Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

Hey, really quick before we start the show, did you know that how I built this is also a book? Well, it's now out in paperback and available wherever books are sold. So check it out. How I built this? The book.

Now to the show. I went to them and said, Uh you know, we're just starting and I said, You know, I'm being open with you, these are big orders. I gotta buy a lot of materials, I can't necessarily get the credit for it. Could you pay us in fifteen days from the day we ship it? So it was like a juggling act, you would basically get the raw materials. And

Wait for your payment to come from pennies and levits and then pay your suppliers. Yeah, it's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax where it says occupation I was gonna put down juggler. 'Cause it was always juggling stuff. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams combine their design smarts to sell upholstered chairs and florals and stripes. Grew a small business? into a multi-million dollar brand. If you ever want to start a business, there are two basic ways to go about it, and we've had both types of examples on this show in the past. The first is to dive right in, even if you have no experience. So think Sarah Blakely and Spanks.

She was on the show back in 2016, and if you remember that episode, Sarah had a sum total of zero experience in fashion, apparel, textiles, manufacturing, and distribution. She also had no connections in the industry. All pretty important things if you want to scale a company that makes undergarments. But what Sarah did have was determination and a few years of sales experience. Even though she was selling fax machines Not underwear.

Okay, so that's approach one and it's risky, but if the stars align and the idea is good enough. It might just work. The other way is to Toil away at a company in an industry you want to learn about for a few years. Gain some experience, make some contacts, and then start your own thing. It might not be as fun as the first approach, but

It's a little less risky, and it's the approach Mitchell Gold took. For more than a decade, Mitchell worked in and around the home goods and furniture industry at some of the biggest retailers in the business. Places like Bloomingdale's and Lane. Today. His furniture company, Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams,

Is a multi million dollar brand with more than 6 stores and design locations across the US. Most of their upholstered furniture is still manufactured in North Carolina, where Mitchell and his partner Bob Williams started the company. For many years, Mitchell and Bob weren't just business partners, but romantic partners as well. Bob had a natural talent for design and aesthetics, and Mitchell honed his business acumen from his years working in the industry.

When they launched the brand in nineteen eighty nine, Their furniture stood out in comparison to the mainstream brands. Design forward furniture that was also surprisingly comfortable and lasted a long time. And they built this brand in a small town in North Carolina where, at the beginning, they didn't always feel welcome. Given the fact that they were a gay couple.

But today Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams employs hundreds of people in and around Taylorsville, North Carolina. And Mitchell in particular is among the most prominent social justice activists in the community. Growing up Both Mitchell and Bob went through the pain of not being able to live openly as gay. We'll hear from Bob in a few minutes, but we'll start with Mitchell, who grew up in the nineteen fifties and sixties in a Jewish family in a suburb

Trenton, New Jersey. Basically my Teenage years starting around eleven. I was emotionally uh in a very difficult spot because I was starting to realize that I was gay. In those days it was considered a mental disorder. It was, you know, really frowned upon society.

There was a gay couple in town who This one fella, Bobby Varga, was a dress designer, and his live in boyfriend, Blaze, was a hair designer. And I remember my parents talking about them and they loved to be with them. The fagal as they would call them. But you knew that it was bad. You knew that that's not something you wanted to be.

That's a Yiddish sort of uh that's a kind of a Yiddish. It's a Yiddish word for homosexual. But sort of a uh disparaging Yes, it's very disparaging. Just like the term queer was very disparaging at the time. Yeah. And um I remember realizing that I had that same attraction to men and really being fearful that I was going to evolve. to become very effeminate and people would laugh at me and talk about me behind my back. And that the only thing open to me. would be that I could be a dress designer or a hairdresser. I mean in my wildest dreams, I never thought the things that exist for me now I never dreamt about.

ha I mean, how do you remember coping with it? Did you try to fight it? Did you try to be like a a a sort of a a macho teenager. What do you remember? Well, there's a couple of things. One is, unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to admit that I was like a little bit of a bully against some of the effeminate kids uh with the other kids in school, so that uh you know, so that that I wouldn't be known as gay.

And the other part was that I prayed every night. I mean I cried myself to sleep too many nights and just prayed that God would change me. I didn't understand why God hated me. I didn't understand what I did. Um it's a horrible, horrible time for a gay kid. But I um I was really lucky. I Eventually. Got through things, I was in college. I found a psychiatrist and I walked into the office and he said to me, You know, what can I do for you? And I said, Well I'm gay and I want you to change me. And it was the first time I had ever used the word gay out loud.

And he looked at me and said, Well I Can't change you, but I can teach you how to love yourself. Wow. And I remember being a little upset and saying, No, no, no, I want you to change me. I don't want to be like this. And he really worked with me to get me to accept it and to love myself. But it took me a few more years after that. How did your how did your parents

I mean this is the early seventies. Right. How did they take it? D were they supportive? Well it's a uh something I tell parents be very careful what you say to your kids. Uh When I told my mother it was on a Sunday morning around eleven o'clock, she called me because I hadn't called that week.

And I was still sleepy and sh and I said, Oh yeah, I'm okay. I said, Oh, by the way, I'm going away on vacation to Saint Thomas. Oh, that's so great. Who are you going with? And I said I'm going with my friend Michael. Michael, I don't understand why you do so many things with Michael. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? You're such a nice looking boy. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? And I said, Well Mom, today's the day.

And I just have to be honest. Michael is my idea of a girlfriend. Okay. Silence. And her words to me were

Don't tell your father he'll have a stroke. You'll kill him. And that just shut me right down and I went back in the closet for a couple of years. So then I Came home one Mother's Day.

I was at the country club with my parents and all of their friends and they started talking about a Broadway play called Torch Song Trilogy. The play by By uh uh Firstein, right? Like by Harvey Firstein. And I had just seen it. It had just opened. So my mother said, Oh yes, I've heard about that play. We're gonna get a bus and go.

And I just you know, my eyes popped out of my head. I looked at everybody at the table and I said, Well, do you know what the play's about? Oh yeah, it's about a Jewish boy and his mother and how they get along. Yeah. I said, Okay. I wasn't gonna tell them.

'Cause it's about a Jewish boy who's gay and come to a reckoning with his mother is part of the play. So I uh Go back to New York. And I got tickets for the next night. They come in.

They go see the play. The next day my father calls me. I have to I have to Collect myself to say this. 'Cause I remember standing at this oak desk that I had in in uh my little apartment, my little studio.

And I my father called and said, I just want to thank you. For the tickets last night. Yeah. And I just want to tell you That's

He said, I just want to tell you. That all I care about. is that you're happy and healthy. And It was just not what I expected from him.

Because my father was always such a macho guy. On a scale of one to ten, ten being straight, my father was an eleven. So I collected myself and I started to talk a little bit to him and he said this he said you don't owe me. Any explanation. And um So that was

That was really great. Mm-hmm. I I wanna turn to you, Bob, for for a moment. I know that um for some of your childhood you were raised in Texas, um where where I think your dad was an airline pilot. Yeah.

When you hear Uh Mitchell story. Yeah, I mean and and you know it well. about you know, sort of his childhood and and teenage years and you know, kind of struggling with his identity.

Does that resonate with you? What was your experience like? You know what, when when he sits there and and talks about, you know, being in tears at night I remember the same thing. later on in junior high and high school

You know, laying in bed and just like Why am I like this? Why am I different? And this was in the mid seventies. Oh late seventies, when I was in high school. And um I remember

After graduating high school and going off to college basically having a nervous breakdown. And um Being hospitalized for a week. Because of the stress of all this. And and that was tough.

But that was also a time when I looked at my life and is like All right, I need to make some changes. And that's when I started looking for schools. That were Primarily design schools. Started looking at New York.

And at the time there was Parsons and Pratt. And um Did interviews. Did pretty well, got accepted to the schools I wanted to. And of course, you know

really wanting to be successful. The only thing I could think of was Madison Avenue is in New York. Parsons is the closest to Madison Avenue, so let's go to school there. So you were

I think it's a very important thing. after you graduated you got I think if I'm right, your first job was at Seventeen Magazine, is that right? It was at seventeen magazine. Which was really a great place to start.

Yeah, what did you do there? Uh I worked in the promotion department. And I was one of the art directors. And and and it's for you, Mitchell. I think out of college one of w like one of your very first jobs was w with Bloomingdales, right?

Correct. And how did you how did you end up getting that job? So I although as a history major in college, I became friends with the dean of the business school. And I was going to go to law school because of course that's what my mother wanted me to do. And he said, Oh, lawyers are such assholes. They're so boring. You don't want to be a lawyer.

He said you should be in retail because he used to work at Bloomingdale's. And uh he said, Let me call and introduce you to somebody. Go get a haircut,'cause I had this long ponytail. Put on a suit, get a haircut, and go meet this guy because it's gonna change your life. So I went and met Mr. Brennan the next day.

had a series of interviews and I Fortunately my last interview was with Lester Grobets, who was probably You know, if there's ten merchants. From the twentieth century who were really outstanding retail merchants. Leicester is one of the tops. He turned the housewares department into a fashion department, a fashion gift department. He turned domestics into

this wildly designer successful look. So he was my last interview and he and I really hit it off well and he said Do you want to come to work here? I want to put you in my division. So I started as an assistant buyer in Department eighty blankets, bedspreads, pillows, and comforters.

And that meant that you were uh buying from manufacturers, from blankets and pillow manufacturers full on behalf of Bloomingdales. Well, it meant that I was the assistant to the buyer who was making those decisions. And I was helping him and learning how to be the person making the decision. Comforters were just becoming popular. And Christian Dior had designed this Comforter. Dust ruffles, pillow shams, sheets Draperies.

It was the first time a big name designer like that had done anything in domestics, and the first time anybody had done this very coordinated look that wasn't bed spreads. And we set it up, and I just remember the excitement that I had. And I remember mister Grebetz looking at me and he said, Mitchella This is going to be fashionable tonnage. And that was a term that always stuck with me too, because the idea at Bloomingdales was not just to be a high-end fashion store, but to really do a lot of business from it. And it's a a term that Bob and I have carried in a lot of things that we've developed over the years.

with the design leadership that we've had with different categories. I I know I know you spent about seven years at Bloomingdale's kind of rising to the ranks and You had gone from kind of I don't know what what's the term for pillows and blankets and um Domestics.

Domestics, right, to um to furniture, to like constructed furniture, which but presumab but presumably you were not kind of You know, in the manufacturing side. But did you kind of start to learn about it. Well, first of all, as a buyer at Bloomingdales, we went to furniture factories and learned how furniture was made so that you could participate in designing furniture and develop and we call the product development.

So as an example When I was there, there was a new book that came out by Joan Crohn and Susie Sleson called High Tech. And what they were showing is people had taken like a big steel I beam took two of them and put a glass top on it. Or they took a tractor stool. a tractor seat and made a stool out of it. And it was a very popular book.

And I looked at that and thought, wow, this is really cool. a new way of looking at modern. It was a very different modern than I grew up with. But what I gave it was saying, Well, I think it's just a little too hard edge. I don't think it's gonna be really appealing for consumers. So I went to some manufacturers that I had and worked with their designers and said, Let's soften this up. Let's make these edges not quite so hard. And You have to know how things are manufactured in order to do that. And that's

very much what I became known for in this store is having this style sense that was kinda the next generation, not not something that had been it popular and then we just made it cheaper. It was really creating a whole new style. And I actually changed the entire department at one point to this look, and it became incredibly successful. Hm. So okay, so

both of you guys are living in and w working in New York and and and I guess around nineteen eighty seven The two of you meet. for the first time. Um, Bob, how did how did that happen? Well how did how did you two meet? Well, it's funny because that night I ha it was a Friday night. I had um

Gone to the movies with a friend, And um at the end of the evening he said, Oh, let's go out for drinks And we go to Uncle Charlie's, which is on seventh Avenue. And needless to say, as soon as we walk in the door The friend that I go with disappears. I don't see him ever again. So I'm kinda standing there in the bar by myself.

And then this guy came up next to me and started talking to me. And um he was really nice and we chit chatted for a few minutes and um Mitchell and I just kinda hit it off and I think that was on a Friday night. And um We went out on a Saturday night. And then Sunday was gay pride.

