How I Built This with Guy Raz - Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu

Episode Date: March 6, 2017

Twenty-five years ago, when Mei Xu emigrated from China to the U.S., she loved going to Bloomingdale's to gaze at their housewares. She eventually started making candles in her basement with Campbell's Soup cans, an experiment that led to the multi-million dollar company Chesapeake Bay Candle. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BrahminPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, the story of how Mei-she left China for America, used Campbell's soup cans to make candles and turned that into a multi-million dollar company. So almost everything about the way May she's life turned out

is improbable. The fact that she started a business, that she makes candles, that she even lives in America, none of this was supposed to happen. And as she describes it, growing up in China in the 1970s was kind of like living in a movie without much color. When we grow up, there was absolutely nothing. Everyone were the same thing. Everyone would be eating the same food. Everyone had the same small apartment.

Life was very happy in a sense that you don't have to be jealous of each other. You don't have to be wanting things you could not have. In the 1970s, China was still a black box, closed off too much of the world. But eventually, the government realized it needed better diplomats, people who spoke foreign language as well. So around the time May turned 12, this is 1979. The government decided to open up some boarding schools to train that next generation of diplomats. And May she was one of the lucky few who got in. So we learned Western culture, American studies, Renaissance art, all in English.

And I knew more about Smithsonian and the locations of each art than many Americans. And this was the thing about learning a language. A language is really living it. I remember it was very funny that I was watching Godfather at 14, which has a lot of violence, a lot of sex and a lot of murders. But we were enjoying it. We thought it was something that everyone in the United States do on every given day. It was a pretty charmed life, especially compared to other Chinese kids.

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

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

You must have been miserable. I was beyond miserable. At that time, I was already dating my first husband. His name is David. So we were very close, and being far away was obviously not a good arrangement. On top of that, what I worry the most is that for 10 years, I was practicing and speaking English. And language is very easily forgotten. And I barely speak Chinese, let alone English, because my boss does not like to talk to me.

He's a man with few words. He smoked most of a time. And that's my life for a year. So may, she decided to quit. She and David thought about what to do. He was a trained geophysicist. And she spoke great English. So they decided to apply for temporary visas to come to the U.S. And after two years of waiting, they got them.

So I flew to Washington, D.C. when we arrived at Dallas Airport, I was very sleepy because of the jet lag. And I saw two signs. One is American citizen. And the other is aliens. It's just as you arrive at immigration. Yes. And the word aliens was kind of confusing to me because I remember aliens from Star Wars or from, you know, those science movies. And I was so excited. I said, wow, they actually have a section for aliens. And so I got very excited.

I said, let me see. I'm certainly not American citizens. So I guess I'm going to have to go to the alien part, and that's great because I can see them. I never knew that the word alien means the non-American non-green card holders. I guess they realized that, too. They changed the name now to something a little bit more. human. What was it like to adjust to the U.S.? I mean, you had sort of immersed yourself in

American culture your entire childhood, but then you finally arrive here. Did it surprise you? Did it disappoint you? Was it lonely? Well, I don't find it particularly difficult to adapt. What I find interesting is that in Washington, D.C., people kind of avoid eye contact. That's something I still think was my first impression of the city. I was right in the subway, and I found it very interesting that as quickly as I look at someone, they immediately changed their eyes and they try to focus on reading. And I said to myself, I said, wow, this is a really deep city because everybody's always reading very big volumes. So were you able to find a job? Yes. So I found a job in New York. It was a job for American medical device companies to export equipment to Chinese hospitals.

And was it interesting work? Did you enjoy it? It was boring. I have to be honest with you. It was a lot of paperwork pushing, a lot of import, export documentations, working with, you know, different factories about skew numbers and pushing a line of credit through the banks. But what's interesting out of all these not so interesting thing is that they put me in a hotel next to Bloomingdale's. Why was that interesting? Well, imagine a bird out of cage. I have always been interested in fashion. Many people wonder, you know, if you grow up in a country without any fashion, how can you

