Rachel Berick - Cartographer + Stylist + $600 = MAPTOTE accessories at 800+ stores
Anne McGinty
Today we have Rachel Berick here to talk with us about her journey from fashion stylist to creating a line of accessories decorated with maps and local culture. Rachel is the co-founder of Maptote, a Brooklyn-based small business that has been making fun and functional products with unique, location-centric designs. They are beautiful. Maptote has collaborated with museums, l'occitane, pendleton, hbo, martha Stewart and many more, and has been featured in the Spruce, on Birdie's Top 50 Best Friend Gifts, in Women's Day, bloomingdale's Greatest Gift Guide, people Magazine, women's Health and so much more.
Rachel, thanks for coming on the show, thank you so much for having me.
Rachel Berick
I'm honored to speak with you.
Anne McGinty
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Rachel Berick
Always as a kid I was interested in art and fashion and design, so that was kind of what I loved doing in school. And then I ended up going to college, I went to NYU and I was an art major there and then following that I went to Parsons and I did fashion design there. So I don't think I ever thought I would kind of end up in the gift world doing accessories like what we do now, but it just kind of all worked out this way.
Anne McGinty
How did the idea for Maptote eventually come about?
Rachel Berick
Yeah, so my husband and, at the time, my then boyfriend Michael, my partner in Maptote when we first started dating I don't know why, but we kind of talked about starting our own thing together, having a business or making something. We didn't really have any sort of grand scheme, but just wanted to do something we went on a trip together to Germany to visit some friends, and this was back in 2006. While we were there, they didn't use plastic bags. They had banned plastic bags and they use cotton bags at grocery stores as reusable bags.
02:50
And in 2006, this idea was so foreign to us that was not at all really happening in the States and we loved the idea. We loved the idea of like not using plastic. And these cotton bags and the bags had names of different cities and locations on them. So we collected them and we bought them back and we gave them as presents to friends, and we were making pillows on the side at the time. And then Michael, who has a background in cartography, he was like, why don't I make something for Brooklyn? So he designed a map of Brooklyn and I figured out how to find some bags that were like these bags we saw in Germany and figured out how to get them printed. And then it kind of started there.
Anne McGinty
What was your first run like?
Rachel Berick
We invested in 50 bags and it happened to be just before the holidays. So we said either we'll try to sell them to stores and if not, then we have Christmas gifts for everyone. So we said either we'll try to sell them to stores and if not, then we have Christmas gifts for everyone.
Anne McGinty
So then, what did you do to let people know that, hey, we've got these cool Brooklyn bags?
Rachel Berick
What we did is we went to the store around the corner from our house that was like a great little gift shop and we walked in there with some bags and showed it to the owner and she was like you should not be walking in and doing this. Like she kind of like was not really happy that we were just walking in to show her something off the cuff. But then she was like but fine, I, those are cute, you're lucky that those are cute and I will buy some. So we were like oh.
04:16
Oh okay. So she was like kind of, gave us a little bit of a lesson of how to do it. Then we figured out another store in our neighborhood that we liked and we just decided, okay, do. Then we figured out another store in our neighborhood that we liked and we just decided, okay, let's just go in and see if we can get the name of the buyer. We did the same thing and they said, okay, I'll try some of those. So it kind of just was just us going into stores we liked in our neighborhood and door to door sales. Did you guys have a website At that point? We didn't. No, we didn't have a website. We originally put some stuff up, not even at that point, but on Etsy, and then eventually we had a friend help us build a site once we had, you know, maybe about like 10 different locations.
Anne McGinty
And then going back to that first store owner, what were the lessons that she taught you about how to do it?
Rachel Berick
People coming in off the street being like do you want to buy this? It's maybe not the way to go about it, but having a line sheet or a catalog showing what your product is, you know, or emailing people and also having something to leave them with, and those 50 bags, like when you first, first, first started.
Anne McGinty
How much investment did it actually take?
