Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal offered half of Crate & Barrel for $10,000 before opening
“I spent six months running around to everyone I knew who had any wealth and offering them half the business for 10,000 dollars.”
Insight
Segal: Youth and lack of wisdom are advantages in entrepreneurship
“The value of being very young is you have a lot of energy and passion and no wisdom. And so being that young was a great advantage”
Insight
Segal: Direct European importing enables significantly lower retail pricing for unique goods
“Obviously, the motivation of going into business was to find beautiful things for other young people, but if we could buy things from Europe directly and just mark them up normally as if you bought them domestically, not take a big margin, but take a short mar…”
Disclosure
Gordon Segal failed to sell 50% of Crate & Barrel for $10,000
“And I spent six months running around to everyone I knew who had any wealth and offering them half the business for 10,000 dollars.
There was no such thing as venture capital in those days.
There was no such things as startups in those days.
Yeah.
And I litera…”
Insight
Segal: Youth and lack of wisdom are great advantages for entrepreneurs
“I mean, the value of being very young is you have a lot of energy and passion and no wisdom.
And so being that young was a great advantage, and we had no children.”
Insight
Crate & Barrel's core thesis: direct European sourcing with standard domestic markups
“Obviously, the motivation of going into business was to find beautiful things for other young people, but if we could buy things from Europe directly, and just mark them up normally as if you bought them domestically, not take a big margin, but take a short ma…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal's father provided a $7,000 loan to launch Crate & Barrel
“The only person who gave us the money was my father, who lent us 7000 dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal: Crate & Barrel accidentally sold half its early inventory at cost
“And we had ended up, because we didn't know how to price merchandise, about half the product we sold at cost.”
Disclosure
Segal: Landlords funded store build-outs during Crate & Barrel's expansion
“And what happened starting in that big expansion was landlords started paying for a lot of the build out of the store.
Building of the building and whatever.
So we didn't have to take as much of our financial risk ourselves, because the landlords built these s…”
Disclosure
Segal: Crate & Barrel sold two-thirds to Otto Group in 1998
“And in 98, we sold them about two thirds of the company.
And 10 years later, and the contract was for 10 years, we sold them the rest of the third company.”
Assertion Supported
Crate & Barrel generates about $1.2 billion annually with 7,000 employees
“It's about 1.2 billion a year. And we went from one employee and out of 7000.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal: Crate & Barrel sold half its initial inventory at cost
“And we had ended up, because we didn't know how to price merchandise, about half the product we sold at cost.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal: Every store opened from 1962 to 1971 was a bet-the-company risk
“Every store we opened between our opening in 62, our first built store in 65, our Plaza de Lago store in 68 our Oak Brook store in 71, every time was betting the company.”
Insight
Gordon Segal: Crate & Barrel needed massive scale for exclusive distribution
“Well, we reached a different era where it was important to have scale to do the things we had to do with buying merchandise. So you had a guarantee to a factory you'd buy a certain amount of a product to make sure we were the only people in the United States t…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Gordon Segal: Crate & Barrel's 1990 flagship made them a mall anchor
“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…”
Disclosure
Segal: Crate & Barrel sold two-thirds stake to Otto Group in 1998
“In 98, we sold them about two thirds of the company. And 10 years later, and the contract was for 10 years, we sold them the rest of the third.”
Disclosure
Segal: Crate & Barrel tripled size and quintupled profits post-acquisition
“And our success was we tripled the size of the company, we quintupled the profits of the company, and we were able to grow.”
Disclosure
E-commerce drove 40 percent of Crate & Barrel sales by 2017
“And early on, then we started developing our internet business, which today represents about 38 to four percent of all the sales at Crate and Barrel.”
Assertion Supported
Crate & Barrel ultimately grew to $1.2 billion in annual retail sales
“It's about 1.2 billion a year. And we went from one employee and out of 7000.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Segal: Crate & Barrel generated only $2,000 in sales in February 1963
“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.”
