← Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff
Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff
How Our Place by Shiza Shahid is Changing the Way We Cook, Connect, and Care
00:37:52
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- [00:02]
Shiza Shahid
Refreshing Wild cherry cola meets smooth cream.
- [00:08]
Rebecca Minkoff
The treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and cream Treat yourself.
- [00:15]
Starbucks Narrator
Protein is now at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or Matcha. Try it today at Starbucks.
- [00:31]
Depop Narrator
You said you were over him, but his hoodie's still in your rotation.
- [00:35]
Shiza Shahid
It's time.
- [00:36]
Depop Narrator
Grab your phone, snap a few pics and sell it on Depop. Listed in minutes with no selling fees. And just like that, a guy 500 miles away just paid full price for your closure. And right on cue.
- [00:48]
Shiza Shahid
Hey, still got my hoodie?
- [00:49]
Depop Narrator
Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on Depop. Where taste recognizes taste list. Now with no selling fees, payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.
- [01:01]
Shiza Shahid
So quitting your job doesn't just mean you lose your salary and your stability and your health insurance. It actually means you lose your right to be in the country you're in. I was at this precipice of making this decision to leave my job at McKinsey at 22 and I remember being completely terrified.
- [01:17]
Rebecca Minkoff
Today's guest I'm so excited to welcome is Shiza Shahid, the co founder and co CEO of our place. If you have ever looked at cookware, let me tell you it's the best.
- [01:28]
Shiza Shahid
Through all of my work I always had this longing for connection, for community. As an immigrant, you leave everything behind. When you move 7,000 miles across the world and you have to rebuild your community from scratch, what fear have you
- [01:43]
Rebecca Minkoff
had to sit with repeatedly as you've scaled and how do you sort of deal with that fear of failure?
- [01:49]
Shiza Shahid
When you're building a business or when you're doing anything hard, it's really like holding up a mirror to yourself and your strengths and your weaknesses are magnified and you see them echo across the org. And so it is this incredible self growth journey where you have to take on the work that you may have been avoiding. And it only gets harder. I don't think it ever gets easier because the challenges get bigger, the stakes get higher, the complexity gets more and more complicated.
- [02:27]
Rebecca Minkoff
I'm Rebecca Minkoff and this is Superwomen. Each week, inspiring women are interviewed to uncover the unexpected journeys, the challenges and the unwavering spirit that makes them powerful. Get ready to be motivated by stories of resilience and discover the keys to unlocking your own potential. Today's guest I'm so excited to welcome is Shiza Shahid, the co founder and co CEO of our place. If you have ever looked at cookware, let me tell you, it's the best. I own all the pots, all the pans, so many dishes. My whole house is our place. And I'm just so excited to talk to you about everything we're going to dive into today.
- [03:10]
Shiza Shahid
I'm so happy to see you again. I have such fond memories of our friendship in New York when we lived in New York, and have admired you as a female founder and entrepreneur and fashion icon for a very long time. And I'm excited that we're back having this conversation.
- [03:30]
Rebecca Minkoff
Well, what's wild is I was looking back, I was thinking about when I first met you. You invited me to one of your dinners and I was so excited and you had such incredible people around the table. And then I found out about the work you did with Malala and the Malala Fund, and I was in awe of you. And then, you know, we sort of COVID happened. We went our separate ways and then I see these amazing, Instagram worthy, like pot dishes and I was like, what? I need this. So I, I bought the brand before I knew you were behind it. And when I found out it was you, I was like, now that is a career pivot I did not see coming. Let's dive into what you did before. And then what made you dive into this incredible. You know what I see? Community forward, community led. If I can call it a home brand. I don't know what you like to refer to as me. It's home because I live in my kitchen.
