Real Success with Nate Kaeding: Dawn and Brittany Schorg, Czech Feather & Down

Dawn and Brittany Schorg are the mother/daughter duo behind Czech Feather & Down, the Cedar Rapids-based bedding company that has been helping people get better sleep for over 100 years.

Dawn and Brittany share with me how Czech Feather & Down started as a household business, how remaining small has given them their unique niche, and how being a woman-owned business has worked in their favor. They also explore how online sales have helped their business evolve, how Brittany has helped revolutionize their marketing and online presence, and they share their thoughts on the one unique benefit of working with family.

I learned a lot, and I think you will too.

Sponsored by MidWestOne Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s new podcast feature with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders, available first to CBJ members. Listen to this episode below, and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher.

Nate Kaeding: Can you begin by telling us what feather and down actually are?

Dawn Schorg: Sure! A lot of people get confused with feather and down. Most people will come in and just say, “I want a down pillow,” or “I have a down pillow,” not realizing that there is a difference between feather and down. Feather has the quill or the stem part on it. A lot of people refer to it as the “pokey” part. The down is just the light, fluffy part off the breast of the bird and you use either duck or goose. They use both. Down, of course, is more expensive because there’s not as much of it.

We have an all-down or we have a 50/50, which is half feather and half down. We also have a feather which just has 10% down in it, and we order it that way. We don’t separate it. It’s the bigger companies that do that. If you go back years ago, we actually have a picture of a group of ladies and we have customers that still come in today that remember family members that would sit and actually just pull that feather off away from that stem. They call those stripped feathers. They’re very time consuming and very messy.

Brittany Schorg: They actually would have feather stripping parties. That was a way for them to get together and gossip.

What can you tell us about how the company got started back in the 1920’s?

Dawn: Unfortunately, as time goes, stories fade and we don’t have a whole lot of information. My aunt would talk about some big steam machine that she would use to clean the feathers. I have never really quite understood the concept of it, but they actually back then would have feather scouts – people that would go out and that’s how they would purchase their feathers. 

It was always a small company. My aunt and my uncle had bought a property and in the garage was this equipment. That’s actually how it started. She was like, “Well, I might as well do something with this.”

It’s always just been local. Actually, it didn’t start to get out of just the local area until we acquired it and started a website and tried to make it larger through digital marketing. Back then they didn’t have that, so they just stayed local. It was just my aunt for a lot of years. In fact, I think she maybe always mainly just did it out of her house. It was just a small side thing that she did. Then, when we bought it, we brought it down to the Czech Village on 16th Avenue. 

What does a typical day look like at Czech Feather and Down? 

Brittany: It’s not as exciting as what you would think. We don’t open until 11, so that’s nice. We’re not early risers by any means! We come in, usually [Dawn] and I chitchat for a second and then go straight into computer work, checking for orders, and getting things set up for the day. Since I’m still in the process of learning everything, a lot of the time I’m like, “Okay, I know we’ve had this come in. I know I sold this, this, and this. Now where are we?” I just started learning the renovation process, which is not rocket science, but it’s one of those things where I don’t want to mess it up. There’s been a few different times where sewing a pillow shut is harder than you would think, especially when they’re super firm.

People can actually send their favorite pillows to you to be re-stuffed, correct?

Dawn: Right. We have a special machine that cleans them. Everybody’s pillow is done separately. 

Brittany: We try to make a point that they’re individually done because there have been several people that have come in and said, “I took it to a dry cleaner years ago and this is not what I brought in.”

Dawn: We clean them and then we can add into it and it blends it all together, and then we put it into a new ticking, which is the casing. So it’s virtually a new pillow when you get it back. 

How long does that process take?

Dawn: If we sat down, start to finish without interruption, for your basic pillow? We could probably do it in around an hour. I’ve been doing it a lot longer than Brittany.

Brittany, you’re the marketing mind behind the operation here. What’s your strategy for getting the name out there? Do you do any work with online marketplaces like Amazon?

Brittany: We don’t do anything with Amazon. We do have Etsy, which we haven’t put a whole lot of time into yet. Before I started coming in, of course, word of mouth was how the word spread. We do a lot with social media. We try to do a little newsletter once a month, but we’ve noticed that consistency on social media really helps drum up business. People love that we’re a small, family-owned, woman-owned business. 

How far has your business reached? Where have some of your farthest pillows ended up?

Dawn: Well, actually we have pillows in England and we have pillows in Nigeria. That’s cool. But we did not actually ship those. They came to us and took them back. As far as shipping, the farthest we’ve ever done is probably Hawaii.

So what does it look like when you’re at your busiest? 

Dawn: Our busiest season is October through December. I would say probably around a hundred in those months, maybe more.

Brittany: I mean, it really just depends. Spring cleaning is big right now, and we’ve been pushing spring cleaning. I think that’s really in the back of everyone’s mind at the moment. It just depends. It’s kind of a transition period right now as well. It doesn’t help that, after the flood, we had to go to Mount Vernon in different locations. That’s kind of been difficult. We just moved to this new location on 16th Avenue back in September. Everyone thinks we’re back in Czech Village. Are they going to know? We moved and we actually had a pretty good turnout for the holiday season. I don’t think we expected that. 

