Chilewich: Sandy Chilewich

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Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.host. It was amazing how quickly people got it. I remember the first international show that I did in Paris for the EU, and I'm standing there when we introduced it.

And I went to the ladies room, and then I'm walking back and literally there's like a wall of people around our booth and in the booth. I couldn't even get in. And they're all staring at the placements, and it was like everyone's talking about it. It was like instant.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and dealersants, and stories behind the movements. And they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, I was a simple splash of color accidentally launched Sandy Chilliwich into a 40-year career as a designer, entrepreneur, and creator of the now famous Chilliwich Placement. Some of the most successful brands we've had on the show were incredibly simple ideas that didn't require much startup capital at all.

Stacey Madison had a sandwich cart in downtown Boston. At the end of the day, she'd cut up leftover pita, toast it in the oven, and sell the chips in baggies for a dollar. Eventually, that became Stacey's Peter chips. Lisa Price wanted better skin cream, so she mixed she butter and essential oils in her kitchen and packed them into baby food jars to sell at flea markets.

Eventually, that became Carol's Daughter, a line of personal care products. Kathleen King baked chocolate chip cookies and turned those into Tate's Bake Shop. All three of these entrepreneurs used their most valuable asset, their own creativity. This was Sandy Chilliwich's most valuable asset as well.

Back in the late 1970s in New York, when a city was filled with struggling artists and squatters living in abandoned apartments, she and a neighbor decided to buy a few pairs of Chinese slippers and dye them into different colors. That simple idea turned into a brand called Hue, and eventually they branched out into Tites. After Sandy sold Hue, she launched a second company called Chilliwich, which is known for selling home products, especially placemats made from durable woven vinyl. Sandy grew up outside of New York and came from a family that had been in the leather goods business for generations.

She said she was a pretty bad student. She went to Sarah Lawrence College but ended up dropping out twice. So to earn money, she painted, made sculptures, and sold handmade jewelry. She was making a little bit from the jewelry, but one night, a simple creative, do-it-yourself idea, change Sandy's life.

What happened is that I met a neighbor of mine in the loft building that I lived in, in New York City. So I'm living in No-Hoe, it was a factory building, everybody was an artist in the building, and one woman and I, who at that time, she was an art teacher, she was also doing some art but mostly teaching. Her name was Kathy Moscow, or Moscow? It was a Moscow.

Moscow, Moscow. And one evening, we were together, we were a little tipsy, drinking wine, and I think we were in her loft and we were looking in her closet at her shoes. And at that time, all young downtown women, what they would wear every day were cotton canvas shoes that we bought in Chinatown. They were black and they were like really thin-sull rubber back, and that was cheap chic.

They were like the flat shoes, like the flat-town Mary Jane's. And they were $3.99 in Chinatown. And we thought, I don't know how we thought this, but it just occurred to us because we both are creative. We wondered, why doesn't anybody make these in colors?

And that night, one of us at Clorox, I had Rick die, and we bleached out the black, it actually came out, and we over-died them. And they looked pretty great. You just thought, we'll make them for ourselves or friends or whatever? Yeah, well this will be fun.

I don't know why. I think sometimes you just do it because it's fun to do it. So we went and we got more of them, and we died a bunch of them. And then we had a building meeting in my loft, or her loft, I can't remember.

And we had all the shoes out, and everybody in the building, they all said, oh my God, would you get these? It's amazing. Wow. So I...

Just died Mary Jane's. You know, because it seems so simple, like it's just a simple thing. Well, this is a time seriously where things were not available in a lot of colors. This was before or around the same time that for the first time you'd get a t-shirt in 12 colors, like Canal Genes, which was one of the four runners of this, was just a couple of blocks away from us, where you would get t-shirts that people would die at home and then sell because you couldn't get a t-shirt in a pale-tial color.

People made t-shirts that they made white, you know, or black, maybe. Alright, so you guys have all these artists in the loft, and they love them, and they what... And I don't know that spark further discussion about maybe we should actually make more of these, or what, like you and Kathy, you know, what that lead to? So what was happening?

I was still had the jewelry going on in my loft. And I got an appointment at that time, Vogue magazine would have open days, and you could show product to all the kind of fashionistas that work there. They would just have an open day where they could just walk in and show the stuff you're making. I think it was by appointment, but it's not like it is today.

They encouraged and wanted to see new stuff. You know, now it's like very... It's not quite the same way, you kind of have to be more established and so forth, but then I had an appointment already to show them my jewelry. And this is at the time, this is the woman that was the editor-in-chief before Anna Winter, this is Grace Meribella.

She was the heavy, and she was there forever before Anna took over. Sure. So we go up there and we're with all these fashionistas, and I got my jewelry, and we decided, I said Kathy come with me, let's show them the shoes too. So we show them the jewelry, and then we show them the shoes, and they all said, you know, in so many words, but get the jewelry, tell us about the shoes.

Wow, like these were really simple shoes that you got in Chinatown. They were just in different colors, and they were blown away by those shoes. Yeah, well, because everyone knew the shoes, and they were great, but they were... You know, imagine them in any other color, but black.

So it was like, that was a big thing. Yeah, I'm sure I think of something that would be analogous, like, like, car tires. Car tires are black. But if somebody pulled up in front of your house with yellow neon car tires, or orange car tires, you'd be like, oh my God, where did you get those car tires in orange?

I think that's totally... But you know, that's taking it to the furthest extreme, but this is at a time when towels were available in four colors. That's a beige, white, darker brown, I mean, gray. That's it.

And that was the beginning where people started to offer more colors in everything. So they're looking at you and they're saying, hey, this jewelry, not for us, but the shoes, we love the shoes. And what did that mean? I mean...

Well, it goes a little further, because then they said, hold on for a minute, we'll be right back, and they all left, and ten minutes later Grace Merabella walks into the room. Oh, wow. She says, oh my God, these shoes. And so...

See, so this is on a Friday, and she said, we need to take these shoes to Sardinia. We're leaving on Monday. To Sardinia. To Sardinia.

We have a shoot in Sardinia. I want all of these colors in size 10, or size 9, in which she said, can you do that? And we said, yes, we can do it. And she said, I'm going to put you ladies on the map or something like that.

It was like... It was like a movie. It was a movie. It was without a question.

I mean, this was for people who don't... I mean, I remember like, there was a magazine called Mirabelle. I don't even know what's still around. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, sure. They were named after her, like that she started. So how did you get... Did you rush out to Chinatown and scramble to get these shoe sizes?

Yes. I mean, we had to get a whole case of like 40 pairs in a box to get the one size 10 that was in the box. Wow. And because they didn't sell them singly.

So we probably got like 10 of these boxes that I don't remember. And we tried to simulate those colors which we did probably drunk one night. And like, how are we going to get this color again? So we did it.

They were still wet on Monday morning. We were blow drying them with it. We didn't sleep. I mean, we were just making these shoes.

And off they went to Sardinia. And there's going to be a lag time between them. The photo shoot and one is probably the five, six months later, it's going to be in the magazine. So at that point, what do you do?

I mean, do you decide to make this a business? Do you and Kathy say, you know, I think we got something here. You know, it was certainly quite a long time before it went into the magazine. But when they came back, they knew that they shot them and this would be, they told us, a two-page spread.

And it said, she was by Kathy and Sandy because we didn't even have a company name. And they can't take a credit unless their customers can buy it in a store. So we went to Burgrove Goodman. We told them we had a credit in Vogue.

Would they look at this product and would they buy it so that we can cover the credit and they did? So it said available at Burgrove Goodman? Yes. So they could say that.

And what did you price the shoes out? God, you know, I know ultimately they were just like $16. We started to buy them in quantities. We went to Macy's.

We went to other stores at that point and showed people. And then we're buying, you know, all these big boxes. But we weren't using all the sizes because some of them were tiny. I mean, none of it made any sense economically.

So all right. So when the Vogue spread came out, was there like a huge rush to buy them? Or what do you remember about that? I would think we were selling a lot.

I don't remember the quantities, but we were selling a lot. And we were, we had to work all night long. And we had people that came in and were dying and bleaching through the night. And this was all in your loft apartment.

Like I read that you had a bunch of washing machines. You were using to dye the shoes and stuff. Well, it was my home and it was a big loft and it was very open. And I had the whole back area was really nothing.

It was an old studio. And that's where all the washing machines and dryers were. Plus the place to kind of lay the shoes out and store the shoes. I mean, I had 36 on its square feet in this loft.

It was huge. All right. So you are basically dying these shoes and getting them out the door and eventually you call your business Hugh, H-U-E, which stood for what was that name? Just colors.

It was like all these colors because that's really what we were doing. We're just offering something that was kind of a very pedestrian product and offering it in tons of colors. Yeah. And it was you and Kathy kind of running this shoestring business.

And I guess like pretty soon after you launched the shoes, you started to get into tights. Dining tights. How did that happen? Because every editor, I mean, we were like the darlings of the press because of color and all the editors were similar.

What else do you guys do in color? So we were looking for things that were kind of cool that were never available in colors. And one of them were these cotton nurses stockings, which is kind of hard to believe that we even picked them up because neither one of us were stockings. But and some other products too, these cotton gloves that were sold in Chinatown with some of these cool garter belts, all these kind of weird accessories.

And we put them into the same dying manufacturing. And again, we were getting like two pages of Man was Elle magazine. And we were at the beginning called Hugh shoes. And then we just became cute.

And I'm thinking like cotton stockings, was it thin cotton? Say cotton money. Were they like tube socks? What do they look like?

Well, nobody wears stockings anymore unless they're porn stars or something. It's got this like really, because it's a garter belt. It's like, you know, they were called nurses stockings. What we were buying, because nurses had to wear, I think cotton in their uniforms, not not enough because that was uncomfortable.

So they would wear a garter belt to hold them up. So nobody, we weren't saying, Hey, let's wear stockings. It was more like we're just trying to feed the market with color and something that was all over the world. So this was, this was, I guess, it was like a kind of a revolutionary or, you know, sort of a new kind of offering in the fashion arena.

Well, honestly, the stockings didn't become the big thing. It's what we did based on the feedback we got from customers and us making a stretch cotton tight. How did you come to that? Well, because people were saying we love the fact that it's cotton.

We don't want to wear nylon. But we don't want to wear a garter belt. Can't you make a cotton tight for us, you know? So that was what we did.

We did a couple of things like that that kind of changed the world of Lake Rare. That was one of them. How did you identify the right material to use? You know, it was identifying how to combine a stretchy material with the cotton to make it tight.

And this had very much, I think, to do with Cathy. I think the nylon pantyhose. There was nylon wrapped around a stretch fiber. So what she was saying is why can't we find somebody to take cotton and wrap it around a stretch so that we can make a stretch tight made out of cotton?

And was that possible to do? Yes, and we did it. Well, so here's my question. I mean, you're in your mid-20s at this point.

How did you figure out how to just manage the business? We didn't know what we were doing from a business standpoint. I mean, we're making all this inventory. We don't realize, like, hey, you have to sell your inventory before you make more stuff.

I mean, they didn't know what we're doing. And so... You were just making a bunch of stuff and then like, oh, we got to sell this. Exactly.

You weren't making a sale first and then making a... Absolutely. And also not every color you make is going to sell. Now, what are you going to do with all those pink things that you just made?

You know, where does that go? And you're making the wrong things and you're not selling to enough people or people are not paying you fast enough. I mean, they're just basic parts of the business and how to deal with cash flow and how to deal with receivables and collecting. And so we're definitely losing money, but we knew we had something great.

And somebody, a mentor of mine who was a friend of my brother's that who went to business school and had been out in the world and he came over and looked at both of us and he appreciated what we were doing. He looked at us and he said, let me just tell you right now, one of you has to stop designing and you have to sell full time. There's nothing else. That's what you have to do.

And that's what I did. So you decided that you were going to focus on sales and the business and Kathy was going to focus on the creative side? Yeah. And did you want to do that?

I mean, kind of designing the products a little bit more fun. You know, I've always been in the later businesses I did. Designing alone is not kind of enough for me. I do like the business side and I do like the marketing side.

And I have a very, very interested in that. And I didn't know it at the time, but I volunteered for that position. And I really learned how to sell, which I think I had a talent for anyway. So I do like the combination of art and commerce.

How did you get the word out? I mean, in the beginning, you had this sort of tension from these publications. But then like, let's say, I don't know, Bullux, which doesn't exist anymore in Southern California. I grew up in Southern California.

So let's say Bullux carried your stuff. Like, how would people walking to a Bullux know about your product? You go to the Hojui department and you see it, we had great packaging. And we did very unconventional photography at that time.

All of our products had a picture of a woman with the product and they were kind of way more fashionable. You know, the Hojui departments were a commodity department in most stores. They were so basic, pantyhose, really ugly socks. I mean, just nothing.

And when we came aboard, and there was another company called Hot Sucks at that time, but the Hojui, we were a huge part of the Hojui department. We still are at some of these big stores. I mean, I understand how early on you funded the business. You would just use money to buy these shoes.

But eventually you had to buy lots of inventory and they had to be said to be sold. So how are you funding it? How did you have, how were you getting the cash to build this business up? I can be quite specific.

My father had lent us $300,000. And he gave it to us as we needed it. You know, I would ask him, look, we really need $10,000. We need $20,000.

So that's what capitalized it plus. At the beginning, I was, I kind of didn't take a salary out probably for several years, but then I did. And it was able to pay both, Kathy and I. You know, we get, Sandy, we get from time time letters from people who, when they hear some stories, they'll say, Hey, you know, that story, I didn't, I couldn't identify with it because I don't have a parent who has a lot of money who could help me out.

And I think, you know, with some just educational say, you know, that sounds like they had all these advantages, you know, that I don't have. And what do you think when you hear that? Well, I hear it. I mean, I definitely hear it.

And, you know, and I've spoken very often, you know, especially at schools and art schools and everything that, you know, they want to get a more practical idea of, you know, what can do with it, whatever. Yeah, I'm always a little uncomfortable about that part. I mean, but I, the fact, actually, this is the first time that I've ever said publicly to anybody as I did with you today to tell you literally exactly how much I got from my dad. And at the end of the day, you know, it is what it is.

I mean, I know it's, I was lucky. Okay, so you're growing you, you and Kathy and selling a bunch of different things. Yes. Eventually you stopped, you stopped selling shoes.

Was that just because they went in the style or what? No, I think it's like, it's something that I've certainly learned and really believe in is that you've got to narrow your focus and be clear on what you're doing. It's just, it's a different, you have to look at your avenues of distribution and who you're selling to. It just wasn't going to work.

I wasn't going to be able to sell these shoes in a houjui department. I just, I identified this, like this product has a leg. So let me put it and this can grow. And I kind of knew that intuitively.

And so the idea was to grow it. You kind of had to kill one of the babies, which was the, the Mary James. Yes. And we have to kill a bunch of things while you're growing, in my opinion.

And a big one that we did was back then there were two sections in a way that we were selling. Two sections in a women's, if a woman wants a sock or a tight or a panty hose, back in those days, there were different sections within the houjui or the legware area. And one was kind of casual socks and tights and the others were panty hose. And we were trying to sell both of them.

And it was definitely my thing. It's like, no, let's be the best in one area or another because it's splitting us up. And that's what we did. And I tend to, that's something that I learned on my own and it's, it's carried me through in general.

So in 1991, you decided to sell, you and Cathy decided to sell the company. And by the way, I should mention, Hugh is still around. You can still buy their leggings and tights and shapewear and stuff like that. You and Cathy stay on as co-presidents for a few years.

Did you, I mean, I'm assuming that essentially you become financially secure at that point for the rest of your life. You could have probably stopped working. Probably. I mean, I wouldn't have lived, you know, the, we're not like the billion dollar business.

So like it's not that kind of money. But it was nice. It was a really nice sum of money and it didn't put any panic in me. And did you sell it because you just wanted to kind of move on or it was just, it was just an offer you couldn't refuse or you were just kind of tired or what do you remember behind that?

Yeah. I think that to be honest, I think my relationship with Cathy, she and I both, I think we're both kind of, it was just hard to work together. And I, you know, so it was time and we were doing this for a long time. So it was time to move on.

Were you guys not getting on? I would say, I mean, it wasn't horrible or anything, but we were fighting. I think I also, you know, more and more, I wasn't designing, you know, and then it became kind of difficult. For me to kind of get back in.

You wanted to get back in the design side and you would have been out of it for so long as a salesperson that it was, and probably Cathy felt ownership over those designs understandably. Yeah. And she, I mean, I definitely had my, you know, my hand in a couple of designs. I can say a hundred percent.

They were mine, but in general, she did amazing things. She was very good at it. And I wanted to do that, not with Haudry, but I needed to do that for myself. Yeah.

I mean, I loved what I did, but then I, it just wasn't as much fun anymore and I wanted to change. When we come back into the moment, how Sandy's big change was inspired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a factory making outdoor furniture material. In Alabama. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raj and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's the mid 1990s and Sandy Chilliwich is finished with you. And she wants to get back to designing things and creating things herself, something she hasn't done in a while.

But at this point, Sandy does have close to 15 years of experience, making, selling, and distributing products and running a business. So she's pretty confident she can launch a new venture if she can just come up with another great new idea. So it's this very organic kind of intuitive process and I decided I'm just going to explore ideas and see where I land. Okay.

And I got a studio downtown, just a one room, it was on Lafayette and spring. It was like so inspiring down there then. You just got a studio space to like, just to have a room of my own, you know. And one idea that I had, which for the life of me, I don't understand where it came from.

But you know the butterfly chair, you know, that's. Yeah, sure. Okay. So I always loved the chair, extremely uncomfortable, but I always loved it.

I loved that idea of the canvas and the wire and bubble bath. And I had this idea like, wouldn't that be great as a bowl? I mean, that whole concept of having a fabric or creating a concavity with a textile to be a container. A bowl to hold what?

Fruit, vegetables. Okay. Like a fruit bowl you put on your counter. Yes.

That's where it started. So, you know, my husband's an architect, he had his own practice at that time. And he helped me build this prototype. And it was like very organic.

Like, you know, we're using wire and then I go out because you have to have fabric. And the, because I was in hosiery, I kept, I was always drawn to stretch materials. So I bought this stretch netting. It's like what people use for girdles, you know.

So playing around with it, if you stretch it around this structure, it's like a trampoline because it's stretchy. It's boingy. So the only way to make it a concavity is to pull it down in the center. It's so hard to explain this without seeing it, you know, it's, but ultimately I called this the Ray Bowl after my older son.

Okay. And the first thing I had to do was to see if people actually would buy this thing. So I was connected to somebody that was the head of the MoMA Design Store. And they saw it and they launched literally launched their whole website with an image of that bowl.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has a really cool online shop. So they picked it up and they put it on their website. Oh, yes. And they had, they never even had a website before.

And when they promoted the e-commerce site, they had this great photographer took a picture of my bowls flying in the air. And that was what they used to sell and tell everybody that they had a website. And there was a poster of my bowls like flying through the air in front of the museum, the actual museum of art, like right at the entrance. It was like, I mean, nothing made more proud.

It's like I couldn't believe it was there. But then I did everything that I would have done and that I did do in a little business. I always, that's what I liked, you know, start with one store, then learn more. Then, you know, so that's what I did.

I did it again with Ray Bowls. I mean, the Ray Bowls are very cool. It's a, it's a wireframe bowl with a stretched material that looks cool. But, you know, it's not something that, it's not like stockings that people need.

It's a real niche product. Like the Museum of Modern Art gift shop is the place to sell it. It was, this was not going to turn into a scalable business. Absolutely.

Because everyone was coming to me and saying, you know, it's such a great concept because I did the bowls and the boxes. Why don't you do lighting? Why don't you do furniture? And I actually did like small prototypes.

And everyone else, you know, that's just pushing it. I hit, you know, I hit the note here. It's perfectly. You know, this is what it, that's all this is.

And so I, but in this whole process of kind of expanding the Ray Bowls, I started to experiment with other materials that I could create a concavity with. And I found it just accidentally this outdoor furniture material that I found at this library called Material Connection, which it had just opened their doors and I was probably one of their first customers. This is a library in New York, right? Yeah, that was, I don't know, it's still there.

And it's basically a library for materials. You can just go and like feel and touch different materials. Yes, this guy that started his name is George Valeriam. He's kind of iconic in the design business.

But I thought I'll go to them. Maybe they can find something. And I found this factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that made a refinisher pulsory. So I got some of the material.

I'm looking at this material and it's pretty ugly. And yet it's waterproof. It's stain resistant. It's like it's woven.

So and it's, you know, it's got opportunities, you know, so I. Like a woven vinyl. It's a woven vinyl, which I didn't even know what that was. And this was used on like, I'm trying to imagine like just outdoor chairs and like sling chairs, you know, like whatever is like outdoor, outdoor, about a pool.

And I just became intrigued with the material. And so honestly, I don't understand why in a way how placemats even entered my brain because honestly, I don't remember even eating on a placemat. But all I know is that I tried to get more, more of a fabric. So I call them and I badger it to speak to somebody important down at Fyfer, which is a Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

That's a big weeding mill. And I told them, you know, look, I want to come down there. I want to talk to you guys. And so I did.

So I go down there. It's a really big factory. And personally, you told them, Hey, yo, I'm a designer. I've already had a successful business with this thing called Hue.

Right. Exactly. Because they knew that brand. They knew the brand of women there certainly did.

So once I told them what I said, look, you're not dealing with a complete rookie here. I know what I'm talking about, you know, and a lot of what they showed me was more interesting and interesting enough for me to start making some prototypes of placemats, which is how I started. I'm just curious, like, how did you even see this material and think placemats? These could be placemats.

You know, that's a good question. Cause seriously, I'm telling you, I don't understand how I think it was just one of these dumb moments where like it's sitting on my table. And I think I said, you know, this is a really good placement. It looks good on my table to frame something.

It looks great. It's a barrier of some sort. And I have to do so little. I don't know how I came to that moment.

I really don't. I think it was very, very organic. It's just looking at it. And like, this looks good on my table.

I think that's what happened. So you basically get them to make you some exclusive designs that you design them and colors and you decide to make a go of this. I'm assuming you use the proceeds from the sale of your previous business to fund this. And you get the first delivery.

Where did you also go back to the Museum of Modern Art shop? I went everywhere that I sold the Ray Bowls. We're going to buy this because it's kind of a home design product. So I already have in a way, already a built in, it's a small distribution, but I have a distribution channel.

Was anybody like this? This is a little weird. I mean placemats are, you know, usually cloth or, you know, or they're kind of an agronistic. People don't really use them.

I mean, did you get any feedback like that? In general, it was, I mean, it was amazing how quickly people got it. It's like, I mean, I remember the first international show that I did in Paris for the EU. And I'm standing there when we introduced it.

And I went to the ladies room and then I'm walking back and literally there's like a wall of people around our booth and in the booth. I couldn't even get in. And they're all speaking multi-warp. And they're all staring at the placemats.

And what it is is that you don't even have to touch this thing. You can have it on the table beautifully set. And you know exactly what it is, what it can do and how to maintain it. You don't even have to touch it.

And it was like everyone's talking about it. It was like instant. I mean, I remember the first time I saw them and I, and full disclosure, I have some of them, probably about them 10 years ago. And they're very simple.

And so it was nothing like it at the time. Like people saw it. Nothing. Nothing.

Zero. And right away people like this is so cool. I love this. Oh God.

It was so instant. And you know, it's a humble product. That's the thing. But what goes into it when you see the designs that we're doing now, people get to own such a beautiful, thoughtful product that's, you know, $14.

And they get to see it every day. So, but let me just say one funny thing about the, when I first told people, when they say it, when the store would ask them, well, how much of these is going to retail for? And I said like $12 and they said that's a dozen, right? And it was like, no, that's one placemat.

And so that I changed that whole idea. Because people thought a placemat was a disposable cheap. Right. Because 12 bucks is still a good price.

But you know, per placemat, that's a lot. So, and did you, I didn't know until I set up this interview that your name was Sandy Chillich. I thought Chillich was this kind of English, you know, right, village brand. How did you come to call it after your last name?

You know, it's probably that hunger that I had that was left over from Hugh where I feel the Ray Bowls, you know, that was my, they proved to me that I was a designer. That was hugely important to me because I had really kind of lost that identity. And I wanted to know if it still had it in me. And a product is not a business.

The Ray Bowls was a great product. And it was not a business. And once the placemats, when that happened, I could see it. I could see the future there that, you know, could be rugs, could be this or that.

And I wanted my name attached. I was very proud of it. And it was time to do that. When you started to get wider distribution of the placemats, because I think initially you had them in boutiques and gift stores and today they're available in Amazon and Crayton Barrel and William Snowman and West Elm, big place like that.

Did they catch on pretty quickly? Did you see that? And have a faster with a slow burn? No, no.

Oh my God. You know, I've had so much experience, you know, at Hugh, you know, it's like selling in versus selling through are two different things. It's great that you got the order, but did it sell to the customer or did it sell to the ultimate party that's going to use it? And when I sold the Ray Bowls to MoMA, I was in their store every day counting the stock because I wanted to know whether or not it was selling to the point where the buyers, she actually physically pushed me out there and said, you cannot come here every day and kick down stock because I need to know.

Is this going to work or not? Because I have to know how I was going to produce it in real for real. But the same thing with the placemats. I mean, you know, it's really about sell through.

I would call the store and say, how many did you sell this week? And I knew before they did that we had a winner. We should acknowledge that you must live in your hospital, by the way. There's a lot of sirens.

Do you live in your hospital? Wherever you are in Manhattan, Lennox Hill? The reality of pandemic interviews, but we're not a studio. So when your husband Joe came into the business, was there any part of you nervous about that?

You had a partner. This is your life partner. And he brings a certain set of skills, probably very valuable as an architect. But was it part of you nervous about working with your spouse?

I don't think I was nervous before. It's hard, though. I mean, I don't, you know, there's no separation. And, you know, it's not so easy working with your spouse.

I don't think it's so easy. I don't think either Joe or I would say it's so easy. I mean, it certainly has some good things. And we've done great things together.

But all the turmoil that you have at the office, it's hard to cut it off. And you continue the arguments or the controversies at home. It's just not so easy. There's a nice picture of the two of you on your website in the About Us section, you and Joe.

And you seem like, you know, it's a nice picture. But do you find that? I mean, he's probably a designer too, right? He's an architect.

And you love design. And are there moments where one of you really just has to kind of surrender to the other person? Well, he has never tried to be involved with the design. He found his own thing, which was manufacturing.

And you make most everything in the US, right? Yes. Everything is woven for us in Alabama. And pretty much everything we make is finished.

Either back with different materials for different flooring or wall covering. All the ultrasonic equipment is in it. I mean, he built a factory. That's what he did.