- [04:21]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah. And I love that you have that memory of that dinner because for me, I'm an immigrant, my partner's an immigrant. We like to say we literally found our place in America by cooking food and having people come to our dinner table. And I imagine in New York City, I'd probably borrowed a friend's dinner table because I did not have a large enough one. But now we have a table that fits 16 people and it's just the two of us at home for now. We are having a baby in five weeks. I had grown up really as someone who was very passionate about women's rights, girls education, social justice. I grew up in Pakistan and was fortunate to get a scholarship to study at Stanford University when I was 18. That's when I moved to America. I co founded and ran a nonprofit called the Malala Fund with my friend Malala Yousafzai, who went on to become the youngest every Nobel Peace Prize winner. But through all of my work, I always had this longing for connection, for community. As an immigrant, you leave everything behind when you move 7,000 miles across the world and you have to rebuild your community from scratch. And for me, that was very much around food, that was around cooking. Anthony Bourdain once famously said, food may not be the answer to world peace, but it's certainly a start. And as I was thinking about building this brand, we were existing at a time of growing disconnection, growing fear, growing loneliness in this country and globally. And so I wanted to create something that was rooted in my own experience of building community around food. But from a product perspective, what that meant was creating products that actually inspired me to cook more and host more multifunctional products, clean products and products that were designed forward because, you know, when you have a beautiful Rebecca Minkoff outfit, you know, you're more likely to want to go into the world. Similarly, when you have a beautiful pan or air fryer that's sitting out, not hiding in the back of your cabinet, you're more likely to cook, you're more likely to host, you're more likely to connect.
- [06:32]
Rebecca Minkoff
So was that something that you think was passed down to you through your mom or dad or family, that cooking was kind of the heart of community and, and in your home?
- [06:41]
Shiza Shahid
My mother never wanted me to cook. She came from a very patriarchal time and place, and she had a lot of her dreams restricted and denied because of the expectation that she would first have to be in the home and first have to be in the kitchen. And when I was growing up, she would always shoo me out of the kitchen every time she was cooking. And I always thought it was because she was worried there was hot oil and sharp knives and we would get hurt. And it was only later in life that I realized it was her way of setting me free and saying, you know, go out there, focus on your education, achieve the dreams that you have. She didn't anticipate that I would move 7,000 miles across the world and be unable to feed myself. And so for the first 10 years, it was, you know, dining halls and takeout and this fast paced life. But at a certain point, I just felt this deep sense of, of loneliness and disconnection and disempowerment. Not being able to nourish myself in my own kitchen. It felt disempowering. And so I began learning how to cook, which gave me outside eyes into an industry that I hadn't really experienced. Walking into a kitchenware store in America as an adult for the first time and seeing Rows and rows of pots and pans that all look the same, that all use Teflon and forever chemicals, and avocado slicers and cherry pitters and strawberry corers and all these things that the industry makes that you don't need. And I was able to look at that with fresh eyes and say, well, this doesn't feel like something I want to bring into my own home. Living in a studio apartment in New York City, you don't have room for 16 pieces of cookware. And that really prompted this idea of not just a brand rooted in culture and connection and community, but product design that was truly innovative because this is an industry that's been very stagnant and very resistant to change.
- [08:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
I'm curious to know. Certain skills you developed with the Malala Fund are very much attuned to a certain type of arena, a political arena, a fundraising arena, you know, social justice. What of the skill sets did you develop there actually became your superpower with our place or didn't, and you had to develop entirely new set of skills.
- [09:09]
Shiza Shahid
So many of the skills that I learned in the nonprofit sector transfer over to the for profit sector, from leadership to building a great team and culture. But the biggest one is, is the one that you mentioned, community building. With the Malala Fund, we were inspiring people to get involved with girls education, which is such a big issue. It's a heavy issue, it's complex, it's impacted by everything from COVID 19 to climate change. And often the issue can feel very far away. But by giving people stories that were true and honest that they could connect with and actions that were tangible, we were able to build a movement around girls education. And in many ways, our place is similar where really rooted in this idea of building a bigger table around food. And that can be as simple as, you know, making a meal with your hands, inviting your neighbors over, having a conversation with someone who looks different, who comes from a different place, who believes in something different. When you walk into someone's home and you eat a meal that they've prepared with their own hands, it breaks down barriers like nothing else. And yeah, I'm a huge fan of restaurants and going out to eat, but there is a deep intimacy to inviting someone into your home and breaking bread with them. And it's very hard to see someone as other once you've shared a meal with their children and with their parents. And there's so many similarities. Food is so vastly diverse, but when you get into it, there's so many similarities in how we cook and gather. And celebrate. And so that's been a really big part of our place is building this grassroots community of people who are just cooking and sharing and connecting, doing that with our place products.
- [11:01]
Rebecca Minkoff
Hey everyone, sorry for the quick pause. I want to share something really exciting. Superwoman has a brand new YouTube channel. It's still under construction, but big things are coming in 2026. You'll find past episodes, new episodes, and some bonus content I cannot wait for you to see. Just search SuperWoman Media on YouTube and hit subscribe so you don't miss a thing. Okay, back to the pod. So speaking about community, because I think you did obviously an incredible job of making that a hero and a center point of our place. You feel that right away when you enter it. And I know from our brand, we launched with community as well, before that was even a word. How do you continue to do that and scale? Because I can only imagine it gets more complicated, harder to do. And I'd love to hear from a business perspective how you keep that at the center when then you have to look at minimums and tariffs and who knows what Covid and new product design.
- [11:59]
Shiza Shahid
I would say some parts of your business have to be built for scale. You know, you don't want to build a logistics infrastructure that's not going to scale. You don't want to build customer service that's not going to scale. However, not everything needs to be hyper efficient and built for scale. And that's something that we've embraced from day one. So we, we have a retail store in Los Angeles with a big backyard and we do pop ups there almost every other day. We have local bakers, local chefs come in who are starting their own small businesses. And do we have space where they can just pop up and showcase their their goods and bring in their community. And you know, it's incredibly micro and it's not meant to scale. It's meant to be a touch point for connection. We have these collections we call Traditionware where we go very deep with our community and we create product around a specific tradition. So we've done a collection for Shabbat, we've done a collection for eid, we've done a collection for Nowruz, we've done a collection for Lunar New Year. And very often these are products that are hyper specific to a community, to a tradition. And you know, they're not as ubiquitous as our always pan or our wonder oven where it's kind of your do it all everyday pan or your 6 in 1 air fryer toaster oven. They take the same amount of effort, if not more. But what they allow us to do is to focus on our mission and focus on our community and make one community at a time feel seen. And I know for myself, if I had seen my traditions represented by a mainstream brand, it would make me feel connected in a way like nothing else would. And so I think there is a point to doing things that are deliberately not scalable while you are building a business that is at its core scalable and having a little bit of both, so you can still have intimacy, so you can still have community, and so that you can still, you know, create this feeling that makes people fall in love with your brand.
- [14:11]
Rebecca Minkoff
I love that you have that double sided view of it because I think so many people, the minute they start looking that they have to scale, they lose that. The touch points. You know, even me, I was going to 40 cities before I had kids to meet my customer. And then I had kids and I was like, I'm not going to those cities and losing that touch point. Not because I didn't want to, but because I wanted to be a present mother. Yeah, it's impossible to replicate the touch points that that does right to your customer. You can't put that on social media. And so I love that you figured out ways to be able to do that because that's again, like you said it as a customer, it would keep you coming back, I think, having that dichotomy.
- [14:53]
Shiza Shahid
Because of course, if your entire business is not scalable, it's not going to scale. But can you build a fundamentally scalable business while still reserving effort and care and attention to things that you do because they feed the soul of your brand, your community, and also your, your internal team and culture. A lot of these things that we do, our own team, those are the things that inspire the most.
- [15:17]
Rebecca Minkoff
So I'm curious, when you told your mom, I'm launching a home brand, you know, a brand that's going to be centered around the kitchen, was she proud or like, I kicked you out of the kitchen? And this is what I get.
- [15:28]
Shiza Shahid
I think she was confused at first, but there wasn't the first time I had confused her. I'd sort of, you know, spent my childhood as an activist. I'd left home at 18, I'd quit my job to start a nonprofit at the age of 22. So she was used to me doing things that, you know, were not traditional. And then I think once she started coming to visit me in LA and saw our office and saw our retail store, and you know, that's when things started to feel a lot more real and tangible. And I think she's proud now.
- [15:59]
Rebecca Minkoff
And so you've co founded this brand with your husband?
- [16:02]
Shiza Shahid
Yes.
- [16:04]
Rebecca Minkoff
So how does that work from a role Division, your co CEOs and then do you draw a line when you go home at night and sort of how have you managed to navigate marriage, business partner and growing a brand?
- [16:18]
Shiza Shahid
For us, it's been a really beautiful thing that has strengthened our partnership. It is certainly not for everyone. Mostly when I tell people that my husband and I work together, people say I could never do that. But I think when it works, it works really well. As you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you give everything to your business. You put in so much and to be able to share that is really lovely and special. I think were we not able to share that, we would perhaps not be able to understand what the other person is going through or why they're still, you know, sitting on their computer at 10pm or why they can't travel or can't take that time off. I think there's a couple of elements that we've arranged in our life to make it work. One is we, we have complimentary skills, so we have a lot of respect for each other, but we don't have complete overlapping skills. I think it's a lot more challenging when, you know, you marry someone who is kind of another version of yourself and then you both want to do the same things and you both want to have final say on the same decisions. We take each other's opinion into account on so many things, but we also know who has the final say on what. Second, we don't report into each other. We're co CEOs and I think that's, that's a healthy dynamic. I think it can be tricky when you have one spouse reporting into another. And then I would say we don't draw boundaries that begin when we go home. That would be a little too, too much. You're building a business that is very all encompassing. However, we do have language to create boundaries when we need it. So at the end of the day when we're having dinner and just unwinding, you know, we're able to tell each other this is not the time to talk about work or, you know, we will often put things on each other's calendars so we know this is when we're going to sit down and talk about work versus something else. And I think those little things and communicating and making time to give each other feedback if we're feeling like things aren't working well, has has made it just a really great partnership for us. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it's certainly not for everyone.
- [18:25]
Rebecca Minkoff
Yeah, it's funny. Recently I've interviewed several couples that have founded companies together and it's totally true. When it works and work, it works. But it's always good that people can figure that out. Like, I'm always in awe of it. For small businesses, every hire matters, but the time and resources required to hire right are Limited. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner, designed to help you hire with confidence by servicing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full time job. When you start getting applications, it's exciting for about 10 seconds and then it gets stressful. It can be so overwhelming to sort through all the resumes while you're trying to find the right candidate and it is so high stakes, which just adds to the pressure. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process, from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI powered interviews for initial screenings, all through a conversational interface that lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Hire right the first time, post your first job and get $100 off towards your post@LinkedIn.com super w that's LinkedIn.com superw terms and conditions apply.
- [19:52]
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- [20:22]
Rebecca Minkoff
So I want to pivot a little bit and talk about fear because starting something new can be incredibly scary. Putting yourself and your essentially your family behind something can be scary. I'm curious, what fear have you had to sit with repeatedly as you've scaled and how do you sort of deal with that?
- [20:42]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah, I would say so many. Fear of failure probably, you know, is one fear of not being liked. You know, I come from a culture where women are taught that they have to be likable. And I think that's probably true of all cultures still, as is we are taught to be people pleasers and to be nice and above all else. And very often sort of our survival is linked to it. When, where I grew up, I didn't see many examples of women living independently on their own. And so a lot of their freedoms were dependent on their parents, their fathers, their husbands. And when you're running a company, you have to provide a tremendous amount of real time, direct feedback to a lot of people. So, and make tough decisions and do so even when you adore the people that you work with and care deeply about them. You have to separate performance from your relationship. And so I think those, those are some of the things that I've, I've had to learn to consistently overcome. I think that when you're building a business or when you're doing anything hard, it's really like holding up a mirror to your yourself and your strengths and your weaknesses are magnified and you see them echo across the org. You literally see your own personality as traits and strengths and deficiencies manifest in the organization that you build. And the things that you're good at, you see them uplift your team and the things that you're bad at, you, you see them harm your team and your culture. And so it is this incredible self growth journey where you have to take on the work that you may have been avoiding. And it only gets harder. I don't think it ever gets easier because the challenges get bigger, the stakes get higher, the complexity gets, you know, more and more complicated. And so I don't think it ever gets easier. And you're constantly in this journey of growth and addressing your fears and addressing shortcomings.
- [22:50]
Rebecca Minkoff
Is there a belief you had that you had to let go of in order to change yourself, your behavior, the organization?
- [22:59]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah, I would say, you know, with failure, I would say really trying to understand the real risk.
- [23:06]
Rebecca Minkoff
Right.
- [23:06]
Shiza Shahid
The real versus the imagined risk. When you're fearful, it's often your body trying to keep you from actual harm. Don't jump off the cliff, you're gonna die.
- [23:16]
Rebecca Minkoff
Right.
- [23:16]
Shiza Shahid
Those are very useful instincts to have. But fear of what other people will think and reputation, et cetera, those are not real fears. Those are things that we project. And I remember, in fact, when I was starting the Malala fund, I was 22 years old, I was a year out of college. I had no savings, I'm an immigrant, I didn't have a US passport, I was living in Dubai at the time. So for anyone who has dealt with, you know, immigration and visa issues. When you don't have a passport from a country that has sort of the privileges that an American passport has or a European passport has, it's very hard to travel, it's very hard to work anywhere. And being employed is actually the only way you get to be somewhere. So quitting your job doesn't just mean you lose your salary and your stability and your health insurance. It actually means you lose your right to be in the country you're in. And so I was at this precipice of making this decision to leave my job at McKinsey at 22 and Malala and her father had asked me to start this organization and serve as founding CEO. And I remember being completely terrified. And a friend of mine sat with me and sort of said, okay, let's, let's talk about what's going to happen if, let's talk about your fears. And he said, what do you think is going to happen? And I said, well, I could fail and you know, I wouldn't have a job and everyone would know I'd failed. And he's like, okay, well would you be unhoused? Would you not have somewhere to sleep? I said no, you know, I could sleep on my parents couch like that would, you know, they'd be happy to see me back home. He said okay, and you would still have, you know, your Stanford degree. And I said yeah. And he said okay, and you would have started something and it wouldn't have worked, but you would have met a lot of people and learned a bunch of things. And I said yeah. And as we talked about it, I realized so many of the fears I had weren't the fears that should hold us back, the things that we should actually be afraid of. They were, they were societal fears, they were imagined fears. And that allowed me to make that decision to take that leap and quit my job. And so I think that processing of which of this fear, fear is actually real and what am I assigning weight to that I shouldn't be is really helpful.
- [25:36]
Rebecca Minkoff
I think the part about assigning weight is so critical because it's what we assign so much weight and heaviness to that I feel like often gives it power with taking risks. You know, I know I would assign so much weight to every time we took a risk with like a fashion show, having real women or doing extended sizing or our former four store of the future. Like the fear that I would self impose on what are they going to think of me? How are this going to be perceived. What if it's not cool? Is like, oh my God, if we could just get rid of that. I almost feel like everyone would be moving so much faster. It's actually not the outbound barriers, it's the ones we often set for ourselves, I feel are the worst.
- [26:16]
Shiza Shahid
I think that's right. And they get, you know, the older you get, the more you accumulate those. And I also think, you know, another practice for me has really just been building a really solid foundation. You know, when I was starting things when I was young, I was by myself, I was on my own. I left my home, my family, my community. It's sort of the blessing and the curse of being an immigrant. I could go out there and create from nothing, but I also had nothing holding me. And now, you know, I have a 12 year marriage and I have a home and I have my own practices and I have a baby on the way and I have community and I have a deeper foundation of, of my own sense of self. And I think that those things are so important to keep you rooted and grounded as you go through hard things. Because if all you have is this dream, then you can start to really wrap up your sense of self worth into that. And I think that's a very dangerous thing because that's when you avoid those hard conversations and that's when you avoid those difficult decisions that you have to make as a founder, as a CEO. It's incredibly lonely and you have to be comfortable with that. And if you can have a strong grounding outside of just this dream, then you can go in with deeper strength and a deeper stillness that allows you to just do your job so much better.
- [27:43]
Rebecca Minkoff
I love that. And I think you've said somewhere I read that you're prioritizing slower growth over the big let's go now, build it huge and whatever. Like everyone's that's on the drug. And I'm curious is what's behind that decision and how do you sort of tune out what everyone else is doing so that you can prioritize slower, steady growth? I talk about all the time how critical that is. Yeah, but I feel like sometimes I'm the only one saying that.
- [28:12]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah, I would say we're prioritizing sustainable growth. And by that what I mean is you can't pump a business model that doesn't work. And I think that the sort of frothiness of the early 2000s in Silicon Valley and venture capital and E Com 1.0, it was pumping cash into business models that didn't work with the promise that one day it would.
- [28:36]
Rebecca Minkoff
Right.
- [28:37]
Shiza Shahid
We don't have to be profitable on the first purchase because we have this metric called ltv, which is a projection into the future. We don't. It's not based on the past. It's a projection into the future. And that metric tells us, well, even if we paid, you know, $200 to acquire a customer who only spent $100, we believe they're going to keep coming back and they're going to eventually be good on the amount that we spent for this sale. And very often those metrics didn't pan out, and you had, you know, tremendous amounts of money funneled into businesses that weren't working and they were held up at huge valuations that didn't hold up in the markets. And so coming out of that, you had a tremendous amount of harm, I think, to consumer businesses, where everyone sort of moved away from investing in consumer businesses and had this opinion that consumer doesn't work. But the fact was that there's incredible consumer businesses. They just, you know, aren't the ones that were getting funded and getting noticed. And so for us, it has always been very important that we build a business that is sustainable and that the fundamentals are in order and that we're not building based on the promise of future profitability, because that's very dangerous. And that can make you lack the discipline and rigor that you need to build a business that endures, that holds the test of time. And fundamentally, you know, when you start a business, you go out to people and you ask them to come and join you. And that is sort of your number one responsibility is, is to your stakeholders, to your team, to try and make the most disciplined decisions so that you can protect that organization and you can protect the people in that organization as well. For us, I think it's really been about that sustainable business model and making sure that the fundamentals are in order, which feels like a very obvious thing. But I think we are coming out of an era where so much capital was infused into businesses because they were digital, because they were sexy, because there was sort of the belief that if you kept pumping cash, eventually it would work out. And that didn't end up being the case.
- [30:51]
Rebecca Minkoff
No, it did not. I am here to tell that tale.
- [30:55]
Shiza Shahid
Okay.
- [30:55]
Rebecca Minkoff
I don't want to say we're getting close on time, but we are. So I thought we would end with a little bit of a lightning round. They don't have to be one word answers. What is one word for this season? Of your life. Love.
- [31:08]
Shiza Shahid
I love that.
- [31:09]
Rebecca Minkoff
I love that A rule about success
- [31:12]
Shiza Shahid
that you've broken linear career paths.
- [31:15]
Rebecca Minkoff
What is something that grounds you?
- [31:17]
Shiza Shahid
My husband.
- [31:18]
Rebecca Minkoff
A boundary that you protect most fiercely.
- [31:22]
Shiza Shahid
Probably my family.
- [31:23]
Rebecca Minkoff
A recent moment you felt deeply proud but you didn't post about it.
- [31:26]
Shiza Shahid
Oh my goodness. So I'm so bad at posting. I would say probably our recent launches which I should have posted about but it's just, it's hard to keep up with. But we have incredible products and incredible product team that creates beautiful launches and I haven't posted about all of them.
- [31:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
Okay, I love that. What now feels like a non negotiable in your life.
- [31:50]
Shiza Shahid
Exercise.
- [31:51]
Rebecca Minkoff
And what do you do?
- [31:52]
Shiza Shahid
Well now I'm 35 weeks pregnant so I, I stand up and then I, I, I breathe heavily for five minutes. Um but a mix of strength pilates
- [32:01]
Rebecca Minkoff
and yoga and soon you'll start curb walking. Do you know what that is? Have you read about that yet?
- [32:06]
Shiza Shahid
Gotta get this baby out.
- [32:08]
Rebecca Minkoff
So last question and I don't know where you if you share these things you can tell me. You don't share it but a scale perspective like and you can be general. You've taken with making this a sustainable business from zero to where are you guys in the pantheon of numbers or, or not.
- [32:26]
Shiza Shahid
I guess I could say we've gone you know from we're now in, in five markets. So we're in the U.S. canada, Australia, France and the UK. Yeah we're in cookware, appliances and dinnerware. So we become a multicad. There you go. Product right there. That's our original mug. We have a new one now.
- [32:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
What's your vision on the go forward?
