?

  So, so how did it change your trajectory? I mean, you still have a candle business where you're bringing these stained glass window candles in from China. You're in Frankfurt, you see these beautiful streamlined designs and you think, what?

• 16:12Speaker 00

  So I could use that design elements in candle design.

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  That you would design your own candles?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  That was always my thought, even though-

• 16:20Guy Raz?

  Even though you were trained as a diplomat?

• 16:22Speaker 00

  I know. I think not many people end up doing what they're trained to do. But that training is very helpful because I was exposed to a lot of art education when I was a very young kid. So it started from a very high level of art and then it trickles down to fashion and finally it goes to home.

• 16:39Guy Raz?

  Okay, so, so after you got back from the Frankfurt trade show, how did it change your approach to, to what you were doing?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  So I came back very refreshed from and invigorated from what I see. And really, I, I was determined that I'm going to really start to do something. And another thing I discovered by starting to pay more attention now to candles is that my competitor in the US, they sell candles in the millions and probably billions. And I asked myself, why do they buy it all year round? It's not because they have a patent, it's because of the fragrance. The power of fragrance has been written. Men and women over the years have been wearing fragrances for many reasons. But for home, it takes on a very new meaning.

• 17:25Guy Raz?

  So that was that you basically decided to, at that point, to start making scented candles?

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Yes. At that time, we were, for the first time, joined by a permanent employee, which is a friend of David's. His name is Richard. And he and I went to visit one of the fragrance vendors in New Jersey to learn how to make candles with fragrance. So he and I went in his speed-up hunchback and for four hours, we learned everything that one need to learn about making fragrance candles. So many people think about candles and they say, how hot can it be? I can make it with my eyes closed.

• 18:03Guy Raz?

  But you just pour some wax and some perfume and you got a fragrance candle.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  And then you put a wick there and then it's going to be a candle. But if you want to make it a business and you want to make sure it doesn't burn someone's house down, you actually have to study how to make it. Because a candle is both a piece of art and a lot of science. It's five things that are interacting with each other. It's the fragrance, it's the base, which is the wax, it's the color, the pigment, it's the wick. And finally, it's the vessel, which is the glass or a container.

• 18:37Guy Raz?

  And if you don't do all those five things perfectly, what could go wrong?

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Well, have you ever seen candles that has a lot of black soot?

• 18:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  That's because the wick is too big. Or you could have a candle that simply tunnel burn into the middle.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  And you don't smell anything. That's because the formula and the wick is not optimized.

• 18:59Guy Raz?

  So half a day you visit there and what, you drive back to Maryland and you start to experiment?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  We were bursting out of excitement. We said, wow, we're going to start making fragrance candles for the first time. And we decided to experiment what we learned. But we didn't have the molds when we went home. So instead, we were always eating a lot of Campbell's soup.

• 19:20Guy Raz?

  You were a startup. You were eating a lot of Campbell's soup?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Exactly. A lot of Campbell's soup, noodle soup. So we said, these are great sizes, so let's use them.

• 19:28Guy Raz?

  For molds?

• 19:28Speaker 00

  For molds. So we started mixing in our kitchen with our regular pots, oils with wax, with colors.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  But one thing we forgot in our excitement is a chemical that blend the oil really well with the wax. So that when you take it out of the molds, it looks very smooth.

• 19:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  We forgot that chemical. But what happened is a random harvest because when we took the candle out of the mold, the candle looked fossilized.

• 19:57Guy Raz?

  Fossilized.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Because of the oil not blending very well.

• 20:00Guy Raz?

  So it kind of had this aged look around it?

• 20:02Speaker 00

  It has a snowflake on it.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  And no candles are like. So the snowflake would be on different part of the candle. Everything looks handmade. And on top of that, I blended fragrance differently. I put vanilla with lavender. I put watermelon with mint, where many people just have a straight vanilla or a straight watermelon.

• 20:26Guy Raz?

  And is that the secret sauce, the fragrance?

