March 21, 2023 • 40 mins
Entrepreneur Mei Xu started out life in China training to be a foreign diplomat. But the effects of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident derailed her plans and she found herself in America dreaming of starting a business. In this episode, we learn how this Chinese immigrant turned her fascination with Bloomingdale's into a multi-million dollar candle business — Chesapeake Bay Candle.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Now, why don't we do something. We don't have
any kids, we don't have any paths, we don't have mortgage.
We have nothing to lose for sure. You know, that's
one thing about being growing up in a culture where
you don't have a lot, is that you don't have
a sense of loss when you quit a job. So
(00:35):
both of us quit our jobs and we started our
business in nineteen ninety four. My guest today May. She
grew up in China during the nineteen seventies. It was
a very different time in that country's history when they
were only just beginning to open up to the world.
Hand Picked by the government, May trained from an early
age to become a foreign diplomat. But after Channaman Square,
(00:58):
a huge political upheaval took place in China, and she
was ultimately sent to work in a factory. That's when
May decided to make a move, a literal She immigrated
to America, where she discovered Bloomingdale's, a department store that,
to her eyes, seemed like a literal paradise. And it's
(01:20):
there that she saw something that everyone else had missed,
the kind of insight that tends to come to outsiders,
to people who look at something mundane with fresh eyes.
What masaw was an opportunity to revitalize Bloomingdale's bland and
outdated home to core section, and that insight led her
to create Chesapeake Bay Candle Ascented Candle Company that she
(01:42):
eventually sold for seventy five million dollars. Mashey's story is
super unique, and I feel like we only started to
skin the surface of her deep reservoir of wisdom in
this interview. This is started from the bottom, hard owned
(02:02):
success stories from people like us. Let's get into my conversation.
I have a Mashie. I was trying to start a
business when I was living in New York. When I
was kind of bored with a job that I had,
(02:22):
I started to go to a Bloomingdale, the Bloomingdale flagship
next door quite often. I noticed a big difference between
fashion at that time, you know, was dominated by very clean,
minimalist designs from you know, Donald Karen if Claron. And
then I went up to the top floors of the
(02:44):
department store and I realized that home and home fashion
was very backward. You know, colors were dark, prints were
very tiny, remind you of very old, traditional, very mundane
designs and very ornate, you know styles, and I was wondering, why,
you know, home cannot be more bold, cannot be more
(03:07):
streamlined or friend So that's when I started talking to
my then my then husband David. We started to think
that because both of us were immigrant from China, and
China was in their moment in the early nineties where
they were rapidly growing their export business and many of
our friends work for those export business and they have
(03:31):
a lot of great ideas. So we said, why don't
we start focusing on things that is home based. Maybe
that's where we can make a difference, you know, with
my eye, my sense of style. So we started testing
a bunch of products, and in the end, it's candles
that really caught up. And that's when I focused on
(03:53):
the category. And when I started working with candles, it's
very natural to incorporate fragrance, and I didn't want to
just stay like everyone else at that time. As you remember,
there are a lot of brands that Americans they all
come in a are and with fragrances like vanilla and mulberry,
very straightforward, and I just don't understand why you can't
(04:17):
make it more stylish. You can't make it also a
little bit more complex. So that's how Chesapeake Bay Candle
was born. Because I see the opportunity to bring some
sense of fashion and style into a pretty sleepy industry.
I love it. Let's back up a bit and talk
a little bit about what your childhood was like growing
(04:39):
up in China in the seventies. Very different place than
it is now, very different places, and I think in
a way that it's probably what has been the most
interesting experience for me is not just to be able
to live my entrepreneurial dream, but it's all to say
too many people that no, you actually may not need
to be born into entrepreneurial house or giving a lot
(05:03):
of classes when you were growing up. I was born
raised in the era for a long time when China
was very closed. Everything was pretty you know, everyone's pretty
much wearing the same color, wear the same style. But
you know, there was something about looking for beauty that
I think it's always what I find myself. I live
(05:26):
in a city called ham Jo. It's about two hours
away from Shanghai. It's a very developed city with a
long history of where poets and painters go and create.
So it was a beautiful setting with very traditional, beautiful
progoders and bridges, very romantic in the sense of the ambiance,
(05:47):
even in a country where it's not very sort of
prioritized in terms of arts. I was lucky that in
nineteen seventy four, after Nixon visited China and decided that
week where he visited China to start this normalization. By
nineteen seventy nine, China already realized. So the government realized
(06:10):
that because it's being so close for such a long time,
they really don't have any career diplomats that not only
speak language as well, but understand long histories and arts
and philosophy. And it's not enough to teach students those
only at university levels. So they want to set up
(06:31):
eight foreign language and diplomacy schools at a younger age
so that they can teach at a younger age. And
I was very fortunate. I went to a boarding school
for diplomacy at twelve, and that was really what I
would think. My background is this exceptional exposure and teaching
(06:54):
in an emerging manner, but also the exposure to art
and history at a very young age. So I would
say this exposure as well as the fact that. To
accompany the amount of education, we were also exposed to
watching movies. I remember watching Godfather at fourteen, which is
so inappropriate to think back, but we did, you know,
(07:18):
after that exposure, I think it prepared me to have
a very good foundation, not only to work in a
different culture, but to really, more than anything else, have
a very global perspective. And that is something that I
would go back to. It's not just an entrepreneurship that
I think came with the fact that I was the
(07:40):
only person in a family that spoke a different language,
but it also was because of my training and exposure
to those things that no one think about right away.
You know, they think you go to school just to
learn from the classes, but you also, because of that exposure,
got to know so much just from passively observing things
(08:01):
or being able to loop into a historical reference. And
that I think was really great about my education is
give me such a great foundation. Did you and your
family at the time realize how great it was? I
think my mother did. My mother and father obviously really
sort of thought it would be a good idea for
(08:22):
me to enroll in this school. So for them, it's
a big sacrifice imagine they sent me to a boarding
school and that basically it's like going to college here,
So it's basically a loss. You know, think about how
I only spend a day of a week with them,
and even that, you know, I do a lot of homework,
(08:43):
so I'm not spending real time with them. And then
China never had really long summer vacations. It's probably a
month at the best. So ever, since twelve, I was
kind of not really there with them anymore. And to
look back, I would never send any of my kids
going to boarding school for a reason. You know, it's
a it's a huge sacrifice, yeah, for them. At that
(09:07):
point in time, What did you think your future looked like?
I am so sure I would be a diplomat. And
it was further cemented when I went to college in
Beijing and I was really in one of the best
colleges for foreign service and diplomacy. I was tapped to
do a lot of work for the World Bank. Wow,
(09:30):
and again they don't have a lot of career diplomats
or career translators, so I was tapped to basically go
along with the mission, and it's usually two weeks long.
I would go with maybe ten experts what we call
the consultants from the World Bank and the mission leader,
and then I'll go to the local government and you know,
(09:50):
I'll be the only one speaking both languages out of fifty.
So that was my four years in Beijing. But you know,
I hate to say it wasn't a great ending for
me because I graduated, going to say, just like, just
like it was sort of good timing. Yeah, in terms
of when you were born for you know, yes, yes,
(10:11):
with the Nixon visit, now, I was not of you
to go to boarding school and be set on this path.
