YouSaid · the spoken record

Mitchell Gold

lines on the record: 64
first: 2022-03-28
most recent: 2022-03-28
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

“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. 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 innate 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 ability and felt that together we could make something.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Six thousand dollars 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 why we call it omnichannel.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, a lot of that stuff is at 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. 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 soldier.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but our superior selling ability and frankly, our superior service and 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 Creighton Barrel said, you know, we just can't do business with you 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 that'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 devolved 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...”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. They really don't like Northerners, but everything has really changed. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, hire 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 we weren't used to, I'd say.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, other people 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 sewer. 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 in love her. And then when her daughter had a girlfriend,”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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 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 it 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was awkwardness before, I would say. Because sometimes we'd be angry at each other and not talk. We'd be in meetings and you could feel the tension. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I'll add to it is we had been on vacation. 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 him 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the same time, we were one of the few manufacturers with a name and we were advertising in metropolitan home, architectural digest, El Decor, all the best magazines. So that was driving consumers into stores saying, you know, I want to buy this Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams furniture. So retailers sought us out.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't sell our stuff anymore. We're not going to sell to you. So we had this reputation of being a 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%.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 to show him. He didn't want to talk to them. He wanted to be in the back room. And one time we had Crayton Barrell come in. I was busy and I said to Bob, just go and sit and answer the 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”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Creighton barrels and the higher end stores, would 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? 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”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 He has become known as designing some of the best proportioned occasional chairs in the industry.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were just too big And a friend of mine was a senior VP at Berdine's. He's a really nice guy. He called me after market. And he said, you know, Mitchell, I just have to tell you the guy you have working with you, the designing. Those chairs are really poorly proportioned”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know we were doing it. So, I mean, 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 an 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we came up with buying them out for $850,000 Be paid over five years at 8%. I want to tell you that's the bargain of the century.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They maintained their business name and they maintained their business for a few years. And we were paid a percentage of the product that we sold. 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 of the business, and they wanted the cash. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would say, Come sit down in this dining chair. You've never sat in a dining chair this comfortable. And it has a 25 year warranty on the frame.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the display look pretty and keep it neat”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Well, I knew the factory could operate. I mean, 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 fact 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 they 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I would also say that for our first many years, 10, 12 years, it was super exciting. And I 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 and a liter, a 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny you use that term because I always thought that on my income tax for it says 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 shares. 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 the reorder really quickly. So it's this, it's getting these balls up in the air and keeping them going”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't hand me in advance, but 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. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they existed, but they existed on sofas. Or a chair in a living room. They didn't really exist on a dining room chair.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the 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 crossbanded plywood and cutting them by computer. So the side of the frame had no joints in it.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 shares. For these four chairs, can you also make arm chairs? I said, yes. And they said, Can you deliver this for all of our stores for Basically, in that weekend, sold 5,000 dining chairs and 800 tables. We'll find a way to do it”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Ray was the buyer at JC Penning. And he said, the black glass table that you showed us and that shares with it, could you deliver that to all of our stores in the fall?”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did they think about it? Now, mind you, I had gone into pennies and said to them, you know, you have 260 stores. Just give me 10 stores to test this in. Then I went to Levitz in Florida, staying at my parents' condo there, and made a presentation on a Friday morning to Levitz. going home from the Levites, 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 a pennies right away. He wants to talk to you. So I called Ray.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we reubolstered them What was the exciting part of that in just starting out is Bob and I went and looked at fabrics. And I think this is the essence of our partnership is, you know, I might have said, let's do upholstered 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 upholstered chairs like that before. So the first people I went to see were JC Penny was one of the biggest furniture retailers in America at the time. Levitz 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's, he's got the sense of style and stuff. So when I walked, you know, when I called them to see them, they were happy to see me. They looked at it and they...”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So Bob and I had talked about starting a dining chair business, an upholstered dining chair business and tables. And just serendipitously, my brother worked with somebody who had a friend, who had a factory in Taylorsville. And the patriarch of the family passed away and the factory was selling chairs. They were running it 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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 their whole way of operating was just not honest is the best way I can say it. You know, it was customer last.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was so cool looking, and in those days, Dorothy Callans, who was the editor in chief of Metropolitan Home magazine, which is 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 at 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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I work for this company. You know, I had access to buy furniture from all the divisions, whether it was sofas, tables. And he really put the house together. In the dining room, he picked out upholstered chairs. But what he did that was so different because whoever had an upholstered 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. And it was on a dimmer.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the highest end, but it was good quality.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 JCPenney, Levitt's Montgomery Ward, Sears. He's huge accounts. And the other thing was their gallery program. They had lane galleries that were either in stores or separate buildings, that furniture retailer zone. There was a licensed kind of thing.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we just really hit it often 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 very pretty design. You could just tell right away that he had a sense of style. Within months we were, so that was in June. By August, we were taking a vacation in the Hamptons and talking about, wouldn't it be great to have a business together?”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-03-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT