S11E2: Branding, Bedding, and Wellness Innovation with Ariel Kaye, Founder of Parachute

I shared that with a friend thinking he would say, that's a good idea, maybe you should pitch it to someone else. And he looked at me and said, you are a founder and you should start this business. And I was speechless and shocked. Had never thought about myself as a founder until that literal moment and walked away from that dinner thinking, could I actually do this? Is this possible?

Welcome to The Room Podcast. I'm Claudia Laurie. And I'm Madison McIlwain.

I'm Madison McIlwain. We are on a mission to open the door to the room where it happens, sharing the stories of some of the world's most iconic founders and funders. We're recording this introduction the week before our 11th season launch at the Forbes 30 Under 30 conference in Cincinnati. After making it onto the 2024 list for media, we've hit multiple milestones, including our 100th episode and our first ever all-day conference. Inside Summit with over 120 attendees July of this year.

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Welcome back to The Room Podcast. Today's episode dives into the evolving world of home and lifestyle brands with Ariel Kay, the founder of Parachute Home. Parachute is redefining how we think about home essentials by crafting high-quality, sustainable products that blend comfort with style. Ariel grew up in Santa Monica, California before moving to New York City. To pursue her studies at NYU. Her unique journey from the world of PR and advertising to founding a disruptive direct-to-consumer brand led her to create a company centered around simplicity, comfort, and trust. Arielle shares her pivotal moments of navigating brand identity in the digital age, her commitment to empowering sustainability and consumer trust through clean, non-toxic products, And of course, her forward-thinking approach to omnichannel retail, where she's combined both immersive in-store experiences with a strong online presence. With Parachute now celebrating 10 years and a host of new retail and experiential initiatives on the horizon, Arielle is proving that blending purpose with innovation is the key to long-term success. I had the pleasure of first meeting Arielle when she visited HBS's campus last spring and was delighted to get to bring her back into The Room here for you all. Let's open the door. Ariel, thank you so much for joining us here today in The Room.

I'm so happy to be here.

We'd love to start at the beginning of your story and journey. I know you grew up in sunny Santa Monica, California. How has your upbringing really shaped your view of the world?

I loved growing up in sunny Santa Monica. I think it's a very idyllic place to grow up. You're close proximity to the beach, to the mountains. It's easy to be outdoors year round, and it's a really creative community. The people that live in Los Angeles, many are involved in the arts and entertainment, and you feel that creativity and that creative energy throughout the city, the experiences. But I would say, you know, you're shaped by your family, and I grew up in a house that really prioritized travel, prioritized museums, and really, you know, put an emphasis on learning. And growing and being creative throughout our home. That played a huge role in who I am and my curiosity about the world. I grew up with parents who were entrepreneurs in their own right, and so I never really had this idea that climbing the corporate ladder was the path that I needed to follow.

Both the component of just the physical spaces in which you're inhabiting as a kid, and then also your parents and your family and what they have to say about what you can and cannot do is so valuable. And I think it can inspire each of us to have different types of dreams and different types of visions for what our life will become and unfold. And so in that vein, we're curious of within your early identity, did you ever think that you were gonna become a founder?

Absolutely not. Not a chance. I was super passionate about music growing up and there was a long period of time where I wanted to be a singer and I was really focused on music and really thinking about my singing career. But no, I never really had that drive or an understanding of what it would mean to be a founder, an entrepreneur. I tried a lot of things. I was doing sports, I was in puppet classes, I was doing this camp and that camp and theater and music and art. I was really overprogrammed in a way that I appreciated, but it allowed me to try a number of different things. And I think looking back, there are definitely themes about who I am and what really inspires me and how I feel most fulfilled that I can trace back to those early days, just making an impact and getting my hands dirty and trying new things and always learning and growing and being comfortable in discomfort. Some of the things that have made me successful are things that are outside of the box of a traditional entrepreneur.

