For Lisa Schulner-Fine and Michael Fine, the trip to business The property started over ten years ago in New York – when their newborn son did not fall asleep.
“I would be in his room in the dark in the middle of the night, the piece, and I started reverie,” said Lisa, co-founder with her husband Michael of Lifestyle Brand Quiet citytell Entrepreneur. “For any reason, my mind would go to the shower curtains.”
Image credit: graciousness of Quiet Town. Lisa Schulner-Fine and Michael Fine.
Lisa had been frustrated by the lack of shower curtain options on the market for a while. She and Michael both had one eye on design – she worked as a styling director at Madewell and him as an independent fashion photographer – and the couple had trouble finding aesthetically pleasant bathroom accessories retail shelves. To make matters worse, most of the articles available were far from durable.
“We would be at Bed bathtub and beyond With a large basket, choose terribly manufactured plastic stuff that did not look like us at all, “recalls Lisa.
For Lisa, bathing accessories looked like the “largest category of outsiders” which it could approach from a creative and lasting perspective. She continued to meditate on the conceptions of shower curtains on nights and weekends, balancing the rush With his full -time career and the breeding of a young family.
At the beginning, Michael admits that he did not understand the impetus of his wife’s passionate project very well. “(I felt) like, It’s crazy, “ he said. “No one cares about shower curtains. Why would you never want start a business like that?“However, he also knew that Lisa was” very creative “and” visionary “- it was logical that she was ready to bring a new perspective to the industry.
“So I said, ‘Okay, I can help you take off this “” remembers Michael. “We didn’t know where it was going. It was really like lateral agitation.”
Image credit: graciousness of Quiet Town
“It was the mood for us, less precise in what we do.”
Lisa decided to make the shower curtains from canvas equipment. The couple has thought a lot about each stage of the process, from dyeing to finish. The goal was to create a product that has become more beautiful with age, “like a pair of jeans,” said Lisa.
For rushThe very first shooting, Michael and his photography assistant took samples of canvas shower curtains that Lisa had made on the beach. They installed the curtains with rope, pulled them and photographed them under a beautiful light – then put a splash page and used the image for the brand’s inaugural message of the brand to let people who were going soon.
“We have never done anything traditional in this way,” said Michael. “It was never like, shooting in a bathroom in front of a bathtub. It was like, going to the beach, or finding a very beautiful red wall, and pulling it there. It was the mood for us, less precise in what we do.”
Image credit: graciousness of Quiet Town
Because in 2016 and now, the couple consider the company as extending beyond bathroom accessories – and in a lifestyle. Michael and Lisa wanted to create functional products that people really need, but they strive to do it in an “beautiful ambitious way”. Some of the first products were named after their favorite quiet cities, such as “Ojai” and “Mendocino”, which also inspired the nickname “Town Town” of the company.
In those early rush days, Lisa found herself to pick up and save “each scrap on the ground” during production, not wanting to waste the “beautiful by-product”. Thus, for a long time, another opportunity emerged: to start a project, nicknamed Re: Canvas, which could preserve these remains and transform them into “something new and cool” thanks to strategic partnerships.
The couple joined the art center textile based in Brooklyn for the First Re: Canvas Project, increasing the equipment in rag carpets inspired by the Portuguese. Quiet Town continued to collaborate on hand -fired pillowcases with artist Rebeca Raney, tablecloths and towels with West Elm, a jacket and a colorblocked shorts with designer Alex Mill and more.
“It’s really difficult, very expensive and it takes a long time.”
Committed to building a sustainable brand From the start, the co-founders admit that they initially hesitated to produce lining for their shower curtains. Lisa and Micahel did not want to introduce more plastic in the world, but after discussing the problem with friends, they realized that they had to understand how to put a lasting turn on the product – Quiet Town started as a shower curtain company, after all.
The solution of the co-founders, of which they do not even call a “lining”, was the “solar shower curtain”. Made of non -toxic Eva vinyl plastic which is chlorine, PVC and BPA -free, solar shower curtains can be used as a shower curtain lining or as an autonomous curtain. They also decided to form a post -consumer recycling plan for them – a difficult company for a small business.
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“It’s really difficult, very expensive and it takes a long time,” says Lisa. The establishment of a recycling project was the objective from the start, and in recent years, the quiet city has “been a card towards circularity” for its solar shower curtains, working with an international recycling community called Precious Plastics, which provides resources to help people attack the problem of plastic waste. The circular solar shower product of the company will be launched this summer.
“The Sun Shower category began to explode because it was affordable and ambitious.”
Like many companies that focus on home products, the quiet city has seen a peak in demand during the pandemic.
“If they were lucky to have a job yet and could afford to spend money, people did not know what to spend their money apart from grocery and toilet paper,” said Michael. “It was like, Oh, wait a second, I spend so much time in my bathroom. The Sun Shower category began to explode because it was affordable and ambitious. “”
Quiet Town graduated from the full -time business drop in 2020. In April of the same year, income started to grow from one month in months. Quiet Town won about $ 300,000 in his first year on this trajectory; Now the brand generates more than $ 3 million a year.
Image credit: graciousness of Quiet Town
In addition, like many people during the pandemic, the couple began to rethink their location. Michael and Lisa have lived in San Francisco in 2001 for about a year; They loved the west coast and had always had the impression that they had “unfinished affairs” there. They therefore decided to move, to give it two years and to devote themselves to the quiet city.
“(The Bay region) gives us access to all the things we wanted,” said Michael, “like the mountains, the beach, the city, a very good place to raise children. It was therefore always there in the bottom of our minds, to the point of using the world as a bathroom on photo sessions.”
“(The west coast) has always informed our design approach,” adds Lisa. “Now we have a little feeling that we are at home.”
“No matter how big or big (the company) you should believe it so passionately.”
Now, almost a decade in the management of their business, the co-founders have learned a lot about what it takes to navigate in the ups and downs of entrepreneurship – and how precious a partner is through all of this.
“The best advice I think I can give to someone is trying to start a business with a partner,” said Michael. “It is so difficult to do by yourself. And make sure that the partner has completely different skills of what you are doing. If you are creative, find someone who has the mind for finance, business or operations.”
Michael also suggests maintaining healthy work-life balanceNoting that he finds part of the best inspiration for the company when he hikes, listening to music.
Lisa highlights the importance of being “obsessed” by the company you want to start – and believing that you are fully ready to fight from the first day.
“No matter how much you grow (the company), you have to believe it so passionately, 1000%, because it really takes control of your life in so many ways,” explains Lisa. “Unless this thing is something in which you really believe, really, do not give it much power about your life.”
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