It was so different from what you might have thought.
It was like sort of maybe bad timing that yeah,
bad Tenement Square happened. Bad timing, bad timing, And in
a way, you know, when you think about COVID, it's
almost a little bit like that. It's so abrupt. It
just no one imagined something like this what happened, even
(10:33):
though you could say, why wouldn't we imagine? But in
nineteen eighty nine, China has opened for more than a decade,
and nothing like this has ever been happening in the
major city, let alone in the capital. Do you have
any memories of Tenement Square. I was never really there
that much. I was traveling so much for work. I
(10:56):
just remember the enormous amount of people. It was a
very special spring. That spring was very warm, and we
actually lost the secretary of the party, who was very
very much loft. You know, I was looking at the
queen's funeral, the possession, and even though you know, they
(11:16):
were obviously never going to be such a grand ceremony,
there was a lot of pouring of sympathy for that
general secretary, and people just loved how he does not
allow corruption. And they use a protest on tim and
Square to share their sort of sentiment against the corruption
(11:39):
that's going on. And that's how it all got started.
So when it did happen our grade, unfortunately our year,
we all graduate in the middle of July. All the
high universities finished in the middle of July, and it
was already after Timman Square. So we were all sent
outside of major cities, particularly Beijing, because they wanted to
(12:02):
give us a second education. So literally we were not
you know, working in offices. We were all in factories
and you know, warehouses. And I was, you know, one
of those unfortunate ones that not only am I away
from the city. I'm going to be in the suburb
and looking after a warehouse with minerals for export. So
(12:24):
like you couldn't possibly think of a more different life.
Wherefore a year my job was to sit and watch
not people but minerals, you know, and they're like a
power of minerals. And then a truck will come and
pick up a load in the morning and then a
load in the afternoon. And that's all I do is
across them on a board twice a day. That would
(12:49):
be my whole year. And this was purposeful, right because
they the government at the time, after tenements, that didn't
want students to feel They didn't want you to feel empowered.
I think it's a you know, it's definitely a strategy
to first not have us being able together, but mostly
it's also away from where we could organize ourselves. But
(13:11):
I think whatever they do, I didn't want to allow
myself to be there for a year. It's just not
something that that's probably the beginning of my entrepreneurship is
that I found myself capable of going into an unknown
world or unknown future and to take control of my happiness.
(13:33):
I can say that now, but I also felt that
I don't have a lot of choices. I was not happy.
I didn't have good food, which is very important to me.
My then boyfriend which later on become my husband, David,
was living in Beijing. It was just not a life
that I want to live anymore. You know, it's so
hard to think about a whole year like that. And
(13:55):
I always wanted to study in the US anyway, I
never know when, but this was kind of like pushing
me to that goal, and that I did. I spent
a whole year gathering my paperwork together passport because in
China at that time, private citizens are not allowed to
go travel on your own. You have to have some
(14:17):
personal relationships outside. And long story short, it took me
a year, but I came to Maryland for graduate study.
And so this happens in your was the mineral job
was that like a cultural revolution factory job with the
minimal right. The mineral job was really completely yeah, devoid
(14:40):
of all Yeah, it's boring. It's really boring. So they
didn't do a lot of what's called political education. But
there's definitely lack of stimulation. There is no real work, right,
there's no intellectual stimulation, as you know, for foreign language.
If you don't practice, you would lose it. A year
(15:01):
of not using my language would be suicidal because I
spent ten years practicing it daily. That's one of the
key reasons for me to give up that career path
to become a diplomat. Once you did make it to
the US, where did you land and were there any
culture culture shocks did you feel? I don't feel a
(15:22):
lot of culture shock. Remember we have been preparing for
this day for such a long time, and I have
had friends in the World Bank who actually opened their
home to me. So my first month was actually spent
on embassy role where my very good friend and my
boss um. He really helped me with the transition. He
(15:43):
and his wife, Uh they're empty nesters, so they could,
you know, shuttle me to different fun places each weekend
when I went to see them. It really helped me
ease into the life. And once you when you get
to the US, you develop a fascination maybe with with Bloomingdale.
I known't who what if you're a fashionista and your
(16:05):
company puts you in a hotel next door and you
don't have any body you know yet in New York.
So I ended up going there after every meal, every dinner,
I came back to my room and I said, okay,
let's see what they have. I remember, you know, the
ladies that spray fragrances at people, and most of them say,
don't spray me, And I'm always saying, spray me and
(16:26):
tell me what's new today, So I think I end
up this is probably another sign that I was interested
in fragrance, because I love when they spray fragrances on
my risk. It kind of gave me a fresh sort
of wake up. Yeah, I love it, and I love
the fashion floors. You know, It's really something I grow
up loving, is fashion, and I never really was able
(16:49):
to wear any designer clothes, obviously until much later. But
I can spot a good thing from a distance. I
know what I like and why I like it. And interestingly,
even today, if I go into an art gallery and
I'll ask I really like this painting and how much
does it cost? And they always look at me and say,
(17:09):
but that's the most expensive painting. How did you know?
And I said, I don't know that. I just it
just speak to me in the sense of there must
be something about color or the composition or the subject matter.
Or the emotions. So I'm fortunate I have a very
good eye for that. Great great instincts in general, scenes well,
(17:33):
those are dangerous for people if they have too much money.
So I always joke with my friend, if you need
to know how to spend money, just come. If you
need to spend let me know. I'll help you with that.
You know what it's too. You know, I've noticed in
life you it's the saying is true. You really cannot
buy taste. So the fact that you have both both
the money and the taste come from a country that
(17:55):
has known when I was growing up. It's very interesting.
People still don't understand. You know, you didn't grow up
with a silver spoon. How did you do that? I said, well,
you know, you be a surprised if that's all you
do is to admiring at things that you couldn't have
a studying it as a subject matter, because a lot
of the arts, you know, classes were about compositions or
(18:19):
lighting and shadows, and I think those things come very
handy after all. After the break May explains how the
bleak and boring home the core section at Bloomingdale's became
the driving point that inspired her to start her multimillion
dollars sented candle company Chesapeake Bay Candle. You're growing up
(18:46):
with very little and only really able to see things
from afar, you do have a sense of style. I
imagine being to go to a place like Bloomingdale's must
have just really it's a paradise, a paradise. It's a paradise.
It is like a you know, it's like you're going
into a Disney World, and the ride it's just so
stimulating from every angle. It's not just the colors. It's
(19:09):
a Melican, it's a fragrance, it's it's a scale of
a certain design. It's very shocking but stimulating. That's why
I can't get enough of it, and I'm always there
to observe. But I think I do realize quite quickly
actually in the early nineties when I started working in
New York, that fashion at that time has already start
(19:31):
starting to focus on a more gender neutral, minimalist trend,
borrowing from men'swear in terms of a fabric. Then they
used the color of men'swear. However, the tailoring is extremely
sort of feminine, so that at once you have this
powerful yet sexy look for a woman, and I love
(19:52):
that combination. I hate Danty, you know, Dante floral prints.
I like always solids and clean and piece that speaks
to texture and quality of fabric, but sculptured in a
way that's for a woman's body, right, And this is
what ultimately inspires you. Once you realize this isn't happening
(20:15):
in home, the core home, the core is behind you
realize I can do that you I should be doing.
I think maybe it's because you know, at that time,
at least for Bloomingdale's the industry that has, you know,
the most fashion designers are the fashion industry. There are
furniture designers too, but they are not yet dominating because
(20:37):
our style in the hotels or a restaurant are still
quite classic. However, I have been lucky that I traveled
to Europe already by the time I went to New
York for my work, and I know when I went
to London, which was the trip that I was invited to,
I noticed the Europeans have that blonde wood that is
(21:01):
not finished, which looks so much better with the boulder colors.
Blonde wood that is natural, right, it's untouched. It just
looks so fresh. It's at once very fresh but substantial,
and it really highlight the texture much better. I absolutely
understand why you are able to sell because you have
(21:26):
a way of talking about these things that make me
that that make them appeal to me in a way.
You know that in a way I don't quite understand.
You have a way of articulating exactly where it is
I'm feeling when I when I look at something that
I find to be striking and explaining it, you will.
You will know as soon as I put that sort
of in front of you. But it's it's difficult to
say why people like textures, but in general, all of
(21:50):
us humans like textures. It's just more interesting, right, It's
not like and it's not manufactured. It's more natural. It's
more nature inspired. So that's where I know it existed already.
It's just that for some reason, it's not caught on
yet in the world, and it's definitely not caught on
in the US. So I continually talk about this to David,
(22:13):
my ex husband, who was in Washington. At some point
he got tired and he said, why are you complaining
about the floor on the top. Why don't we do
something you're tired of commuting? I was commuting at that
time between DC and New York every weekend. So why
don't we do something. We don't have any kids, we
(22:33):
don't have any paths, we don't have mortgage. We have
nothing to lose for sure. You know, that's one thing
about being growing up in a culture where you don't
have a lot, is that you don't have a sense
of loss when you quit a job. So both of
us quit our jobs and we started our business in
nineteen ninety four here in Maryland. Wow, and how did
(22:55):
you arrive on the name Chesapeake Bay at that time?
You know, we have always loved the water, not because
it's particularly clean or tranquil, but the fact that around
Chespeag Bay, the bridge and the surrounding area, it just
looks very quaint. You know, most of the places in China,
(23:17):
because we have so many populations, I mean, the population
is so big. Everywhere you go, it's a big crowd.
It's very rare that you could go look at a
bridge or beautiful picture picturesque town center and it's not
crowded every inch. And I just remember one day we
were watching some sailboats with our dog, my first dog,
(23:43):
and it's just that very crisp blue sky with very
dark water and the white sail in the distance. That's
such an Americana visual and that feeling is what I
want to capture in the candles. It's that sense of
relaxing on assuming and nature inspired with a botanical fragrance
(24:07):
focused collection. It's amazing how when you're living outside of
the American dream you have such a firm of what
looks like you're taken for granted. It's another interesting thing
I don't know if you've been to Asia, is that
we have a lot of parks, and parks are really
(24:28):
door like gated, and there was a lot of man
made sort of scenery and it's relatively small, and it's
always filled with people taking photos. So that sense that
you don't have a gate, you don't have a fence,
it's also very liberating. There's something free about that you
can't have it. You can go with your dog. Even
(24:50):
that's almost like too good to be true for someone
that doesn't have a lot of experience traveling at that time. Right, right,
But when did you realize that this is a viable
business opportunity. It's pretty immediate. We I don't know if
I mentioned to you but the first year we went
into business, it was nineteen ninety four and it was
(25:13):
already September nineteen ninety four. We did half a million
dollar wards of sales the first year, and the next
years we did even to think we did even then
the next year we already did two point five. So
we know that we hit a nerve with Americans. Did
you have okay, so obviously staggering numbers. I know, lots
(25:37):
of candles. It is. It is obviously you had this
great education in China. But to come here and to
be able to figure out how to start a business
and then make do those kinds of sales, it is staggering.
How did you know how to approach your company early on?
How did you know how to exactly the steps you
needed to take to make your company one exist and
(26:00):
two let it drive so quickly? Well, I think the
timing is very important. You know, when people ask me
how do you succeed? When do you know it's the
right time? I always say, you want to get into
an industry when it's on the rising. You don't want
to go in there when it's declining and you think
you can save the industry or you can be the
(26:20):
cheapest guy. Being the cheapest guy is never going to
be sustainable. So for me, I realized that candle has
been around for a long time, but fragrance candle have not,
and fragrance candle company has been dominated by I'm sorry
to use those words, but white men who pretty much
(26:40):
were brought up with only one vision, which is you know,
country and grandmother's cookie jar kind of look right, And
I'm just nothing about me what. I don't want to
be caught burning a candle like that at home anytime,
and I don't want anybody to think that I'd make
(27:01):
any of them. So to me, you know it is
you're laughing because do you want to be associated with
the grandmother's cookie jar candle? You don't because I might
want to eat them, but I don't want to, I know,
I mean, who wants to burn a cookie jar candle?
I mean there's a guy that actually come up with
a fragrance called hamburger, and I'm like, seriously, of all
(27:21):
the fragrance you can think of, you are dreaming of
smelling your own fat hamburger. So that is what that's
what is driving me crazy. But long story short as
you can say, I have a lot of opinions about fragrance.
I love it. I love it. So the long story
(27:42):
short is that I don't think it's because I'm uh,
you know, I need a lot of experience to get
into this. When you're on the ride, even you know,
we say that the rising tide lifted the boat, right,
So this little boat was lifted because I was riding
on a very high tide. But what's unique about me
(28:04):
is don't forget I immediately connect my manufacturing with China.
Not many people figure out their supply chain, and I
hate to say that's probably the number one mistake for
people that get into the product driven business is if
you don't have strong partners in supply chain, you could
go very far with ideas, but you would not go
(28:25):
very far with the scaling of the business. So talk
a little bit about how you charted out your supply
chain and how someone today might do. I like the
word supply chain. I charted out my supply chain sounds
really like May has a strategic group of people that
looking at her and she said, I want to charter
(28:46):
my supply chain. Unfortunately it's me and my ex husband
is we look at each other and we were so
annoyed with the fact that because I want to design
my own candle and because I want to put fragrance
in a candle, no one in China actually want to
do my business. I went to show them how you
(29:06):
make a fragrance candle and then say, but who's going
to buy it. I said, well, I'm pretty sure if
you make it for me, I can sell it. And
they say about how many containers are you going to buy? Container,
meaning those forty foot truck that you see on the road.
I say how many containers? I want three hundred of
each color and that's all I can buy. They say, no,
(29:28):
we're not going to sell you. So it took us
a long time to realize. I remember we even went
to an investor to see if someone can invest in
our business. So they asked me, what are you going
to do? I said, I'm gonna make candles, and then
they asked me, but what does a candle do. That's
when I know I said, okay, this is not gonna work.
(29:50):
No one's ever gonna if they asked this question, what
does a candle do? So I told my family about it,
and then both my sister and my brother in law
decided that they had a boring job as well, it's
called computer scientists, that they wanted to join the fun.
That's how I found my supply chain. Is I just
(30:12):
I just announced that it's something I wanted to do. So,
you know, even today, my sister's factory, it's probably the
biggest now in the world. And I really think I
have something to do with with what happened to that business.
