Sara Sugarman could have raised millions. She started the venture capital roadshow, listened to the advice, and walked away—because rapid growth at all costs was never the goal. Since 2012, she’s bootstrapped Lulu and Georgia, the digital-first home brand named for her grandfather Lou and father, George, into a business that grows 20% to 30% a year with a repeat-purchase rate double the industry average—no debt and no outside money.
Sara grew up in her family’s rug showroom and turned it into something new. Here, she breaks down the financial discipline behind a self-funded brand: why she turned down VC funding, how owning every dollar changes the way she spends, and what “slow, intentional growth” looked like when COVID nearly broke the company.
On building proof of concept before investing in technology:
My first site was on Drupal: I was putting together purchase orders by hand, and we crashed on the very first day. Honestly? I don’t regret any of it.
I knew what I was doing with product and importing, and I really knew brand marketing. Technology, I had no idea. But in the beginning, my belief was: Let’s just build it; let’s just get the customer. I didn’t want to pour money into infrastructure before I knew anything. I wanted proof of concept—are people resonating with our products? Do they even like them?
We’d built up a big launch through influencers and social media, with a page collecting email addresses before we were even ready. Then the site went down on day one. It was a wake-up call, but it was validating too. It meant we had something. And it taught me I was on my own and had to figure it out myself.
On the infrastructure mistake she’d fix sooner:
Launching scrappy wasn’t the mistake. Not fixing the tech once I had proof of concept, that’s the one I’d redo.
Once we’d seen traction, I let the technology piece slide for too long. Technology is supportive of the business; it isn’t the business. We’re not a technology company. But I needed to pay more attention, especially operationally, to make sure we had the infrastructure to scale. I didn’t, and we paid for it later.
On walking away from venture capital:
Early on, I had mentors and consultants telling me I needed to raise money, go on the roadshow to the VCs. I started that process and realized pretty quickly it wasn’t for me.
I truly believe brands take time to build. You don’t build a brand overnight. My goals weren’t aligned with investors who want rapid growth at all costs. I’ve always believed in slow, intentional growth—and by the way, that’s still double, even triple digits year over year, just not the way some brands are forced to grow when they take the money.
People ask if I’ve thought about it recently. That’s exactly why I haven’t done it. I don’t know what I’d do with that money that would actually be in the best interest of the business.
On why owning every dollar changes how she spends:
Because every dollar is mine, I’m so intentional about how we spend it—in a way I don’t think I would be if someone handed me $20 million or $30 million. You’re just not as careful with money that isn’t yours.
We have no debt, and we’ve always been cash flow positive. I’m very in tune with those metrics, because it means we only have ourselves to answer to. I have complete control, and that’s amazing.
That mindset goes back to the start. The goal was never to build some big company and sell it. It was to keep the family business alive and thriving, because I knew this was how I’d support my family. And the one thing I learned from my family’s business was how to run a profitable one.
On committing to inventory two years out:
Half of our revenue comes from products we design and import ourselves, and that’s the half we inventory. The rest is split between wholesale partners on a dropship model and made-to-order pieces, like upholstery where the customer picks the fabric and the legs. But the inventoried products we commit to way ahead of time; our development cycle is two years.
We have a whole planning department forecasting every SKU from a bottoms-up perspective, with tools to help them. But it took a while to get there. You need history. Is a swivel chair going to outperform a non-swivel chair? You have to build that history to compare like products, and in the beginning I had no idea what the demand was.
For a lot of our history we’ve been playing catch-up, and the thing is, if you never buy enough, you never know what your ceiling is. We only found ours by taking the risk to buy enough. And some of it is pure gut. We’ll get 20 or 30 of us in a room in product development and buying, and someone says, “I have to have it. When is it coming in stock?” You learn what’s going to hit. Sometimes you’re wrong, but for the most part, we’re right.
On the COVID surge that collapsed the infrastructure:
In 2020, I remember sending everyone home and saying, “See you in two weeks.” My CFO called me and said, “Start making a list of who you’re going to lay off.” I said, “I don’t know, maybe not yet.”
Within weeks, it just hit us. It hit us like a hurricane. The amount of growth and demand was amazing, but it collapsed our entire infrastructure. We did about 200% year over year, and when you grow like that without being prepared for it, everything collapses: customer service, warehousing, returns. We didn’t even have an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system at the time.
That’s exactly why intentional, thoughtful growth matters so much to me. It was an incredibly stressful time. The growth was extraordinary, and I think it pushed us forward many years.
On why there’s no single inflection point:
People always ask, “What were the inflection points? What’s the one thing I can do to transform the business?” And it’s usually not one thing. It’s 100 things, and you’ve got to do all 100 step by step.
Outside of COVID, there isn’t a single year I can point to as the big breakthrough. It’s the slow, disciplined growth—that’s what you actually want. People don’t want to hear that. They want the one big move. But unfortunately, it’s a marathon.
On setting the revenue goal first, then backing out the plan:
My team will ask me, “How did you come up with the goal for next year?” Because we start with the revenue number, and everything else gets backed out of there. And I tell them, “I just came up with it.” They don’t love that answer.
But that’s how it works: figure out the goal, then figure out the plan to get there. Some years the plan is different. This year we’re opening a showroom and launching a hospitality division. Next year, a kids division. Beyond that, scaling our marketing channels and teams like design services and trade.
There’s always that initial shock when I say we’re going to grow double digits year over year—“Well, how do we do that?” We create a plan. We do it every year. We’re very analytical and numbers-focused, and by the time it’s all said and done, everybody feels confident about it.
Hear Sara’s full conversation on Shopify Masters for more on the free design service behind her 52% repeat rate, why she’s bringing back the catalog, and the physical store she resisted for a decade.