Rachel Berick
I think when we started it was about $300 each when we started, in total for everything. Oh my gosh, that's amazing yeah it is pretty crazy when you think about it, like where we're at now with everything that's epic. It was like a side thing, you know. It seemed oh my gosh, it seemed like a lot of money to us then you know,
Anne McGinty
yeah, and how is your business performing now?
Rachel Berick
We have about 600 plus SKUs in our line, so that doesn't include custom. Our growth rate has been pretty steady, year after year. Also, as we add new products, it just adds more growth. Instead of somebody buying one SKU, they're buying, you know, five SKUs or seven SKUs. It just gives more option for growth. So I think that's also been a part of our success.
Anne McGinty
And approximately how many wholesale orders are you fulfilling?
Rachel Berick
Have probably processed about 2000 orders, let's say last year, in total for a wholesale. But that doesn't, you know. Some of them are big.
Anne McGinty
Oh, I can imagine! what is the size of your team now?
Rachel Berick
In total, there's six of us, including Michael and myself.
Anne McGinty
So cool, considering you didn't originally think this would be more than a side gig. How did you learn the business side?
Rachel Berick
There was so much to learn and we definitely don't come at all from business backgrounds, but I think we're open to talking to people and getting advice, and we talked to as many people as we could.
Anne McGinty
So let's go back to when you just had those first two stores carrying your products.
Rachel Berick
So Michael had a full-time job as a cartographer at engineering firms. So it was a different kind of cartography than what you see in MapTote and I worked freelance doing fashion design and fashion styling. So I kind of worked freelance job to job. So in my days that I didn't have work I could work on this or think about stores or look into how are we doing this. But really we also did a lot of stuff in the evenings. I mean this was before we had kids. We had a lot more energy. We did stuff on the weekends. I mean it was fun, like you know, like it was just almost like this little passion project, almost hobby at that point.
Anne McGinty
How did it change to being more than just a side hobby?
Rachel Berick
So this was in 2006. So then we grew from there.
So we went from making Brooklyn and then we did Manhattan and kind of go there on the weekends and try to look for stores in different neighborhoods. And then it grew to like places we were traveling to or that we knew, like Los Angeles or San Francisco. We're like, oh, we're going on a trip to visit friends in LA. Like why don't we make an LA bag before we go? And then we'll do this while we're hanging out and seeing LA.
Anne McGinty
Amazing. Turn it into a work trip and take the deductions against your income. That's awesome.
Rachel Berick
Yeah, everything was kind of just like that.
Anne McGinty
When did it reach the point when you could let go of your other jobs?
Rachel Berick
So I guess the big moment was in 2008 was the recession. So I worked with a lot of magazines and things like that. That dried up during the recession and Michael was laid off from his job. I know a lot of business owners are big risk takers. I wouldn't describe us as a risk taker. We're both very pragmatic and we're just very safe with how we make plans and things. So that happened and it kind of pushed us. We were kind of like all right, I guess, while we're figuring out maybe what the next thing is or what's happening, let's actually try this. But we just weren't sure if we could live off of it. But we figured this was a point if we both put our full-time attention to it, can we get it to that next level.
Anne McGinty
I can see how that would have been a very scary feeling. Yeah, totally, but it was more of a need at that point.
Rachel Berick
Yeah, it just gave us an opportunity. You would never think of that as an opportunity, but it was a blessing in disguise.
Anne McGinty
What were some of the key milestones that you reached when you started feeling more secure?
Rachel Berick
A couple of things. We were on this email list I don't know if you remember and this might be dating me called Daily Candy. Oh yeah, I know, daily Candy. Yep, before the days of Instagram or TikTok or whatever all these things, there was a daily email that people got and it told people about the new restaurant, a new thing to do, a new product, and we got to be one of their things that they emailed out. And that day we got like hundreds of orders Like it was next level. We didn't even know how to process them. We figured it out. I mean I can't even what a memory. I like babysat for people. At that point I was like babysitting people, kids that night and Michael's calling me and I'm like quickly trying on the slide to like type up addresses.
Anne McGinty
I mean it was it was a little bit of a mess, but we got through it.
Rachel Berick
I mean it was like we were just doing everything, but we processed it. We brought these huge garbage bags to the post office, all the orders, and I guess another big turning point for things was JCrew contacted us. Oh my gosh, yeah, how did they find you? For some reason, in the beginning we started selling to a lot of stores in Japan. That's so random. That was kind of bizarrely. We were getting bigger orders from Japan and we did like a couple of trade shows or maybe we met somebody at like a market or something and JCrew went on a their buyers went on like a shopping trip and they found us in Japan at stores.
11:06
And they're like we literally they called us and they're like we literally went all the way to Japan and we found you guys and you're in Brooklyn, like they were in Manhattan, and we were like oh my God. So we came in and we ended up, started working with them, but that felt like oh my God, this is like a real company you know what a day that must have been.
Anne McGinty
So what was the meeting like?
Rachel Berick
They asked us about our numbers and who do we sell to? And it was kind of turned into this big meeting. And actually Mickey Drexler at the time came into the meeting because he was always very much like around the office and seeing, I think, what everyone was doing. So he came into the meeting and he really loved it and he really loved what everyone was doing. So he came into the meeting and he really loved it and he really loved what we were doing and he was like we got to get on this. And I mean I feel like both of us were a little bit of a deer in headlights but we were like, okay, great, yeah. So we ended up making bags for their stores. That's huge, yeah, yeah. And it was a great way to legitimize what we did for, like, other stores and other businesses.
Anne McGinty
How did you handle the manufacturing for such a big sudden order?
Rachel Berick
So with manufacturing, when we started we were figuring out how to get this made. We placed an order with a factory abroad for blank bags and we were going to print them here and we got the bags. It took forever to get the bags. It was like a whole thing and by the time the bags came they weren't really great. We just didn't love the quality. And Michael was kind of at the time. He also in college had like a background in environmental studies. He brought up and it was a great point.
12:38
It's still one of our values today is, if we're trying to make something to limit plastic, use something good for the environment, why are we shipping it around the world to us and having this carbon footprint of it coming? Like we don't know who's making it, we don't know how they're making it really, because we're not there and then it has to fly all the way around the world to get to us. Like at that point, like just use a plastic bag, you know Right. So that was a really good point. It really got us thinking and really made us realize we just want better quality, but we also we should make it here. So I started looking at factories here. So we ended up finding a factory in Brooklyn who cuts and sews our products and we have another factory in Brooklyn that screen prints and I figured out you have to order everything. So I found cotton that was made in the US, I found handles that are made in the US, because it just felt like everything needs to come as local as possible. That just feels good.
Anne McGinty
So did the business have an exponential takeoff after the JCrew collaboration.
Rachel Berick
We never had like a crazy spike up, but it always since the beginning it's been slow and steady, which has felt really good, Just like I said before, like we're kind of safe people. It's always been a good thing.
Anne McGinty
What other collaborations have been particularly meaningful to you?
Rachel Berick
We were on the Martha Stewart show and we did some things with Martha Stewart. If we were on the Martha Stewart show and we did some things with Martha Stewart, I'm like a big Martha Stewart fan and being somebody who's crafty and for her to kind of put her stamp of approval on it feels pretty special and I feel like that also kind of helped get the Mapto word out.
Anne McGinty
Do you have any idea how she discovered you?
Rachel Berick
So we used to, on the weekends, sell to the Brooklyn Flea. When we started selling it there, that was kind of the beginning of them too. It was like this idea of kind of a cool market. You feel like, no, there's a lot of those out there. But at the time there really wasn't. And she ended up going to the Brooklyn Flea and did a show about the Brooklyn Flea and we were a part of that. And then from that we ended up making a bag for one of her birthdays and she was doing other small business events and things and we got a part of that as well.