Dawn: We were in Mount Vernon for quite a few years after the flood, but then we were just renting there and had to leave that location. Wxhen we lost our location in Mount Vernon, my mom and I were working from home. She was working from her house and I was working from mine. She always did all of the comforters and I did the pillows. It didn’t take long for her to come to me and say, “I’m going to finish up what comforters I have, and then I’m retiring. I’m done.” There wasn’t any notice there. She was already in her seventies, so it was way past time.

So we didn’t have a main location. I was working from home and that sort of thing. So that’s why the business actually kind of started to slow down a little bit. That’s when Brittany was like, “Well, I could maybe help you with social media and we can get into a permanent location again.” 

You were asking her about her marketing. My mother used to go and do talks at Rotary and that sort of thing. In fact, Brittany would even actually go with her back when she was in high school or maybe even younger. My mother loved that kind of thing. It’s just not me, but Brittany likes doing that. 

We have a CPAP pillow for people who wear the mask and stuff, and we’ve done work with
chiropractors, so we’ve always wanted to go out and directly market to them, which is something that I’m hoping that, when Brittany gets more comfortable, that’s going to be more of what she does. Our main issue is that people don’t know. We have so many people come in and say “I didn’t know you existed.” 

What have you learned working with your family?

Dawn: We’re actually fortunate. We’ve always worked as a family, and we’re very fortunate that we’ve always gotten along really well. Don’t get me wrong, we’re a family. Brittany and I — she says right, I say left, she says up, I say down. We automatically know we are opposites. My mother and I — she was making all the comforters and feather beds, and I was just doing all the pillows. We each had our own little area and we stuck to it.

How did you all decide how the books and accounts would be managed?

Dawn: My mother did all of that. She owned it. So we swapped roles. I took hers and Brittany took mine. Back then, my mother and I would actually split up days. We were open seven days a week back then, and we had two days a week where we would work together. There are things that we’d work on together, like some of the marketing that we were trying to do. But otherwise it was separate because then she could have the whole space for comforters and I could have the whole space for pillows. Plus then somebody got a day off too. So her and I didn’t actually spend as much time together as what Brittany and I do right now. But it’s because Brittany’s still learning.

What are your goals going forward? How does the family aspect play into that?

Dawn: Well, once again, when it comes to Brittany and I, my goal is to just sustain it. I have no desire to have employees. Brittany has bigger visions than I do. 

Brittany: We haven’t really talked about it. As a young kid, so many people would say “Your family business is so cool.” You take it for granted when you’re a kid. You don’t care.

Dawn: She didn’t want anything to do with it.

Brittany: I wanted nothing to do with it. My mom and grandma do that. Let them do their thing. I also was the one that was going to get out of Iowa. I wanted nothing to do with Iowa. Today, there’s no way that I would ever move out of Cedar Rapids. First of all, the family aspect is … I don’t know … there’s just something about that. It’s really cool.

Ten years ago, had you asked me, I would’ve wanted to make it big and go from there. But now I don’t think that I have any interest in that. I like keeping it in the family.

Dawn: Oh, that surprises me. 

Who is your typical target customer?

Brittany: Well, when you’re marketing, you have to look at that and you have to know what you’re going for. Typically we see ages fifty and up, and typically women are coming in. A lot of the time we get women in that are like, “Oh, my husband’s pillow is absolutely disgusting.” But often we’ve seen worse. You’re fine.

We have that older generation that appreciates the product, but we want to try to promote to the younger generation a little bit as this is better for the environment too. It’s not throwing foam pillows into a landfill. We get a lot of people that do that too. They’ve spent $200-300 this past year trying to find a pillow and they’ve thrown them out. 

But we also see a lot of them purchased as wedding gifts. The younger generation is receiving this from grandma or mom or dad or whomever. Then that’s also bringing in that new generation. They’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realize how important it was to have a decent pillow.” That keeps that newer generation coming in. We have a good mix.

Dawn: I have to give a shout out to our male customers. Nine times out of ten, they’re easier. They walk in, grab a pillow, feel this one, feel that one, and say “That’s what I want.” 

I’m a firm guy personally. That’s what I like. Are there key elements to success about working with someone as close as a mother and daughter?

Dawn: I personally have to say that I don’t know if being in business with a friend would ever really be a good idea. To me, you’re always mother and daughter. You’re never going to walk away from each other whereas with a friend, you can. I think it would be easier to have conflict with family. 

So what’s your preferred pillow type?

Dawn: I have a king-sized bed and I sleep with more of a lighter-weight pillow because I’m not a lay down, out-for-the-count type of person. I’m constantly moving around so, with a down pillow, I can wad it all up in a ball when I want it to be more full.

Brittany: Light down is what I’m all about. Sometimes my pillow will end up pushed up and I’ll sleep on my arm. People come in and ask for opinions all the time, but it has to be personal preference. Yeah, I sleep on (light down), but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like it. 

I did make the mistake before I started helping with the business. I’ve always slept on down since I was a little girl. But you were busy and the shipment of down hadn’t come in yet, so I said, “Well, just put 50/50 in it. It’ll be fine. I won’t tell the difference.” Yeah, I could tell the difference. That’s the dog’s pillow now. That’s how much I’m set on down