- [32:47]
Shiza Shahid
Our vision is to build the most beloved, trusted and culturally impactful brand and what we believe is the most important room in every kitchen in the world. For us it's really about building a brand that's rooted in creating a bigger table and creating products that are breakthrough in a select number of categories. So you know we've never made a fork because you can buy a really good fork from lots of brands. We have made an air fryer because air fryers are ugly and they're bulky and they're often made with plastic and Teflon and they only do one thing and so we think there's a lot of categories within the kitchen and home that the products don't exist that we would want to bring into our own homes and when we see that we dive in. We make every product from scratch do designed in LA with our in house team Takes at least two years to make anything because we're really innovating on the materials and the form factor. And we think there's a lot of room to continue to just make cooking and hosting and gathering a better experience. So it's what we're focused on.
- [33:50]
Rebecca Minkoff
I love it. And then we didn't touch on this, but the health of your products, because most people don't realize the pfas, the chemicals, you scratch your Teflon, it like leeches plastic into your food. And I think it's incredibly important just to highlight how exceptional you've been with paying attention to like non toxic materials. So will you just share a couple blurbs before we wrap about that?
- [34:13]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah, absolutely. So most nonstick cookware is still made with Teflon or forever chemicals. With the. The technical word is ptfe. That's the chemical that's used. But it's not just nonstick pans. You find it in air fryers, you find it in the rim of blenders, you find it in, you know, the floss that says glide. And so for us, it's really about using clean, healthy materials in our own kitchen. At home, we'd want to be putting out the materials that we cook on for our own families. And it's one of those things that you don't think about it until you think about it. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. But even if you are not motivated to make the decision for your own health, these chemicals are incredibly bad for the workers who have to produce and apply them. They're incredibly bad for the communities and water systems where they are produced. And there is unfortunately an incredibly well funded and aggressive cookware lobby that has been actively working to prevent bans on PFAS and cookware. In fact, there was a bill on the governor's desk in California just last month. It had passed. And the last thing was for him to sign or veto it. And he vetoed it. And he cited the cookware lobby's rationale, which is they want to be able to offer cheap cookware. But there are 14 states in the US where there are bans that have either been enforced or about to be enforced. So for example, in Minneapolis, you cannot sell a PFAS coated pan anymore. The cookware lobby is pushing to have that removed. In France, you can't put PFAS and clothes anymore, but the cookware lobby got an exception for cookware. So you can't wear them, but you can cook on them, which to me makes no sense. So for us. It's really just can we educate consumers and offer them better alternatives? And that's been a big part of the work that we do.
- [36:05]
Rebecca Minkoff
In a circular way, you're sort of back to the political landscape.
- [36:08]
Shiza Shahid
Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Food is always political, right? Connected to culture and immigration and gender and so are so is how we create things and the impact that they have on on our communities and our health and our environment.
- [36:26]
Rebecca Minkoff
Well, I am a forever fan. Thank you for coming on today and I'm so excited for the journey you're about to have that's not food related, but love related.
- [36:35]
Shiza Shahid
Thank you for all your advice, your inspiration and your friendship.
- [36:39]
Rebecca Minkoff
Thanks so much for watching today's episode. Before you head out, I want to invite you to my brand new YouTube channel for all things Superwoman. It's a fresh space I'm building out for 2026, packed with past episodes, future episodes, and some special new content we're cooking up. Just search SuperWoman Media on YouTube and subscribe so you're there for everything. Coming next. I'll see you over there. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you've enjoyed it, take a second to rate and review the show wherever you're tuning in. It really helps others find the podcast. You can follow me on Instagram, Rebecca Minkoff and at rmsuperwoman or for a slice into my personal life at Becky Minkoff. And don't forget to check out my book, Fearless the New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage and Success. See you next week.
- [37:28]
Shiza Shahid
Lifelock. How can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [37:32]
Starbucks Narrator
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- [37:35]
Peloton Narrator
What do I do?
- [37:36]
Shiza Shahid
My refund though.
- [37:37]
Starbucks Narrator
I'm freaking out.
- [37:38]
Shiza Shahid
Don't worry, I can fix this.
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Starbucks Narrator
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Shiza Shahid
I'm so relieved.
- [37:46]
Starbucks Narrator
No problem.
- [37:46]
Shiza Shahid
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [37:48]
Starbucks Narrator
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- [37:57]
Shiza Shahid
Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give
- [38:06]
Rebecca Minkoff
your patio a glow up.
- [38:08]
Shiza Shahid
Spring's calling, Ross. Work your magic.