And I was meeting some friends of mine. To watch the parade. And um Mitchell met up with us. And that's how um that that was our first week in together. Yeah. I mean we just really hit it off and And we had such a synergy together.

You know, the first time I went to his apartment, it was a studio apartment, it was sparse, he had a just a gray flannel sleep sofa that was very pretty design. You could just tell right away that he had a sense of style. And um Within months we were so that was in June. By August we were taking a vacation in the Hamptons and talking about, you know, wouldn't it be great to have a business together. And and what were you doing at the time, Mitchell, when When you met Bob, were you still at Bloomingdale's? No.

At that time I was working for Lane Furniture. Mm-hmm. And I was in charge of uh two important businesses for them. One was national accounts, which was J C Penny, Levitz, Montgomery Ward, Sears, these huge accounts. And the other thing was their gallery program. They had the like lane galleries that were either in stores or separate buildings for their furniture retailers owned. It was a licensed oper it licensed kind of thing. And I should mention, I mean lane furniture's still very much around, I think still manufactures most of them. Well, they're they're around, but they're very different than they than they were then. When uh when I worked for them they were making most of their product in America. It was reasonably high quality. It wasn't the highest then, but it was it was good quality. Right. I I guess it around I mean you the two of you met in nineteen eighty seven.

And clearly You connected. quickly because not too long after I think Mitchell, you were

Lane sent you to Virginia and then to North Carolina. Right. And North Carolina a huge center of furniture and textile manufacturing in the US, so obviously an important place to be And Bob, you You followed him down there, so What compelled you to leave your job at at Seventeen Magazine and to go

you know, f follow this guy. When the two of you had only been together. For several months. You know what? It it's funny. Uh you know, I'm I'm sitting here and I'm I'm trying to think out

You know, what Yeah, it it really is. And it's so funny'cause I I remember Walking into my boss's office. Her name was Murphy.

And um Telling her that I was leaving, that I was moving to North Carolina And then I you know, I'd be Basically putting in my um My notice and I'd be gone in a couple of weeks. And um and I remember her looking at me and

You know, I said, Are you sure you want to do this? And I was like, Yeah, this I I wanna do this. I wanna take this chance. And you know, I I I I took a leap. To move to New York? And um Ended up going to a great school.

Ended up working for Seventeen Magazine, which was fantastic. And so when this opportunity came along I just like, you know what, I'm just gonna follow my instincts and and go for it. And Where in North Carolina w were were the two of you living at the time?

Hickory, North Carolina. And tell me about Hickory, North Carolina in nineteen eighty eight, when the two of you finally start living together. Mitchell, you're working for Lane. as has has have this important job for this big furniture manufacturer. Bob, first of all, what did you do when you got there? What was your job?

Uh started. Sending out my resumes to The few little places that There was in in Hickory there were two ad agencies And um I got a job.

It's so funny'cause this was right before computers became Popular. And um The reason why I picked this agency over the other agency was they had computers. And it's so funny because I remember we had these Mac Classics. So they had like the screen that was about the size of your iPhone today. Yeah. And uh I remember

I was working on a catalog for Outward Bound. And I could only see like a fourth of the page at a time. And one day they came in and said, Bob, we got you a new computer and it had like a big monitor and I could see the whole page at one time. And I was like, Wow, this is so amazing. Um Mitchell, when you um While you were at Lane Furniture, Did you already start thinking about

starting your own business. Was that in the back of your mind, or were you were you happy working for a bigger company? Um I was sort of happy. I really hadn't thought about starting my own business until I met Bob. Um When we both moved down, we bought a house and I had said to Bob, you know, how about if you get the house together and decorate it and you know, I work for this company and You know, I had access to buy furniture from all the divisions, whether it was sofas, tables, and he really put the house together and um

In the dining room, he picked out upholstered chairs, but what he did that was so different, because they whoever had an upholstered chair, it was like in an oatmeal fabric, a beige fabric. But he picked out this beautiful floral. And then we got a uh table with a uh like a vintage metal base with a big octagonal glass top. And then for the chandelier, he took chicken wire and created like this cloud and put Christmas lights in it. Wow and it was on a dimmer. And it was so cool looking. And in those days, uh Dorothy Callens, who was the editor in chief of Metropolitan Home Magazine, which was one of the most popular home magazines at the time, she was coming down With her editorial staff, So she came to our house for dinner, and while at dinner she just looked at me and said, I love this living room. I've never seen anything like it. And uh it was really a huge signal to me about Bob's taste and his ability to think differently and to think the next step. So it was really an exciting time.

Mitchell, when you um You go down there to you know, take on this big job for Lane furniture. Um presumably you were probably on the fast track to an you know, maybe even one day, I don't know, running the company.

But but it's F from what I understand y you began to kind of sour on the job. What what was going on? Well I sort of felt that I would never really run the company because I was Jewish From the north.

And wasn't a member of the family. And then increasingly I became very unhappy at work. Um it was They had moved me down to North Carolina, but And it became very obvious to me that I couldn't be out. I couldn't bring Bob with me to functions of the company functions when they had spouses.

And their whole way of operating was just not honest, is the best way I can say it. Uh You know, it was customer last. And and as I understand it. Mitchell, you I mean, you decide to s sort of speak out about some some of the things that bothered you and they I guess they They eventually sort of let you go, right? Yeah.

But I I you know, it seem I mean reading about it, it seems like you saw that as an opportunity, right? Because you you'd been in the industry for like ten years at that point and And both you and Bob had this Yeah. I guess it's when you started talking about maybe launching your own thing, your own business.

Is that right? Yeah. So we um Bob and I had talked about starting a dining chair business, an upholstered dining chair business and tables. And Just serendipitously my brother Worked with somebody.

Who had a friend who had a factory in Taylorsville and The patriarch of the family passed away and the factory was selling chairs. they were running at around fifty five percent capacity. And you really can't make money running a factory at fifty-five percent capacity. And they were looking to contract out Somebody's product.

Okay, so Nineteen eighty nine. officially you kind of found what would become Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, but but initially that wasn't the name. Correct. Um and it was called called design line, right? Right.

And the idea was to make Upholstered chairs or other things. Upholstered dining chairs and eclectic dining tables. And so was the idea that you guys would go to your old contacts that you had from Lane and from Bloomingdales and And pitch them your products and essentially try to get them into those stores. Was that the kind of the the business model that you were thinking of? Yeah.

I'm just thinking like Furniture's I think expensive. You've the raw materials, there's the labor, there's the shipping, there's the marketing, like To me it just sounds like A daunting

thing to start. We were so we were so naive. Yeah, I mean ideally if you're starting a factory, you do need millions of dollars.

But we didn't have it, so that wasn't an option. So It's just lucky that my brother knew this person that knew this person. and we were able to have a conversation and we really liked each other. And as I said, their father had passed away. So it was a wife and three children in the business. They really didn't know how to run a a full business and how to build the sales. So we started with them Like in May.

We made up some chair samples. And did you draw them or did you actually physically make them? No, we we actually these were chairs that existed, upholstered chairs that existed, and we modified them. So we would say like sewed on, you you put on new you reupholstered them. Right. And we reupholstered them. Yeah. What was the exciting part of that in just starting out is Bob and I went and looked at fabrics. And you know, I think this is the essence of our partnership is you know, I might have said, let's do upholstered chairs because that's gonna be a big growing category. But when Bob

When his vision of the chairs were to put this beautiful floral fabric on, to put these great stripes on, to get these really rich And when we presented the line to people, they had never seen upholstered chairs like that before. So the first people I went to see were JC Penny. was one of the biggest furniture retailers in America at the time. Levitt's was the biggest furniture retailer at the time. And and coming from Bloomingdales, they were always intrigued with the idea that oh Mitchell was at Bloomingdales, you know he's got this sense of style and stuff. So when I walk you know, when I called them to see them, they were happy to see me. Right. Uh they s you know, they looked at it and they

Did they think about it? Now, mind you, I had gone into Penny's and said to them that You know, you have two hundred and sixty stores. Just give me ten stores to test this in. Then I went to Levitz in uh Florida. staying at my parents' condo there.

And made a presentation on Friday morning to Levitz. So After Going home from the Levitz, I got back to my parents' apartment and And uh they said oh Bob called because this is before the days of of

Blackberries and before the days of cell phones. I called Bob and he said, You gotta call Ray Dykes at Penny's right away. He wants to talk to you. So I called Ray. Ray was a buyer at at J C Penny. Yeah, Ray was the buyer of J C Penning. And he said, uh The black glass table that you showed us and the chairs with it.

Could you deliver that? In the fall. Wow. So in like five months. Yeah.

Could you do this for all two hundred and sixty stores and we're gonna put it in our catalog. So I knowing that I had a factory that needed capacity, I said yes. Then on Monday when I went to Levitz, I made the presentation to all the regionals and They said

We want all nine chairs. For these four chairs can you also make arm chairs? I said yes. Wow. And they said, Can you deliver this for all of our stores for fall?

Mm. We had basically in a that weekend sold five thousand dining chairs and eight hundred tables. And I thought for a minute I said. We'll find a way to do it. When we come back in just a moment.

How Mitchell and Bob juggled materials and money and manpower. to make eight hundred tables and five I was in dining chairs. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to how I built this.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1989, Mitchell and Bob have just launched their own furniture business, and they already have an unexpectedly big order. Five thousand dining chairs and eight hundred tables. So the question is Can they pull it off?

First of all. Was the supply chain? relatively straightforward. All this stuff was just you could go to one place in North Carolina that made textiles, one place that made the stuffing for the Chairs one place that that, you know, g had the lumber, one place that was it all relatively Local?

Yes, for the most part. Uh the fabrics were lots of different fabrics, so we were dealing with lots of different fabric mills. The foam we bought. From a supplier that had been an established supplier with the factory that we were dealing with. And then the most one of the most interesting things we did

was we came across a wood frame for the dining chair. That was very different than what anybody else had been doing. Uh imagine a dining chair and most guys when they sit on a dining should they lean back on it and rock a little bit. And then the chairs can become then the legs can become loose. It's called racking. Yeah.

Somebody had come to us with taking crossbanded plywood and cutting them by computer. So the side of the frame had no joints in it. Hm. As soon as I saw that, I said to the owner of this factory, Give us an exclusive on this. Don't sell it to anybody else. But we we were not able to ship them.

um exactly when they want it. I had to say to the retailers this I I can't ship you you know like August fifteenth, but we can ship you by September fifteenth. And then we set out with the factory to do it. Help me understand why the dining chairs were were so radical. I mean I and forgive me because I I I love and appreciate great furniture, but I'm not a sort of a scholar on on the history of furniture. But like I'm thinking floral designs and I think of like

these old huge, you know, resort hotels like the Greenbrier. Where they've got like floral designs everywhere. Yeah. So they existed, right? I mean or was it completely different? Well, they existed, but they existed on sofas. Right. They didn't really exist on a dining room chair.

Well, and these were also fully upholstered chairs. Yeah. Which were more of a designer look. So you would see them at a higher price point, but they weren't necessarily For the mass consumer. And if you did, they were still expensive. Fully upholstered means upholstery on the back and legs. On the legs. Okay, I see. And this was um under the name design line. That was your name. Initially, right. Well it was under the name Mitchell Gold's design line.

Right. Okay. get the name design line. That was already taken. So My lawyer said

uh why don't you make it Mitchell Gold's design line, then that would be different. And honestly, I took advantage of it because I knew a lot of people in the industry and I thought that if I did have my name out there, we'd have an opportunity for people that I wasn't calling on to say, Oh, I know that guy. Let me go see what he's doing. Alright, so you have this. Order. You gotta do it all within four months. Um, first of all. How are you gonna finance that? How are you gonna pay for all because I can't imagine that JC Penny and Levitz just handed you a an advance.

Well, actually they did. They did. Wow. Yeah. But the usual terms Right.

Furniture is called like net thirty or net sixty days, which means thirty days after they receive it, they would pay for it. And I went to them and said, Uh you know, we're just starting, but I knew I knew these people well and they knew that they could trust me. Right. And I said, you know, I'm being open with you, these are big orders. I gotta buy a lot of materials. I can't necessarily get the credit for it. Could you pay us in fifteen days from the day we ship it? And they were very cooperative with us and did that. So it was like a juggling act, you would basically get the raw materials.

And say, Yeah, we'll pay you in sixty days or whatever. and wait for your payment to come from pennies and levits and then pay your suppliers. Yeah, it's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax where it says occupation I was gonna put down juggler. 'cause it was always juggling stuff. Yeah.

a juggling act to get the materials in to get just the right of materials in. And if if they order, let's just say, five hundred shares, You really can't order fabric for five hundred chairs. You really have to order for five hundred and fifty chairs, six hundred, you have to give yourself a little bit extra in case some of the fabric's not good. Or in case they get it, it sells really quickly. You wanna be able to fulfill a reorder really quickly. So it's this It's getting these balls up in the air and keeping them going. In meantime, um, you guys are standing up a business. So was it initially I have to imagine that the business was just the two of you, right?

Well, it was the two of us with this factory doing the the production. And Bob, what did you I mean Mitchell had kind of the business background and these connections and had been a buyer and a a a little bit of a big shot in the furniture world at that point. What did you I mean

what did you kind of see your role as? Were you kind of focused on the design and And the sort of the aesthetic. Yes, but I mean Ultimately there wasn't a ton of stuff for me to do'cause it was more the selling and things like that. So I was still working at the ad agency. Okay. Because um we still needed

an income. Sure. And so I would work there five days a week and then on the weekends I would help Mitchell. And it was also nice because um we didn't have a computer or anything, so In the evenings. The ad agency was kind enough to let me

Use that equipment to help create all the sales materials. And finally it got to a point after about like Six or eight months. Um I I quit working at the ad agency because there was enough

To keep me busy. Getting ready for market. Picking out fabrics. Um I was also the bookkeeper. I was the swatch department mailing out swatches. I had all the grunt work.

So I I was I was busy most of the time. You were Business. um but also lived together, were in a relationship H how did that work? How did you

I mean was there. Was there any conflict or tension between the two of you? Oh no, Mitch was on the road all the time, so it was great. No, it was it you know what? It it was a lot of fun.

Then it got to a point where He was working with but the salespeople and the factory and I'm working with product development and and my team and all that stuff. And the only time we'd really get a chance to What

In the car, going to dinner. And at dinner. And I remember at some point We decided That if one of us did not want to talk about work

The other one had to Be polite and realize the other person needed a break. Yeah. But I would also say that for our first many years, you know, ten, twelve years. It was super exciting and and I was remember Tuesday night.

'Cause we didn't really have a lot of extra money, we would go to Pizza Hut'cause it was like twelve ninety nine for all you could eat and And uh you know, we would just be there eating that stuff and talking about business and this customer and that customer, and it was super exciting. In in Taylorsville, uh, North Carolina, where where your factory is, um It's been described

Uh. Is kinda like the buckle of the Bible belt and um And I I read an article that that said that that people didn't always know that you guys were a couple, even though You were.

Well, we were in business about two years. And We went away, we finally took a vacation, we went together. And then People said to our partner who was running the plant,

Gosh, I don't understand. Mitchell and Bob work together all the time. Why would they go on vacation together? And then I'm told that the word spread like wildfire through the factory that we were a couple. But you know what's what I think is interesting and what makes me optimistic is People really got to know us.

We've really over the years only had a couple of people that quit because You know, our gayness was too much for them. But it it really gave people a chance to get to know us and it gave us a chance to get to know them too and why they had the beliefs they had. So Mitchell, when you made that sale. to Levitz and and to pennies.

Um I mean That's obviously super impressive. I and and and it makes sense. They trusted you, they knew you, but like You have to get those shipped In time. Five thousand chairs by September.

And eight hundred tables. Did you did you hit that deadline, by the way? Yes. Well. Well, I n I knew the factory could operate. I mean I it this was a this was an up and running factory with twenty three or so employees. And

I knew enough about manufacturing that I could uh work with them together. We had this huge opportunity, everybody knew it. And the factory that we bought into They had a reputation for paying their bills on time, for Being nice people.

And we all pitched in and did it. We had people working overtime, you know, we we made it happen. All right. So you have this. Great relationship with this factory. You are manufacturing now. When your product hit the stores. In the fall of of nineteen eighty nine.

Did they just sell themselves? Did people Was it a success from the beginning? Yeah, it sold it's sold right away. What explains that? Well, because we had done a lot of pre work. I mean we had

Done a lot of sales training meetings to make sure the salespeople knew how to sell it, knew the information. We convinced the stores to advertise. So that draws customers in. And in the advertising, I mean, I literally worked with them on what the copy was to make sure it was accurate, that it could that the product could sell itself. The posters that Bob did that were in the stores. And the displays were beautiful. We had a contest for the stores that had the best displays. Hm. It was interesting at the time at at a levit store You offer pizza to everybody and they're all working together to make display look pretty and keep it neat.

And what what would uh they have said to me if I walked into a Levitz looking for new dining room chairs? I don't know what I want. Why would I pick The fully upholstered dining room chairs. with flor patterns or, you know, stripes or whatever. What was the was the pitch that would be made to me at the time.

They would say, Come sit down in this dining chair. You've never sat in a dining chair this comfortable. And It has a twenty five year warranty on the frame. twenty five year warranty. Nobody else could offer a twenty five year warranty on the frame because those type of wooden frames at the time.

They became loose. our frame would never become loose. 'Cause it was one piece. Right. There was no joint. It's a one piece side construction.

I I wanna for people who are listening to this, I think they're gonna be interested in in just figuring out the business structure here for a moment. You did some really Smart things. But you didn't have to put at this huge outlay of cash. uh which would have been hugely risky.

to build a factory from the ground up. You had to find a place that you could partner with. Yeah. Um so how did you structure that relationship? Did you sort of say, Hey, you know it'll be a fifty fifty business and then um and we'll kinda split the profits and but we're gonna incorporate under one name, or did they did they remain a separate business and you remained a separate business and'cause there's all those details that you have to work out. How did you kinda work

Work through that. Well they they maintained their business name and they maintained their business for a few years. And We were paid a percentage of the chairs of the product that we sold. Right.

But in and within a couple of years our business had grown so much That They started to say well the business that we have is not as profitable as this. Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams business. We're gonna stop making our line of furniture.

But then we had so much production. I mean we started out with a few big customers, but Now several years later, we were selling to all the Federated Department stores. So then in about five years, they came to us and said, you know, this is a lot of pressure, we're buying hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars of material. How about if you guys buy us out? Completely. Because when the father had passed away, The

Wife was getting older. she wanted to work, but she didn't really want the pressure the business and they wanted the cash. Yeah. And I said, Well why don't you think about what price you'd want and obvious Bob and I don't have the cash, so maybe we could pay you out. So we came up With buying them out. For eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

To be paid over five years at eight percent. And I want to tell you, that's the bargain of the century. Bargain of the century. Yeah. It's incredible. I mean What amazing good Lack and fortune because

Obviously today you've you've got a two hundred plus million dollar business even even higher we'll which we'll get to, but How did you design In the first sort of Five years. Did you hire an outside designer or were you guys doing all the design?

I know we were doing it. So And I think this is an interesting and important story when the first chairs that we did for the bedroom Bob wanted to do a big wing chair, like really an oversized wing chair and an oversized kind of club chair. Yeah.

Nobody bought it. And uh somebody who did buy one as a sample that worked in the factory said, Jeez, I can't even get it into my house. Yeah, they were just interesting. They were just too big. Right. And a friend of mine was a senior VP at Burden's He's a really nice guy and he called me after market and he said, You know, Mitchell, I just have to tell you the uh The guy you have working with you the designing, those chairs are really Poorly proportioned.

And the guy you had working for you was Bob Williams. And this is what's so great about Bob. He just looked at me and said, Yeah, I know. I really have to learn how to design chairs. And he took that And He has become known as designing some of the best proportioned occasional chairs. How did how did you do that, Bob? I mean you were not a trained you went to Parsons and so you presumably you took some classes, but you were an ad designer, you were a graphic designer. How did you kind of make that transition to Becoming a furniture designer.

Well, uh, you know what? It was tricky and tough at first,'cause you're right. I I was a graphic designer. I was used to designing on paper. you know, catalogs and ads. And now I'm dealing with this three D object. And one of the things I realized early on was that a chair Actually

You know, will float in the middle of the room. So People see it not only from the front and the side, but also from the back. It actually is a sculpture that people sit on.

So you know, you start looking at it from a couple of different points of view. And and trust me. There's been a lot of chairs that have been dogs. And every so often you get one that's a winner. Yeah. And out of those winners, you get one or two that become a super winner. And that's really how you build your business.

That'll help fund everything else. So initially it sounds like it certainly in the first Five, maybe even ten years. The idea was you would be a a furniture maker, and you would sell your furniture through these

uh retail channels, whether it was uh Levitt's or J of Penny's or or maybe Bloomingdale's, that was the idea. That was what this company was going to be. Yes. I think if you were to say what was your long term plan, it would be that we were gonna make good quality On time at a good price. And it was gonna be beautifully designed.

And that led us organically to be doing other things because we were making these dining chairs and our customers, especially like the crate and barrels in the higher end stores, would come to us and say, Well, if you're making these dining chairs, it's so great, the service is so great, can you make a living room chair? So we made a living room chair. Can you make a sofa? Can you make a a sleeper? And our business just evolved because our customers were asking us. And that's the best way. When your customers are asking you and they're engaged with you on the product that you're developing, then they're buying it. They're buying it before you even make it. And we come back in just a moment.

How Mitchell and Bob continued to grow the business. Basically by shrinking it. and firing a few dozen of their own customers. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

So it's the late nineteen nineties and as Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams furniture continues to grow, the brand gains an unlikely new salesperson. And that salesperson was Bob Williams. So I have to just tell you a cute thing that when I first met Bob, he was very shy. And um We had customers coming in the showroom. He didn't want to talk to them. He wanted to be in the back room. And one time we had Creighton Barrel come in. I was busy.

And I said to Bob, just go and sit and answer their questions because you know the fabrics really well. You know all the stuff really well. You just have to answer their questions. You don't have to sell anything. They would normally buy one, maybe two new collections from us a season. But all of a sudden they were buying four or five collections. And I went out and they're all like talking and laughing. And the the main merchandising person, Rob Pitt. This guy's really great. I mean, he just tells us what we want to do. He's not trying to sell us anything. He's so sweet.

Then I realized I got a good sales person here too. And it was great because I mean one of the things when Bob did start to come out of his shell was the editors really liked him. There's something special about having somebody talk about the product who doesn't have this agenda as a salesperson. I read that

In the first ten years. There was something that you did that I want to ask you about. You actually fired some of your customers. You got rid of some of your customers. You had like Seventy or eighty accounts. And you you reduced it to like

fifty. Which actually paradoxically increased your business. Yeah, we we had Done it a couple of different times. Early on.

We had a customer from New York. who was really obnoxious and would call the factory and yell at people and I had to call them and say, You just can't be abusive and they continued and then we called them and said You're no longer a customer. You can't sell our stuff anymore. Yeah, you can't sell our stuff anymore. We're not gonna sell to you. Okay. So we had this reputation of being a little picky. And then we started to drop customers if they weren't nice. And the word got around about that. But then we got to the point where we just had so much business and we had some people that were just wasting our time by we were evolving to this higher end design brand.

And we had stores that weren't showing our stuff properly, that weren't selling it properly. They might have customer service problems. So Bob and I sat down and we went through the seventy two customers that we had and we dropped it to forty eight. And we said, these forty eight we're gonna be able now to give better service to. Okay. And I swear this number is true. In that year, our business increased forty eight percent.