But most of all, she deserved a lot of credit
for taking a risk on me and trust my instinct.
(30:36):
So your sister and brother in law in China leave
their computer science jobs and start a factory, yeah, out
of nowhere, out of nowhere they've never been in to
help me pour candles into a job, you know, into
a mode and take the mode out. They learned everything
because I learned everything from people that I you know,
(30:57):
that's something you can think about. I don't know how
to way candles right, and there's no YouTube in nineteen
ninety five. So what happened is I went to a
fragrance vendor. His name is Peter Fred He's based in
New Jersey like many other fragrance vendors, and he also
supplied pigments for the dye for the color right the color.
(31:18):
So he taught me everything and the rest I figured
it out step by step by trying true. And he's
due my very good supplier if I work with them.
But you know, I sold my business five years ago.
How much did you end up selling the company for.
It's not a huge amount, but it's a lot for
(31:38):
you know, those of us that comes from a background
almost nothing. I think it was seventy five million dollars.
That's amazing. When we come back. More from Mehee about
getting her candles placed in Bloomingdale's and new challenges she
faced after finding success. Once your sister decides to jump
(32:08):
in the phrame, sort this factory to help you make
your candles, pour your candles and bring them to the
US and sell them. What were the other initial startup
costs and how did you go about covering those? I
went to trade shows, and at trade shows, I met
a lot of smaller business owners. By the end of
twenty nineteen ninety five, but already have over two thousand
(32:31):
business accounts. But I really want to work for the
major companies. That's when I just pick up a phone.
You know, those are the days you still have a
Yellow Page, and I just call the buyers at Bloomingdale's
who gave me an appointment, who I sold on the
spot because he can tell that his floor is so sleepy.
(32:52):
He couldn't wait for me to ship him. So it's
an amazing ride. That's all I can tell you. It's
if you hit the nerve, if it's the right moment,
and you can deliver, which is very important. It's almost
like you couldn't go wrong. You have no competition at
that time. Wow, And so how quickly did you get
(33:13):
into blooming So you're on Bloomingdale's ink in nineteen ninety
five and the next time I met them in nineteen
ninety five. I think the delivery was in February of
nineteen ninety six. And I remember by April when I
went back to Bloomingdale, I saw my candles displayed throughout
the home floor. It's such you know, literally a year
(33:34):
and a half after you start this business, you're you're
You're able to walk into Bloomingdale and the flame share
store that I always went to. It's such a great feeling.
It's almost like they know you're coming. And they used
one color only they used that green. This um you know,
it's almost like honey dew green and then the white,
So how fresh is that for spray? Right? So it's
(33:56):
a white and that that lime green, and it's so beautiful.
It's throughout the whole home, on the table's, dining room, table,
on the coffee table, bathrooms. They just said up throughout
the whole store, and I'm so happy about that. How
would you characterize your experience from nineteen ninety four through
(34:17):
twenty seventeen with Jessapeague Bay Candles. It's a pretty wild, right,
But I was very I was very dedicated to the business.
I didn't really have a lot of break in terms
of my career or a huge time for me to
think I do have to stop in twenty seventeen because
I was finding that I had a breast cancer in
(34:40):
the end of twenty sixteen and it was a pretty
aggressive cancer. Even though it's stage one, I have to
get surgery and chemo six months of chemotherapy, so it's
very intense. And that's when I decided that the company
need a steady hand and it needed someone that can
(35:02):
give it one hundred percent. That's a very hard decision,
but it happened, and I sold the business by the
time I finished the chemotherapy, And what were your feelings
around letting it go? It's hard, and you know, I
(35:23):
was not a person that can sit around and you know,
just enjoy some slow time. And I know for sure
I cannot just do a regular retirement. I have to
be stimulated, I have to be curious, I have to
learn new things. So I started giving a lot of
(35:44):
talk about entrepreneurship. You know, I was invited to speak
at podcasts like yours or in person. I realized that
a lot of times women audience are the ones that
want to talk to me because most of their businesses
are so much smaller. I think the majority of women
(36:06):
owned businesses do less than even two hundred thousand dollars
leatherlon a million. And that's the moment when I decided
to do more with them. And then came the pandemic.
I heard from many of them, and a lot of
them wore overseas and their business completely depend on tourism,
and when their country was shut down, their orders were
(36:28):
canceled because the stores were closed. And I realized that
instead of helping them from a consulting perspective, maybe I
can help them by setting up a platform. So that's
when Yeshimay was born. It's in June of twenty twenty,
with the hope that you know, we can help those
women to reach consumers online. Yeah, so you have Yes
(36:52):
She May, which is sort of provides mentorship to women entrepreneurs,
to female entrepreneurs. Looking back, how did you feel your
experience was as a female entrepreneur. Well, I didn't think
about myself first as a female entrepreneur. To be honest
with you, I always think about myself as a consumer
product entrepreneur, and my being female may be actually very
(37:17):
helpful because I have the insight. I'm also the user
of the product that I design and create, so I
understand the pain point. My challenge to a lot of
consumer product company is that I don't think there is
enough a point of view from consumer that was always reflected.
So you can think of Victoria's Secret. For a very
(37:40):
long time, the bras were not designed for women. They're
designed for a different audience for the people that's you know,
looking at them. I don't mean it in a bad way,
but you know, you have the Victoria's Secret runway show
and it's completely overtaking what really is that brand's supposed
to be. They's supposed to be the best friend of
(38:01):
a woman. They're supposed to make her feel supported and
nourished and cherished. And I feel none of the materials,
designs speak to that. So if I have been incorporated
in the decision process, that message should have been heard
loud and clear. We're going to lose market share because
we're not inclusive. We don't use the comfortable fabric, and
(38:22):
we make women look like you know, they are doing
other business. So that voice is not heard on the
top to the bottom level in that organization. And there
are many consumer product companies that are still not waking
up to see the world they're living in. And our
world has changed. Our young consumers, they want nothing to
(38:45):
do with companies like that. They want a company that
stand for something that minimum should stand for, understanding them,
be humble about what you're serving and who you're serving. Well, Mayshe,
you are my favorite candlemaker. Thank you, and I'm a
big fan of candles, and so I really want to
thank you so much for so much today. Thank you,
(39:08):
and I hope we get this week again. Thank you.
Justin I hope you've enjoyed my long winded dialogue. Look,
there's a lot I feel like there's a lot more
we could talk about it, So one day we'll do
it again. Thanks so much again, have a wonderful weeks.
Bye bye. That was May She, founder of my favorite candles,
Chesapeake Bay, and also the new online shop. Yes she,
(39:30):
May I get to speak with some truly passionate, intelligent
entrepreneurs on this show, and I'm so glad I got
to share this conversation with you guys. May She left
us with a major point. Listen to the consumer, to
the people you're trying to serve your audience, and understand
what it is that they want. It's so obvious, but
(39:52):
also at the same time, it's just refreshing to hear
someone actually say that out loud. Start Up from the
Bottom is produced by David Jah, edited by Keisha Williams,
Engineered by Ben Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan with duction
help from Leah Rose. We're executive produced by Jacob Goldstein.
(40:15):
Our theme music's by Benaliday and David Jah, featuring Anthony
Yaggas and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to start it from
the bottom, wherever you get your podcasts and if you want,
ad free episodes available one week early sign up for
Pushkin Plus. Check out pushkin dot fm or the Apple
Show page for more information. If you like our show,
(40:35):
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast stap. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin, Now, why don't we do something. We don't have
any kids, we don't have any paths, we don't have mortgage.
We have nothing to lose for sure. You know, that's
one thing about being growing up in a culture where
you don't have a lot, is that you don't have
a sense of loss when you quit a job. So
(00:35):
both of us quit our jobs and we started our
business in nineteen ninety four. My guest today May. She
grew up in China during the nineteen seventies. It was
a very different time in that country's history when they
were only just beginning to open up to the world.
Hand Picked by the government, May trained from an early
age to become a foreign diplomat. But after Channaman Square,
(00:58):
a huge political upheaval took place in China, and she
was ultimately sent to work in a factory. That's when
May decided to make a move, a literal She immigrated
to America, where she discovered Bloomingdale's, a department store that,
to her eyes, seemed like a literal paradise. And it's
(01:20):
there that she saw something that everyone else had missed,
the kind of insight that tends to come to outsiders,
to people who look at something mundane with fresh eyes.
What masaw was an opportunity to revitalize Bloomingdale's bland and
outdated home to core section, and that insight led her
to create Chesapeake Bay Candle Ascented Candle Company that she
(01:42):
eventually sold for seventy five million dollars. Mashey's story is
super unique, and I feel like we only started to
skin the surface of her deep reservoir of wisdom in
this interview. This is started from the bottom, hard owned
(02:02):
success stories from people like us. Let's get into my conversation.
I have a Mashie. I was trying to start a
business when I was living in New York. When I
was kind of bored with a job that I had,
(02:22):
I started to go to a Bloomingdale, the Bloomingdale flagship
next door quite often. I noticed a big difference between
fashion at that time, you know, was dominated by very clean,
minimalist designs from you know, Donald Karen if Claron. And
then I went up to the top floors of the
(02:44):
department store and I realized that home and home fashion
was very backward. You know, colors were dark, prints were
very tiny, remind you of very old, traditional, very mundane
designs and very ornate, you know styles, and I was wondering, why,
you know, home cannot be more bold, cannot be more
(03:07):
streamlined or friend So that's when I started talking to
my then my then husband David. We started to think
that because both of us were immigrant from China, and
China was in their moment in the early nineties where
they were rapidly growing their export business and many of
our friends work for those export business and they have
(03:31):
a lot of great ideas. So we said, why don't
we start focusing on things that is home based. Maybe
that's where we can make a difference, you know, with
my eye, my sense of style. So we started testing
a bunch of products, and in the end, it's candles
that really caught up. And that's when I focused on
(03:53):
the category. And when I started working with candles, it's
very natural to incorporate fragrance, and I didn't want to
just stay like everyone else at that time. As you remember,
there are a lot of brands that Americans they all
come in a are and with fragrances like vanilla and mulberry,
very straightforward, and I just don't understand why you can't
(04:17):
make it more stylish. You can't make it also a
little bit more complex. So that's how Chesapeake Bay Candle
was born. Because I see the opportunity to bring some
sense of fashion and style into a pretty sleepy industry.
I love it. Let's back up a bit and talk
a little bit about what your childhood was like growing
(04:39):
up in China in the seventies. Very different place than
it is now, very different places, and I think in
a way that it's probably what has been the most
interesting experience for me is not just to be able
to live my entrepreneurial dream, but it's all to say
too many people that no, you actually may not need
to be born into entrepreneurial house or giving a lot
(05:03):
of classes when you were growing up. I was born
raised in the era for a long time when China
was very closed. Everything was pretty you know, everyone's pretty
much wearing the same color, wear the same style. But
you know, there was something about looking for beauty that
I think it's always what I find myself. I live
(05:26):
in a city called ham Jo. It's about two hours
away from Shanghai. It's a very developed city with a
long history of where poets and painters go and create.
So it was a beautiful setting with very traditional, beautiful
progoders and bridges, very romantic in the sense of the ambiance,
(05:47):
even in a country where it's not very sort of
prioritized in terms of arts. I was lucky that in
nineteen seventy four, after Nixon visited China and decided that
week where he visited China to start this normalization. By
nineteen seventy nine, China already realized. So the government realized
(06:10):
that because it's being so close for such a long time,
they really don't have any career diplomats that not only
speak language as well, but understand long histories and arts
and philosophy. And it's not enough to teach students those
only at university levels. So they want to set up
(06:31):
eight foreign language and diplomacy schools at a younger age
so that they can teach at a younger age. And
I was very fortunate. I went to a boarding school
for diplomacy at twelve, and that was really what I
would think. My background is this exceptional exposure and teaching
(06:54):
in an emerging manner, but also the exposure to art
and history at a very young age. So I would
say this exposure as well as the fact that. To
accompany the amount of education, we were also exposed to
watching movies. I remember watching Godfather at fourteen, which is
so inappropriate to think back, but we did, you know,
(07:18):
after that exposure, I think it prepared me to have
a very good foundation, not only to work in a
different culture, but to really, more than anything else, have
a very global perspective. And that is something that I
would go back to. It's not just an entrepreneurship that
I think came with the fact that I was the
(07:40):
only person in a family that spoke a different language,
but it also was because of my training and exposure
to those things that no one think about right away.
You know, they think you go to school just to
learn from the classes, but you also, because of that exposure,
got to know so much just from passively observing things
(08:01):
or being able to loop into a historical reference. And
that I think was really great about my education is
give me such a great foundation. Did you and your
family at the time realize how great it was? I
think my mother did. My mother and father obviously really
sort of thought it would be a good idea for
(08:22):
me to enroll in this school. So for them, it's
a big sacrifice imagine they sent me to a boarding
school and that basically it's like going to college here,
So it's basically a loss. You know, think about how
I only spend a day of a week with them,
and even that, you know, I do a lot of homework,
(08:43):
so I'm not spending real time with them. And then
China never had really long summer vacations. It's probably a
month at the best. So ever, since twelve, I was
kind of not really there with them anymore. And to
look back, I would never send any of my kids
going to boarding school for a reason. You know, it's
a it's a huge sacrifice, yeah, for them. At that
(09:07):
point in time, What did you think your future looked like?
I am so sure I would be a diplomat. And
it was further cemented when I went to college in
Beijing and I was really in one of the best
colleges for foreign service and diplomacy. I was tapped to
do a lot of work for the World Bank. Wow,
(09:30):
and again they don't have a lot of career diplomats
or career translators, so I was tapped to basically go
along with the mission, and it's usually two weeks long.
I would go with maybe ten experts what we call
the consultants from the World Bank and the mission leader,
and then I'll go to the local government and you know,
(09:50):
I'll be the only one speaking both languages out of fifty.
So that was my four years in Beijing. But you know,
I hate to say it wasn't a great ending for
me because I graduated, going to say, just like, just
like it was sort of good timing. Yeah, in terms
of when you were born for you know, yes, yes,
(10:11):
with the Nixon visit, now, I was not of you
to go to boarding school and be set on this path.
It was so different from what you might have thought.
It was like sort of maybe bad timing that yeah,
bad Tenement Square happened. Bad timing, bad timing, And in
a way, you know, when you think about COVID, it's
almost a little bit like that. It's so abrupt. It
just no one imagined something like this what happened, even
(10:33):
though you could say, why wouldn't we imagine? But in
nineteen eighty nine, China has opened for more than a decade,
and nothing like this has ever been happening in the
major city, let alone in the capital. Do you have
any memories of Tenement Square. I was never really there
that much. I was traveling so much for work. I
(10:56):
just remember the enormous amount of people. It was a
very special spring. That spring was very warm, and we
actually lost the secretary of the party, who was very
very much loft. You know, I was looking at the
queen's funeral, the possession, and even though you know, they
(11:16):
were obviously never going to be such a grand ceremony,
there was a lot of pouring of sympathy for that
general secretary, and people just loved how he does not
allow corruption. And they use a protest on tim and
Square to share their sort of sentiment against the corruption
(11:39):
that's going on. And that's how it all got started.
So when it did happen our grade, unfortunately our year,
we all graduate in the middle of July. All the
high universities finished in the middle of July, and it
was already after Timman Square. So we were all sent
outside of major cities, particularly Beijing, because they wanted to
(12:02):
give us a second education. So literally we were not
you know, working in offices. We were all in factories
and you know, warehouses. And I was, you know, one
of those unfortunate ones that not only am I away
from the city. I'm going to be in the suburb
and looking after a warehouse with minerals for export. So
(12:24):
like you couldn't possibly think of a more different life.
Wherefore a year my job was to sit and watch
not people but minerals, you know, and they're like a
power of minerals. And then a truck will come and
pick up a load in the morning and then a
load in the afternoon. And that's all I do is
across them on a board twice a day. That would
(12:49):
be my whole year. And this was purposeful, right because
they the government at the time, after tenements, that didn't
want students to feel They didn't want you to feel empowered.
I think it's a you know, it's definitely a strategy
to first not have us being able together, but mostly
it's also away from where we could organize ourselves. But
(13:11):
I think whatever they do, I didn't want to allow
myself to be there for a year. It's just not
something that that's probably the beginning of my entrepreneurship is
that I found myself capable of going into an unknown
world or unknown future and to take control of my happiness.
(13:33):
I can say that now, but I also felt that
I don't have a lot of choices. I was not happy.
I didn't have good food, which is very important to me.
My then boyfriend which later on become my husband, David,
was living in Beijing. It was just not a life
that I want to live anymore. You know, it's so
hard to think about a whole year like that. And
(13:55):
I always wanted to study in the US anyway, I
never know when, but this was kind of like pushing
me to that goal, and that I did. I spent
a whole year gathering my paperwork together passport because in
China at that time, private citizens are not allowed to
go travel on your own. You have to have some
(14:17):
personal relationships outside. And long story short, it took me
a year, but I came to Maryland for graduate study.
And so this happens in your was the mineral job
was that like a cultural revolution factory job with the
minimal right. The mineral job was really completely yeah, devoid
(14:40):
of all Yeah, it's boring. It's really boring. So they
didn't do a lot of what's called political education. But
there's definitely lack of stimulation. There is no real work, right,
there's no intellectual stimulation, as you know, for foreign language.
If you don't practice, you would lose it. A year
(15:01):
of not using my language would be suicidal because I
spent ten years practicing it daily. That's one of the
key reasons for me to give up that career path
to become a diplomat. Once you did make it to
the US, where did you land and were there any
culture culture shocks did you feel? I don't feel a
(15:22):
lot of culture shock. Remember we have been preparing for
this day for such a long time, and I have
had friends in the World Bank who actually opened their
home to me. So my first month was actually spent
on embassy role where my very good friend and my
boss um. He really helped me with the transition. He
(15:43):
and his wife, Uh they're empty nesters, so they could,
you know, shuttle me to different fun places each weekend
when I went to see them. It really helped me
ease into the life. And once you when you get
to the US, you develop a fascination maybe with with Bloomingdale.
I known't who what if you're a fashionista and your
(16:05):
company puts you in a hotel next door and you
don't have any body you know yet in New York.
So I ended up going there after every meal, every dinner,
I came back to my room and I said, okay,
let's see what they have. I remember, you know, the
ladies that spray fragrances at people, and most of them say,
don't spray me, And I'm always saying, spray me and
(16:26):
tell me what's new today, So I think I end
up this is probably another sign that I was interested
in fragrance, because I love when they spray fragrances on
my risk. It kind of gave me a fresh sort
of wake up. Yeah, I love it, and I love
the fashion floors. You know, It's really something I grow
up loving, is fashion, and I never really was able
(16:49):
to wear any designer clothes, obviously until much later. But
I can spot a good thing from a distance. I
know what I like and why I like it. And interestingly,
even today, if I go into an art gallery and
I'll ask I really like this painting and how much
does it cost? And they always look at me and say,
(17:09):
but that's the most expensive painting. How did you know?
And I said, I don't know that. I just it
just speak to me in the sense of there must
be something about color or the composition or the subject matter.
Or the emotions. So I'm fortunate I have a very
good eye for that. Great great instincts in general, scenes well,
(17:33):
those are dangerous for people if they have too much money.
So I always joke with my friend, if you need
to know how to spend money, just come. If you
need to spend let me know. I'll help you with that.
You know what it's too. You know, I've noticed in
life you it's the saying is true. You really cannot
buy taste. So the fact that you have both both
the money and the taste come from a country that
(17:55):
has known when I was growing up. It's very interesting.
People still don't understand. You know, you didn't grow up
with a silver spoon. How did you do that? I said, well,
you know, you be a surprised if that's all you
do is to admiring at things that you couldn't have
a studying it as a subject matter, because a lot
of the arts, you know, classes were about compositions or
(18:19):
lighting and shadows, and I think those things come very
handy after all. After the break May explains how the
bleak and boring home the core section at Bloomingdale's became
the driving point that inspired her to start her multimillion
dollars sented candle company Chesapeake Bay Candle. You're growing up
(18:46):
with very little and only really able to see things
from afar, you do have a sense of style. I
imagine being to go to a place like Bloomingdale's must
have just really it's a paradise, a paradise. It's a paradise.
It is like a you know, it's like you're going
into a Disney World, and the ride it's just so
stimulating from every angle. It's not just the colors. It's
(19:09):
a Melican, it's a fragrance, it's it's a scale of
a certain design. It's very shocking but stimulating. That's why
I can't get enough of it, and I'm always there
to observe. But I think I do realize quite quickly
actually in the early nineties when I started working in
New York, that fashion at that time has already start
(19:31):
starting to focus on a more gender neutral, minimalist trend,
borrowing from men'swear in terms of a fabric. Then they
used the color of men'swear. However, the tailoring is extremely
sort of feminine, so that at once you have this
powerful yet sexy look for a woman, and I love
(19:52):
that combination. I hate Danty, you know, Dante floral prints.
I like always solids and clean and piece that speaks
to texture and quality of fabric, but sculptured in a
way that's for a woman's body, right, And this is
what ultimately inspires you. Once you realize this isn't happening
(20:15):
in home, the core home, the core is behind you
realize I can do that you I should be doing.