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

So you would just go and hang out of Bloomingdale's? Every day I would go starting from the first floor, which, you know, all these sales ladies that they spray. fragrances and everybody hate them, not me. I love them. They say spray on me. I like being sort of in the middle of something they're launching and be able to tell what's in the fragrance that I like and dislike. And then look at the packaging. Packaging is always fascinating to me because I grew up in a country with no packaging

at all. But what interests me the most is the fashion floor and it's usually the second floor and just being amazed. And I love the women. in New York the way they are so confident and they dress in those colors, in those shapes, and they look great. And then I would always end in the home department. And it would always give me a lot of question because it would look like it's in the 1920s. So what would it look like? Furnitures were very ornate. It has a lot of very, you know, gilded finish. And then

the plays are like Laura Ashley prints, you know, very small. Mama's wallpaper floral. And I'm just wondering, the person who is so confident walking on the street will go home to see this. It's so disconnected. So I keep saying that to David. Yeah. When we talk on the phone, he heard me talking. He was living in D.C.

He was in New York, and I would get up at 5 on Monday and took the first train. And I'll get home at 9 o'clock on Friday. So it's not really a very good quality of life. And I was calling him about what I discovered was very exciting. And then I continually bring up how disconnected the fashion and the home departments are. Finally, he said, May you seem to be really upset about this commute. So he said, maybe we should start something. So you quit and then what was the plan?

What was the business you guys were going to do? So we knew it's going to be home. Homewares, home goods. Home goods. Because the fashion business is done. dominant by brands. And we feel the home business is left without brands. And that's where we see the opportunity. So it closed the gap between home and fashion. So that's our idea. We don't know what product. We just quit both of us at the same time. And you just like started

brainstorming in your in your apartment or your house at the time, like trying to figure out what to do? Not only without each other, but we really reach out to our friends. So we brainstormed with our friends. And as a result of that, when we started the business, in the middle of 1994, we quickly got a lot of feedbacks. People sent me samples, sent me pictures, and we zoning on about four categories. And what were they? The first you would be surprised is silk flowers. I don't know if you know that.

They're fake flowers that never die. The second category is accessories for your car, so seat cushions, something to make you feel comfortable when you drive for a long distance. And the third category, because I noticed American doll was so popular, is a kind of doll that can rotate with music. And the last, something that I didn't even think is interesting, but I think it might have an opportunity is a candle. Candles. Every category I mentioned is a huge business in this country. There are billions of dollars that are in each of those categories.

But you didn't have access to massive amounts of data and research then because the Internet wasn't available. No. it wasn't. And I don't really know what difference we will make other than making it design better, but I didn't even know how hard it was. It's actually good that you don't know everything, that you don't know how hard it is, that you just have a gut that something can be done to make it better. There's no amount of research that can prove an idea. But there's one thing you can always do, which is to take your product to the market. So that's what we did. How did you get the products, by the way?

They sampled us. They sent by FedEx or from China. From China. So you got Chinese-made products and you imported them to the U.S. We haven't imported them. We just sampled them. So they send by DHL, FedEx, whatever it is at that time is available. Soak flour, seat cushion.

Soak flowers. I think David brought some of those back by breaking his back also. Oh, just in the suitcase. Just in the suitcases. Yes. And by that time, it was September 1994. all the major wholesale trade shows take place twice a year. In January, when people replenish their goods after holiday, and in summer when they are buying more for Christmas. But it was

September. So the only show we can possibly go to is in Charlotte, North Carolina. And what happened? 90% of the business came from the candles. And what did the candles look like? Were they just candles? You don't see them anymore. They're called glow candles. They're red, they're round and they look like stained glass. And when you burn them, they are glowing from within. So people came up to your booth and they were not interested in anything else with silk flowers or the carseys. It was that stained glass looking candle?

Because it's holiday. And it was gift-giving season. And it's a great gift. Okay. So after the show, you know, you've got all these orders. How did you deliver them? How did you get them to customers? We rent a very inexpensive warehouse with an office and a friend.

And we couldn't afford many people for time. So we just have one part-time to help us. And we were able to use our savings and our family and friends helped us. So the first container was a 20-foot container, not even a 40-foot container. And then we shipped them very fast. And we got reorders. From the clients at the trade show. Yes.

Wow. So what was the candle retailing for? $15 the most. How much did it cost you guys? We probably will take 50% margin on them. So it was almost half a million dollars of business we did in four months. That's insane. I mean, were you and David just like shocked by the candle thing?

