YouSaid · the spoken record

Tory Burch

lines on the record: 82
first: 2023-06-05
most recent: 2023-06-05
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

“Well, no, you probably think the cat head had a chair next to him. I don't know that for sure because I wasn't seated next to him, but the creativity is pretty spectacular.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know that I actually have a lot of trouble. Even one of our dresses, I felt badly because it's quite large. How do they do that?”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's definitely both because there's been a lot of luck along the way and I'm extremely superstitious person so I realize that but there has been such a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this company by so many people and me included. So I think they go hand in hand and I think that we always need a little luck and I'm hoping that that continues but I don't see a world where we're not working and doing inspiring work, but it's hard work that's ahead.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I just don't know the answer to that. I'm so not ready to sell this company or I hope that we're here for a long time and Pierre even I love working together. We love working with the team that we have and we have so much we want to do. So I don't think about selling the company. That's not something that I'm actively thinking about. I think it's a luxury to be private.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think there's elements of our playbook, but certainly they need a new one. And I think that we need a new one. And we always need a new one, and we're always, we have our core strategy, and that's not changing. But the world is changing so quickly, and we need to be evolving and changing with it and be intellectually curious and not just jump on everything, just think about what's important that applies to our business.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's too long in retrospect. And you know what I realized as I learned my passion over the years, and it wasn't operating a business, it was really designing the product and the creativity and being able to be focused just on design and the product creation, I think has been transformative for the business and for the product for sure. I mean, I went from me spending 30% of my time on it to 100%. And I do feel that we're just hitting our stride.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I've always wanted it to be welcoming. And I think in retail sometimes that's not always the case, that customers are intimidated. And so I always thought it would be great to have an environment where people could stay and get to know our sales team and sort of get their stories as well. And I think you get a lot of insight into the customer that way. So we tried to make it an environment that even from the beginning that you felt like you were walking into a living room.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The private equity partners that bought Chris and some other people out. But I would say it was challenging. I am happy to say recently, four or five years ago we are the best of friends. We've gotten through The mess of everything. He told me it was a 10 year misunderstanding, which I had to laugh.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that was something that was a relief. I think bringing BDT capital and general Lanick in was an incredible result.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literally, we were in Hawaii. I'll never forget it. My brother didn't leave a hotel room for probably two weeks. He hadn't shaved and we were lucky enough to find two extraordinary partners to buy Chris out.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we had to because we also had young children and a lot of children, but I mean, we both tried to. The best we could.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a problem. And we need to deal with it because this doesn't work And he's sitting in board meetings and having proprietary information and starting something that would be brand damaging. So we wanted him to change his concept, and then he sued us. He sued me personally and my entire board.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought it was a big problem because it was Taking cues from our brand and doing it in a way that would be damaging from our intellectual property standpoint.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I was aware he was working on a concept and I was fully supportive of that until I went to see the store. And that was the first I had seen anything that he was working on”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's something that I, as a leader in business, would love to impart on startups and other businesses. That doing good is good for business. And that's something that in the early days, I was pretty much left out of the room. And when I talked about building this global lifestyle brand so I could start a foundation. Is very gratifying.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I wasn't exactly sure in the beginning of when I started the company. I knew I wanted to help women and children. And what I realized is that I was an entrepreneur and there were a lot of exceptional women in business that weren't as lucky enough to have the access that I had. And so I thought maybe that I could help women get access to all kinds of things, whether it would be capital or each other or other business leaders. And so in 2009, that was what we started. And even though we were doing a lot of work, I wanted real numbers. So we partnered with Bank of America to help women get access to lower interest loans and their commitment of $100 million was something that I was so excited about.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's been a second father figure to me. He's nine years older and he's always been a pillar for me, a rock, as you said. He's also brilliant. When I finally convinced him to come on board and be part of the company, he was doing other things. He was working on, I think, selling a company. And so I was so grateful that he came. not only as it turns out has he been in-house legal new business development he's helped me build the business over the years and he's like he also personifies our culture”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say my father passing away. Yes, he said, I get choked up because that was probably hands down the hardest out of anything. And it was just, you know, he had been sick, but it was, he was better and he was getting better. And then he had a heart attack. So it was incredibly sudden. And it was just on top of everything, but it really just made everything pale in comparison. It just was, I saw the toll was taking on my mother. And, you know, listen, he lived a great long life, but he's still my dad. And I was just not expecting it.