Wow. When you actually reduced the number of accounts of people you were selling to. Right. And you could do that because there was a demand for your products. Well at the same time we were one of the few manufacturers with a name and we were advertising in Metropolitan Home, Architectural Digest, El Decor, all the best magazines. So that was driving consumers into stores saying you know, I want to buy this Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams furniture. So retailers, you know, sought us out.

you the two of you are running this business. It's growing I think by the Within ten years, I think you had about four hundred employees. Does that s sound right? I think so. Meantime. Your

relationship. I don't know if falls apart is I mean, it's so crazy for me to say that because I'm here, I am talking to the both of you with s clearly so much fondness and Respect and and love for each other and yet Your romantic relationship ended. Um I guess but

Maybe grew apart. What what happened? We broke up. On New Year's Day. After nine eleven. And um I remember

Sitting in. At the kitchen. Island. Watching the news and nine eleven happen. Telling Mitchell what what had just happened.

I go take a shower, he comes and tells me about the second plane. And we drive into the office that morning. And um I remember walking through the factory. And everybody just like being numb, not really knowing

What's going on? And I think it Over the next few months we both just sort of realized that You know what?

Life is short. Um We can be happier. Yeah. I mean

We have a great friendship. We have a great working sh relationship. But our personal life just That there wasn't much of a personal uh relationship between the two of us because we were working so much.

And that's when we decided that We needed to make a change. Well what I'll add to it is we had been on vacation and was really obvious to both of us that it wasn't working and and we Came back from Hawaii and we were in San Francisco at a restaurant, and over the course of dinner I said to Bob, You know, I just really think we need to talk about our relationship.

And Bob said, Yeah, I know, but I'm afraid because I don't want to lose you. As a friend. And I just looked and I said, Well let's commit to each other right now that we'll be best friends forever and we'll Keep our business and run it well together. It's our baby. And we just looked at each other and did that and

And did it nicely. That Decision. is so mature and so you know, from a business perspective, very smart and and wise.

Um for obvious reasons'cause business screw, but I'm just thinking from an emotional perspective, I mean Wasn't awkward at work, it wasn't weird. I mean you gone from being partners In relationship.

There was no awkwardness, there was no kind of moment of I don't know, like this is weird or this is different. Well there was there was awkwardness before, I would say. Yeah, sometimes we'd be angry at each other and not talk. We'd be in meetings and you could feel the tension. But after we announced that we were not going to be together anymore, then uh the mood really, I think, lightened. And I think our we've heard from employees that

Things were really better. It really didn't feel awkward until we kind of saw the other person with somebody else. Yeah. And that happened a you know a a couple of times. And I remember the first time it was like really kind of strange. And then By the time I saw him with his fifth or sixth person that he was dating, it just became you know, it wasn't that unusual. And it was like, okay Do I like this guy better than the last guy? Yeah. And and he had some really interesting and and fun people that

that he dated over a period of time. So it was nice getting to To meet some Yeah, so I would always bring these people we'd we'd always have dinner'cause I wanted to get Bob's approval. Yeah. Mitchell, I obviously have read a lot about the two of you and just for people listening, um

You are a very prominent supporter of gay rights and You started a foundation to combat religious based bigotry against Yeah.

But it is also became part of your company. Like it became part of what You did, um and do today, I I think at a certain point You sent a letter to every employee. of Mitch and Bob Williams basically saying, Hey, you know

I'm starting this. Gay rights organization and I want everybody to know Um why And You were worried that people would quit.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I uh I wrote it. It was a three page letter. And I really wanted people to understand why. these very teachings were so harmful and what it meant to young people because I knew that they cared about people. You know, they they these are nice people. There's there's professional anti gay people who

make money off of it and do it as a business, but then there's you know people in the pew's who are being told certain things and taught certain things. And I really wanted to have a chance to explain what I was doing and why it was so harmful. And I'll tell you, that night I I don't even remember sleeping. I was so nervous that the next day I would come in. And uh But it turned out only one person quit.

And then I w I just walked around the factory. and uh gave the opportunity for people to ask questions and it was just so sweet because people would give me a thumbs up, other people would smile at me, other people come up and say, you know, I love you. A couple of people, more than a couple, said, you know, I really learned a lot. I didn't realize that my beliefs were hurting. You know, I don't wanna lose my child. And during the course of it through it, there's one woman I'll I'll never forget. A few years later she came to me, she was a sower, and she said, You know, I just wanna thank you. Because of you I never lost my daughter, and she told me the story of how her daughter came after her, and had she not known the

Bob and me and known our story, she might have kicked her daughter out of the house like her husband wanted to. She told her husband, No, she's our daughter. We're gonna keep her and love her. And then when her daughter had a girlfriend girlfriend was coming to Thanksgiving dinner. So we've had a lot of super rewarding things over the years about that. One of the things that you guys did You

Decided to do things. A little bit differently. You've got a day care facility Uh a subsidized lunchroom You pay I think pretty well. You're not a union company, right? There's no you're not a union shop. Correct. There there really aren't unions around this part of the country.

But um you know, those kind of perks and we we had uh Gary Erickson and on the show Cliff Bar and they do some of those things too. Um h has that had had a huge impact on retention? Oh yeah. Well early on one of the

There's more business usually in the fall than in the spring in a furniture factory. So a lot of the factories would higher up in the fall. Lay people off. After Christmas. Higher up? Mm-hmm.

And in simple terms, we came up with this idea that Rather than do that. We would talk with everybody and say, Hey, we might have to work overtime in the fall, but in the spring work four days a week or three days a week, but we wanna keep everybody year round. We don't want to have this This roller coaster.

And first of all, the employees in the area like that. We were very cooperative with people on uh the opening day of hunting season. There's there's different things that are important to some of these folks that are That we weren't used to, I'd say. were important to pay attention to. You more

Mitchell or really an outsider, right? This kind of Jewish guy from Trent, New Jersey in in the south, but but doing those culturally relevant things matter to people. Yeah, there's d definitely I would say I used to joke and say coming Down here, you know. What did people dislike about me? Was it that I was Jewish, gay, or from the north? And the number one thing they didn't like is that I was from the north. Yeah. They they really don't like northerners, but but everything has really changed. There's so much there's such a mix now of people. There's so many people that come from different parts of the country. It's it's just so different now.

