Gwen Whiting

Were you tempted at times to take on outside capital?

No, because as horrible as it was, I knew that I couldn't give any part away for my own protection.

I loved what I did and I'm so passionate about it, which you experienced.

I was so focused on just getting through the day and the week and the month and the year.

And so I had a concept of the business plan that I wrote was like a five-year plan of you do it for five years and you exit.

And at the time I,

when writing that in 2002, the only other brands that had like a niche or a small brand or a creator brand outside of the giant corporate structures were acquired really quickly.

It was like Bobby Brown and Bliss Spa and Frederick Fakai.

And then there's a Bumble and Moe.

There's a handful of really small niche prestige brands.

That was like the birth of,

something non giant CPG and their track records were like really quick acquisition.

So I just assumed that that was like the lifespan of this kind of journey.

Not because I wanted to exit or understood what that even meant.

I just thought that's how that worked.

And then the 2008 financial crisis changed that.

And then you wake up one day and it's 16 years later and you're still doing it.

But I did expect to exit, not from a financial perspective, not like, oh, I'm going to cash my chips and have a windfall.

That was never part of my understanding or sensibility of it.

My feeling was that I could only take my brand and my company so far and a giant or a larger parent company