Gordon Segal's Advice to An Entrepreneur

The latest issue of the Inc. Magazine is chock-full of interesting entrepreneurial stories. Gordon Segal of Crate and Barrel recalls the early days of his business:

“More than anything, being a successful start-up entrepreneur is about hard work. You have to be willing to work 12-hour days six days a week for the first five years. We didn’t take off a week until 1970 [ed.: Gordon and his wife, Carole, started C&B in 1962]. Now people walk into my office looking for a job and they want work-life balance. They ask for three or four weeks of vacation, and I’m saying to myself, “Ha. That’s interesting.” I don’t think you can do a start-up and have a normal life. But it’s worth it. I couldn’t have done anything else.”

Those of you who know me, will understand why this quote strikes a chord with me (hint: I’m a workaholic with passion for my craft).

Here’s a great advice on how to stand out from the crowd with a unique product:

“It’s harder to be unique today: In the 1960s, very few people traveled internationally. You’d stay in a small hotel in Italy and it would take three days to arrange an international phone call. Now the world has grown much closer, which is great, but it means that products like this face more competition. On the other hand, because there are fewer different stores and more homogeneity in retail today, uniqueness is more highly prized. If you can develop a unique design—something visually or mechanically clever, or something beautiful—you have greater opportunity today than you did then.”

I don’t know if there’s a place in the world where this advice is as urgent as in the United States where stores are stocked top to bottom with mediocre stuff. Just observe the crowd at a major holiday, eg. Christmas, and you’ll see people buying crap in bulk. The paradox of choice must be dumbing down the feel for aesthetics.

Gordon is a major figure in commerce and in the greater universe as well. I can assure you that he pays the same attention to his community interests as he does to his business, and it is no surprise to me that the concept of "vacation" is not uppermost in his mind. As he withdraws from active management of Crate & Barrel, which he can do, he says, thanks to the excellence of his staff, he is increasing the time he can devote to his interests. One of these is Old World Wisconsin, [http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/oww/], the nation's largest living history museum, located in Eagle, Wisconsin, near the Segals' weekend getaway.
Michael Horne