It seems like you really did follow your passions around that creativity by going to NYU for undergrad and then spending about 10 years collectively in New York where you also got a master's from the New School of Design. Just from a resume perspective, it seems like you were able to find that niche for you and scratch that itch, if you will. Can you speak to this early career path and, and how it paved ultimately the way to what became Parachute?

At NYU, I was in the School of Individualized Study, the Gallatin program, and that allows you to create your own major. So I was able to take classes from all of the different schools within NYU, the business school, the communications school. And I also was able to do a lot of internships for credit. Even throughout my college experience, I was interning at Gucci and Nickelodeon and at Sony. I was testing a lot of different waters and trying on different roles and different experiences for size. And after school, I worked for a few years in PR and then went back to get my master's in media studies. Which ended up landing me in an advertising agency where I was an account planner, which meant that I was on the strategic side of creative. I was doing a lot of consumer behavior research, really thinking about how to inspire and connect and motivate people. And I loved it. I loved getting inside people's brain and really thinking about how to add value from a brand perspective to the customer. And so I enjoyed my experience, the many years that I worked at an agency. And then I got to a place where I looked around and, and realized that I was less excited about climbing the corporate ladder. I had been positioned as the millennial advocate within the agency, and so I was going to a ton of conferences and I was doing a lot of research and focus groups and really got this deep understanding of who these people are, and I am one of them. And it always helps when you're in the shoes of, of who you're studying. A lot of that can then become intuitive when you're starting to think critically. But on the side, I also started this home design blog and I was helping friends decorate their homes. And so I was finding myself on the weekends helping decorate a friend that was moving or decorating my sister's apartment. And she was moving quite frequently because she was working in politics. And I loved it. All of a sudden had unlocked this new creative energy for myself and I was really good at it. And I was getting some of these projects featured in design blogs. And all of a sudden I was like, should I be an interior designer? What have I done? I made a— advertising, maybe that's not for me. And then the other piece is that this is 2011, 2012, and, and really this idea for Parachute started to solidify towards the end of 2012. But I had all these friends that started joining startups and I started watching them just have these incredible experiences where they were working 20 hours a day, but obsessed and so energized by the impact that they were making, what they were building, the people that they were working with. And I had spent all this time in advertising coming up with these ideas that became virtually unrecognizable by the time they hit market. And these are my friends were building physical products or digital products that people were using. And I was just like, oh my God, this is what I need to be doing. It lit something up inside of me. I was like, I don't care if I can never go to another dinner or social gathering again. Like, I wanna build something. And initially I was like, I'll build something with someone else. I still at that point was not like, I'm a founder and I'm gonna start a company. I just was excited. And inspired by this new age of startup culture chaos, working all night long. And that was what I initially gravitated towards. And then I had my aha moment where I was like, wait a second, I love building brands and I love home. And what if there was something in there that I could do?

It's so cool looking backwards to see how all these different pieces really came together to lead you to that aha moment, like these deep consumer insights, understanding consumer advertising and marketing, doing home design, and then being really excited about this burgeoning startup ecosystem. Fast forward a little bit to when Parachute really started to come together. So 2012 to 2014, maybe. Tell us a little bit more about what that initial aha moment was that prompted you to say, okay, I have this exciting idea. Let me actually become a founder and start a business.

So there are a few things that happened, but one of the biggest ones was that I started thinking about the home, and I started thinking about what makes a home and what's important in the home. And I realized that your bed is really important. It's where you spend a third of your life. Your sleep impacts everything. And what was happening culturally at the same time was this emphasis around health and wellness. So we were seeing this whole wellness movement start— yoga, clean eating. This was the beginning of that in a more mainstream way. And so tapping into the wellness movement seemed like an interesting angle and one that certainly no bedding brand had ever thought about or done, which led me to focus in on the bed. And then I took that a step further when I started asking friends, what sheets do you sleep on at night? And not a single person could tell me a brand. Everyone could tell me that they went to a store and they bought sheets, but they didn't know the brand and that they were really disappointed in the experience and that it was floor-to-ceiling stacked products that were all wrapped in plastic. They didn't know what it meant. Should they buy high thread count? Should they buy wrinkle-resistant? What's going on? There was no understanding of what quality was, and frankly, there was no quality available. As someone who had spent this time working in brands, when I realized that this was a category without a brand, I was like, this is a jackpot. How rare is it to find a category that's virtually brandless? And so that was when things really started spinning in my head and I got totally consumed by this idea because it just seems so obvious that these are products that you use every single day. There's not a brand that exists and they impact your sleep experience. Like what an incredible story to tell if you could do it right. And then I mentioned thread count and wrinkle resistant. I realized that thread count was completely a marketing gimmick, has no input in terms of quality. I found out that things like wrinkle resistant actually meant formaldehyde-coated sheets. I realized there's toxic chemicals everywhere. And so that was another tie back to wellness. If you could create clean sheets that— which, you know, by the way, you want because you sleep on them every day. And I just realized that this was a perfect entryway into a broader category. And when I figured out that 90% of purchases for this category were made offline and we were entering this new digital world where people were shopping with much more confidence online, I was just like, this has gotta be something. And I became fully consumed. I could not think about anything else. I was up all night. I was doing research. I have never worked in retail. I've never worked in textiles. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea where to begin, but it was all I could think about. And it was at that moment that I realized that there was an opportunity here. I shared that with a friend thinking he would say, that's a good idea, maybe you should pitch it to someone else. And he looked at me and said, you are a founder and you should start this business. And I was speechless and shocked and blown away and had never thought about myself as a founder until that literal moment and walked away from that dinner thinking, could I actually do this? Is this possible? It was so inspiring and such an incredible gift that he gave me because sometimes people see something in you that you can't even see in yourself.

I think the multiple realizations, like the growing conviction that this is something that you have to do, it's the hero's arc of being a founder, like on the come up. So it's really cool to hear those different visceral moments in that journey for you. As you mentioned, 2014 was really the early wave of D2C companies becoming true competitors to traditional retail, where these new categories that were only really shopped offline are now living online. What was a moment where you realized, okay, let's sell this bedding online and wow, we're really seeing traction here with this new way of purchasing bedding and home goods.

So I never really considered any other option than selling online, and I knew that there was going to have to be a lot of trust because these again were products historically purchased offline and also as a brand new brand, getting someone to take a leap of faith and purchase something from a brand they've never heard of before can be hard. I didn't have a lot of awareness. I hadn't done like a huge campaign leading up to our launch with a ton of education. So really we launched out the gates running. But to take a step back, I think when I decided to really do this, I went to Europe and I knew that I needed to manufacture in Europe because this is where the most premium textiles are made, and the association with quality and Italy and Portugal was significant. I knew that I could get one step closer to building trust simply by saying these sheets are made in Italy, and that's what happened. So I went to 15 factories, I visited all throughout Europe. I honed in on one factory in Italy that I wanted to kick things off with, and I was able to tell that story of this is designed in LA, It's made in Italy and we've changed things up. We launched sheet sets without a top sheet. There's top sheet optional because we figured out that 40% of Americans don't sleep with a top sheet. We told the story about thread count. We told the story about toxic chemicals and that we were Oeko-Tex. We were the first brand to go to market with this Oeko-Tex messaging, which is now a certification that people talk about all day, every day. And I hired a PR agency because of my experience in PR. I knew that launch press is really valuable and really specific to a moment in time. And we launched and it was instant from the day that we launched on January 16th, 2014. It went from here's 10 orders a day, here's 15 orders a day, here's 20 orders a day. And it just happened. And we started getting validation from those customers the second they received their product. I've been looking for this, like, why doesn't this exist? Why isn't there quality product? Why am I shopping at these retail experiences that are really underwhelming and are not an enjoyable experience? I care about the products I sleep on. And it just became crystal clear that product market fit that you chase and that you wonder about every day, all day as you're building, that we had it. And that didn't mean that, that we were in the clear and there weren't gonna be challenges because there's plenty, especially in that first year. But it just, it was very obvious from day one that this was something.

