Consider the Wildflowers
Consider the Wildflowers
105. Kate Stewart: How a Family Tradition Became a Million-Dollar Business Making a Global Impact
It’s officially the holiday season & we are so excited to have one of our first holiday-based entrepreneurs on the show. Kate Stewart is the founder of Bauble Stockings. From family tradition to a thriving holiday company, hear how Kate has scaled a business by creating lasting memories in households across the country.
Creating global impact, pricing for wholesale, saying yes to the things you truly love in business & no to the things you don’t— all inside.
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Shop Bauble Stockings!
Ashley Schoenith
Bauble Stockings x Heirloomed
Alibaba
Ready Fire Aim
Good Threads
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This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.
Ready, fire. Aim is a book that maybe my husband read it, and it's just always stuck with me, that that sentence of, like, you shoot and then you figure out what you need to change. So, like, the first year, we were all about it's for mom, and what we learned very quickly from our store. So I called every single one of my stores that year after Christmas, and the feedback I got was, Well, Kate, you made it so that it's a gift for mom and women are our number one shoppers. And no woman is going to buy this product and hand it to her husband and say, so you need to fill this for me. And then I still went to America's Mart in January of 19 with that pitch. And then I changed that pitch in February at New York. Now it was when I was like, Okay, let's re let's reconsider what this is about. And so we shifted the whole thing to be for anybody. And that's that was kind of a, my brother calls it a hockey stick moment, like, where all of a sudden our sales went from kind of flat to going like, you know, like up. That was a big turning point. Was when we changed the whole purpose of the stocking. I mean, not the whole purpose, but, like, a pretty big detail, you
Lauren / Team Skidmore:Hey, Wildflower, Lauren from Team Skidmore here, and you're listening to consider the wildflowers podcast episode 105 the Christmas lights are twinkling, the hot cocoa is flowing, and our favorite Christmas movies are making their debut. It's officially the holiday season, and we are so excited to have one of our first holiday based entrepreneurs on the show. Kate Stewart is the founder of bobble stockings, from family tradition to a thriving holiday company. Hear how Kate has scaled a business by creating lasting memories in households across the country, creating global impact. Pricing for wholesale, saying yes to the things you truly love in business and no to the things that you don't all inside. Let's dive in.
Shanna Skidmore:Hey, it's Shanna, and this is consider the wildflowers. The podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear 1000s of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the reel. Behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout and those of utter victory. Or, as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering, but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today, stories that will inspire and reignite, encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome, Wildflower, I'm so glad you're here. Okay, Kate, welcome to the show.
Kate Stewart:Good morning. I'm so glad to be here.
Shanna Skidmore:We're gonna have fun. Um, okay, so we're gonna just have to dive right into this, because now my I'm just, I'm so curious. Before we hit record, we are talking about our friend, mutual friend. I mean, we're good. I would say she's more of an acquaintance. For me, Ashley, tell me how you know her, how y'all got connected, all the things.
Kate Stewart:So Ashley showed it owns heirloomed, and she's been interviewed on the podcast before, I believe, and Ashley is the first person I knew in the business of product sales, if that makes sense, you kind of don't realize how few friends you have that sell products until you start trying to look through your LinkedIn. But she happened to work out with my husband's business partner, Lance. Who knows everyone? I'm just gonna say Lance Culpepper, because all of your audience will be like, Oh yeah, we know Lance. So when I told Lance what I was setting out to do when I was working as a secretary for my dad. Lance was like, Oh, my friend Ashley. She is, like, been on Oprah's Favorite Things and, like, she does all this stuff, and you should have coffee with her. And so I said, okay, so Ashley was the first person I ever reached out to in the business to say, Hey, would you mind having coffee with me and hearing like, what my product idea is, and giving me some feedback? And so we met at the coffee shop over at the Atlanta History Center. And I feel like Ashley hears me say this all the time, but she was the first person that she she listened to me pitch and she said, Kate, if I can be the apron girl, you can be the miniature stocking girl, you know, like you've got this. And I put that in my back pocket and ran with it. So she's just always been so encouraging. We just had a launch with her. We did a collaboration with her this year. We have Yes, so we have two stockings based on her designs. And then she and she did linen napkins and tablecloths and a candle based on the same designs. And then she took our 12 days of Christmas set, which is like our most like iconic set we have, and she made them into linen napkins. And they're so they're so cute. It was, actually, it's, it's been our best launch this year. Is huge.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, you're going to have to, Imma, have to look this up. You're going to send me the link, because we're going to link it below. This makes me happy. So you're at in the Atlanta area.
