Join us at Glossie's Beauty and Wellness Summit from November 11th through 13th in Napa, California. Influential beauty and wellness leaders will meet to discuss strategies and pain points, discover innovative tech, and ultimately make valuable business connections through one-on-ones and casual networking. For a limited time, we're offering $200 off with promo code GBS24, No Spaces. Again, that's GBS24 with No Spaces. Go to Glossie.co/beautysummit for more information and to secure your past today. Join us September 12th in New York City as Digide Modern Retail and Glossie bring together brand and agency leaders to connect, as industry experts from Colgate, PepsiCo, and more dive into the rise of retail media and how it's begun to mature, providing an exclusive, deep dive into the best practices and winning strategies. For a limited time, we're offering $100 off with promo code retailmedia, No Spaces. Again, that's R-E-T-A-I-L-M-E-D-I-A with No Spaces. Learn more and register today at digide.com/retailmedia. Hello, and welcome to the Glossie Podcast. I'm senior fashion reporter Danny Prizi, and I'm very excited today to talk to Bayard Winthrop, who is the founder and CEO of American Giant. American Giant has since its founding in 2011, always been focused on all American manufacturing. All of its goods are made in the U.S., and I'm going to talk to Bayard about how they did that, how the American manufacturing scene is changing, and I'm also going to talk to them a little bit about some retail partnerships they have. I just came back from the Glossie Summit, Bayard, and a lot of the brands there that I was talking to had a lot of questions about how DTC brands can work with retailers and maintain their identity, that kind of stuff. I'm excited to ask you about all of that stuff. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So, I gave a little intro there, but just, could you give us a quick backstory on the brand? Like I said, started in 2011, and from the very beginning, you wanted it to be all made in America, right? What was the early days of setting up the brand with that goal in mind, like? Yeah, I started the company in 2011, and I had spent a good chunk of my career making consumer products, a lot of apparel, a lot of footwear. And as part of that process, I sort of inevitably off-shored my manufacturing, started in the U.S., started locally, started in small production runs, and then as those businesses grew, off-shored the manufacturing almost entirely to China. And it dawned me over time that there were sort of two things that were happening that I didn't love. One was that I was getting really disconnected from the product that I made, and at least in my judgment, it's really hard to be a product company and not be close to the making of the things that you're selling. And I felt that was particularly true of the apparel, that being intimately involved with the manufacturing cost itself made me a better steward of the product that I sold. And as I off-shored these businesses, I found myself getting really disconnected. And as part of that kind of not clear what kind of business I was running anymore, I'd sort of entered those things for love of product and found myself just selling stuff. And so that I think at a personal level was problematic, and then as important or more so was the implications of those moves. And I'm a globalist, I'm a believer in free trade. But I couldn't shake this growing feeling that I was abandoning partnerships and communities and people that had stuck by me and valued the jobs that our businesses provided. And I just didn't like that any longer that I was off-shoring over some small amount of money on something I was making. And so when I started American Giant, it was really an opposition to that. I wanted to build a business that was committed to local manufacturing and where I was really involved in the product itself. And that was as simple as it was at that time. I wanted to build a company that made great stuff here. And I didn't know if that would be a big company or a small company, but I knew it was something that I'd be proud to run. And we started 2011 with a single sweatshirt, men's only, and kind of took that leap of faith. But it was that sort of basically framed when I got going. Yeah, it does feel like sort of just the way everything is kind of set up. The gravity pulls you toward off-shoring to moving manufacturing elsewhere because everyone else has done it. That's where all the infrastructure is. And you kind of like every new brand kind of gets pulled there automatically. But you're right, I think about feeling distance from the product. It's kind of crazy to me sometimes when I see stuff from brands, you know, when there's some snafu with their supply chain. And they're like, you know, we're working on figuring out where this material we use is coming from. Or we're working on having more trackability or whatever. And I'm like, that's your product. You don't know where that is coming from. It's a little surprising to me that it's pretty normal to not have a super close visibility to your whole supply chain of manufacturing. Yeah, particularly, I really agree with that. I mean, I think that whether your motivation is wanting to really be close to your product and understand how it's made and the materials that go into it from a quality standpoint. Or if you are a mission driven business that is staking its claim on human rights or environmental standards and you don't have an intimate understanding of the supply chain. I agree with you. It feels very, I don't know, it feels very difficult to have an environmental position. But be making stuff in China, for example, very hard to have any kind of environmental controls when you're that far away in a country that does not have the same environmental standards that we do. Yeah. I agree. I agree. I mean, I do think, I think for some people, maybe to be uncharitable, it's a little bit of plausible deniability. It's our partner's fault that this thing is not working rather than ours. Well, I mean, that is certainly the case. I don't know if you guys have covered any of the stuff that's going on in Jingjiang in China, which is a pretty horrific situation. And what everybody knows but no one wants to talk about is that in that specific instance, about 95% of the cotton fiber coming out of China is grown in Jingjiang, which is that far Western province. And so if you know anything about clothing production, you're a big part of your production has to be domiciled near the agricultural product. So you're ginning and you're yearning at a minimum and oftentimes the knitting are close by. And so any company that is sourcing product from within China, I want to get a shirt or a dress made and that is delivered full package to those brands. It's very likely that that stuff is being made and is running at least through some part of that supply chain. And you're exactly right that that plausible deniability, which doesn't really stand the test of scrutiny, is what a lot of brands do rely on because I don't think anyone wants to look or be hung up on that. Right. Yeah, so you started manufacturing in the US in 2011. Wondering how has the scene kind of changed in that time? Is it easier to do what you're doing now? Maybe for you personally, I'm sure it is since you've got more experience, but generally do you think it's easier to do more manufacturing in the US now? Yeah, it's definitely mixed back. It's certainly easier for us for what you're saying. I think we just we know the players now and understand where the capabilities are. But broadly, I think that there's been something that the first eight or nine years of our involvement, maybe seven or eight years of our going, I don't think there were meaningful changes. But over the last four years, kind of accelerated by the pandemic, which I think brought into focus a few things. I think it won the supply chain disruptions were financially really bad for a lot of apparel brands, particularly. And I think that jolted people into more of an understanding that they needed alternatives to the traditional Chinese supply chain that's just quite fragile, actually. And when there's a disruption like that, that can be pretty devastating for businesses. Coupled with, I think, a growing sense among consumers that we are too committed to a Chinese manufacturing base. I think those two factors have created a fair amount of reshoring in textiles, particularly. And so over the last four years, I think there's been an improvement in capability. That's not to say that the business isn't still under real pressure. It is if you go into the supply chain and talk to the components, the dires, the finishers, the cut and sew facilities, you'll get a very mixed bag. There are people that are doing really well and are benefiting from, I think, some accelerating demand and others that have either gone out of business or really struggling. So I would say on balance, the last four years have gotten easier, but that's not to say that it's been an overall rising tide lifting all boats. There have been people that have been struggling and going out of business. Yeah. Is it similar across the whole country or there's sort of hubs where things are better in other places where it's worse? I think there are hubs, but it really is the hubs are around, I think, areas of expertise. So you have in the southeastern United States, the Carolinas and Georgia is a very, very strong knitwear center. So T-shirts and sweatshirts, we produce a lot of our sweatshirts and T-shirts out of the Carolinas. I think the LA Basin, which is another area where we produce an awful lot of stuff, is also good in, typically, in faster turnaround, lower run knit production. And then as you get into things like woven pans, we've got a very successful woven bottoms program. It's called the rough knit pant. Those types of programs then kind of go in different parts of the country, Texas, the upper Midwest, depending on where the needle is or where the production capability is. So it really depends on what you're trying to get done, but there definitely are pockets where there's strength in certain areas. Is there a scale ceiling, you think, for manufacturing in the US? You guys have gotten quite big, but it feels like if you wanted to make a small run of anything, you could find someone in the US to do it, but if you want to do it. For sure. Yeah, for sure. And the scale is a tricky question. I mean, it depends on what you mean. I think the channel, this is sort of relevant to something that we're kind of going through at the moment. One of the reasons why the domestic manufacturing basis is not as robust as it was when I was a kid, when virtually all the clothing that Americans wore were made in the United States, and they were the best quality in the world back then. One of the reasons why that's less possible today is that if you were, let's say, Levi's, and you wanted to do a very large run of t-shirts domestically, there is not a single provider that you could