You mentioned we're at a 10-year moment in 2024, and really over those 10 years you've gone from strictly selling online to also having some interesting in-person experiences. Obsessed with the Hayes Valley store in San Francisco. Could touch everything every time I go there. And it's really different than going to a Bloomingdale's and looking at sheets and plastic covers, like on a wall. So tell us a little bit about when you decided to introduce a brick and mortar experience and how you thought about rethinking that in-person shopping moment.

So because I knew that 90% of purchases historically were made offline, I knew that retail was going to be part of our experience. And I also am just an experiential person. I love being in stores. I love seeing products come to life. We did a little pop-up in our first year for a month or two, and I remember just standing there observing and watching people come in and watching them feel the product and just light up. And it became so clear that this had to be part of our story. So we opened our first store in Venice in 2020. 2016, and it was actually attached to our office, now our flagship in LA, but it was attached to our office, which was super cool because we built a pony wall that people didn't really realize was a pony wall. It was shorter. You could hear over the ledge and people would come in and say, you guys sell sheets here? And touch and feel. And but we knew it was going to be part of the experience and we knew we wanted to create a different retail experience. People come into our stores often and think it's more of a showroom, but it's not. We have a full stockroom. We want it to feel like a home. And we wanted the products to be stocked in ways that it felt like you were experiencing them in your home. So we always have a bath area that has a working sink so you can actually test the absorbency of the towels. We have beds that are styled the way that they would be in a bedroom. The way that we drape our sheets are designed to be touched. Like, we really want you to touch them and we clean them so they're clean.

Don't worry.

We want you to lay in bed and get under the covers. Like, we just want you to get immersed in the Parachute experience and In addition, the idea of the stores from day one was also a place to just build the relationship. It was not about the transaction. We've never been a brand that is focused on the transaction in retail. It's really all about building the relationship, whether you buy or not. We want you to come in and experience that Parachute world and what that makes you feel. And whether you buy in store or later or in years, or you just tell a friend or whatever it is, that's all good. It's like the antithesis of a big box retailer, and it works. People people like, hang out, we, we'll give you a coffee. You can hang out, stay a while.

You really defined this new category and obviously have scaled so that you have all these in-person experiences. So in order to, you know, last the 10 years, sometimes you gotta raise capital. And I know as a founder myself, raising capital is often tough, but congratulations. Today, Parachute has raised over $47 million from iconic investors such as Upfront and Flybridge. I'm curious, tell us about that moment in time when you realized it might make sense to raise some venture capital, and who was that first person to say yes to investing in Parachute?

So it happened about 2 weeks after I launched. We were selling through our inventory much quicker than I had anticipated, and I had been part of an accelerator program that had provided me some capital, which allowed me to buy my first batch of inventory. Um, I had no idea. The velocity of sales and what was gonna happen in the demand. And we were selling quite quickly. And in order to keep up with demand, it became urgent that I raised more capital because I was in LA and part of this accelerator program. I had some pretty incredible access to investors. That's part of what being part of an accelerator program is about. It's about the introductions. But for me, it was really important that I raised capital from people that were based in LA. Not everyone, but I wanted at least to have some of my investors and key investors to be LA-based because I was a sole founder and I I felt like if we're in this together, like I wanna be able to show up at your office and say, I need help, or can you review this with me, or can we chat? And so Upfront was our lead investor for our seed round, and then we rounded that out with some other funds and angel investors, some who were more strategic and had experience and some who were consumer investors. That process was wild. I had very early traction. I had tried to raise capital leading up to the launch and heard from everyone. People just wanted to see more traction, see more traction, which can be challenging in a capital-intensive consumer product business where you need cash in order to buy the product. It's a bit of a catch-22, but we were able to close this million-dollar round as our seed round. And I actually closed it at South by Southwest while I was running around passing out eye masks that said Dream Big and Parachute Home and was just fully out of my mind, just running a million miles a minute. I can 25 meetings, getting people close and verbally committed and all the things, and it all wrapped up in a bow and I was able to close that round. And that allowed me to buy more inventory and make a few hires so that I could get some support, which was also mission critical at that time.

