You had a successful career as a supermodel. What inspired you to go into business for yourself?
I did okay as a model – I wouldn't say I was "super", although I worked for some publications that were super. At the time I was modeling there were many other models out there I would consider to be supermodels. I was occasionally seen and rarely heard. I was told I had a voice that could "Kill small animals". But I think it was a blessing that I wasn't super as a model because I never felt I could count on that.
Modeling wasn't what I aspired to do – it wasn't my passion, but I'm grateful for the experiences it gave me, like being exposed to people of all cultures. I knew modeling would be short term for me. Although I would have liked to do some celebrity endorsements, no one was offering them to me.
I was involved and interested in business before my modeling career. I saw modeling as a way to save money to go to college and to save capital for a business.
You started out designing a sock collection and expanded into home furnishings, rugs, lighting, art and upholstery. What was your motivation for expanding into home décor?
We started out with socks – I thought,"Let's take something very basic like socks with innovative fashion designs" – if women embraced the socks, then we would be successful.
When we first started out, my Creative Director, Jon Carrasco and I loaded up our backpacks and started knocking on doors to try to sell our socks. We had a lot of doors slammed in our faces and were told, "It will never work. It's never been done before." We ended up sleeping in airports to save money. When people say to me, "Sleeping in airports, that must have been quite a sacrifice", I reply "That wasn't a sacrifice. Sacrifice is not doing what is your passion."
I believe that to succeed you need to turn down the noise, the negativity, and move forward. You must know an awful lot about whom you're going to work with. We really made it a point to scrutinize our potential partners, even to the extent of pulling surprise inspections – and we encourage our partners to scrutinize us just as thoroughly.
We've now sold over 100 million pairs of socks, and our mission has been to help working moms, so home furnishings and design were a natural progression for the business. I believe that all moms are working moms – whether they get a paycheck or not. Our customers come to us because they need a solution and they need it now.
I understand that you use your home as a testing lab of sorts for new products you've designed. How important of a role does your home play in your day-to-day business activities? Is that role growing or diminishing as your business continues to grow?
In fact, all of my team members use their homes as testing labs as well. The kids just love it. When I started testing products at home I was testing rugs, and I had my kids take all the gross things out of the refrigerator and "have at it". We build forts with furniture and have pillow fights to make sure the furnishings are durable, but I have to make sure the kids know that it's not okay to jump around on the furniture at someone else's house whenever they're visiting others. After all, their furniture may not have been designed to withstand the abuse.
Testing at home is a lot of fun and it's useful for discovering what types of improvements need to be made to our products.
