Turning Creative Ideas Into Successful Businesses: 13 Inspiring Stories From 2014

The common thread of almost every Fast Company story is a creative person who had a compelling idea and managed to spin it into a successful company or organization that continues to innovate.

In case you missed them the first time around, here are some stories that inspired or fascinated us during 2014. You’ll find teenage lingerie entrepreneurs, feminist coders, crossword-puzzle game changers, the engineer shaping the future of wearables, and more.

1. Building The Next Pixar

Pixar alums (many of whom joke that they’re a small club, because no one wants to leave) have gone on to lead in a range of fields, from entertainment to consumer technology to healthcare. Fast Company spoke with more than a dozen executives, entrepreneurs, and storytellers from all eras of Pixar’s three-decade history, all of whom have moved on but attest that Pixar’s influence over their ongoing work is invaluable and profound.

Whether they’re selling healthy snacks or building potentially lifesaving technology for type 1 diabetics, these alums are applying Pixar’s values in unexpected but highly successful ways.

2. “I” Is For Innovation: Sesame Street’s Secrets To Staying Relevant

If you are under the age of 50, there’s a good chance you are fiercely attached to Sesame Street, the show that shepherded so many of us through our toddler years.

You may remember sitting in rapt attention, wondering if anybody would believe that Mr. Snuffleupagus was real, or giggling hysterically about Oscar the Grouch’s musical ode to trash. For generations of viewers, Sesame Street is a portal to a simpler, more innocent time in their lives. This creates something of a quandary for the show’s producers: how do you keep evolving a show so it doesn’t get stale without offending its devoted fans?

Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of Sesame Workshop, talked with Fast Company about how you keep a 45-year-old brand fresh—yet familiar at the same time.

3. This Company’s Brilliant Marketing Strategy Makes Yours Look Sad and Boring

Over the last decade, Manhattan Mini Storage’s ads have become increasingly provocative. The company has perfected its distinct, snarky voice with dozens of billboard ads that address hot button issues on New Yorkers’ minds including gay culture, right wing politics, abortion rights, and perhaps most shockingly, why the Mets even bother calling themselves a professional team.

People often ask which advertising agency hatches MMS’s hugely successful campaigns, but the truth is that the branding is an in-house job. For the last two decades, Archie Gottesman, chief branding officer of Manhattan Mini Storage, has been carefully crafting the ads for MMS, the company that her father and uncle founded in 1978. She spoke with Fast Company about their approach to advertising—and why groupthink makes everything suck.

4. Changing The Bra Industry For Young Girls

High-school student Megan Grassell couldn’t find cute, age-appropriate bras for her younger sister, so she made her own. Now her company, Yellowberry, is being held up as a model of innovation, design, and feminists united against the sexualization of girls.

5. The End Of Shampoo

With Purely Perfect, Michael Gordon hopes to change the American shower regimen and kill shampoo along the way. “The problem with shampoo is you have to make lots of product to try and correct what the shampoo did,” says Gordon. The chemicals in shampoo strip hair of its natural oils, which necessitates conditioner.

Gordon’s formula, on the other hand, relies on fatty alcohols, which are mild cleansers, so there’s no need to counteract with additional product. That means less time in the shower, less wasted water, and less stuff to buy.

6. The New York Times Innovates The Crossword

Since starting at the Times straight out of Swarthmore college last year, Anna Shechtman has brought some youthful edge to the 72-year-old quadrant of the paper.

Not only did Shechtman get crossword editor Will Shortz to include clues like “State of being awesome, in modern slang” (answer: epicness) in her own puzzle, she has influenced dozens of other grids, helping to justify more modern words and clues.

7. This Lingerie Company A/B Tests The World’s Hottest Women To See Who Makes You Click “Buy”

Sex doesn’t sell, so forget the boudoir shot. Blondes don’t work. Props distract. Couches are fine. Playing with hair is ideal.

Those are some of the insights the lingerie company Adore Me has learned from testing the photos of models wearing its sexy products online.

For each bra, Adore Me shoots multiple versions of images to run on its website. The distinctions between the pictures might include different models wearing the same set in the exact same position, or the same model in the same set in a different position, for example. Then, like any good tech company, it tests the options to find out which one sells better.

8. The Coder Grrrls of Double Union, San Francisco’s Feminist Hacker Space

Unlike Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of feminism, which puts the responsibility on women to lean in, the women of Double Union—San Francisco’s feminist hacker space—take a structural approach. It’s the system that needs fixing, not women.

The stated goal of Double Union is to create a safe space for women, and it does that in many ways. DU tries very hard to make its members feel welcome, while actively keeping “creeps” out. Most of the time the door stays shut and locked. People take the anti-harassment policy seriously. Can a handful of members of a feminist hacker space make significant strides in how women in tech are treated outside their protective doors?

9. Inside Rent the Runway’s Secret Dry Cleaning Empire

Most people think of Rent the Runway—which rents designer dresses at a fraction of the retail price for women to wear to events—as an innovative fashion retailer powered by impressive technology. And it is.

But, when the company moves to its new 160,000 square foot warehouse, it will also officially become the nation’s single largest dry cleaner, as measured by pounds per hour.

We spoke to the unsung heroes—who, by the way, are harder to hire than engineeers—who make sure each RTR dress that shows up on your doorstep looks just as glamorous as it did the first time someone took it off a hanger.

10. The Surprisingly Profitable Rise Of Podcast Networks

In the last six months, three podcast networks have popped up, from established public radio players: Infinite Guest from American Public Media, SoundWorks from PRI, and Radiotopia from PRX. Meanwhile WNYC has added more podcasts to its roster of shows, which includes the beloved, and very popular, Radiolab. This American Life, the radio show, is now spawning a podcast called Serial. Online print media has also gotten the message: Slate has doubled its podcast output in the last two years.

With more people listening than ever, and real money to be made in a media landscape with disappearing ad dollars, of course radio veterans are flocking to podcasts. “There have been a number of successful podcasts that have generated fans and made money—everyone wants to see if they can take a crack,” says Steve Nelson, the program director for Infinite Guest, American Public Media’s brand new podcast network.

11. The Hidden Messages In “Game of Thrones” Costumes

Game of Thrones features dragons, blood magic, white walkers, dire wolves, and all sorts of made-up creatures, but its world is a “fantasy reality,” to use the words of the show’s costume designer Michele Clapton. In spite of all the otherworldly elements, viewers still have to believe that the Seven Kingdoms could exist somewhere in the universe.

Much of the credit for the plausibility of the HBO show’s made-up world goes to Clapton, who has overseen costume design throughout the show’s first three seasons. For her, the key is looking at costume design as a mode of storytelling. “It’s so easy to draw a pretty dress in a fun way,” Clapton told Fast Company. “But this is so much more about finding the right look and telling so much more about that character, and that’s what I really, really enjoy: the storytelling….Each thing will tell a story. It might look like a costume is wrong, but actually it’s supposed to look like that. It’s telling you something about the character at the time.”

12. The Softer, More Wearable, Future of Wearables

Amanda Parkes, the founder of Skinteractive Studios, is bridging the worlds of tech and fashion to make sure next-gen wearables look less like watches, and more like scarves.

Wearables of the future will cover the entire body and do a host of things we can’t yet imagine. She spoke with Fast Company about the real future of wearables, and what we’ll see in new categories of yet-to-be-created products.

13. Gentrification, Inc.

New York real-estate developer Jamestown has perfected the art of creating the Next Hot Neighborhood. This is its formula—how gentrification really happens—and where you fit in.

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The New Guard of Fashion Is Hanging Out in a Mattress Shop

For young designers, a brick-and-mortar retail space can be both a dream-come-true and a proverbial albatross. Operating a store costs money. Lots of it. A second floor, mid-Market showroom above a mattress store, however, is both quirky and economical. According to Artful Gentleman co-founder Jake Wall, “It’s a very sweet story which is very San Francisco in its own way,” and an example of the resources that small business owners can find in the city.

Robin McRoskey —the current president and CEO of McRoskey Mattress Co.— met Jake during a panel discussion for Small Business Week, and later offered to let him use the second floor of the building for his showroom. “This is the old sewing room,” Jake explains. “The McRoskeys consider themselves bespoke mattress makers. We make custom clothing. It’s the same space with different products.”

After spending a few minutes with Jake, it’s obvious that Artful Gentleman’s success is based in large part on his drive and larger-than-life personality. Jake declined a portrait when Racked photographed the showroom, instead submitting an existing photo that shows him holding a bottle of bourbon. His business cards advise, “Have some f*cking self respect.” And he landed in the suiting business, somewhat by accident, after leaving a job in Internet marketing.

