Podcasts

Greentop Gifts founder Jackie Rodgers: Entrepreneur in the Spotlight

April 1, 2021 by Paul W

In our fourth podcast, Hatchit catches up with Jacquelyn Rodgers of Greentop Gifts to talk about the inspiration behind her e-commerce store, the uniqueness of her clothing and merchandise line, and how she's managed to grow it from a small family startup to an emerging brand. You can listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the interview below.

Elizabeth: Welcome to Hatchit, the digital asset marketplace for Internet entrepreneurs. I'm Elizabeth Wilcox. Here today we are speaking with Jacquelyn Rodgers, CEO of Greentop Gifts. Jackie founded the niche e-commerce store in 2016 after having begun making Christmas products with more inclusive and diverse representations of race and culture. Greentop Gifts has been featured on NBC News, People Magazine, O The Oprah Magazine, and many others. Welcome, Jacquelyn.

Jacquelyn: Thanks for having me.

Impact of Covid on Business

E: We're both kind of talking to each other remotely still. It's Covid right now. I would love to start with kind of where you are right now and how the pandemic affected you with respect to your business. Has it been sort of a help to your business or have you had to pivot or shift at all?

J: Well, I'll say 2020 has been our most successful year, in spite of Covid and how it's affected everyone and people's health and families don't want to make light of that, for our business, but it definitely has been our most successful and profitable year. And I think I would attribute most of that to the fact that I quit my job in February of 2020 and started working on the business full time. But we definitely have made some pivots along the way and adjusted the way we go about marketing products and shipping products. So I'd definitely say we pivoted in the past year for sure.

E: And what exactly is your focus right now with respect to your business?

J: Our focus right now is scaling and growing our audience. We definitely want to get into some larger mass retailers. Working on some of those conversations and discussions now and making sure that our operations are streamlined to handle that type of growth. So those are kind of our main focuses at the moment.

How It All Began

E: And you began after the birth of your son at age two and you decided that you should start to make or could start to make Christmas gifts? Is that how it began?

J: Growing up, my mom was like crazy Christmas holiday. She celebrated everything. There were Christmas trees in every corner of our house. She painted angels and figurines to look brown like our family. And so that was like kind of a lot of the inspiration behind Greentop Gifts. And when I had my son, I knew that I wanted him to see images that looked like him at Christmas, too, because my mom really did a lot of that, and the products just weren't there. I decided that I was going to make my own wrapping paper to wrap his gifts with the black Santa Claus. And my husband kind of chuckled at me and it kind of started as just something I wanted for him. And it grew into a business and there was like a void in the market and other moms wanted it. So definitely started as like a passion project for my son but turned it into a company for sure.

E: And was it an online business from the start?

J: Yes, we started out e-commerce and we have a few small independent retailers that we partner with now to sell our products in, but we're mostly e-commerce.

E: And so how did you initially sort of market?

J: We started with kind of an About Us video that kind of told the story and showed me like looking in stores and cutting the sample paper and billing papers. And it kind of just told an awesome story. I can't take a lot of credit for that video doing so well. I have a sorority sister who is like an Emmy Award winning editor and works in the news.

And she shot the video for us and edited it. And I think she's a great storyteller. And so she really was pivotal in, I think, packaging it just right. And we posted it on Facebook and we posted it on Instagram. And I wouldn’t say it went viral, but it got a lot of views and people shared it and people really connected with that for their children to see representation and their memories of Christmas. And from there, I think it just kind of took off and the orders started to come in. I would say most of our marketing was through digital ads on social media.

media and publicity

Media and Publicity

E: And that I see that you've got a fair amount of media and press. Did that generate some press? And if so, I would imagine that would have been kind of instrumental in gaining some traction.

J: Definitely. I would say we've had a slow and steady pace for that. Year one, we picked up some local press and then year two, we got featured in Oprah magazine and Gail's section of the products and things that she loved. And so when you're featured in Oprah magazine, that kind of helps pick up other media outlets. And then NBC News, the first year picked up our product and did like an online piece.

And that is when, like, my phone was pinging and I was like, oh, people want this. And then from there, we've gotten you know, this past year, Beyonce had a woman-owned grant that she did. And we were recipients of that. And Visa and iPhone women, and so we had some really great partnerships and grants that have really helped give our business a spotlight for sure.

E: Did you have a PR person working for you? I mean, how do these people even find out about you through this video?

J: Through the video and then I had another sorority sister that works in PR full time, and we were her pet project. She kind of did some work for us for free, and wrote some press releases for us and sent them out and helped us get some interviews and press early on. And then two years ago, we hired a full PR agency to help us with pitching and getting a gift guide. But it's kind of they've all kind of, I would say, snowballed onto each other and been really great wins and Clarence has been to Oprah’s house during Christmas. I've never been to Hawaii to her house, but he has.

E: Clarence is your son?

J: Clarence Claus is the character we call him. Some of the sweatshirts, Gayle and Ava DuVernay and Oprah's family members were wearing them for Christmas, so we got to see it on social media. It's pretty cool.

Marketing and the Network Effect

E: It sounds like, in the early stages, your network was really important to you when you were building your business?

J: I would say we definitely relied heavily on our network. My background is sales. At CPG, I worked in sales and my undergrad degree was in business marketing. I would say a mix of using the skills that I had in corporate and then really using our network. My husband and I both went to historically black colleges and so we relied heavily on our HBC network and reached out to friends that worked in fields that we thought align with things that can help us with the business – two of my sorority sisters, one in PR and one that worked in video.

We relied heavily on going to historically black college homecomings and passing out flyers in October about our product that was coming in December. And we wore Christmas shirts in October. If you were at a tailgate, you see somebody in a Christmas t-shirt, you're like, what the heck? We really relied a lot on that market because it was our core demographic at these homecomings and football games. And we passed out buttons and stickers and flyers to kind of generate a buzz. We definitely relied heavily on our networks, which I think is something at first, a kind of a scary thing to ask, but I've got more comfortable with asking.

E: Yeah, interesting. And it was really in the initial stages, a lot of grassroots marketing. I mean, it was sort of, for lack of a better word, sort of guerilla marketing, you know, getting on the ground and wearing your Christmas shirt in October. And people kind of looking at you, giving them a flyer, showing them samples, and then growing from there.

J: Yes. There was no big marketing budget. We were on a shoestring budget for sure when we started it.

E: And you say “we” a lot. Who is the “we” and who was the “we” originally and who is the “we” now in terms of your business?

J: When we started it, my husband and I co-founded it. He has a finance background and I have a marketing and sales background. And so I think we're a good balance for each other, because whereas I'm all creative and excited about everything, he's strictly like, what is the return on this? And does this make sense financially? We balance each other out a lot. And then from there we had a friend that helped with PR and now our team has kind of grown and expanded. We have a social media coordinator that manages our community online.

We have two graphic designers and illustrators that help us create new products that we're working on. And we also have a person that manages our PR and then our warehouse that manages all of our fulfillment orders. We’ve definitely grown from the two of us packing orders in our garage to now having a team of people in a warehouse that pack orders for us. So those are ways we have scaled and to be very thankful that I don't have to pack the boxes anymore.

clarence claus

Product Line

E: Are you just Christmas focused still or have you expanded your target and sale time?

J: We are launching some new items that we're super excited about in the next few weeks that are not just Christmas. So birthdays, baby showers and graduation. And there's a lot of moments and celebrations that still don't have a lot of diversity. And so we're expanding. Our society is multi-cultural and I think kids want to see themselves in textures and skin tones and facial features or freckles or gaps or braces. And there's a lot of kids that don't see that representation when they look on the shelves and we want to provide that. So, yeah, we're expanding and I'm super excited about these new products.

E: So that's fantastic. And you mentioned when we began, you were talking about the pivot right now. So that might be a part of the pivot, but also in terms of how you're distributing, is that a part of the pivot right now? And what other facets of your business have shifted over the last 12 months?

J: Yes, I would say one of the first things where we pivoted was when we realized early on that the postal carrier shipping carriers were experiencing delays. And we tried to move our launch of Christmas products up. Our family pajamas that we sold in typically November, we moved those up to October to allow people to order early and to help to kind of mitigate that delay that was coming with the shipping carriers. I think that was kind of the first pivot. It was just really marketing Christmas much earlier.

A lot of retailers do that, too. And so that was kind of the first pivot. And we also started to sell masks, because we have to wear a mask or we're encouraged to wear a mask, we should say. And so we started selling masks with Clarence Claus on the face and then we've been selling some since then that have Greentop Gifts on them. It's another way and another product that we thought consumers still needed. And it was a way to be festive with your mask. And then since then, we know that we want to gain a larger audience. So we're interested in retail. We are looking at retailers and testing that out and looking at ways we can continue to scale our business. And as far as the birthday and the graduation, baby shower, that was kind of always on the plan. I won't call that one a pivot. But that's just kind of new product innovation in our products.

Juggling a Full-time Job and a Startup

E: When you first began, it sounds like you were working full time when you first started the business. So you'd be working in the evenings and you had a two year old obviously at that time. How could you have done that? I mean, it sounds like your husband was working full time.

J: It was so much fun. And I felt like I had a battery in my back because I wanted the product so bad and I was excited about it that it didn't feel like work. It was fun. And so I literally would work from home and then I'd travel to see customers with my day job. I was traveling a lot and we have a great village that I can't not mention. We have great support from my mom and my dad and my in-laws. They were super helpful with helping us with our son. But for most days, I worked eight to five. I'd get off work, pick my kid up from daycare, and then we would do dinner.

My husband would come home. We'd get our son settled for bed. I'd spend a little time with my husband and then I would literally work until one, two or three in the morning on the business and respond to emails from manufacturers or from people during the day and take photos of the product, upload those to the website, creating ads. I did it all in the very beginning. But it sounds crazy when I say it now. But at the time, I just wanted it to happen and to see the end result that I was so focused on it. And then occasionally my husband would tap me like, please close your laptop and go to sleep. But yeah, it was a lot of late nights and weekends for sure.

E: Well, and looking back at that time, if you were to say the reason why I was able to get it from a startup that I worked on from five until 1:00 in the morning to where it is now, what would you say are some key factors in that?

J: I think the passion for wanting it for my son, knowing the other moms wanted it. I read this quote a long time ago about ideas have expiration dates. And after hearing that, I knew that I wanted to get it done as soon as possible, because I didn't want someone else to get to market with something similar or for the time to pass or the interest to pass. And I was really adamant and determined to do it. And I just felt like there was a need for it and I really wanted to see it through. So, I think that was pretty much it.

Working on a Startup with Your Spouse

E: Yeah. And how's it been working with your husband? I imagine that probably has challenges and I would think there are some aspects or some principles that you integrate. You do this, and I do that, or we don't talk about it at dinner or you mentioned how your husband would say turn off the phone. What would you recommend if one is starting a business with a spouse or a partner? What are some takeaways?

J: My first takeaway I would say is communication and understanding when and how to communicate with your spouse if you run a business together. I've known my husband for almost 18 years, so we dated for a long time and then we've been married for 11, he'll probably say that I said that wrong, but I think it's 11 years. And so because of that, we know each other pretty well. But I learned I wake up at six and five when we get up and I want to discuss my list in my brain that I wrote down from the night before. I have like a list of things I want to discuss, from accounting to marketing to a change we're going to make in shipping. And he doesn't want to talk at that time. He wants to talk at 11 p.m. at night when I'm ready to now go to sleep.

And we had to figure out, OK, these two times don't work because I'm exhausted and then you're just trying to brush your teeth. So we have to find a time during the middle of the day, where we can kind of set a time. We make appointments and schedule times. OK, this is when we want to sit down and these are things we want to talk about, because we know that both of us are not engaged at our prime times. And so I really found that to be super helpful. And then knowing that sometimes we will say, OK, we're going to dinner, but tonight we're not going to talk business. We're going to just pretend it doesn't exist. And this is just going to be our family dinner.

And now we have a two-year-old and a six-year-old, and our kids now will tell us, like, put your phone down. They are part of that checking in now and making sure that we're engaged in family time. But it can be difficult. I think that's the biggest thing. And knowing, his lane is more finance. And I try not to interject with that. I mean, I might have questions or give my thoughts, but we know our lanes and where to defer. He's not going to tell me, ”I think you should go with yellow instead of teal”, he's not going to go in my lane like that. So it comes with time, but communication first.

E: Is he full time on this business as well or does he still have his day job?

J: He still has his day job. He does his day job. He checks in and wants to participate in certain parts of it now because his day job is super busy. And as our business is growing, I can't schedule a lot of things around his schedule. There's a lot of it where it's kind of shifting and changing.

greentop gifts

Future Vision

E: What do you see in your perfect world? Where do you see this business ultimately going?

J: In a perfect world, I see this business growing into content and licensing and children knowing our characters and products when they are in stores or they see them on television. And we become like a household entity of a Disney or a Hallmark that is like the ultimate goal for our brand. I have so many ideas and products that I want to create for kids that I think are missing. And so now it's just getting the capital and moving with speed to successfully launch them all.

E: That sounds like possibly a multimedia kind of business.

J: Yes.

E: Interesting. So maybe radio and television and books and all sorts of things.

J: Yes.

E: I would think there is an opportunity right now, particularly with home schooling and parents really working with their children very intentionally and given, as you say, the lack of diversity in representations of America and who we are as a country, that there would be an opportunity there. Have you sort of noticed that at all over the course of the last year in terms of what parents are asking for?

J: For sure, I would definitely say we lost in 2016. And I've always, as a parent, be really intentional about the images that I show our children and the books that we buy and all of those things. I really want them to see, you know, diversity and I think it's not just important for black and brown children. I think it's really important for all children to see that diversity, especially at a young age. And

I think 2020, really, George Floyd’s death and just 2020 brought that to a forefront. His loss of life should have never happened, of course. That's such a sad moment. But I think out of that, there has been conversations, some more authentic than others – phone companies and brands – that are really trying to make change. And so I definitely have seen a shift and a spike in our business from that. And I think it will continue. I hope it continues.

Where "Greentop" Came From

E: Well, it's been really fascinating talking to you. And I can see and understand how your company has been such a success. I mean, what a need we have. One last question for you. Was that Greentop just because of a Christmas tree or is there another story behind that?

J: There's another story. My grandfather had a restaurant bar in Hillsboro, North Carolina that was called Greentop. And it was at the time a place where African-Americans could go and drink. And one of the only places of its kind in the county at the time. And it was a source of celebration. And I obviously could never go there. But I heard fond stories from my dad who shined shoes there as a kid and my dad's friends that talked about memories from Greentop. And so it was kind of our family's first start in entrepreneurship. It's just an ode to that legacy.

E: Wow, what a great story. I love it. Well, I'm glad I asked.

J: I'm happy you did too.