In today's fundraising climate, I feel like a lot of folks are really struggling to adapt to a little bit of a different environment compared to, let's say, 2021. Especially when building businesses with physical assets that need to be purchased, as you mentioned. What advice would you give other D2C businesses when approaching fundraising? As in, what is the right time to consider venture capital versus maybe other forms of capital infusion?

I think it's important to note that for every yes that I got, especially in subsequent rounds, I talked to about 100 people that said no. So raising capital can be very hard, very time-consuming. It's easy to idealize raising capital, and for some businesses it is easy and hats off to them. That's super exciting, but that was not my journey and I don't think the expectation should be that it is easy. One of the things that was important and helped me just shift my perspective and plan my pitch accordingly was investors are looking for reasons why to say no, not why to say yes. And so that was something that helped me approach these conversations with a different type of confidence and a different type of preparation because I knew that they were looking at all the reasons why not to invest and I needed to be prepared to convince them for all the reasons why their reasons why not were actually not valid reasons. And so it, it shifted the way that I communicated. I also think it's important to do your own due diligence and figure out who the right people are to talk to. And see what's in their portfolio. Do they like the category? Are they excited by the brand? What are their most recent investments? Because investors love talking to companies and they love collecting data and they love learning about brands that are up and coming, and they might have no intention on ever investing. It's hard to know. And so I think through some diligence, it can be easier to, to navigate, is this a conversation that's more just an introductory conversation? That's all it's gonna be. And perhaps that's great because they might make an introduction to a person that really is a series investor. So I'm, I'm not saying those are not necessarily worthwhile, but I do think time is so valuable, especially in the early days of running a company. You have to be mindful of how you are spending your time. And so for me, there were seasons of fundraising where I was talking to hundreds of people and probably a good percentage of those people, we were not the right fit for their fund. That's an important lesson to learn. And I think it's also all about building relationships. If someone doesn't necessarily feel like it's the right fit, in this given moment, it could be the right fit down the road. And keeping in touch with investors and staying connected and showing progress is a really great way to connect the dots and provide just some more insight into how things are going. It's a time-consuming experience, and I think for me, I, I learn a lot when I'm fundraising. I'm asked questions, I'm thinking critically in ways about the business that perhaps I'm not in my day-to-day. And so Despite how frustrating it can be to get a no or to feel like you're so close to a yes and have it not work out, there's always something to learn and grow from that experience.

Don't spray and pray, but also build relationships and think critically and test and learn as a part of that journey. I think that's something that a lot of founders mention. You do learn a lot about your business when you're fundraising because you can't just coast. So it's cool to hear that was your experience as well.

Yeah, and you're getting into real relationships with these people. So I think it's important to be clear about what your vision is and what your goals are and what your aspirations are and be transparent because at the end of the day, the stronger the relationship, the better. I've always been someone who has overcommunicated with my investors, who has shared updates on a very regular basis because I need them to know how things are doing and how things are going so that they can properly support my business if times are more challenging. No one likes to be surprised. And so that's allowed me the ability to just stay connected and get support in a, a really effective way.

Diving into just other parts of being a founder beyond fundraising, we know that the founder's journey is never easy. It's full of high highs and low lows. So could you maybe share about a moment in Parachute's lifecycle where things just didn't go as planned?

There's been many. Every little misstep, every little mistake, every email with a typo felt like the end of the world. You're such a perfectionist. You want everything to go right. And it's where don't sweat the small stuff becomes the mantra that you must live by. In the early days after we launched and we started growing really fast and had to buy this inventory and we sold out of all of our inventory and we were backordered for 4 or 5 months. And that was a moment where I thought everyone's gonna cancel their orders and people are gonna think that we don't know what we're doing. And I sent emails to every customer overcommunicating, explaining what was happening, giving them updates, and very few people turned around and said, I want my money back. You don't know what you're doing. Probably 2, 3, maybe. Most people were excited that we were having this early success and excited to be part of the journey. There have been category introductions that we have moved into that haven't worked as well as we wanted because we got excited and forgot critical parts of the supply chain or logistics process. We've moved really quickly. We opened a ton of stores. Which we're very excited about. But I think in retrospect, maybe we should have opened at a slower pace. There's so many things that you learn along the way. And what I remind myself and remind my team of on an almost daily basis is that through challenges is opportunities. And the strongest companies emerge through challenging moments. And so how you respond and react and how you create a resilient business that can navigate highs and lows. You don't know what's going to be thrown at you. No one knew that we were gonna have a pandemic. No one could have expected that. Celebrating the mistakes while in the moment can feel very challenging to do, can really create an incredible relationship with growth that is positive for the organization. And I think like a lot of that comes from leadership. And so the way that you respond to challenging moments as an opportunity to flex new muscles, to try new things, to think outside of the box. And it can be very inspiring for a team and for, yeah, the organization as a whole.

First of all, thank you so much for sharing a bit more of those stickier moments or of heart palpitations and realizing, oh crap, we need to keep moving here, but things are gonna break and that's okay too. And we're gonna be comfortable and confident in the ambiguity of knowing that and But if we've learned anything from this experience of talking to incredible founders like yourself, it's just that ambiguity and uncertainty is endemic to being a founder, and it's how you react to it defines—

it never ends.

It truly never ends. And, and in many ways it hasn't ended because you guys have just done an incredible job at reacting. You're 10 years into this journey with Parachute, so congratulations there. Recently in Inc., you mentioned that you guys are now profitable and Due to our sleuthing, we found that your last reported revenues were in the $150 million range. Just incredible feat in terms of growth and accomplishment on the core business too. And with a backdrop of uncertainty in supply chain, you mentioned the pandemic, and then of course macro factors. How would you say you did manage through? What were some of the takeaways as a leader that you would give to other leaders as they look towards their future uncertainties?

I think it's really important. To be critical of the business in the good times and the uncertainties, you know, and I think that the practice of being critical and being super metric-oriented can help you see ahead and help you figure out how to navigate uncertainty. I mean, we benefited from the pandemic and then have experienced changes in consumer behavior since that are very unpredictable, and that's been a challenge. And so I really believe that success is so largely tied to the way that you are able to communicate and be transparent among the team, among your investors, among your community, even your customers to an extent. And it's okay to not know what the answer is, but not knowing can lead to incredible knowing and positive change.

That is an incredible core value and something that I think not all leaders really bring to the forefront, but it sounds like has been a part of your journey as you've grown Parachute. And speaking to that strategy of growth, both from a team perspective and how you are as a leader, but also the community component, which I think Claudia was alluding to this as she was speaking about how much she loves the Parachute store. And I've also been to the one in Hayes Valley in San Francisco and as customers and maybe emerging customers, you just know there's something special here. And we talked a little bit about this when you were on campus a few weeks ago, but you've had a really unique digital strategy where you've leveraged digital marketing, influencer partnerships, and then these omnichannel experiential moments in store. So taking a step back, how do you think the role of digital and physical is going to continue to evolve now that we're back out in the market, not staying at home, and getting to know our communities.