I think maybe it's because you know, at that time,
at least for Bloomingdale's the industry that has, you know,
the most fashion designers are the fashion industry. There are
furniture designers too, but they are not yet dominating because
(20:37):
our style in the hotels or a restaurant are still
quite classic. However, I have been lucky that I traveled
to Europe already by the time I went to New
York for my work, and I know when I went
to London, which was the trip that I was invited to,
I noticed the Europeans have that blonde wood that is
(21:01):
not finished, which looks so much better with the boulder colors.
Blonde wood that is natural, right, it's untouched. It just
looks so fresh. It's at once very fresh but substantial,
and it really highlight the texture much better. I absolutely
understand why you are able to sell because you have
(21:26):
a way of talking about these things that make me
that that make them appeal to me in a way.
You know that in a way I don't quite understand.
You have a way of articulating exactly where it is
I'm feeling when I when I look at something that
I find to be striking and explaining it, you will.
You will know as soon as I put that sort
of in front of you. But it's it's difficult to
say why people like textures, but in general, all of
(21:50):
us humans like textures. It's just more interesting, right, It's
not like and it's not manufactured. It's more natural. It's
more nature inspired. So that's where I know it existed already.
It's just that for some reason, it's not caught on
yet in the world, and it's definitely not caught on
in the US. So I continually talk about this to David,
(22:13):
my ex husband, who was in Washington. At some point
he got tired and he said, why are you complaining
about the floor on the top. Why don't we do
something you're tired of commuting? I was commuting at that
time between DC and New York every weekend. So why
don't we do something. We don't have any kids, we
(22:33):
don't have any paths, we don't have mortgage. We have
nothing to lose for sure. You know, that's one thing
about being growing up in a culture where you don't
have a lot, is that you don't have a sense
of loss when you quit a job. So both of
us quit our jobs and we started our business in
nineteen ninety four here in Maryland. Wow, and how did
(22:55):
you arrive on the name Chesapeake Bay at that time?
You know, we have always loved the water, not because
it's particularly clean or tranquil, but the fact that around
Chespeag Bay, the bridge and the surrounding area, it just
looks very quaint. You know, most of the places in China,
(23:17):
because we have so many populations, I mean, the population
is so big. Everywhere you go, it's a big crowd.
It's very rare that you could go look at a
bridge or beautiful picture picturesque town center and it's not
crowded every inch. And I just remember one day we
were watching some sailboats with our dog, my first dog,
(23:43):
and it's just that very crisp blue sky with very
dark water and the white sail in the distance. That's
such an Americana visual and that feeling is what I
want to capture in the candles. It's that sense of
relaxing on assuming and nature inspired with a botanical fragrance
(24:07):
focused collection. It's amazing how when you're living outside of
the American dream you have such a firm of what
looks like you're taken for granted. It's another interesting thing
I don't know if you've been to Asia, is that
we have a lot of parks, and parks are really
(24:28):
door like gated, and there was a lot of man
made sort of scenery and it's relatively small, and it's
always filled with people taking photos. So that sense that
you don't have a gate, you don't have a fence,
it's also very liberating. There's something free about that you
can't have it. You can go with your dog. Even
(24:50):
that's almost like too good to be true for someone
that doesn't have a lot of experience traveling at that time. Right, right,
But when did you realize that this is a viable
business opportunity. It's pretty immediate. We I don't know if
I mentioned to you but the first year we went
into business, it was nineteen ninety four and it was
(25:13):
already September nineteen ninety four. We did half a million
dollar wards of sales the first year, and the next
years we did even to think we did even then
the next year we already did two point five. So
we know that we hit a nerve with Americans. Did
you have okay, so obviously staggering numbers. I know, lots
(25:37):
of candles. It is. It is obviously you had this
great education in China. But to come here and to
be able to figure out how to start a business
and then make do those kinds of sales, it is staggering.
How did you know how to approach your company early on?
How did you know how to exactly the steps you
needed to take to make your company one exist and
(26:00):
two let it drive so quickly? Well, I think the
timing is very important. You know, when people ask me
how do you succeed? When do you know it's the
right time? I always say, you want to get into
an industry when it's on the rising. You don't want
to go in there when it's declining and you think
you can save the industry or you can be the
(26:20):
cheapest guy. Being the cheapest guy is never going to
be sustainable. So for me, I realized that candle has
been around for a long time, but fragrance candle have not,
and fragrance candle company has been dominated by I'm sorry
to use those words, but white men who pretty much
(26:40):
were brought up with only one vision, which is you know,
country and grandmother's cookie jar kind of look right, And
I'm just nothing about me what. I don't want to
be caught burning a candle like that at home anytime,
and I don't want anybody to think that I'd make
(27:01):
any of them. So to me, you know it is
you're laughing because do you want to be associated with
the grandmother's cookie jar candle? You don't because I might
want to eat them, but I don't want to, I know,
I mean, who wants to burn a cookie jar candle?
I mean there's a guy that actually come up with
a fragrance called hamburger, and I'm like, seriously, of all
(27:21):
the fragrance you can think of, you are dreaming of
smelling your own fat hamburger. So that is what that's
what is driving me crazy. But long story short as
you can say, I have a lot of opinions about fragrance.
I love it. I love it. So the long story
(27:42):
short is that I don't think it's because I'm uh,
you know, I need a lot of experience to get
into this. When you're on the ride, even you know,
we say that the rising tide lifted the boat, right,
So this little boat was lifted because I was riding
on a very high tide. But what's unique about me
(28:04):
is don't forget I immediately connect my manufacturing with China.
Not many people figure out their supply chain, and I
hate to say that's probably the number one mistake for
people that get into the product driven business is if
you don't have strong partners in supply chain, you could
go very far with ideas, but you would not go
(28:25):
very far with the scaling of the business. So talk
a little bit about how you charted out your supply
chain and how someone today might do. I like the
word supply chain. I charted out my supply chain sounds
really like May has a strategic group of people that
looking at her and she said, I want to charter
(28:46):
my supply chain. Unfortunately it's me and my ex husband
is we look at each other and we were so
annoyed with the fact that because I want to design
my own candle and because I want to put fragrance
in a candle, no one in China actually want to
do my business. I went to show them how you
(29:06):
make a fragrance candle and then say, but who's going
to buy it. I said, well, I'm pretty sure if
you make it for me, I can sell it. And
they say about how many containers are you going to buy? Container,
meaning those forty foot truck that you see on the road.
I say how many containers? I want three hundred of
each color and that's all I can buy. They say, no,
(29:28):
we're not going to sell you. So it took us
a long time to realize. I remember we even went
to an investor to see if someone can invest in
our business. So they asked me, what are you going
to do? I said, I'm gonna make candles, and then
they asked me, but what does a candle do. That's
when I know I said, okay, this is not gonna work.
(29:50):
No one's ever gonna if they asked this question, what
does a candle do? So I told my family about it,
and then both my sister and my brother in law
decided that they had a boring job as well, it's
called computer scientists, that they wanted to join the fun.
That's how I found my supply chain. Is I just
(30:12):
I just announced that it's something I wanted to do. So,
you know, even today, my sister's factory, it's probably the
biggest now in the world. And I really think I
have something to do with with what happened to that business.
But most of all, she deserved a lot of credit
for taking a risk on me and trust my instinct.
