Serena & Lily

“I said to the new owner, the new majority shareholder, I said, listen, this brand needs someone who can really scale it, and I hadn't really spent enough time with my children at this point, and I wanted to spend more time with them, and so I kind of said I'd …”

“We had a 70% cumulative average growth rate over a seven-year period, and honestly, to Sand Hill Road, Like, we were a slow grower.”

“100% wholesale. We had about 600 to 800 stores. We had zero online. We didn't even have a shopping cart on our website, so there was no direct-to-consumer happening for us”

“I always kept Serena as my 50% partner, and we booked this infusion, if you will, as a due to Lily Cantor, so that we had a liability on our books, but not.”

“Now, keep in mind, we haven't taken a salary now for three and a half years”

“One of our other major investor on Sandhill Road came up with the capital. They actually put the money into the company on top of our cap stack, on top of the capital chart, At a very heavy duty preference of a two X preferred participating, very gnarly securi…”

“Well, initially I stayed on in my role, but my role was redefined. And I lasted maybe six months, and then I left and had essentially a part-time role that was external.”

“They're asking for a controlling interest in your company for a 17% of your equity, you know.”

“We got the name of an agent that can help us in Los Angeles find a printing source that can print our fabric for us. So we literally, you know, talked him into Taking a risk that we were going to be this multi multi-million dollar brand one day, and can you pl…”

“I mean, Serena chased down every one of her friends, and I would say half the money came in from Serena's friends, half the money came in from my friends, and we raised the money in a 17 day sprint.”

“And meanwhile, our investors want us to take the acquisition offer regardless of the egregious terms, including, ah, owning our name, image, and likeness in perpetuity.”

“I had a thought about what a nursery should feel like, and nurseries were not approached the way that felt right to me, and so design relates to a feeling, right? It doesn't matter if it's the bumper, if it's textiles, if it's artwork, what should it feel like…”

“We spun it out as a separate company. We were fifty-fifty owners. I told Serena I'd put 50,000 dollars into this business. We'd be equal partners.”

“The first year we were direct-to-consumer, we did five million dollars. The second year we were in direct-to-consumer, we did ten million. It doubled. That third year we were in direct to consumer, it went to twenty million. Like, we had a five, 10, 20 sprint.”

“And oh shit, there's a financial meltdown that literally took out 50% Of our wholesale channel. Shut down.”

“In fact, Maveron, who was, you know, came from the money of Starbucks, they told us that if Starbucks had walked in their door right now, they wouldn't fund them.”

“Listen, we, the board could have voted to sell the company because they had enough votes around the table that were incentivized to sell the company. The problem is that the acquisitions were requiring us to sign three year employment contracts.”

“At the time, we sold everything as a three-piece crib set, which was the bumper, the sheet, and the dust ruffle. And the dust ruffle, ok. Yeah. It was very premium crib bedding, and we had a minimum order requirement of four crib sets, so it was basically a mi…”

“I had an assistant who was block printing, and I swear I was losing money on every order because it had to be pretty perfect and contiguous yardage.”

“She came over and started working full time for Serena and Lily, and she I think they use the word screen scraped. She screen scraped the entire internet for every retailer that would be the right place to get our crib bedding into their store and produce mail…”

“Was it the right choice for our first store? Probably not, but you know what? It put us on the map with every, a major media, New York.”

“So, we're like, hey, why don't we call all of them? And let them know that we are in an oversold situation with our initial production, and if they would like to guarantee their order, they would have to provide us a 50% deposit on their order. And the oversol…”

“Wendy Bellissimo, who had a, probably, 600, possibly 800 independent specialty stores selling her, Beautiful premium crib bedding. Literally faxed down her entire independent channel, thanking them for their amazing patronage for the last X number of years, an…”