And this is different from his factory in Georgia. Yeah. And it's our factory and, you know, it's grown like crazy. And we employ a lot of people.

And, you know, it's all made here. So the materials made in Alabama. And then it's all cut and made into products in Georgia. Right.

So all the, also, like, so we make it into products, but also we laminate different backing materials and laminating machines that Joe helped design that, you know, that are very specific to our needs. But you were so successful that you attracted a lot of copycats, right? I mean, even now you can probably find companies that are really just copying what you're doing. Yeah.

Well, at first, you know, it first feels terrible. But at the end of the day, at this point, you know, and it's all about how quickly we really saturated the segment of the marketplace that we really wanted to saturate. Copies over the years in general are viewed and they are, in fact, cheap knockoffs from China. You know, we have very, very strict trademark and copyright protection.

And we've sued people and we've made big companies stop when they get too close to our designs. You can't copyright a simple basket weave. But when people get close to really our more graphic designs and certain other things, we can, I don't know, in America, we don't have any competition to be honest. I mean, within the stores that we're in, if they carry somebody else's, we've told them if you carry this, we're pulling out and nobody lets us pull out.

I wonder if you, we are in the middle of this global health and economic crisis. No sound. And I have to imagine you have like 99.9% of businesses sitting there slow down because people can't physically go into shops. So you still have to rely on direct consumer probably a lot.

What is that meant for your business right now? Well, I mean, the lucky thing is that all the big stores like, you know, Crane Barrel let's say it's our biggest customer or a surlutado or any of these big people, they will have web sales. And we've been building those businesses with these stores for a long time. So we're not dependent on brick and mortar.

And in addition to that, because we have our own factory, when somebody orders, you know, placemats from West Elm, we can ship it directly from our factory to the customer. But from like a design perspective, right? So much of what I imagine you do has to happen in a room with people looking at the material like right in on that table. Well, I mean, my design team, first of all, we're nowhere near as big as there's one, two, four people in my room.

Yeah, but you still need to like pass things around. So you're doing that like on Zoom and stuff? Well, no, that has been, I mean, actually my master weaver, she actually wove all of our small samples that we're going to do for Fall 21 in her home. And we all met for the first time, all with masks to look at all the things that we had to fight for due.

You know, it's not ideal, but we're functioning and we actually did a season. And also be given that the sales are definitely down. We don't have to have every skew, so many new skews. I mean, who knows if the world's going to come back like it was, you know, so, but we're doing okay.

You know, we cut expenses, we had to furlough a little bit, but we hired pretty much 99% of the people that we furloughed for a couple of months back. But it looks like we have to rethink everything. It's just, it's tough, but I don't know, I feel very bullish. I feel our product is really good.

It's just damn good, you know. When you think about the journey you took and, you know, the considerable success you've had as a business person entrepreneur, do you think more of it has to do with luck or more of it has to do with your hard work and the skills that you brought to it? I don't think luck had anything to do with it. I don't.

I think it has to do with endurance. It's constantly testing yourself, being open-minded, hugely listening to negative feedback. You've got to be able to listen. You have to listen and you have to make sure when people say they like something that they really, really like it.

You've got to constantly test the value of your product. And I think I did that. I think I did that very intuitively. That's Sandy Chilliwich.

She's the co-founder of Hugh and the founder of Chilliwich. And by the way, remember Sandy's Ray Bowl, the design that was featured on the Museum of Modern Arts and Web Store. Well, if you had difficulty imagining what the Ray Bowl looks like, if you do a quick image search, you can see it for yourself. Just make sure you type it all as one word.

Otherwise, you'll just see balls by Ray. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 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 or at Guy Ross. You can also follow me on Instagram. That's at Guy. Ross.

Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with Music Composed by Rantina or Louis. Thanks also to Julie Carney, Candice Lim, Neva Grant, Sarah Sarison, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Ross and you've been listening to How I Built This.