How I Built This with Guy Raz - Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017)

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

In 1983, Eileen Fisher signed up for a fashion trade show with no experience, no garments, no patterns or sketches – nothing but a few ideas for a women's clothing line focused on simplicity. Within three weeks, she came up with 12 pieces, a logo, and a name: Eileen Fisher. Today, the Eileen Fisher brand is still known for its elegant and minimalist designs, but it has grown to more than 60 locations and makes over $300 million in annual revenue. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Glenn Auerbach who invented nICE mug, a container made entirely from ice that keeps drinks cold. 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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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. 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 personal insecurities. Because back in the early 80s,

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 2017, 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 have you out?

I was like, a deer in headlights. From NPR, 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 the show today, how an introverted interior designer got over her stage fright to 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&M and Zara. So given that Eileen Fisher does about $300 million 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 $350. She never took a dime from outside investors, and she still owns about 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 Eileen 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 classroom, I remember there were like 60 kids in my Catholic school classroom. And it was just always safer to hide and to be small and not speak. Eline grew up in a middle-class family in Des Plains, 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. I think what I mostly remember is my mother, you know, her kind of unhappiness. I think it was hard raising seven children, and I think she felt it was her job to do all the hard work.

and my dad felt, you know, his job was to go to work and make the money and come home and be taken care of after that. 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 dressed and get the meal ready and sometimes even put on lipstick. And I just remember I was about 16 and my mother had a breakdown. And my father said that the 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.

But there were a lot of happy moments. Yeah, we played, the kids played. We had the neighborhood, the suburbs and bicycles, and we'd kick the can at night, and the good humor truck came down. 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 1960s without any real idea of what she wanted to do. She started it out as a math major, but eventually

she decided on interior design. You know, I just loved 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. 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 $100 bucks a month.

So to pay her 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 started just doing whatever needed to be done. And we designed logos, and we designed packages, things for banks, and then we did stuff for Japanese clients, Kieran beer, and things like that. And 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?

Did you go to Japan? Right, right. So this is exactly where the clothing idea came from. So we started traveling. We took two trips together to Japan. I'm just trying to imagine, like, this is the, I guess, the sort of mid to late 70s. Right, mid to late 70s. 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. I felt pressure and, you know, I couldn't speak the language, so tried hard to learn it. So there was glamour, yes, I guess, you know. But I'm not so attracted to glamour. I'm always more uncomfortable with glamour. I always say I'm this uncomfortable person. That's why I had to make these comfortable clothes. Yeah. What struck you about design that you came across in Japan? 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, you know, use different fabrics and different techniques to make it different. 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? Ray, yeah. How long did you work with him?

About four years. And, I mean, of course, any time there's a professional and personal relationship, this can also always, often causes some complications. Was that, did that sort of begin to unravel, your personal relationship begin to unravel your professional. relationship? Oh, God. Yes, definitely. It was all connected. We thought we could split up and continue to work together, but that became quite clear within a few months that was just not going to work. But, 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. 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 work I was stumbling around and getting. I don't even know how if I look back because it was really day by day. And it was just freelance like design work. Right, right. Apartments, I did a few apartments. I did small office, dentist office, things like that, just whatever I could get. And trying to survive and pay the rent. and keep working as a designer

and not go back to working as a waitress. That was my one commitment. I wasn't going to end up waitressing again. I had done that in many years, and I didn't want to go back to that. And then I met some people, and that's when I had been kind of cooking on this idea of the clothing business.

You've been cooking on this idea already in the early 80s? Oh, yeah. It was in my mind for probably five years before the first garments appeared. To make your own clothes, or to try and design clothes, that was in your mind? Right, to try and design clothes. Where do that idea come from? I don't know.

I think some of it was that when I was trying to get dressed for the Japanese clients and, you know, the different, I needed to look like a designer. What did that mean? What did it mean to look like a designer? I was to look, you know, put together and, you know. Sophisticated. Yeah, 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. At Catholic school? Catholic school. And so when I was trying to get dressed as a designer, I kind of, I never really liked the uniform, but I like the concept of getting dressed simple. Just get up and I have enough to think about, enough to worry about. Just 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, 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 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 widely 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 because now I had artists' friends in Tribeca and other people who were designing clothes and jewelry and things like that. You were saying to them, which often happens when people have an idea, you were saying, I have this idea to design these things.

beautiful, simple pieces of clothing for women and were your friends saying, you should go for it? 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? Yeah. People probably thought it was really obsessed. So this is what I'm curious about because this is the point at which 99.9% of people do nothing.

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 switch that idea into something you actually tried? Wow. 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 make this happen? And I couldn't picture myself, you know, like, what if I made these clothes? How would I do that? And then I couldn't picture myself, how would I sell them? You know, would I go to stores?

