Segal offered half of Crate & Barrel for $10,000 before opening
Gordon Segal · Crate & Barrel: Gordon Segal (2017) · Nov 18, 2019 · at 6:16
Gordon Segal, co-founder of Crate & Barrel, describes the struggle to raise seed capital before opening their first retail location in Chicago in 1962.
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“I spent six months running around to everyone I knew who had any wealth and offering them half the business for 10,000 dollars.”
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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.
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Yeah.
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“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…”