go to and say, make me, you know, 300,000 flannel shirts and make me 700,000 t-shirts. Because the supply chain base doesn't have the balance sheet, the capital available to manage that working capital, and they don't have the capability to do that kind of volume. So there has to be this combination of a durable commitment over time and a durable commitment in volume over that time to give the supply chain the ability to invest in and build up the capability to do it. And so there is a volume constraint. In that way, the irony is that if you had some bigger brands join in and make that basic commitment, it doesn't have to be huge. It would be transformative to the supply chain, because you find these family-owned businesses who are disinclined to make investments into automation or innovation or engineering be more willing to say, okay, now that I've got this larger order over time, I'll invest. And I take on the ability to be more competitive and take on larger orders. So that's a long answer. But there is a bit of a scale challenge. I wouldn't say it's a limitation, but I'd say it's a challenge. Yeah, it does feel a little bit like a Catch-22 where the manufacturers don't invest in the capital to make that much because no one's asking them to, and then no one's asking them to because they don't have the ability. And it's like someone needs to just make it happen. Let's make it real for a second. So you run a dying finishing facility in the Carolinas, and you're a second or third generation family business. You employ 150 people, you've got a successful business that basically runs, you know, small to medium-sized runs every quarter or so. For you to make a decision to buy, let's say, a larger, more automated, faster drying machine to dry the fabrics that you're dying. And that machine, let's say, costs you $3,000,000. That's a massive commitment, a capital commitment, right? And so up front, and so if you're willing, you can finance that business, that piece of machinery, but it's breathtaking. If it's you and your sister and your mom running that business and you can bank with the business if you get it wrong. On the other hand, if you had a partner that said, "Listen, we're going to be here for the next two or three years and we're going to have a steady Florida man. We need 100,000 yards every two months from you." Well, then it's a different idea. Then you know that business is there, you'll invest in that dryer. It will increase your throughput, increase your quality, and you'll be able to be more competitive. That is the cash 22. And what we have found is when that you stay committed and you give that protection to the supply chain, there's a phenomenal willingness among the American workforce and the American entrepreneurial segment to say, "Yeah, we're in. We'll do that." We just need more people to step up and join in that because it provides the framework then to have the textiles industry be much more competitive. Yeah. If they get the business, then they can get the scale and they just need to take the first step. What would be your advice then to brands? Imagine I'm starting a brand today and I want to do what you did and manufacturing the US. What would you advise them to do in terms of priorities and striking up those partnerships? How would you go about it if you were starting now? Yeah. The first thing I would ask is if you're going to, it's a lot easier to go overseas with your manufacturing. And so the first question I'd ask you is why are you doing it in the States? I think there needs to be a commitment from you that you care about something. It might be environmental standards, it might be human rights issues. It may be wanting to take care of your neighbors and wanting to provide good jobs. But I think you should have that conversation first, which is this matters to me and therefore I'm making that decision. I obviously would applaud that decision if you did it, but that's the first thing. And then the second thing I think is it's all about who you know and so I would encourage people to network. Call me, call some provider you might know and say, "Hey, I'm looking to do this thing. Who does that in the States still?" And get on a plane and meet people. That's probably the number one lesson I learned in. It was just to get out from behind my desk, fly to facilities, meet people, tell them what my vision was, what I was looking for. And then we found that there was just this tremendous capacity and willingness to help. People won't work. They want to work with people that are motivated. And so I would get out, look around, get into facilities and find people that you feel like you can do business with and that have the capability that you're looking for. It's easier than you think in that regard and I think it's just a function of getting started and getting out there and seeing what's underway. Yeah, because some of these partners might not have, you know, we can do this amount of, you know, we can do this volume listed on their website or whatever, but then if you go talk to them and tell them what you're doing, you know, everything's negotiable. They can maybe work something out. Yeah, I'll also tell you that, you know, I think when you get into business with somebody to make a product that you've poured your life into, you want to know what that business is like, you want to walk that floor, you want to meet the men and the women that are doing the work, and at least I would, and that level of reassurance and understanding. And there's a wide