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Yes. And many people say the reason why they burn fragrance is the finishing touch to cleaning their home. When they want to finish and sense that their home is ready for their, you know, friends and family to come for entertaining, or when their husband and children come back to home, they want to put something to mark that it's a clean house. So they put a candle. It smells like a cookie. It smells like a fresh cotton. And that's why people continually buy the candles, because they need the fragrance.

• 21:05Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, so as you are sort of really kind of honing in on what this product is going to be, is that when you came up with the name?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Yes. So think about those colors. Beautiful cobalt blue with a lavender, with a honeydew green, not hunter green, which everybody use, sunflower yellow, white. Think about what it means. It means energy. It means fresh. And this is where we gave the name, because we were living in Annapolis at that time.

• 21:32Guy Raz?

  Annapolis, Maryland.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Annapolis, Maryland. And many times I would take my dog for a walk. I like how Annapolis, really, still today, is still very quiet. It's not the Hamptons or... Any other, you know, fufu shishi place.

• 21:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  It's very down to earth.

• 21:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's very real.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  It's very pristine in the sense that, to me, coming from China, it is very untouched. And it stands for natural beauty. And I want to communicate that because our candles are not touched by a lot of chemicals. It has that natural finish on our texture. So we just called it Chesapeake Bay Candle.

• 22:15Guy Raz?

  When we come back, how Mei she wound up making an enemy out of the one person she needed to get her candles into Target? And how eventually she recovered? Stay with us. It's How I Built This from NPR.

• 22:41Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So thanks to an experiment in her basement with Campbell's soup cans, Mei she has stumbled across a new kind of candle with bold colors and mixed fragrances. And now she just needs to convince someone to buy it.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  So I called Bloomingdale's. And I was working with the secretaries, begging and pleading that I have a great product. So finally, she gave me the name of the buyer. The buyer is really important. They are the eyes and ears for any company, and particularly for Bloomingdale's. You can imagine the standard's really high. But when I described the candles, the texture, the fragrances, and the colors, she was very intrigued. So I got an appointment right away. And, you know, when I went there, they didn't even sit down. They started taking the candles and show everybody around in the office.

• 23:38Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  And you knew you got them.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  So I take it Bloomingdale's made an order?

• 23:45Speaker 00

  They loved it. They just showed it to their bosses. And we got the first order to ship to the stores that I have been going so many times.

• 23:56Guy Raz?

  Wow. How did you produce enough candles to fill that order?

• 23:59Speaker 00

  So here comes the best part. I was frustrated because at that time, China did not have a home fragrance industry. To produce that kind of oil, you need a chemical compounding facility. And they were not used to that. They used to sell their cinnamons and their adjustments overseas. The French and the US will then turn them into oils for fine fragrance or for food flavors. But they don't have industry themselves.

• 24:28Guy Raz?

  So if the Chinese weren't making fragrances like this, how were you able to even start that?

• 24:35Speaker 00

  So I talked to a few factories in China. They looked at me like I have some problem because they certainly wouldn't take on a project like that. I was frustrated. And I told my sister about this. And she too was very determined to help me. So she said, I'm going to quit. And she said, I'm going to start a factory for you.

• 24:56Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  In 1995. So that was the year when we started to have our own factory. We changed everything for me.

• 25:04Guy Raz?

  Put up a fact? Like, you can do that? You could just build a factory?

• 25:07Speaker 00

  That's already 95. So you can, particularly in that part of China, which is very entrepreneurial. There are villages that make nothing but buttons or village that make nothing but candlestick. So having a factory is possible. But we have borrowed very heavily from friends and family to build that from scratch.

• 25:28Guy Raz?

  So your sister builds this factory and starts manufacturing the candles. And were you working like crazy? Were you always working?

• 25:35Speaker 00

  I'm always thinking because I was always thinking about the next color, the next fragrance I can mix or the next packaging that we can put together. So... I was always doing a lot of things at the same time.

• 25:48Guy Raz?

  What were the things at that time that kept you up at night? What were the sort of anxieties you had?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  I was never have time to worry. I'm a very optimistic person, but I was always wondering who's our next customer. So we sold to Nordstrom right after Bloomingdale. They're very similar companies. But in 1995 and 96, my eyes started to search for who's the sort of company that's trending. They represent some demographic changes or style of shopping that's different.

• 26:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  And my eyes started to focus on Target.

• 26:24Guy Raz?

  Why Target?

• 26:27Speaker 00

  They stand for style and design versus Walmart, which stands for value. And it really inspired me because I really subscribe to design for all that philosophy. Because I came from a country with a lot of people that are very poor.

• 26:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  And I know a lot of teachers of mine who have great taste, who would never be able to buy things that are so expensive at Bloomingdale's. So how can we make it more affordable? How can we make it so we can sell it for $20 versus $80? So I knew it's going to be the big growth for us if we can get in because it's already 750 stores nationally. And they have two dedicated aisles with 48 feet of candle space.

• 27:16Guy Raz?

  So who do you call there?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  So it was pretty straightforward. You can find the name of the buyer. There's a telephone extension and you can leave messages.

• 27:26Guy Raz?

  And you call that person?

• 27:28Speaker 00

  So this is the time when I always say you cannot give up, even if you call for a whole year, which I did.

• 27:34Guy Raz?

  A whole year?

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Every month at the same time, I call and I left messages.

• 27:40Guy Raz?

  And you said what?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  I said, hi. The same thing I did with Nordstrom and the same thing I did with Bloomingdale's.

• 27:45Guy Raz?

  What was your pitch? What'd you say on the phone?

• 27:46Speaker 00

  My pitch was that I have a great candle and now I can even say it's sold at Bloomingdale's, which usually Target buyers would listen in and they would say, wow, they're already at those stores. We want to be those stores. So they would usually return your phone, but not the buyer.

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  And nothing, silence?

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Nothing, silence.

• 28:04Guy Raz?

  So how did you, how did you finally break through? What happened?

• 28:07Speaker 00

  So I have to say, this is probably one of my biggest failures is that I started to get frustrated. And I said to the receptionist, she's not returning my call. So she said, I think you could call her boss and make a complaint, which I did. I basically say, well, one of your buyers have not made any return phone calls. Two minutes later, the buyer called and she said, this is so and so. And just so you know, it is not a way to start a relationship. And she hung up.

• 28:37Guy Raz?

  And she hung up on you?

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:39Guy Raz?

  Wow, so you were finished at Target?

• 28:42Speaker 00

  I'm done. So every time I called again, if it's her voice, I didn't even leave my voice message.

• 28:48Guy Raz?

  But you kept calling even?

• 28:50Speaker 00

  But I kept calling, I kept calling.

• 28:51Guy Raz?

  But you were shut out at that point?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  I basically was, yes. So I waited until the next year in April and it was a very different voice. It was a very cheerful voice.

• 29:02Guy Raz?

  It was a new buyer?

• 29:03Speaker 00

  It was a new buyer. And I left my message and I got it back in two days.

• 29:07Guy Raz?

  Wow, two days.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  New day has finally come because as you can imagine, every new buyer wants to make a difference. They want to make their mark. And she heard me, so she said, why don't you come? And I did.

• 29:22Guy Raz?

  But where's their headquarters?

• 29:23Speaker 00

  They're based in Minneapolis.

• 29:24Guy Raz?

  Right, of course.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  So I flew there and she was very young. She was probably in her late twenties and she came in and she was sitting down, listening to my pitch. But halfway through, she has to get up and smell the candles from the bottom. Candle buyers usually want to smell the candles from the bottom. That's when the oils settle into the bottom and you smell the most from the bottom.

• 29:48Guy Raz?

  And so what'd she say? Did she, did she put an order in?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  She, basically in a big store, it's a lot of process involved.

• 29:56Guy Raz?

  Right, right.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  They ask you capability questions, pricing questions. They cherry pick what they want. So I didn't expect anything to happen. But she asked me, if I put it in my store, how soon can you ship? That was the moment when I froze because I said, what do you mean? Are you going to test? Because I heard they test a lot. So do you test in 50 stores or 100 stores? She said, no, May, I want to put it in 750 stores.

• 30:25Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  And I said, oh, in that case, then I started to calculate in my head how fast my sister's company can produce with 750 stores. And I said, six months. And she said, perfect, that will land us in October and you can ship it. So it arrives in December and that's when we set for spring.

• 30:46Guy Raz?

  And, and how big was that order?

• 30:49Speaker 00

  That order ended up being over a million dollars. And the forecast for the year ended up being over $3 million.

• 30:57Guy Raz?

  How did you, I mean, so, so basically, I mean, when you called your sister and you said, we have this order from Target, we have to make how many candles? Do you even remember how many candles you had to make?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  It's probably half a million candles.

• 31:08Guy Raz?

  And how, how many candles was the factory able to produce a day at that time?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  That was going to stretch them. They were going to have three shifts a day, every day of the week.

• 31:18Guy Raz?

  Just like 24/7?

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Yes, they will have to hire people to work seven days a week. And the thing about the, the Target shipment is that it's really daunting. When you think about people scaling their business, one of the things people always think about is finance, how to finance a big order, a million dollar order. The second thing they ask is logistics. Physically, how do you turn over 20 containers of candles in two days? And we don't even have the physical space to turn 20 containers in two days, right? So we rented a very big, empty warehouse in Laurel.

• 31:56Guy Raz?

  In Laurel, Maryland.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  In Laurel, Maryland, where our other warehouse is. But there's no electricity. So we parked our two cars, used the headlight to light up the warehouse in the evening. And we literally packed and unpacked using, of course, booklets.

• 32:12Guy Raz?

  All of you, you, David, your husband.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Richard and two or three of our warehouse workers, five of us altogether. We turned over 20 containers.

• 32:21Guy Raz?

  So your company was five people in the US at that time?

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Five to six, four time people. And we went into holiday season somewhat absent minded, waiting to see when the products would show up on the shelves. And sure enough, right after Christmas, our products were there. But it was radio silence. There was nothing coming from the buyer.

• 32:41Guy Raz?

  From Target?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  From Target.

• 32:43Guy Raz?

  Until when?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Until two weeks after it was set. And I get a panic order call from the buyer. She said, "May, we're in big trouble." So I said, "Oh, no, they didn't get all the products or they're not moving at all?" She said, "No, we are under forecast. We could have sold $8 million of your candles this year. And you need to go back to China and build a bigger factory. And we need to catch up because I don't want to be empty shelves in April or March."

• 33:12Guy Raz?

  So is that what you did?

• 33:14Speaker 00

  That's what we did. And we found a much bigger facility. And we outfitted so that by March, we started shipping out of the new facility.

• 33:23Guy Raz?

  So how many factories do you have today?

• 33:25Speaker 00

  So we have one in Hangzhou, China, as the first factory. Then we have one in Haiphong in Vietnam, and now in Glen Burn, Maryland.

• 33:35Guy Raz?

  Wow, so presumably, I mean, it's a lot more expensive to manufacture candles in the US. So why are you doing it here?

• 33:42Speaker 00

  I came to this country, and I'm a citizen for many, many years. I always want to find product that's said made in USA when I go back to China. And I couldn't find them. Everything's always made in China, made in Indonesia, made in India. I think made in USA stand for something. We may have not realized that. People believe that there's integrity and there's a cool factor with products that made in USA. And we haven't explored that as a country.

• 34:13Guy Raz?

  Do you think you had a competitive advantage? In part because you were an immigrant and in part because everything in America was new to you and you were kind of naive?

• 34:24Speaker 00

  I think that's precisely. I think immigrants are self-selected group. They are self-selected group that is very big on taking risks. In some ways, they have the same traits as entrepreneurs already. Instead of taking what's easy, what's already familiar, they choose the unfamiliar, the uncharted. Because they have more confidence and they have more curiosity. So in selecting themselves as immigrants, they are already facing big risks.

• 34:56Guy Raz?

  So from a company that you started, you know, like as an afterthought with silk flowers and car seat covers to a company that I've seen does reportedly like 60 to 70 million dollars a year in revenue, it's a pretty amazing. I mean, could you have imagined that when you came to the US on a temporary visa that you would be running a company that's so big?

• 35:22Speaker 00

  So remember the alien story?

• 35:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Remember, I thought I was, you know, going to meet an alien and discover that I was actually the alien. How cool is it that an alien can sit next to the President of the United States and talk about how to create jobs in America? That was me in 2012. I was creating jobs in the United States because of our factory and the President's office took note and he invited 13 of the biggest manufacturers such as Ford, Intel. And I was invited because I was a small business and I was giving advice as to why it makes sense to revitalize manufacturing in this country, but why that we have not

• 36:10Speaker 00

  done enough for those companies to bring jobs back. So I feel very fortunate. Not only was I accepted, not just as a learner, you know, I was able to giving a path to realize what I want to do and more.

• 36:30Guy Raz?

  Mayshi, founder of Chesapeake Bay Candle. By the way, to this day, Target is by far her biggest customer. And even though the average price of her candles is around 15 bucks, Americans spend more than $3 billion just on candles each year. And 90% are bought by women.

• 36:57Guy Raz?

  Please don't turn us off just yet. In a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you guys are building.

• 37:06Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around. It's time now for How You Built That. And we're going to hear from Louise Bigger, who lives in Toronto. And I'll let her describe the product.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  It tastes like the smell of cedar. There are these fruity tones that travel through your mouth at different times.

• 37:24Guy Raz?

  I think you know what she's talking about.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Citrus notes.

• 37:27Guy Raz?

  Fruity undertone, cedar, citrusy notes. Louise Bigger, as you guessed, sells?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Pepper.

• 37:35Guy Raz?

  Pepper, as in the salt to your pepper. Actually peppercorns. Louise came across this very special kind of pepper on a family trip a few years ago at a plantation in Cambodia.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  And when it's grown carefully, using centuries-old harvesting techniques and the proper soil and the proper climate, then it takes on a flavor that is entirely different. And we felt like we tasted pepper for the very first time. It was amazing.

• 38:03Guy Raz?

  After the family returned to Toronto from their trip, every time they would use the pepper mill on their kitchen table, it kind of just tasted like ordinary, boring pepper. They'd been spoiled by those Cambodian peppercorns. And so they thought, maybe there's a market for complex and nuanced artisanal pepper here in North America.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And then we delved a bit deeper and realized that about 25% of the world spice trade is peppercorns. So everyone uses pepper. And when we started thinking through, we felt we could do this.

• 38:36Guy Raz?

  So they emailed that farm in Cambodia and got them to ship a big bag of peppercorns. Louise built a website, of course, and then designed a nice little package for them. And then?

• 38:48Speaker 02

  We'd given the printers the green light and then realized that the dimensions weren't quite right. So we would have ended up with 13,000 packages that we wouldn't have been able to use. So we got lucky and caught that.

• 39:01Guy Raz?

  So it's now been about seven months. Louise and her husband launched their business. They sell black and red Cambodian peppercorns to foodies at a few retail stores, but mostly through their website. And they call their company Drum Pepper.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Drum means dream in Danish, and I'm Danish. The trip that we took there was a longstanding dream of ours. And setting up the business was also something we had dreamt about. So a bit of a dream theme throughout.

• 39:27Guy Raz?

  That's Louise Bigger. She is the founder of Drum Pepper in Toronto, Canada. To find out more about her company, head to our Facebook page. Just search How I Built This on Facebook. And please do keep sending us your stories. We love sharing them. You can tell us all about the things you're building by visiting build.npr.org. That's build with a D dot NPR dot org.

• 39:53Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also consider subscribing to our show on iTunes. And do us a favor, write us a review while you're there. You can also write directly to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Rand Abdelfatah, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Claire Breen. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  The news is about more than what just happened. You need to know why it happened, who made it happen, how it's felt in the communities you care about. NPR's daily news podcast, Consider This, gives you all of that with context, backstory, and analysis on a single topic every weekday. It's not just information, it's what the news means. Consider This from NPR.