YouSaid · the spoken record

Eileen Fisher

lines on the record: 65
first: 2019-02-25
most recent: 2019-02-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's different is now I know that. And I can look at it and I can just be with it. And so if I'm anxious, I can just say, hey, I'm anxious. And it's okay. You know, I don't have to try to pretend I'm not. I can just be who I am. And that's okay.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, scared like before I came in here today. I'm really anxious. I'm really excited. I'm really More feelingful than probably ever in my life.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, you know, not every day, not all the time. But I know how to work with it. You know, I watched my mother, she was depressed. And, you know, I remember having this insight, even before I started the business, when I went through kind of a dark moment in my late 20s, I remember going, you know, having this revelation that I can make a different choice. I don't have to be depressed just because my mother was depressed. I might have to be overwhelmed because my mother was overwhelmed, but I don't have to be depressed. I didn't understand the full impact of the different choices I had to make, but I realized that I could choose. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't get the better of me some days, but I also know it doesn't last long. So I would say happy, I'm happy, I'm also really sad sometimes. I'm also really”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my mother did. My father was utterly totally impressed by $200,000 need to see anymore. But my mother did. I don't know that she understood it quite. You know, my sister is at work in the store out in the Midwest, and so she'd go in there. She was so adorable. She would go in and even as the company got really big and she'd see damages. We'd have a section of damages that we'd sell in the back of the store cheap. And she'd go to the back of the store and pick out those damages. I can fix this. She'd take them home and fix pieces. And you could sell this as good as a first burst. Put it on the main rack. But I think to her, you know, it could have been $200,000. It would have been just fine. It didn't need to be this big. Nobody.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. Oh yes, I'm still very uncomfortable with that. That's something that I have to do some more work in therapy on Especially because”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh man, It is weird. Yeah, it was weird. It's still weird. Someone suggested I write a book called How I Became Eileen Fisher. I don't know, sort of like it's a strange thing.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, it was never about the money. No. I mean, probably in the very beginning when I didn't know how to price the clothes, it wasn't about the money, but it was personal, I guess. I wanted it to be how I wanted it to be. And I think it's still true. And actually what I did do was sell part of the business of the employees. So we are 40% Aesop employee-owned. And I always wanted that collective idea. I wanted the people who are a part of it to participate and feel like owners and be owners.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, once I got divorced, my kids were four and eight, and I said, I am going to stop working on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at three o'clock. I worked in my home a lot and I would let the people keep working and I'd close the door and go and be with my kids. And my husband would have the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays and we shared the weekends and things like that. So it actually worked better for me. I don't think it worked so well for them. They didn't really like the going back and forth stuff and I guess kids never liked divorce. Yeah. But I think that over time I sorted it out and things got better. I got stronger. I started doing things like yoga and meditating. I had some time to myself, which my mother never had, you know. I didn't have to have a breakdown actually to get a hold of myself.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah I did the best I could I had to let go a lot I had to trust a lot of people which worked and didn't you know it worked in places and then there were moments that I felt you know sad about how I'd let go too much over here when you know I'd go into a store and see pieces I didn't recognize or feel like the line didn't look right or I couldn't find the clothes I wanted to wear or it wasn't really the concept. It was gone. Where was the soul of this company and what happened?”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, and reading reports and trying to understand if this is working or not, what's working and what's going wrong. And at the same time, worrying about my kids when I was at work and just, you know, I guess the thing I say to myself now is that if I look back, I would have just worked harder on being where I was. Doing what I was doing in the moment and stopped trying to be two places and stop taking the work home and just do the best you can.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that was the hardest, hardest ever. And if I look back, man, if I could do anything differently, that'd be, no, I'm not going into regret, but. That was incredibly hard. I think about all the women out there trying to start businesses and work in the business world and just how hard it is to manage families. So I really had to rely on the people in the company. I tried to, again, sort of lead loosely and just, but I struggled a lot with being in two different places and wanting to be at work when I was at home or worrying about work.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, I would say that's accurate. I saw myself more as a designer, artist rather than a business person, even though I wasn't bad at it in terms of maybe not so much the managing of people. I guess I never liked telling people what to do. And I never liked working for other people when they would sort of tell you what to do. I didn't like being told. I like give me the problem and let me do it my way kind of thing.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think CEO is a word that I've always been sort of uncomfortable and not actually. Held that title. I used to call myself Chief Creative Officer. That was sort of the closest I could come. But I did know that sort of the buck stop with me. You know, sometimes I had to make important decisions, you know, which would have been would be hard. But I always kind of held the business and sort of from a leadership standpoint pretty loosely. And so I like the designers being with it and making it their own and working together and in a sort of collective way. And I feel that way about the leadership and even today we're a leadership team. It's pretty complicated, and we're really working to streamline it, and we're getting better, we're getting a lot better.