Nebraska

When Anne Tariani was living in Karachi, Pakistan, in the mid-1980s, she had terrible feet and a simple fix. A terracotta foot scrubber, fired from Indus River Valley clay and sold in piles outside a ceramic shop, worked better than anything she’d found back home. She started bringing them back as gifts for friends and family. The response was immediate. In 1990, she and her husband Kumy moved to Omaha, set up in her mother’s garage, and Gilden Tree was born.

For its first decade, the business was strictly wholesale, growing through spa trade shows and word of mouth into a national network of salons, spas, and podiatry offices. Then, in 2003, Gilden Tree began selling in Amazon’s store. Over the two decades since, as Amazon’s seller tools have expanded, Gilden Tree has grown right alongside them — trying, as Laura puts it, virtually everything Amazon offers.