YouSaid · the spoken record

Vicki and Rich Fulop

lines on the record: 138
first: 2020-04-20
most recent: 2020-04-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“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 Ibuel This or at GuyRaz. This episode was produced by Deba Motasham with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. Thanks also to Candace Lim, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Rainy Toll. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this. This is NPR If you're looking for your next binge watch or you want the latest on all the big movies and albums, NPRs, pop culture, happy hour has you covered. Every weekday we are your guide to all things entertainment. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A bad idea actually, but I don't know. I think I'll save that one for someone else. You know, again, luck that I went for this one and not that one. Who knows? One of those sliding doors moment, I guess, of what could have happened. But you never know.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vicki and Rich Fullup, co founders of Brooklyn. And by the way, do you have any, I don't know, any regrets about the hot dog by getting? Do it, you could sell the hot dog by gets in your brick and mortar store in So”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but it's stopping that person in the street and emailing them. I think part of it try to give that back also. I think Rich especially takes a lot of coffee meetings because he always talks about all the people that when he reached out to them gave him advice. So, you know, he and I both try to pee that forward.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, look, we didn't raise a ton of money out of the gates. So I think to answer a question, it's probably 50-50. If Dave didn't leave the business when he did, then Vicky couldn't have come on and taking a salary, which means we might not have been able to continue if that hadn't happened. Like you said, if I hadn't had that quick conversation with Neil and a thousand other conversations that I've had with other entrepreneurs along the way to find out little tidbits.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a mix. I mean, I think it's lucky there's some things that are crazy lucky like that Rich ran into Neil Blumenthal and he suggested that he look at banks like that's crazy luck But a lot of it was working really hard and talking to people and trying to get the word out like day in, day out, pound the pavement. So that part I can't say is lucky. It was just, you know, just doing it.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How much of your journey and your success do you tribute to both of you your intelligence and artwork and how much do you think it's because of luck?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be fine. Thankfully, you know, we don't have a big part of our business that's exposed to our brick and mortar stores or to wholesale channels. We don't sell in the big box stores or the department stores, which are clearly suffering as This is a lot of people are at home and thinking about their home environments and their comfort from their workspace or their bed, whatever it is. So it's not like we're going to fall off the face of the earth. Obviously, as a CEO, I'm always thinking about the worst case scenario. And what if? But it's not something that's like newly keeping me up at night in light of this stuff.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'll add that there are some areas I think, Rich, you know, loungewear, we had a couple launches, things that we were going to come out with that we're not going to be able to launch it. But we're just going to communicate with our customers and let them know what's going on, you know. That's all we can do. And humanity is, especially in a difficult time, I think generally really understanding and trying to. Support each other as best they can, and that's what we're trying to do too.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate that we've prepared for this a long time. We actually 2017 and half of 2018 were not profitable. And then we turned that ship in the second half of 2018 towards a focus on profitability kind of back to our roots. And the goal was really to control our own destiny. So right now we're in a decent spot, but who knows how long this will last?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, Yeah. So last year, 2019, your revenue hit, I think, close to $100 million. It's just incredible. I mean, you started this in 2014. It's just insane. We are now in the beginning of a very different and uncertain period. We don't know how long we're going to be inside. We don't know what's going to happen to our economy. We don't know if this is going to be worse. We don't know. Are there ways you can kind of build resiliency into your business now to mitigate some of the challenges? Because there is, I mean, there is going to be a slowdown for your business, like with every other business.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was going to say, you know, we consider a category to be comfort and at home. It's not necessarily bath. It's not necessarily betting or it's not necessarily apparel. It's just kind of you in your home and everything around you. We want to own that experience from when you get home from work and you change into your comfortable clothes. You know, you watch some TV, you go to bed, you wake up, click that entire experience of just being comfortable in your house. It's not really about like, oh, how do we make the next buck? Let's launch this product. That's not how we think about it at all. We survey our customers. We see what they want from us and what they're looking for. Spaces, for example, was a product of our customers repeatedly asking us about props on our photo shoots that were like kind of secondary in the picture. It's like, ooh, where's that cool bed frame from or that night table or that vase? It's really like, oh, you're interested in that. We will figure out a way to bring it to you.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Loungewear, and you've got this whole spaces by Brooklin where you curate really cool. I've checked it out, some really cool furniture and lighting that you also sell. I mean, it's smart, right? Because a company that just sticks with the one thing that they make once a bunch of competitors come in, it can be hard to compete. Is that the thinking? Like, you want to kind of be more than just about sheets. You want people to think of you as a home decor or like a lifestyle brand.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You built this initially on bedsheets, and now you offer up different kinds of bedsheets and duvets and pillows, and you've got”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had an advantage in hindsight. The fact that we were trained on a shoestring with no money to fund the business from the get-go, the bones of the business and the unit economics and the margins and everything were really, really good and built well because they had to be in the early days because we didn't have that extra money. So we had our hands on the dials at all times”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. We got on the drug really, really quickly with that after we raised our Series A. And it was not a fatal mistake to the business, but it was certainly a point in time that was not one that was easy for me as the CEO. We dropped into the negative in terms of our EBITDA at that moment. And that was really anxious times because, again, I came from a business where I was counting money at the end of the day with my father, singles that was bought sandwiches and lottery tickets of like.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you guys on your own were making a profit because it was your money, you were sending it out, money was coming back in, you couldn't waste money. You had to be really careful with it. Did you find yourself after you raised a lot of money that you were spending more than you were bringing in?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you needed to go out and raise money for the big money. So you do that. And I mean, I think that year was almost 50 million in revenue. And you went on to open a brick-and-mortar store in Soho. You're now... I think you went on to raise another $50 million just this past year in 2020. Let me ask you about that. I mean, is it, you know, when you're running a smaller. Enterprise, right? When you bring on a lot of capital, that means a bigger marketing budget and a bigger, just a bigger budget to do more stuff. And it also means for a lot of companies, you're going to spend more. You're actually not going to be profitable”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, so you were doing so much work with third party logistics teams, right? Because you couldn't afford to hire people. You needed the capital. And this is important because no bank is very, I mean, probably almost no bank was going to say, here's $10 million. Here's a $10 million loan. You just were not able to. No one can get that. That's almost impossible”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not big, but it was something to help us pump into inventory, and we had a skeleton crew running, so we had to hire some people. Our core team. They just kind of saw, helped us build it from the beginning and super nimble, super lean values of just kind of make it work and roll up your sleeves.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I passed him on the street walking by one day, and I stopped him on the street because I recognized him. Pitched my idea and I told him in literally a three-minute convo, I asked him, I was like, hey, here's my situation. How did you get out of the gates and raise money so fast? And so like, how'd you make them finances work? And he's like, we didn't. It was really, really hard. We ended up going to New Jersey and other states and talking to community banks and whoever was willing to talk to us about loans and just figuring out a way. Don't be attracted by the shiny VC light. There's other ways to get capital. That was one of like quick education I got from Neil in literally five minutes on the street from somebody I'd never met before but respected his business a lot. You know, we got a bank loan that was”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of had to. We were a victim of our own success at that point with the demand rising. We had to buy into more inventory. We were expanding our product mix. So at that point, we had multiple lines of. We're also still six or seven people at that moment. So, you know, kind of doing whatever we could and everyone's wearing a lot of hats. I had one of those critical moments actually also that stood out of my mind at a time when I had trouble fundraising until we kind of hit our stride. I passed Neil Blumenthal from Warby Parker, who I don't”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what I'm wondering. You did this all on your own. I mean, bootstrap this thing. And in March of twenty seventeen, you actually went out and raised ten million dollars from VC firms who I'm sure were beating down your door. Maybe some of the same firms who were kind of giving you the cold shoulder or just dismissing you just a few months before. Why did you decide to take outside money at that point in March of 2017?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It made us work very efficiently, and I think go as far as we could until we had to bring someone on. We brought an intern on who ended up being the first employee at the company. He jumped in as a jack of all trades also, helping with customer service tickets, figuring out Facebook, searching for a developer. But we were doing everything ourselves until we could find someone else.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it was really trial by fire at that moment. I had to learn really quickly how to do the books and I'm self-taught on all of that stuff to this day. And I have a really good handle of the business. But it was actually another thing that kind of worked in our favor because we had very little money and very little skill on this front, but we just had to know how far every dollar went. We were not venture-backed or anything. So every dollar count”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did everything ourselves So Rich went out and did find us a 3PL, a third partner for warehouse and logistics. Third part logistics. Third party logistics so that we weren't paying for our space in Greenpoint anymore. We were working out of our apartment. that freed up our time to be a little bit more effective in getting the word out and operating.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That must have been intense right then as you're starting to kind of get some traction. But it sounds like you hit cruising altitude really fast. I mean, I think 2015, you did three-quarters of a million dollars in revenue in that year. How are you managing? I mean, at what point did you get a fulfillment center and people to help out? I mean, I'm assuming even with $750,000 revenue, you can't hire lots of people because most of that money is going to make more product. But how are you dealing with the demand?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's three of us at this time. It was me, Vicky, and And then actually we came out of the gates and we had a wildly successful launch. And then that is when David resigned, actually. He went through with the launch. Well, his girlfriend at time wanted to move back to San Francisco where she'd grown up and had roots. And he had a difficult choice to make. And he moved out to the West Coast with her to pursue a family life with her. And it was one of those moments that was very, very critical to the future of the business because Vicki was not pulling a salary at that point for us, so I was, and David and I were pulling very small salaries. We had prorated $50,000 or so we gave to ourselves at that moment.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's just, I mean, how did you deal with that? Did your website crash? This is still the four of you, right, running this company.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we built up a lot of buzz ahead of launch. We're launching next week. Here we come. We had a landing page. We had a countdown. We had a lot of stuff. We tried to just bottle up as much of what we could and then execute as soon as we went live. And we spread the word. And Vicki wrangled all the media and had him lined up to go live right when the site did and all in concert. And we just blasted through our inventory. And it was a really funny moment because we were so excited that we had a few hundred orders and we're high fiving and celebrating. And then we realized we had no more inventory to sell for the next month or two. We had nothing on order because we didn't realize how replenishment works and forecasting and different things.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's amazing What I'm wondering about is when you launched, right, I read that you actually sold out a seven-month inventory in four days. Like there was a clamor for this.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I promise you that the next order will be twice as big if you just give me time and the flexibility to sell this down. Just take a chance on me because it's pretty small at this point. And they did. They believed in me. And they sent it without us sending them a dollar.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were out of money. We were over. We had to make it work somehow. And we kind of were constantly shuffling the deck. It took, I got back on a plane alone to go back to the factory in Israel and talk to them. And I said, hey, we want to scale this thing up. And ultimately, I convinced them to front us the inventory without paying and give us some sort of favorable terms. And I said,”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just out of curiosity, you raised $236,000 from Kickstarter. Some of that went to Kickstarter. The rest of it, you had to pay to manufacture all this stuff. How close were you to running out of money?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, we had to because we really wanted to launch the business on ecom and have a real standalone business, not just the Kickstarter flash in the pan. And we knew time was not on our side because we had momentum at that point and we would be kind of kind of. Out of it if we wait too long.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we would just tear open boxes and hope to see if it was the right size and be climbing all over. This whole room was filled essentially to the ceiling, like packed to the gills with boxes and pallets. And we're literally climbing on top of these mountains of boxes, tearing them open, and hoping that it's the right size and color in there. It was just a comedy of errors.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we were building the boxes ourselves, putting the handles into the box. Each box, we built a little assembly line. It was me, Rich, David, and David's girlfriend Tina, who's helping us out very generously, donating her time. And yeah, we were building each box, packing the sheets into the box. We also really wanted to make tote bags to package the sheets in. And we thought that, you know, it was like an eco-friendly way to send people their sheets instead of sticking them into plastic. So we were taking the plastic covers off, putting the sheets into these tote bags, putting the tote bags into the box, taping the box”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, eventually the sheets presumably get released. You've got 1,700 to fulfill. And you just get like, is it all prepackaged? You just have to take them off the pallets and put a shipping label off and just send them out to people.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The worst thing you can do from a customer service standpoint, and we learned this lesson very early is just say nothing, honestly, and just go dark and under communicate. That just frustrates people and always better to overcommunicate.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I can't remember. Rich might have even taken a picture at the shipping dock to at least share with customers and say, like, hey, we're stuck in customs. We're trying. People were appreciative that at least, you know, they knew where their stuff was, even if they were really delayed in getting it.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So I got a zip car in the city. I went from Jersey. I drove to the shipping yard. Honestly, I don't know if anyone's ever seen on the New Jersey turnpike, you see you pass all those containers. I drove in there, and that complex is huge. And I was just banging on the door, and I'm like, somewhere in this yard of thousands of containers, I need to find mine and get it out of here. Like, tell me what I need to do. Ultimately, found a way to get it released, and it cost us probably two weeks, which was very frustrating from a customer relations standpoint because we promised we'd be fulfilling and we were late. And that's the last thing you want to do with the consumer is have their money.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no idea. All kinds of paperwork. I didn't know what a bill of lading was at that time or a commercial invoice to declare. There's just a lot of complications with logistics. We had just no idea what we're doing. We told them, you know, send us the paperwork and put it on the boat and we'll go collect it. So we didn't really understand kind of the scale of what we ordered for these customers.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep. So we end the Kickstarter finished in May 22nd. We were on course to fulfill in 90 days, which we promised on our Kickstarter page would have been August. But of course, whatever can go wrong does go wrong. We're all set to go. But then all the goods came in and we didn't have our import bonds in place. We didn't even know what that was to legally be able to import goods into the country. So all of our goods were seized at the ports in August.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. So basically, this was going to be a big money loser. You didn't realize it at the time, but you get $236,000 in. Obviously Kickstarter gets its cut, but you're left with this money, and now you've got the money. To do a legitimate production run. And by the way, how many people did you have to send bedsheets to?”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, our goal was $50,000 on Kickstarter. And the way we thought about that was we want to get a really aggressive number so that if we don't hit it, like we know there's no interest or we really have something here.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we're all packing and boxing. We chose queen size for everybody. It was the whole production run because 65% of beds are queens. So we figure we'll play the odds that this is what they need. So we boxed them all up in the apartment, 60 sets and handwritten notes. We rented a U-Haul van and we had like this itinerary of all these addresses up 6th Avenue and Third Avenue of where all the journalists are and we just pull up in front of the mail room. We hustle in, drop off the packages with the notes and then continue on and cross our fingers.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a piece that was skipped also was how we got in front of these people is pretty funny. Oh, yes. So I remember yesterday where Vicky, me, David, and David's girlfriend at the time, Tina, who is now his wife, we're in an apartment and Vicki's writing these handwritten notes.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, what people don't realize, myself included and most people is that just, you know, journalists and writers aren't just discovering things on their own and spinning their wheels to figure out something to write about. They're pitched constantly and they are self-select what they want to write about. It's funny, we talk about this, my mom to this day whenever we get a PR placement. Vicki works in our teamwork really hard to get those placements. And they're like, how did the Wall Street Journal know to write about you guys? That's amazing. It's like, that's not really how it works.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The plan was okay, we're gonna get a set of samples of basically sheet sets that we are gonna give away in hopes that these writers would actually like our product enough to then write about the fact that we were doing a Kickstarter to raise money to launch our business”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why don't we come back in just a moment? How the first big shipment of Brooklyn sheets got stuck at a shipping yard in New Jersey and why sending those sheets off to customers became a major pain in the butt. Stay with us, I'm Guy Ross, and you're listening to how I built this from NPR Hey, welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Ross. So it's April 2014 and Vicki Rich and their remaining partner David Fortune are trying to get Brooklyn in off the ground. They're low on money and the clock is running down, so they decide to launch a Kickstarter campaign. But first, they want to generate some buzz about the brand, so they reach out to some influential publications and writers.”
2020-04-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT