Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017)

So today's story isn't just about a clothing brand that's had a huge influence on fashion and the business of fashion. It's actually a story about overcoming fears and deep Because back in the early eighties. Eileen Fisher was extremely introverted.

and even terrified at the idea of speaking to buyers and customers about her clothes. How she overcame that? It's a pretty cool story. It first ran in twenty seventeen, and I hope you enjoy it. I was so Freaked out.

The first day I literally couldn't speak. I just stood there. People would ask me questions like How much does it cost? What's the style number? And I like froze and other people in my booth would help me out and say, you know, Oh, you know, why don't you come back tomorrow? She'll help you out.

I was like A deer in headlights. From NPR? That's how I built this.

A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They don't. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how an introverted interior designer got over her stage fright. Launch Eileen Fisher. A multi-million dollar clothing company?

For women. So if you know a little bit about the clothing industry, the giants, especially for women's apparel, are brands like Chanel and Versace and Prada and of course H<unk>M and Zara. So given that Eileen Fisher does about three hundred million dollars a year in revenue, It's comparatively small.

But in women's fashion The brand is also incredibly influential. And not just for the designs, but how Eileen Fisher started her company. To be precise, with just three hundred and fifty dollars. She never took a dime from outside investors, and she still owns 60% of her company.

Her employees own the rest. Now if you've seen the clothes, you'll know that they're pretty spare and minimalist. Low key, but Also elegant. Which is sort of how you might describe

Eline Fisher. It's funny because lately I've been kind of calling myself a shy extrovert. I think I don't know that I'm wired so much that way. I just think that something I was kind of shut down when I was young and you know, the the classroom I remember there were like sixty kids in my Catholic school classroom and It was just always safer to to hide and to be small and to not speak.

Aline grew up in a middle class family in Des Plaines, Illinois, in the 1950s and 60s. She had five sisters and a brother. Her dad worked as an accountant for a local company and her mom spent her days at home doing laundry and cleaning and making dinner for all nine of them. Um, I think what I mostly remember is my mother, you know, her kind of unhappiness. I think it was hard. Raising seven children then. Um

I think she felt it was her job to do all the hard work and Um my dad felt You know, his job was to go to work and make the money and So

She would Pretty much Kind of We used to call it ranting and raving all day long. And then my dad would come home and just before my dad would come home she would Get to rest and get the meal ready and

Sometimes even put on lipstick. I just remember. Uh I was about sixteen and my mother had a breakdown. And my father said that

Next day. He was driving to work. and he had to pull over on the side of the road and he broke down crying, realizing that He had thought only a few days before that these were the happiest days of his life. Wow.

Um, but they were happy. Moments. Um Yeah, we played, the kids played, you know, we had the neighborhood, the suburbs and bicycles and We play Kick the Can at night and the good humor truck came down the street and we got ice cream and things like that. So, you know, it was pretty much your typical suburban experience, I think. Aline went off to college at the University of Illinois in the late nineteen sixties without any real idea of what she wanted to do. She started out as a math major, but eventually she decided on interior design.

You know, I just love fabric and color and Playing with the shapes and back to my mom for a second, I had sewed with my mother when I was younger. So that was some of my Happy memories with my mother.

I used to have these pictures in my mind of the clothes I wanted to wear and we would go shopping and I loved being in the fabric store. That was one of my favorite places to be. In her early 20s, Eileen moved to New York with a friend, but with no real plan. Now, this was 1972, when you could actually find an apartment in Manhattan for a hundred bucks a month. So to pay a rent, Eileen started doing some freelance graphic design gigs, and eventually she got a job working with a Japanese graphic designer named Roy Yoshimura. Yeah. I was an assistant, so I'd started just

doing whatever needed to be done. And um We designed logos and we designed um packages, things for banks and And then we did stuff for Japanese clients, Kieran Beer and Things like that. After a short while we were like working together and you know, we ended up getting into a relationship which was like, Oh no.

And were you Traveling aga you go to Japan Right. Right. So this is exactly where the clothing idea came from. So um I st we started travelling, um We took two trips together to Japan.

I guess the sort of mid to late seventies. Right. And you're flying from New York to Japan. It must have been pretty glamorous, right? I mean that was a big deal. Yeah, I guess so. It was also kind of stressful, you know, I felt pressure and, you know, um I couldn't speak the language, so tried hard to learn it. Um so there was glamour, yes, I guess, you know. Um but I'm not I don't I'm not so attracted to glamour. I am I always more uncomfortable with glamour. I always say I'm this uncomfortable person, that's why I had to make these comfortable clothes. What what struck you about

about design that you came across in Japan. Um just how simple and beautiful things were. Simple, really simple. Like you could really see like with the kimono, for example, one shape, you know, for thousands of years and, you know, they would just to you know, use different fabrics and different techniques to make it different every time and you know, it was beautiful. It was beautiful and Yeah, that inspired me. How long did you did you work with his name was Ray, right then? Ray, yeah. How how long did you work with him?

Um, about four years. And I mean, of course any time there's a professional and and personal relationship th this can also always often causes some complications. W was that did that sort of begin to unravel your your personal relationship begin to unravel your professional relationship? Oh God. Um yes, definitely. It was all connected. Uh we thought we could split up. And we're continue to work together. Um but that became quite clear within a few months that was just not gonna work. But um yeah, so I ended up

Separating getting my own little loft eventually after about a year of bouncing around and finding a little space in a loft in Tribeca and uh Where you lived and worked. Where I lived and worked. And I was stumbling around doing still, you know, a few you know, some Japanese clients still and then some Other uh work I was stumbling around and getting. I don't even know how and if I look back, um,'cause it was really Day by day. And it was d it was just freelance like design work. Right.

Right. Uh apartments. I did a few apartments, I small office, uh dentist office, things like that. Just whatever I could get. And trying to survive and pay the rent and, you know, keep working as a designer and not go back to working as a waitress. That was my one commitment. I wasn't gonna end up waitressing again. I hadn't done that in many years and I didn't want to go back to that. And then I met some people in That's when although I had been kind of cooking on this idea. Of the

You've been cooking on this idea. Already in the early eighties. Oh yeah. It was it was in my mind for probably five years before the first garments appeared. To make your own clothes or to to try and design clothes that was in your mind? Right, to try and design clothes. Where did that idea come from? Mm.

Um, I d I don't know. I think some of it was that when I was trying to get dressed for the you know, the Japanese clients and you know, the different I wanna I needed to look like a designer. And what did that mean? Oh, what did it mean to look like a designer? put together and though sophisticated and clean and elegant and simple. I wanted to reflect my own style of my own aesthetic. You know, I wore a uniform when I was young.

And at Catholic school. Catholic school. So when I was trying to get dressed as a designer, I kind of I I never really liked the uniform, but I like the concept of making getting dressed simple. Just get up and have enough to think about. Enough to worry about. Just get put the clothes on and go, you know. I wanted to make it simple, but I didn't want it to be so confined that it had to be exactly like, you know, the uniform or, you know, one only one particular shape. I didn't want to wear the same thing every day. And I just had this idea that I could make these simple clothes. No one's really doing it. And The images would come to me, I would see these simple shapes. And the first one I remember was I called a box top. It almost had a skin quite straight lines, like a kimono sleeve and

It was about the way it would drape when you had it on. So that was kind of the first picture that came to me and others were You know the simple little wide pant and you know, there was a vest and a shell and these first few pieces it just started to come to me. And I was talking to people'cause now I had artist friends and Tribeca and

Which often happens when people have an idea, y you were saying, I have this idea to design these these Beautiful, simple. Yeah, pieces of clothing for women and and w were your friends saying you should go for it. You should you should you should do it. Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. And you would have these conversations for You know, for a long time with many people, like over a period of five years. Um yeah. Uh people probably really obsessed.