As you were growing and really in all of these stores, um Was there pressure for you guys to go lower end? You know, to make sort of um more IKE affordable style furniture. Oh yeah. Yeah, one of our big customers really

lower quality, lower pricing, and we just grew apart from them because that w it's you know as the business evolved. When we started the business, we didn't start out to be a high end company. Right. But we just evolved that way because we wanted to make a better and better product. Um and part of the reason we want better and better product is'cause we don't want returns. Um and then You Bob and I travel all over the world looking for new ideas, being inspired by a restaurant, a hotel, a museum, a fashion show. And when you are making fashion forward furniture, lower end companies really don't want that. They want proven sellers. Yeah. So it just we just evolved this way. And it was the thing that it that that got us new customers. I mean the thing that when Crate and Barrel first came to see us, the fact that we had these twill fabrics in black and in white Uh you know it it it was really appealing to them. Um

I think around Two thousand. six or seven, which was to open your own stores. And I remember I used to live in Washington, D C. I remember you you have a big store there, Logan Circle. That was one of the big first ones. I think you now have over thirty. of these stores. So you went from being a you know, basically a wholesaler to

Doing that and also being a retailer. That's a completely different business. Um and risky. Um, why did you decide to to go in that direction? Well, I think that for Bob and I we often would be frustrated that the retailers we were selling to weren't displaying our product cohesively, weren't displaying it as best as we thought they could.

And one of our retailers, ABC Carpet and Home at the time. Was a really hot store in New York. And they had come into the showroom and looked around and said, Can you guys take what you're doing here and do this for us in Arster? We'll give you a prime location. And in short order, we were doing fifteen hundred dollars a square foot, which is unheard of in the furniture industry. The furniture industry on average at the time was about two hundred and forty dollars a square foot and in sales. Yeah, in sales.

And we started to see how much business it was. And then we decided that we would open up our own store. But you're right, it was very it was complicated because we had these other retailers that weren't real excited that we were building a brand, that we were building our own. I'm sure they weren't. I'm sure they were really pissed off. Yes, but our superior selling ability and and frankly our superior service and uh the Our stuff on their floors was the best selling stuff and it was the best service stuff. So it was hard for them. They were pissed off.

But they were And then it got to the point where they were becoming less tolerant of it. And as an example, in two thousand and eight, my good friends at Crate and Barrel said, you know, we just can't do business with you anymore. You're opening a store a couple blocks from us in Manhattan, you're putting out catalogs. that business dried up and we eventually got out of most of those stores and kept opening our own stores to where now we have uh twenty

five retail locations and four outlet locations. You know, one of the things that's that's been interesting and that's happened to this industry and we've done some of the some of these brands on the show is direct to consumer you know, Casper mattresses on the show, for example. There are um You know, there's a company, can't remember the name that you can build your own bed frame, that that sort of Japanese joinery I see it all over Instagram. Um, and some of these products are good. I mean they're let's be honest, they're they're very good products. There's there's these

companies that are financed by venture capital that are like modular sofas and you know all all different kinds of focused on direct to consumer sales. Is that a threat to your business model? Well, uh a lot of that stuff is a different quality level than what we're doing. But uh it it's look, there's a lot of business out there. There's a lot of business for everybody. Um if people like our style sense, they're not going to get it from some of those companies that are making those modular sofas. And that's the only thing they can buy. From us they can buy pillows that coordinate with it. They can buy lamps. But it's amazing What people buy online now. Every day when I look at the uh sales figures and I see like a you know a$7,000 sectional soldier.

six thousand dollars in dining chairs and tables and stuff. I'm just like amazed that people do it. But it's not just that they're buying it online. They might have seen it in a store in person. They might have called and had a virtual appointment with one of our people. There's many different touch points. So it it it's all that's why we call it omni channel. Today, um Mitchell, you are no longer the CEO, right? You found uh uh somebody to run the company a few years ago. Um, but b obviously both of you are still Owners, I think you sold part of the company.

Owners. They're the majority. We own a We own we own a good piece of the minority. I think you guys are now you have about a thousand employees nationally. Correct. I think you're the one of the biggest employers in your county. Whether you intended for this to happen or not, it's it's made both of you

um wealthy. But d what's what's your it's your sort of long term view. I mean eventually to completely sell a company to somebody else? You know, we're going through such an interesting different phase of the business. I'll be seventy one next month. I I I don't envision

not being involved in this company in some way, in some form or fashion, even in in The most modest way, but Allison has come on board. She's doing an incredible job. And honestly, for me, every day is exciting when I open up an email. and see what Allison and her team have done. It's different and better than what I would have done. So I'm kind of really enjoy watching how the company is is going.

When when you think about The journey you had. Bloomingdales and Lane and then moving to North Carolina and starting to slow Dining room. chair business into what it is now.

You know, w at least three hundred million dollar business a year. Am I right about that? Somewhere near there. Or private company. Can't say. More?

Little bit more. It's a good guess. It's a number we never dreamt of, let me say that. Do you attribute that to Your talent and your hard work um or do you think More of it has to do with luck.

Well, I've often said if I was gonna write a book about our company, I'd call it Pluck, Luck and Perseverance. We've had situations we've had a confluence of incredibly Good things happening. We had the luck of Finding a facility that already existed. We didn't have to start from scratch. We didn't have to hire somebody to put a factory together.

And we've had some bad things. You know, we had nine eleven We had two thousand and eight, we had a pandemic. But there's a a lot of hard work and there's skill. I mean Bob had this innate design talent. Uh years ago we were interviewed for CBS Sunday Morning Show, and I love when Rita Braver said to him, You were a um graphic designer. What made you think you could design furniture? And he said, because Mitchell said I could. You know, I saw that in him, that this this ability.

And felt that together we could make something out of it. And that's what makes a an exciting business. It's Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, co founders of Well Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams home furnishings. Yeah.

These days, as he said. Mitchell has stepped away from a lot of the day-to-day operations of the company. Bob is more involved, he's responsible for new product development as president of design. And by the way, if you remember the CBS show The Good Wife. Nearly every scene in that show featured furniture from their company. In fact, Mitchell and Bob partnered with the set designer to create the first licensed furniture line in TV history sold in stores. is the Goo Wave collection.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at How I Built This, and mine is at GuyRaz. This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes JC Howard, Julia Carney, Elaine Coates, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, and Alex Chung.

Our intern is Margaret Sarino. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. How I built this.

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