![]() ![]() “The focus for us has always been online, and there’s so much growth potential there,” says Sugarman. She wants to keep growing it, but not into a fleet of stores. It was a success, and Sugarman turned her side hustle into a booming business, with around 110 employees today. Sugarman noticed that the industry was changing and used the opportunity as an experiment to see how an internet-based brand would perform. ![]() The company, named after Sugarman’s father and grandfather, was born out of the demand for online shopping after the 2008 recession. By day, she managed the showroom and salespeople by night, she pursued an e-commerce side hustle that would later become Lulu and Georgia. After a brief detour in publishing as a post-college graduate in New York, Sugarman returned to her hometown of Los Angeles to join the family firm. In 1955, her grandfather started Decorative Carpets, a to-the-trade rug showroom in West Hollywood that was eventually passed down to her father. Sugarman wasn’t exactly “thrown” into the design industry she was born into it. “It was such a metaphor of things to come, of just being thrown into the business and realizing that you have to persevere and figure it out-that’s how it still feels today sometimes.” “I felt really helpless, and there was no one to turn to because I had no partners or employees,” Sugarman tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. Although the direct-to-consumer e-commerce home decor brand built up demand before the launch through influencers and designers, CEO and founder Sara Sugarman was still surprised by the deluge. The first day the official Lulu and Georgia website launched in 2012, selling products like woven rugs and boucle chairs, it crashed from too much traffic.
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