Kate Stewart:Yes, I'm based in Sandy Springs. I grew up in Sandy Springs.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, okay, okay, so good, alright, let me tell you how I know Ashley, and then we're going to dive into your store and all the things. Okay. So I my husband and I moved to the Atlanta area for him to go back to school in 2011 and I, at that time, was working in finance, of course, and but also was really curious to get my hands in the creative like I wanted to kind of get out of finance. I wanted to not be at a computer every day, and I just didn't know exactly what I was going to do. So I started shadowing Amy osabah, who's a floral designer out of Atlanta. A lot of people know this part of my story, so I'll speed it up. But I was kind of working with Amy osaba while pursuing private equity and all this MBA and all these things, and I realized really quickly that female owned small businesses don't get a lot of assistance in the finance running a business side of running a business and like, pricing, forecasting, sales, All those things. And I was like, There's something here, but I didn't know how to start it anyways. Those are the days when I met Ashley shownath, when she was ice milk aprons, like in her OG days. And so, yeah, she was on the podcast. We'll link it in the show notes. I love her story, and so tell me what year. So let's, let's, let's bring it back. Tell me what year you met with Ashley, or where this idea for how did you call them mini
Kate Stewart:they are ornament sized stockings.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, tell me how the idea came to be and all the things
Kate Stewart:I'm betting I met with Ashley in 2017 or 2018 I launched the company in 2018 so it would have been some time before then, because then I ended up at America smart in July of 2018 when we launched the company. So my company is called bauble stockings. It is based on my family's Christmas tradition where after all of your presents have been opened, you go to the tree, you get your bauble stocking down, and then the final gift of Christmas, or a clue to it, is in the stocking. So the idea is really a save the best for last. It's not necessarily the most expensive gift, though sometimes it is, but it's about the idea that you were thought of, that your whole family got together and sat down and talked about you in the most positive, lovely way you can imagine. Yeah, and they go over, I feel like I always talk about my son, but it's kind of, you know, people say shopping for little boys is hard, and I think it's the easiest thing in the world because it's so fun. We his sister, who's nine, who just turned nine when she started, when she turned seven, we were like, Okay, you can keep a secret. You can help us start picking out Calder's bobble stocking gift. And so my husband, Brianna, and I all sat down and we wrote down everything that Calder loves, like what a five year old loves. So it's like balloons and balls and cake and ice cream and all those things. And then it was, how do you make it special? And I think that year we settled on, well, we settled on a few things, but we did ice cream and we ended up having him do so he gets his bobble stocking down from the tree. So it's a little like, imagine a stocking the size of your hand is the size of a bobble stocking. Okay? So he gets down the bobble stocking, and it has a clue in it, which his sister read to him. And it was, I made it a poem. You can use chat GPT to make anything a poem these days, but I, but I worked really hard on these poems for a minute, and it had him run up to his room, where he found sprinkles and another clue, and that clue took him to the next place, and he found chocolate sauce, and the next place took him to cones, and anyway, and then the the end of the scavenger hunt, he opened the basement freezer, and it was full of ice cream and just his face and, like, the whole thing. So I say that story because, yeah, we we've seen people get cars we love, we love a good car and a bottle stocking, right? But it doesn't have to be that complicated. It's just the idea that your family sat down and thought about you and thought about what would make your heart so happy. And I took the tradition we grew up. I just do it for did it for my mom, so my dad, my big brothers and I would go shopping for the special gift each year. And when I found out that not every mom had a bottle stocking, I was really surprised. I really thought everyone had one, and I started the company. Realized very quickly that people wanted to do it with their kids or with their husband or with their girlfriend or with their godchildren, whoever it was, grandchildren, very popular, and that's when we really, I want to say, blew up, but that doesn't sound good when it comes to your business, right? That's when we took off. Was when we made it not just about mom, but about everyone. Okay,
Shanna Skidmore:bobble stockings. Did you come up with this name? Or is this a concept that's been around for a long time. No,
Kate Stewart:I my my dad came up with the name because growing up, so it was always my mom's bobble stocking. And when I was asking my friends, you know, how your mom gets the last gift of Christmas and it comes in our bobble stocking, and my friends were looking at me like I had two heads. And then I, like, Googled it. I was like, bobble stocking. And it was like, nothing like pictures of Bob. Ball in British English is an ornament, is a Christmas ornament. So it was just pictures of, like, stockings with Christmas ornaments drawn on them. And so I called my parents, and I was like, did you know no one knows what a bobble stocking is? And they laughed. And they were like, Yeah, we we made that up. Um, but my dad said the reason it's called a bobble stocking is because, on a good year, it's a piece of jewelry. So a bobble is the the literal definition of a bobble is a small, shiny trinket. So bobbles, like bobble bar, it's jewelry. So bobble just, just kind of means something small and shiny.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, so your dad made up this concept, and your whole life, your mom got the last got the bobble stocking. It was only for your mom.
Kate Stewart:It was only for my mom, well, until I stole the concept and made a business. But yeah,
Shanna Skidmore:okay, so Okay, so you're working. Okay. Now I'm so into this. The love it. So much. Okay, so then you, you're working for your dad. It sounds like yes, and so, yeah, kind of take us back before the concept started. What were you doing?
Kate Stewart:I'm crazy workaholic. I've always told people I'm I'm never they're going to be the smartest person in the room, but I can outwork most anybody. Um. So I, um, my journey is all over the place. I actually just, like, cleaned up my LinkedIn because it was so scattered. But like I worked in a bakery for several years. I ran a bakery. I worked at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta as a grant writer. I worked in Panama, running a study abroad for kids. And then when I came home from Panama, my dad's secretary, who'd been a secretary for most of my life, had found love on the internet, and she was moving to Colorado. So my dad was like, Well, you don't steal. You should come work for me. So I, I was very lucky, and that my dad, my dad, had a spot for me on his team as, like his secretary. I say that dad would say I was, I kind of lower it to I was his dad's secretary, but I was like his investor relations person. So I sent all the emails to our invest real estate investors and stuff like that. I ran all of our bank accounts. And during that time, I worked for my dad for, I think, six years, you know, time flies. Yeah, six years. And during that time, I had both my kids. Both my kids came with me to work every single day until they were one, and then they started school. So they'd be in school from 930 to 130 and I'd pick them up and bring them back to work. We had a what is it? We had a pack and play in the copy room for naps. It was a big team effort right there. But during that time, if I wasn't stressed out enough, I decided I should start this company. So
Shanna Skidmore:were you so you had this conversation of, like, nobody knows what Bible stockings are, Dad, what happened here? And then, were you wanting to do this for your family or
Kate Stewart:well, so I, when I was in Panama, I was working for a company called Kalu Yala that my brother actually owns, and it was a lot of entrepreneurs. So, like, it was a study abroad for it's an entrepreneurial study abroad, which is kind of a long term, but it was the kids would do four hours of, like, a director led program, and then four hours of their own inventive program, which I just nerded out over all the time. And we had all these conferences, like we had a TEDx conference there. So these people came from all over the world, and they all own their own companies. So I got asked a lot if you could start a company, what would it be? And I always said, bubble stockings. It always was on my mind as soon as I got engaged and I found out that bobble stockings weren't something that everybody had. It always been like in the back of my mind, this is the company. This is, yeah, this is what people need, because it was such a huge part of my childhood. It was such a big thing for me, because I just grew up with such gratitude for my mom, because my dad, my dad, not that my dad forced on it, but yeah, like my dad took us out to lunch, yeah, every Christmas for us to talk about my mom and how awesome she was and all the things she did for our family. And how could we make her feel special? And my dad love him, but like, when I was growing up, he was, like, that 90s dad, you know, like, he had the car phone, and he worked all the time, and he worked in, like, the IBM tower in Atlanta, and, like, I just thought my dad was, like, the most important guy in the world, right? Yeah, and that he took the time to take my big brothers, and that's another thing, is I was the youngest, so, like, it was really special to me. And I just felt like people were missing out on such a big part of what had made my Christmases special, growing up.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, so tell me what, what was the final push like, okay, bauble stockings is happening. We are going to start the company. Like, just talk about those beginning days, how it came to be when you started your website. Like, how did bobble stockings come to be?
Kate Stewart:I looked this up one time for news reporter, like, what was the timeline on it? And it looks like I sent my first email inquiring about like, if I could get them made. And I searched on Alibaba, like I put out a RFP on Alibaba, which is a request for proposals for a needlepoint stocking in, I think, June of 2015 so that means that. I was like, eight months. Reena was born in September, so I was like, very, very pregnant when I decided to start the company with the first kid. So then I searched for a manufacturer. I did not know at the time that needlepoint, like hand stitched needlepoint, is as rare as it is. I think there are only six manufacturers in the world because it's a very skilled skill set. So I did not know that at the time, or I probably wouldn't have, wouldn't have started the company. I would have given up a lot sooner. But I searched for I did that first RFP then, and it took me until July of 2018 to launch, and my second child was born in September of 2017 so, I mean, I had two children in the timespan that it took me to launch, the company,
Shanna Skidmore:finding manufacturers, pricing, getting your website up. What finally was like, We're going live, alright? So
Kate Stewart:let's see. I knew it had to be needlepoint. So I found, I found my, well, I say this, I found my first manufacturer. When I was pregnant with Calder. I was, I was 10 weeks pregnant, or something like that. Because Peter and I flew to China. We thought we found our team in China, and so we flew to China to meet the people, because I'm a huge believer and that you must make you have to meet who makes your products. I don't understand companies, and I've got a lot of friends in the industry who've never met their manufacturers, and I admit that I probably have a little chip on my shoulder about like, Why? Why wouldn't you meet them? You need to go and look them in the eye and make sure you're doing business the right way. So my husband, I flew to China when I was pregnant with Calder. I found out that it was a that he was a boy while I was in China, and we realized very quickly, this wasn't the company we wanted to work with, because it wasn't it, it wasn't fair trade, and it wasn't anyway. It wasn't where I wanted to be. So I then spent a full year searching Fair Trade needlepoint, there's only 1b Corp certified Fair Trade needlepoint in the world, and that is who I work with in Haiti. So that that probably did delay me a bit, just just trying to do business the way I wanted to do business, in terms of pricing. I really just looked at what Shark Tank told me I had to do. That was how, that was how I decided price point was. I Googled, like Shark Tank margins, and it's funny now, because, like, the margins they list are pretty specific, but my margins are nowhere as good as that now, because our prices on getting everything made have just skyrocketed from from not just like our thread and our canvas and stuff like that in Europe, but then my team in Haiti, their price of living because of the situation in Haiti has skyrocketed in the last two years, and we have to pay them to keep fair trade, to keep making it a livable wage, you got to pay them more. And I haven't raised my prices. I don't really see the price elasticity in a needlepoint stocking. Personally, you know, I've got customers who say it'd be fine. You'd be fine to charge what you should, but it makes me nervous, and I'd rather get it into more hands, the more hands that I can put bobble stockings in. That means the bigger order I can have to Haiti, which means the more jobs we create for the team in Haiti. So the way I do business is a little bit backwards, because I'm always thinking I need to move my product faster to create more jobs, if that makes sense,
Shanna Skidmore:yeah, impact. I have this thing I teach my students. This is a side note. You don't care, but I'm going to tell you anyways, I have this thing I teach all my students with financial planning, I believe, begins with vision, right? And success. Like defining success, what does it mean to you? And one of I have what I call the four core motivators, and one of them is impact. And like, I just hear you talk about, it's essentially the baseline of scalability decisions in your business. So like, I'm time motivated. We all have all four of them in us, but time motivated means I'm really careful with, like, where my time goes and as we all should be, but like you get motivated to create more jobs, like you are creating impact. And knowing that means so much with how you grow your business, like defining that and knowing that up front. And I think so many entrepreneurs go in and they don't exactly know that, and that's why I'm so passionate about teaching it. Because I say like the world will tell you, success looks a certain way to you, increase your profit margins, raise your price, but you know that's not success to you. So anyway, blah, blah, blah. Will you talk about that? No, I
Kate Stewart:agree with that completely, and it is. But I mean, I just I sometimes feel like I'm on this, like Island, where the brands that I find similar to mine just have different motivators, right? And then I have, I've found, thankfully, in the last two years, I've met all these incredible women that have businesses based in Haiti as well. And it's it's different for me, because I use a manufacturer in Haiti rather than them being mine. Manufacturer, like, I don't technically employ any of the 1500 people that we give jobs to in Haiti. Those are employed by good threads needlepoint, and I happen to be their largest client. So sometimes it's a bit different. But when you I look back and it's interesting, the first time I went to dinner with it's about eight, I think it's eight different women that own companies based in Haiti, and I like, cried because I was like, I've never met people who get like the President was assassinated were it's run by gangs, like, you can't drive on the roads like it's crazy, and most people don't understand where I'm coming from because they use a manufacturer in a in a, I should say, a solid cut. But in a country that doesn't have the same turmoil that we have in Haiti, but it's even more motivating to keep the work up, because so many companies have pulled out of Haiti, and they've had to, and we've been very lucky, based where we are, that we haven't had to pull out at all.