E: When I saw the name, I thought maybe it's just because of the Christmas tree and the green top of a Christmas tree, but there's got to be more to it than that. Thank you so much for talking to me today. It's been fascinating and wish you the best of success, both as a business owner and as a mom and a wife. And you've got a lot of hats and really amazing that you have accomplished what you have already. So best of luck to you and thank you so much for talking today to us.

J: Thank you.

Search for digital businesses on Hatchit or read other inspiring entrepreneur startup stories like Jackie Rodgers.

Entrepreneur in the Spotlight: Joe Colopy of Bronto

January 7, 2021 by Paul W

In our third podcast, Hatchit chats with Joe Colopy of Bronto email marketing software about his entrepreneurial journey from bootstrapped startup to acquisition exit. You can listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the interview below.

joe colopy

Elizabeth: Welcome to Hatchit. I'm Elizabeth Wilcox, and here today we are speaking with Joe Colopy, a former Peace Corps volunteer and entrepreneur, a startup investor and most relevant for this podcast, co-founder of Bronto Software, a cloud-based provider of commerce marketing automation solutions. Joe co-founded Bronto in 2002 and sold it to NetSuite in 2015 for $200 million. NetSuite has since been bought by Oracle. So great to have you joining us.

Joe: Well, thanks for having me, Elizabeth.

Defining Automation Solutions

E: We're very privileged. I'd like to start by kind of defining what Bronto Software is. You co-founded in 2002, as we mentioned. But what exactly it is, or was the cloud-based provider of commerce marketing automation solutions. What exactly were you doing?

J: Yeah, sure. Well, there's a lot of buzzwords in there. It started off quite simpler, but really, at the end of the dotcom bust or somewhere in there started a very simple email marketing newsletter product. It was just the idea for small businesses to send email newsletters to their customers. And then, over the many years, it kind of evolved. And we started focusing our email marketing with retailers, particularly online retailers, and they got more and more sophisticated. What it evolved into is something we like to refer to as commerce marketing automation. It was a way for retailers and online retailers to manage all their communications with their customers. So, if someone purchases something, it would send the receipts. If they wanted to share specials, if they wanted to do special promotions, if they wanted to do things like, hey, we know she's been looking at umbrellas all day. Here's a coupon for 10 percent off. It facilitated all those things. And we worked with about fourteen hundred of the top brands in the US and across the world helping them really drive revenue through this kind of marketing coordination tool.

E: Wow. I know to get to that point was probably not as simple as it just sounded. Did you begin that business with that kind of objective or what service were you providing initially when you just started? You were working at Red Hat at the time. What did you think that business would be?

Early Days

J: Yeah, so it was a very different time and kind of timely now, given that we're going through coronavirus. So back in the summer of 2000, I left my mid-level marketing job at Red Hat because I simply didn't want to climb up the corporate ladder. I decided it was time. I learned enough and it's ready for me to show my entrepreneurial stripes. And then more or less, over the next year and a half, I started brainstorming different ideas. I started learning how to code a Web application and tried some things, a lot of things. It didn't work, but eventually settled on a very simple email newsletter product that small businesses could use. So, it took me a long time. I definitely did not have an idea or good idea when I left my job and it took me about a year and a half to try different things, feel different things and finally find something that started getting just a little bit of traction.

E: What was that little bit of traction? I mean, what was your metric for determining whether it was working or not working?

J: So, the third main metric was to create something someone actually found useful. And I had a friend who ran essentially a newspaper and he was like, wow, I actually could use this. And he told his friend about it. And they actually found my simple email newsletter product called Bronto Mail, at the time M-A-I-L, actually useful. Everything I'd done before that, it was an interesting product, but had no real application. It was people use it because they're nice, but no one found true utility of it. It was just more of an exercise in creating some interesting products. And I think that's kind of the fundamental aspect of it. You have to create something that people want and it sounds very basic, but it's actually quite hard to figure out the core of what people really, really want. And so, once I had early friends use it, I was able to turn that into some people they knew that started paying a little bit and then, kind of, away we went.

E: I read once that you made a distinction between the need to have and the nice to have. So, this was a need to have you determined. And then once you determine that there was a need to have because you effectively got a client and then did you sit down and say, OK, I'm going to put together a business plan?

Startup Approach vs. Business School Teachings

J: I think I changed my approach a lot. I graduated from MBA school at UNC late or mid 1999. So a couple of years earlier and very much in business school, you're taught all the right things. You plan it out, you write your business plan, you create your PowerPoint, etc. But when you're starting a business, you got to throw all that out the window. And I really had to hark back to when I had a paper route when I was 12 and I was trying to hustle free Dr Peppers out of a pop machine, down the block. It really is about just trying to take care of a customer and then get another one. It really wasn't very academic at all. It really needed not to be very academic at all. It really just needed to be a hustle. And so, once I changed my mindset to kind of strip away all my educational background and all the things that was kind of taught and I focused a bit more just on your survival, things got a lot better. And so, I was able to turn one customer to two customers and then three customers to ten customers. And then you start having something that you could see a pattern. You just need to get more of them. But it was very difficult before I start getting those first few customers, because my head was filled with all the theory when the reality is I need to get off my butt and go out there and sell and take care of customers.

