Time Will Tell… "Clocky is very clever," says Gordon Segal of Crate and Barrel (left), seen here examining Gauri Nanda's signature invention. "But you can't build a company or a brand on a single product."
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Case Study #1: The Reluctant Entrepreneur
Published July 2007
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BUY A REPRINTWhen my wife, Carole, and I started Crate and Barrel in 1962, we were at a golden point in time when you could start a company with almost no overhead and few regulations. Forty-five years later, the cost of doing business has gone up much more quickly than price, so today it's more difficult to start a company. We opened our first store with $17,000; today I think it would cost $300,000 to $400,000. Plus, it's harder to be unique today: In the 1960s, very few people traveled internationally. You'd stay in a small hotel in Italy and it would take three days to arrange an international phone call. Now the world has grown much closer, which is great, but it means that products like this face more competition. On the other hand, because there are fewer different stores and more homogeneity in retail today, uniqueness is more highly prized. If you can develop a unique design--something visually or mechanically clever, or something beautiful--you have greater opportunity today than you did then.
More than anything, being a successful start-up entrepreneur is about hard work. You have to be willing to work 12-hour days six days a week for the first five years. We didn't take off a week until 1970. Now people walk into my office looking for a job and they want work-life balance. They ask for three or four weeks of vacation, and I'm saying to myself, "Ha. That's interesting." I don't think you can do a start-up and have a normal life. But it's worth it. I couldn't have done anything else.
Back to Gauri Nanda for some final thoughts:
"Knockoffs are inevitable, but I think the best we can do is penetrate the market quickly with extensive distribution and introduce the next version of the clock when the knockoffs start. We have filed patent applications all over the world and hold the trademark for the Clocky name.
"Whereas this version is designed to appeal to a store like Target, the next version will be attractive to upscale retailers in terms of aesthetics, feature set, and price point. In the long term, our goal is to build the Nanda brand and we have a lot of exciting things planned for the Clocky product line, as well as other products for the home and for travel."