Shanna Skidmore:I love this story. Okay, so tell me then about the growth you started the company. You get it off the ground, walk me through how the business has grown. What part have you had in it sounds like, are you pushing? Are you pushing? PR, like, just kind of walk me through the growth. What went well? What didn't go well? You
Kate Stewart:told me earlier, I could go as deep or as broad as I want, but I'm very into my numbers. I am a numbers nerd.
Shanna Skidmore:Same these. Give them to me first year. So
Kate Stewart:first year we did, I think $28,000 which to me at the time, was huge. Like, I went to, I went to America's Mart, I went to some shows as 2018 like, I was like, very proud of that. And then the next year, I think, we did half a million. And then the next year, we did a million. But then we had to refund a bunch of people because we couldn't get stuff out of Haiti. We ended up, it ended up being like, this, sounds weird. Was very 2021 was extremely stressful, but we ended up telling all these people, so I used to sell product. This is actually good business advice. I used to sell product before it got here from Haiti. Like, I would just be like, Oh, I'm gonna have 100 of these. You know, I'll sell 100 and then in 2021 it couldn't come from Haiti. Like, there was just too many problems happening in that country. It was the year that the President was assassinated, and the gangs originally took over, and so I had to write. At one point, I wrote 1000 people and said, I don't have your product. It was awful. It was like I was crying. It was so bad. And the responses I got back, and I am extremely communicative. I think if I could give anybody business advice, it's just over communicate what's going on. Like, honesty is the best policy. And so I had customers who wrote me back being like, well, one I did get, like, attacked by a few people. And I, like, wrote, I was like, the messages have not been of love and concern. They have been of where is my product. And so anyway, the emails that I got back were people that were like, Kate, I'll wait till next Christmas. I don't, you know, like, it's not, this isn't gonna ruin my Christmas. And then I had the people that said, hey, like, look, I would like a refund, but if you could tell me where. So I ended up going onto my stores websites. I would go look at an order that needed to be refunded from my website. So say they ordered four stockings. I would go search down my store websites, because we sell in at this point, we probably sell in 150 stores, if not 300 I don't know where we were at the point, but I would see which which store had it. If I could, I would put it in a cart, and I would send them the link, being like, Okay, I've refunded you. Now click this one and buy here and you'll get what you needed. So ended up being like, that's without saying, so silly, but being like a hero, but I, like, was really good. Like, I didn't lose the sale, really. I mean, I lost the sale directly to me, but I made the sale for my stores and my stores. I love my stores so much. They have been so good to me. So the fact that I could put that money in their pocket, yeah, was huge. And then from there, 2020 so then 2022 I mean, that's where we just picked up. I mean, 2022 I think we went from Yeah, 2021 we had 150 stores. 2022 we went to 300 stores. So we, like, really, grew wholesale in 2022 2023 was the year that I was like, I won't do it if it doesn't make me happy. I'm tired of being stressed. Um,
Shanna Skidmore:I just, I mean, as far as, like, partnerships, just everything, everything
Kate Stewart:about my company in 2023 I said, if I don't want to do it, I'm not doing it. That was my hard and fast light. I have suffered. And I say, you know, whatever, but I have been through the ringer from 2018 to 2022 and I do not want to do that anymore. It is not good for me. It's not good for my mental state. It's not, you know, like
Shanna Skidmore:all of that is just and you had tiny people at home, right? Yes, I
Kate Stewart:do. I have, I have little kids. I mean, now they're nine and seven, so they're not as little, but they'll always remember Volvo stockings growing up like they Yeah, they are hilarious, and that they don't understand, that people don't know what a bottle stocking is, um, but so 2023 I made that decision, and we did just as well. We did. We kept, we kept right where we were. We were much more profitable. So everybody
Shanna Skidmore:Wait. Can you tell me what things you were saying yes to, and what things you were saying no to, and when did you
Kate Stewart:get no? Um, I'm trying to think it was. So I always hire the way that I've run my business in the last few years. It's up here, it's just me and one other person for six months. So I try and, like, take a mental break. There's no reason to have an extra person here half the year, because we're a Christmas company, right? Yeah. So I've been really fortunate, like, right now it's me and Francis, who graduated from Georgia, and then last year was Taylor, and I pretty much just hire people that I like to work, you know, like, who's gonna be my friend for the next six months, and put their head into it. Um, so I'm trying to think of what Taylor and I did last year that was just like, we're only doing fun stuff. We went to we only went to shows that we really wanted to because going to shows like jumping on an airplane and going to sell is very tiring. So we just picked our favorite shows. So we went to like Greenwich and Philly, Texas. We always will jump on a plane to Texas. I love being invited there. And then we had our our influencer event was in West Palm Beach at Daniel Rollins place. And like so we had collaborations with Buru and Paige Minier and Mignon Gavigan and all of them came in for the event. We just had a lot of fun. And I just, I stopped, not that I stopped trying to get people pleaser, but I just, if somebody suggested something to me and they were like, you'll get what is it that people, people try and always not pay you, but say like, you'll get exposure. And I just don't believe in that this this far in I think if you want something, if you want a product, you need to pay for it, right? I feel that way. And I just, I stopped. I stopped just trying to people please, all the time. And that's kind of how we run now. So, like, this year we're only doing, like, yeah, there's certain stuff that will stress me out, like, we just ran out of velvet in Haiti, and I'm having to figure that out. And that's very stressful to get, to get materials to Haiti. But like, anything on the ground here, if it doesn't sound like fun, I'm not doing it. I just,
Shanna Skidmore:Hey, are you designing all of the designs other than your collaboration? So, like, your job, your role in the company is designing. No, then it sounds like sales.
Kate Stewart:No, I am not a designer at all. I'm not an artist. I this is also very different. I don't know if you always interview product based companies, but we, most the friends I have who are product based companies, are creatives. Yes, they are. They are the I am not. I am a ENTJ, I am I do not have I'm a creative director. I can tell you, I like it. I don't like it, you know, change that color, do this. But our creative director is Sarah Watson, who just moved to Saipan, which is island off of Guam on the other side of the world. She was in fair hope a month ago, but now she lives across the world from me. But Sarah is a SCAD Savannah College of Art and Design graduate in textiles. She know she's been with me for six years. And if I tell her, like, I want a Santa riding a horse, she knows exactly what my vision of a Santa riding a horse would be, because she just
Shanna Skidmore:knows mine. From the beginning, you've had somebody else design absolutely
Kate Stewart:I've given Sarah the outlines of like, I want Jingle bells, and I want this and I want that, and then Sarah runs with it, and then I edit her designs.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, okay, I gotta ask you, how did you create your business plan? Like, you obviously have to be great at marketing like, so Did you know In the beginning that you were going to sell at shows? Was that kind of your marketing, sales channel? Did you think like, I'm going to go online, I'm going to get PR, I'm going to get media like, tell me I'm picking your I
Kate Stewart:kind of, I might open it for you. I have a Google doc of my business plan. I am sure that I have not run by it at all. I am positive I knew I was going to do wholesale. I knew that was important to me to sell in stores, which that is a huge thing. Like, I have friends that didn't originally plan to sell wholesale. They didn't realize how much business that can create, and they didn't price their stuff accordingly. So I did have that from the get go, is that I priced my stuff with the anticipation that I would wholesale. But in terms of I got really lucky. America's smart is in Atlanta, and I got onto the high design floor, which is like the best floor of America's Mart, if you ask me, it's like the jewelry collection.
Shanna Skidmore:And you just called them and said, Hey, this is what I'm doing. Here's my story. I went in.
Kate Stewart:I mean, I faked it till I made it. I sent them a lot of emails with hyperlinks to one. I made my websites beautiful because my best friend, Jenna, is a graphic designer, and so she she also is a SCAD grad. If you can ever help it, always work with a SCAD grad. They're very smart. So Jenna did all of my designing. I My friend Anna, who is at trend in design for Home Depot. She just has an eye for everything. So she really made sure that I was as high end looking as I was supposed to for selling an $85 miniature stocking. Yeah. Um, that's a problem that a lot of fair trade businesses get stuck in. Is that fair trade you tend to be more expensive, but being a fair trade based company, you you don't necessarily have a high end mindset, because you're really just trying to help people right. Yeah. And so you need somebody who has that eye for design and for what you need to look like. So like, everything we have is very specific, white, gold, green and red, like our color palette, that's that Jenna laid out for us. And so with America's Mart, I started email. I found out who was in charge of the floor I wanted to be in, and I found out what floor I wanted to be in by going to a store that I thought would sell bobble stockings called Beatty Jeffries. And I showed them what my product idea was, and they and I asked him where I should be at America smart. I highly suggest doing that to anyone. Yeah, if you're planning on going to America smart, go into a store that you think would buy you and say, or buy, buy your product and say, Where, where would you expect to find us at America's marks. America's marks, mass, American arts, massive it is. So they said high design, and it's funny, they actually never bought bobble stockings. And one of our best customers in the world is a neighbor up the street from them called Lucy's market, and ended up being a way better fit. But you don't you don't know until you know. So the business plan for me has always been based on the book title, without ever I, if I read the book, I don't really remember reading the whole thing. Was a ready was it ready fire aim?
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, so I've never heard of this
Kate Stewart:ready fire aim is a book that maybe my husband read it, and it's just always stuck with me, that that sentence of like, you just you shoot, and then you figure out what you need to change. So like, the first year, we were all about, it's for mom, and what we learned very quickly from our store. So I called every single one of my stores that year after Christmas, which I'm sure, like, annoyed them. I was like, calling them on the phone, being like, I want to know how my stockings did at your store. Yeah, and the feedback I got was, Well, Kate, you've made it so that it's a gift for mom and women are number one shoppers, and no woman is going to buy this product and hand it to her husband and say, so you love to spell this for me, yes. And then we had to, and then I still went to America smart in January of 19 with that pitch, and then I changed that pitch in February at New York. Now it was when I was like, Okay, let's re let's reconsider what this is about. And so we shifted the whole thing to be for anybody. And that's that was kind of a, what is it? My husband, my brother calls it a hockey stick moment, like, where all of a sudden our sales went from kind of flat to going like, you know, like, up, yeah, yeah. So that that was a big turning point was, when we changed, changed the whole purpose of the stocking. I mean, not the whole purpose, but, like a pretty big detail,
Shanna Skidmore:I just feel like there's got to be a lot of peace of mind, Kate, in that you're going so I worked in fashion before I fish. I had a one of my very first clients, but that got me into this creative female owned so I know America smart very well. I was in fashion design, and I feel like there's got to be Kate, some peace of mind, going to these shows, getting wholesale orders placed instead of, you know, a lot of people right now are selling online, direct to consumer. You know, they're focused on every single cell. You know, we have to make 1000s of cells every single month, whereas you're going in with these large orders, hopefully large like, do you feel like there's peace of has been peace of mind for you in that
Kate Stewart:or Absolutely not? No, yes, but the stores, you got to remember, people have to shop at the stores for them to make these big orders, and the fact that people are not going to their local stores. This year, our stores, we've had so many stores go out of business. It's insane. So our stores typically account for 75% of the jobs we supply to Haiti. They're seven, they're 50% of my money, but 75% of the jobs we have in Haiti, they make up for 75% of the stockings we order from Haiti. Yeah. And this year in particular, it is hard to be a nice to have product like bobble stockings. Rather than a have to have product. There are some like bobble stockings. They have to tell the story, you know, like nobody comes up and goes, Oh, I'm gonna buy it? $85 miniature stocking, exactly. They buy one for everyone in their family. Yeah. So stores have been tough because they've had a really hard year. If anybody's listening this and you're debating going to your local gift shop today, please go. They need your money. They need they need your support. Stores are so amazing for the community. I mean, stores donate all the time, right? Everybody's always asking these gift shops to give back and for them to to stay. We need to be shopping there. So the big guys, though, so like this year, we have a huge order with Neiman Marcus. I mean, it, it is massive. I was told we are one of their biggest Christmas POS of the year when I was in Texas, was in Texas last week. So I don't know if that's true, but that's, I wouldn't be surprised. It's a, it's a very large order. Um, so we're very grateful for it, but there's always the we hope it happens again next year. Yes, you know, yeah, they'll change their order based on how it does, and we're trying to set it up for success. I mean, I'm going. On a road show with my friend st Nelson, who's part of this collaboration. We're going to a bunch of different human markets, and we've got a whole plan for it, and they've got a marketing plan, and they're putting marketing dollars towards it. And because
Shanna Skidmore:you're right, the story is, what sells it, not, I mean, the stockings are beautiful, obviously, but the story, yes,
Kate Stewart:you're not for the miniature ones, especially, like some people go, Oh, it's for gift cards. And I'm like, Absolutely not. That is, I have never sold an $85 miniature stocking gift card holder. It's for the final gift of Christmas. I've sold over 40,000 of them. You know, Nima
Shanna Skidmore:and Marcus go, Kate, your hockey stick moment. Okay, so, okay. So your first full year in business, your first full year in business, you did half a million. Our first 2019,
Kate Stewart:I think that's right,
Shanna Skidmore:I'm pretty sure 2020, so,
Kate Stewart:oh yeah, go ahead,
Shanna Skidmore:you've been able to scale. You're, you don't have to share how big. But you know, girl, I'm curious. You um, you've been able to scale because you have a team in Haiti that's making these stockings. So your workload, yes, increases, but it's a scalable model, yes, like, just get it in more getting it into more stores, selling more orders, because the team in Haiti is what's really growing.
Kate Stewart:The team in Haiti, we started there with David. David's the owner of good threads. I think at that point, he had 82 full time stitchers. And now he will tell you, it's 1500 maybe 2000 now those aren't all full time, yeah, but we have a lot of people stitching. And the thing with that David, I always am asking him, you think you could get this done? You think, you think that you can hurry through this and get and get it done? And he's like, Kate, we will never run out of people who need work. Yeah. And with that, our team is kind of cool, and that stitching. So everyone stitches from their homes, right? So they go in to the office to get the to pick up stockings and or to pick up, like, all the materials and stuff, and they sit from their homes and they teach their family members. So if somebody falls on hard times in northern Haiti, their family in southern Haiti will say, Well, come down here and we'll teach you to stitch and you can get back on your feet, because that's how good the money is. So we're never going to have a shortage of people who need the work. Yeah,
Shanna Skidmore:that's amazing. Okay, so, but your team here in the States hasn't grown that much. I've
Kate Stewart:shrunk it. Yeah, I mean Frances and I can do most anything. I have the best crew that I love our bauble. We have a bobble Christmas lunch every year, and it's whoever's worked for me, you know, like, and I have a text chain with them. So I just have some amazing women. Some of them have other jobs. Some of them are, you know, stay at home moms or and I can just text them when we need extra hands, and somebody will chime in and say, hey, I'll be there
Shanna Skidmore:because somebody else is packing and shipping and they're going straight to your stores and like you're not, we pack and ship here, okay, your online orders? Our
Kate Stewart:online orders? Yeah, we pack and ship all of them. All of them, if you get an online order, most, I'd say 90% of the time I sign Thank you. Love Kate.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, so let's get back to my question, and I'm just gonna say my little line of questions that I haven't followed at all because I'm so intrigued about all of this in a world that asks us to do everything really well, and you're running this company, and you have scaled really quickly. It sounds like big to big numbers with a small team here in the States, it sounds like with little kids at home. How? How are you doing this?
Kate Stewart:Well, I told you I was really stressed out for a lot of years. Um, no, I we only work in the office from nine to three most days. So I pick up my kids from the bus stop, um, and it goes back. I mean, at this point, so we are six years in. At this point, I have the choice to say if I want to be there or not, like, if I if I want to do something. And the way I look at it, like keeping my team small, somebody posted the other day, people asking, how big your team is about, like, asking, like, what's in your bank account? Yeah. And I thought that was a really funny statement, because when I made my team smaller, there was a lot more money in my bank account, yeah. So I'm really willing to do a lot of work that maybe somebody else in my position wouldn't do, but I like being involved in this, like, that's how my brain works, because I'm not a creative Yeah, I'm really good at answering emails, I'm really good at taking a ball and running. I'm good at following up. I'm good at that because I'm not spending my wheels designing. I think a lot of my friends who have these other companies, they have to be designing all the time, and I outsource my designing to Sarah, and Sarah is not in my office. Sarah's in Saipan. So it's, it's really a priorities based thing, and I'm lucky that it's in my skill set to do a lot of stuff that other people in this. Same industry probably don't like focusing on because it would be taxing. The stuff that I enjoy is not enjoyable to a lot of other people, most
Shanna Skidmore:people. So are you like do you find yourself working in the evenings? Do you have really hard and fast boundaries? What has helped you just thrive in Yeah. So a family, sometimes
Kate Stewart:growing a business. Sometimes I'm working in the evenings. I mean, I definitely check my email on a regular basis, but I'm really good with my email. I have three categories, so I have three folders that I usually use, and it's it's, every time an email comes in, it's filed into net a folder called now, a folder called pending, or a folder called follow up. And every time an email comes in, it usually moves into now, which means the next time I sit down at my so if it comes in on my phone and I see it, and I see that it's something I'm going to need to respond to, I file it away into the now folder, which I have open on my desktop. And when I sit down to work, that's the first thing I work on. But every time I open my email, when I'm on my phone. I'm not looking at these emails going, Oh, I should respond to this. Yeah. So that's been a huge game changer in just taking because I'm a I sometimes hurry too much to get things off my desk. Yeah, so not having those looking staring at me when I open my email box is really helpful on my phone. So it's kind of given me a boundary there to where it's like, I don't, actually, I don't have to deal with this in this second while I'm at the playground with my kid. You know, right? Sometimes you work at night. My husband is also an entrepreneur, so I do post it on Instagram sometimes when we're up, my office is the third floor of our house, and it's, I mean, it's a big it's 1600 square feet. It's a big office. And it's, we built it for this. But my husband and I, I mean, we'll look at each other every but the kids will be like, Hey, you got any work you want to do? We'll come up here and work. But that's not every night at this point. The first few years were the hardest, for sure, yeah. And now I kind of know we have a formula, right? It's, it's, it's kind of gotten into its place. And I'm not, I'm not spinning my wheels on hoping things will work in 2022 we did 17 launches, or something, maybe more than that. We did this year. I have four launches. Last year, I three or I had four launches as well.
Shanna Skidmore:Like, collaborations, collaborations, yes, yeah. But
Kate Stewart:each one needs your attention and needs your like, there's just so much stuff, and you want to make sure that the person you're collaborating person you're collaborating with feels appreciated. And because I don't pay any of our collaborators, I give money to their charities. And, I mean, it's just that was a lot, but it was thinking like, that's going to get us to the next point this is going to and then figuring out, like, no, I'd rather just do collaborations I adore, you know, yeah, not. I adored all 17 of those people, but I didn't have enough time to adore them as much as I should have
Shanna Skidmore:before we I could spend three hours with you before we go into quick fire. I just want to ask you, for anyone listening, what would you say in these six years? Because I I have this really, it's an honor, truly, to get to sit and I would say the see the real behind the highlight reel in 1000s of businesses, I've done this now for 18 years, and I see some businesses that do. I want to caveat the word like well, because, as I mentioned, we all have different success measures, and so money is not the success measure for most people, but in the world of business, it is a success measure. You assume I'm saying so I have people who are doing really well in lots of areas. They're either loving their work, or they're making a lot of money, or they're impacting a lot of lives, like your business, and it's doing all those things, or they're struggling. Most businesses are struggling. They're tired, they're overworked, they're not making money. So in these six years, I would just be really curious to for Kate's analysis of what did you do well, and what would you say is the best thing, like, if you could tell any other business, like, do this is the best thing for me, or for this business, or what's you know, like, that'd be really curious of like, you're
Kate Stewart:doing well, I think the best thing I've done well is telling the truth. I think being honest. When you're struggling, you'll find it's very lonely when you have your own business. I mean, I'm alone in my office for six months of the year, and I think people realize I post a lot more on Instagram when I'm by myself, because it's like having friends, but telling the truth and like, especially for me, with having to explain, like, what's going on in Haiti and making sure User Experience matters in that too. Like realizing I know a lot about the intricacies of what's going on in Haiti, because it matters to me. My news is always telling me about what's going on in Haiti, and I need to recognize that most of my customers don't know that, yeah, and making sure that I lay it out as clear as possible, like, this is what's currently happening. You know? I need your support on this, or whatever it is, it's never come back to bite me when I've had to reach out to tell somebody that something that, literally, I'm a perfectionist, and that's a problem. And so telling anybody their stuff's not on time, or telling anybody there's an issue is the bane of my existence. I hate doing it, but when I do it, I've never had anyone, I mean, that's never as a word, but I've had less than 1% of people say anything less than encouraging to me. Um, so I've done that really, really well. Um, and then the other thing, when you're talking about money, I think money is an interesting thing, because as an entrepreneur, Money comes and goes. One of my Lance Culpepper, who I mentioned earlier I was, I was on a walk with his wife once, and we were talking, because he's my husband's business partner, and they started their company. And it was very stressful, you know, every every time people start a company, stressful. And she was saying what Lance had told her was, you know, I can go get a job that pays me X amount of dollars. That's fine. I won't have I don't have to be happy, you know, I can go get a job that I don't like and it's going to pay me whatever some you think it's going to take for us to be happy. Or I can pursue my dream, and eventually I'll make that money, yeah. And I really have become a believer in that, and that it's never easy. I didn't pay myself until I put myself on salary in 2022 so I worked a full time job until 2020 and saved up money from my full time job while running bobble stockings, which was a large it did become a large business by 2020 and then I didn't pay myself on Sal on salary. In 2022 like, I put myself on my payroll. Yeah. So you just have to be willing to, like, tighten your belt. And Peter and I, my husband and I both owning our own companies. We've had a lot of very tight belt years, but now we're both kind of at a place where it's not as stressful as it was. We just had to put our heads down and work through it and miss some things that maybe we had to say no to some things for a little while.