variety of facilities, you know, some that you're very proud of doing work in and to be supporting and business with and others that you wouldn't want to be in business with. And so I think physically getting out there and seeing facilities that are they safe, are they well lit, are they the kind of place that you'd want to work, or the people smiling when they're, you know, they're getting up where they go into work and meeting the people that you're going to go work with. There's a big part, I think, of building a successful once in partnership. Yeah, and speaking of that, how often are you, are you personally kind of on the floor looking at stuff, going to talk to your partners directly? Is that a pretty big part of your? Yeah, a lot, a lot, for a whole variety of reasons, but first and foremost, it's about exactly that relationship. I mean, I'll just, I'll tell you, I'll give you sort of a silly example that I was thinking about, some of the benefits of staying domestic. A couple of years ago, we had a big production run, we had, it was a crimson fleece in its program we were running, and I got a phone call one morning, it was probably, I don't know, 6 a.m. West Coast time, from our dying plant on the East Coast, a place called Carolina Cotton Works, and our contact there called me and said, "Hey, we're seeing like a flaring in this crimson, is that what you guys are after?" I said, "Well, hang on a second, when we talked to our product team, they got in touch, they realized there was something wrong in the formulation, they changed it, fixed it, and off we went." But had that been time zones away in a different country, we wouldn't have caught it, that whole production run would have gone through. But that's a function of just getting to know one another, and having my cell phone and saying, "Oh, a buyer wants to hear about this, let me call them." So those relationships are great and important in their, I think they're unique, I think they, I've never had that experience in my manufacturing life, where I have that level of understanding and partnership where it's easy to text or pick up the phone and say, "Hey, we got a question here, we're running into this issue." So I'm in there a lot, and it's relationship building, it's having hands on product and understanding what we're making, it's making sure that we're hitting the kind of standards we care about as a brand, all those things just require being out there and walking floors. It seems like one of the... And it's fun, it's fun day too, that's the other thing, it's fun. There's something inherently good about, in my judgment, in making things, and if you have the privilege to walk a cotton field with a cotton farmer, and get inside a gin, or see your yarn being produced, or talking to your dyes and finishers, there's something really inspiring, and I feel like I've been given the biggest gift in the world to have that be my life and to be able to do that. So it's a real enjoyment, selfish part of that as well. Yeah, and it's less abstract, like we were talking about, you're closer to the product, you get your final product obviously, and so it's real in that sense, but you get to see the whole thing. And maybe a hidden benefit of manufacturing locally is just, you save on airfare, that you don't have to fly across the world to just to check something out. Well, I'll tell you, you save on that, you also save on sort of what I was alluding to earlier, that I can't tell you the number of times that I've been involved in manufacturing overseas, and something gets onto a ship before you even know there's an issue, and then you've got six weeks in transit and clearing customs, and you've got an inbound problem that you just can't deal with. And so there's a business component to that as well, that your ability to hop on a plane and be there and address things, or get things addressed much more quickly is just enhanced. And so there really is, there are benefits if you can run the business well, there are real benefits to seeing local as well, and so we're just inventory exposure. Another thing I just thought of, but I'm assuming most of your customers are in the US. Do you have any sort of international customer? Are people ordering from Europe and Asia? Yeah, we've got a pretty strong, I think anywhere you find an appreciation for quality American-made goods, what's interesting is that internationally, oddly, there's at least as much appreciation in certain countries for quality American-made as there is in the United States. I mean, places like Japan, Korea, the Nordic countries, Germany, there's a lot of deep respect and love for great American-made stuff. And so we do almost nothing to support that business. Our website is entirely US-focused, our logistics capabilities almost all focused domestically, so we don't make it easy on people that want to buy product in places like Japan and Sweden, but we've got good loyal customers in all those places. More than I would have expected, yeah. It just picks up organically. I think so, yeah, just because there's no one really doing it. And like I said, back when I was a young kid, America was the leading example in the world for quality, great value clothing. And so I think that there is that appreciation that's there, that people are looking for the modern day version of that. Yeah, so I also wanted to talk to you moving away from manufacturing a little bit about retail. You guys are, I think, primarily direct-to-consumer. Do you have a lot of wholesale partnerships at the moment? We have, as of now, none where we sell through our retail stores and our website. We'll be right back after this short break. Are you a brand in the fashion or luxury industry? The Glassy Fashion & Luxury Awards provide the opportunity to recognize your company's work with categories, including Sustainable Brand of the Year, Best Collaboration, Best Experiential Marketing Activation, and more. Don't miss the chance to be recognized alongside past winners from Good American, Skims, and Gucci. Learn more and start your entry at glossy.co/awards/fashion. But I know from talking to your team that you do have a partnership coming up soon with a big American retailer. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I can. So we talked earlier about, and one of the things that when I started the company was really important to me, is that I've always been bothered by the nature of American-made products in the marketplace today, and that we make t-shirts that are $30, $40, $50 at retail, and they're beautiful t-shirts. They're made out of really beautiful yarn, and there's a lot of care and needle that go into them. But that price point is out of reach for a lot of consumers. And I think if you're lucky enough to live in a place where you can afford those things, I think we're a great alternative. But there are many customers that we leave out of that conversation just by the nature of our price point. And as we talked about earlier, we make our products in places where so much of my passion about breathing life back into domestic manufacturing and providing good, dignified work for communities that want it and need it, and in the middle class and lower middle class rung of our economy. And yet we're producing product that oftentimes is priced too high for that consumer. And I was on a podcast a while ago talking about more broadly, but specifically is related to manufacturing, but I was speaking more broadly about it that we're just too divided as a country right now. We're too quick to blame one another, too quick to determine that the one thing I disagree with you about Dani is the only thing, and therefore I can't even connect with you on a million other things that we might totally agree on. And I just think I was sort of ranting about that and ranting about how bad I felt that was for humans and for the country and for communities. And the host asked me specifically what I was talking about, and I just said sort of off the cuff, I said, "Well, take Walmart, for example, as a retailer with whom I have much to disagree with about. They've in some ways been not the best force in, in fact, in US manufacturing over their lifetime." But they have recently, in the last 10 years, really become a growing advocate for American-made products and American-made jobs. And one of the things they've done that very few people know about is they've committed $350 billion over the next decade to purchase American-made goods, $350 billion with a B. And that's a really good thing, and that should be celebrated. And it should be acknowledged what it is, and it stands in very stark contrast with every other major retailer, whether it's Target or Amazon in the latter's case, who as far is actively lobbying to make it more and more difficult to manufacturing the United States in my judgment. And so I made that point, and that podcast made the rounds at Walmart and the person that is leading their American-made textiles initiative, which is a significant initiative reached out to us and said, "Listen, we heard your podcast. We need help on the textiles side of things. We love to talk, and I will talk to absolutely anybody that wants to talk about textiles manufacturing particularly." And in the United States. And so that began to trip out to Bentonville, and what emerged out of that over time was a discussion around how incredible it would be if we could get the volume that Walmart brings to bear, which is, as we all know, astounding the amount of volume they do, and got a commitment from in time and volume for them for some American-made products. And when you do that, a couple of remarkable things happen. When you have a partner like Walmart that has the ability to drive real volume, and it's willing to commit over time, that sends an incredible message to the supply chain as we discussed earlier. It gives a tremendous amount of faith and reliability that is really lacking in American production. And so the dialogue essentially was, "Look, we would love to do this. We need a committed partner to step up and stand next to us. Be committed over time. Not be wobbly if things don't go perfectly and commit to a volume that is going to get people the confidence to invest that they need." And so they said, "We're in. We'll do that." And it did a great credit. And so we started working over the last year on a t-shirt program that will be in store on July 4th. It's a line of four t-shirts for men and women, unisext, in four color ways, that retails for $12.98 at Walmart, which is an incredible achievement from the men and women that participated in the making of it. And it is going to be absolutely profoundly important to the supply chain as well, because it's the kind of volume that the industry desperately needs. And in my judgment begins to pose a question to the other retailers, the presidential candidates for that matter. If this is possible, if you can produce a really high quality, 100% cotton entirely made in the United States t-shirt, that retails for $12.98 at Walmart. Why isn't every other