Ninety nine point nine percent of people Do nothing. I they have a great idea. And They do nothing either because they decide not to do something or just because of bad luck. What was it that that

switch that idea into something you actually tried. Uh huh. Okay, that's good. So

I think what happened is that I'm so I'm seeing these pictures and I'm trying to imagine where do I start, you know? And how would I m make this happen? And I couldn't picture myself, you know, Like what if I made these clothes? How would I do that? And w and and then I couldn't picture myself, how would I sell them? Yeah. You know, would I go to stores? Other people were telling me they were going to like, um Henry Bendell and waiting in line for hours and the buyer would go like nope I don't like it. And you did not ha that was not you. You were not a You're not a hustler in that way.

Uh introvert, I thought I think at the time, but um but I knew I couldn't I was definitely not a hustler and I could not have done that. I think that's the idea was mortifying to you to have to to go and Try to be what what what do you think was the would have been the hardest part of that the the Rejection, somebody saying no, or trying to articulate what what it was that you Both. Both. I think Probably it was still rejection at the time, you know.

But articulating. Was and still is a kind of a An issue for me. Just thinking today about trying to tell the story very. I I wanna try this but I I cannot even imagine what I would do after

Right. I would have like a sample of this. Right. And so what ended up happening is I had a friend who took me to the boutique show and um this is like a famous show in like a a trade show? It's a trade show. In in New York. Right.

But it was a show, big show that catered to the small boutiques around the country. and a lot of small designers and small companies would come there and show their things. And so I remember going to the show Just c out of curiosity. And kind of floating through and going like, oh

I can do this. I see how to do this, you know? Like I just looked at these different booths and saw how the designers were presenting their clothes, a little rack here, a few things hanging. You know, oh I knew how to do a logo, I could do that, I'd need a logo, wouldn't I? I'd need a name, you know? Um so I could picture A whole story, so it wasn't just like one garment.

It was that I had to people had to see a kind of a whole to understand that it went together and And that it was um a little story somehow. And and and by going to the design So then.

I committed to um a booth. A small section, just like a one Wall of a booth. For for the the same design. For the next show. For the next show. This is in like nineteen eighty three, eighty four. You thought I'm gonna go there and show you. Show my clothes, right. And did you have No I had no clothes. Did you have a name of for the company? No. I had no name, I had no clothes, I had no fabric, I had no styles, I had nothing. You had designs already. So and how much time did you have? Three weeks. You had three weeks to come up with a clothing line, a fashion line? No, don't get carried away now. It wasn't really a fashion line to start out with with four garments. But still that's all but still. But I had sewn, you know, as a kid, so I knew, you know, that it wasn't that complicated. But I was lucky and this is how this is kind of weird how things happen, but you know, again, one of the friends I'd been talking to said, I have a friend who's a pattern maker. She works in a clothing company. Maybe she can help you. So she came and she worked for me at night and

This this woman just volunteered? And she w well, she said, You can pay me. I know you're gonna you're good for it. You can pay me when you get paid. Did you draw a bunch of designs and give them to her to sew? Or did you sew them? Well, I pretty much talked my way through it. I scribbled them, you know, my little sketches, and she said, Whoa, those are pretty simple. Um what's special about the Mylene? I was like, well, it's special that they're simple. And she said, Oh okay. But I'll help you. And so first I had to find fabric. That was kinda the hardest thing. And so she helped me, you know, figure out where I could go to get fabric. Wha what kind of fabric was it? It was a linen and cotton blend. Mm.

Yeah. So what did you what did you end up making? I made the box top. The little crop pant. kind of based on the flood pant from Japan. And I made a little shell, uh a vest that kinda went over the um top. And then uh I made a little shell so you could wear it just a shell with a simple pant. Oh my God, these are like the pieces on my line today. It's so amazing to just see the pictures. And what c what colours were they?

They were um like a teal color and kind of a Burgundy. It's uh quite burgundy, salmon y pinky red, you know. And uh Ivory. So after three weeks you had four

Pieces of clothing. Samples. And that's what you were gonna take to this trade show? Uh well I made them in the three colours, so I had twelve pieces. And that's what I took with my little logo. And I was I spent probably as much time obsessing about the graphics and the name because I didn't want to call it Island Fisher. Why why not?

Because I didn't see it as so personal. I thought it was something that You know People would make their own, um, that it would You know, that it it wasn't so personally me. It was yeah, I don't know.

Strange. W so what did you end up calling it for that for that show? So I called it Eileen Fisher because I couldn't think of anything else. And and I was working as Eileen Fisher as a designer, so I had to I already had my name registered as a business, so I guess if I was gonna take checks I better have a business name and so that sort of worked for them. So so like when they when they make the the Eileen Fisher story movie, like feature film one day, and they have this scene in there, where you're at that first trade show is there like this is this is this like this amazing moment where designers are like, oh my gosh, this is life changing. I have never seen anything like it. Is that what was going on? No no no no no no no no. Absolutely not. I was so

Day I literally couldn't speak. I just stood there. People would ask me questions like How much does it cost? What's the style number? And I like froze and other people in my booth would help me out and say, you know, Oh, you know, why don't you come back tomorrow she'll help you out. I just want to give you a hug and say, It's gonna be okay, Eileen, it's gonna be okay.

I was just like, I was like a deer in headlights. So so did you e eventually get over the stage fright and and start selling? I did. I did. I sol sold to eight stores. I sold about a hundred pieces. So couple thousand bucks? Yeah. Three thousand bucks. So did you were you like skipping home saying bucks, you know, like thrilled. And it was the right amount because any more I would have never been able to deliver. I wouldn't have been able to get enough fabric. I wouldn't have been able to figure it all out fast enough or get the money to make it happen. Yeah. So that was a pretty that was pretty good. You walk away, yeah three thousand dollars and these are boutiques around the country.

Right. Exactly. And uh presumably you you filled those orders. You you made most of them yourself? cut every one myself on the floor in my loft and to Ribecca and then carried them in garbage bags. Down my stairs onto the s subway and out to Queens. And did you sew your name, Eileen Fisher, in the

Tag like in the in the clothes. The label I had an a a label made that um the sewers, the This tiny sewing company. out in Queens. Sowed them.

Yeah. So at this point this is like nineteen eighty four. You've got three thousand bucks and Are you like incorporated, do you go like do an L C and all that stuff? Oh.

I don't think I did that until I got my next round of orders. So how did that happen? Well I I came up with Eight styles. And went back to the next boutique show.

And this time I had this new fabric that I found. It was a Very textural French terry very kind of Lush fabric. Like a thicker thicker cotton. Thicker cotton, like yeah. Yeah, think of tearing, think of towels. More like a

Elegant sweatshirt fabric. and came back with three different colors. I remember uh and This time, um people stood in line to write orders. Well.

I was like, oh my god, I knew. Something was happening. When we come back. How Eileen Fisher took her clothes from trade show flood to department stores. Across the country.

I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. From NPR. Hey welcome back to how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So at this point in the story. Eileen had just sold forty thousand dollars worth of orders in her second trade show.

And things seem to be looking up. The only problem was She now had to figure out how to put together a real functioning business. But I was even further back figuring out just how do I get the money to buy the fabric and you know, you know, how am I gonna produce this? Well yeah, I mean you you had You had forty thousand dollars w worth of orders, but not forty thousand dollars in cash. They just made the orders. Right. You had to go and buy all of the material and I'm assuming you didn't have forty thousand dollars. Right. Well I would have needed about twenty to do the production. Um and

Um but I got some good advice actually while I was at the boutique show. a small order first. So I did white just for like um February delivery and then I did the other colors for m delivery couple months later, so that let me spread out the delivery and I could produce part of it while I was starting to turn the money. I did the orders on C O D, so then when they delivered the boutiques would write a check and they had to pay right away. They had to pay right away. And you know, at the show when they were standing in line it was kind of easy to ask them to do C O D because I could sort of plea with them I'm a small designer and need this to be C O D and they were They accommodated me. But but did you also try to get like a a loan at a bank?

I tried and and um you know, I went to the bank I remember, you know, with my stack of orders and they were like, Well how long have you been in business? I'm like, Ooh They just looked at you and they were like, You have no track record, you're not going to be able to do it. I'm like, how do you get it to how do you do that then? But did you say, look, I've got forty thousand dollars worth of orders here. Right. And they said the first thing the person at the bank said, which was great, is how do you know they're even real orders? How do you know these time I'm like, Whoa. They said if you check credit on the orders. Checked credit on the orders. Whoa. Okay. No, I haven't done that. That's a good idea. What what does that mean? How do I do that? Uh

Were you stressed out about this or were you'cause you don't sound stressed out about it now. You sound like very chilled out and I think maybe it's just kind of your Your uh the your demeanor, your you just seem very calm and No. No, it was you were nervous? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well Um was I nervous you mean during the days when I was trying to make this come together? No. No, no. I wasn't nervous then. I was nervous at the show. I was nervous when I had to present myself, but I was never nervous

you know, trying to solve the problem. I loved solving the problem. I love okay, how gonna get the money, how many do this, you know Uh who's gonna help me? How am I gonna ask? What what do I need here? You know, and I did little shows and my you know, in my loft and I had friends come and they brought friends and they bought orders and and they you know, they paid me up front and then I could deliver uh things like that. Anything you had to do to just do it. Anything. Yeah. It was like puzzle making kind of and And it was fun and just figuring it all out. I like I like I guess I'm a math major somewhere in my soul, you know, I like solving puzzles and problems and You know, trying to you know, make things right. So you would make some Get the cash.

and then tak use cash to buy more material and then just continue to kinda fund it that way. Right, right. scrambling day by day, you know, how to make this work and You know, then go to the next show and sell eighty thousand dollars worth of orders and then it's like Oh my God, here we go. Wow. You know Point. Did you

Did you actually say I'm this is real. Like I'm not just going to trade shows. This is a company. I need to hire somebody. Oh. Well I I hired my first official em employee, that was Siggy, who still works for the company today. And I don't remember thinking I'm a real business or anything. I just remember thinking I need help. I really need some stable help. And did you start to go to department stores and and do the thing that you were mortified to do earlier in your in your design career? No, I never did that, but eventually opened a store on Madison Avenue. Um and

buyers from the department stores would come. So you open this the store on Madison Avenue in in nineteen ninety one. And uh how did it do? Really well. Again, similar experience to that um boutique show where

You know, people just stood in line and bought clothes and stacks of clothes and they were so delighted to find the store and Um, I remember that's when uh I think it was a buyer, somebody from Bloomingdales came in because they've been looking at the line and curious. And they um would say things like, Um, you know, you know, great clothes, but you know, they're just gonna get lost at Bloomingdale's. And um they're too simple.

That same thing. Too simple, too simple, you know. Um, but I knew that was the idea. So I had to hold that piece. Anyway, um so when they came into the store they knew they didn't understand it, but they knew something was happening. And so they wanted to open a shop, a small shop and blue. Yeah, so that was a kind of a I think that Who who were your customers? Were they um

W was it a s certain type of woman? Was it a certain age? Was it a certain profession? Um, yeah, in the early days I described them as um artists, therapists, and teachers. And it seemed like they were people who You know, um I used to say they They help people find themselves. Something like that, you know? That or that they could figure out how to

make their own style with these clothes and they could They operate in the you know, not in such a corporate world. They didn't have to dress a certain kind of way. How were you able to finance the stores and The production just through

Existing sales? Yes and no. Uh we found we were able to get a line of credit. uh our fabric manufacturers'cause we we bought fabric in bulk even though we were small because we I was very dedicated to a certain fabric. So you know, I built around one fabric and then I I had my brother in law came and was helping me and he got me a small l line of credit, fifty thousand dollar line of credit. Then I got a new accountant who

you know, helped me tap into the banks and how you had to put business plans together and so it was a combination of credit lines and loans and you know, self funding because it was growing and it was um profitable. It was always profitable. From there where you I mean was the growth Just

Was that what was happening? You know, it was um kind of strong and steady, you know. It was um Not exactly off the charts. But It was exciting and sometimes it felt like, you know, like

horses in a carriage, like kind of out of control a little bit, you know, like it was pulling me somehow. Um, and You know Mostly It wasn't too out of control. It was you know, it was mostly organic. There was never like an attempt to make it ever bigger than it was. It was more like okay

It's working, so let's open two more stores. Or it's working, so it's open four more stores. You know, or um now, you know You know, other department stores want to buy the line, you know. Um sacks and Nordstroms and you know That kind of thing. W what was your revenue at that point? Oh

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

Wow. There was gross sales, of course, and there were plenty of expenses, but you know, it was still Pretty. Pretty shocking. How did you I mean, as the company was growing in in the nineteen nineties, um

How did you Deal with Being a CEO. Did you Did you like that? Oh CEO No. Um no I I think CEO is A word that I've always uh

I I'm always been sort of uncomfortable and not actually held that title. I used to call myself Chief Creative Officer. That was sort of the closest I could come. But I did know that sort of the buck stop with me. You know, sometimes I had to make important decisions, you know, which were would have been would be hard. Um, but I always kinda held the business and sort of from a leadership standpoint pretty pretty loosely. And so I like the designers being with it and making it, you know, their own and working together and you know, in a in a sort of collective way. Um and I feel that way about the leadership and and even today we're a leadership team. Yeah. Uh it's pretty complicated and we're really working to streamline it and we're getting better. We're getting a lot better. really just started to explode in in your growth. Yeah.

Uh I mean d did you find yourself in a position That you were reluctant to be in? Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's accurate. Um

I saw myself more as a designer, artist, rather than a business person, even though I wasn't bad at it. um in terms of maybe not so much the managing of people. I guess I never liked telling people what to do. I I and I never liked working for other people, uh, you know, when they would sort of tell you what to do. I didn't I didn't like being told, I like give me the problem and let me do it my way kind of thing. I mean, did you I mean I know that um In the nineties it was a Um an incredibly

Just active time for Eileen Fisher and and would continue. And also personally, I mean you were Yeah. You've been married, you had two children in a in a four year period of time, two young kids, you were trying to run this company and your marriage was kind of falling apart. Two.

How did you How did you manage the personal and the And the professional. Um I would say that was the hardest.

Hardest ever. And if I look back Man, if I could do anything differently that'd be No, I'm not not going into regret, but That was incredibly hard. Um, God, I think about all the women out there trying to start businesses and work in the business world and Just how hard it is to manage families. I just

Uh. So I really had to rely on The people. In the company. I tried to again, you know, sort of lead loosely and just but I struggled a lot with being in two different places and wanting to be at work when I was at home or worrying about work you know, and reading reports and trying to understand if it's working or not, and what's working and what's going wrong and

And at the same time worrying about my kids when I was at work and just You know, I guess the The thing I say to myself now is that um if I look back I would I would have just worked harder on being where I was and just Doing what I was doing in the moment and stop trying to be two places. Just

And stop taking the work home and just do the best you can and You were trying to be the best mom you could be and And also run the company. And You I must I mean it it it it kinda sounds a little bit like

what your mom went through. Well, she was kind of overwhelmed, right? I mean she was It was relentless. Every day was this hamster wheel. Yeah. Uh I did the best I could. I I had to let go a lot. I had to trust a lot of people.