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Family type of business that you had employees you wanted to protect. You had your actual family you wanted to protect. You wanted to protect the business and protect yourself because when you're being written about, it's hard. That said, I found the inner strength and courage and my mom always said to me and that you wake up and tomorrow is a whole new day. And I kept thinking that tomorrow's took longer than I'd hoped. But it was how I looked at it.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was one thing I am good at is compartmentalizing things. And I would say, even though that's a strength, this was incredibly difficult. I think everyone likes to get this scoop on what's going on with divorces and it becomes everyone's story. For me, I really do live my life where I disengage with that kind of like gossip and particularly when the focus of the gossip. It's not fun. I had Vanity Fair writing stories on me and also the company was taking off. So you had this like”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they became very close. So, I was very close with my sister in laws and my brother in laws and all the cousins, and I'm a huge family person, so you can imagine it was excruciating. And the boys were really young. Zora was probably four and Henry and Nick were seven, and then I had my stepdaughters that were all in their teens, and they were like my kids also when I married Chris, I made the decision that I would treat all of our kids the same. And so to go through something like that and do it in a public way when you're the most private person and wanting to protect your kids and your family, it was incredibly difficult.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was the most difficult period of my life. And, you know, to have a marriage fall apart when you have six children. That are all very young, and our parents were great friends and our families were completely intertwined. Both of our families are from Philadelphia”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think again it was through friends. And we also had a wonderful young girl named Samantha Gregory. She came to do our PR and we gave it maybe to some people.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was dilutive, and I had seen so many wonderful brands do too much licensing, and it scared me. So we set up a production agreement. It was a very different kind of deal. So we talked to Vince about this concept of this ballet flat, and I had this idea of our logo being the design element, not necessarily a logo. So I put it on our toe. And on this deconstructed, super comfortable shoe. And that was the beginning of the Riva Ballet flat, which then all of a sudden just was worn by Jessica Alba and Camerondia and Paris Hilton and Katie Holmes. I could go on and on.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“President, and I'll never forget her boss at the time, John Idol told her it was career suicide coming to work for us. I was in this meeting with Vince Kamuto and he was a footwear manufacturer. He had his own collections, but he had called us because he was interested in a licensing deal. And I rightfully also, you know, probably with Chris too, we weren't excited about licensing in general. I wanted to be extremely careful about licensing”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, right. Right. They were buying manola blonics. It was about comfort and it was about this concept of a ballet flat. And I always felt that a ballet flat was super classic. And I'll never forget it because Bridget Klein, who had joined our company from Michael Kors, she became a VMB.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Avon. It was literally like Avon. I was kind of always obsessed with the Avon model. And it was kind of, they were becoming in turn brand ambassadors. And it was becoming word of mouth. And it was just building like that.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We also built it in a very scrappy way. We were doing trunk shows. I was taking suitcases of product to Greenwich and to Atlanta and to Palm Beach and I would have, I would go places where I had friends.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my god, so many things like that. And by the way, I didn't even think of myself as a designer either. So there you have it. I was the hardest on myself. So I would say not until about four years ago did I consider myself a designer and proud to say it, even though I loved, I worked with incredible designers over the years. But personally, I'm the hardest on myself. So yes, she wasn't a designer. People would come up to me and say, do you go to the office? I mean, I'm working 13 hour days. So for me to hear or something like that is pretty shocking.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tuned it out. I learned to tune it out even more and I think it's a very freeing concept when you don't listen and you don't read and you just keep your head down and keep going and believing in yourself.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, okay, I can't say it wasn't hurtful because it was. That said, I mean, literally I hear it every five minutes from my parents' negativity as noise. Buckle up thick in your skin. This is going to be a roller coaster. I mean, I had those conversations. I knew what I was getting into. And I'd also had those snipes before. And it definitely got to me at times. And my mother is my North Star. Whenever it would get to me I would call her and I hear your Tory Robinson, don't you know who you are, even just when I was little? Always building me up and my brothers and my family, they were like my strength. And, you know, when you go back to the concept of a lot of money, there's perception and reality. And I wouldn't say we had a tremendous amount of money at the time when we launched this company.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and we were so fortunate that we had e commerce because had we not, it would have been a very different conversation probably because it really propelled us in a way that I never could have imagined. She told us to back up our site. We had eight million visitors in our first year.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I thought it was a joke, first of all. My brothers and I are constantly playing tricks on each other. So I thought this was a total joke But I realized it wasn't after a moment. So I was completely blown away and said yes. And it was the beginning of a new chapter for us.