Jake was traveling on what he calls an Eat, Pray, Love trip, though he concedes there was “not that much eating…and not that much praying. And probably not that much love either.” While in Hong Kong, he wanted to have a suit made, and met tailors who had a “true Hong Kong, British-style tailoring business.” Jake, a lifelong maker, convinced them to teach him the trade. When he returned stateside, he had a new skill set, and a new path.

That path led him to the Fashion Incubator of San Francisco, a local program that sets promising local designers up with studio space, a salesroom, and publicity. Jake was one of the 2013 designers in residence, and he met Mansoor Scott designers Bethany Scott Meuleners and Sabah Mansoor Husain, (2012 participants) and Evgenia Lingerie designer Stephanie Bodnar (2014 DIR), through the program. Soon, Mansoor Scott and Evgenia joined the Artful Gentleman’s masterfully-crafted suits on Market.

Like Artful Gentleman, Mansoor Scott evolved from a global journey. The idea was born when Sabah and Bethany were still in graduate school at Academy of Art, where they double majored in knitwear and fashion design. After showing with Academy at New York Fashion Week in 2010, Bethany and Sabah agreed that they both wanted to start a line in San Francisco. Bethany left the city for a year to study textile design in Nepal on Fulbright Scholarship, and the two formed their company after she returned in December 2011. Three months later, they started their term in the Fashion Incubator.

Bethany and Sabah took the traditional route into fashion and Jake followed fate into design: Stephanie’s road falls somewhere in between the two extremes. While in college at Carnegie Mellon, Stephanie pursued writing for television, interning at news stations and the soap opera “Guiding Light.” But her love for costume and apparel design —she’s been drawing dresses since she could hold a pencil— kept nagging at her. At Guiding Light, she recalls “I ended up hanging out in the costume room more than anybody else.” With one credit left, she took a costume design class, and she was hooked.

After moving to the Bay Area, Stephanie worked at a lace shop in Berkeley, where she learned about different techniques of lingerie design. Stephanie was accepted into the Incubator with her first lingerie line, Honey Cooler Handmade, and shifted her focus to the more pared-down, historically-influenced Evgenia Lingerie, after joining the program. Though Dark Garden, Heroine, and Dollhouse Bettie currently carry her line, Bodnar jumped at the opportunity to join the Artful Gentleman space.

“Once people know that I’m here, which is starting to happen, I think [business] will change. Having a presence where I can actually talk to people about the product in person is so different than selling retail to a store,” Stephanie explains. “They may not know the whole story behind your product. But being here, I can actually fit people, so that will probably change the experience.”

Jake’s sharp tailoring. Bethany and Sabah’s laser cut leather. Stephanie’s delicate laces. They’re all reminders —under one roof— that San Francisco has a growing fashion scene beyond the international labels like Gap and Levi’s that our city is typically associated with. But the level of quality that these designers offer doesn’t come cheap. Artful Gentleman’s price tags are the most jarring: A custom suit can easily cost over $2000. Then again, it’s a custom suit. Mansoor Scott’s price points are on par with contemporary labels like Rebecca Minkoff. Evgenia Lingerie costs three times as much as a piece from Victoria’s Secret, but it’s made with silk and high-end lace instead of polyester. For the shopper who wants quality (and not a nationally-known status label), a store like Artful Gentleman is a must-stop shop.

Luckily, such shoppers exist in San Francisco. Jake describes his clients as people who want to have a relationship with their clothes. “If you don’t really care what you wear, if you think ‘I just need to have clothes on,’ we’re probably not for you because there’s no relationship.”

Bethany agrees. “I think in general our focus is women in their 30s and 40s. They want to have clothes they’re invested in; clothes they’re not just going to wear for the season. We do bring in trend aspects, but it’s more dressing for those pieces you’re going to hold onto forever. We’re not super expensive, but we’re a little more on the high-end. You want it to be a piece that people can see the long-lasting value in, but they can also have that emotional attachment.”

And lest you think that hoodie-loving San Francisco is the wrong place for finer apparel, Jake will remind you that our city has a greater appreciation for quality than most. “We are the home of the of the craft cocktail. We are the home of the $6 piece of bread. We are the home of boutique coffee. If there is a finer thing in life that can be made out of, well, pretty much nothing at all, it is probably curated first and foremost here in SF. When you think of that person who buys that $6 piece of craft toast, it’s because they want to have a relationship with their bread. There are a lot of people who do, and that’s our customer.”

· Artful Gentleman [Official Site]
· Mansoor Scott [Official Site]
· Evgenia Lingerie [Official Site]
· Slow Fashion Is the Future of Local Apparel Manufacturing [Racked]

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