Jun 17, 2019 · 42m · how-i-built-this
Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu (2017)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 'How I Built This,' host Guy Raz speaks with Mei Xu, who shares how she immigrated from China, innovated scented candle design in her kitchen, and scaled Chesapeake Bay Candle into a $75 million global business.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 28.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 1.3 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 0.1 Guy pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:55 Defending non-traditional design background
Mei politely counters Guy's skepticism about designing candles despite diplomat training, explaining that her foundational art education directly transferred.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 16:55 Challenging design qualificationsGuy gently presses Mei on how she could design high-end home products when she was trained as a diplomat rather than a designer.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:56 Explaining candle chemistry and soot causesMei corrects oversimplified assumptions about candle making by explaining the delicate interplay between wick size, vessel, pigment, fragrance, and wax.
Guy holds their own ▶ 34:55 Framing immigrant risk-taking as innate entrepreneurshipGuy synthesizes Mei's business trajectory by proposing that her perspective as a naive immigrant gave her an inherent competitive edge.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growing Up in China and Political Reassignment | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz sets up the historical context of 1970s China and Tiananmen Square. Mei Xu explains the reality of state reassignment to a mineral warehouse in a remote northern suburb. | |
| Arrival in America and First Cultural Impressions | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Mei shares humorous and perceptive anecdotes about arriving at Dulles Airport, misinterpreting immigration signs, and spotting the disconnect between fashion and homeware at Bloomingdale's. | |
| First Trade Show and the Charlotte Glow Candle Hit | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Mei details selecting product categories before the internet era and attending the Charlotte trade show where glowing stained-glass candles accounted for ninety percent of orders. | |
| New York Gift Show Failure and Frankfurt Design Epiphany | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | When Guy suggests she lacked formal design credentials, Mei clarifies how her childhood immersion in art and international trade fairs informed her aesthetic intuition for candle designs. | |
| Campbell Soup Experiments and Naming Chesapeake Bay Candle | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Mei educates Guy on the precise chemistry and five interdependent components of scented candle making, describing how a mistake with Campbell's soup cans created their signature snowflake texture. | |
| Mid-Roll Break and Target Conflict Preview | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Mei details securing her initial Bloomingdale's order and having her sister build a dedicated manufacturing factory from scratch in entrepreneurial China. | |
| The Target Breakthrough and High-Stakes Logistics | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Mei shares the stressful process of breaking into Target, accidentally alienating a buyer, and turning over 20 containers in an unlit warehouse using car headlights. | |
| Domestic Manufacturing, the White House, and Newell Acquisition | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Mei reflects on why domestic manufacturing matters and recounts her White House meeting advising President Obama on job creation as an immigrant entrepreneur. | |
| How You Built That: Regrained Upcycled Snack Bars | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Dan Kurzrock outlines the founding of Regrained, recounting how he and his co-founder turned spent brewery grain into upcycled snack bars after solving texture issues. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Xu: Uniform living conditions in 1970s China eliminated jealousy and fostered contentment
“When we grow up, there was absolutely nothing. Everyone wore the same thing. Everyone would be eating the same food. Everyone had the same small apartment. Life was very happy in the sense that you don't have to be jealous of each other. You don't have to be w…”
Xu: Chinese authorities assigned her to guard an export mineral warehouse
“They assigned me, ah, to a northern city, very cold, not even a city, a suburb. My job for the whole year is going to be, ah, watching a warehouse for minerals that are going to be for export.”
Xu: 1990s department store home decor was disconnected from modern fashion
“And then I would always end in a home department, and it would always give me a lot of questions, because it would look like it's in the 19 twenties. Furnitures were very ornate. It has a lot of very, you know, gilded finish. And then the plates are like Laura…”
Mei Xu: Market research cannot prove an idea until product launch
“There's no amount of research that can prove an idea. But there's one thing you can always do, which is to take your product to the market.”
Mei Xu: Chesapeake Bay Candle generated nearly $500K in first 4 months
“We probably will take 50% margin on them, so it was almost half a million dollars of business we did in four months.”
Xu: Design trends trickle down from fine art to home decor
“So it started from a very high level of art, and then it trickles down to fashion, and finally it goes to home.”
Mei Xu: Candle manufacturing requires balancing five interdependent components
“If you want to make it a business and you want to make sure it doesn't burn someone's house down, you actually have to study how to make it because a candle is both a piece of art and a lot of science. It's Five things that are interacting with each other. It'…”
Mei Xu: Consumers buy scented candles to signal a clean home
“Many people say the reason why they burn fragrance is the finishing touch to cleaning their home. When they want to finish and sense that the home is ready for their, you know, friends and family to come for entertaining, or when their husband and children com…”
China lacked domestic home fragrance and chemical compounding facilities in the 1990s
“I was frustrated because at that time, China did not have a home fragrance industry. To produce that kind of oil, you need a chemical compounding facility, and they were not used to that. They used to sell their cinnamons and their jasms overseas. The French a…”
Xu: Candle buyers smell candles from the bottom where oils settle
“Candle buyers Usually want to smell the candles from the bottom. That's when the oil settle into the bottom, and you smell the most from the bottom.”
Xu: Target's first Chesapeake Bay Candle order exceeded $1 million
“That order ended up being over a million dollars, and the forecast for the year ended up being over three million dollars.”
Xu: Immigrants inherently share key entrepreneurial traits like risk tolerance
“I think immigrants are self-selected group. They are self-selected group that is very big on taking risks. In some ways, they have the same traits as entrepreneurs already. Instead of taking what's easy, what's already familiar, They choose the unfamiliar, the…”
White House invited Xu alongside Ford and Intel in 2012
“In 2012 I was creating jobs in the United States because of our factory and the President's office Took note, and he invited 13 of the biggest manufacturers, such as Ford, Intel and I was invited because I was a small business, and I was giving advice as to wh…”
Raz: Newell Brands acquired Chesapeake Bay Candle for $75M in 2017
“About a year after we spoke, in the fall of 2017, May actually decided to sell the company. She wound up making a pretty good deal with Newell Brands. It's a New Jersey-based business that also owns Yankee Candle. The purchase price? Seventy-five million dolla…”