♪ - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today built a beloved brand inspired by the beauty, the artistry, and warmth of Italy.

Susan Gravely is founder of Vietri, transformed a family trip into America's leading importer of Italian ceramics.

- Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - Coca- Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose- driven teammates, we are Coca- Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

- Susan, your company is well- known all across the land.

It's called Vietri.

It was founded sometime in the '80s?

- 1983.

- 1983.

Tell us the story.

It was you and your sister were in Italy and saw something, fell in love with something.

- You're close.

My mother and sister and I went on this trip because it was the trip my mother and father had planned to take when he sold his company, which was tobacco, Eastern North Carolina, Rocky Mount.

- You were born and raised in Rocky Mount.

- I was born and raised in Rocky Mount.

Daddy's company brought foreigners from all over the world to our home.

He was with the Italian conglomerate in Georgia, didn't feel well, came home, and had a heart attack at 60.

He had had mitral valve issues.

But we took the trip that he and mama had planned, went down to the Amalfi Coast, stayed at a beautiful hotel called IL San Pietro.

And when you came down through the rock and the door opened and you saw the arches and the white walls and the blue ocean, and you turned and saw peach- colored tablecloths with plates that were assorted animals and fish and flowers, we fell in love.

I, for the first time, and it was with dishes.

So that was the beginning.

- I had the best French fries at that very restaurant that you're describing at the bottom of the... So Vietri is a line of... - All Italian- inspired, dinnerware, decorative accessories, everything for the table, the home, and the garden.

No decals, everything handcrafted, mouth- blown, and made by artisans.

- Is it all made in Italy?

- 99% is made in Italy.

We deal with one factory that is owned by an Italian that is in Turkey, and one factory that's very inspired by Italy in Poland.

Other than that, everything is Italian.

- But you do much more than dinnerware.

- Oh, we do.

We do.

We started with this one line of dinnerware, and we had met a gentleman on the airplane going over who ended up becoming our agent.

We would have never called him, but Mama's pocketbook was stolen in Florence, and we were desperate.

And she said, "Remember that man who gave us a card?"

Because he was very curious about a mother and two daughters.

We called him.

He gave us money, helped us with passports, and he luckily was from a family where he didn't work.

He just explored life.

So he became our agent.

And with that, he and I would spend weeks and weeks going all over Italy looking at different factories.

So we sell a wood line, flatware, linens, all mouth- blown glass, lots of wall accessories, lamps, and then we sell garden accessories, which could be anything from wall pieces to garden pots.

And now we'll be bringing in a beautiful line called Ortizia, and that will be candles, perfumes, wonderful ladies' personal accessories.

- But you've also written books, like "Italy on a Plate" was one book, and "Italy in a Glass" was another book.

- Correct.

- And these books have examples of the very products that you have.

- You're right Nido.

During that year, people would ask me, "Please write a book, a travel book.

Please write a recipe book.

Please write a memoir."

So one night I woke up and said, "I'm gonna combine these."

So "Italy on a Plate" was the first, and the second is similar.

The plate is more menus, bigger recipes, and I chose nine different people or places or factories that were very important.

I wrote about them.

Bill came over.

We photographed with them at their home or in their factories, and then they gave me their family recipes, and we photographed everything on Vietri plates.

The last chapter is bringing Italy home.

So it's how we live in Chapel Hill and how Italy has inspired us.

The glass, "Italy in a Glass," focuses on mouth- blowing glass, glass blowers and vineyards, and again, hiking in the Dolomites with friends or being in Venice celebrating.

The gist of both is really about how I see you living, which is celebrating life.

You know, maybe I sell glasses and plates, but what I really sell is joy, being together, celebrating together, and finding common interests even if what we do is very different.

- Is it safe to say that you are the largest importer of Italian ceramics in the States?

- We're the largest in the world now.

- Largest importer of Italian ceramics in the world.

- Of Italian products for the home and garden.

- I see.

- Yes.

Yes, we work with about 30 factories all over Italy, including Sicily, and have built this for that better market, the market that understands a handcraft other than a mass- produced product.

- Yeah.

And you're based in North Carolina.

You're a North Carolina corporation.

- We are.

- And you're chairman of the board of the corporation.

- We are.

- And was it easy for you to start a business?

Was it hard?

How did you start it?

I mean, today, the name of the company is very well known, the products are very well known, people have them all over the, certainly all over the country, maybe all over the world.

But run us a little bit about this young lady who had an idea with her sister and mom, and serendipitously found something and built it into a significant brand.

- Nido, the beautiful thing about my life in Rocky Mount was that I grew up around a lot of foreigners.

And I, as a child, would be able to sit, not speak unless spoken to, serve either the drinks or the cigarettes they were talking about, and listen.

And we had a globe that daddy would show Rocky Mount and somewhere in the world and say, "Look how small the world is.

You're only a plane ticket or a phone call away."

So for us, we were never afraid of this thing called the world.

So when we found it, we went to the factory thinking we're gonna buy for ourselves and our family.

And then we sat and had drinks with a couple in manufacturing from New York who said, "Clearly you love design.

Why don't you wholesale and distribute?"

And that was the seed.

I didn't think about being afraid.

We invested $20,000.

- $20,000.

- The 1980s.

- 1983.

We interviewed banks thinking that's how you did it, as opposed to banks interviewing you.

And we found one where there was a woman who was mesmerized by what we did, and we borrowed $25,000.

Our $20,000 seed money came from a handwritten note that was attached to my father's will.

And where everything was left, of course, to my mother, he wrote a note saying, "Susan Francis Stephen Page, I'm proud of you.

You will find your place in the world.

You will work hard, but I want to leave you $2,000 to go blow on a good time."

- That's a lesson for all of us.

- For all of us.

So Francis and I took our $2,000 each and invested in Vietri, and our mother felt that we were gonna do it, and she invested $16,000 in the beginning, and that was her $20,000 investment.

- That's how you started the company.

- Yes, it was.

- Isn't that amazing?

- Yeah.

- America is built on the backs of people who had ideas and started small companies and then grew them to much larger spheres, and that's what you've done.

- That's what... Right.

- You bring the product from Italy.

- Yes.

- You're a wholesaler.

- We are.

- Do you distribute the product through retailers everywhere?

- We distribute through retail.

We have our own dot com.

We distribute through other dot coms, department stores as well, and through Amazon, but not all of our product in Amazon.

- But if I went on any of those that you mentioned... - Yes.

- Amazon or retailers, any of them... - Yes.

- Is the price for item A the same at all of them?

- All of them.

- Yes.

- It's a fixed price.

- It's a fixed price now, except for Amazon, which expects percentages.

But that's the only one.

Everybody else is what we ask as a retail price.

We're opening our first retail store, Vietri, in Chapel Hill next August, and the reason we decided to do that, Nido, is that we want to show our brand as the lifestyle of creating happiness and joy around the table so that people can come and see it, and they can make their own choices.

And they can go anywhere to our outlet store.

They can go to retail stores, anywhere, and choose what they want.

But we're going to show it, and then bring in other Italian things that we cannot wholesale, but maybe we can retail.

- Is it easy for you to bring product from overseas to North Carolina?

- It is.

We bring it by containers.

- Are there tariffs involved?

- Yes.

Tariffs have been... This has been a very big challenge this year.

Pricing has been very difficult.

It's been hard from the factory to the packaging companies to the customs brokers, because things were changing all the time.

- You couldn't predict very quickly.

- Couldn't predict.

So now we've been able to, right now, settle on pricing.

And honestly, Nido, I think if you build a company based on trust and honesty with respect for your product and quality, they believe you.

So that we've not had any problems with people questioning.

It's been scary, but it's been fine.

- So how did the business, or doing business, or managing the business, change, or has been transformed... - Right.

- ...from the 1983 era to the 2020s era?

- There've been ebbs and flows.

Like all businesses, when we started, it was all about specialty stores.

Every town had a wonderful clothing store and had a wonderful gift store.

Today there are many fewer gift stores.

And the stores look more alike, because if they're buying for price, they're buying from big Asian companies.

Dot com has become a very important part of their business.

It is still about how you present yourself, right?

And it's about making sure that what they see and get is what it really is.

So now we're 40% dot com, 60% still retail stores.

- E- commerce.

- E- commerce, yes.

So it's changed a great deal.

We've also gone through... - Recessions.

- COVID.

- All that.

And each time we've come together as a team and brainstormed how can we create a selling world of product that people will feel more comfortable with in this world.

So during COVID, as an example, we decided to call our stores and do online advisory meetings about how they could still sell.

Online people picking up packages outside their stores.

And our business exploded during COVID.

- Because people were staying home more.

- Staying home.

- Maybe wanted to have more happiness, as you put it.

- That's right.

See what they had in their house.

They hadn't redecorated in a while.

They used the same dishes.

They just had time to think about being home more.

And so luckily, Vietri was part of those thoughts.

- Who is your customer besides B2B, business to business?

- Yes.

- Who is your retail customer?

I mean, forgive me for characterizing it this way.

Is it people of means who can afford it or is it for everybody?

I don't know price ranges and so on.

- Price point is on the higher end because it's handcrafted.

Italy is not given any government help on pricing where Portugal is.

So our prices at first cost are going to be much higher than our competitive countries.

The key for us is that it's something that is special and will last.

So 20 to 30 year olds, it's few pieces to start their collection or getting married.

The 40 to 65 year olds, it's collecting and then giving to their children and their grandchildren.

But our outlet store in Hillsborough provides a great place for everybody to be able to buy it at a well discounted price, a product that's usually discontinued or we have overstocked.

But it's always first quality.

- Very, very interesting.

You know, I'm trying to compare it in my mind, for example, to a Heron line where it is also handmade.

It's Hungarian, no?

- Yes.

- Hungarian, very expensive pieces.

- Very, but valued correctly for the hand paint.

Ours is a step down from Heron because most of our products do not have the level of hand paintedness.

Everything Heron does is porcelain.

We sell an of like product, but it's called, it's an oven to table to microwave, very durable restaurant safe product, but it's not as thin as porcelain.

- I see, yes.

- Yeah, it's a white clay.

- So you went to Salem College.

- I went to Salem for two years.

- And then you went to Chapel Hill.

- Chapel Hill.

- But your master's degree in Chapel Hill was in education.

- That is right.

- Had nothing to do with art, nothing to do with happiness, nothing to do with ceramics, nothing to do with Italy.

- Well, I did get my master's at UNC after I'd been in Boston and worked for Boston Children's Hospital, volunteered there.

I worked for an architectural firm because I loved design, but I met a woman named Anita Oles who was the beginner of play therapy.

So I started at Radcliffe, finished at UNC and then started the outpatient pediatric play program at Duke.

And so I built a Snoopy dog house that opened in all places and we would take it around for children.

And then in the outpatient clinic, I was able to work with the psychiatrists and the doctors and the families to find out what was happening emotionally to a child who was sick.

So I still loved the people skills and the creative side, but I burned out.

My father was sick, I was in love with a medical student and I got to a place where I said, I have got to do something else.

- And that's what turned you so indifferently to something else.

- It did.

I had a terrible break in and it really was a terrible impact on me personally.

- You mean break into your house?

- I was raped at 31 by someone who just broke into my house, but I was able to recognize this person who I didn't know and go to court and have the incredible support of my family.

But I needed a break.

So I went to New York to be invisible, which was crazy, but I lived with two wonderful gals and went to the New York School of Interior Design.

And that's when I thought, well, maybe I'll be an interior designer.

And then mama took us to Italy.

I didn't have a job.

I didn't know where I was going to be living.

And so it was the right time for me to jump into something else.

- But now you speak fluent Italian.

- I do.

- At what point did you learn Italian?

- Took about 10 years.

- After?

- When I started Vietri.

- 1983, post 1983.

- My sister was doing all the marketing in because she had two young children and I felt like I was going to be negotiating a lot of money that, and I couldn't speak the language and I liked our agent, but what was going on.

So I carried a notebook around and would write down every word and repeat it and repeat it.

But it took 10 years.

And now I speak Italian with this wonderful Southern accent.

- That's a plus.

- And you speak, Susan, you speak of the break- in with confidence.

You obviously have grit and faithful courage and all the principled elements that make you the person you are.

- Thank you.

- But what a painful thing to talk about and what a painful experience in one's life.

And regretfully, even now in society, we still struggle with the same issue of people being assaulted in vicious and terrible ways.

Emotionally, though, you seem to have overcome that.

It must have taken a while to do that.

- It did.

And it took me about 20 years to recognize that I was able to help other young women.

And I was invited to a business school, women's business school group at someone's home.

And there was this gal there that for some reason I just felt like there was something going on.

I hadn't said a word.

They were asking me about struggles in business.

And I told them that I had been raped.

And she looked at me and I thought, "We're kindred spirits."

And afterwards, she came up and said, "Can we talk later?"

And we did.

She had never told her parents, never told anyone.

And I spent a year meeting with her for lunch.

To talk about life and healing.

And so I decided then that even now, 50 years later, 40, I get a little, I feel a little flush talking about it.

I feel like I can help somebody else who's gone through it.

Because you're right, there are many women who still don't talk about it.

- What a noble thing that you have chosen to do, to guide and to mentor and to be a friend and provide a support system.

I think that is the highest order of stewardship.

- Thank you.

- But then, you know, Ernst and Young picked you as the 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year.

- That's right.

- And then this Italian mayor in the city of.. - of Nove - ..of Nove gave you the key to the city.

I can go on, but your life is an amalgamation.

It is a collective universe of achievements in business.

And now for the first time, I know about your personal challenge there.

And you've turned that around.

What is it that you would say to a young person, perhaps a female, who wants to start a business, who doesn't think she can?

What advice would you give a person like that?

- I would first ask her what she loved to do as a child.

What were her favorite things to do?

And I would encourage her to always remember that, whether it was caring for people or loved math and science or loved business and finance, you know, would be the banker or secretary of things, and to make sure it's aligned with what her dreams and hopes are.

I would then tell her to just write down everything she thinks she wants to do and break it into sections and find four or five people with experience, someone who's failed, someone who's been successful.

People who can help her.

People that can help her.

And ask them if she can meet with them every month and report.

And use other people to help you grow.

- Great advice.

You're a remarkable person, a great North Carolinian.

I'm privileged to have had this chance to chat with you today.

Thank you, Susan.

- Nido, Thank you.

Loved it.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

[ Music ] ♪ - Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - Coca- Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose- driven teammates, we are Coca- Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.