Chicago

“In 1990, we built a flagship store in Chicago, which really helped launch our expansion because then every landlord, every shopping mall wanted a crate and barrel building. And we were a big attraction because we drew in a lot of customers. And what happened s…”

“And in this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build What's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the busine…”

“And then February of 63, I remember, was probably one of the snowiest months in Chicago's history, and we had one day where we did eight dollars, and the whole month was only 2000 dollars.”

“I just traded in the day, and then I would go home at night, and I was working on my own web browser.”

“In this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build what's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the business.”

“So after that first Summer, I had almost every major retail florist in the city of Chicago.”

“We partner with groups in Atlanta and Chicago. That give books to incarcerated people and also give books for free to students.”

“I just started selling the stuff that I already had in my collection, kind of like whittling it down and what can I get rid of and what's worth a lot. And through doing that, I made, I don't know, Probably five grand, but I moved to Chicago with that much mone…”

“The Proliferation of clones was undermining the foundation of the business model. The business model was based on scarcity. It was based on the novelty of one of these things existing per day in a city, and when you have 50 different Groupons in Chicago, all o…”

“The number one key thing for why we beat them, all of the folks in Chicago. Is we were only in Chicago. Everyone else was distracted with all these other cities. Even the companies based in Chicago, they were focused outside of Chicago.”

“Yeah, I mean, it was about 5000 dollars worth of parking tickets.”

“Once we were in 12, 25 Old Town, the snowball started to form, and we ended up adding eight new locations a month. And then ultimately, Guy, we grew to 250 locations in Chicago over the course of, call it, three years.”

“Ultimately we had advantages there. Drew is from Chicago, I am as well. We had some relationships with real estate owners Drew specifically did that would help us get some early wins, but this was a hard business. And as we thought about who to hire, who we co…”

“Our cost for a driver was 60% higher than Chicago.”

“And we looked at our revenue and it had only gone down by two percent.”

“But I think the year was 2016, and I believe there were 55 new buildings coming up in Chicago. And guy, I think we were in 53 of the 55.”