Growing the Business

E: And then what about in terms of growing as a business? Was it you and then who else initially? And what kind of skill sets did they bring that complemented you?

J: Sure. Well, early on it was just me. I left my job in summer of 2000 from Red Hat and really just started trying to figure out how to code, how to come up with a basic business idea and did that for a little over two years. Got to the beginning of 2002. My wife and I, we had a baby on the way in six months and I hadn't been working. So, it was time to get on it. At the same time, started seeing progress with this new idea called Bronto Mail. And then in a few months later, I was starting to get some traction. At the same time, there is a fellow that I’d known a little bit, because we both worked at Red Hat and we both had gone to UNC business school and he suddenly was free on the market. I'm like, hey, you're not doing anything. The economy's crap. Why don't you just join, help me out here? And he was like, OK, sure. So, we were able to kind of take that, incorporate the businesses Bronto mail and start taking our first early customers and turn them into a few more. So, we really were extremely lean early on. We didn't have a team. It started with me and then him, and then we just started executing.

E: Did you think, this guy would be good because he's got these skill sets and I have these? Or was it more just a function of this person's in a position to try to start something as am I and I like him. I mean, how did that work out?

bronto email J: It was very much the latter. It was, hey, he's a smart guy. We haven't killed each other yet. Let's just see how this goes. You know, early stage startups, they're really messy. They're not necessarily very scientific approaches. We bootstrapped that entire business even from the get go. We only put in a few thousand dollars each and we only spent it for a computer and some furniture. And so most long-lasting businesses actually have very scrappy beginnings. And ours was no different. We are very, very scrappy. It wasn't played out on a business plan. It was very much, hey, let's turn one customer into two and two customers into ten and then twenty.

Scaling the Business

E: So, at what point did you develop the business plan?

J: Well, I think business plan takes a lot of different parts. You can look a lot of different ways. We definitely didn't need a business plan to start executing a business, I think. But at the end of the day, we both had a master's in business and we were both pretty smart, capable people. So, I think there is a transition to some extent. The first million dollars of revenue is hustle, hustle, hustle. But I think the unique thing we're able to do is we're able to kind of slowly transform who we were to become good managers and directors and leaders and executives. So that's how we had to play our game up to a million dollars in revenue was very different than we were many years later, more than forty million dollars in revenue. We were able to transform ourselves. And that is a rare entrepreneurial trait because what it takes to start a business is often usually very, very different then what it takes to scale a business and to exit the business.

E: So you've just spoken to the fact that it's hustle, hustle, hustle for the first million or whatever that figure may be, and get one client, and then there's a point at which you start to say, OK, let's start to think of some other facets of this business. That's actually a different paradigm, if you will. What do you start introducing at that point?

J: Well, I think first off, you know, I think speaking to these entrepreneurs, it's great. And I think I can have a lot of credibility with them because I was there. I did code the first product. I did have zero dollars in it. We didn't raise any capital at all. So, I know it's extremely difficult. Some ability to identify with their struggles and say, hey, it's really hard, but here's what I did. And it's a tough, tough path that gets a lot of credibility. At the same time, when they start going saying, OK, well, you need to start think about these things. You need to start thinking about your team. You need to start thinking about, for example, hiring. You don't want to just hire people that look like you. You want to be conscious of your culture. These things early on when you're just trying to get started and get revenue are not so relevant. You start approaching a million dollars and next, you know, it's going to be ten million dollars. You really want to make sure you have a good culture and you're putting the seeds for that early on. So that culture is one thing. I try to bring in ideas of planning, ideas of watching their cash flow. I think a lot of early entrepreneurs are too focused on funding, getting investment is the sign of success. And I really tell them not to focus on that. It's really more about getting customers and being very lean and smart with their pennies. Later on, you have to change that game. But most entrepreneurs with early startups, they don't get to keep on playing. Very few of them move on to the next stage. So, you know, I try to give them advice that will let them do that. And it's hard.

Exiting the Business

E: And what about when you decided - when you sold to NetSuite in 2015 - what led you to the point of thinking, OK, it's time to let it go and to move on to something else?

J: Well I think Chaz and I, Chaz, the co-founder, we have been doing it a long time. I left my job in summer 2000. We started working together in 2002. So, you're talking about at least 13 years. And we really enjoyed building the company. But I felt to go to the next stage of business for us to go to forty million dollars revenue to one hundred two hundred million dollars revenue. We're going to have to raise a lot of capital, go public and/or join up with a larger partner. And so, we ultimately decided on the latter, that we are going to go through a different phase and we needed something bigger than us in order to get there. That was one decision. Another part is I have a family of four kids and I had spent a lot of time working on the business, having a hangover my head worrying about it, trying to build it. And I really want to spend more time with my family. I wanted to just kind of mix it up a little bit. So, I was ready for a change. I thought the business was ready for a change, even though we are still doing very, very well. I didn't want to be in a place two years down the road where our growth was going to flatten out and then we wouldn't have the same options. I thought, you know, it's best to make a change while we're all on the upswing.