Um, which which worked and didn't, you know. It worked in places and then there were moments that I felt you know, sad about how I let go too much over here when you know, I go into a store and see pieces I didn't recognize or feel like the line didn't look right or I couldn't kinda find the clothes I wanted to wear or it wasn't really the concept. It was gone. Where was the soul of this company? And, you know, what happened and You know, um Once I got divorced it was my kids were four and eight and I said, I am

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

But I think that, you know, over time I sort of it out and Things got better. I got I got stronger. I I started doing things like yoga and meditating. I had some time to myself, which my mother never had, you know. Yeah. Um I didn't have to have a breakdown actually to to get a hold of myself. I mean was there a point, Eileen, where you thought'cause your business was I mean it was cu by this point it was already huge. Like you were successful beyond your wildest dream and this is the late nineties. It's not even where you are today. And did you ever think maybe I should just Cash it in and sell this company to somebody and just Just

Wash my hands of it. Oh my god, no, I never never thought that. Never thought that. Never never crossed your mind. That would be like selling my firstborn child. It just really felt like that. Yeah, but you were under so much stress and you had you you did have that security blanket. You could have done that. Oh right. It was never about the money, no. I mean, probably in the very beginning when I didn't know how to price the clothes, it wasn't about the money, but um It was personal, I guess. I wanted it to be how I wanted it to be and I think it's still true. And and actually what I did do was sell part of the business to the employees.

Um so we are forty percent uh ESOP employee owned. And I always wanted that collective idea. I wanted the people who are a part of it to participate and feel like owners and be owners. Yeah. I think Eileen Fisher has Like fifty five Hyleen Fisher the company.

Your company. has like about sixty stores around the world. No, is that right? Right, right. Roughly, yes. And thousands of employees, probably. Uh twelve hundred um un direct employees. But many probably ten thousand people work daily on our making our clothes and presumably as the company became bigger and bigger, it became

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

Corporation. Oh man. Was that weird? It is weird. Yeah, it was weird. It's still weird.

Someone suggested I write a book called How I Became Eileen Fisher. I don't know. Sort of like it's a strange Thing. I I I ke I keep thinking I I like I keep thinking of your dad coming to visit you in New York. in your early days and saying you know, doing like looking through your books and saying, Eileen, you guys made two hundred thousand dollars last year just being so Blown away by that.

Ileen Fisher does like hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. A year I mean Is it strange? To you that you

became rich even though you never wanted to or tried that wasn't your intention? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. I'm still very uncomfortable with that. That's something that I uh have to do some more work and therapy on. Ha ha Mm. And especially'cause you grew up with like

Seven children in your house and this very middle class. Oh yeah, I put myself through college. This level of success. I mean Yeah, my mother did. My father was utterly, totally impressed by two hundred thousand dollars you need to see anymore. But my mother did. I don't know that she understood it quite. You know, my sisters w work in a store out in the Midwest, and so she'd go in there. She was so adorable. She would go in and even as the company got really big and she'd She'd see damages, we'd have a section of damages that we would sell in the back of the store. She'd and she'd go to the back of the store and pick out those damages and say, I can fix this. She'd take them take them home and fix pieces. And you could sell this like go to the first burst. Put it on the main rack. But I think to her, you know

You know, it could have been two hundred thousand would have been just fine. It didn't need to be this big nobody you know, that didn't didn't mean so much to her. You know. It sounds like you are in in in a pretty good place in life, um Professionally, personally You sort of

You don't have to do the logistical operational stuff of the company, you have you can have like vision and Big picture stuff and And you seem like

You're really happy. Yeah, well, you know Not every day, not all the time. Um, but I I know how to work with it. You know, I watch my mother, she was depressed. Yeah.