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

Okay, so you ship this container from China and then you deliver all the stuff to your clients. And then what did you guys do after? Like what was the next move for the company? The second year, I decided since the trade show, it's so important, we registered for the New York gift show, which is the holy grill of trade shows. So we went to the New York gift show, and we thought that this is going to be the tip of the TV show.

it to our success. But the show, which is 10 times bigger with an international audience, told us that we were wrong. It was a complete disaster. You are trying to sell these same candles that you're importing from China, and they're not selling. They're not selling. And I was devastated because it's a very expensive trade show. I'm assuming at this point, I mean, you must have sort of thoughts in your mind that maybe this candle business, maybe it was a fluke, maybe the fact that we did so. well that first four months just had to do with Christmas.

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

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

So how did it change your trajectory? I mean, you still have a candle business where you're bringing these like stained glass window candles in from China. You're in Frankfurt. You see these beautiful streamlined designs and you think what? So I could use that design elements in candle design. That you would design your own candles. That was always my thought. Even though you were trained as a diplomat.

I know. I think not many people end up doing what they're trained to do. But that training is very helpful because I was always. I was exposed to a lot of art education when I was a very young kid. So it started from a very high level of art, and then it trickles down to fashion, and finally it goes to home. Okay, so after you got back from the Frankfurt Trade Show, how did it change your approach to what you were doing? So I came back very refreshed from and invigorated from what I see, and really I was determined that I'm going to really start to do something. And another thing I discovered by starting to pay more attention now to candles is that my competitor in the U.S., they sell candles in the millions and probably the billions.

And I asked myself, why do they buy it all year round? It's not because they have a pattern. It's because of the fragrance. The power of fragrance has been written. Men and women over the years have been wearing fragrances for many reasons. But for home, it takes on a very new meaning. So that was that you basically decided at that point to start making scented candles? Yes.

At that time, we were for the first time joined by a permanent employee, which is a friend of David's. His name is Richard. And he and I went to visit one of the fragrance vendors in New Jersey to learn how to make candles with fragrance. So he and I went in his beat-up hunchback, and for four hours, we learned everything that one need to learn about making frays and candles. So many people think about candles and they say, how hot can it be? I can make it with my eyes closed. You just pour some wax and some perfume and you got a fragrant candle. And then you put a wig there and then it's going to be a candle. But if you want to make it a business and you want to make sure it doesn't burn someone's house down, you actually

have to study how to make it because a candle is both a piece of art and a lot of science. It's five things that are interacting with each other. It's the fragrance. It's the base, which is the wax. It's the color, the pigment. It's the wick. And finally, it's the vessel, which is the glass or a container.

And if you don't do all those five things perfectly, what could go wrong? Well, have you ever seen candles that has a lot of black soot? Yeah. That's because the wick is too big. Or you could have a candle that simply tunnel burn into the middle.

And you don't smell anything. That's because the formula and the wick is not optimized. So half a day you visit there and what, you drive back to Maryland and you start to experiment? We were bursting out of excitement. We said, wow, we're going to start making frequent candles for the first time. And we decided to experiment what we learned. But we didn't have the modes when we went home. So instead, we were always eating a lot of Campbell soup.

You were a startup. You were eating a lot of Campbell soup? Exactly, a lot of camel soup, noodle soup. So we say these are great sizes, so let's use them. For molds? For molds. So we started mixing in our kitchen with our regular pots, oils, with wax, with colors. But one thing we forgot in our excitement is a chemical that blend the oil really well with the wax.

So that when you take it out of the modes, it looks very smooth. We forgot that chemical. But what happened is a random harvest, because it's a random harvest. because when we took the candle out of the mold, the candle looked fossilized. Fossilized. Because of the oil not blending very well. So it kind of had this aged look around it?

It has a snowflake on it. Wow. And no candles are like. So the snowflake would be on a different part of the candle. Everything looks handmade. And on top of that, I blended fragrance differently. I put vanilla with lavender. I put watermelon with mint.

where many people just have a straight vanilla or a straight watermelon. And is that the secret sauce, the fragrance? Yes, and many people say the reason why they burn fragrance is the finishing touch to cleaning their home. When they want to finish and sense that their home is ready for their friends and family to come, for entertaining or when their husband and children come back to home, they want to put something to mark that it's a clean house. So they put a candle. It smells like a cookie.

