Kate: It oddly doesn’t phase me in the slightest. Katie: Many people still think it’s your company. Andy had really already begun doing all his other things and Bea was born and I was like, “This feels like it’s meant to be.” We didn’t want to up and run, but after that it was just a good time. We ended up selling the rest of the percentage because Neimans was selling themselves…We agreed to stay on for six months with whomever they sold it to. They’ve since sold the company to Liz Claiborne. Katie: So what was it like at Kate Spade towards the end? First you sold a percentage to Neiman Marcus and then eventually you sold them everything. There’s this little thing called “profit.” What else? Īndy: We turned it into a Christmas tree store…Our CFO eventually suggested we let go of the space.
Once we moved on to Mercer, that was our flagship…we turned the old space into a travel store, a bookstore…but then we were buying all these vintage books and the girl was opening them up and selling them for what we paid for them, so that wasn’t really working out. Katie: What year did you open the first store? Even once we started getting some of the larger accounts, we weren’t tooling around town in a town car.
We took on two partners…between the four of us we really were scrappy and very conservative in terms of how we spent our money. Kate: I would say Andy might have, but I definitely did not. Katie: Did you have some concept of just how big it would someday be? Kate: Oh yeah, he kept saying, “But Katy, these are the stores you want to be in!” And I would be like, “Okay, but we didn’t even make enough money to pay for the show we were just in.” Katie: So Andy was the one that kept you going? When we won the first CFDA I thought, “Okay, wow, people are actually taking notice.” I mean we were in stores, but only a few… What kept you motivated? Was there a moment you thought, “this is really going to be something”? Fast forward to New York and the early days of Kate Spade. Andy would laugh because he would come in and I would be wearing a tennis sweater and these big pieces of fabric tied around my hair in a huge bow. I didn’t get promoted, so I was like, “I’m outta here.” The only place I could find that paid enough was this biker bar called Desperados. Well, I get there and I wasn’t very good, so they started me off working at the hot dog stand. Kate: A friend of mine was working at a golf course as a beverage girl and making a fortune. Katie: Speaking of college days, I read somewhere that you worked in a motorcycle bar. I’m trying to think–pretty much the same I’d say. How do you think you’ve each changed since then? You and Andy met back in college in Arizona. Her style, humor, and trailblazing ways clearly inspired so many of us. I’ve decided to share it after reading all your comments on this instagram tribute to Kate. Here in its entirety is my refreshingly candid 2011 interview with Kate and Andy Spade.