Other people were telling me they were going to, like, Henry Bendel and waiting in line for hours. And the buyer would go like, nope, I don't like it. And you did not, that was not you. You were not a hustler in that way. No, I was a shy introvert. I thought I'd think of the time. But I knew I couldn't. I was definitely not a hustler and I could not have done that.

The idea was mortifying to you to have to go and try to – What do you think would have been the hardest part of that? The rejection, somebody's saying no, or trying to articulate 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 kind of an issue for me. Just thinking today about trying to tell the story. You're doing great. Thanks.

This is an incredible story. So you're thinking, all right, I want to try this, but I cannot even imagine what I would do after 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. This is like a famous show, like a trade show? It's a trade show. 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 out of curiosity kind of. 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, and Oh, I knew how to do a logo. I could do that.

I'd need a logo, wouldn't I? I need a name, you know. 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 kind of a hole to understand that it went together and that it was a little story somehow. And by going to the design show, you thought, well, hey, I don't have to be a carnival barker. I can just stand here and wait for people to come to me.

Exactly. The people who like it will come and write orders or, You know, give me feedback, and the people who don't like it, it'll just walk by. So then I committed to a booth, a small section, just like a one wall of a booth. For the same design show? For the next show. For the next show. This is in like 1983? It must have been 83 because I think it was 84 that I, at the show that I first introduced the line.

You thought, I'm going to go there and show my clothes there? I'm going to go there and I'm going to show my clothes, right? Did you have... No, I had no clothes. Did you have a name 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, though, right? Just pictures in my mind. I had nothing. 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 four garments. But still, that's all... But still. But I had sewn, you know, as a kid, so I knew that it was... 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 on the weekends, those first three weeks. This woman just volunteered? And she, well, she said, you can pay me. I know 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 say? 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. What's special about them, Eileen?

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 kind of the hardest thing. And so she helped me, you know, figure out where I could go to get fabric. What kind of fabric was it?

It was a linen and cotton blend. Yeah. So 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, a vest that kind of went over the top. And then 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 colors were they? They were like a teal color and kind of a black. burgundy, not quite burgundy, saminy, pinky, red, you know, and ivory. So after three weeks, you had four pieces of clothing samples, and that's what you were going to take to this trade show? Well, I made them in the three colors, so I had 12 pieces, and that's what I took with my little logo. And I spent probably as much time obsessing about the graphics and the name, because I didn't want to call it Eileen Fisher. Why not?

because I didn't see it as so personal. I thought it was something that, you know, people would make their own, that it wasn't so personally me. It was, you know, strange. So what did you end up calling it for that show? So I called it Eileen Fisher because I couldn't think of anything else. 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 going to take checks, better have a business name. And so that sort of worked for them. So, so like when they make 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 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. Right, okay.

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 if she'll help you out?

I just want to give you a hug and say, it's going to be okay, Eileen. It's going to be okay. I was just like, I was like, a deer in headlights. So did you eventually get over the stage fright and start selling? I did. I did. I sold to eight stores. I sold about 100 pieces. So a couple thousand bucks? Yeah, 3,000 bucks.

So were you like skipping home saying, I got 3,000 bucks? I was thrilled. And it was the right amount because anymore 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 happened. Yeah. So that was a pretty, that was pretty good. You walk away. Yeah. $3,000 and these are boutiques around the country. Right. Exactly. And presumably you filled those orders. You made most of them yourself? Cut every one myself on the floor in my loft and Tribeca. Wow. And then carried them in

garbage bags down my stairs, onto the subway and out to Queens. And did you sew your name, Eileen Fisher, in the tag, like in the clothes? The label, I had a label made that the sewers, the tiny sewing company out in Queens, sewed them. So at this point, this is like 1984, you've got $3,000. And are you, like, incorporated? Do you, like, do an LLC 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 came up with eight styles and went back to the same. 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 cotton? Like a thicker cotton. Yeah. Think of terry. Think of towels. More like an elegant sweatshirt fabric. And came back with three different colors, peach mint and white, remember? And this time people stood in line to write orders. Wow. I was like, oh my God, I knew something was happening. When we come back, how Eileen Fisher took her clothes from trade show floors 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 $40,000 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 we get the money to buy the fabric. And, you know, how am I going to produce this? Well, yeah, I mean, you had $40,000 worth of orders, but not $40,000 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 $40,000. Right. Well, I would have needed about 20 to do the production. But I got some good advice, actually, while I was at the boutique show, that I deliver a small order first. So I did white just for, like, February delivery, and then I did the other colors for delivery a 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 COD. So then when they delivered, the boutiques would write a check. 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 COD because I could sort of plead with them. I'm a small designer and need this to be COD. And they were, they accommodated me. But did you also try to get like a loan at a bank?