It smells like a fresh cotton. And that's why people continually buy the candles because they need the fragrance. So as you are sort of really kind of honing in on what this product is going to be, is that when you came up with the name? Yes. So think about those colors. Beautiful cobal blue with a lavender with a honeydew green, not hunter green, which everybody used,

sunflower yellow, white. Think about what it means. It means energy. It means fresh. And this is where we gave the name, because we were living in Annapolis at that time. Annapolis, Maryland. Annapolis, Maryland.

And many times I would take my dog for a walk. I like how Annapolis really, still today, is still very quiet. It's not the Hamptons or any other, you know, Fufu Shishi place. It's very down to earth. It's very real. It's very pristine in the sense that, to me, coming from China, it is very untouched.

And it stands for natural beauty. And I want to communicate that because our candles are not touched by a lot of chemicals. It has that natural finish on our texture. So we just call it Chesapeake Bay candle. When we come back, how may she wound up making an enemy out of the one person she needed to get her candles into touch. target and how eventually she recovered. Stay with us. It's how I built this from NPR. It's how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So thanks to an experiment in her basement with Campbell's

soup cans, Meshie has stumbled across a new kind of candle with bold colors and mixed fragrances. And now she just needs to convince someone to buy it. So I called Bloomingdale's and I was working with the secretaries, begging and pleading that I have a great product. So finally, she gave me the name of the buyer. The buyer is really important. They are the eyes and ears for any company, and particularly for Bloomingdale's. You can imagine the standards really high. But when I described the candles, the texture, the fragrances, and the colors, she was very intrigued.

So I got an appointment right away. And, you know, when I went there, they didn't even sit down. They started taking the candles and show everybody around in the office. And you knew you got them. So I take it, Bloomingdale's made an order? They loved it. They just showed it to their bosses, and we got the first order to ship to the stores that I have been going so many times. Wow.

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

So if the Chinese weren't making fragrances like this, how were you able to even start that? So I talked to a few factories in China. They look at me like I have some problem because they certainly wouldn't take on a project like that. I was frustrated and I told my sister about this and she too was very determined to help me. So she said, I'm going to quit and she said I'm going to start a factory for you. Wow. In 1995. So that was the year when we started to have our own factory, we changed everything for me.

Just put up a fact, like, is it you can do that? You could just build a factory? That's already 95. So you can, particularly in that part of China, which is very entrepreneurial. There are villages that make nothing but buttons or village that make nothing but candlestick. So having a factory is possible, but we have borrowed very heavily from friends and family to build that from scratch. So your sister builds this factory and starts manufacturing the candles and were you working like crazy? Were you always working? I'm always thinking because I was always thinking about the next color, the next fragrance that can mix or the next packaging that we can put together.

So I was always doing a lot of things at the same time. What were the things at that time that kept you up at night? What were the sort of anxieties you had? I always never have time to worry. I'm a very optimistic person. But I was always wondering who's our next customer. So we sold to Nordstrom right after Bloomingdale. They're very similar companies. But in 1995 and 96, my eyes started to search for who's the sort of company that's trending. They represent some demographic changes or style of shopping that's different.

And my eyes started to focus on Target. Why Target? They stand for style and design versus Walmart, which stands for value. And it really inspired me because I really subscribed to design for all that philosophy, because I came from a country with a lot of people that are very poor. And I know a lot of teachers of mine who have great taste, who would never be able to buy things that are so expensive at Bloomingdale's. So how can we make it more affordable?

How can we make it so we can sell it for $20 versus $80? So I knew it's going to be the big growth for us if we can get in because it's already 750 stores nationally. And they have two dedicated aisles with 48 feet of candle space. So who do you call there? So it was pretty straightforward. You can find the name of the buyer. There's a telephone extension.

And you can leave message. And you call that person? So this is the time when I always say you cannot give up, even if you call for a whole year, which I did. A whole year? Every month at the same time, I called and I left messages. And you said what? I said, hi, the same thing I did with Nordstrom and the same thing I did with Bloomingdale. What was your pitch?

What did you say on the phone? My pitch was that I have a great candle. And now I can even say it's sold at Bloomingdale, which usually target buyers would listen in. and they would say, wow, they're already at those stores. We want to be those stores. So they would usually return your phone, but not the buyer. And nothing silenced? Nothing, silence.

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

And she hung up on you. Wow. So you were finished at Target. I'm done. So every time I call again, if it's her voice, I didn't even leave my voice message again. But you kept calling. But I kept calling. I kept calling. But you were shut out at that point. I basically was, yes. So I waited until the next year in April, and it was a very different voice. It was a very cheerful voice. It was a new buyer.

It was a new buyer. And I left my message, and I got it back in two days. Wow, two days. A new day has finally come. Because as you can imagine, every new buyer wants to make a difference. They want to make their mark. And she heard me. So she said, why don't you come?

And I did. But where's their headquarters? They're based in Minneapolis. Right. Of course. So I flew there, and she was very young. She was probably in her late 20s, and she came in, and she was sitting down, listening to my pitch. But halfway through, she has to get up and smell the candles from the bottom.

Candle buyers usually want to smell the candles from the bottom. That's when the oil settled into the bottom, and you smell the most from the bottom. And so what's she saying? Did she put an order in? She basically in a big store, it's a lot process involved. They ask you capability questions, pricing questions. They cherry pick what they want. So I didn't expect anything to happen.

But she asked me, if I put it in my store, how soon can you ship? That was the moment when I froze because I said, what do you mean? Are you going to test? Because I heard they test a lot. So do you test in 50 stores or 100 stores? she said, no, me, I want to put it in 750 stores. Wow. And I said, oh, in that case, then I started to calculate in my head how fast my sister's company can produce with 750 stores.

And I said, six months. And she said, perfect. That will land us in October. And you can ship it so it arrives in December. And that's when we set for spring. And how big was that order? That order end up being over a million dollars, and the forecast for the year end up being over $3 million. How did you, I mean, so basically, I mean, when you called your sister and you said, we have this order from Target, we have to make how many can't, do you even remember how many candles you had to make?

It's probably half a million candles. And how many candles was the factory able to produce a day at that time? That was going to stretch them. They were going to have three shifts a day every day of the week. like 24-7. Yes. They will have to hire people to work seven days a week. And the thing about the target shipment is that it's really daunting.

When you think about people scaling their business, one of the things people over think about is finance, how to finance a big order, a million-dollar order. The second thing they ask is logistics. Physically, how do you turn over 20 containers of candles in two days? and we don't even have the physical space to turn 20 containers in two days, right? So we rented a very big, empty warehouse in Laurel. In Laurel, Maryland, where our other warehouses. But there's no electricity.

So we parked our two cars, used the headlight to light up the warehouse in the evening, and we literally packed and unpacked using, of course, all of you, you, David, your husband? Richard. and two or three of our warehouse workers, five of us all together, we turned over 20 containers. So your company was five people in the U.S. at that time? Five to six, four-time people. And we went into holiday seasons somewhat absent-minded, waiting to see when the product will show up on the shelves.

And sure enough, right after Christmas, our products were there. But it was radio silence. There was nothing coming from the buyer. From Target? From Target. Until when? Until two weeks after it was set And I get a panic order call from the buyer She said, May, we're in big trouble

So I said, oh no, they didn't get all the products Or they're not moving at all She said, no, we are under forecast We could have sold $8 million of your candles this year And you need to go back to China And build a bigger factory And we need to catch up Because I don't want to be empty shelves

In April or March So is that what you did? That's what we did. And we found a much bigger facility. And we outfitted so that by March we started shipping out of the new facility. So how many factories do you have today? So we have one in Hamzhou, China, as the first factory. Then we have one in Haiphon in Vietnam. And now in Glenburn, Maryland. Wow. So presumably, I mean, it's a lot more expensive to manufacture candles in the U.S. So why are you doing it here? I came to this country and I'm a citizen for many, many years. I always want to find product that's made in USA when I go back to China and I couldn't find

them. Everything is always made in China, made in Indonesia, made in India. I think mating USA stand for something. We may have not realized that. People believe that there's integrity and there's a cool factor with products that made in USA. and we haven't explored that as a country. Do you think you had a competitive advantage, in part because you were an immigrant

and in part because everything in America was new to you and you were kind of naive? I think that's precisely. I think immigrants are self-selected group. They are self-selected group that is very big on taking risks. In some ways, they have the same trace as entrepreneurs already. Instead of taking what's easy,

what's already familiar, they choose the unfamiliar, the uncharted, because they have more confidence and they have more curiosity. So in selecting themselves as immigrants, they are already facing big risks. So from a company that you started, you know, like as an afterthought with silk flowers and carsey covers, to a company that I've seen does reportedly like 60 to 70, million dollars a year in revenue. It's pretty amazing. I mean, could you have imagined that when you came to the U.S. on a temporary visa that you would be running a company that's so big? So remember the alien story? Yeah. Remember I thought I was, you know, going to meet an alien and discovered that I was actually the alien? How cool is it that an alien can sit next to

the president of the United States and talk about how to create jobs? in America. That was me in 2012. I was creating jobs in the United States because of our factory and the president's office took note and he invited 13 of the biggest manufacturers such as Ford, Intel. And I was invited because I was a small business and I was giving advice as to why it makes sense to revitalize manufacturing in this country. But, why that we have not done enough for those companies to bring jobs back. So I feel very fortunate. Not only was I accepted, not just as a foreigner, you know, I was able to giving a path to realize what I want to do and more.

Meshire, founder of Chesapeake Bay Candle. By the way, to this day, Target is by far her biggest customer. And even though the average price of her candles is around $15,000, Americans spend more than three, billion dollars just on candles each year. And 90% are bought by women. Please don't turn us off just yet. In a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you guys are building. Hey, thanks for sticking around. It's time now for how you built that. And we're going to hear from Louise Bigger, who lives in Toronto, and I'll let her describe the product. It tastes like the smell of cedar. There are these fruity tones that travel through your mouth

at different times. I think you know what she's talking about. Citrus notes. Fruity undertone, cedar, citrusy notes. Louise Bigger, as you guessed, sells. Pepper. Pepper. As in the salt to your pepper.

Actually, peppercorns. Louise came across this very special kind of pepper on a family trip a few years ago at a plantation in Cambodia. And when it's grown carefully using centuries-old harvesting techniques and the proper soil and the proper climate, then it takes on a flavor that is entirely different. And we felt like we tasted pepper for the very first time. It was amazing. After the family returned to Toronto from their trip, every time they would use the pepper mill

on their kitchen table, it kind of just tasted like ordinary boring pepper. They'd been spoiled by those Cambodian peppercorns. And so they thought maybe there's a market for complex and nuanced artisanal pepper here in North America. And then we delved a bit deeper and realized that about 25% of the world's spice trade is peppercorns. So everyone uses pepper. And when we started thinking it through, we felt we could do this. So they emailed that farm in Cambodia and got them to ship a big bag of peppercorns.

Louise built a website, of course, and then designed a nice little package for them. And then? We'd given the printers the green light and then realized that the dimensions weren't quite right. So we would have ended up with 13,000 packages that we wouldn't have been able to use. So we got lucky and caught that. So it's now been about seven months since Louise and her husband launched their business. They sell black and red Cambodian peppercorns to foodies at a few retail stores, but mostly through their website. And they call their company Drum Pepper.

Drum means dream in Danish. And I'm Danish. The trip that we took that was a long-standing dream of ours, and setting up the business was also something we dreamt about. So a bit of a dream theme throughout. That's Louise Bigger. She's the founder of Drum Pepper in Toronto, Canada. To find out more about her company, head to our Facebook page.

Just search how I built this on Facebook. And please do keep sending us your stories. We love sharing them. You can tell us all about the things you're building by visiting build. npr.org. That's build with a d.npr.org. Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to how I built this.npr.org. Please also consider subscribing to our show on iTunes and do us a favor, write us a review

while you're there. You can also write directly to us at H-I-B-T at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Rund Abd al-Fata, with music composed by Rumtin Arablui. Thanks also to Niva Grant, Sanaz Meshkampur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Claire Breen. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR. The news is about more than what just happened. You need to know why it happened, who made it happen, how it's felt in the communities you care about.

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