E: Do you think the skill sets of an entrepreneur, a sort of startup entrepreneur versus a skill set of somebody running a two hundred million dollar company, are they quite different?

J: I think they are different skill sets. I think early in my journey I wouldn’t have said that. But the reality is, is when I finished up at Bronto, it was a three hundred person organization. We had offices in London, Sydney, L.A., New York, including North Carolina, where the majority of people were. We had we had done a lot of stuff and we had figured it out and it was hard and we had made a lot of mistakes. But then we had made a lot of right choice. So, I actually felt like I could have totally ran a two hundred million dollar organization. It would have been hard. I think it's a very different job, but I'd gone through that transition. I had been very far removed from the day to day. I spent most of my time communicating, setting a vision, working with different stakeholders. I'd already kind of made that jump. I think it would have been more of that kind of stuff. We never had any outside shareholders. We would have been a publicly traded company. That would have been a different skill set. I would have spent a lot more time working for the board, but that was more similar to what my day to day life was anyways, then certainly the early stages, which was radically different,

E: Now, given where you are, what are your aspirations and hopes and dreams professionally? How do you feel like you've had your big success and now you're content to try to develop or support other people or get involved in other small ventures or what are you thinking professionally now?

What I'm Doing Now

J: Professionally, I am most focused on supporting other software engineer entrepreneurs in the Raleigh Durham, North Carolina area. That is where I grew Bronto. And it's my form of giving back. It's what I find interesting.I like working with entrepreneurs. I like helping them. I like teaching them. I started my career as a teacher. And so in a weird way, I get to kind of return to that and help build others up because I've had my big success. I've learned a lot of lessons. I want to make sure they don't go for waste. And if I get to pass some small fraction of those to others and help them be and have the next Bronto success, then awesome.

E: You say you started your career as a teacher. Were you referring to your time in the Peace Corps and after that?

J: After I graduated college in 1993, I joined the Peace Corps. I was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in the small island nation called the Seychelle Islands, which is off of East Africa. And I was essentially a high school teacher and I taught a number of different things. But one of the main things I taught was computing, which was kind of an unusual Peace Corps post. But they don't get a lot of computer scientists that they tend to score. So I guess I was well slated for that. And then I did that for two years and my students were 16, 17, and they were very bright. They were like the country's brightest students. It is a small country, but still they're still pretty bright. And then after that, I had a small, short stint in Guayaquil, Ecuador, more of a middle school teacher, also teaching computers and accounting to middle schoolers, which was controlled chaos. As you can imagine, middle schools around the world are all kind of similar in their approach. But that was a great experience. And then when my wife and I, we first moved to North Carolina, I actually did computer training classes and consulting around the Internet. And this was in the nineties. I really had three different teaching experiences, one very bright, older high school, maybe first year college type students in a different country, than middle school students, a different country, and then adults in the US all around technology. I had a pretty good idea. I had gotten pretty good at how to communicate ideas among different people, particularly different groups that was either a different language or in the case of middle schoolers who really for the most part had little interest in listening to me. I could make it somewhat entertaining, which is widely applicable actually, when you work with adults.

Last Thoughts

E: That's interesting. In terms of looking at the skill set you had as a teacher, you point to communicating ideas and being effective at that. Do you think that played a pivotal role in your success in building a company?

J: Absolutely. I think starting a company was much more about being resourceful, being able to come up with a product by myself, willing to make the calls and do whatever it takes. There's a lot of grit, a lot of persistence, a lot of hustle there. But building a company, I think my teaching experience was instrumental, the ability to communicate clearly, rally other people around a common cause. I work with lots of different types of people. Be clear, and the larger you get, that becomes even more important. It really is. Certainly when I finished my time at Bronto and for a number of years before that, it was really about setting vision and communicating. This is where we're going. Make sure it's very clear. I think being a teacher develops a skill set in an awesome way. And I think that's why I'm fairly confident that Bronto could have gone from forty million dollars in revenue to two hundred million dollars of revenue. I think those skills, that's even more important, and I enjoyed it. I think being a great communicator and being able to articulate your ideas very clearly is key for any leader, certainly a leader of a large organization.

E: Interestingly, it sounds as if being a teacher helps cultivate leadership skills, is what you're saying?

J: I think so. I think it definitely can. You become very refined in how to communicate with people with lots of different answers and I think is a great skill for being a leader, particularly a technology leader, where often the concepts are kind of complicated or confusing or intimidating to certain people.

E: Great. Well, that sounds like a great place to end our conversation. I so appreciate you joining us today. Very insightful. And we thank you. And stay well too.

J: Thank you very much. And you stay well as well.

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Entrepreneur in the Spotlight: Pam Schaecher of Amaya Textiles

January 7, 2021 by Paul W

In our second podcast, Hatchit speaks with Pam Schaecher of Amaya Textiles about her niche e-commerce store featuring boutique clothing from India. You can listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the interview below.

Pam Schaecher

Hailey: Today I am with Pam Schaecher from Amaya Textiles. Pam and her husband, Bob, founded Amaya 12 years ago with the desire to create and sell clothing that is distinctive, comfortable and timeless, handmade in India. Her clothing line is now sold around the world. Welcome to the program, Pam.

Pam: Hi. Thank you. Yes, of course.

Where the Idea Came From

H: What gave you the idea to start, Amaya?

P: Well, my husband was headmaster of an international school and we had a lot of friends. Eventually at their behest, we went to India mainly to a wedding of a daughter of good friends who went to school with our boys. And so it was the travel to India really that got me started. We went to this wedding where the women just wore these most beautiful, vibrant colors of fabrics were so lightweight and flowing and I just fell in love with it all. And then I discovered the handwork as well. So, you know, living in Europe, we always wore sort of dark, dull colors. And there we were in India with all these beautiful bright colors. So I was really enamored. And I've always loved textiles from the time I was a young child. I would comment on certain things. So I know I've come full circle after a few careers, but this is sort of the culmination and the most fun I've had, I think. So then also when I was there, I got to visit with a friend of mine, some of the homes of other women she knew. And they have these gorgeous hand-woven shawls and embroidered tops. I just went nuts over them, for starters. But I also like the fact that they were giving back to their villages. These women all came over to their families are originally from villages to the city of Bombay. And these women would take all the profits from selling these things and give it back to the people and the village they came from. And I found that very touching.

amaya

H: And how has the clothing line evolved over the years?

P: It's a long, long evolution. After I fell in love with these textiles, my daughter-in-law said to me, “Oh, you really have to do something with this.” So I started bringing back a few handmade things, mostly home furnishings, tablecloths, place mats, pillow covers. And then I went to do a trade show for home furnishings. And I always wore something rather Indian embroidered. And most of the women were buyers and most of them were much more interested in what I was wearing, than what I was selling. So I decided we needed to change course. And so that's what we did. We decided we needed to not just focus on the clothing, but focus on the incredible crafts and the artisans that make these clothes and how unique they are to the handwork on them. There are a lot of clothes out there that are machine made, machine embroidered. We really wanted to be special and bring this handwork to the United States. And so we started with one shirt and now we have a line of dresses and tops tunics all from pure cotton or pure silk using natural dyes which are all environmentally friendly. We feel this is very important in this day and age.

H: That's awesome that you kind of changed your business to what the customers kind of wanted, liking your clothes and having it go into something really special for you.

P: Yeah, as I say, live and learn. And sometimes you have to change course and do something that's better.

Finding Artisans

H: How do you go about finding artisans to make your clothing handmade?

handmade tunics

P: Well, we developed friends, friends of friends in India, and we were introduced to some people by friends who had been in the business a long time, and they had connections to these women in the villages who do this special embroidery. So we were able to make the products and then send them to the villages for embroidery. And luckily, we have probably the best artisans in the field right now. Traditionally, you know, they've carried on this tradition, which started in Persia centuries ago. And because of it, most of the embroidery is made by Muslim women and some men. But the printing is all done by Hindus. So they each have their own sort of expertise that carries on from generation to generation. And that's really what we're trying to do. Keep it going for generations to come, to give them work and to keep the crafts going, because so much of the world has lost their craftwork, their handwork. Also, we're lucky to have wonderful agents who help us in the workshops, bring it all together.

H: And do you give your artisans specific instructions on what to make?

P: Well, we give them the ideas for the prints and the colors and the style and the embroidery designs, but we really do work together. For example, we explain to them exactly where we want the embroidery. Do we want it around the neck? Do we want it around the hand sleeves, the back, whatever? And then we choose the style of embroidery as well. Some of them are very old style. They're based on the old carved windows that you see in Indian pictures or if you've been to India and some are based on florals and things that you see in nature as well as our prints are as well. Our block prints are all done on cotton and the screen prints on silk. We develop our own prints this way. Now, some of them are traditional and some of them are, I would say, partially at least created by us. It's a long, long, long process, of course, because they have to carve a block, but they have to carve the piece of wood first and the design that they want or we want to be printed. And then they take a plain sheet of cotton, very long, and they dip the block into color dye and print it on the fabric. And sometimes it's four or five colors on top of each other. You can imagine they really have to be expert at where they place it. And likewise, the silks are all done by screen. The screens have to be cut and metal and then they place it on the long sheet of silk and do one color at a time as well. So it's a really, really long process. And then they have to do the handwork and it has to be put together by the people, sewn and stitched by them and then they have to be washed and packaged. It takes probably three months for us to get anything.

empowering women

H: I always thought it would be sketched and then put on and I never knew about all the processes of the printing. That's really interesting.

P: Well, you can do digital prints, but we don't, we don't tend to do that. We like the old fashion way of doing it.

Selling the Tunics

H: And how did you first start selling the items and how do you sell them now?

P: You’re gonna laugh at this. I failed at the home furnishings. So then we started with clothes. We came back with probably one shirt that I absolutely loved, embroidered all over, and we decided we'd see if any of these shops were interested. We drove around the coastal towns and asked shops if they would be interested. No kidding. And then we discovered trade shows, so we started doing trade shows. In the beginning, we were at one trade show and people were complaining about our price point. So then, we went to another trade show and that was good. But then we've now moved to what's considered the top of the line called coterie. And these people are happy to pay our price. I should say they've been fairly successful. We sold a lot of boutiques that way, of course, and now I'm selling things online as well. We do sell some exclusive designs to some catalogs. That's currently what we're doing.

tunic

H: Do you sell on Amazon too or other third party sites?

P: We thought about Amazon, but you get lost on Amazon. There’s so much. Our stuff really is more special. I hate to say that, then what's sold on Amazon, because of all the handwork. I don't think people who are looking for something on Amazon really get that. It has to be a specialty boutique or special catalog or of a special resort or something like that. Right. We do use a company on the West Coast called Fashwire, they're connected with Google as well. And they've been good for us. And we've done a collaboration with a jewelry company, which is fun because people can see how the products are worn, both the jewelry and the clothes. And then we have our own e-commerce site, so we're trying to cover it.

H: And what have you learned about selling online versus through the traditional stores in your catalogs and the trade shows?

P: We have learned a lot of processes. You know, it's always a learning process. It never ends. But the trade shows are becoming more and more challenging. They're very expensive for people like us to do and it's expensive for the buyers to. There's many trade shows all over the country. It's very expensive for buyers to travel around, stay in hotels and look for things to buy. The trade shows are often very big and they have to wander all over the place. So it's getting harder and harder. There's less foot traffic at each show. So that's something that's beginning to change. The online way seems to be a better way to approach things now, but you still have to go a long way to get your brand name out there and that you're a known quantity. So people will actually come to you or look for you online. And that takes some doing. My husband does all the financials, so he's had to learn all the software and the technology that goes with it. And we have to keep track of inventory. And then the warehouse knows our inventory. The warehouse takes the orders in and ships things out for us, which is a big, big help. But we still have a fair amount of work to do on this side as well.

Online Marketing

H: And then I imagine online marketing is a huge aspect too. What types of online marketing have you pursued?

P: It is a huge, huge part of this. And again, we're sort of new at all of this coming to it rather late. We have a sales director who helps. She's always out there searching for new opportunities for us. And she's wonderful. Then we have somebody who does our social media. She posts everything on the social media sites for us. She's wonderful. And then we have a wonderful, fantastic website and Internet marketing person or company, I should say. We deal mostly with one person and all between all three of them. They have really helped a lot. Again, just getting your name out there.

H: Yeah, it's a big first step for sure. Has the transition to a more robust online presence been overall extremely difficult, or do you think it's starting to get a little bit easier, more and more?

P: I can't say it was difficult. It's just a lengthy process and it's a learning process. It takes time and some help, which I've just told you about it. Very happy. We're very lucky. We feel very fortunate to have such great help. It's always a work in progress. I think that's true for anybody coming into a business. It's all a big learning process in that I think that the person in charge, like myself and my husband, would be, I think, have to stay on top of things and be sure everything's going the way you want it to go. You can't be overly controlling, but you have to oversee things, so that you're sure that this person's doing what you wish and that person is and you can't just let it go and give it off to them. You have to really stay on top of it.

H: And how do you see Amaya growing in the future?

P: Well, I see great potential for us. I feel our potential is really only beginning to be tapped. It's so difficult to get your name out there and there's so much competition around. You have to keep coming up with ideas to show people that you're unique and different from other people, not just more of the same. So that's new design, the new colors, new prints, but in our case and it's trying to get new venues for your products. But I do see great potential for online and for other avenues of growth other than specialty shops.

Education for Empowerment

education for empowerment

H: And lastly, would you like to speak to your Educating for Empowerment initiative?

P: I would. On top of supporting all these wonderful artisans who do this incredible work for us, who we support, so they really have a better life than they used to. Mostly women, a lot of women, who never had money for themselves now do and they could afford to take care of their children or the family better and all of that. And as a byproduct of all of this, my husband and I are retired educators. And when I thought about what we can do more to help, I thought, well, the natural thing is to give scholarships to girls who could not otherwise afford to carry on with school. All countries offer an elementary education, as we would call it. But when they finish that and want to go on to high school or higher education, in most places, they have to go to boarding school and boarding school costs money that they can't afford. So we're trying to truly choose children in slums and in poor villages, we want to send to school, you know, bright scholars. And we have children in Afghanistan, Kenya and India, we're sending to school now. And it's my pleasure really to do this. I wouldn't care if we were completely a non-profit. It means so much to me. And to see these girls blossom is just wonderful. Makes you feel good.

H: It's a beautiful, beautiful story. And thank you so much for joining us today and talking about everything that you do.

P: You're very welcome. My hope is it will be helpful to some others.

H: Yes, I'm sure it will be. Thank you.