The Exchanges

Q And he moves you guys to the Bay Area, to Walnut Creek, California. First of all, why did he choose to go there? Did you have relatives in that area?

A So we had an English teacher in Iran whose brother lived in Walnut Creek. And I remember to this day when he picked us up from the airport and driving over the Bay Bridge, and we were two kids, my brother and I, my mom and dad, And I remember distinctly that the guy kept turning around and looking at us, and I kept asking my parents, why is he, like, looking at us? Now, of course, you know, when I was 16, I learned how to drive. We learned that that's what you do when you're changing lanes. So those were kinds of the, you know, and then other things that I remember is that I remember right when we got here, we just didn't want to be apart from each other, and we went to Montgomery Awards, and we bought blankets and pillows, and even though we had three rooms in the apartment, we all huddled up around the TV with the blankets and the pillows in one room together, the four of us, and none of us wanted to use the other rooms. We just wanted to be together because it already felt like we had, like, left our home, and now we were, like, gonna be in separate rooms. So it was just, um, it was very lonely when we first got here.

AI assessment note: “we had an English teacher in Iran whose brother lived in Walnut Creek.”

Q Alright, so you're a ten-year-old kid in the U.S., um, new country. Um, how was your English at the time? Did you, did you have, I mean, you had gone to a Catholic school in Tehran, so did you already speak English?

A You know, it's really, um, that's a great question because when I got here, I actually felt like I didn't speak English at all, barely, and I remember that I used to, um, mix up the word want and have, and it was so difficult for me. When I got here, I was in fourth grade, and my parents put me into school, and I remember that I pretty much didn't understand anything that the teacher said. And at one, and I had really poor eyesight, and my parents didn't know that, because on top of not speaking the language, I didn't want to be called for eyes, so I didn't want to tell them that I couldn't see. So, um, it was a pretty miserable, um, move for me. I felt really, um, out of place, and the kids laughed at me all the time. I felt very different.

AI assessment note: “I actually felt like I didn't speak English at all, barely”

Q And you were selling mainly to, to businesses, presumably, right?

A Yes. I, I was selling software and hardware, actually, at that point, to other businesses. I mean, the training that I got in, in marketing and sales was amazing. I remember walking into one company, into SAS San Francisco with my sales manager, and she said, Kat, you've got to walk into this account with me. And we walked in, she says, watch, they kick me out every time. And we walk in, they say, hello, Mrs. Johnson. And she'd say, hello. And she'd say, as you know, I'm Gail Johnson from IBM. And they'd say, yes, we know, and you know where the door is. And she would walk me in, she'd say, I just want you to know, you should never be afraid of that happening to you.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I, I was selling software and hardware, actually, at that point, to other businesses.”

Q What did you do? Did you, did you have a shop?

A I had a corner spot in front of the Orbit Room Cafe, um, where there's a Whole Foods now in Upper Market, because we lived in San Francisco at that point, and I had a flower stand, and we did weddings, and catering, and all that, you know, so, um, it was a nice little business, but your inventory dying, and then also your cash would disappear, because Um, you'd have people that were working the shifts, various people, and it had a big turnover of employees. So, uh, your cash would somehow, like, not be what you thought at the end of the day. So it, it was a tough thing, and I moved on pretty quickly to other venues.

AI assessment note: “I had a corner spot in front of the Orbit Room Cafe”

Q So clearly you wanted to, you, you started to think about ways you could innovate or grow, and you had experience in silicone plastics, in, in silicone products. Um, you, and, and it sounds like in your mind, you You started to think, what else could I do with silicones, with silicone products?

A Yeah. So my aha moment was definitely, um, as I was trying to make a bag with, um, my, my silicone product and with some fabrics with some friends of mine at Graph and Lance, we were trying to make like a handbag. We were trying to like sew the silicone into a bag and then put a zipper on it. And they were beautiful. But then again, I was going back into the industry that wasn't exciting me anymore, which was the, you know, the high end product. You know, design industry, and I love design, and I love the function of things, but I wanted something that actually could be consumed by the masses that could actually make a difference and sell in volume.

AI assessment note: “my aha moment was definitely, um, as I was trying to make a bag”

Q So around this time, I think it's about 2005. Tell me about how you came up with this idea. What, what's the, yeah, what's the origin story of that company?

A So as I mentioned to you, I, um, created this little PJ pocket hidden product, but I wanted to come up with, I, I had a feeling that people could knock me off pretty easily with a sewn product. So I started searching the internet and, you know, I was starting to think about from my days when I was at my husband's company where there was so much plastic waste, like they would make parts and the part would only be like a 10th of the piece, um, And the rest of it would go on the ground, and it would be wasted, and then it would be thrown in the garbage. And that really sat with me, and I kept thinking, how can, and it had a translucency to it too, and I had a design sense to me. And I thought, there are all these plastic things out in the world. How can I come up with something that is more design-driven, that performs better than plastic?

AI assessment note: “I was starting to think about from my days when I was at my husband's company”

Q Right. How did you, I mean, given that there, there, there were and are, um, products that, that are also silicone bags with the zip top zip, uh, there's a company called zip top. Was it just at a certain point you can't sue them because they're also, I mean, they're, they're changing it enough where they're not violating the patent?

A Yeah. I mean, the, the thing is you also don't want to, you know, I always told my My team this, you know, and, and they know I didn't watch the copiers like they did because my job was to drive forward and to drive really fast, and their job was to look in the rearview mirror and to always make sure we took care of our customers like nobody else, and that we had a culture in our company that cultivated everything that we stood for. And people like, you know, we had millennials in the office. They're no nonsense. If Our office was all about what we wanted to see out in the world, and that just spread like fire. You can't copy that unless you're legit.

AI assessment note: “I didn't watch the copiers like they did because my job was to drive forward”