(30:36):
So your sister and brother in law in China leave
their computer science jobs and start a factory, yeah, out
of nowhere, out of nowhere they've never been in to
help me pour candles into a job, you know, into
a mode and take the mode out. They learned everything
because I learned everything from people that I you know,
(30:57):
that's something you can think about. I don't know how
to way candles right, and there's no YouTube in nineteen
ninety five. So what happened is I went to a
fragrance vendor. His name is Peter Fred He's based in
New Jersey like many other fragrance vendors, and he also
supplied pigments for the dye for the color right the color.
(31:18):
So he taught me everything and the rest I figured
it out step by step by trying true. And he's
due my very good supplier if I work with them.
But you know, I sold my business five years ago.
How much did you end up selling the company for.
It's not a huge amount, but it's a lot for
(31:38):
you know, those of us that comes from a background
almost nothing. I think it was seventy five million dollars.
That's amazing. When we come back. More from Mehee about
getting her candles placed in Bloomingdale's and new challenges she
faced after finding success. Once your sister decides to jump
(32:08):
in the phrame, sort this factory to help you make
your candles, pour your candles and bring them to the
US and sell them. What were the other initial startup
costs and how did you go about covering those? I
went to trade shows, and at trade shows, I met
a lot of smaller business owners. By the end of
twenty nineteen ninety five, but already have over two thousand
(32:31):
business accounts. But I really want to work for the
major companies. That's when I just pick up a phone.
You know, those are the days you still have a
Yellow Page, and I just call the buyers at Bloomingdale's
who gave me an appointment, who I sold on the
spot because he can tell that his floor is so sleepy.
(32:52):
He couldn't wait for me to ship him. So it's
an amazing ride. That's all I can tell you. It's
if you hit the nerve, if it's the right moment,
and you can deliver, which is very important. It's almost
like you couldn't go wrong. You have no competition at
that time. Wow, And so how quickly did you get
(33:13):
into blooming So you're on Bloomingdale's ink in nineteen ninety
five and the next time I met them in nineteen
ninety five. I think the delivery was in February of
nineteen ninety six. And I remember by April when I
went back to Bloomingdale, I saw my candles displayed throughout
the home floor. It's such you know, literally a year
(33:34):
and a half after you start this business, you're you're
You're able to walk into Bloomingdale and the flame share
store that I always went to. It's such a great feeling.
It's almost like they know you're coming. And they used
one color only they used that green. This um you know,
it's almost like honey dew green and then the white,
So how fresh is that for spray? Right? So it's
(33:56):
a white and that that lime green, and it's so beautiful.
It's throughout the whole home, on the table's, dining room, table,
on the coffee table, bathrooms. They just said up throughout
the whole store, and I'm so happy about that. How
would you characterize your experience from nineteen ninety four through
(34:17):
twenty seventeen with Jessapeague Bay Candles. It's a pretty wild, right,
But I was very I was very dedicated to the business.
I didn't really have a lot of break in terms
of my career or a huge time for me to
think I do have to stop in twenty seventeen because
I was finding that I had a breast cancer in
(34:40):
the end of twenty sixteen and it was a pretty
aggressive cancer. Even though it's stage one, I have to
get surgery and chemo six months of chemotherapy, so it's
very intense. And that's when I decided that the company
need a steady hand and it needed someone that can
(35:02):
give it one hundred percent. That's a very hard decision,
but it happened, and I sold the business by the
time I finished the chemotherapy, And what were your feelings
around letting it go? It's hard, and you know, I
(35:23):
was not a person that can sit around and you know,
just enjoy some slow time. And I know for sure
I cannot just do a regular retirement. I have to
be stimulated, I have to be curious, I have to
learn new things. So I started giving a lot of
(35:44):
talk about entrepreneurship. You know, I was invited to speak
at podcasts like yours or in person. I realized that
a lot of times women audience are the ones that
want to talk to me because most of their businesses
are so much smaller. I think the majority of women
(36:06):
owned businesses do less than even two hundred thousand dollars
leatherlon a million. And that's the moment when I decided
to do more with them. And then came the pandemic.
I heard from many of them, and a lot of
them wore overseas and their business completely depend on tourism,
and when their country was shut down, their orders were
(36:28):
canceled because the stores were closed. And I realized that
instead of helping them from a consulting perspective, maybe I
can help them by setting up a platform. So that's
when Yeshimay was born. It's in June of twenty twenty,
with the hope that you know, we can help those
women to reach consumers online. Yeah, so you have Yes
(36:52):
She May, which is sort of provides mentorship to women entrepreneurs,
to female entrepreneurs. Looking back, how did you feel your
experience was as a female entrepreneur. Well, I didn't think
about myself first as a female entrepreneur. To be honest
with you, I always think about myself as a consumer
product entrepreneur, and my being female may be actually very
(37:17):
helpful because I have the insight. I'm also the user
of the product that I design and create, so I
understand the pain point. My challenge to a lot of
consumer product company is that I don't think there is
enough a point of view from consumer that was always reflected.
So you can think of Victoria's Secret. For a very
(37:40):
long time, the bras were not designed for women. They're
designed for a different audience for the people that's you know,
looking at them. I don't mean it in a bad way,
but you know, you have the Victoria's Secret runway show
and it's completely overtaking what really is that brand's supposed
to be. They's supposed to be the best friend of
(38:01):
a woman. They're supposed to make her feel supported and
nourished and cherished. And I feel none of the materials,
designs speak to that. So if I have been incorporated
in the decision process, that message should have been heard
loud and clear. We're going to lose market share because
we're not inclusive. We don't use the comfortable fabric, and
(38:22):
we make women look like you know, they are doing
other business. So that voice is not heard on the
top to the bottom level in that organization. And there
are many consumer product companies that are still not waking
up to see the world they're living in. And our
world has changed. Our young consumers, they want nothing to
(38:45):
do with companies like that. They want a company that
stand for something that minimum should stand for, understanding them,
be humble about what you're serving and who you're serving. Well, Mayshe,
you are my favorite candlemaker. Thank you, and I'm a
big fan of candles, and so I really want to
thank you so much for so much today. Thank you,
(39:08):
and I hope we get this week again. Thank you.
Justin I hope you've enjoyed my long winded dialogue. Look,
there's a lot I feel like there's a lot more
we could talk about it, So one day we'll do
it again. Thanks so much again, have a wonderful weeks.
Bye bye. That was May She, founder of my favorite candles,
Chesapeake Bay, and also the new online shop. Yes she,
(39:30):
May I get to speak with some truly passionate, intelligent
entrepreneurs on this show, and I'm so glad I got
to share this conversation with you guys. May She left
us with a major point. Listen to the consumer, to
the people you're trying to serve your audience, and understand
what it is that they want. It's so obvious, but
(39:52):
also at the same time, it's just refreshing to hear
someone actually say that out loud. Start Up from the
Bottom is produced by David Jah, edited by Keisha Williams,
Engineered by Ben Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan with duction
help from Leah Rose. We're executive produced by Jacob Goldstein.
(40:15):
Our theme music's by Benaliday and David Jah, featuring Anthony
Yaggas and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to start it from
the bottom, wherever you get your podcasts and if you want,
ad free episodes available one week early sign up for
Pushkin Plus. Check out pushkin dot fm or the Apple
Show page for more information. If you like our show,
(40:35):
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast stap. I'm justin Richmond.
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