Shanna Skidmore:And what made it all worth it for you both? Because, yeah, my husband and I, we both worked for ourselves. But get it, I am. I heard you, girl, what made it like worth it for you
Kate Stewart:right now, it's the flexibility. I mean, at any point, my kids went to camp up at High Harbor this summer, and I got to go spend a week at my parents lake house, you know, without worrying about things I think, you know, like in the middle of summer, I didn't have that many people ordering stockings, but I wrote the people who did order that week. I was like, Do y'all mind that I won't be home? And the fact that both of us can pick up and take off and kind of like write emails from anywhere is huge. I can't imagine being in a building from nine to five every day as an
Shanna Skidmore:entrepreneur, if you could only focus again on one or two areas. Communication you mentioned is key. Communicating with your customers your stores, like being open and honest about what's going on. What would you say is the other thing? Would it be like, getting the price right, getting a great team focusing on marketing like, I'm interested if, like, if you could only put your efforts in one place, where would you put it?
Kate Stewart:Well, it's kind of double, but I'm sorry, first off, branding, your branding has to look on point. You've got, you've got to have the photography, the video, whatever it is like if you're going to sell a product and you want to get, you know, a price for it, you've got to look you got to look the part. And then, when it comes to PR, my target market is women, ages 60 and above, for the most part, those are my big buyers that are buying for everyone in their family, their grandchildren, their their children, everybody. Magazines are huge for us. When we just did our post purchase survey, I just pulled all the results, and I think behind Instagram was magazines. And all the magazines we've been featured in the first magazines we were featured in most of those links that are on my website were three PR companies. I had a great PR team, and I'm on my honestly, I've had three PR teams now, and we they are who've gotten us into most of the magazines now, now that we're kind of established, like three of the magazines we're about to be in this year, which are very large publications, those guys all came to me because they knew who I was at this point. Yeah, but when you're just starting out, I would not say when you're just starting out when you are a year under your belt. I think getting a PR team is very helpful, because you kind of know who you are after a year. Like, if I'd gotten a PR team that first year, I would have been pushing, it's about mom, and then I would have had to re educate anybody who read those articles about it's about mom, yeah, which would have been very, very hard. So I was really great, glad that I gave myself that space to learn who I was and learn what I wanted to push before I hit go on a PR team.
Shanna Skidmore:Ready, fire, aim. Yeah, no, I love that. I always tell people the best thing I think I did for my business well, among so many other things, but took the first year and I just did all the things like I just figured out, because, again, I didn't know. I started a consulting company. Me not knowing. I knew I wanted to help female owned small businesses, but I didn't know in what way, like I could have gone the bookkeeping, Route, accounting, Route, CFO, Route, education, Route, like so that first year, just did all of it and then figured it out. Okay, let's quick fire. Kate, thanks for your time. This has been so good. I didn't even follow the script at all, but your story is so engaging. Okay, what is one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew
Kate Stewart:I said it earlier, but I live by my Google calendar. If it's not on the calendar, I'm gonna forget it. You gotta. You have to, if you make a date with me, be like, Hey, did you put it on
Shanna Skidmore:your calendar? Yeah, I love it. Okay? Any regrets or wish you could do over moments not
Kate Stewart:trusting my gut. The minute you don't trust your gut, get out of there. Get get rid of whatever the situation is just, just push it aside. You need to trust
Shanna Skidmore:your gut. Yes, okay, big win or pinch to me. Moment,
Kate Stewart:this Neiman Marcus collab with Sandy Nelson is just, I'm over the moon excited for
Shanna Skidmore:him. Ponce, best advice, or just really good advice that you have received. Give
Kate Stewart:yourself grace. You've got it. You've got to let yourself, give yourself forgiveness for things that have gotten over things you didn't know. I'm so mean to myself when I didn't know the answer to something you don't know, what you don't know, it's okay. Yeah,
Shanna Skidmore:I love it. Okay. Last quick fire, and then we'll send it off. What are you working on now? Or one resource that you would like to share?
Kate Stewart:We are working on our book launch. It is the cutest book of the century. I'm obsessed, and I hope y'all will love it. Okay,
Shanna Skidmore:tell me about this book launch. What's it called? It
Kate Stewart:is the cute. It's a kids book. It is a cartoon. The cartoons are my family. And it's about bobble stockings. But it's definitely going to be the perfect compliment to anytime you give someone a bobble stocking, or if you're buying bobble stockings for the first time. It is a book you will want to read every
Shanna Skidmore:holiday. Is it coming out in 2024?
Kate Stewart:Fingers crossed. It is it is on its way. We found a fair trade book manufacturer in India, so they are shipping us the first version of it, hopefully in the next month.
Shanna Skidmore:Okay, I'm so excited. You have to keep us posted so we can link it if it's ready. Absolutely okay. I love it, and I want to know who illustrated it, if you can share, but it's all Sarah Watson, okay, okay. Love it. Go. Sarah. All right, let's send it off. Kate, looking back now having those littles at your dad's office in the pack and play taking three years to get bubble stockings going, what would you tell yourself when you either at first had the idea, or the day it like went live. Either one, you can choose. What would you tell yourself on day one? I
Kate Stewart:would say that the work you put in now will pay you back down the road, so just hustle as hard as you can and know that it'll come back tenfold.
Shanna Skidmore:I love it. Hey. Thank you for sharing your story and your time. This has been so awesome. Thank you for having me. Hey,
Lauren / Team Skidmore:Wildflower. You just finished another episode of consider the wildflowers the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com. For show notes, resource links and to learn how you can connect with Kate. One final thought for today, from Jane Goodall, what you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. As always, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Consider
Shanna Skidmore:the wildflowers. Podcast is produced and edited in partnership with the team at Palm Tree podco. Special thanks to our producers, Anthony Palmer, our audio mixologist of palm tree podco, and Lauren from Team Skidmore, without whom this podcast would never reach your earbuds each week.
