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technology, disruption in supply chain, distribution, those things is what makes brands happen.
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What is behind changes like that once she showed me aesthetically what she wanted to create, I couldn't get that out of my head. I just couldn't.
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I have to really watch it so we don't become a victim of our own success.
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It's not the whole cake, but it's it's the biggest part of the cake.
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[Music] I have to start with the name of your holding company which is popular culture which I think is the coolest name for holding company I've encountered and demands the opening question what trends in popular culture do you think are the most interesting today?
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Well, first of all, thank you.
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Um, I have always wanted to have a really cool name. Mission accomplished.
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And you're probably the first person who's commented on it.
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So, 15 years later, I finally got that recognition I was I was looking for. So, I appreciate it. You got it.
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I named my my company Popular Culture because I'm a real child of the of the ' 90s pop culture.
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You know, growing up in Sweden and you partly grew up in Minnesota, so you know the feeling what it's like in January to ride your bikes to your friend's house and I would ride my bike to my friend's house to watch Beverly Hills 90210 and Baywatch and you know we would sit there, you know, and and eat chips and just can you can you know could you imagine yourself living like that?
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Could you imagine yourself being at the peach pit?
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I was like a real child of the '9s. Yeah.
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Pop culture and skateboard scene and music.
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And I've always been obsessed with it.
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And as I got older, I would say the red thread in my career has been the ability to to work in the intersection of pop culture and commerce.
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first through my first chapter on behalf of my clients and later on in life as as an entrepreneur and as an investor, I have believed that pop culture today is really the only hack to the consumer economy that we have.
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And um so for me that was it it it was the obvious name because that's what I do.
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When you say hack when you say hack to the consumer does that mean the means through which to reach them and build something for them and make sure that they know about it.
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There's really hard to reach a critical mass of consumers today.
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If someone gave you and me a billion dollars to start a vodka company, we can call it winter warmth.
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And we spent that on TV and billboards and on meta, we wouldn't have half the brand recognition that Dwayne the Rock Johnson have for his tequila company, Tamana.
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So you tell me what's the value of Dwayne Johnson?
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It's a billion dollars or is it five?
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So it's really the only way today that you can reach a critical mass of US consumers.
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Not just building awareness, but building a sense of um knowing what the company stands for and what the brand's trying to do is is is is for personality and it is for culture.
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And I think today as we're living through we've or we have lived through a fragmentation of media, right?
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The fragmentation of media.
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My social media feed looks entirely different from yours and entirely different from my wives.
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We are consuming different news from each other and often um very different opinions uh from one another.
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If I'm into fly fishing, I can live in a fly fishing world where fly fishing is the most important thing in the world.
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I can watch fly fishing shows and engage with other fly fishermanmen.
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And uh I truly believe that fly fishing runs the universe.
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Um so the only two things that cuts across really is pop culture and sport.
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And I put sport kind of in the culture bracket.
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It's sport and culture is the only two things that generally tend to cross all those boundaries in society today being um political, racial, religious boundaries that society has drawn up and I think in many cases the algorithms have um strengthened.
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Can you talk about the difference between the role of individuals versus institutions today versus say the '9s when you developed your interest in pop culture?
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It seems like that change has been seismic and and really important for businesses.
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I don't know if the consumer makes as much of a distinction today as we used to.
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When we grew up, a singer was a singer, an actor was an actor, a brand was a brand.
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Um, a soda maker was a soda maker, a clothing company was a clothing company.
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And brands and individuals had very little agency to move past what the consumers the box the consumer had put them in or that they had you know themselves worked within.
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Um there was just very little room.
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I think we made a high distinction between a corporation and an individual.
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My sense is if you ask a 20-year-old today, they make very few of those distinctions.
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Not only can you be a wrestler who becomes the world's biggest movie star, a phenomenal entrepreneur, the lines between these disciplines or um they have been entirely blurred out.
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Ryan Reynolds is a movie star is also the founder of a mobile phone network. That's bizarre.
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I don't think that's would have been the case 20 years ago or even 10, the consumer don't really mind.
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Um in fact I think in a world where we have a distrust generally for authority and a distrust um where truth is somewhat debatable.
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The importance of an individual and the voice of an individual has probably never been higher.
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M I think we see that from the business I'm in all the way to the Oval Office.
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Having a strong voice in culture today translates into a strong voice in consumer but also a strong voice in politics.
7:33
I want to stick with culture for a moment and ask what you think drives the major changes like you and I have talked before about uh the change from hiphop to country as like a big theme of changing culture in the US and around the world.
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What is behind changes like that?
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Is it people that drive it?
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Is it confluence of forces?
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Like what is the input data that you watch to figure out how things are changing and why?
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Everything we have around us is a reaction and a counter reaction.
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I don't think that just goes for music.
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I think the current political climate is a clear counter reaction to the previous four years.
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That was a reaction to the previous four years.
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I think the same thing is true for um pop culture.
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What I'm seeing quite interestingly where pop culture used to be more contrarian to the establishment like the '9s was about being contrarian to the establishment.
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It wouldn't matter if it is nirvana or public enemy. Okay.
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The establishment in the name. Yeah.
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This the the the establishment was was somewhat the enemy of the young.
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Today we live in a time where I see pop culture moving more in lock step with the establishment and let's say where the kind of wind is blowing um dare I say politically but just in terms of what we put first in a world today that we most people really consider quite quite threatening, scary, uncertain.
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I just watched the movie Mountain Head. I heard about it.
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I haven't watched it yet. It's worth a watch.
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It's a good satire and uh it's clear he spent some time um with the stereotypical billionaire master of the universe gods of tech.
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I think that movie, however exaggerated it is and how much it it prays on our fear about the future, um, but that's how people feel and that's nothing new.
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I go back to Stanley Cubri's Dr.
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Strange Love, which was about, of course, the prospect of a uh nuclear war, which really, if you ask your grandparents, defined their lives.
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Yeah, their whole life these kind of consequential moments that we are now experiencing, they experienced and I would say they were probably more intense.
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I mean like the Cuba missile crisis.
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It's a highly intense moment than and the struggle between um the political philosophy of of the of of the of of Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
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Um, but that's a that's a long-winded way to say that today I see culture moving with politics.
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So, in a America first agenda, we're seeing and uh in a time of of technological disruption and uncertainty, we are clamoring to those things um that makes us feel good. What makes us feel good?
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Olive Garden, country music, Applebee's is booming.
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You know, Banana Republic is having the best year in probably decades. Abbercomian Fitch. Abbercomian and Fitch.
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Somehow Back from the dead. Exactly. Right.
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We recently did a diner in LA.
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We called it the Skiims Diner.
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We took over a classic, you know, drive-in diner and we um transformed it into a ski experience, but you know, it's big root, you know, uh root beer floats and waffle stacks high.
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And and we in 5 minutes, I think we booked this place out for 10 days from morning to 3:00 in the morning. Like from from 8:00 a. m. to 3:00 a. m.
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Every table went in four or five minutes.
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I mean, people were lining up for any spare seats all around the block and um it's just that feeling of comfort.
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You ask any 12 12y old or 14year-old today, what's your favorite TV show?
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You'd be surprised how many people say friends.
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They just they they you know they're just clamoring for that less threatening warm nostalgia that um those shows and those experience um gives you.
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I really think that it's the techn technological changes and the uncertainty about the future that is is driving this pop culture that has driven this pop culture moment that's really if you think about it has moved more from futurism to nostalgia.
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So interesting futurism we haven't really seen for for for quite some time.
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We're not hopeful about the future quite as much as we used to be.
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But if you and I'll make a reference to diners right now.
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I'm obsessed with diners because again I'm a disciple of popular culture.
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So I'm listening to country myself.
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I've had Morgan Wallen in the car on my way here.
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Um but I love diners because diners is one of the few things that now they're retro, right?
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But they weren't a restaurant concept that was born out of nostalgia like Italian food.
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Diners were hyper modern modernist structures, you know.
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Um they were all about the future.
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They were it was in an era where cars were inspired by, you know, the space race.
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They were inspired by rockets.
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And it was all about this promise of what tomorrow had for us.
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And we were certain that this generation was going to be so much greater off than the generation that had lived through through the Second World War.
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And I think today generally we are fearful of the future rather than optimistic.
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I think we should be optimistic about the future.
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Winston Churchill talking about people that lived through the war, he once said, "I'm an optimist because I see little use to be being anything else.
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And um I'm definitely an optimist.
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How do we flip back into that mode?
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Like I'm one that wishes the pervasive cultural vibe was optimism about the future and futurism.
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And we're at a we're in a time right now when say compared to 5 years ago.
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There is way more interesting technological platform explosion happening than there was even 5 years ago.
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So it would seem like there's more to imagine that we might be able to build and and do that's good for everybody.
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But at the same time, this shift is happening.
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So what what do you think of that?
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Well, you are a beneficiary of it. Sure. Right.
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This podcast and the people that you speak to and the community that you are a part of, you're at the you're on the tip of the spear, right?
15:16
You're the beneficiary of it.
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this format that um that I have the pleasure today to um to take part of um didn't exist in its form, you know, a decade ago.
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It certainly wouldn't have provided a fantastic living.
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Today, you're a beneficiary of the creator economy.
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you're a beneficiary of um uh of the insight that you probably have as a result of of of your network and your community and can position yourself for it.
15:51
So for you the future is exciting but for you know a large part of our country they are not and perhaps we need to do a better job at bringing them along or or for them to really seeing you know the the benefits and I'm not so sure the benefits is it's an app with a new feature you know the benefits It's needs to be more profound than that.
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In what ways is if you if the transition has been kind of from hip-hop to country in music, what else goes in that bundle of hip-hop like related cultural touchston with hip-hop and why are those like you touched on the comfort and nostalgia being why the the the new cultural touchston have worked.
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What about the ones we've transitioned away from work less well?
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Well, I think in the I think it's reflected in sports, too.
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I remember was it eight years ago, 10 years ago?
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I'm I'm I'm I'm freestyling a little bit, but remember when there was a lot of talk about CTE? Yeah.
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And you know, parents doomed.
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I'm not so sure parents, all parents still want their kids to play football, but it was really a conversation and there was this feeling that the NFL was somewhat in trouble.
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Was NFL going to go the way of boxing?
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today that feels laughable because NFL owns sports in this country.
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NFL is the biggest sports league in the country and college football is the second largest you know sport in viewership numbers in this country far ahead of of basketball for example.
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So to me it seems pretty consistent right?
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football, Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Olive Garden, Chili's has been in the news recently. They're killing it.
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You know, we all want sliders.
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And, you know, to me, that's just very it's a very consistent cultural mu uh movement that is lining up with the overarching feeling of society in uh which is of course more protectionist than it's been, you know, in the past.
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And it's probably a counterreaction um to globalism which much like technology did not work for everybody.
18:20
Speaking of cyclicality, the Abberian Fitch story for some reason is just fascinating to me that this was this very fallen brand that defined your and my kind of upbringing but then went the wrong way and somehow has been resurgent.
18:37
Tell me about what you think learning about that story or watching that story and I'm curious in general what other sort of fallen brands might be able to make a comeback and and how through learning from the story like that one or Banana Republic or others.
18:50
Oh, I love this question.
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I love it because it will lead me into something I really want to talk about. Why big wins? Yeah. in this era.
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I really I must have told anybody who wanted to listen five years ago to buy Abocrombi.
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I think it was worth 700 or $800 million at the time.
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I think there's a big difference between a what consumers care about and a consumer story and what is a Wall Street financial press story.
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Ironically, they don't seem to impact one another very much.
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If you asked consumers about Abocrombi, I think they were going through a very tough time.
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Abocrombie the founder was in all sorts of all sorts of trouble.
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He was in all sorts of trouble.
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But if you ask a 20s something consumer, if that would have impacted their purchasing behavior, common sense would say it would, but I never see it do.
20:06
Victoria's Secret is is right up there too, right?
20:08
Um, they had an Epstein connection because the founder, Les Vexner, had one.
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They had totally lost that kind of connectivity with the customer.
20:18
Their fashion shows felt outdated.
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The way that they um portrayed women felt outdated.
20:25
The whole concept in the early 2020s felt just really out of step with our times.
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And everybody said, "It's over. It's not over.
20:39
They're doing just fine."
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Now the street are still working on the thesis of that story from 2020.
20:48
Nothing has shifted Wall Street's views of Victoria Secrets.
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But the consumers, go to any mall in America and you see early 20somes with a Sephora bag, which is a darling, you know, from a financial press point of view, and a Victoria Secret bag.
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they are unaffected about.
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So sometimes I think we we um we tend we tend to overanalyze a little bit and think that things really matters to customers that don't really matters to customers.
21:26
You know we know that Coke isn't great for us to drink with every meal but Coca-Cola seems to be doing just fine.
21:34
If you think about this idea of why big wins, what do these brands and these trends teach you?
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and and what's the core idea?
21:42
I think big wins and I think big will increasingly win.
21:47
This is the time for so many different reasons.
21:50
Uh one going back to what we spoke about which is you know popular culture being one of the only hacks in consumer economy.
22:00
It's because to do business today.
22:02
So, first going back, we have been in an era of brand creation with Shopify and other tools make it incredibly easy to start a business and through Meta and other platforms very easy to find an audience that cared about what you were doing.
22:22
Today the algorithm is not favoring uh loyalty.
22:29
It's not it's not as you know not favoring necessarily who you followed two years ago or 5 years ago.
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It favors who you recently followed.
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It favors what you're talking about over breakfast with your partner.
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It favors things that you have engaged with that you clicked on.
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maybe something a friend sent to you and you watched it three times and now you're getting, you know, served tons of lookalike content.
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It does not favor brands making content.
23:05
It's not putting that in front um of its followers.
23:08
I mean, I don't know how many people you follow. Maybe I follow 1,200.
23:13
Do I see content from more than 200 of those? Never. I don't. Right.
23:16
Sometimes I think, "Oh my god, I haven't seen something for so long. Did they stop posting?" Of course they didn't. It just moved past me. Just didn't favor it.
23:25
So, as we went from, you know, a social media to really an interestbased algorithm, let's say, that was pretty devastating for young brands.
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It was very very hard all of a sudden to build a community on social the way that five years ago, six or even I would I say eight, nine years ago was very possible.
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Skims were one of the few larger brands that was able to build a community through social and get to a critical scale where we could pay our way.
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But today you have to pay to play if you want to be seen.
24:14
The other part is distribution.
24:17
I've seen postcoid you know in in shopping has really returned to 2019 levels.
24:22
In the end of the day it's 80% a physical store business and 20% an e-commerce business today.
24:31
Um just generally in America.
24:38
So people ask me, why do you want to open so many stores?
24:40
And I said, I don't want to be the 20% business.
24:42
I want to be in the 80% business.
24:46
But opening stores is incredibly expensive.
24:51
And it it's it's very capital, you know, it it consumes a lot of capital to build stores.
24:58
So again, if you and I was trying to start a retailer, we would really struggle to find the financing and being able to open a lo a good location, a nice store in a good location. It's just unaffordable.
25:14
So big wins, especially large retailers, large restaurant chains with a big footprint.
25:25
It it it's almost impossible today to to recreate.
25:31
It's the perfect time to talk about how you broke through.
25:34
So, how Skins, which is what, 5 years old?
25:36
It's not It's not terribly. Yeah.
25:38
Coming up to six in September. Yes. Almost six.
25:39
But you're extremely young business. Kindergarten age. Kindergarten age.
25:43
And yet you've broken through this difficult landscape.
25:48
So just tell us the entire origin story of how whether or not that's the model for if you were an entrepreneur sitting here today with a blank sheet of paper what from the skim story could be borrowed and applied again productively to breakthrough.
26:01
I have a distinct feeling that if I tried to do it again, I wouldn't be successful today.
26:10
When it comes to, for the lack of better word, disruption in consumer and especially retail is more connected to changes in uh supply chain than uh and consumer taste. than the brand itself.
26:32
It's not that a brand comes along and then the world shifts or mobilizes it around the brand.
26:43
It's far more common that the um changes are happening and the brand is in the right place at the right time.
26:53
you know, um they say luck is when opportunity meets preparation, and I think that's true.
27:03
Timing is just one of those things that are beyond our control somewhat.
27:10
I ultimately have to believe that and I'm going to go into it the the the way we make product the the strength of what we do the value proposition that we offer our way to market would ultimately have had the same result but I very much doubt it would have been on the same timeline and going back for history and I'll I'll I'll get into why this was the right moment.
27:43
I hopefully I'm not too longwinded. No, bring it about this.
27:45
I like the long versions.
27:49
So, Les Wexner, who is uh one of the kind of godfathers of American retail, created for those who don't know, and why would they uh Victoria Secret, Bath and Body, Express, Abberrombi, um the crazy Yeah. Hollister. Um, and more and more.
28:10
Was it the brands he created or was it No, the the it was the fact that it coincided with malls being built in the 80s all across America and all these great malls in Minnesota.
28:29
You have uh Mall of America.
28:31
The Mall of America for example, very biggest one.
28:32
There's a lot of storefronts.
28:36
These malls needed fresh concepts for their customers and less understood this opportunity and created and bought companies and developed these concepts that he could replicate time over time over time with favorable economics in all of the malls that was built in America. He's a genius of retail.
29:08
I'm just saying none of those retailers would be around if it hadn't been for the expansion of the American mall.
29:22
If you're into luxury, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karen, George Armani, Versace, Gucci, Dolabana, I can go on.
29:36
All happened within the same five years.
29:40
Some of them might have been started slightly earlier but they but it was a distinct period of time where they grew where they expanded and that's directly linked to Sachs and Neiman Marcus and Barnes because these designers were able to sell their goods and finance the goods for something called factoring where you get the money before you sell before you get your invoice paid.
30:10
creating a positive cash flow which is why someone like George Armani still owns 100% of his business that could not be replicated today.
30:18
It was a unique situation and a unique financing model that led them to be able to retain the full ownership and scale their companies to a critical size.
30:34
2008 after in the aftermath of the financial crisis, people wanted designer values, but they wanted to pay less for them.
30:43
Well, enter Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Dragon Bone, the expansion of Coach, and all of these companies that today makes five five billion, 10 billion, 15 billion dollar businesses.
30:59
There was a change in consumer taste.
31:04
And that's kind of well documented.
31:04
What no one talks about is, and maybe you remember this, do you remember all the diffusion lines, DNG? Not really.
31:11
So designers used to make harmonic change. Oh yeah, sure. I remember that one.
31:19
All this kind of like diffusion lines.
31:21
And it was like only a couple of companies behind it and they went bust.
31:25
So all of a sudden all over the world there was all this floor space for these lower price designer goods again the growth of those businesses and this change in distribution they all coincide.
31:38
So in America we had uh the J C Penies and the gap and they were disrupted by the Europeans like in the text that owns Sara and H&M they had a better supply chain.
31:53
They were able to get trend at the lower price to the American customer faster. Faster. Yeah. What is Shien?
32:01
It's an even more efficient model.
32:01
It's a supply chain and software company that is masquerading as a retailer.
32:08
They found an even more efficient way to make and supply trends at an even lower price.
32:17
technology disruption in supply chain uh distribution those things is what makes brands happen you know and with skims it was a combination of a few things.
32:32
So one I saw this very large part in retail um in in underwear and lounge.
32:40
I saw that people were changing the way that they dressed not just on weekends but life was becoming kind of two distinct wardrobes. One that is very soft.
32:53
I'm not sure if you wear Vari.
32:56
Of course it's a great brand. Great brand.
32:58
Um, and I'm sure when you come home tonight, I'm gonna change into it. There you go.
33:03
So, you have two wardrobes, right?
33:05
And you will have one at home and you had one out and or one at work and the one at home started spilling in over your life.
33:13
So, that's one thing that's happening.
33:14
Consumer taste is changing.
33:18
Incumbents had gotten stale, discount driven.
33:24
Um, they weren't leading with innovation anymore.
33:26
It was multiacks and even though it was cheap, we were paying a lot for not very much.
33:33
So I saw the opportunity to really lead through um through innovation in the supply chain and built a business really based on fabrication because what you love about Vori is the way you feel.
33:50
It's the feel as you're wearing the product, right?
33:57
The way the fabric will feel to skin.
33:59
I'm getting a little scientific on this. Please do.
34:02
But I'm getting to a point, which is that is just as powerful as the difference in taste between Coke and Pepsi.
34:14
Cuz if you buy something that's not vary, I promise you, you'll feel the difference cuz you know exactly how Vir is meant to feel.
34:24
Well, that's the Coke and Pepsi challenge.
34:27
It's it's distinct is a it's a distinct sensory experience like the first sip of Starbucks feels a certain way, the first sip feeling.
34:41
So I saw the opportunity to create that in this category, you know, in the beginning primarily for women and now of course for everybody and really bring out a company that was a better alternative.
34:59
It might been, you know, slightly more expensive but still affordable.
35:04
I think about Starbucks a lot when I do these things.
35:09
I think Starbucks uh to me is is is is just a phenomenal innovation company.
35:14
Many of the things we take for granted like a Frappuccino or pumpkin spice latte or Starbucks inventions and they're incredible at building these franchises.
35:25
What they've done in the last couple of years with refreshers is it's it's incredibly powerful.
35:32
And I took that same I took that analogy to my company and I said I want to be I want to be the Starbucks.
35:40
And the lesson there is the adaptability the driving of franchises within the bigger brand. What what specifically?
35:48
It's about doing something that is worth the extra bit of money it costs because I'm sure you have coffee. You have coffee here.
35:55
Maybe if I really asked if I asked could I have a cup of coffee?
35:58
You you might have coffee here.
36:01
I would get that for free.
36:01
In fact, every office building in America has free coffee.
36:05
My office has free coffee. Pretty good ones, too. Yeah.
36:08
But I still think the Starbucks is worth my $550 or $6, right?
36:14
So, it's at a premium, but it's still available to me.
36:19
It's still affordable, and I believe that the quality difference is worth the difference in price.
36:27
And that's a philosophy that I think runs like a red thread through all of my thinking.
36:34
How do I make just a phenomenal experience for what you're paying?
36:40
I'm less focused on the price more than what I'm more focused on what you get for your money.
36:46
Can you talk about this concept of house taste and how it is developed over time and how that relates to the like the feeling the first sip feeling the feeling on the skin of the wari like the distinctive thing sensory experience or whatever that a consumer brand allows
37:02
for and how that relates to taste and I'm fascinated by this topic house taste is a is a is a is a dangerous dangerous thing it's a dangerous thing I collect wine I love wine every winery I go to they truly believe that their wine is the best in the world. Of
37:18
Of course, why do they believe that?
37:20
They often have worked there for 10 years, 20 years.
37:25
So, they drink a lot of their own wine.
37:27
And safe to say, they've developed the wine that is perfect for their pallet.
37:34
Therefore, they truly believe their wine is the best in the world because every other wine they try will not taste as good as the one they make.
37:46
House taste is therefore a dangerous concept for any company.
37:48
You shouldn't get high on your own supply and you you certainly shouldn't get too in love with what you're doing.
37:56
It happens pretty easily and I see it with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of founders.
38:04
They are really in love with their own product and they spend a lot of time convincing or wanting to convince everyone they meet why their product is the best in the world rather than letting people tell them what they think about what they make.
38:19
And um I was aware of this.
38:23
So what we did out of the gate was just really creating a a very strong feedback loop with our own community and not losing oursel necessarily in in in in our own in our own house taste.
38:41
The consumer is is is the customer is always right.
38:48
What was the mechanism for that?
38:49
Like how did you actually build that feedback loop really for social some of it you can you know do through process and that's good but you know culture eats process and just the culture of a company that is open to outside feedback I think that has to come from the top if I'm open to feedback you will be open to feedback and and and down the reporting line it will go.
39:19
And assuming that if you if a customer feels a certain way, it's warranted because they feel a certain way.
39:30
We talked a little bit about the conditions that made SKIMS possible.
39:34
The supply chain, the technology, you mentioned sheen, which I think has like 10 times better in, you know, unsold inventory performance than like the next most relevant.
39:42
So, the business is much better and not getting sucked in by house taste like this positive feedback.
39:47
I'd love to talk about the other side of the equation, which is the brilliant partnership with Kim, how it was established.
39:52
The phrase I've heard before is the king that became a kingmaker, which which were or queen that became a queen maker.
40:00
Um, I want to talk about the origins of this relationship.
40:03
Maybe even going back to like the first conversation you can remember having about this idea and just like tell us that story to begin.
40:12
The whole process was very organic.
40:16
I've had the pleasure of being, you know, um, part of a few startups through my life.
40:21
And when it's at its best, it happens organically.
40:26
And when it too contrived or you're trying to like force a good idea, like what should we do?
40:31
Um, it tends not to work out quite so well.
40:34
She wanted I mean, she really had a point of view, an aesthetic point of view on what she wanted to make.
40:43
And I had a point of view of what was missing from this category from a price position innovation piece.
40:55
From her point of view, very much aesthetically driven certain solutions and things that just wasn't available in the market that she wanted to bring to market.
41:08
And through a series of conversation, we just ended up in a place where we were just doing it.
41:17
I don't I don't know if there was ever like let's do this thing.
41:23
It was more like, oh, we're we're definitely doing this thing.
41:28
When you're an entrepreneur, it's not that you want to do something.
41:29
It's that you cannot not do something.
41:32
You can't leave it alone.
41:35
You wake up and you just you cannot leave it alone.
41:36
And once she showed me aesthetically what she wanted to create, I couldn't get that out of my head. I just couldn't.
41:47
So, you know, I had kind of finished the previous chapter.
41:51
I had sold my businesses.
41:56
I was, you know, in my late 30s, semi-retired.
42:04
And uh and you know I had been walking around for for maybe a year, two years.
42:10
I was I was still the chairman of a group within Omnicom at the time.
42:12
And um I was really trying to search for it, you know, search for it, you know, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?
42:22
And then once I saw what she had in mind, there was no question about what I was going to do.
42:28
This is what I had to do. What was it like? What was it? A specific feature? Was it a look? Like it was a world. It was a world.
42:36
It was just stepping into a world that no one else owned aesthetically.
42:42
I spent my whole life talking in these terms.
42:44
So I understand it might seem very clear to me when I say that expression and less clear to others what I mean with stepping into a world.
42:56
Um when you go into Ralph Lauren, you're in Ralph Lauren's world.
42:59
It's very clear where you are, right?
43:02
You could take all the signs off the walls and you know where you are.
43:07
And when I saw aesthetically what she wanted to do, it was just instantly identifiable, distinctive, so distinctive.
43:21
Just the look, it was just so distinctive.
43:23
the world, the the the the the color world, the architecture, the um attitude towards uh women.
43:31
Um how to lift people up kind of.
43:39
It was inclusive without ever having to say the word inclusive. It wasn't a decision. It just was naturally. It was so distinctive.
43:55
Yeah, distinctive is the right way to put it.
43:57
And and uh I just felt I had to bring I just had to help bring her that to bring that to life.
44:05
And so what was step one?
44:05
So you step into a world and then you have to go make products and start to distribute them.
44:12
Like what was that first chapter defined by?
44:14
I think there's two distinct steps to starting a company.
44:16
One is a hell of a lot more fun than the second. Dreaming.
44:21
First is the visualizing, right?
44:24
Um, it's gratifying, it's fast, you know, you you kind of start putting together this mood and and design and and and all that's incredibly gratifying and and and and it's fast.
44:40
And then comes the second step where most go where most good ideas goes to die, which is the execution.
44:51
execution of bringing that to life at the right cost.
44:56
You know, I mean, I've been in this world for my whole life. It's what I do. Yeah.
45:00
You know, you have interviewed some just some of the most unbelievable, you know, investors and and and and I'm sure founders and if some Altman wanted to build a another product, he knows how to do it. This is what he does.
45:20
exceptional talent to build an exceptional product.
45:22
And uh you know the world is full of communities and I have mine.
45:28
I can build an exceptional team.
45:30
That's kind of second nature.
45:30
We're all good at something and I've been relatively good in my career at starting with a blank piece of paper and I'll figure it out.
45:41
You know, I can make in my head I make sense of the scramble.
45:47
You know, you know, I can I can articulate the mess into a step, a step one and a step two and a step three.
45:54
And what is that process?
45:54
What is uh what is literally going on in your head or what are what are you literally doing in those early days to bring some order to the the messy chaos of possibility that hasn't been executed yet?
46:07
Part of it is probably intuitive.
46:11
Part of it is I'm a very objective person.
46:16
Like I can remove myself emotionally from pretty much any situation and just really look at it very matter of fact and that's incredibly helpful.
46:25
You know when you start something you need to have you know a healthy dose of nite.
46:34
That's important in my business. Experience helps. experience helps.
46:40
It's it's very physical and for me it all starts with a product marketing and and you know I was trained as a marketeteer my whole first chapter of my life was one of a marketeteer and if you ask me who am I today I probably still identify as a marketeteer first and foremost but I know its role It's lipstick.
47:13
You know, in the end of the day, it's only there to accelerate. You need good lips. Yeah. Yeah.
47:18
It's only there to accelerate or to accentuate something that is already there.
47:24
And I always say that you have to create a product so great that you will still get to the same place with or without marketing.
47:38
just on the strength of the product alone.
47:39
Sometimes when I've hired people into uh marketing functions, um the trick question is for them to tell me a the last ad campaign they saw from Tesla and they struggle with that question because Tesla don't make advertising.
48:02
It certainly hasn't stopped them.
48:04
I think the product is is omnipotent.
48:08
It's number one, two and three.
48:08
And everything else we do is just to aid the awareness and selling of that product.
48:18
But product is everything.
48:18
So years before we launched the company, we started in u product development in in really going all the way down to raw material.
48:30
material. really thinking about how can I bring a product at an exceptional quality and feel at an affordable price and that was my whole focus because the companies that does solve it I mean I'm talking a lot about the worry today but
48:50
that's probably because some very distinctive feel well it's more comfortable sometimes to make an example using others and and I think they've done a good job they're kind of the anti-K schemes because they're not so marketing le. They were
49:03
They were just really leading through fabrication. Yeah.
49:09
And your experience just was probably someone told you about it or you walk past a store or a friend of you wore it and um you know they have gotten to a similar place um just through the strength of their product been around longer.
49:26
So in the end of the day product really is omnipotent and um for me any any venture that I'm involved in as a founder or as an investor I'm just laser focused on um the strength of the product.
49:42
I don't care about anything else.
49:44
The product is everything.
49:46
What was the biggest breakthrough that you remember in the product development days for the early Skims products?
49:51
Was it a specific material?
49:53
Was it some something else?
49:55
Again, I come back to culture and and and the whole company was built on, you know, product franchises.
50:02
You don't really know what people would be gravitating to right out of the box.
50:07
Um, I felt incredibly strongly about what we had done.
50:11
But when we came to market, there was this moment maybe couple of months in or a month in.
50:17
I think we had 2 million customers on wait list for product and we had no product left at all. and no product coming.
50:23
And but there was this moment for sure when I realized that it had hit that that it really had hit the nerve that our timing had lined up that people genuinely loved the product and that the way that we the world that we built was highly desirable.
50:48
And it was like a 1 plus one plus one wasn't free.
50:56
It was like 100 all of a sudden.
50:59
It was just was just asymmetric the amount of interest that um that customers had in the brand.
51:06
And six years in, I think Skiims is, you know, a far more important company culturally than it is, you know, the size of a business.
51:19
you know, we're still a small company for what I believe is a very big brand today.
51:28
I like this phrase that you've told me before, which is that by nature, you're the sort of person that likes to take yards, not inches. Yeah. Yeah.
51:36
Which which makes me wonder about this this very founder energy. Yeah. Founder energy.
51:40
Um that that you had this incredible opportunity early on to make a huge splash through Kim and others for a lot of people to know about this.
51:48
How did you orchestrate that?
51:50
And talk a little bit about her and your idea to not just have it be about her, but have it be a platform for other people like her to spread the brand around the world.
52:03
I think that's such a cool idea.
52:06
Kim is incredibly clever and she doesn't get enough credit for what a great executive she is.
52:14
And she's she's very smart.
52:22
She's not I mean she has a a a she's she's a public person.
52:28
She's also a private person.
52:30
She's a celebrity probably one of the most famous people in this world.
52:37
She's also a creative director.
52:40
I think we share some of that objectiveness that I spoke about.
52:48
She can very much compartmentalize I believe the different roles that she plays and um draw lines between the different areas of her life.
53:03
So we were both very uh aware that if you want to build something um with longevity, if you want to if you want to make something that really matters, you it has to be a platform.
53:23
It can't be about one person.
53:30
I remember showing her a picture of this kid, I don't know, going to school.
53:32
I'm speculating here, uh, in an American city wearing a pair of Beats headphones and a pair of Jordans way before we launched.
53:43
And I said to her, you know, that kid has never watched Michael Jordan play basketball, nor did they listen to Dr. Dre.
53:50
Yet, both of those companies would have been impossible without its founders.
53:59
So the work to make SKIMS a a a a pop culture platform really started day one because we knew it took time.
54:11
And what made Beats Beats was LeBron wearing it between the bus and the locker room. Right.
54:21
What made Jordan, you know, people say, "Oh, Jordan," or they called Skiims in the early days a celebrity brand.
54:30
And I said, "That's fine.
54:32
Is Is Jordan a celebrity brand?" It is.
54:34
It's just 40 years old at this point.
54:42
It's the fact that the Jordan platform allowed other athletes that shared his competitive spirit and athletes that were connected to culture and you kind of know what the Jordan athlete is about.
55:01
And the Jordan brand is inspired and built upon, you know, um, Michael Jordan's importance in popular culture, you know, in that era and has become a platform in pop culture for 40 years as a result of it, you know, and um, Kim is for an influencer generation and and I'll give you a I'm paraphraseing ing slightly but I believe that um 20 years ago about 14 15% of American teenagers wanted to be a professional athlete.
55:43
Today that number is more like 3%.
55:48
But almost 20% of American teenagers today wants to be a creator or an influencer.
55:55
Well you tell me isn't Kim Kardashian the Michael Jordan of the influencer generation? I would say she is.
56:00
So she deserves to have a brand that is inspired by that and a brand that will live on in 30, 40 and 50 years as a um as a platform in popular culture just like Jordan is in sport.
56:14
What have you learned about that transference from the original source Jordan or Dr.
56:20
Dre or Kim in this case to others that share some set of common features like the competitive spirit for Jordan?
56:28
like teach me about what you've learned about doing that effectively and how to borrow the original source and transfer it to other fantastic athletes and musicians and and people that you work with.
56:40
I've got to put that to Kim because she's a participant in popular culture, not an analyst or someone who is trying to figure it out.
56:49
She is it, you know, naturally.
56:52
Our disposition is different.
56:56
I think corporate America looks at what they do and they overanalyze it and they invest time and money in research and decision making and to build consensus about who to endorse and what to do.
57:12
And then they try to create content that everybody can be happy with and sign off and then they put it out in this world.
57:24
and no one cares and no one really cares.
57:27
But it's also one year later.
57:29
It's like if my wife asks me what I want for dinner on first day on a Monday.
57:34
I don't know what I want for dinner on first day. It's Monday.
57:38
And popular culture is dairy. It goes off.
57:42
So the first thing we did was go at it.
57:48
Not everything we do is going to be successful.
57:51
Not everything is going to track.
57:53
We don't optimize for what is going to work and not work. That sounds simple.
58:01
Um, maybe counterintuitive, but if you want to be if you want to be in the site guys, it's about doing rather than not doing.
58:13
It's about action rather than inaction.
58:14
So, you do more rather do less.
58:18
The second thing we knew is just the the the decision making process.
58:27
You can't operate 6 months in advance, a year in advance. It's impossible.
58:34
But imagine if we operated six weeks in advance.
58:39
Well, six weeks in advance.
58:39
I know who's going to be nominated for the Oscars.
58:41
I know who's likely going to be up at the Grammys.
58:48
I know um that the next season of White Lotus is coming out.
58:51
I know when the season finale is going to be.
58:56
So when you're operating much more in the in the immediaccy of popular culture, your chance of being effective again increases exponentially.
59:11
So if you think about some of the stuff that we've done at Skiims, you know, last year for the MBA, the face of Skiims was Shajil Alexander.
59:22
That was his breakout year.
59:22
This year was Donovan Mitchell.
59:27
Um last year we featured, you know, uh Patrick Mahomes and family over the holidays.
59:36
Um we didn't know he would win the Super Bowl.
59:38
He was a roll every year.
59:38
You could know that a year in advance. Exactly.
59:45
But when we featured Usher, we knew he was doing the halftime show.
59:47
When we had the Italian girls that played a pivotal role in in in the last season of the season before last, I guess, of uh White Lotus, it was clear that they were the breakouts.
1:00:02
So, what's the decision-m process? It's very simple. I love White Lotus. Wouldn't it be cool?
1:00:08
Wouldn't it be cool if the two girls that we're all a little bit, you know, quietly excited about were our Valentine's couple and we took them out of the show.
1:00:22
So, I think going by again, what are we interested in? What do we want to see?
1:00:30
What are we excited about?
1:00:33
Yeah, you can ask me right now.
1:00:33
it's um you know this afternoon what I want for dinner I will have a pretty good idea of what I fancy. It's the same thing.
1:00:44
Public culture is the same thing.
1:00:44
I know right now what I want to see then the only thing stopping us is our ability to attract the talent or the opportunity to do it for us in that moment.
1:00:58
Then you have to take a lot of chances.
1:01:01
Not everything is going to hit.
1:01:03
Okay, we had Sabrina Carpenter um one week before she went number one with espresso. Okay.
1:01:12
I wish I was one week later, but it was pretty good. Yeah.
1:01:16
You know, so this is kind of how we work.
1:01:19
We are really working with as a team, as a company, as a culture.
1:01:22
What do we want to see right now?
1:01:24
And then we try to make it happen.
1:01:27
And we're not trying to hit it out the park every single time.
1:01:32
If you like baseball, Shiooni, greatest baseball player probably ever lived.
1:01:37
Even though I'm sure that's debatable.
1:01:39
Um, he doesn't hit the home run every time he steps up to bat. That's us.
1:01:44
We don't hit the home run every time we step up to bat, but we hit them often enough.
1:01:48
I love the the simple device of wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't it be cool?
1:01:55
It is as good of a process to determine what to do as anything else.
1:02:01
It's just that our culture and especially when we are responsible founders and executives, we love the idea that we can control an unpredictable outcome and we can't.
1:02:19
If we could, every LTV to CAC model that you ever saw over the past 15 years would have worked out.
1:02:26
And let me tell you, I haven't seen one.
1:02:32
What does it require on the operational side to to be able to deliver against the wouldn't it be cool strategy, whether that's supply chain, marketing, operations, distribution, like it seems like the system needs to be able to accommodate that fast turn.
1:02:47
Yeah, you build that muscle.
1:02:50
You build it over time, you know. You build it over time.
1:02:52
It's not hard in the beginning.
1:02:54
Small companies can do remarkable things.
1:02:59
Every founder would tell you that what the first 12, 20 people can accomplish is unbelievable. Yeah.
1:03:07
And what the next thousand can accomplish is disappointing. Why? What is it?
1:03:15
You've done this a number of times.
1:03:17
What happens in that transition that makes that true?
1:03:18
As a company grows, there needs to be discipline.
1:03:22
There needs to be a sense of structure.
1:03:24
It needs to have a sense of process.
1:03:29
And they're necessary, but if you're not very very careful, they'll kill what made you special to begin with.
1:03:38
I think that's true for any sector.
1:03:41
What about the pricing of distribution represented by these great partnerships?
1:03:48
You mentioned what's Dwayne the Rock Johnson worth? $5 billion.
1:03:52
Is is this like asset well priced or is there still enough like arbitrage for brands?
1:03:59
You see where I'm getting at?
1:04:01
like like how does Donovan Mitchell, who I'm a huge fan of, know his own price like and and how do you think about um that dynamic and how it evolves?
1:04:13
I have never spent too much time worrying about the ROI of one singular opportunity.
1:04:27
I think if you do um two things can happen.
1:04:33
You can be right and uh positively surprised and next time you make a mistake or you can be disappointed leading you to think that you're overspent and therefore pull back and not do the next one.
1:04:47
So uh again I come back to little bit. Isn't it cool?
1:04:54
you know, um, wouldn't this be cool to do?
1:04:57
Am I proud of the result?
1:04:57
Do am I excited about it?
1:05:00
You know, do we think it represented the brand well?
1:05:03
I think those things are more important.
1:05:08
And again, just the pace, just the pace of output and uh, constantly being in the conversation.
1:05:15
The hard thing with building an e-commerce company is that we don't own any real estate.
1:05:21
It's it's only it's it the real estate is is the mind share and you know keeping customers attention is incredibly hard.
1:05:38
So, you know, we take in a enormous amount of messages in our daily lives, right?
1:05:47
When we were kids, we took in a fraction, not a percent even of what we're taking in today, right?
1:05:52
So, when I say the Coke Pepsi Challenge, you know what I'm talking about. Of course.
1:05:59
Have you seen a Coke Pepsi Challenge?
1:06:00
They might not have done it for 30 years.
1:06:02
I have no idea when the Coke Pepsi Challenge even happened. Yeah, stuck in my mind.
1:06:09
If I say the album cover of um Nirvana, okay, you know, exactly, you know it, you can close your eyes to see it, right?
1:06:16
I have no idea what you know what an album cover is of any artist, you know, really in in in in the last 5 years.
1:06:25
So things can be incredibly important for an hour in our culture today. I can't change that.
1:06:30
The only thing I can do is I can increase the output.
1:06:36
I can increase the output.
1:06:36
What I've heard you use the phrase um posttruth media before. Yeah.
1:06:40
What does that mean and what are the implications of it? There are two twofolds.
1:06:47
One, you don't necessarily trust what you read even from a trusted news source.
1:06:53
That could be misguided, but that's how people feel.
1:06:56
I'm not talking about what is fact and what is not fact.
1:07:00
I'm talking about how most Americans feel about what they read. They're skeptical. Okay.
1:07:10
So, we have gravitated to individual voices as a source of information but also as a source of a singular truth.
1:07:26
And you can be a disciple of Elon Musk or you can be a disciple of AOC.
1:07:34
And you're far more likely to believe either of those two than um than the Washington Post.
1:07:41
What do you think the implications of AI on that whole trend?
1:07:46
And I'm assuming you think maybe it makes that even more true that we align ourselves with people and a and a coherent perspective which whether or not it's correct truth, it's still it's continuous and coherent. Absolutely.
1:08:00
It's it's the only way to go.
1:08:00
The indivi the power of the individual is only going to strengthen in this current culture.
1:08:08
There's no doubt about it.
1:08:11
However, we probably have to ready ourselves for a time where if Elon Musk says it, we will be debat debating if he actually indeed did say it.
1:08:21
So, um unfortunately, uh as a result of deep fakes, we are we're we're probably going to be skeptical of everything we see soon enough.
1:08:37
And um so I believe in the power of networks of I I believe in close networks.
1:08:43
We follow individuals and uh we will make sure that they are saying it and we'll take their words as gospel.
1:08:52
I think it's kind of heading that way.
1:08:54
If it's not it's already there.
1:08:54
I've long wanted to invest in a company that made it possible for Elon to digitally sign and verify some piece of content.
1:09:02
So if anyone listening that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
1:09:03
I would love to back something like that.
1:09:04
Of course it's going to happen.
1:09:05
And then and ironically, the way we watch television now is we watch it over a period of time. Yeah.
1:09:10
Um the whole premise of the movie Mountain Head is and I'm not going to give away any spoilers, don't don't worry.
1:09:17
Um but it's the premise about four tech founders, you know, in in a in a remote hilltop house.
1:09:28
One has just made these AI tools available where we cannot tell what's real and what's not.
1:09:33
and the other person has exactly what you're saying.
1:09:39
He has the technology that can validate or invalidate content. What a premise.
1:09:45
That is essentially the premise, you know, of the movie.
1:09:48
It's a satire, just like Doctor Strange Love was a satire.
1:09:52
It's a satire of a dark future.
1:09:52
However, um it's hard not to think that it's incredibly important to validate information that we're getting increasingly.
1:10:03
say a little bit more about the power of networks and uh what you believe is powerful and especially set in today's environment or the near-term future. I see it in chat groups.
1:10:14
You know the uh WhatsApp has emerged as a much more powerful tool of information sharing.
1:10:23
one chat group that Dan Sheim has and D1 which famous one the famous one I would think it's one of my more trusted sources of information of what's going on in our economy today I will turn when when there's when there's critical events happening I turn to that chat group and uh I find it highly informative and I respect the voices ultimately the individuals in that group.
1:10:55
So yeah, that's a power of a micro network, but it's incredibly important and and I think obviously we always had micro networks, our community, our church, you know, um our our basketball team, you know, our friend group networks have all always existed.
1:11:15
But these larger closed networks with a thousand members or a million members, but it's closed.
1:11:21
Um, they have they have a lot of power.
1:11:25
I think Reddit is emerging as a platform with a tremendous amount of power today.
1:11:33
If let's say I snap my fingers and skims disappeared and you had to go build another company in a vertical uh where you could apply some of these same ideas and models that that needs it a place that's stale or has gotten stagnant.
1:11:48
Where would your instinct pull you today?
1:11:50
I'm very excited about the creator economy.
1:11:53
I think we are in the um early innings early innings of the creator economy.
1:12:01
I'm um an investor in in in several companies but one that I have been a little bit more involved with is is one called passes uh which was founded by um Lucy Goo who um uh was co-founder of scalei and uh she's built a um a platform for creators to directly um monetize you know, their their their audience, their fan base.
1:12:36
And I think that's incredibly powerful.
1:12:41
And I think we're in the beginning, really beginning of um talent building and monetizing um their own networks.
1:12:49
And it can go from um again, it could be a network around fly fishing.
1:12:56
It it could be a great chef, it could be an athlete, it could be a pop star, but so it can be a thousand members, it can be millions of members.
1:13:09
But I really believe in the power of that close and more intimate network where we engage directly with um with with someone we admire, a voice of authority, someone that inspires us.
1:13:24
And there's a real need for it today because going back to, you know, the social algorithm, they are really not about following as much as they're about entertainment today.
1:13:36
And I think talent uh or creators have realized on the social platforms that they don't they don't really own their audience anymore.
1:13:51
You don't really own your following.
1:13:54
And I'll give you a challenge.
1:13:54
You can do it after after this.
1:14:00
Go and look at three different artists.
1:14:02
Let's say one has 5 million followers, one has 20 million, and I'll I'll give you a name of someone who has, let's say, 300 or 400 million.
1:14:09
You'll find the exact same amount of engagement.
1:14:12
How's that statistically possible?
1:14:15
Well, it is because engagement is being spread.
1:14:18
So the size of the following doesn't matter so much um anymore.
1:14:24
So that audience someone has built maybe spent 10 years building that size of that following but now they're actually unable to communicate with that following.
1:14:39
They are they they they they're not getting through.
1:14:42
If you have 400 million followers and you say something, 400 million people is not going to see it. Only a fraction.
1:14:50
I have no opinion if that's good or if it's bad. It's clearly good.
1:14:55
Otherwise, we wouldn't have moved away from from it, right? That's it is what it is. It is what it is. It is what it is.
1:15:02
And I'm sufficiently entertained.
1:15:04
So, I'm a very happy customer of Instagram.
1:15:07
It's a fantastic product.
1:15:10
So um I'm excited about it.
1:15:14
Having said that, of course it's creates um this opportunity to um to build these networks where um where you have your own captive audience and then can monetize um that audience.
1:15:33
I'm trying to think of like places that had this iconic the equivalent of the 400 million and are kind of in a hard spot or might be in a hard spot.
1:15:42
If you were like the economist or the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times or or something like this, what would you do against this reality where there it was about the brand, not about the I can't name you economist doesn't publish by lines, but I can't name you a Wall Street Journal author anymore.
1:16:01
I used to be able to name lots of them, right?
1:16:03
So what would you do if you were I I think you started in magazines actually way back in the day in Sweden. Several in the UK. Yeah. Several.
1:16:11
And so I would love to hear a little bit about that and like what if anything is left from you know that era that might still be applicable today and what you would do if you were you know the economist or something.
1:16:21
I don't have all the answers.
1:16:22
This is a tricky question.
1:16:25
It's a very tricky question because I believe that news organizations have an incredibly important role within society and I think it's a shame.
1:16:43
Um, some of it they did to themselves partly because of what we're talking about.
1:16:51
They had to create journalism that was clickbait and they had to build incentive structures.
1:16:58
It's like that saying, right?
1:17:00
Show me the incentive and I'll show you the result.
1:17:01
They have to um they had to create incentive structures for the people working there um you know to get to get eyeballs on what they were doing.
1:17:14
And uh I think that changed things.
1:17:19
I and and this is just my personal opinion.
1:17:22
I'm I'm not a highly political person.
1:17:25
This is not me making a political statement in any shape, way or form.
1:17:33
I'm just objectively observing that in um during the first Trump administration um what he often refers to as you know mainstream media saw it as an existential threat and uh they took action that over time in many cases undermined some of their editorial integrity and Or at least that's what what what a large part of America believes today, rightfully or wrong, wrongfully so.
1:18:08
And as we went into CO, they just were not able to put the genie back in the bottle. I I can't remember.
1:18:19
I was listening to the All-In podcast and I can't remember which one of the guys um that said it.
1:18:27
Um but I thought it was very insightful and I'm paraphrasing again.
1:18:30
that said that journalism became activism and and I think maybe it did for a period of time and um and it's been pretty hard to put that put to put that back in the bottle today.
1:18:44
What do you remember most fondly from your magazine days?
1:18:46
It was just a wonderful thing to do because it's the storytelling.
1:18:55
Um it's the storytelling that's Yeah, that's it. It's the storytelling.
1:18:58
It's it's the sense of discovery and then storytelling.
1:19:06
And um I used to work for GQ and the editor of GQ in the UK was guy called Dylan Jones.
1:19:12
And I think he probably was one of the greatest magazine editors of all time.
1:19:16
And everybody worked in in in in at GQ were frustrated with him at times because he said, "I knew Arctic Monkeys were going to blow and he wouldn't write about it or I knew this was going to happen and you know I was so excited about this that and and he said no or and he he knew that he was the he was the top 2% of readers.
1:19:51
But he was a customer of his own journalism.
1:19:53
So there was a moment in time when he got it.
1:19:59
It was never first, but it wasn't supposed to be.
1:20:02
It was supposed to be in GQ when he knew about it.
1:20:04
So he was the and he taught me this idea of being um or aspiring to be not to break it, not to break things.
1:20:17
You didn't have to be first.
1:20:19
You needed to be at the forefront of your own customer.
1:20:25
And that thinking um has really uh reflected on most things I've been involved with in I'm not so worried about always being first, a product being first or um first mover advantage.
1:20:44
I think it's sometimes phenomenal to be number two or three.
1:20:51
Um that can be a a much better place to be.
1:20:55
In fact, um I'm focused more when I think it's right, you know, where where where it resonates with me and and I'm not necessarily on on the cutting edge, but I'm probably the tip of the spear of mainstream, if that makes any sense.
1:21:11
And the other thing working for a magazine called Wallpaper in the UK um under the guy who founded that magazine called Tyler Brulee um I learned two things.
1:21:25
One is that a magazine can be a reflection of your own yeah your own interest in your own life.
1:21:34
and um and wallpaper just was a was a total reflection of what we as a team were living through in that moment in time.
1:21:46
And I think that's what made it so powerful.
1:21:49
It also taught me that you can't hold on to a good idea.
1:21:53
Meaning when you're early on something, when you're when when when you found a different way to communicate or speak or um create product, everybody's going to pile in.
1:22:08
And you know, you have to continue to um to transform on your way up because once you plateau, it's already too late.
1:22:22
And a guy that made a big impression on me was a guy called Pier Vel.
1:22:28
He was the chairman of of Louis Vuitton or LVMH fashion.
1:22:33
And he said, "Yans, the secret to our success is that we always transform on the way up."
1:22:38
And there's a truth to that because you think, you know, how we operate is as long as it's good, we don't want to change, right?
1:22:49
And then when things plateau or you know kind of trails off human nature optimistic so we go it's a moment we'll be back we were first we did this first they will remember it it's going to come back and then it doesn't come back then we start thinking about changing and then by the time we're actually have implemented any change things are already going down.
1:23:20
Who fires a CEO when a company is growing? Almost nobody sometimes. Maybe we should.
1:23:27
The Nicks just fired Tibs conference vitals. There you go. Same question.
1:23:36
I I'm so glad I asked about magazines.
1:23:39
Um about your work in agency working with brands like H&M and others like Yeah.
1:23:44
same set of I would love the same set of reflections of just like what you take from that time of your life.
1:23:50
Well, I was unsatisfied working on behalf of everybody else.
1:23:55
You know, it comes a moment in your life where you want to be the guy, you know, not working for the guy. Yeah.
1:24:04
And I knew that in my early 30s that however much I would build this group, in the end of the day, I was figuring out ways to sell time.
1:24:20
And at the end of it, there's not that much emotional ownership of the work that you create.
1:24:29
You know, you're a hired gun.
1:24:32
You know, you go home at the end of the day and when something goes wrong, it's your fault.
1:24:42
When it goes well, it wasn't you.
1:24:47
It's a pretty thankless thankless place. Yeah. To have a full career.
1:24:50
And I'm very grateful because I had the opportunity to work with um with some of the greatest to ever do it like Bernardo at LVMH or Remma Ruffini at Monontlair and you know becoming inspired to the point where I wanted to be like them not work for them.
1:25:19
So I'm very grateful for that.
1:25:22
What did those two teach you?
1:25:23
What was the bar of excellence that they showed you?
1:25:24
Remo taught me about the power of the role of art in commerce and letting go.
1:25:39
and he took something which was a small company called Monontlair and it was a small ski company and he attached it to to fashion and to popular culture and to sport.
1:25:54
He was able to to build, you know, just a an an unbelievable brand and company by by borrowing all the cues while staying true to um the core of the product which is, you know, which was performance ski. Sure sounds familiar. Yeah.
1:26:14
And then if it wasn't for that experience, I wouldn't have started skims.
1:26:18
I wouldn't have started frame.
1:26:20
you know, he looked for, you know, the thing with underwear that people don't really think of, and I don't blame them, is that they have a lot more in common with a a sneaker than they do with a t-shirt.
1:26:34
They're all performance highly complicated from a construction fit. It has to do a job.
1:26:40
Um especially um in women's more so than for men's in that it has to do a job.
1:26:50
It has to you know offer support and comfort for you know 12 hours in a row, 14 hours.
1:26:56
That's a performance product.
1:26:59
So there's a much higher moat.
1:27:03
It's much harder to compete.
1:27:05
It's much harder to innovate product in it.
1:27:07
Um once you have a customer's trust um they're very loyal as super high retention.
1:27:18
So you know underwear and performance wear has um a lot in common and the same thing you know with if you think about performance ski it's uh highly complex highly technical has to do a job for you.
1:27:31
Um, so I looked at taking a category like that and attach and attaching it to culture.
1:27:38
And if I hadn't had the opportunity to observe Remma Monontlair, I don't know if I would have gone about building schemes the way that Kim and I went about building schemes. What about Bernard?
1:27:52
that in the end of the day, he works to inspire and excite his customer.
1:27:58
And for all of his unbelievable success, he's just highly in tune um with what his customers will give him agency to do or not to do.
1:28:13
And that level of I come back to this this notion of being objective. He has that in spades.
1:28:22
What do you think is going to fill the role of status in the future when machines are smarter than we are and do a lot of the tasks and a lot of the things that might have earned us status in the past might be different in the future?
1:28:36
I don't think status is going anywhere. Such a basic human want.
1:28:44
I don't think our physical lives are going anywhere.
1:28:52
But let's assume that it is going somewhere.
1:28:55
What is status to my 11year-old?
1:28:57
Well, he has status in what he has achieved in Roblox.
1:29:01
He has he feels a great sense of status of what he's built.
1:29:08
So, I don't think that status is limited to physical objects.
1:29:15
Um, humankind will always find ways to display status.
1:29:19
And if you interact in social gaming, from what I'm seeing, all of our, you know, cues of status here in our physical world is in their digital world.
1:29:34
It's a direct transference.
1:29:38
There's there's really no difference.
1:29:41
I don't know what the future looks like in 20 years, but as far as my children goes, they combine physical and digital status.
1:29:53
What teenager or 20some doesn't have status in the amount of followers they have.
1:29:59
I mean, status exists in so many different ways.
1:30:03
And um yeah, I don't think I don't think that's going anywhere.
1:30:06
He's right up there with hunger.
1:30:08
It's a basic basic human drive. very basic human need.
1:30:11
I'd love to talk about investing for just a minute.
1:30:14
You're an investor, too, uh, and have been for a long time. You also get to work.
1:30:18
I talked to Neil and Josh ahead of this, two of the great investors of of our era that have been big partners of yours.
1:30:23
I'm curious about what you've learned makes for great investors from working with them and also just how you think about your own investing and the broader trends happening in the investing world.
1:30:33
We've talked about private equity before and the implications of that evolving landscape.
1:30:38
tell us your thinking on kind of the world of investors and investing.
1:30:40
Josh and Neil are both really really special people and dare I say atypical in many ways.
1:30:55
They're both guys of really high conviction that take a long-term view and they take a lot fewer bets than many other people that I know, you know, in the venture space.
1:31:18
And they really do believe in doubling down behind their winners and staying engaged.
1:31:27
And they seem really unfaced by a news cycle, a month, a quarter.
1:31:37
They tend to have really long-term views on everything and they invest into that world view.
1:31:47
And I think that's ultimately going to make them they're already incredibly successful.
1:31:53
I'm scared for how successful those two are going to be.
1:31:55
I'm I'm afraid, you know, you give these guys another They're young, too. They're 40. Yeah. Oh my god.
1:32:04
Give them 20 years of compounding this, you know, 20 years of compounding into this world view.
1:32:08
Most people are, you know, overly optimistic, don't have the stomach for the long term, influenced by by by by market trends.
1:32:20
When something is good, there's no end to how good it can get.
1:32:23
When something is bad, there's no end to how bad it can get.
1:32:27
You know, in 21, you can give away, you know, retail real estate.
1:32:35
Now, it's the hottest part of the market.
1:32:39
a couple of years you couldn't give you know years ago you couldn't give away you know offices now it's uh you know occupancy and you know the right places are at capacity there's no end to demand you know these are um you got to you got to very few people dare to have their own long-term view and I think both of them do so um I think I'm in Honestly, I've learned from that.
1:33:10
I don't know where the world is going within the next year, but I think we can be relatively confident where the world is going in 5 years.
1:33:16
It shouldn't be impossible to if you have the stomach for it.
1:33:21
If you invest, you know, with that with that perspective, you're going to be right more times than you're wrong.
1:33:29
How would you summarize where the world's where you think the world's going in five or 10 years?
1:33:31
We touched on some of it today.
1:33:33
If you go with my theory that which by the way is not my theory.
1:33:38
I mean I think it's wildly established that we're living in kind of a post-truth society.
1:33:41
you know, that's been written endlessly about.
1:33:47
And as a result, um, an individual voice can cut through and really, um, control a narrative and what they say is taken as a truth over what you refer to as an anonymous journalist.
1:34:06
An individual is going to be only more important, not less important. Okay.
1:34:14
If the algorithm is going towards a place of entertainment, not following, one has to assume that the person that has a higher degree of influence will have the opportunity to forge their own network.
1:34:28
Those are two basic things that I don't think I'm going to be very wrong about. Which product will work?
1:34:39
which products will you know I couldn't tell you which founder that's going to be successful I don't know but I know where it's going so um if I had their uh their expertise and and and many others where they have enough of a sample and enough of a nose for great founders you want to back people that that are creating the companies that fits this worldview you and hopefully you're going to be right.
1:35:12
Say a bit about the future for SKIMS both from the perspective of maybe an IPO on the horizon, maybe new product lines, things that you're doing to transform on the way up as you said before. What's next for SKIMS?
1:35:26
What I'm working on is how do I scale at pace the business to meet the global demand for the brand and right now it's a big global brand but we're yet to do business the way that customers like to do business which is highly inperson. Okay.
1:35:54
So I'm very focused on the global physical distribution of skims.
1:36:04
That's one that's important.
1:36:04
And again, and I'm now starting to tie some of these things we talked about, I guess, together, which is if social media is a less um effective way for me to communicate with my community.
1:36:28
What really matters is the community that I'm building through my app and loyalty.
1:36:35
today about a year after we launched our own um app we do about over 20% of our business through it but building our app and loyalty and uh which is a nice way to say trying to expand that direct community in a close network where I can have my customers attention that's that's going to be um the difference maker I think over the next five five years or so.
1:37:07
So that's incredibly you know important to continue to evolve the way we do business to continue to be surprising.
1:37:24
You know when we started we did a lot of things that no one else did at the pace no one did it.
1:37:31
I have to really watch it so we don't become a victim of our own success.
1:37:41
So we have to coni continue to innovate not just on the product side but also on a marketing side.
1:37:46
When Luca got traded to Lakers just to bring it back to basketball again.
1:37:52
Clearly watch too much basketball.
1:37:54
Um no such thing in my opinion.
1:37:57
Pacers and OKC feels like I can miss the whole series so I get some time back.
1:38:01
If it was Knicks I would have to watch it.
1:38:03
when Luca got traded um to the Lakers, I was watching I think it was First Take or something on ESPN and they said, you know, we're now waiting for Lucas to show up in the Skims campaign.
1:38:17
I first of all, whenever they talk about Skims on ESPN, I'm excited.
1:38:20
So, I I was I was very happy.
1:38:26
However, there's an expect if there's an expectation, there's also not a surprise. Yeah. Right. So, interesting.
1:38:39
To me, that's a signal that we have to take a step further and continue to do the unexpected. and I love Luca.
1:38:57
So, the door is open if he wants to do it.
1:39:01
Having said that, uh it's it's it's it's to do what you're not expecting me to do next.
1:39:08
And if anything keeps me up at night, it's it's probably that idea.
1:39:13
We've talked about all the money and assets and companies that are in private markets.
1:39:17
And I'm curious as an entrepreneur who's thought a lot about investing, how you think about being private versus being public and the trade-offs associated with both.
1:39:29
What are we doing this for?
1:39:31
You know, I think it's a fair question and I ask other founders that, you know, as a as a as a founder of a company that receives a lot of public attention like Skims, I have the opportunity to meet other founders that have created unbelievable businesses that also are in the public eye.
1:39:53
And we talk about it like what are we doing it for?
1:39:57
Because money in my view is the result of doing something great.
1:40:07
I think money by itself is a poor purpose.
1:40:12
It shouldn't be the reason we get up in the morning.
1:40:16
It should be the result of us doing something we love and doing a great job and exciting our customers and that should be rewarded. Right?
1:40:29
So, but that's me as a founder.
1:40:31
Not if you're an investor, the money is the purpose in many ways, right? Not for everybody.
1:40:38
Not the all it's not the whole cake, but it's it's important.
1:40:44
It's the biggest part of the cake.
1:40:44
It's is it's it's 90% okay. It should be.
1:40:50
If not, they weren't doing their jobs.
1:40:52
So, but as a founder, you don't sit and think I'm going to start this company cuz I'm going to make so much money with it for my investors. For my investors.
1:41:02
That's that's why I'm going to go through this pain and give up my life to make sure that in 5 to 10 years time I'm giving an excellent return to those that invested in my seound.
1:41:18
That's just not how you think.
1:41:18
You wake up and you say I have to do it.
1:41:21
I cannot live with not doing this thing.
1:41:23
And then you got to love it.
1:41:27
And you're going to love it through the great times because there is enough hard times in any entrepreneurial journey that you need a lot of love to carry that through. He carry you through.
1:41:42
You know, I think Yansen Hong said uh the other day something along the lines of that he would never be an entrepreneur if he knew how hard it was.
1:41:55
I had to be an entrepreneur to do what I love to do.
1:41:57
the way I want to do it and I had to be an entrepreneur to realize the creative vision that I think entrepreneurship is. But so I had no choice.
1:42:07
This is what I had to do.
1:42:07
as you uh bring something to life and you um you bring capital partners on board and you have a duty, you have a responsibility and uh I treat everybody's money like your own and uh I understand that my motivation and their motivation there's times where um they're not going to be completely aligned.
1:42:39
I'm going to be in this company for a very long time.
1:42:45
You know, I'm probably going to go public one day.
1:42:48
My cap table in 5 years is going to look nothing like the cap table today. And that's okay. Um I'm aware.
1:42:57
I know I know I know how the game goes.
1:42:59
And my responsibility at this point is actually to deliver an excellent return for my shareholders.
1:43:08
and in the process hopefully having a good time doing it.
1:43:11
I just for me the most important thing is to do a great job and have fun and if I'm doing great work and I have a good time doing it money normally follows public private it's really a matter of taste you know you used to have to go public today there's this semi-liquid market that has emerged that gives um a lot of early shareholders at least a great deal of optionality.
1:43:44
You know, you look at companies like uh Stripe or SpaceX, there's been a lot of, you know, optionality and liquidity for early shareholders and um people can trade in and trade out even, you know, in these in them privately.
1:44:00
So maybe it's less important today um than it was for me.
1:44:09
I made a choice to have institutional shareholders and uh I've got to respect um their their their their timeline and what matters to them.
1:44:23
um they have entrusted me with their capital and uh I will do everything within my power and I will um make sure I I give them um what they require in return.
1:44:38
You know that's that's the deal. That's the deal.
1:44:40
And to do that uh the most likely outcome, not to say it is the outcome, the most likely outcome is to be a public company.
1:44:49
I do think though that it's healthy for a company to have outside shareholders.
1:45:00
At some point, it's healthy for a company to be public.
1:45:02
Does foster good governance.
1:45:04
But a company as it scales and as it grows and matures, it's not just about a founder. It's about everyone.
1:45:12
It's about all the stakeholders, your employees.
1:45:13
You have a greater responsibility.
1:45:19
And I think it's it's easier to take that responsibility as a public company.
1:45:24
So, um I'm pro the public route personally.
1:45:27
Um but that's not to say it's for for for for everyone.
1:45:35
If I own this company 100% myself, maybe I would have taken a different view.
1:45:40
Josh said something to me earlier today just as thinking about how to structure our conversation.
1:45:44
Um, which was really nice, which was that you're an incredibly unique combination of creative and commercial and that actually the fact that you can do both so well probably leads to more interesting outcomes on both sides of the equation, product, marketing, business, etc.
1:45:59
Um, and I feel like our conversation today has been so chalk full of things that I I'm scribbling down constant notes here u that I want to remind myself to go back to and learn from and apply to what I'm trying to do because that's what I want to do too.
1:46:13
That's what everyone wants to do is to be creative and commercial.
1:46:14
Um, they want both sides of the equation.
1:46:16
So, I'm so thankful for your time and an amazing conversation.
1:46:20
The same question I ask everyone at the end of these is what is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
1:46:26
I'm very grateful that I was able to move to the United States in my late 30s and has had the ability to reinvent myself in this country and having another chapter in this country.
1:46:51
a country and a community that has, and I'm speaking in the broadest sense of the word here, welcomed me, my wife, my family, and allowed us to be both successful, but also a member of our more direct community in a way that couldn't happen on any other place on earth.
1:47:16
I don't know if it's an act of kindness.
1:47:18
I pay a lot of taxes in return, but um I'm in I'm incredibly grateful for um for for that opportunity and and um that's why I'm optimistic about the future.
1:47:38
I'm optimistic um about this country.
1:47:42
Um, I am not fearful even though I understand why many people are.
1:47:49
Um, and personally I'm just I'm I'm just excited to um to to be part and live for death time uh in human history, which is arguably the greatest time in history to be alive.
1:48:05
I think you're the first person to say America as your answer ever, which is so cool.
1:48:08
I have to ask one followup.
1:48:11
Can you describe Emma's superpower?
1:48:14
She has an ability to uh to bring everybody with her.
1:48:20
I have never I mean, myself included, I go along with everything she says.
1:48:29
Now, that's not that unique in a marriage.
1:48:33
Most of us most of us go along with what we're told.
1:48:37
But she has this unbelievable ability to um to inspire people and bring people with her and it's exciting to be around her.
1:48:44
I think everybody who's around her has that feeling.
1:48:48
It's it's it's intoxicating.
1:48:48
So it's a remarkable quality.
1:48:51
I I wish I had a fraction of it.
1:48:53
But you know they say you marry someone that compliments you. So she's the charm. Yes. This has been amazing.
1:49:00
Such a cool conversation.
1:49:02
Thanks so much for your time.
1:49:02
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. [Music]