I tried. And, 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. You have no track record. I'm like, how do you do that then?

But did you say, look, I've got $40,000 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? I'm like, whoa. You said, if you check credit on the orders, I'm checked credit on the orders, whoa. Okay. No, I haven't done that.

That's a good idea. What does that mean? How do I do that? Were you stressed out about this? Because 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 demeanor. You just seem very calm.

No. No. You were nervous? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, 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 love solving the problem. I love, okay, I'm going to get the money.

I'm going to do this, you know, who's going to help me? How am I going to ask? What do I need here? You know, and I did little shows in my loft, and I had friends come, and they brought friends, and they bought orders, and they, you know, they paid me up front, and then I could deliver things like that. Anything you had to do. Anything. It was like puzzle making, kind of, and it was fun, and just figuring it all out.

I like, I guess I'm a math major somewhere in my soul. 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 use the cash to buy more material, and then just continue to kind of fund it that way. Right, right. Scambling day by day, you know, how to make this work. And, you know, then go to the next show and sell $80,000 with orders. And then it's like, oh, my God. Wow.

Here we go. Wow. You know. So at what point did you actually say, this is real? Like, I'm not just going to trade shows. This is a company. I need to hire somebody. Oh, well, I hired my first official 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 do the thing that you were mortified to do earlier in your design career? No, I never did that. but eventually opened a store on Madison Avenue. And buyers from the department stores would come.

So you opened the store on Madison Avenue in 1991, and how did it do? Really well. Again, similar experience to that 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 I remember that's when I think it was a buyer, Somebody from Bloomingdale's came in, because they'd been looking at the line and curious. And they would say things like, you know, great clothes, but, you know, they're just going to get lost at Bloomingdale's.

And they're too simple. I was that same thing, too simple, too simple, you know. But I knew that was the idea. So I had to hold that piece. Anyway, 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 believe. Inside Blum & Diels. Yes.

I think that catapulted us to another phase. Who were your customers? Were they, was it a certain type of woman? Was it a certain age? Was it a certain profession? Yeah, in the early days I described them as artists, therapists, and teachers. And it seemed like they were people who, you know, I used to say they helped people find themselves, something like that, you know, or that they could figure out how to make their own style with these clothes.

And they operate in a, 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. We found we were able to get a line of credit of our fabric manufacturers because we bought fabric in bulk even though we were small because I was very dedicated to a certain fabric, so I built around one fabric. And then I had my brother-in-law came and was helping me, and he got me a small line of credit,

$50,000 line of credit. Then I got a new accountant who 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 profitable. It was always profitable. From there, were you, I mean, was the growth just off the charts, were you just, was that what was happening? You know, it was kind of strong and steady, you know, it was 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.

And, you know, mostly it wasn't too out of. control. 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 now, you know, other department stores want to buy the line, you know, sacks and northrooms and, you know, that kind of thing. What was your revenue at that point? Oh, different moments in time, how much. I can't remember.

I remember my dad came to visit me one time in the early days. And he sat back in the chair. He was in account, and 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, $200,000. Wow. That was gross sales, of course, and there were plenty of expenses. But, you know, it was still. pretty shocking. How did you, I mean, as the company was growing in the 1990s, how did you deal with being a CEO? Did you like that part of the job? No, no, no, no, no. No, I think CEO is a word that I've always, 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 buckstop with me, you know, sometimes I had to make important decisions, you know, which would have been, would be hard. But I always kind of held the business and sort of from a leadership standpoint pretty loosely. And so I like the designers being with it and making it their own and working together and, you know, in a sort of collective way. And I feel that way about the leadership. And even today we're a leadership team. It's pretty complicated and we're really working to streamline it. And we're getting better.

We're getting a lot better. But in that period of time when you really, I mean, really just started to explode in your growth. Yeah. I mean, did you find yourself in a position that you were reluctant to be in? Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's accurate. I saw myself more as a designer, artist, rather than a business person, even though I wasn't bad at it. In terms of maybe not so much the managing of people, I guess I never liked telling people what to do.

And I never liked working for other people, you know, when they would sort of tell. tell you what to do. I didn't like being told. I like, give me the problem and let me do it my way, kind of thing. I mean, I know that in the 90s, it was an incredibly just active time for Eileen Fisher and would continue. And also personally, I mean, you were, you've been married, you had two children 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 to how did you manage the personal and the professional? I would say that was the hardest, hardest ever.

