How I Built This with Guy Raz - Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

After working in the furniture and home goods industry for over a decade, Mitchell Gold took a risky bet and decided to start his own furniture company. In 1989, he went into business with his romantic partner, Bob Williams, who had been working in advertising as a graphic designer. They contracted with a furniture factory near their home in Taylorsville, North Carolina, and launched a line of boldly-patterned upholstered dining chairs and eclectic dining tables, leveraging Bob’s design skills and Mitchell’s industry experience. Roughly thirty years later, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams is a multi-million dollar brand with hundreds of employees, which sells a full range of home furnishings at retail locations nationwide.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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Well, it's now out in paperback and available wherever books are sold. So check it out, how I built this, the book. Now to the show. I went to them and said, you know, we're just starting. And I said, you know, I'm being open with you. These are big orders. I got to buy a lot of materials. I can't necessarily get the credit for it. Could you pay us in 15 days from the day we ship it? So it was like a juggling act. You would basically get the raw materials and wait for your payment to come from pennies and levits and then pay your suppliers. Yeah, it's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax versus occupation, I was going to put down juggler. Because it was always juggling stuff. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

combine their design smarts to sell upholstered chairs and florals and stripes and grew a small business into a multi-million dollar brand. If you ever want to start a business, there are two basic ways to go. go about it. And we've had both types of examples on this show in the past. The first is to dive right in even if you have no experience. So think Sarah Blakely and Spanx. She was on the show back in 2016. And if you remember that episode, Sarah had a sum total of zero experience in fashion, apparel, textiles, manufacturing, and distribution. She also had no connections in the industry. all pretty important things if you want to scale a company that makes undergarments.

But what Sarah did have was determination and a few years of sales experience, even though she was selling fax machines, not underwear. Okay, so that's approach one and it's risky, but if the stars align and the idea is good enough, it might just work. The other way is to toil away at a company in an industry you want to live. learn about for a few years, gain some experience, make some contacts, and then start your own thing. It might not be as fun as the first approach, but it's a little less risky, and it's the approach Mitchell Gold took. For more than a decade, Mitchell worked in and around the home goods and

furniture industry at some of the biggest retailers in the business, places like Bloomingdale's and Lane. Today, his furniture company, Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, is a multi-mealtzing. million-dollar brand with more than 60 stores and design locations across the U.S. Most of their upholstered furniture is still manufactured in North Carolina, where Mitchell and his partner Bob Williams started the company. For many years, Mitchell and Bob weren't just business partners, but romantic partners as well. Bob had a natural talent for design and aesthetics, and Mitchell honed his business acumen from his years working in the industry. When they launched the brand in 1989, their furniture stood out in comparison to the

mainstream brands, designed forward furniture that was also surprisingly comfortable and lasted a long time. And they built this brand in a small town in North Carolina where, at the beginning, they didn't always feel welcome, given the fact that they were a gay couple. But today, Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams employs hundreds of people in and around Taylor'sville, North Carolina. And Mitchell in particular is among the most prominent social justice activists in the community. Growing up, both Mitchell and Bob went through the pain of not being able to live openly as gay. We'll hear from Bob in a few minutes, but we'll start with Mitchell, who grew up in the 1950s and 60s in a Jewish family in a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey.

Basically, my teenage years, starting around 11, I was emotionally in a very difficult spot because I was starting to realize that I was gay. In those days, it was considered a mental disorder. It was, you know, really frowned upon society. There was a gay couple in town. This one fellow, Bobby Varga, was a dress designer and his live-in boyfriend, Blaze, was a hair designer. And I remember my parents talking about them, and they loved to be with them, the fagalas, they would call them. But you knew that it was bad. You knew that that's not something you wanted to be. That's a Yiddish sort of, that's a kind of a Yiddish. It's a Yiddish word for homosexual.

But sort of a disparaging. Yes, it's very disparaging. Just like the term queer was very disparaging at the time. Yeah. And I remember realizing that I had that same attraction to men and really being fearful that I was going to evolve to become very effeminate. People would laugh at me and talk about me behind my back. And that the only thing open to me would be that I could be addressed as. designer or a hairdresser. I mean, in my wildest dreams, I never thought the things that exist

from me now I never dreamt about. I mean, how do you remember coping with it? Did you try to fight it? Did you try to be like a sort of a macho teenager? What do you remember? Well, there's a couple of things. One is, unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to admit that I was like a little bit of a bully against some of the effeminate kids with the other kids in school so that I wouldn't be known as gay. And the other part was that I prayed every night. I mean, I cried myself to sleep too many nights and just prayed that God would change me. I didn't understand why God hated me. I didn't understand what I did. It's a horrible, horrible time for a gay kid. But I was really lucky. I eventually got through things. I was in college. I found a psychiatrist, and I walked into

the office, and he said to me, you know, what can I do for you? And I said, well, I'm gay and I want you to change me. And it was the first time I had ever used the word gay out loud. And he looked at me and said, well, I can't change you, but I can teach you how to love yourself. Wow. And I remember being a little upset and saying, no, no, no, I want you to change me. I don't want to be like this. And he really worked with me to get me to accept it and to love myself.

But it took me a few more years after that. How did your parents, I mean, this is the early 70s. Right. How did they take it? Were they supportive? Well, it's something I tell parents. Be very careful what you say to your kids. When I told my mother, it was on a Sunday morning around 11 o'clock, she called me because I hadn't called that week. And I was still sleeping. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. I said, oh, by the way, I'm going away on vacation to St. Thomas. Oh, that's so great. Who are you going with? And I said, I'm going with my friend Michael.

Michael, I don't understand why you do so many things with Michael. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? You're such a nice looking boy. Why don't you have a nice girlfriend? And I said, well, Mom, today is the day. And I just have to be honest. Michael is my idea of a girlfriend. Silence.

And her words to me were, don't tell your father. He'll have a stroke. You'll kill him. And that just shut me right down. And I went back in the closet for a couple of years. So then I came home one Mother's Day. I was at the country club with my parents and all other friends, and they started talking about a Broadway play called Torch Song Trilogy.

The play by Firestein, right? Right, by Harvey Firestein. And I had just seen it. It had just opened. So my mother said, oh, yes, I've heard about that play. We're going to get a bus and go. And I just, you know, my eyes popped out of my head. I looked at everybody at the table and I said, well, do you know what the play is about?

oh yeah it's about a Jewish boy and his mother and how they get along I said okay I wasn't going to tell them because it's about a Jewish boy who's gay yeah and come to a reckoning with his mother is part of the play so I go back to New York and I got tickets for the next night they come in they go see the play the next day my father calls me and I have to I have to collect myself to say this because I remember standing at this oak desk that I had in my little apartment, my little studio. And my father called and said, I just want to thank you for the tickets last night. And I just want to tell you that he said, I just want to tell you that all I care about is that you're happy and healthy. It was just not

what I expected from him because my father was always such a macho guy. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being straight, my father was an 11. So I, collected myself and I started to talk a little bit to him and he said there's he said you don't owe me any explanation and um so that was that was really great I want to turn to you Bob for for a moment I know that um for some of your childhood you were raised in Texas where I think your dad was an airline pilot yeah when you hear Mitchell story and I mean and you know it well about you know sort of his childhood and teenage years and, you know, kind of struggling with his identity. Does that resonate with you? What was your experience like? You know what? When he sits there and talks about, you know,

being in tears at night, I remember the same thing. Later on in junior high and high school, you know, laying in bed and just like, why am I like this? Why am I different? And this was in the mid-70s, late 70s when I was in high school. And I remember after graduating high school and going off to college basically having a nervous breakdown and being hospitalized for a week because of the stress of all this. And that was tough. But that was also a time when I looked at my life and it's like, all right, I need to make some changes. And that's when I started looking for schools that were primarily designed schools. started looking in New York. And at the time, there was Parsons and Pratt

and did interviews, did pretty well, got accepted to the schools I wanted to, and of course, really wanting to be successful. The only thing I could think of was Madison Avenue is in New York. Parsons is the closest to Madison Avenue, so let's go to school there. So you were a student at Parsons. I think after you graduated, you got,

I think if I'm right, your first job was at 17 magazine. Is that right? It was at 17 magazine, which was really a great place to start. Yeah, what did you do there? I worked in the promotion department, and I was one of the art directors. And as for you, Mitchell, I think out of college, one of, like one of your very first jobs was with Bloomingdale's, right? Correct. And how did you, how did you end up getting that job? So I, although I was a history major in college, I became friends with the dean of the business school, and I was going to go to law school because, of course, that's where my mother was. wanted me to do. And he said, oh, lawyers are such assholes. They're so boring. You don't want to be

a lawyer. He said, you should be in retail because he used to work at Bloomingdale's. And he said, let me call and introduce you to somebody. Go get a haircut because I had this long ponytail. Put on a suit, get a haircut, and go meet this guy because it's going to change your life. So I went and met Mr. Brennan the next day, had a series of interviews. And I, fortunately, my last interview was with Lester Grubetz, who was probably, you know, if there's 10 merchants from the 20th century who were really outstanding retail merchants, Lester is one of the tops. He turned the houseware's department into a fashion department, a fashion gift department. He turned domestics into this wildly designer successful look.

So he was my last interview, and he and I really hit it off well. And he said, do you want to come to work here? I want to put you in my division. So I started as an assistant buyer in Department 80, blankets, bed spreads, pillows, and comforters. And that meant that you were buying from manufacturers, from blankets and pillow manufacturers on behalf of Bloomingdale's? Well, it meant that I was the assistant to the buyer who was making those decisions. And I was helping him and learning how to be the person making the decision. Comforters were just becoming popular.

and Christian Dior had designed this comforter, dust ruffles, pillow shams, sheets, draperies. It was the first time a big-name designer like that had done anything in domestics, and the first time anybody had done this very coordinated look that wasn't bedspreads. And we set it up, and I just remember the excitement that I had. And I remember Mr. Grebetz looking at me and he said, Michela, this is going to be fashionable tonnage. And that was a term that always stuck with me too, Because the idea at Bloomingdale's was not just to be a high-end fashion store, but to really do a lot of business from it.

And it's a term that Bob and I have carried in a lot of things that we've developed over the years with the design leadership that we've had with different categories. I know you spent about seven years at Bloomingdale's kind of rising through the ranks. And you had gone from kind of, I don't know, what's the term for pillows and blankets and domestics? domestics, right, to furniture, to like constructed furniture, which presumably, I mean, you were not kind of, you know, in the manufacturing side, but did you kind of start to learn about it? Well, first of all, as a buyer at Bloomingdale's, you went to furniture factories and learned how furniture was made so that you could participate in designing furniture and develop. And we call the product development. So as an example, when I was there, there was a new book that came out by Joan Crone and Susie Sleson called High Tech. and what they were showing is people had taken like a big steel eye beam took two of them and put a

glass top on it or they took a tractor stool a tractor seat and made a stool out of it and it was a very popular book and i looked at that and thought wow this is really cool a new way of looking at modern it was a very different modern than i grew up with but what i gave it was saying well i think it's just a little too hard edge i don't think it's going to be really appealing for consumers So I went to some manufacturers that I had and worked with their designers and said, let's soften this up. Let's make these edges not quite so hard. And you have to know how things are manufactured in order to do that. And that's very much what I became known for in the store, is having this style sense that was kind of the next generation,

not something that had been popular and then we just made it cheaper. It was really creating a whole new style. And I actually changed the entire department. at one point to this look and it became incredibly successful. So, okay, so both of you guys are living and working in New York. And I guess around 1987, the two of you meet for the first time. Bob, how did that happen? Well, how did you two meet?

Well, it's funny because that night, it was a Friday night, I had gone to the movies with a friend. And at the end of the evening, he said, oh, let's go out for drinks. and we go to Uncle Charlie's, which was on 7th Avenue. And needless to say, as soon as we walk in the door, the friend that I go with disappears. I don't see him ever again. So I'm kind of standing there in the bar by myself. And then this guy came up next to me and started talking to me.

And he was really nice. And we chit-chated for a few minutes. And Mitchell and I just kind of hit it off. And I think that was on a Friday night. And we went out on a Saturday night. and then Sunday was gay pride. And I was meeting some friends of mine to watch the parade. And Mitchell met up with us.

And that was our first weekend together. Yeah. I mean, we just really hit it off. And we had such a synergy together. You know, the first time I went to his apartment. It was a studio apartment. It was sparse. He had just a gray flannel, sleep sofa that was a very pretty design.

You could just tell right away that he had a sense of style. And within months, so that was in June. By August, we were taking a vacation in the Hamptons and talking about, you know, wouldn't it be great to have a business together? Wow. And what were you doing at the time, Mitchell, when you met, Bob, were you still at Bloomingdale's? No. At that time, I was working for Lane Furniture.

And I was in charge of two important businesses for them. One was national accounts, which was J.C. Penny, Levitts. Montgomery Ward, Sears, these huge accounts. And the other thing was their gallery program. They had like lane galleries that were either in stores or separate buildings for their furniture retailer's owned. It was a licensed operator, licensed kind of thing. And I should mention, I mean, lane furniture is still very much around. I think still manufacturers most of the other. Well, they're around, but they're very different than they were then. When I worked for them, they were making most of their product in America. It was reasonably high quality. It wasn't a

highest end, but it was good quality. Right. I guess around, I mean, the two of you met in 1987. And clearly, you connected quickly because not too long after the two of you met, I think, Mitchell, you were, Lane sent you to Virginia and then to North Carolina. Right. And North Carolina, a huge center of furniture and textile manufacturing in the U.S., so obviously an important place to be. And Bob, you followed him down there. So what compelled you to leave your job at 17 Magazine and to go, you know, follow this guy when the two of you had only been together for several months?

You know what? It's funny. You know, I'm sitting here and I'm trying to think out, you know, what the hell was I thinking? Kind of nuts, right? Yeah, it really is. And it's so funny because I remember walking into my. boss's office. Her name was Murphy and telling her that I was leaving, that I was moving to North Carolina and that I, you know, I'd be basically putting in my notice and I'd be gone in a couple

of weeks. And I remember her looking at me and, you know, I said, are you sure you want to do this? And I was like, yeah, I want to do this. I want to take this chance. And, you know, I took a leap to move to New York and ended up going to a great school, ended up working for a school, ended up working for 17 Magazine, which was fantastic. And so when this opportunity came along, I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to follow my instincts and go for it. And where in North Carolina were the two of you living at the time? Hickory, North Carolina.

And tell me about Hickory, North Carolina in 1988, when the two of you finally start living together. Mitchell, you're working for Lane as has to have this important job for this big furniture manufacturer. Bob, first of all, what did you do when you got there? What was your job? Started seeing out my resumes to the few little places that there was in Hickory. There were two ad agencies, and I got a job. It's so funny because this was right before computers became popular, and the reason why I picked this agency over the other agency was they had computers. And it's so funny because I remember we had these Mac classics.

So they had like the screen that was about the size of your iPhone today. Yeah. And I remember I was working on a catalog for Outward Bound. And I could only see like a fourth of the page at a time. And one day they came in and said, Bob, we got you a new computer. And it had like a big monitor. And I could see the whole page at one time. And I was like, wow, this is so amazing.

Mitchell, when you, while you were at Lane Furniture, did you already start thinking about starting your own business? Was that in the back of your mind? Or were you happy working for a bigger company? I was sort of happy. I really hadn't thought about starting my own business until I met Bob. When we both moved down, we bought a house. And I had said to Bob, you know, how about if you get the house together and decorate it? And, you know, I worked for this company. And, you know, I had access to buy furniture from all the divisions, whether it was sofas, tables. And he really put the house together. And in the dining room, he picked out upholster chairs. But what he did that, that was so different because whoever had in a pulsed chair, it was like in an oatmeal fabric, a beige fabric. But he picked out this beautiful floral.

And then we got a table with a vintage metal base with a big octagonal glass top. And then for the chandelier, he took chicken wire and created like this cloud and put Christmas lights in it. Wow. And it was on a dimmer. And it was so cool looking. And in those days, Dorothy Callens,

who was the editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Home Magazine, which was one of the most popular home magazines at the time. She was coming down with her editorial staff. So she came to our house for dinner. And while at dinner, she just looked to me and said, I love this living room. I've never seen anything like it. And it was really a huge signal to me about Bob's taste

and his ability to think differently and to think the next step. So it was really an exciting time. Mitchell, when you go down there to take on this big job for Lane Furniture, Presumably, you were probably on the fast track to, you know, maybe even one day running the company. But from what I understand, you began to kind of sour on the job. What was going on? Well, I sort of felt that I would never really run the company because I was Jewish from the North and wasn't a member of the family. And then, increasingly, I became very unhappy at work.

It was they had moved me down to North Carolina. and it became very obvious to me that I couldn't be out. I couldn't bring Bob with me to functions, the company functions, when they had spouses. And the whole way of operating was just not honest, is the best way I can say it. You know, it was customer-laced. And as I understand it, Mitchell, I mean, you decided to sort of speak out about some of the things that bothered you and they, I guess they eventually sort of let you go, right? Yeah. But, you know, it seemed, I mean, reading about it, it seems like you saw that as.

an opportunity, right? Because you'd been in the industry for like 10 years at that point. And both you and Bob had this just kind of great sense of design. And I guess it's when you started talking about maybe launching your own thing, your own business. Is that right? Yeah. So we, Bob and I had talked about starting a dining chair business and a polster dining chair business and tables. And just serendipitously, my brother worked with somebody who had a friend who had a factory and Taylor's business. And and the patriarch of the family passed away and the factory was selling chairs. They were running at around 55% capacity. And you really can't make money running a factory at 55% capacity.

And they were looking to contract out somebody's product. Okay. So, 1989, officially you kind of found what would become Mitchell Golden, Bob Williams. But initially, that wasn't the name. Correct. And it was called design line, right? Right. And the idea was to make upholstered chairs or other things.

Appalceded dining chairs and eclectic dining tables. And so was the idea that you guys would go to your old contacts that you had from Lane and from Bloomingdale's and pitch them your products and essentially try to get them into those stores? Was that the kind of the business model that you were thinking of? Yeah. I'm just thinking like furniture is, I think, expensive. of the raw materials, there's the labor, there's the shipping, there's the marketing. Like, to me it just sounds like a daunting thing to start. We were so naive.

Yeah, I mean, ideally, if you're starting a factory, you do need millions of dollars. But we didn't have it, so that wasn't an option. So it's just lucky that my brother knew this person that knew this person. And we were able to have a conversation. and we really liked each other. And as I said, their father had passed away. So it was a wife and three children in the business. They really didn't know how to run a full business and how to build the sales.

So we started with them like in May. We made up some chair samples. Did you draw them or did you actually physically make them? No, we actually, these were chairs that existed, appulstered chairs that existed and we modified them. So we would say. Like sewed on, you put on new, you re-appulstered them. Right, and we re-apulstered them. Yeah.

What was the exciting part of that in just starting out is Bob and I went and looked at fabrics. And, you know, I think this is the essence of our partnership is, you know, I might have said, let's do appalceded chairs because that's going to be a big growing category. But when Bob, when his vision of the chairs were to put this beautiful floral fabric on, to put these great stripes on, to get these really rich colors of velvet to put on. And when we presented the line to people, they had never seen upholster chairs like that before. So the first people I went to see were J.C. Penny was one of the biggest furniture retailers in America at the time. Levitts was the biggest furniture retailer at the time.

And coming from Bloomingdale's, they were always intrigued with the idea that, oh, Mitchell was at Bloomingdale? He's got the sense of style and stuff. So when I called them to see them, they were happy to see me. Right. They looked at it and they thought they think about it. Now, mind you, I had gone in to pennies and said to them, you know, you have 260 stores. Just give me 10 stores to test this in. Then I went to Levitts in Florida, staying at my parents' condo there and made a presentation

on a Friday morning to Levits. So after going home from the Levits, I got back to my parents' apartment and they said, oh, Bob called because this is before the days of Blackberries and before the days of cell phones. I called Bob and he said, you got to call Ray Dykes, the pennies right away. He wants to talk to you. So I called Ray. Ray was a buyer at JC Penny? Yeah, Ray was the buyer at JC Penning.

And he said, the black glass table that you showed us and the chairs with it, could you deliver that to all of our stores in the fall? Wow. So in like five months? Yeah. could you do this for all 260 stores and we're going to put it in our catalog so knowing that i had a factory that needed capacity i said yes then on monday when i went to levitz i made the presentation to all the regionals they said we want all nine chairs for these four chairs can you also

make arm chairs i said yes wow and they said can you deliver this for all of our stores for fall We had basically, that weekend, sold 5,000 dining chairs and 800 tables. And I thought from it and I said, we'll find a way to do it. Why don't we come back in just a moment, how Mitchell and Bob juggled materials and money and manpower to make 800 tables and 5,000 dining chairs. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1989. Mitchell and Bob have just launched their own furniture business,

and they already have an unexpectedly big order, 5,000 dining chairs and 800 tables. So the question is, can they pull it off? First of all, was the supply chain relatively straightforward? All this stuff was just you could go to one place in North Carolina that made textiles, one place that made the stuffing for the chairs, one place that had the lumber, one place that, was it all relatively local? Yes, for the most part. The fabrics were lots of different fabrics. So we were dealing with lots of different fabric mills. The foam we bought from a supplier that had been an established supplier

with the factory that we were dealing with. And then one of the most interesting things we did was we came across a wood frame for the dining chair that was very different than what anybody else. had been doing. Imagine a dining chair and most guys when they sit on a dining chair, they lean back on it and rock a little bit and then the chairs can become, then the legs can become loose. It's called racking. Somebody had come to us with taking a cross-banded plywood and cutting them by computer. So the side of the frame had no joints in it. As soon as I saw that, I said to the owner of this factory, give us an exclusive on this. Don't sell it to anybody else. But we were not able to ship them exactly when they wanted. I had to say to the retailers, I can't ship you

like August 15th, but we can ship you by September 15th. And then we set out with the factory to do it. Help me understand why the dining chairs were so radical. I mean, and forgive me because I love and appreciate great furniture, but I'm not sort of a scholar on the history of furniture. But like, I'm thinking floral designs and I think of like these old, huge, you know, resort hotels, like the Greenbriar, where they've got like floral designs everywhere. Yeah. So they existed, right? I mean, or was it completely different?

Well, they existed, but they existed on sofas. Right. They are a chair in a living room. They didn't really exist on a dining room chair. Well, and these were also fully upholster chairs. Yeah. Which were more of a designer look. So you would see them at a higher price point, but they weren't necessarily for the mass consumer.

And if you did, they were still expensive. Fully upholstered means upholstery on the back and on the legs. On the legs. On the legs. Okay, I see. And this was under the name design line. That was your name initially, right? Well, it was under the name Mitchell Gold's design line.

Right. Okay. Because when we went to get the name design line, that was already taken. So my lawyer said, why don't you make it Mitchell Gold's design line? Then that would be different. And honestly, I took advantage. of it because I knew a lot of people in the industry and I thought that if I did have my name out there, we'd have an opportunity for people that I wasn't calling on to say, oh, I know that guy. Let me go see what he's

doing. All right. So you have this order. You got to do it all within four months. First of all, how are you going to finance that? How are you going to pay for all? Because I can't imagine that J.C. Penny and Levitz just handed you an advance. Well, actually, they did. They did. Wow. Yeah. They didn't hand me in advance. But the, The usual terms for furniture is called like net 30 or net 60 days, which means 30 days after they receive it, they would pay for it. And I went to them and said, you know, we're just starting. But I knew these people well, and they knew that they could trust me. Right.

And I said, you know, I'm being open with you. These are big orders. I got to buy a lot of materials. I can't necessarily get the credit for it. Could you pay us in 15 days from the day we ship it? And they were very cooperative with us and did that. So it was like a juggling act. You would basically get the raw materials and say, yeah, we'll pay you in 60 days or whatever and wait for your payment to come from pennies and levits and then pay your suppliers. Yeah, it's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax versus occupation, I was going to put down juggler.

Because it was always juggling stuff. And it's such a juggling act to get the materials and to get just the right of materials in. And if they order, let's just say 500 chairs, you really can't order fabric for 500 chairs. You really have to order for 550 chairs, 600. You have to give yourself a little bit extra in case some of the fabric's not good or in case they get it. It sells really quickly. You want to be able to fulfill a reorder really quickly. So it's getting these balls up in the air and keeping them going.

In meantime, you guys are standing up a business. So was it initially, I have to imagine that the business was just the two of you, right? Well, it was the two of us with this factory doing the production. And Bob, what did you, I mean, Mitchell had kind of the business background and these connections and had been a buyer and a little bit of a big shot in the furniture world at that point. What did you, I mean, what did you kind of see your role as? Were you kind of focused on the design and the sort of the aesthetic? Yes, but I mean, ultimately there wasn't a ton of stuff for me to do. because it was more of the selling and things like that.

So I was still working at the ad agency. Okay. Because we still needed an income. Sure. And so I worked there five days a week, and then on the weekends, I would help Mitchell. And it was also nice because we didn't have a computer or anything. So in the evenings, the ad agency was kind enough to let me use that equipment to help create all the sales materials. And finally, it got to a point after about like six or eight months.

I quit working at the ad agency because there was enough to keep me busy getting ready for market, picking out fabrics. I was also the bookkeeper. I was the swatch department mailing out swatches. I had all the grunt work. So I was busy most of the time. You were business partners but also lived together, were in a relationship. How did that work? How did you make that work?

I mean, was there any conflict or tension between the two of you? Oh, no. Mitch was on the road all the time, so it was great. Now, it was, you know what? It was a lot of fun. Then it got to a point where he was working with the salespeople and the factory, and I'm working with product development and my team and all that stuff. And the only time we'd really get a chance to talk to each other during the day

was in the car going to dinner and at dinner. And I remember at some point, we decided that if one of us did not want to talk about work, the other one had to be polite and realize the other person needed a break. Yeah. But I would also say that for our first many years, you know, 10, 12 years, it was super exciting. And I as remember Tuesday night, because we didn't really have a lot of extra money, we would go to Pizza Hut because it was like $12.99 for all you could eat. a liter of Diet Coke or something. And, you know, we would just be there eating that stuff and talking about business and this customer and that customer.

And it was super exciting. And Taylor'sville, North Carolina, where your factory is, it's been described as kind of like the buckle of the Bible Belt. And I read an article that said that people didn't always know that you guys were a couple, even though you were. Well, we were in business about two years, and we went away, we finally took a vacation, we went together. And then people said to our partner who was running the plant, gosh, I don't understand. Mitchell and Bob worked together all the time.

Why would we go on vacation together? And then I'm told that the word spread like wildfire through the factory that we were a couple. But, you know, what I think is interesting and what makes me optimistic is people really got to know us. we've really over the years only had a couple of people that quit because, you know, our gayness was too much for them. But it really gave people a chance to get to know us. And it gave us a chance to get to know them too and why they had the beliefs they had. So, Mitchell, when you made that sale to Levitts and to pennies, I mean, that's obviously super impressive. And it makes sense that they trusted you. They knew you. But like, you have to get those shipped in time. 5,000 chairs by September and 800 tables. Did you, did you hit that deadline, by the way?

Yes. Wow. Well, I knew the factory could operate. I mean, this was a, this was an up and running factory with 23 or so employees. And I knew enough about manufacturing that I could work with them together. We had this huge opportunity. Everybody knew it. And the factory that we bought into, they had a reputation for paying their bills on time, being nice people, and we all pitched in and did it. We had people working overtime. We made it happen. All right. So you have this great relationship with this factory. You are manufacturing now. When your product hit the stores in the fall of 1989, did they just sell themselves? Did people, was it a success from the beginning? Yeah, it sold right away. What explains that? Well, because we had done a lot of pre-work.

I mean, we had done a lot of sales training meetings to make sure the salespeople knew how to sell it, knew the information. We convinced the stores to advertise so that draws customers in. And in the advertising, I mean, I literally worked with them on what the copy was to make sure it was accurate that the product could sell itself. The posters that Bob did that were in the stores. And the displays were beautiful. We had a contest for the stores that had the best displays. It was interesting at the time at a Levitt store, you offer pizza to everybody, and they're all working together to make display look pretty and keep it neat. And what would they have said to me if I walked into a Levitz looking for new dining room chairs, I don't know what I want.

Why would I pick the fully upholstered dining room chairs with floral patterns or, you know, stripes or whatever? What was the pitch that would be made to me at the time? They would say, come sit down in this dining chair. We've never sat in a dining chair this comfortable. And it has a 25-year warranty on the frame. 25-year warranty. Nobody else could offer a 25-year warranty on the frame because those type of wooden frames at the time, they became loose. Our frame would never become loose.

Because it was one piece. Right. There was no joint. It was a one-piece side construction. I want to, for people who are listening to this, I think they're going to be interested in just figuring out the business structure here for a moment. you did some really smart things, but you didn't have to put at this huge outlay of cash, which would have been hugely risky, to build a factory from the ground up. You had to find a place that you could partner with.

Yeah. So how did you structure that relationship? Did you sort of say, hey, you know, it'll be a 50, 50 business, and then we'll kind of split the profits. But we're going to incorporate under one name, or did they remain a separate business and you remained a separate business? and you remained a separate business. Because there's all those details that you have to work out. How did you kind of work through that? Well, they maintained their business name and they maintained their business for a few years.