Anne McGinty
Wow, so many big, memorable moments. What would you say has been the hardest challenge you've faced?
Rachel Berick
I mean, the pandemic was a huge challenge. Most of our business is wholesale and a lot of them are tourism. You know, it's like our products is like a cool souvenir. So nobody went to stores and probably like another struggle. It's kind of like a good and a bad. Michael and I love working together and I don't think we would have it any other way. But you know, working with your spouse at times can be challenging.
Anne McGinty
Oh yeah, so majority of your sales are to wholesale accounts. What would you say is the percentage split between direct to consumer and wholesale?
Rachel Berick
Right now it's probably about 90% wholesale, 10% retail. So, interesting, yeah, which we would like to grow our retail, which is our online store. We actually, just like a week ago, launched a new website through Shopify. Our site before was a custom PHP site, so we're hoping now, with this like change into Shopify, it'll just be much more compatible.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, probably a lot easier for self-management too. Yeah, do you work with a distributor or third-party logistics of any kind to ship out your orders?
Rachel Berick
No, Really All of our product comes back to our office studio space and we pack and ship it all out ourselves, so it kind of goes through our hands.
Anne McGinty
Have you ever done a cost analysis to see?
Rachel Berick
Yes, I have I. You know we're so funny with certain things. I have gone to see what it would be. There's something about having it come through our hands to see it, to quality check it. I know other people can do that. I know so many ways. We're very hands-on people, like we do all our own sales ourselves. We've been approached by showrooms and sales reps and I don't know what it is. We've talked about it, but we love doing it ourselves and I don't know if that's what makes part of our charm too. We're us and real people, and not that that's a bad thing. It could be a great thing. I mean, we could be really stupid and be producing so much more and like you know, but I don't know. I like having so much more in our control.
Anne McGinty
Well, there's absolutely nothing wrong with continuing to do something in a way that works really well for you. What would be your ultimate goal for MapTote Like? Where do you see the future? Where would you want it to go?
Rachel Berick
That's a good question. I mean, you know, continual growth, I mean as of right now, like a short term goal. It is this retail site and really seeing what we can do direct to consumer. But you know, we love collaborating with different companies and different stores and different businesses and I love that and I love seeing our stuff around, so just continuing that experience.
Anne McGinty
What marketing strategies have been the most effective for you?
Rachel Berick
It's never just like one thing. I feel like with marketing. We do trade shows, which are pretty important. There's a new online wholesale site called Fair. That has become an amazing tool for us for getting new stores and getting reorders from existing stores. Plus, they have an online market. But we do still do in-person markets and trade shows because I still think it's great to have that relationship with people and people to meet us and see our stuff in person. Which trade shows do you do? We do New York Now, which is two times a year, and we just started doing in the past few years. There was a museum store associations show. It's called MSA.
Anne McGinty
Oh, so you can get in front of the museum gift shops. Yes, what was it like when you did your first trade show.
Rachel Berick
We did New York. No, I did it because Michael is working, so I was able to have the time to do it. We had like a tiny little booth and actually that show is where I think we met with a Japanese distributor, which was probably the beginning of it. That's how we got our stuff to stores in Japan. 18 years in, it's still so exciting whenever somebody places an order, like still a little part of me is like woohoo, but yeah, definitely. Then I was like oh my God, somebody bought something, which is the point. But, like you know, it was like oh my God.
Anne McGinty
Oh, I love that that feeling is still with you. I mean, you said you're at a bunch of stores. How many stores do you have?
Rachel Berick
We're at about maybe like 800. It kind of fluctuates, but yeah
Anne McGinty
Gosh, that’s a lot!
Rachel Berick
Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, Well, it's all over.
Anne McGinty
How do you manage those relationships?
Rachel Berick
It's a lot of just keeping in touch and I feel like a good amount of them I know kind of personally because of trade shows, Like if I met them at a trade show and over time we've visited a lot of them. You know, like if I still do travel, I still do try to email some stores and be like, hey, I try to give them a heads up. Now you know, I'll be in San Diego, Are you around? So usually when we do travel, even if it's just for fun, like we kind of try to look into like dropping into stores or making appointments to see them.
Anne McGinty
I love that. I mean obviously for the write-off component too, because then your trip is discounted, which is pretty awesome. Yeah right, I have a friend who owns a tourist shop in Bermuda, for example. Like, let's say she wanted to place a custom order, how many units is she going to have to commit to?
Rachel Berick
Usually it's about 72 units.
Anne McGinty
Wow For custom. That seems super doable. So once a new location is chosen, what goes into the designing process?
Rachel Berick
Well, there's two parts of design. There's designing for our own line and then there's designing for clients, for custom, so designing for MapTote for us. So we started with a map and then from there, you know, the map became very popular. But as you're doing these shows and as our line is growing, we really needed to figure out more products and more designs, because people just want more and more and what's new. So we kind of figured out other ways to show location right, like how to create like another cool souvenir.
21:27
So we kind of developed that concept and we make these fun font designs that are really graphic and bold, with, like this location name, with major icons that might fit into the lettering. And we've done these designs that we call our pins and patches. So they look like they're pins and patches but they're screen printed and they kind of have this vintage sort of campy feel to it. If we're not familiar with the location, we always try to find somebody from there, a local, because we don't want to just have it be the obvious. So we usually try to find somebody and it's a friend of a friend or especially if we're making it for a store or for somebody that lives there. I mean they're the best resource for that. It's like a little research project and I feel like we know all these weird little facts about places you know it's not so fun, and do you have any idea what your best selling item is?
22:19
Oh anything Brooklyn. Oh, how fun. Yeah, it's still the Brooklyn tote that, and our onesies are pretty popular now. And then have you ever seen somebody wearing it out in public that you're like, oh hey we see people all the time in our neighborhood, or like my kids now come home and they're like my science teacher has your tote bag, which is so funny and so cool. That's amazing. But yeah, I mean, there's been. Like you know, there was a paparazzi photo of Natalie Portman wearing a bag. That's so cool.
22:50
And that was kind of like oh my gosh, you know Natalie Portman, or, like recently there was a photo of Jerry Seinfeld and his wife and she was carrying one after an event. Oh my gosh, it was so funny, so that is kind of we get a kick out of that for sure. Whenever you know, something like that pops up.
Anne McGinty
I don’t think that would ever get old. So, looking back, what advice would you give yourself if you could go back and have a conversation with yourself back then, if you could go back and have a conversation with yourself back then.
Rachel Berick
I think it's just working hard and being persistent and like just staying focused on what we do. You know, as we started, there's been a lot of tote bag lines, a lot of locations, designs have popped up and just staying focused on what we do and what our objectives are. Because I feel like when we first started, too, that was bothersome if we saw something like that, but now I feel like we're in our groove and we've made our mark and we have our thing going on, that we have a little bit more steady feeling in our company and what we do.
Anne McGinty
What has it been like expanding your team Considering? You know you hadn't. Maybe you had been a manager or boss in a past job.
Rachel Berick
No, I hadn't. You know it's a learning experience, but you know we started with one and then two. I don't know if that's my favorite role I mean, our team is amazing and we need them and they're so valuable but I think a lot of it, at least for us, feels like common sense or like how we would want things.
Anne McGinty
So how would you describe your day to day work life, and what is the technology that helps you keep it all going?
Rachel Berick
For our designs we use the Adobe Suite, like Illustrator is probably the key one we use, and sometimes we use Photoshop or InDesign for catalogs and then just for our business we use a lot of Google Suite. There's a lot of just shared Google Docs between all of us. That's how I manage. A lot of our production is through Google Docs so we can communicate through the doc. So it's just an easy way to share a lot of information. We have kind of like two office spaces right next to each other. One is our studio with our desks and then the other side is the stock room. So there's a lot of moving in between the two spaces but we're mainly in the studio Because of the product moving through there's a few in-person people that have to be there all the time. Michael and I move around a lot. I work in the office half the time and I probably work from home half the time and Michael goes to our factories probably one to two times a week.
Anne McGinty
Where does the quality control happen? Is that at the factory or back at the office?
Rachel Berick
It happens at both. You know, if the factory sees something, they will pull it out or tell me like, hey, there's holes in these t-shirts, okay, so don't print on them. So they do look at things as they're doing production, but when it does come back to our space, we have two people actually. One person goes through everything that comes in before it goes on our shelves or into an order, and then, before something goes out in an order, there's another person who just double checks that everything is correct.
Anne McGinty
How have you navigated the free shipping that Amazon has made commonplace? As a small business, how do you compete with that?
Rachel Berick
It's hard. I mean we usually do free shipping at a certain threshold on our own website for retail, like direct to consumer. So hopefully that helps people. You know, I mean it's just a cost of doing business these days to like have to include it, but if somebody can get to a certain amount on retail it helps us cover it. You know, once you do the math of the margins and everything.
Anne McGinty
What are typical margins for this type of product?
Rachel Berick
Yeah, usually it's you figure out your cost of a product, of what it is to make it, and then you double that and that gets you to your wholesale and then to get to retail it should be about double that. Sometimes it's 2.2 times doubling your wholesale to retail. It just depends on the retailer.
Anne McGinty
Those are some solid margins. It's always been so fascinating to me like how they differ.
Rachel Berick
Yeah, like what you're buying in a store is it really costs a quarter Right To make it? But yeah, to get through all the different people.
Anne McGinty
What else do you think has led to your success?
Rachel Berick
Yeah, we kind of we get an order and then we reinvest that money into the business. It's kind of always been this like Slow and steady yeah, To kind of make sure that we have enough money to continue. And then more products increases the order, Because in the beginning people would only be able to buy like one bag.
Anne McGinty
Right, and now you have over 600, you know, and that's not even the custom work. I love how it's been so steady, because it feels like you're removing the risk. What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who work in a creative field?
Rachel Berick
I mean, just work hard, stay focused on what your vision is. You know, try to figure that out, which can be hard, and just stay focused on what it is that you want to do. Sometimes there's so many ideas you kind of do need to like narrow it down until one vision or one brand of what that is, and then from there you can expand upon ideas. You know, reach out to people for help, Looking for business advice from anywhere. If you don't have anybody in your network of friends, there's a lot of opportunities out there, and so just keep your mind open.
Anne McGinty
Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story with us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
key takeaways
If you're looking for a cool business idea, go on a trip to another country and pay attention to what you see and experience when abroad. There are so many proven concepts that can be found in other places and brought back to your home country.
Offering additional options to existing customers is a great opportunity for growth.
If you are risk-averse but want to explore the idea of entrepreneurship, prove one concept first. Then use the profits to reinvest into another offering. Then use the profits to reinvest into another offering. Continuing in this slow and steady way is a comfortable way to grow a business for someone who doesn't like risk.
Attend trade shows like New York Now to tap into invaluable networking opportunities and to gain exposure on a broader scale.
If you're a small business looking for exposure for your brand, consider selling on FAIRE, an online marketplace where retailers across the globe can discover independent brands.
If you are manufacturing a product, consider the environmental impact of your manufacturer's location with shipping, and consider looking for a manufacturer closer to your operations.
If you've never been an employer or a manager, but are diving into that role, just think about how you would want things if you were the employee and let that help steer you.
Focus on what you're doing instead of getting sidetracked by the competition. Seeing a competitor set up a similar shop, concept or product can be bothersome, but just stay focused on your own vision.
Finally, keep your mind open open to ideas, ways of doing things and to learning.
That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, sometimes more, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.