And if I look back, man, if I could do anything differently, that'd be, now I'm not going into regret, but that was incredibly hard. 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, oh, 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 is this working or not and what's working and what's going wrong. And at the same time, worrying about work. And at the same time, worrying

about my kids when I was at work and just, you know, I guess the thing I say to myself now is that if I look back, 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. You were trying to be the best mom you could be and also run the company and you, I must, So, I mean, it kind of sounds a little bit like what your mom went through, where she was kind of overwhelmed, right? I mean, she was relentless.

Every day was this hamster wheel. Yeah. I did the best I could. I had to let go a lot. I had to trust a lot of people, 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'd let go too much over here when 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 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? Yeah. You know, once I got divorced, my kids were four and eight and I said, I am going to stop working on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at 3 o'clock. I worked in my home a lot and I would let the people keep working and I'd close the door

and go and be with my kids and my husband would have the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays and we shared the weekends and things like that so 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 I guess kids never liked divorce but I think that

over time I sort of out and things got better. I got stronger. I started doing things like yoga and meditating. I had some time to myself, which my mother never had, you know. I didn't have to have a breakdown actually to get a hold of myself. I mean, was there a point, Eileen, where you thought, because your business was, I mean, it was cute. By this point, it's already huge. Like you were successful beyond your wildest dream and this is the late 90s. 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 wash my hands of it. Oh, my God, no, I never, never thought that.

Never thought that. Never crossed your mind. That would be like selling my firstborn child. I just really felt like that. Yeah, but you were under so much stress, and you had, 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. it was personal, I guess. I wanted it to be how I wanted it to be, and I think it's still true. And actually what I did do was sell part of the business to the employees. So we are 40% 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 55. I'm talking about you, but Eileen Fisher. sure the company. Your company has like about 60 stores around the world now. Is that right? Right. Right. Roughly, yes. And thousands of employees probably. 1,200 direct employees. But many, probably 10,000 people work daily on our making our clothes. Presumably, as a company became bigger and bigger, it became more corporate, more corporate because you just had more people. You had to, it was a big company. It was like a lot of revenue. You were doing $100 plus million a year at a certain point, and of course, much more today.

But was that, was it weird for you? I mean, you're the person 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 keep thinking of your dad coming to visit you in New York in your early days and saying, you know, looking through your books and saying, Eileen, you guys made $200,000 last year just being so blown away by that. Eileen 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 that wasn't your intention?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. I'm still very uncomfortable with that. That's something that I have to do for more work in therapy on. Especially because you grew up with like seven children in your house and this very middle class. Oh, yeah. I put myself through college. My father said, no, women don't need to go to school.

So, you know, I like that. Did your parents ever see this? level of success? I mean... Yeah, my mother did. My father was utterly, totally impressed by $200,000 he didn't see any more. But my mother did. I don't know that she understood

it quite. You know, my sister's work in the 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 see damages. We'd have a section of damages that we'd sell in the back of the store. And she'd

go to the back of the store and pick out those damages say, I can fix this. She'd take them home and fix pieces and you could sell this as good as a first first, put it on the main rack. But I think to her, you know, it could have been 200,000 would have been just fine. It didn't need to be this

big. Nobody, you know, that didn't mean so much to her, you know. It sounds like you are in a pretty good place in life. Professionally, personally, you sort of, you don't have to do the

logistical operational stuff with 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 but i i know how to work with it you know i watched my mother she was depressed 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 20s, 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 understand the full impact of the different choices I had to make, but I realized that I could choose.

And it doesn't mean that it doesn't get the better of me some days, but I also know it doesn't laugh long. So I would say happy. I'm happy. I'm also really sad sometimes. I'm also really, 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, because everybody listening to this is going to 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. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's different is now I know that. And 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. Ilean 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 Owerbach, and I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

and I've created Nice Mug. And the idea for Nice Mug came about totally by accident. It was on one of those freezing winter mornings in Minnesota when Glenn went outside to his backyard 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 the kind of glass you would put on your dinner table, perfectly formed, made of clear ice. So being the resourceful people that we are, with a beer in our hand, we poured a beer in, and an ice 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. 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 I'm really proud of that.

The way Glenn'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 them up and said, hey, we want to use nice mugs in one of our ads. Yeah, it's 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 Nice 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 30 minutes, 45 minutes. I mean, I suppose the one thing that's cool about nice mug is when your ice is melted, you're done drinking. That's Glenn Orbach of Minneapolis. He's the founder of Nice Mug. And if you want to learn more about Nice Mug or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, how I Built This.NPR.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We 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 hibt 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 Rundadal Fata with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. Thanks also to Mia Venkat, Julia Carney, J.C. Howard, Nur Kudzi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanazmesh Kempore, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.