Got it. And we were paid a percentage of the products of the product that we sold. Right. But within a couple of years, our business had grown so much that they started to say, well, the business that we have is not as profitable as this Mitchell Gold. and Bob Williams' business, we're going to stop making our line of furniture. But then we had so much production. I mean, we started out with a few big customers, but now several years later, we were selling

to all the federated department stores. So then in about five years, they came to us and said, you know, this is a lot of pressure. We're buying hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars of material. How about if you guys buy us out completely? Right. Because when the father had passed away, The wife was getting older. She wanted to work, but she didn't really want the pressure the business, and they wanted the cash.

Yeah. And I said, well, why don't you think about what price you'd want? And obviously, Bob and I don't have the cash, so maybe we could pay you out. So we came up with buying them out for $850,000 to be paid over five years at 8%. And I want to tell you, that's the bargain of the century. Bargain of the century? Yeah. It's incredible.

I mean, what amazing good luck and fortune, because obviously today you've got a 200 plus million dollar business even higher, which we'll get to. But how did you design in the first sort of five years? Did you hire an outside designer or were you guys doing all the design? I know. We were doing it. So, and I think this is an interesting and important story. When the first chairs that we did for the bedroom, Bob wanted to do a big wing chair, like really a nice. oversized wing chair and an oversized kind of club chair. And nobody bought it. And somebody who did buy

one as a sample that worked in the factory said, geez, I can't even get it into my house. Because you, because you were so wide, it wouldn't fit into a standard entry. Yeah, they were just too big. Right. And a friend of mine was a senior VP at Burdine's. He was a really nice guy. And he called me after market. And he said, you know, Mitchell, I just have to tell you the the guy you have working with you, the designing, those chairs are really poorly proportioned. And the guy you had working for you was Bob Williams. And this is what's so great about Bob. He just looked at me and said, yeah, I know, I really have to learn how to design chairs.

And he took that. And he has become known as designing some of the best proportioned occasional chairs in the industry. How did you do that, Bob? I mean, you were not a trained. You went to Parsons. and so presumably you took some classes, but you were an ad design, you were a graphic designer.

How did you kind of make that transition to becoming a furniture designer? Well, you know what? It was tricky and tough at first because you're right. I was a graphic designer. I was used to designing on paper, catalogs and ads,

and now I'm dealing with this 3D object. And one of the things I realized early on was that a chair actually will float in the middle of the room. So people see it not only from the front and the side, but also from the back. It actually is a sculpture that people sit on. So you start looking at it from a couple of different points of view. And trust me, there's been a lot of chairs that have been dogs,

and every so often you get one that's a winner. And out of those winners, you get one or two that become a super winner. And that's really how you build your business. That'll help fund everything else. So initially, it sounds like it's certainly in the first five, maybe even 10 years, the idea was you would be a furniture maker and you would sell your furniture through these retail channels, whether it was Levitts or Jayopennies or maybe Bloomingdale's. That was the idea. That was what this company was going to be. Yes. I think if you were to say, what was your long-term plan? It would be that we were going to make good quality on time at a good price. and it was going to be beautifully designed. And that led us organically to be doing other things

because we were making these dining chairs and our customers, especially like the crate and barrels and the higher-end stores, we'd come to us and say, well, if you're making these dining chairs, it's so great, the service is so great, can you make a living-room chair? So we made a living-room chair.

Can you make a sofa? Can you make a sleeper? And our business just evolved because our customers were asking us. And that's the best way. When your customers are asking you, and they're engaged with you on the product that you're developing, then they're buying it.

They're buying it before you even make it. When we come back in just a moment, how Mitchell and Bob continue to grow the business, basically by shrinking it and firing a few dozen of their own customers. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1990s, and as Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams' furniture continues to grow, the brand gains an unlikely new salesperson.

And that salesperson was Bob Williams. So I have to just tell you a cute thing that when I first met Bob, he was very shy. And we had customers coming in the show. He didn't want to talk to them. He wanted to be in the back room. And one time we had Creight and Barrel come in. I was busy. And I said, Bob, just go and sit and answer their questions. Because you know the fabrics really well. You know all this stuff really well. You just have to answer their questions. You don't have to sell anything. They would normally buy one, maybe two new collections from us a season.

But all of a sudden, they were buying four or five collections. And I went out, and they're all like talking and laughing. And the main merchandising person, Rob Pitt, pulled me aside. And he said, this guy is really great. I mean, he just tells us what we want to do. He's not trying to sell us anything. He's so sweet. And then I realized, I got a good salesperson.

here too. And it was great because, I mean, one of the things when Bob did start to come out of his shell was the editors really liked him, there's something special about having somebody talk about the product who doesn't have this agenda as a salesperson. I read that in the first 10 years, there was something that you did that I want to ask you about. You actually fired some of your customers. You got rid of some of your customers. You had like 70 or 80 accounts and you reduced it to like 50, which actually paradoxically increased your business. Yeah, we had done it a couple of different times. Early on, we had a customer from New York who was really obnoxious and would call the factory

and yell at people. And I had to call them and say, you just can't be abusive. And they continued. And then we called them and said, you're no longer a customer. You can't sell our stuff anymore. Yeah, you can't sell our stuff anymore. We're not going to sell to you. Okay.

So we had this reputation of being a little. little picky. And then we started to drop customers if they weren't nice. And the word got around about that. But then we got to the point where we just had so much business. And we had some people that were just wasting our time by we were evolving to this higher end design brand. And we had stores that weren't showing our stuff properly, that weren't selling it properly. They might have customer service problems. So Bob and I sat down and we went through the 72 customers that we had and we dropped it to 48, and we said, these 48, we're going to be able now to give better service to. And I swear this number is true. In that year, our business increased 48%.

Wow. When you actually reduced the number of accounts of people you were selling to. Right. And you could do that because there was a demand for your products. Well, and at the same time, we were one of the few manufacturers with a name, and we were advertising in Metropolitan Home, architectural digest, El Ducor, all the best magazines. So that was driving consumers into stores saying, you know, I want to buy this Mitchell Golden, Bob Williams' furniture. So retailers, you know, sought us out. You, the two of you are running this business. It's growing. I think by the, within 10 years, I think you had about 400 employees. Is that sound right? I think so. And meantime, your relationship, I don't know, falls apart.

I mean, it's so crazy for me to say that because I'm here. I am talking to the both of you with clearly so much fondness and respect and love for each other. And yet your romantic relationship ended, I guess maybe grew apart. What happened? We broke up on New Year's Day after 9-11. And I remember sitting at the kitchen island watching the news and 9-11 happen telling Mitchell what had just happened. I go take a shower. He comes and tells me about the second plane.

And we drive into the office that morning. And I remember walking through the factory and everybody just like being numb, not really knowing what's going on. And I think it, over the next few months, we both just sort of realized that, you know what, life is short. We can be happier. Yeah. I mean, we have a great friendship. We have a great working relationship. But our personal life, just that there wasn't much of a personal relationship between the two of us because we were working so much.

And that's when we decided that we needed to make a change. Well, and what I'll add to it is we had been on vacation and it was really obvious to both of us that it wasn't working. And we came back from Hawaii and we were in San Francisco at a restaurant. And over the course of dinner, I said to Bob, you know, I just really think we need to talk about our relationship. And Bob said, yeah, I know, but I'm afraid because I don't want to lose you as a friend. And I just looked at me and I said, well, let's commit to each other right now that we'll be best friends forever. And we'll keep our business and run it well. together. It's our baby. And we just looked at each other and did that and did it nicely.

That decision is so mature and so, you know, from a business perspective, very smart and wise for obvious reasons because the business grew. But I'm just thinking from an emotional perspective, I mean, wasn't awkward at work, it wasn't weird. I mean, you've gone from being partners in a relationship, there was no awkwardness. There was no kind of moment of, I don't I don't know, like, this is weird or this is different. Well, there was awkwardness before, I would say. I guess sometimes we'd be angry at each other and not talk. We'd be in meetings and you could feel attention.

But after we announced that we were not going to be together anymore, then the mood really, I think, lightened. And I think we've heard from employees that things were really better. It really didn't feel awkward until we kind of saw the other person with somebody else. Yeah. And that happened a couple of times. and I remember the first time it was like really kind of strange. And then by the time I saw him with his fifth or six person that he was dating, it just became, you know, it wasn't that unusual.

And it was like, okay, do I like this guy better than the last guy? You know, and he had some really interesting and fun people that he dated over a period of time. So it was nice getting to meet some. Yes, I would always bring these people. We'd always have dinner because I wanted to get Bob's approval. Mitchell, I obviously have read a lot about the two of you and just for people listening, you are a very prominent supporter of gay rights and you started a foundation to combat religious-based bigotry against gay people. But it also became part of your company. It became part of what you did and do today.

I think at a certain point you sent a letter to every employee. of Mitchell Golden Bob Williams basically saying, hey, you know, I'm starting this gay rights organization and I want everybody to know why. And you were worried that people would quit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wrote it. It was a three-page letter. And I really wanted people to understand why these very teachings were so harmful and what it meant to young people.

Because I knew that they cared about people. You know, these are nice people. There's professional anti-gay people who make money off of it and do it as a business, but then there's, you know, people in the pews who are being told certain things and taught certain things. And I really wanted to have a chance to explain what I was doing and why I was so harmful. And I'll tell you, that night, I don't even remember sleeping. I was so nervous that the next day I would come in and we'd have half the factory quit. But it turned out only one person quit.

And then I just walked around the factory and gave the opportunity for people to ask questions. And it was just so sweet because people would give me a thumbs up. Other people would smile at me. Other people would come up and say, you know, I love you. A couple people, more than a couple, said, you know, I really learned a lot. I didn't realize that my beliefs were hurting. You know, I don't want to lose my child. And during the course of it, there was one woman I'll never forget.

a few years later, she came to me, she was a sower, and she said, you know, I just want to thank you because of you, I never lost my daughter. And she told me the story of how her daughter came out to her, and had she not known Bob and me and known our story, she might have kicked her daughter out of the house like her husband wanted to. She told her husband, no, she's our daughter. We're going to keep her and love her. And then when her daughter had a girlfriend, the girlfriend was coming to Thanksgiving dinner. So we've had a lot of super rewarding things over the years about that. One of the things that you guys did, you decided to do things a little bit differently.

You've got a daycare facility, a subsidized lunchroom. You pay, I think, pretty well. You're not a union company, right? You're not a union shop. Correct. There really aren't unions around this part of the country. Right. But, you know, those kind of perks.

And we had Gary Erickson on the show Cliff Bar, and they do some of those things, too. Has that had a huge impact on retention? Oh, yeah. Well, early on, one of the things that Bob and I did differently is there's more business usually in the fall than in the spring in a furniture factory. So a lot of the factories would hire up in the fall, lay people off after Christmas. Higher up, lay people off. And in simple terms, we came up with this idea that rather than do that, we would, talk with everybody and say, hey, we might have to work overtime in the fall, but in the spring,

work four days a week or three days a week, but we want to keep everybody year-round. We don't want to have this roller coaster. And first of all, the employees in the area like that. We were very cooperative with people on the opening day of hunting season. There's different things that are important to some of these folks that are, that we weren't used to, I'd say. But it was things like that that were important to pay attention to. I mean, you both of, well, You more Mitchell are really an outsider, right? This kind of Jewish guy from Trent, New Jersey in the south. But doing those culturally relevant things matter to people. Yeah. Definitely, I would say, I used to joke and say, coming down here, you know, what did people dislike about me? Was it that I was Jewish, gay, or from the north? And the number one thing they didn't like is that I was from the north. Yeah. They really don't like northerners. But everything has really changed. There's so much. There's such a mix. now of people. There's so many people that come from different parts of the country. It's just so different now. As you were growing and really in all of these stores, was there pressure for you

guys to go lower end, you know, to make sort of more IKEA affordable style furniture? Oh, yeah. Yeah, one of our big customers really wanted us to make lower quality, lower pricing, and we just grew apart from them because it's, you know, as the business evolved, when we started the business. We didn't start out to be a high-end company. But we just evolved that way because we wanted to make a better and better product. And part of the reason we want better and better product is because we don't want returns. And then Bob and I travel all over the world looking for new ideas, being inspired by a restaurant, a hotel, a museum, a fashion show. And when you are making fashion-forward furniture, lower-end companies really don't want that. They want proven sellers.