And you know I remember having this insight even before I started the business, when I went through kind of a dark moment in my late twenties, I remember going, you know, having this revelation that I can make a different choice. I don't have to be depressed just because my mother was depressed. I might have to be overwhelmed because my mother was overwhelmed, but I don't have to be depressed. I didn't I didn't understand the full impact of the different choices I had to make, but I realized that I could choose Um, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't get the better of me some days, but I also know it doesn't last long. So I would say

Happy? I'm happy. I'm also really sad sometimes. I'm also really um you know, scared like before I came in here today. I'm really anxious. I'm really excited. I'm really More feelingful than probably ever in my life. I love that you

'Cause everybody listening to this is gonna say Eileen Fisher. Hugely successful. You know created this amazing company and brand.

Has you know, made it beyond her wildest dreams and yet She has bad days. She gets sad. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's different is now I know that. And I can I can look at it and I can just be with it. And so if I'm anxious I can just say, Hey, I'm anxious.

And it's okay. You know, I don't have to try to pretend I'm not. I can just Be who I am. And that's okay.

Eileen Fisher, the founder of Eileen Fisher. By the way, Eileen still oversees all of the designs for the company, and in recent years, she launched a program called Green Eileen. The goal is to eventually reuse or recycle almost all of the clothing the company sells. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today we're updating a story we ran over a year ago. My name is Glenn Auerbach and I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I've created NiceMug.

And the idea for Nice Mug came about Totally by accident. It was on one of those freezing winter mornings in Minnesota when Glen went outside to his backyard and And he picked up a jug of water that had frozen overnight. Nature freezes water in a jug from the outside in and from the bottom up. So you get kind of a hockey puck type freeze at the bottom, but there's this really interesting cavity that freezes last.

And that's an iconic shape. And that shape was a glass, like a the kind of glass you would put on your dinner table. Perfectly formed. Made of clear ice. So being the uh Resourceful people that we are, with a beer in our hand, we poured a beer in and nice mug was born. I mean, can you say USA any more clearly than a cold beer in a glass made of ice? Anyway, the first thing Glenn did, naturally, was to take the ice mug into his backyard sauna.

And it held up pretty well until, you know, it melted. So Then I started messing around with different molds and different ways that we could freeze ice. So and as he experimented, Glenn came up with a plastic mold that seemed to do the trick. But it was a massive challenge for me. To make clear ice. And without clear ice, you get leaks, and leaks are no fun.

The leaks actually come from air bubbles in the ice, and Glenn tinkered for years to come up with a mold that would make a mug without the bubbles. And finally He nailed it. It never leaks, and uh I'm really proud of that. The way Glen's mold works is pretty simple. Fill it with water, freeze it overnight, then pop out your own ice mug. He's now selling molds all over the country, and just a couple years ago, some executives at Coca-Cola in Egypt actually called him up and said, Hey, we want to use nice mugs in one of our ads. Yeah, it was quite a rush. You know, the biggest beverage company in the world making nice mugs, putting Coca-Cola in there. We just had a great time. business has tripled since we last spoke with Glenn, but Nice Mug is still a side hustle.

and he's still assembling and shipping the molds from home. Eventually, he does hope to quit his day job as a salesman. Just not yet. You know, if we could send our kid through college with the proceeds for an ice mug, well, I couldn't be happier. And if you're wondering how long the ice mug actually lasts in your hands before it melts. We can have nice mugs that last like thirty minutes, forty five minutes. I mean I suppose uh the one thing that's cool about nice smug is when your ice is melted, you're done drinking.

That's Glenn Oerbach of Minneapolis. He's the founder of NiceMug. And if you want to learn more about NiceMug or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuilthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npl.org. Love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there. please do give us a review.

You can also write to us at hibtnpr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Randa Abdelfata with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. Thanks also to Mia Vencat, Julia Carney, JC Howard, Noor Kutzi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanazmepur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this.

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