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They wanted to buy, and so they came into my apartment to see the two racks and the accessories, and that was the beginning of our wholesale collection. It was the most exhausting year, and following by 18 other years, but it was crazy and it was a whirlwind.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well I imagine something big and I don't know why, but I felt that I wanted to create a company that reached a lot of women. And I wanted to build something globally. But it was pretty frenetic. It was, you know, a lot of just moving in all directions and just trying to keep up. I never slept. And it was being a mom. I was working out of my apartment for the first two years. We didn't have an office. So it was doing everything in our kitchen or in our living room. It was taking my kids to school and then getting on the phone until four in the morning, falling asleep on the phone. You know, we ended up having maybe 14 or 15 people working out of our apartment. So I was also contacted from the first day by Bergdorf Goodman. They wanted to buy.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was how I think it was in the ether that way back then, that it was okay for men to be ambitious, but not okay for women. And I got a phone call from a friend of mine in business, and it was until she mentioned it to me that I should embrace the word ambition and not shy away from it. It never occurred to me. And as soon as I heard it put that way, It struck me as something that I wanted to change and wanted to correct in myself because I also shied away from that word and I wasn't embracing my own ambition and I wasn't saying thank you. Yes, I am ambitious.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it bothered me in the way that it was asked it was not it was it was asked in a way that at the time I sort of was put off by that question and I just felt like it was kind of a rude question.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think so. I think we were pushing the limit there. And first of all, I had met some different designers. So the attention to detail and design was there. And the quality was incredibly beautiful. I think I've learned a lot about design, I would say, the pieces were at the time. Great, and they stood out and different. But as I've learned to become a designer over time, it was a first collection.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Tribeca, there was nothing on the street at the time. There was cafe Habana and maybe a couple stores. And the store we ended up taking was a furniture store.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we were designing different products, and I was really interested in sweaters, and we had ready-to-wear, we had the peacoat, the concept of the perfect pen, we had the caftan. I had found a vintage tunic in a Paris flea market for about $8. That became one of the core pieces of our collection. We had a fair amount of my mom's clothing that I was inspired by, and we had to swim. We had espedrills.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, well, I didn't want to use my name, and I tried to get, I wish I could remember, maybe 10 names. And all of them were taken or unavailable in some way. And so I thought Tori by TRB in retrospect, it was such a bad name. But that's what we ended up using. And I think it was probably a year and a half into it or maybe two years into it that I ended up changing it.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that's sort of a message about our whole company. We've never wanted to take the fast way. We've always wanted to be a patient brand, even from the very beginning. I've never been inspired by becoming the biggest brand I wanted to be, the most extraordinary brand”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, I was not thinking about wholesale at all in the beginning. I was really interested in direct to consumer, and I really felt that e-commerce at some point would be worth it. And it was also a way that we could reach more people”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went and I met with factories. And back then to ask a factory to make fifty or a hundred pieces of something was not that interesting for them. So they had to, I think, going there personally made all the difference and showing them that if they took a chance on us that we would stay with them and partner with us, that we would grow with them. So it was a lot of long dinners, a lot of long conversations. And I think also Chris's experience of building a brand absolutely helped as well.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I liked it and I felt that it was like, I felt it was impactful and strong. And, you know, I had spent some time studying Chinese art and it reminded me of like never ending the circle. And it was, it just felt vibrant.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't thinking about it that way. I wasn't thinking, like, what is our logo and the way you made today? Yeah, it wasn't like that at the time.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we got the cross, we got, it looked Asian, it looked Moroccan, it looked, you know, everyone had a different opinion.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yes, I met with this branding company called Modco and I said, you know, I wanted to create a logo that we could use in different ways. And I was really interested in Morocco. My parents had spent their honeymoon and then just constantly went back. And then also David Hicks, who was an interior designer that I'd always loved and my parents loved. And so I thought there was something interesting that we could combine and that it would be more of a design element. And they came back with different iterations, but many different iterations. And they came up with this one and it was the one that I loved and it was the first one that I had an emotional connection to. And I would say that wasn't the case for everyone. It was polarizing. And people either loved it or they didn't. And I really loved it.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, Chris and I put in $2 million, and we also were funding the beginnings of it. And that was everything from the branding. We worked with a company called Modco to work on our logo and to actual setting up the production in Hong Kong. And Chris had experience with that. We set up our Hong Kong office at before anything.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I remember it was really around 2003 when I decided that I wanted to start something and it was a year of very intense everything to get the idea of the company together.”
2023-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tory Burch: Tory Burch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT