15 Gifted Women: Andrea Sadek
By Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 11/9/2009
Andrea Sadek
Shonnie Bilin
Frances Gravely
Isadora Frost
Jenny Hammons
Anne McGilvray
Maxine Burton
Susan Roghani
Joan Ulrich
Wendy Rosen
Anna Griffin
Barbara Baekgaard
Andrea Grossman
Ande Rooney
Marian Sullivan
Vice President
Andrea by Sadek
Andrea Sadek gave more than just her name to the New Rochelle, NY-based company founded by her grandfather Charles Sadek and father Norman Sadek. With an active career of over 40 years, Andrea leads Sadek’s overseas sourcing efforts and is responsible for designing a large portion of the Andrea by Sadek product line, as well as working in sales, marketing and merchandising. After gaining a B.F.A. from Syracuse University and an M.A. from N.Y.U., Andrea was a printing making teaching fellow at N.Y.U. After she began her design career designing area rugs for Edward Fields Carpets, her father recruited her to join the family business along with brother Jim (current president) and sister Lauren (vice president). Charitable outreach includes The City of Hope, CA, Daniel R. Schrier Fund in Support of Brain Cancer Research and The Fulfillment Fund Los Angeles, CA, Student Mentoring Program.
Gifts & Decorative Accessories: What have your biggest challenges been?
Andrea Sadek: Independent stores are really our best customers. I love the independence and creativity that comes out of the independent store and their challenges are our challenges. Today my hope is for them to survive.
G&DA: What have been your greatest successes?
AS: Our greatest successes have been working as a team: my brother Jim and my sister Lauren and I. We each have a segment of the business that we are responsible for. At our company, we're great storytellers, and it is our ability to blend categories to tell a story that really stands out. That's what we're most successful at and a very big part of our challenges.
G&DA: Do you think that as a woman you approached doing business differently?
AS: Certainly I've had my challenges working in Asia as a woman over the many years I've done it, but I've watched it evolve. It has gotten much better. I travelled in Asia in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and I really was in the minority as a woman on the sourcing side. Today I think that's very different. It is traditional in Asian culture that women aren't very much a part of the negotiating process. You see a lot of women working everywhere, and today, I think you see a lot of women in the supervising process. I bring the problem-solving techniques that women use in every aspect of life, including developing personal relationships and showing people how to do things: an aspect of teaching, as well as selecting and creating, that women are taught in the parenting and grand-parenting process.
G&DA: How has being an executive affected your personal life and relationships and how do you deal with it?
AS: My work is my life. Our challenge is to think and talk of other things when we're together, because we all have spouses and children.
G&DA: How and why did you get into business?
AS: My background is in fine arts, and when you choose the arts, you are always looking for what is a good professional fit for your talents. I did try other things before I joined the family business and I have always been grateful that I did. I was a rug designer, had a masters from NYU, but ultimately the opportunity to create product was exciting. I also liked the opportunity in business. I certainly came at a time when there were a lot of women coming into the business world and choosing to be career women, and I was one of them.
G&DA: What advice would you give to a woman starting out in the business?
AS: A career is something that happens over a long period of time; it evolves. You don't know what exactly it’s going to be at the beginning, you just have to pick a starting place. I think a lot of young women — and young men — think they want to be a specific thing, and I don't think it works that way.
G&DA: What is the best — or most memorable — gift you ever received?
AS: My two sons: Adam Schrier, who works for Whereoware, and my other son, who is an executive at Fox/FX.
To read the interviews with each of the other 14 Gifted Women, please click on their image at right.
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