It was Super Bowl weekend 2013, and Craig Barnell was eating pizza in his friend Ralph Carbone’s kitchen when the conversation took an unexpected turn. Between bites, Carbone asked Barnell about launching an e-commerce
business. Barnell offered to draft a business plan. Carbone didn’t want to wait.
“He says, ‘No, no, just give me an idea. How much would it cost?’” Barnell recalled. “I said, ‘About $300,000.’ And he thought for a moment, and he looks at me and he says, ‘Okay.’”
By November that year, Fisher’s Finery, which was named after Carbone’s home on Fisher’s Island in the Long Island Sound, was live in the Amazon store, selling silk pillowcases, cashmere accessories, and women’s sleepwear.
Today, Fisher’s Finery is a digitally native, luxury brand with more than 3,100 products listed in the Amazon store, spanning silk pillowcases in three grades of momme weight, certified Egyptian cotton sheets, organic cotton towels, sustainable cashmere accessories, and women’s athleisure and sleepwear.
The company has achieved 988% growth in Amazon sales since launch, building an eight-figure business in the store, with roughly 70 percent of overall sales coming through Amazon. They also sell through other online channels and retailers. The entire operation runs with a lean team of seven people out of a multi-use building in Plantsville, a small community in the center of Connecticut.
“We’re somewhat proud to be a small business, a small team that can do something large on a scale thanks to Amazon,” said Kayla Simpson, assistant operations and design manager at Fisher’s Finery.
The business has been able to scale a 3,100-SKU catalog with a small team by tapping into Amazon’s logistics capabilities. Fisher’s Finery uses Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) for all Amazon orders, giving their products the Prime badge, which more than doubled their conversion rates.
They also use Multi-Channel Fulfillment to fulfill orders from other shopping channels from the same Amazon inventory pool, saving over $1 million in inventory purchasing costs by eliminating the need for separate stock.
Fisher’s Finery is a lean team of seven people who work out of a multi-use building in Plantsville, Connecticut
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution stores their products by pallet, cutting storage costs by more than $80,000 in 2025 alone.
And Amazon Global Logistics manages their entire supply chain from manufacturer pickup in China through customs clearance to AWD, reducing per-container shipping costs by nearly 25 percent.
“The fact that we can book a shipment from China on a container that comes through Amazon Global Logistics that then moves into Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, that then auto-fulfills Amazon FBA and Multi-Channel Fulfillment, is remarkable,” Barnell said.
That logistics infrastructure proved critical during two pivotal moments. In their first holiday season in 2013, late-arriving products forced Barnell and first employee Kyle Hayes to hand-pack 300 orders a day on folding tables, loading them into vans bound for the local post office. The experience was so challenging that as soon as the holiday season ended, they worked diligently to get everything properly packaged and sent to FBA. Craig emphasized there was “no way we could scale at that level” with manual fulfillment. This crisis became a turning point—by switching fully to FBA, they went from $268,000 in revenue in their first two months to hitting $1 million in sales by June 2014.
Years later, when Jenna Bush showed a Fisher’s Finery silk pillowcase on the Today Show during a Mother’s Day segment, orders surged overnight. “Thank goodness we use Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment because we had massive sales in a short period of time, but scaling with Amazon is not an issue,” Barnell said.
Amazon also helped Fisher’s Finery deal with a counterfeiting crisis. At one point, 500 counterfeit listings appeared on their cashmere collection from foreign sellers, with customers receiving cheap nylon hats instead of cashmere. Negative reviews on Fisher’s Finery’s listings followed. Amazon’s Brand Registry program allows sellers to protect their product ASINs from unauthorized sellers and puts guardrails in place so that unauthorized sellers cannot list on a seller’s protected products.
Fisher’s Finery had a surge in orders after appearing on the Today Show
Looking ahead, Fisher’s Finery plans to double the business in the next four years. They’re launching in Canada and preparing to expand into Europe, including Great Britain and 5-6 additional countries, leveraging Amazon’s logistics capabilities across international stores.
The growth has fueled more than balance sheets. Fisher’s Finery donates 20 percent of revenue from their organic silk pillowcase collection to the Hope for Depression Research Foundation, a cause deeply personal to Barnell, whose mother and sister were impacted by mental illness.
The company also donates products to Prudence Crandall Center, a domestic violence program in Connecticut, supports young mothers and fathers at Carolyn’s Place in Waterbury, Connecticut, and sponsors Front Row Players in Manlius, New York, which produces full theatrical productions for people of all abilities. They also plant a tree with every order placed on their website.
“It’s the logistics capability; it’s the entire ecosystem that Amazon has provided that has allowed us to grow as a group,” Barnell reflected. “We all live a life, and we work to support that. It’s not the other way around.”