We're personally investing a lot more in experiential than ever before. What we're seeing online is so much noise and there's so much content happening digitally and it's getting so expensive to connect to people online that we are actually leaning into experiential marketing more and more. And some of that is at a much bigger scale and some of that's at a small scale. But we believe that the association that you have as a customer with a brand is much more long-lasting and much more positive when it's in person and when you're able to create these memories and these valuable moments. We're gonna see much more of that. I don't think it's going away. I think people are continuing to get very creative on how they create experiences. And like I said, I think it can be done in a 10-person workshop or in a massive over-the-top event. We did a huge event in the holidays. We created this European holiday village with snow and 40 brands participated in LA and we had 5,000 people come over the weekend and it was incredible. We we were able to track whether or not they knew about us ahead of the time. And about 40% of people that showed up to the event were not familiar with Parachute. So it was a huge brand awareness and a new customer acquisition play. And all of the post-purchase surveys around that event were so positive. Like, this is the best event I've ever been to. I can't wait to come next year. That was a specific experience that we were able to cut through the noise of holiday craziness and do something very unique and really important for the customer. Also super value-add because they got to do Christmas shopping and eating and drinking and having a good time. Our strategy in general with marketing has always been to be super diversified. We never want to get too hooked on any given channel or too dependent. We've all seen the way that channel changes and things can switch overnight, like iOS changes that can have significant impact. On the way that you're able to market. And if you have too much leverage in one specific channel, it can be really disruptive. So we look to be diversified and we definitely are excited. We've got some pretty cool experiential moments coming for the rest of the year.

Keep us on that roadmap. And touching on this idea of diversification of channels and marketing, you've also incredibly diversified your product suite as well to expand beyond the original origin of the bed. And now it's really the home and I guess for entrepreneurs who they themselves are narrowing in on product market fit, whether it be a singular product to what becomes the bundle, if you will, how did you think about knowing when to go forward with a new product launch or frankly when to scale back on something from a product standpoint?

It's a good question. We've taken our time, 10 years, and we've launched a number of different categories, but we didn't introduce a new category for 2 years after we launched. We really focused on the bedroom and really stayed specific to bed. Bedding and bedding adjacent. There's a lot of things that go into our product development. We do want to be a home brand and we want to be a brand that touches every room of the home. And we've gotten there, but we're looking at a lot of consumer feedback. So whether it's from our retail stores, from surveys, from focus groups, there's a ton of feedback that we're getting that our product team is leveraging in terms of how we think about development, because there's a lot of consistency in terms of trends and how people are purchasing. I think Having a clear point of view is the most important thing, and having a clear point of view as you move across categories is critical. And we have been focused on quality and comfort so specifically since day one. And our hope is that when customers think about Parachute, that's what they feel and that's what they know. And as we introduce new categories, they trust us to move from one category to the next. Repeat rate is our north star in terms of a metric because we know that means people like the products and they want more. And so as we hold on to that metric as an important driving factor of brand health and business health. We see the way people are coming back to buy new products and the cadence in which they're doing that. And it's been interesting, but we don't bat 10 out of 10. We have some misses and things that are less popular than we expect. Then there's products that are a slam dunk and we're chasing after them and trying to get them back in stock. But I think it really comes down to that clear point of view because the worst thing you can do is confuse the customer. Like you don't want your customer to wonder why you're doing this or why you're doing that. You want it to make sense.

I'd love to drill into that clear point of view because there's been a couple different themes you've touched on around the emotionality of these products and curating a space and how you've done that in your stores. But you empower customers to also do that within their homes. And so much of the zeitgeist to Parachute feels like an extension of you. Even your own home was featured recently in Architectural Digest and just had a beautiful exposé alongside a book that you've published in the space. And so How have you thought about as a founder, both owning the vision and emotional experience of a company as well as the business?

It's really fun to start a business where you're the core customer, and then it's really fun to have people join the company who are fans of the brand and have such personal experiences with the brand before they've even joined the company. For me, being a founder has been like such a joy because I am constantly growing and evolving as a person from an aesthetic perspective, you know, and I bring that evolution into the brand alongside our teammates who are also evolving and growing and thinking about who they are. And one of the things that we've talked about since the very beginning at Parachute is that we want to grow with our customers. We never want our customers to grow out of us. And so this journey of evolving who we are and, and continuing to grow and to push ourselves and to hold ourselves to such high standards and to be a brand that really stands for quality and comfort. What that means has continued to change over time and to broaden and to elevate. We're just growing up together and now we're not just designing for me. There's plenty of products where I'm like, this is beautiful, but it's not for my house. This doesn't fit for me. But then we see it be such a huge success amongst our customers and that's great. You can't also get in your own way. When you're building a brand because you have to think about the audience. And at the early days it was easy to be like, it's me. And then it becomes much bigger than that.

Thank you for sharing that sentiment. We're all just growing together. More on a personal note, as Madison and I grow into our late 20s, we're starting to think about our careers in context of personal milestones. You are both a mom and an entrepreneur. What advice do you have for us on managing career and family?

You'll never have balance because balance doesn't happen. Women can do it all. That is an absolute fact, and they can do it better than anyone else. My favorite brands are started by women. My favorite products are led by women. I have an incredible group of female founder moms that are in my community and in my circle that inspire me every day. And some days you nail it and some days you don't. And that's just the fact, you know? And I think the more that you can let go of perfection and this idea that there's going to be some sort of harmony between life and work, it just doesn't work. And I mentioned when I was in the classroom that I look at presence and it's all about being present for me. And so when I'm at work, I try to be present as much as possible. And when I'm at home, I try to be present as much as possible. If I can do that, excellently 50% of the time, I consider it a win. If you are wanting to be an entrepreneur, you are a Type A person who wants things done a specific way and holds themselves to such a high standard. We all want to be exceptional, but it also— some days you're gonna nail the work thing and you're gonna miss on the home thing, and you're gonna wake up the next day and do it differently. And as a mom, it's been really fun to have conversations. I have little kids, they're 5 and 3, but If my daughter gets frustrated at me 'cause I was at work late and I missed bedtime, the next day when we wake up, we have a conversation about it and I tell her that I'm gonna try again and that tonight I'm gonna be there. And she knows that I love my job and she knows that I love working and that this fills me up just like she fills me up. And I, it's been so fun to bring her into stores and to show her what I do. And my son's a little bit young, but he's getting there too. I do think that there's never a right time or a wrong time or any time. It's just you have to, know that you can do it all and you can do it all great and it's going to be fun.

That's such an encouraging sentiment. I'm gassed up from that, so thank you for sharing that.

I will say, like, having a community of peers and friends who are going through similar stages is so critical. The fact that I have this group of women who are also moms who are working all the time and doing such incredible things with their companies, it keeps me going. It's so easy to then pick up the phone and be like, I totally missed the ball on the mom thing today and just talk it out. I like could not focus at work today because my kid's sick and I got this thing. And it's just nice to have a community of people that can relate. It's so important. Life-saving.

Trae Furr, who we talked about briefly in person, but also we've had on the pod, is an investor in Claudia as well. And we hear her journey too, a little bit with having 4 boys and how she also is an investor full-time and just the balance act. And it's just nice to have those people like on the ground for you.

As we wrap up on our time today, a final reflection and a question that we ask all of our guests on the podcast: who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

I'll give a shout out to Kara Nordman, who is an investor and is doing incredible things. She's one of the owners of Angel City, the women's soccer team in Los Angeles, and she was an early investor in Parachute, a mentor and a friend, also a mom of 3 and a person that I can call when I need that pep talk, when I need to be reminded that I can do anything. She sees me in ways that I don't always see myself, and to have someone that I can lean on and work with and have in my corner has been a great pleasure.

Thank you so much for sharing that, Ariel. It's been amazing having you on The Room today. Thank you for sitting down and chatting with us.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for joining us at The Room Podcast. If you want more from The Room every week, subscribe to our newsletter at theroompodcast.com/newsletter. Newsletter. We'll be back next week with a new episode and inspirational guest Tuesday. See you in the room. Perkins Coie supports the most innovative entrepreneurs and investors in fast-moving and high-growth sectors, addressing their myriad of legal needs. But the firm doesn't just provide end-to-end legal and business counseling to its startup clients. It also facilitates introductions to key advisors and sources of capital. Perkins Coie's interactive website, Startup Percolator, offers access to programs, resources, and rich dynamic content designed to assist entrepreneurs on their startup journey. To learn more, go to startuppercolator.com and perkinscoie.com.

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