China
After the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, Mei Xu and other college graduates were sent to work in the countryside and factories for their "re-education." Frustrated, Xu decamped to the U.S. in 1991 to pursue a master's degree in journalism and communications at the University of Maryland.
Graduating in a tight job market, she took a position with a medical equipment company in New York, while husband and computer scientist David Wang remained in Washington, DC. Although her job was less than satisfying, for Xu, a self-described "fashionista," being on her own in New York was like being let loose in a candy store.
"It was a lot of fun," she recalls. "I was exposed to so much sensory experience."
Her husband had always wanted to start a business, and in New York she saw the possibilities everywhere she looked.
She focused on products for the home, and she and Wang began by importing items from China, ranging from silk flowers to candles. When the couple sold $90,000 worth of candles at a South Carolina trade show, she knew she'd found her niche.
Xu's next step was to add fragrance and unusual colors to her candles. She contacted fragrance magnate Peter Friend, who gave her a crash course in melting wax, adding color and mixing fragrances. She started experimenting in her Annapolis basement, using soup cans as molds and kitchen pots to melt the wax and add colors.
Fortuitously, as it turns out, Xu left out an ingredient designed to produce a satiny finish. Without that chemical, the candles came out with a unique snowflake texture. That texture became Chesapeake Bay Candle's signature finish.
The texture, however, wasn't the only unique thing about Xu's products. Her candles boasted atypical colors, such as lime green and mango, and she formulated unusual fragrances, pairing lime with ginger and basil with mint, for example.
Nordstrom snapped up the candles in 1995, and Bloomingdale's and Bed, Bath and Beyond started selling them the following year. By 1997, Xu realized that she needed a factory.
Undaunted, Xu contacted her sister, a computer engineer in China. Two months later, Chesapeake Bay was producing candles in China. (Today, her sister runs three Chinese factories.) Xu next set her sights on Target and secured all 800 Target stores at her first meeting with the company's buyer, who predicted $2.5 million in sales the first year, 1998.
That forecast turned out to be much too low. Xu was soon advised to triple her capacity, and the first year the candles garnered $8.3 million in sales.
Today, Chesapeake Bay has sales of $60 million in the U.S. and about $40 million globally. And in 2005 Xu added Blissliving Home, a line of home décor products that focuses on the bedroom and takes its inspiration from design ideas all over the world.
Xu's Chinese roots have been an asset to Chesapeake Bay in terms of sourcing items in China. For Blissliving, Xu has taken a more global approach. Materials come from Europe, India and Thailand, as well as China.
Xu gives America a large measure of credit for her phenomenal success.
"This is the country that gives people opportunities," Xu says. "That's why I chose to become an American."