So we just evolved this way. And it was the thing that got us new customers. I mean, the thing that when Crate and Barrel first came to see us, the fact that we had these twill fabrics in black and in white, it was really appealing to them. You guys made a pretty big decision, I think around 2006 or seven, which was to open your own stores. And I remember I used to live in Washington, D.C. I remember you have a big store there in Logan Circle. That was one of the big first ones. I think you now have over 30 of these stores.

So you went from being a, you know, basically a wholesaler to doing that and also being a retailer. That's a completely different business. And risky. Why did you decide to go in that direction? Well, I think that for Bob and I, we often would be frustrated that the retailers we were selling to weren't displaying our product cohesively, weren't displaying it as best as we thought they could. And one of our retailers, ABC Carpet and Home at the time, was a really hot store in New York. And they had come into the showroom and looked around and said, can you guys take what you're doing here and do this for us in Arster? We'll give you a prime location.

And in short order, we were doing $1,500 a square foot, which is unheard of in the furniture industry. The furniture industry on average at the time was about $240 a square foot. In sales. Yeah, in sales. And we started to see how much business it was, and then we decided that we would open up our own store. But you're right. It was complicated because we had these other retailers that weren't real excited that we were building a brand, that we were building our own. I'm sure they weren't.

I'm sure they were really pissed off. Yes, but our superior selling ability and, frankly, our superior service. our stuff on their floors was the best-selling stuff and it was the best service stuff so it was hard for them they were pissed off but they were tolerant of it and then it got to the point where they were becoming less tolerant of it and as an example in 2008 my good friends at crate and barrel said you know we just can't do business for the anymore you're opening a store a couple blocks from us in Manhattan you're putting out catalogs that business dried up and we eventually got out of most of those stores and kept opening our own stores to where now we have 25 retail locations and four outlet

locations. You know, one of the things that's been interesting and that it's happened to this industry, and we've done some of these brands on the show, is direct-to-consumer, you know, Casper mattresses on the show, for example. There are, you know, there's a company, I can't remember the name, that you can build your own bed frame that for Japanese joinery. I see it all over Instagram. And some of these products are good.

I mean, let's be honest, they're very good products. There's these companies that are financed by venture capital that are like modular sofas and, you know, all different kinds of focused on direct-to-consumer sales. Is that a threat to your business model? Well, a lot of that stuff is a different quality level than what we're doing. But it's, look, there's a lot of business out there. There's a lot of business for everybody. Yeah. If people like our style sense, they're not going to get it from some of those companies that are making those modular sofas.

And that's the only thing they can buy. From us, they can buy pillars that coordinate with it. They can buy lamps. But it's amazing what people buy online now. Every day when I look at the sales figures and I see like a $7,000 sectional sold or $6,000 in dining chairs and tables and stuff, I'm just like amazed that people do it. But it's not just that they're buying it online. They might have seen it in a store in person. They might have called and had a virtual appointment with one of our people.

There's many different touch points. So that's what we call it Omni Channel. Today, Mitchell, you are no longer the CEO, right? You found somebody to run the company a few years ago. But obviously, both of you are still owners. I think you sold part of the company to private equity company. So they're minority owners. They're the majority.

We own a good piece of the minority. I think you guys are now, you have about a thousand employees nationally. Correct. I think you're one of the biggest employers in your county. Whether you intended for this to happen or not, it's made both of you wealthy. But what's your sort of long-term view? I mean, eventually to completely sell a company to somebody else? You know, we're going through such an interesting, different phase.

of the business. I'll be 71 next month. I don't envision not being involved in this company in some way in some form or fashion, even in the most modest way. But Allison has come on board. She's doing an incredible job. And honestly, for me, every day is exciting when I open up an email and see what Allison and her team have done. It's different and better than what I would have done. So I'm kind of really enjoying watching how the company is going. When you think about the journey you had, Bloomingdale's and Lane and then moving to North Carolina and starting this little dining room chair business into what it is now, you know, at least $300 million business a year. Am I right about that?

Somewhere near there. We're a private company. Can't say. More, a little bit more? It's a good guess. It's a number we never dreamt of. Let me say that. attribute that to your talent and your hard work, or do you think more of it has to do with luck? Well, I've often said if I was going to write a book about our company, I'd call it pluck, luck, and perseverance. We've had situations. We've had a confluence of incredibly good things happening. We had the luck of finding a facility that already existed. We didn't have to start from scratch. We didn't have to hire somebody to put a factory together. And we've had some bad things. You know, we had 9-11, we had 2008, we had a pandemic, but there's a lot of hard work and

there's skill. I mean, Bob had this in eight design talent. Years ago, we were interviewed for CBS Sunday morning show, and I love when Rita Braver said to him, you were a graphic designer. What made you think you could design furniture? And he said, because Mitchell said I could. You know, I saw that in him that this, this is a graphic designer. You know, this. ability and felt that together we could make something out of it. And that's what makes an exciting business. That's Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, co-founders of, well, Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams' home furnishings. These days, as he said, Mitchell has stepped away from a lot of the day-to-day operations of the company. Bob is more involved. He's responsible for new product development as president of

design. And by the way, if you remember the CBS show, The Goodwife? Nearly every scene in that show featured furniture from their company. In fact, Mitchell and Bob partnered with the set designer to create the first licensed furniture line in TV history sold in stores as the Goodwife collection. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at How I Built This and mine is at Guy Raz. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtin Arableu. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima.

Our production staff includes J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Elaine Coates, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, and Alex Chung. Our intern is Margaret Serino. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.