brand and retailer doing that? If no other reason, then, if you're Levi's or Wrangler or Target that you care enough to invest in American communities and jobs, why aren't the presidential candidates doing it? Why isn't Trump, who's over here yapping and Biden is over here yapping about the importance of American jobs? Why are they sourcing t-shirts from overseas when it can be done domestically like that? So I'm really proud of it. I think it's obviously, I think the challenge for us was to produce a high quality garment at every price point that we participate in. It was very important to me to be as the American giant brand into the Walmart stores and stand behind that quality at $12.98. It's obviously a different t-shirt than what we make in the inline stuff that we sell through our website and stuff, but I'm incredibly proud of it. And I'll just say that disagreements with Walmart notwithstanding, they were and have been phenomenal partners through this process and I think are really committed to a basic idea that I value. Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to kind of what we were talking about earlier with scale where, you know, they've got an immense amount of scale and then that scale allows them the commitment that brands like you and the manufacturers that you work with need to be able to invest if you're guaranteed. Yeah, I think, Danny, from my perspective, I think it really comes down to a conversation about what do you care about, you know, and in my mind anyway, I care really deeply about American workers. I think jobs are really important. I think they stabilize communities, they stabilize families, they give people purpose. There's a whole bunch of people in this country that are not going to become Google engineers and they need good viable jobs and urban centers and rural centers. And those jobs have gone away in many cases, and middle-class wages have not moved for 35 years. And I care a lot about that. I think it's a really important thing nationally. And so, you know, as I said earlier, I think finding partners that are willing to commit in common cause with you towards a goal is something we have to do more as a country. We have to kind of be coming together more and finding common purpose with people. And so, and to your point, that volume, it is true in textiles. It's also true just in manufacturing in general. When you have committed partners stepping up and saying, "We're not going anywhere. We're going to be here for a while," just changes the industry in a really important, profound way and puts America back on a course to be competitive again, even in textiles. Even in textiles. And that's just exciting. Yeah. I think it goes across a lot of different sectors, but when things are not tenuous, then you can be more confident. You can make bolder steps. If it's not, you're not worried that this is going to be taken away next week or something. 100%. 100%. So, I alluded to this at the beginning. I just came back from the glossy summit in Miami, and we talked to a lot of brands there. Excuse me. We talked to a lot of brands there who are especially from smaller brands or newer brands. And one of the main questions a lot of them had was, "How do they work with a big retailer like Walmart or Nordstrom or Saks or Target, whoever?" And not kind of be led astray from whatever. Yeah. Not get swallowed up. Not get led astray from their values. Obviously, this partnership with Walmart was built on that specific value, so maybe that wasn't a danger. But do you have any thoughts on how you work with a big retailer and not kind of, like you said, get swallowed up? Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great question. And not that I have the answer to that. But I think it does come down to really, and you left Amazon off the list, but maybe Amazon's the most looming, most difficult version of that. I mean, I think we don't sell through Amazon, don't have any plans to. Because I think for that reason, we're very, very difficult to maintain your brand integrity. I do think that if you are a mission-driven business and you're found common cause to retail, it's easier. I think in our case, we're partnering with Walmart for a simple reason, right? It's that it advances our core mission as a brand in a very fundamental way. And so I think it's a really symbiotic partnership in that regard. I would, transparently, if I was just a brand, I would be very reluctant to go into any of the retailers today. When I was coming up, there's been this sort of interesting bifurcation in American retail in my lifetime between, you used to have a very robust network. I'll talk about apparel specifically right now, a really robust network of independent retailers. You'd go into cities all across the country and there'd be, you know, Sarah's, you know, haberdashery, or whatever it was. And then a series of regional players where you'd have regional retailers that would have five, ten, fifteen stores. And then you had the national guys. Now it's all either huge retailers or really struggling independence. And there's kind of nothing in between. And those large retailers are hard to work with. They're hard to maintain store integrity, product integrity, staff education, brand independence. So I don't have a lot of advice there. I think you had to build a really strong brand that customers really care about and can withstand on its own the risks of being in a large, large retailer that is maybe not as concerned about your brand's integrity as you are. So it's difficult today, I think. Yeah, no, I think you're right. There's a lot of challenges in doing it. I think the thing that I hear from brands about why they do still want to sell in a big retailer is just visibility. You know, if you get your product on the shelf at a big department store or something, that can do a lot. But you guys obviously grew a lot without doing that, it kind of ties into marketing a little bit. But what was your approach for sort of getting people to know the name of American Giant and you have a strong pitch for the brand that all American made? I think that's a strong identity. How did you kind of raise awareness and kind of message around the brand early days and now? Through tons of mistakes, trying a million things and getting one minus a million wrong. And I mean that kind of literally, I think the real answer has been 13 years of banging the drum about our core focus. That's the real answer and you just mentioned it. It's like we have an identity, we have a mission, we're super focused on it. I don't want to be totally ridiculous about it, but we don't care if we grow this year or don't or shrink this year or stay flat. We don't care about, we care really about advancing the mission. And so when you have that kind of clarity of purpose and that destination in mind, it clarifies your messaging to the out of world and press and podcasting and media have been an incredibly important part of that. And so journalists that care that are interested about writing have been our secret weapon, have been people that are writing about and talking about what's happening in the peril. The crazy thing, Danny, as you well know, the apparel business is a dirty business. It's a really dirty business. And no one wants to talk about that. We are beginning to more and more. But the amount of waste, the conditions that people are working in, it's not good. And we have this very strange, in my judgment, this very strange, imbalanced as Americans. On the one hand, we have all these core values we really care about. We care about environmental protections. We have laws in place to protect the environment. We care about human rights. We have very strong laws in place of human rights. We care about minimum wage. We care about health care. We care about worker safety. We've OSHA and the EPA exist for a reason. And yet, so we hold all of our producers that make product within those very important constraints domestically. We hold them to that standard as we should. At the same time, we create trade deals that allow and in fact incentivize big brands to ignore all of those values we care about and chase production to places where they can skirt those values and chase cheap at any means. And that, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but that's effed up, Danny. And that's fucked up. It's really fucked up. And it is at once punishing factories domestically that are trying to do the right thing. They're living by really good and important standards. And it's enriching really big brands that have no business doing that in my judgment. And that's a story that needs to get written. Thankfully, there's a bunch of journalists like you that care, that want to look about it, talk about it. So that has been the thing for us, is that we've tried Facebook marketing and podcast ads and a slew of other things. And a lot of them work and a lot of them don't. And we, you know, you sort of poke around and try to learn a little bit about where you can live as a brand. And it's taken us a long time, but we now have a rhythm of how to do that well and in a financially sane way. But the real thing has been singular focus on why we exist and talking to anybody that we can about that whenever we can and trying to be as loud about as we can. And some set of customers out there care enough that they start to get loyal to the brand and understand what we're trying to do and want to be a part of it. Yeah, cool. Okay. Last thing I want to ask you about is going back a little bit to price. You know, price and scale are obviously interlinked. I also wanted to ask you feel that there's obviously pressure on the consumer. You talked about how wages have pretty much stagnated for 35 years. Meanwhile, I can tell you by experience that rent in New York City has not stagnated. The rent prices in New York keep on going up, which I can absolutely attest to. Do you feel like there's a pressure obviously on a consumer, but also do you think on brands to kind of lower their prices? I think you mentioned she and earlier, maybe that was before we started recording, but I think the rise of she and I think has, you know, when you can buy a shirt for literally $1 or something, you know, that also kind of changes the whole landscape a little bit. I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit more about price and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think that value is a, there's value at every price point, right? And I think, obviously, I think what she is doing is just horrific. But there's value at a dollar t-shirt, obviously, right? Not great quality, maybe not consistent with your values, but it's a dollar. And all the way up to t-shirts that you can find for $140, $150 from fashion brands. There are consumers at every one of those levels that are going to determine that value interchange is at the right place for them. So do I think there's pressure to move down market? I think it totally depends on the brand. I think if you are a premium brand, no. I think there's still plenty of energy and excitement at the high end of the spectrum. And there's obviously lots of volume at the $12.98 and the $1 range of the value paradigm. As a broad comment, I think there has been over the last couple of years, there's been pressure on the premium side. I think that people that are in premium apparel have been 23 and 24 and rough years for them, but that's a temporary thing, I think. So I don't think so particularly, I think it's really about figuring out where you as a brand need to exist and what your value proposition is with your customer. And just making sure you're communicating that well. I think that you will go through ebbs and flows. I think when different segments of the market are under pressure. And I think that the pandemic was kind of rocking and rolling for apparel. And then I think the last couple of years it's been soft and I think it's recovering now. And so as long as you can ride those waves, I think it's not. I don't think there's some macro thing about people having to really look hard about price point reduction. That's my two cents anyway. No, I think that makes sense. Last thing just on that is, can you talk at all about margins and how that changes by price point? For the 1298T shirt, did you have to shave margins off at all or do you get the same level from all your different price points kind of? Yeah, well I mean margins tricky. I think in our business, we tend to try to look at margin broadly. And so there will be some, for example, and this is all very specific to us. In the American supply chain, there is still a very robust knitwear capacity. So t-shirts and sweatshirts are, you can make phenomenal t-shirts and sweatshirts in the United States still. And the southeastern United States in some ways is still the knitwear capital of the world. There's really a robust capability there. Wovens are much harder. So woven shirts, woven pants, much harder to do domestically, both in the fabric, production side and the needle, both sides of it. So for example, we take a lower margin on our wovens than we do on our knits. So just because we can't, the domestic capability is not there. Another great example, by the way, of where if you could start to push real volume into wovens, that would change overnight. But right now, there's not that capacity. And when you consider margin, it's really an intersection of how efficient can we make. What does the product and the customer require for this to be a good value proposition for him or her? And so in the Walmart example, volume obviously helps. If you've got committed demand over a period of time, you can take a little margin. If you are doing a very small production run, I would argue you can if you're going to make 200 jackets because you're a startup and trying to make it. And I think you have to maintain your margin integrity. And so it just depends. We try to do it as a macro way. So when we went into the Walmart discussions, which was a long time in the development of that, it really was a discussion about how long is this partnership? How many units are we talking about that are committed? How many are not committed but are potential in the future? What's possible in the supply chain all the way through? Because I think that was one of the things that was challenging about it. It was having to manage the component parts of the supply chain to produce the product. How can we do it? How much efficiencies can we gain by the volume? And then land and an economic relationship that made sense for us, for them, and for the consumer? Yeah. Cool. Okay. Final question broadly. Aside from the Walmart partnership, what's your big priority for the rest of the year? Is there a project or maybe just a general kind of topic that you feel like you're really focused on? Yeah. What we're really, and I'm just incredibly excited about, is we have some phenomenal fleece and knits coming over the next six months. And that really is a function of going back into our supply chain. And I think we focus a huge amount of energy, Danny, on trying to build really beautiful fabrics. That's kind of the foundation of all that we do. And we just have some unbelievable sweatshirts, fleece dresses, fleece shawls, t-shirts coming over the next six months that I'm just thrilled about. And it just feels like, you know, this is just us or we're all leaving the industry. I sort of feel like we've been coming out of this pure dormancy post-pandemic, and it is all the engines are going now. And so we just got the inbound product over the next six months. It's just great. It's great looking. The fabrics are unbelievable. The colors are unbelievable. And so I'm really excited to see that start hitting the market. And that'll begin in August, but run all the way through the end of the year. So I'm totally fired up about that. I'm excited to see it inspired. Thank you so much for being here. This was a great conversation. Thank you for sharing all of your insights into kind of how you built the brand and everything you're working on. It was really very valuable. Thanks for having me, and thanks for covering this kind of stuff. I appreciate it. And for those of you listening, don't forget to give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Wherever you listen to this because that helps us out so much. Don't forget to subscribe to the Glossy Podcast because you'll hear interviews with industry insiders like Byard every Wednesday. And I host a week interview episodes every Friday. Until then, thank you all for listening. [Music]