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh different moments in time how much I can't remember, I remember my dad came to visit me one time in the early days and he sat back in a chair. He was an accountant, he was going over some of my books. He wanted to make sure I was getting paid and things were working out okay. It was so adorable. And he sat back in the chair and he said, Eileen, do you know how much money you made last year? And I said, no, I really don't. And he said, two hundred thousand dollars. That's incredible. That was gross sales, of course, and there were plenty of expenses, but it was still pretty shocking.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it was kind of strong and steady, you know, it was not exactly off the charts, but it was exciting, and sometimes it felt like, you know, like horses in a carriage, like kind of out of control a little bit. You know, like it was pulling me somehow. Mostly, it wasn't too out of control. It was mostly organic. There was never like an attempt to make it ever bigger than it was. It was more like, okay, it's working, so let's open two more stores or it's working, so let's open four more stores. Or now other department stores want to buy the line, Sachs and Nordstroms. That kind of thing.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and no, we found we were able to get a line of credit from our fabric manufacturers because we bought fabric in bulk even though we were small because I was very dedicated to a certain fabric I built around one fabric, and then I had my brother-in-law came and was helping me, and he got me a small line of credit, $50,000 line of credit. Then I got a new accountant who helped me tap into the banks and how you had to put business plans together. So it was a combination of credit lines and loans and self-funding because it was growing and it was profitable. It was always profitable.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in the early days, I described them as artists, therapists, and teachers. And it seemed like they were people who I used to say they helped people find themselves or something like that, you know, or that they could figure out how to make their own style with these clothes and they could operate not in such a corporate world. They didn't have to dress a certain kind of way”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really well. Again, similar experience to that boutique show where people just stood in line and bought clothes and stacks of clothes and they were so delighted to find the store. And I remember that's when I think it was a buyer, somebody from Bloomingdale's came in, because they'd been looking at the line and curious. And they would say things like, you know, great clothes, but they're just going to get lost at Bloomingdale's. And they're too simple. That's that same thing, too simple, too simple, you know? But I knew that was the idea. So I had to hold that piece. Anyway, so when they came into the store, they knew, they didn't understand it, but they knew something was happening. And so they wanted to open a shop, a small shop in Bloom.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh well, I hired my first official employee, that was Siggy, who still works for the company today. And I don't remember thinking I'm a real business or anything. I just remember thinking I need help. I really need some. Stable help.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. Scrambling day by day, you know, how to make this work. Know then go to the next show and sell $80,000 worth of orders. And then it's like, oh my God. Here we go. Wow.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything. It was like puzzle making kind of, and it was fun and just figuring it all out. I guess I'm a math major somewhere in my soul. Solving puzzles and problems and trying to make things right.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, y Well, was I nervous you mean during the days when I was trying to make this come together? No. No, no, I wasn't nervous then. I was nervous at the show. I was nervous when I had to present myself. But I was never nervous, you know, trying to solve the problem. I loved solving the problem. I love, okay, I'm going to get the money. How am I going to do this? Who's going to help me? How am I going to ask? What do I need here? And I did a little shows and my loft and I had friends come and they brought friends and they bought orders and they paid me up front and then I could deliver things like that.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they said the first thing the person at the bank said, which was great is how do you know they're even real orders? I know these. I'm like, whoa. He said, if you check credit on the order, checked credit on the orders. Whoa. Okay, no, I haven't done that. That's a good idea. What does that mean? How do I do that?”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tried and I went to the bank. I remember with my stack of orders and they were like, well, how long have you been in business? I'm like, ooh.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to pay right away, and at the show when they were standing in line, it was kind of easy to ask them to do COD. Because I could sort of plead with them. I'm a small designer and need this to be COD. And they accommodated me.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would have needed about 20 to do the production. But I got some good advice actually while I was at the boutique show that I deliver a small order first. So I did white just for like February delivery. And then I did the other colors for delivery a couple months later. So that let me spread out the delivery and I could produce part of it while I was starting to turn the money. I did the orders on COD so then when they delivered the boutiques would write a check.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I was even further back figuring out just how do I get the money to buy the fabric and how am I going to produce this?”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Came back with three different colors, peach mint and white, remember. And this time people stood in line to write orders. I was like, oh my God, I knew something was happening.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I came up with eight styles and went back to the next boutique show. And this time I had this new fabric that I found. It was a very textural French terry, very kind of... Lush fabric like a thicker.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cut everyone myself on the floor in my loft and try Becca. And then carried them in garbage bags down my stairs onto the subway and out to Queens.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was thrilled, you know. I was thrilled, and it was the right amount because anymore, I would have never been able to deliver. I wouldn't have been able to get enough fabric. I wouldn't have been able to figure it all out fast enough or get the money to make it happen.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. I was so freaked out. The first day I literally couldn't speak. I just stood there. People would ask me questions like, how much does it cost? What's the style number? And I like froze and other people in my booth would help me out and say, you know, oh, you know, why don't you come back tomorrow? She'll help you out.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was working as Eileen Fisher as a designer, so I had to. I already had my name registered as a business, so I guess if I was going to take checks, I'd better have a business name. And so that sort of worked for them.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I didn't see it as so personal, I thought it was something that people would make their own, that it wasn't so personally me. Strange.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While I made them the three colors, so I had 12 pieces, and that's what I took with my little logo, and I spent probably as much time obsessing about the graphics and the name because I didn't want to call it Eileen Fisher. Why?”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I made the box top. Little crop pant, kind of based on the flood pant. Japan, and I made a little shell, a vest that kind of went over the top. And then I made a little shell so you could wear just a shell with a simple pant. Oh my god, these are like the pieces on my line today. It's so amazing to just see the pictures.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's special about the Mileen? I was like, well, it's special that they're simple. And she said, Oh, okay. But I'll help you. And so first I had to find fabric. That was kind of the hardest thing. And so she helped me figure out where I could go to get fabric. What kind of happen?”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I pretty much talked my way through it. I scribbled them, you know, my little sketches, and she said, whoa, those are pretty simple.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I had sown, you know, as a kid, so I knew that it wasn't that complicated. But I was lucky, and this is kind of weird how things happen. Again, one of the friends I'd been talking to said, I have a friend who's a pattern maker. She works in a clothing company. Maybe she can help you. So she came and she worked for me at night and on the weekends, those first three weeks.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Weeks to come up No, don't get carried away now. It wasn't really a fashion line to start out with four garments. But still, that's odd. But still. Yeah.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I had no clothes. Did you have a name for the company? No. I had no name. I had no clothes. I had no fabric. I had no styles. I had nothing.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come to me exactly. The people who like it will come and write orders or, you know, give me feedback. And the people who don't like it will just walk by. So then I committed to a booth, a small section, just like one wall of a booth.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And kind of floating through and going like, oh, I can do this. I see how to do this, you know? Like I just looked at these different booths and saw how the designers were presenting their clothes, a little rack here, a few things hanging, you know, oh, I knew how to do a logo. I could do that. I need a logo, wouldn't I? I need a name, you know. So I could picture a whole story. So it wasn't just like one garment. It was that I had to, people had to see kind of a hole to understand that it went together and that it was a little story somehow.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was a show, big show that catered to the small boutiques around the country and a lot of small designers and small companies would come there and show their things. And so I remember going to the show just out of curiosity.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, both. Both. I think probably it was still rejection at the time, you know, but articulating was and still is a kind of an issue for me. Just thinking today about trying to tell the story very dark.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I was a shy introvert, I thought I think at the time. But I knew I couldn't. I was definitely not hustler, and I could not have done that.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. Okay, that's good. So I think what happened is that I'm seeing these pictures and I'm trying to imagine where do I start, you know, and how would I make this happen? And I couldn't picture myself, what if I made these clothes? How would I do that? And then I couldn't picture myself. How would I sell them? You know, would I go to stores? Other people were telling me they were going to, um... Henry Bendell and waiting in line for hours and a buyer would go like, nope, I don't like it.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was talking to people because now I had artist friends in Tribeca and other people who were designing clothes and jewelry and things like that.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just put the clothes on and go, you know? I wanted to make it simple, but I didn't want it to be so confined that it had to be exactly like the uniform or only one particular shape. I didn't want to wear the same thing every day. And I just had this idea that I could make these simple clothes. No one's really doing it. And the images would come to me. I would see these simple shapes. And the first one I remember was I called a box top. It almost had quite straight lines, like a kimono sleeve, and it was about the way it would drape when you had it on. So that was kind of the first picture that came to me, and others were the simple little widely pant and, you know, there was a vest and a shell. And these first few pieces, it just started to come to me.”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Catholic school. And so when I Was trying to get dress as a designer. I never really liked the uniform, but I liked the concept of making getting dressed simple, just get up and...”
2019-02-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT