How Northwestern Shaped the Lives and Careers of the 2020–21 Northwestern Alumni Medalists, with Co-Founder and Former Chairman and CEO of Crate & Barrel, Gordon Segal ’60 (’93 P)

CAT RECKELHOFF: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections. On today's special episode we will be highlighting the recipients of the Northwestern Alumni Association's highest honor. The Northwestern Alumni Medal celebrates alumni who have had a transformative impact on their field, who have performed exemplary volunteer service to society, or who have demonstrated an outstanding record of service and support to the University

This year's honor was bestowed to four industry leaders in the fields of public health, biotechnology, global business and retail: Judy Belk, Andrew C. Chan, Christopher B. Combe, and Gordon Segal.

This episode features excerpts from interviews conducted with the alumni medalists in January of 2020.

Gordon Segal is co-founder of Crate & Barrel and a design visionary and retail industry pioneer, who also helped transform the appearance of the University's Evanston and Chicago campuses in his role on the Board of Trustees.

GORDON SEGAL: I sort of had an unusual pattern. I spent my first year at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I did well in school there, but I really didn't enjoy it. So, I transferred to Northwestern for my sophomore year. And luckily, I had taken a lot of business credits at the Wharton School, so even though I transferred to what was then called The School of Commerce, I was very fortunate in the sense in that all I had to do was take one business course a quarter, which allowed me to take three liberal arts courses every quarter. If someone asked, "What did you learn in university?" I learned how important liberal arts were to my future.

There were some great professors. My wife and I both had a professor, Bill McGovern, who was teaching Political Science, who was absolutely a crazy guy who was fantastic. I must have taken three courses plus the senior seminar in his home. He taught us how to properly brew British tea. The second thing is we had a guy named Richard Leopold, teaching American Diplomatic History, who was absolutely a mentor to me and to many others. He made you feel you're the only person in the world, and he was very good at correcting papers and bringing out the best of what you said, and noticing the things you should refine and improve upon. There was Richard Ellman teaching James Joyce. One of the rare privileges in my life was being able to study Joyce for a year with Richard Ellman. It's one of the places Carole and I both were in that class, and we were in I think in the McGovern class. So, we got to know each other because we were in several classes together in mostly our junior year that those took place. Then there was a fantastic guy, [inaudible]. He was a German immigrant, had left Nazi Germany before the war. He escaped, came to America, learned English and started teaching European History, especially German Philosophy and Thought, which was the most important part of his course.

After I was through with him, I was very fascinated with Europe and understanding the thinking which had brought Europe along to the place it was at the time, which was in the early 60s, or late 50s/early 60s. So, I just found these courses created an intellectual curiosity that I had, that wanted me to travel to other places and do other things, and learn other cultures, and live other experiences than just living in north suburban Chicago. So I think all of these things had a great impact on my success. It created the desire when I graduated school, I saw from another student at Northwestern, took a three month summer trip through Europe and we rented a deux chevaux and drove all the way around Europe living on $5.00 a day, and saving up money to once in a while go to a nice dinner.

But all that whole exposure to Europe, I was planning to go into the restaurant business, so I was looking at equipment supply stores and food stores, and going to restaurants. I was really immersed in the food and housewares that would go into the restaurant business. As it turned out, I went into the home furnishings business. But all of that sort of broadened my desire to do something very different, as I realized years later. Most of it came out of the way it evolved out of the way curiosity created by these professors at Northwestern.

We had a wonderful Advertising professor at The School of Commerce. He would talk to us about not only what you'd be creating, obviously advertising's a very creative world, but how do you create your own personal lifestyles. And I remember this guy used to have a wonderful little Jaguar convertible, and dressed as if he had just come out of Paul Stewart. He just was the epitome about every young college guy wanted to be when he grew up. I think in a subtle way that had an influence. He talked a lot about how to project your product in whatever you're selling him. It helped me think through a lot of things we did in marketing years later. It was subtle. It was just sort of you kept remembering in the back of your mind the words he had.

I think I had many good professors, but ironically I found the Business School pretty boring, and I found the Liberal Arts School just absolutely wonderful and enchanting. And the creativity that came out of the thinking they imbued in us as students was terrific.

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Ironically, I met my wife, as I mentioned, in several classes: McGovern's class and Richard Ellman's class. And we were just friends. I think we went on, I don't know, 15-20 coffee dates just at the Student Union after class would end. We never started dating for four or five months after we met. Then, I don't know, she went home over Christmas vacation. She lived down in Calumet City. And I decided, "How about if I come down there?" Thinking it was an easy 40 minute drive. Of course, I got lost going down there, and it took me two and a half hours. But that was our first date-date. A 7:30 date, and I arrived at 10:00 at night or something. It was crazy. I said, "I'll tell you, when you come back to campus, I'll take you out to dinner." I made her dinner at my apartment, and she was very impressed with my cooking. Then we started dating. It started from there.

But I was very lucky to have a wife that I could create Crate & Barrel with, because it happened on our honeymoon that we discovered in the Virgin Islands, a little Danish design store. My wife was quick to observe things, noticed that the prices were a third or fourth of what you'd buy Danish design in Chicago. We started to decide to buy a few things for our first apartment. I remember Carole picking up some stainless steel and saying, "How can you have 18-8 Danish stainless for $395.00 a placement, and Dansk is $24.95? Another thing we picked up, and the merchant came over and he said, "Well, I go to Denmark and I buy products direct from small factories." "Oh, that's interesting." Then we went on to other islands, and eventually had to go to Miami and New York on business, and her sister in New York told us a couple of other places to go buy things for our first apartment, which we did. And we never forgot those stores were much better than anything we'd find in Chicago. So when we came back, I went into the real estate business. Carole was already a school teacher teaching school, but by February of '62, I had decided, I said one night, "There's got to be other young couples like ourselves that have good taste and no money. Why don't we open a store?" My wife looked at me like I was crazy. I said, "No, no. We should really think about it," and that's how it got started. And then we started exploring how to do that. About nine months later, in December of '62, we opened the first store on Well Street in Old Town.

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I think what interested me is to explore different cultures, and the way people live, the way people dine, the way they furnish their homes. I always felt that I was so fortunate being in this business, because I could get to meet people, all these European countries. Some were just absolutely the most charming people you ever met. Carole and I would just enjoy, or even later on my other key buyers, we would travel and have dinner with them at their homes, visit their factories, understand what they were doing, buying in for the design or their idea of why they designed a glass, or a tray, or a bowl, or a plate that way. We were really dealing, for the most part, with designers and artisans.

And how much more fun can you have than doing that? We're not representing them. We're our consumers' buying agent. We're buying for our customers. We've got to be thinking about what if this selection of things that Europeans do or like, that we can bring to America that Americans would do and like? I looked back and I said, "It was such an exciting creative business." I mean, we'd travel to Europe once or twice a year. You'd attend the fairs, you'd visit the factories, you'd hear about a resource, you'd try and find them, you'd spend two or three days trying to convince them to sell you something he never sold to Americans before. So, didn't understand how to export or how to do that, but we were looking not for the big name factories. We were looking for the small creative designers and artisans, and ateliers where we can find product and put it in our first store or second store, or third store, which people didn't see elsewhere. And we figured if they walk in and we display it nicely, and can explain it intelligently, that we would sell the product because it was beautiful.

And our biggest problem was editing what we could afford, not being able to buy all the things we'd want to. We were always focused on, "Can we, you know, buy product for other young couples like ourselves, if we have more taste than money?" And so it had to be tasteful. It had to be of value. We had to, in a sense, deliver something unique to the customer. That's really what we built the company on, and I was lucky enough I had the ability to persuade other young people to join this sort of mission, and I always felt it was more of a mission, and convince them this could be not only a nice way to make a living, but to help people here in this country obtain a more sophisticated dining table, a more useful and helpful kitchen to be able to eat and dine, and do things in a more sophisticated way. We used to talk about how it was important that if they could, to have candle holders for candles every night for dinner. Even with young kids, we always had candlelight, because it was sort of setting a little more formal sit down, take your time, enjoy life, enjoy dining, things that we learned from our European friends. This wasn't intuitive.

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I think that it made me a better business person. I certainly think some of the Business School rubbed off. I certainly understood marketing from Northwestern. I certainly understood statistics and accounting from Northwestern. So, all that was the basics. But you really learn by doing versus being instructed. You sort of understood what you had to do from that, but it was more I'd say the learning experience. I think what I got out of Northwestern that was unique, was the ability to work well with people, and be able to choose the right kind of people. And you know, just denoting the right kind of character and personality you wanted your senior to be. People think we were successful because of the stores we built, or the displays in the stores, or just the merchandise.

We had an incredible group of people who were our senior management, and our mid-management, people who I was able to inspire to really be great leaders of our stores and our different businesses. I got to attribute that certainly to a culture I certainly got at Northwestern. But it gave me, like I said we had such inspiring professors. They had such inspiring classes, and I always remembered how he projected and talked, and used his hands like I do, and whatever to convince about, to teach people stuff. In the back of my mind, I always thought of myself as teaching my leadership teams about what our culture should be, and what we had to be about more than just the business, we had to have culture that young people enjoy working in.

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Hah, it's changed a lot in the last decade, but when we started this thinking, when my wife and I talked about what we'd like to do at the university, it was very evident to us that in Europe, Japan the new products that were coming out were very thoughtfully designed and well made. And they had a sense of taste and style that often we didn't build into our products. It was the reason our company focused on European design, then some Japanese design. We can find good design happening all over the world, and yet when you'd go to the marketplaces here in the United States, you would see a lot of product that was maybe practical and useful, but wasn't very tasteful. It wasn't very well done. I mean, our automobiles now are a lot better the way they're finished on the inside, and the outside, and the quality. But they weren't done to bring tasteful good design and practical design compared to the Germans who did a superb job, and then the Japanese who did a superb job, and look what happened to their car business. They created much better, you know, designs that we did, and much better interiors than we did. Why is this happening? Europeans and the Japanese have always had a great sense of art in their way of thinking. And maybe it's their museums, maybe it's their culture, maybe it's their literature. Make design a more important element.

Luckily, Steve Jobs was thinking the same thing when he was doing Apple, and making design, color and style a very important element in a key appliance that we all use. So what our thinking was it coincided with beginning of Apple, and the thought process was, “how do we teach students in engineering, and business, whatever, that design is a very important element in your thinking?" Its usefulness, it's practicality, the way it looks, the way it feels in your hand, the way it looks on the table. Whatever, you know, let's make beautiful things. It doesn't usually cost much more, but let's focus on doing it. And so that's why we created The Design Institute at McCormick, and hopefully integrating more of that into Kellogg, and getting a combination of that working together.

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We made a commitment a number of years ago. We decided that we were going to instead of giving a lot money for one project, we were going to break it down giving annual gifts to a diverse group of the colleges at the university. Things that we were committed to, one small gift every year is to the Leopold Lecture Series, named after Richard Leopold, the Political Science professor. But there's many things that we're interested in, and interested certainly in the library and seeing that evolve. And we just think that the different areas at the McCormick School is very much about advancing new design classes, and new ways of thinking in the Segal Design Institute. And then Kellogg obviously is developing that building and becoming so intimate with the Dean at the time, with the students, with the professors.

I obviously wanted then to go on and support it. So it wasn't like all of a sudden it was one great intention. It was just, what are the things that we love about the university. What do we want to support? What's important to us? What gives us gratification by being involved? We couldn't choose one thing. Carole and I had very differing opinions. So between us, we created a series of things we enjoy supporting. It'll vary from year to year, and we commit usually to a program with three or four years and then move on to another program, things that we think could be useful that other people might not support. I would think that we'd make the university a more creative place, a place where more unique things were being done, like you want any business to be. You want to create an environment where the best students come, and find just like my wife and I did, inspiration at a university when you're living between what 18 and 21? You're really developing your perspectives on life. I would want the university to have a diverse group of impacts that the students really wouldn't realize they're almost absorbing from the different elements of the university.

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I think Northwestern impacted my life by opening up a world to me that I didn't experience before in a very friendly atmosphere. And I'd visited other colleges and universities with my kids and now grandkids, and I think Northwestern is... Maybe it's a Midwestern thing I really like, and the attitude and the warmth of the Midwest of people who live here and went to school here, or whatever, and I think the people who taught there. It was a very friendly university environment for me. And tt let me grow, and it let me prosper. It made me intellectually prosper, and it stimulated me to keep thinking, and reading, and doing. And whatever, I mentioned even after I graduated, Richard Leopold lived in Evanston. I'd go visit him once every few months and talk about books that I was reading, or books he thought I should read, or things like that.

I mean we really became—this wasn't just me. I'd say two dozen of us that we've met at the Leopold lectures ever since, was all because he encouraged you to keep opening up your mind to think about things, and to relish them. I think that's how the school impressed me, and created this idea of constantly regenerating new thinking.

I just think Northwestern and it's diversity of opportunities for students to learn so many different areas, to enjoy their fellow students was an enormous pleasure. We still have probably half a dozen acquaintances and friends we went to school with that we still see, talk to, converse, laugh together. It was a very unique experience because it's a relatively small Big 10 university. And I think the environment in which we were able to grow and prosper... Just, you know, enjoy it. Enrich your lives. You're never going to again have a chance, until you're retired, something to read, the variety of books and hear the variety of lectures, or see the many things that happen on the campus from the theater to the arts that are presented at the school to the great teachers of, you know, science and math, and whatever. So I would say over-challenge into areas you never would expect, that'll have an impact on your life.

Step back and make sure that you're not just taking courses in a narrow specialty, to make sure even though you think you want to be in medicine or science, or you want to be in business, or you want to be in the arts, make sure you take the advantage of a university's wide, broad array of ideas and courses.

I mean we struggled, I remember, with Richard Ellman studying James Joyce. We spent probably 90% of the class year studying Ulysses page by page almost. What was the meaning of that in terms of the detailing of a day in the life of this person in Dublin? What was the intricacies. What was that meant to be? What was that meant to be? What was James Joyce trying to say? What was he trying to project? How do you understand something so complex? And it really strained your imagination. It frustrated you. It made you angry. It was hard to read. It was difficult. But you struggled through it because you had a great professor and you didn't want to disappoint him, and you wanted to try and understand something very complex. So if you're going to into science or medicine, or the arts, or business, bet those kinds of experiences... Luckily, my wife and I were taking the course at the same time, so my girlfriend at the time, were taking the same course at the same time so we could discuss, and argue or interpret, where she'd explain to me—and she usually does—complex issues that I couldn't start to understand. So I think that's what a liberal arts school like Northwestern can bring you, and challenge you. And it wasn't easy. And it wasn't like we just breezed through.

But mostly, it's students. The students are very different today, a much more diverse population. But they're very smart. When I visit classes or talk with students on campus, I think they're just very passionate and excited, and you know love being there. It feels like a family, not like a cold university. I visit other college campuses. There's a few that are close, but I think Northwestern is very special in that area.

CAT RECKELHOFF: Thanks for tuning into this special episode of Intersections and congratulations to our four Alumni Medalists for this incredible and prestigious honor. If you missed the President's Alumni Panel, we've included a link to the recording in the show notes. Hear President Morton Schapiro lead a discussion with the Alumni Medalists about how the University shaped their lives and careers. To our alumni listeners, if you know an alum whose life, work, and service truly exemplify the ideals of Northwestern University and deserve recognition for their accomplishments , please go to alumni.northwestern.edu/medal to access the form to nominate them; we will also include a direct link to the nomination form in the show notes.