Jan 8, 2018 · 39m · how-i-built-this
Kate Spade: Kate & Andy Spade (2017)
Kate Spade · 18m spoken Guy Raz · 8m spoken Andy Spade · 6m spoken Dennis Darnell · 35s spoken Cardiff Garcia · 15s spoken
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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 NPR's How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Kate and Andy Spade about their journey from bootstrapping an unconventional burlap handbag line in a cramped New York apartment to building a globally celebrated fashion empire. The founders candidly reflect on their early financial near-collapse, the strategic naming and scaling of the brand, and their decision to gracefully exit corporate fashion to prioritize family.
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 25.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.1 Guest teaching 2.1 Guest disagreement 0.1 Guy pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 32:07 Gentle correction on legal name change
Kate mildly pushes back when Guy suggests she changed her name to Kate Valentine, clarifying she merely appended Frances Valentine to distinguish the new brand.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 24:46 Guy presses on the strategic turning pointGuy presses the Spades to identify whether an intentional business decision turned the company around or if success was entirely organic discovery.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 32:07 Kate explains trademark and naming nuancesKate educates Guy on how she structured her personal name and new brand identity to avoid stepping on trademark toes with the original company.
Guy holds their own ▶ 26:34 Guy cites the $30 million Neiman Marcus dealGuy introduces reported financial terms showing exact deal figures of Neiman Marcus acquiring 56% of the company for over thirty million dollars.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Beginnings and Moving to New York | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz opens with biographic background and warmly prompts Kate about her move from Arizona to New York. Kate explains her accidental career start at Condé Nast despite poor typing skills in an agreeable, conversational tone. | |
| Andy's Early Ad Career and Arrival in New York | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Andy recounts his arrival in New York, his creative bartering in college, and getting an advertising job through a chance encounter in Grand Central. The host listens attentively and prompts for colorful personal details. | |
| Working at Mademoiselle Magazine | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks Kate about leaving Mademoiselle and what inspired the move to handbags. Kate and Andy share how Andy spotted a gap in the market based on Kate's accessories styling expertise. | |
| First Designs and Sourcing Burlap | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Kate details the scrappy prototyping process, including taping paper mockups and contacting a potato sack supplier in the Yellow Pages for burlap. Guy prompts her on how someone without technical design training learned to construct bags. | |
| Debut at the Javits Center Trade Show | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The guests describe their debut at the Javits Center trade show where low sales caused Kate to want to quit until Andy pointed out orders from Barneys and Fred Segal. Guy asks what caught fashion editors' attention. | |
| Creating the Name Kate Spade | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Kate and Andy discuss naming the company, shipping bags from a loft packed with boxes, and taking subway trips with trash bags full of inventory. Guy asks about the origin of the name and the reaction of Kate's mother. | |
| Bringing on Partners and the Near-Collapse | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The couple discusses exhausting their savings and 401(k) accounts while bringing in equity partners to stay afloat. Guy asks whether they ever reached a breaking point where failure seemed imminent. | |
| Breakthrough: CFDA Award and Retail Expansion | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Andy and Kate explain the turning point when winning the CFDA award led Neiman Marcus and Saks to scale up orders nationwide. Guy asks whether a specific business pivot or organic word of mouth catalyzed the turnaround. | |
| Neiman Marcus Investment and Brand Scaling | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy references Neiman Marcus acquiring a 56% majority stake for over thirty million dollars. Andy and Kate explain the sale served as a personal financial safety net and enabled category expansion into shoes and stationery. | |
| Exiting Kate Spade and Family Priorities | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Kate explains exiting the company fully in 2007 following the birth of her daughter to avoid ownership conflict. Guy inquires about how they managed both marriage and business without straining their relationship. | |
| A New Chapter: Frances Valentine | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Guy asks about launching Frances Valentine and asks if Kate changed her legal name. Kate gently clarifies that she added Frances Valentine rather than abandoning her name, and humorously recounts visiting a Kate Spade store incognito. | |
| Jack Spade and Interview Conclusion | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy wraps up the Spade interview with a brief note on Jack Spade before transitioning into the How You Built That segment featuring Dennis Darnell's fly trap. Dennis describes his invention in a standard narrative format. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Kate Spade: Condé Nast hired me despite poor typing skills
“Condé Nast called, and they have a job in the fashion department. So they ended up hiring me. They didn't want to because I couldn't type, and my boss said, listen, she's great, and I don't need her to type a lot, because we were doing fashion shoots and styli…”
Andy Spade built a college ad agency by bartering for food
“I did start an advertising agency my senior year in college, and so I started trading ads for bartering food, and so I'd go to a restaurant, for example, and I'd bring in the ad that they had running in the local paper, And I would show it to them and say, I t…”
Kate Spade accepted her first New York job for $14,000
“When she got her job offer for 14,000 dollars a year, everything changed.”
Kate Spade: Early 1990s handbags were overly complicated
“At the time, things were very, bags were too complicated, and I really loved very simple kind of architectural shapes, and I would wear these very simple shapes, none of which were famous designers.”
Kate Spade: Giving up a salary creates essential founder scrappiness
“The truth is, you would never have done it had you stayed, because I wouldn't have been as scrappy or as, I mean, it was kind of, you know, do or die, so I think if I had still been working, I would have been like, ah, a little bit more lackadaisical about it,…”
Kate Spade's debut collection was made from potato sack burlap
“I looked in the yellow pages, and I looked up burlap, and I found a potato sack company that was willing to sell to me. And they had three different, you know, weights, and I needed the heaviest weight so that it was, you know, substantial enough for a handbag…”
Kate Spade secured Barneys and Fred Segal at first trade show
“We hadn't even sold enough to cover the cost of the booth, and I started crying, and Andy said, well, who did you get? And I said, well, we got Barney's, and he said, okay, and I said, Fred Siegel in Los Angeles”
Sourcing materials from Yellow Pages prevented mainstream fashion clones
“There's a fabric show in Paris called Premier Vision that all the designers go to, so sometimes you could end up with the same materials. Mine came out of the Yellow Pages, so chances are I wasn't gonna run into any people that had the same materials. So we we…”
Andy Spade invented the brand name reflecting a 50-50 partnership
“Well, that was Andy. Because we were, I was not Kate Spade. I was Kate Brosnahan, and I kept coming up with these names, and Andy kept saying Kate Spade, because we were fifty-fifty partners, and finally I just said, okay, and everyone said, I love it, Kate Sp…”
Kate and Andy Spade took no salary until year four
“Fourth year we paid ourselves 15,000 and we're still working out of our apartment.”
Founders drained their savings and 401(k) to bootstrap Kate Spade
“We had run through our four or one K money. And, you know, all of our savings at that point, we still weren't seeing, you know, a progression that was going to pay us a salary in the next year, in the near future.”
A 50-store department store rollout quadrupled Kate Spade's business
“Either Neiman's or Saks, they were buying for two or three stores, and they said, we're going to buy for all of our stores. And that was 50 stores, or more than 50 stores, and that quadrupled our business.”
Kate Spade never borrowed money to fund operations or inventory
“But we never borrowed a dime, ever.”
Counterfeit Kate Spade bags first appeared on Canal Street in 1998
“And counterfeits started around 98. And we started seeing them on Canal Street.”
Kate and Andy Spade maintained boundaries by working on separate floors
“We actually worked on separate floors for that very reason, because I had a tendency to go into his office, and he'd be on the phone, and I'd say, get off the phone, I have something to tell you, or ask you. And that, we had to really, I had to myself find bou…”