Episode 1: Romper Drama and Useless Safety Pins, or It’s a Cents Game

Hi, I’m Amanda.

I’m your annoying coworker that won’t eat at Chick fil A, because they support anti LGBTQ organizations. And yeah, I know they allegedly don’t do that anymore. But who wants to support a company whose leadership is so homophobic and transphobic, that they would still make a big deal of donating to these organizations in the first place? I am also your annoying coworker that won’t take a SoulCycle class, because that company is such a huge supporter of Trump that I may as well just donate directly to his campaign.

Why am I so annoying? Because I believe that in a capital society, hint, we’re living in one right now. Our money is as powerful as our vote. When we buy things from brands that make the world a worse place, we are casting a vote in favor of the bad things they are doing. Whether it’s exploiting marginalized people, creating a culture of fat phobia and racism, or just plain supporting the orange bigot in the White House. When we withhold our money, and give it to brands that are doing good things, we not only forced the bad companies to rethink their practices. We also help good brands grow their businesses, making ethical practices the standard rather than the exception. That said, it’s hard to know where to cast your vote in the world of fashion. The industry is veiled in layers upon layers of mystery, and there’s so much spin, inclusive, sustainable, ethical, conscious, eco friendly. What are these terms even mean? Do they mean anything? Are they just marketing messages?

I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve been on furlough for my job for more than three months thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. And while I’ve spent most of my time worrying about my family’s future, and fretting about money, and worrying about all the other things that all of you are worrying about. I’ve also found myself becoming more and more engaged with Reddit. There I found a sense of community. This is not a commercial for Reddit by the way. I often find myself answering questions about all kinds of fashion related issues from inclusive sizing to influencer collab lines to Why do you think this brand went out of business? And it feels so good to share my experience. As I’ve been doing this, I realized if you don’t work in the industry, nothing about it makes sense.

My mission with Clotheshorse is simple: to educate all of you about the Fashion and Retail industries. By revealing the complex machine underneath the spectacle of trends and buzzwords, you can make better decisions about where to cast your vote.

By now you’re probably want to know why I’m declaring myself the expert in this area. I’ve been working in the Fashion and Retail Industry for the majority of my adult life. I began as a part time seasonal sales associate for a large retail chain. My first day at work was my birthday and I stood under an air conditioning vent for 10 hours folding t-shirts. From there I moved into buying as the first person to move from the stores to the home office in more than a decade. To be honest, I didn’t even know that buying was a job. I assumed I would spend my days smoking cigarettes and looking at fashion magazines. Sounds pretty cool, right? In reality, it’s lots of spreadsheets, Applied Mathematics and critical thinking with a splash of shopping, a little tiny splash of shopping. And since then, I’ve worked for large corporations, buzzy startups, and you know like some medium sized e-commerce brands. Along the way, I’ve met so many incredibly intelligent women that I am honored to call my friends. They will be jumping in to discuss their areas of expertise, and share their insights on fashion style and spending your money the right way.

In our inaugural episode, we will be starting at the beginning or what I think of as the beginning, not promising that we will be answering life’s biggest questions because tbh I’m not even sure what they are. But we will be diving into the cost of the things you buy, mostly the literal cost with a dash of figurative cost. Our special guest is Janine, she brings a ton of experience in the area of merchandise planning to the table. Don’t worry, we’ll explain what that means. And this is just what we’re going to need as we untangle all the factors that explain why we pay what we pay for what we buy. Try saying that five times fast. Are you ready? Let’s get started

I’m really excited today for our first episode, and our very first guest to have Jeanine here to tell us a little bit about the cost of the things we’re buying, like, what’s happening there, right? So, Janine, I’ve known you since way back in the day when I worked at ModCloth. And we’re sort of like long distance friends, because you’re in San Francisco, and I was in LA, but I still thought you were pretty awesome.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? And you know, like what you do?

Janine

Yeah, so I have worked in the retail and fashion industry for about 10 years, a little bit more, I started out my career at Banana Republic, and then I moved on to ModCloth. So I have experience working in larger corporations, as well as what it’s like to be in a smaller startup. And I’ve definitely seen a lot during my years, as both of those companies. And during that time, I really worked primarily in merchandise planning, which is the function that manages inventory and profitability.

Amanda

So I’m, I’m going to tell you right now that most people do not know what a planner is much less than that job exists at all. So why don’t you tell us a little bit of what a planner is?

Janine

Yeah, I did not know that this job existed, actually, before I applied for it. My background originally was in finance and accounting, and I just wanted to use those skills and work in fashion. So I just started browsing jobs at the gap that I thought had some type of financial function to them. And I found this job. So I definitely didn’t know it was before I started working in this capacity either. So a planner is actually similar to what people think of is as being a buyer, I sometimes tell people, it’s like the number side or the finance side of being a buyer in a lot of fashion and retail companies. There is a role that is a buyer and that person, sources inventory and product and then buys it. But in a lot of other companies, they also split that job into two functions, where someone’s just in charge of sourcing the styles, and aesthetically figuring out what we should buy. And then there’s a financial component and an inventory component, which is the merchandise planner, that figures out how much to buy and then maximizes the profitability of that inventory. So merchandise planning is really managing the movement and profitability of inventory from when that very first PO is placed until it goes on mark down or sells out. And the main objective of the job is just to try to maximize the profit that’s made off of the inventory that the company owns, while also minimizing the risk of owning too much of something that nobody wants to buy, which invariably always happens.

Amanda

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you’re not you don’t pick 100% the right product, 100% of the time, it is 100%, sort of like educated gambling, I guess I would add, from my perspective, as a career buyer that I always tell people, the best advice I can give them is that your planner should be your best friend. And you should be collaborating rather than arguing. So, you know, we’re like peanut butter and chocolate, you know, better together.

Janine

And I would definitely say that I had been really lucky in my relationships over the years have had super amazing, collaborative, wonderful, like, arguably loving relationships with merchandisers or buyers that I’ve worked with. But oftentimes, it can also be a little contentious. And it’s meant to, there’s meant to be push and pull, because the buying side is typically always like, buy everything buy more at the highest cost ever. Who cares, whatever, money doesn’t matter. And the planner is always like, we have a budget, we have a margin to hit, you know, we need to make money. Do you really need 5000 of that thing? You know, blah, blah, blah. So there’s there’s definitely checks and balances, but that’s kind of the nature of the beast and in a good way.

Amanda

And yeah, that’s a it’s a great push pull relationship. And it’s so essential, like the balance of powers there. So the question I hear most on social media are like, Why is this so expensive? Why is this so cheap? Why is there such a wide spectrum of say, how much a pair of jeans could cost? Like, why is just the pricing of clothes all over the place? So today, we’re gonna dig into that and actually, now you understand why she needs here because she is an expert and all things cost related. I love a fun fact. I think Fun fact, you know right way, now to sort of set the context and have some fun, while the Consumer Price Index, which is sort of the average price of all the things we buy, has risen by 70%. Since the 1990s, the price of apparel has actually decreased by 6%.

Janine

Wow, that’s, that’s pretty crazy. That’s pretty crazy.

Amanda

So, to put that, in some context, if you’re not as much of a nerd for economics, as Janine and I are, in 1990, the average new car price for just like a mid range decent car was about $15,000, which sounds so cheap and exciting. Meanwhile, in 2020, it’s more like $26,000. So huge increase, but somehow, your jeans actually cost a few dollars less than they did in 1990, which was 30 years ago. I mean, people, yeah, people are making more money now than they were in 1990. Just from a purely like dollars and cents, not talking about like cost of living increases, but it’s really it’s a disconnect.

Janine

Yeah, cuz I mean, for inflation alone, you would expect an increase in ticket price or an increase in like the the number of dollars paid. And it’s crazy to think that you’re paying less.

Amanda

It’s so crazy. So that’s what we’re gonna dig into today. I guess, just to start things off, we think we’re paying a lot of money for clothes. But we’re not. That’s going to be the summary of us, we’re going to tell you why, like why clothes are so cheap. So the first ingredient in any garment is going to be the fabric, right? And you probably know this, and maybe you don’t, but nicer, more natural, sustainable fabrics are more expensive. And you couldn’t see me because we’re recording this. But I said sustainable in quotation marks because I have a lot of problems with that term. So every time I say that, we just assume it’s in quotes. So polyester blends are really cheap. So Janine, I already know how you feel about polyester because we talked about that. So why don’t you just lay it out for us.

Janine

I say to my friends, whenever anybody talks about polyester, if you’re wearing polyester, you may as well be wearing a plastic trash bag, because polyester is actually plastic. And actually I was wearing just a 50/50 cotton poly blend t-shirt today when I went out on a bike ride, and I wasn’t going that fast. I wasn’t going that far. And by the time I got home, I was sweating. And I just had to take it off. Because it’s literally like wearing plastic. It literally is plastic. So I hate polyester. I slightly regret buying and wearing this, like 50 I didn’t really realize it was. I didn’t really realize it was a 50/50 blend until after I walked away. And to be fair, it was a t- shirt I bought at a craft stand. So I couldn’t return it. But yeah, polyester is disgusting.

Amanda

It is disgusting. So I think when we think of clothing, we think of cotton, right? Like that’s always been the go to like natural fabric for the garment industry. But in 2011 prices reached their highest in 140 years. And you know why? Well, for one 2008, it was the financial crisis. So demand for clothing in general fell pretty substantially. People just didn’t have the disposable income. So therefore, the demand for cotton was pretty low. There are three countries in the world that produce more most of our supply of cotton, China, India, and maybe you didn’t know this, the United States. So not selling cotton, because we’re not selling clothes turns into a huge economic crisis for the farmers of the world specific I mean, obviously, like the farmers of cotton. So in 2009, China, and India decide they’re going to help their farmers out. So they began to buy up local stock of cotton, you know, just to protect the farmers. So this artificially led to prices rising globally, in the US sort of followed suit, that drove up the price of clothing immediately, right. But then, weather conditions led to a shortage of cotton in 2011. So prices went up even more. By the end of that year, the cost of cotton clothing increased by about 11%. And that doesn’t sound like a lot of money. But designing and buying garments is all about pinching pennies. And you know, it’s all about like, can I get Can I take 25 cents off this cost? So what happened? How did retailers adjust to this? Well, they began shifting their assortment into synthetic fibers, aka our good friend polyester. I mean, for one, they’re a lot less expensive to make. But even more important, and this is kind of the other reason we’re certainly even seeing polyester takeover. After the financial crisis of 2008. Customers had an increased appetite for what I like to call it cheap and cheerful clothing. And this is when fast fashion really blew up. Think back to 2008. That was when Forever 21 became more ubiquitous everywhere you went just, there’s a Forever 21. There’s a huge one, they’re expanding, they’re new, they’re new. So, at the time, retailers thought customers might not like the synthetics. But maybe in time, after realizing how crappy these fabrics are, or when they regained their financial situation, they would turn back to cotton and other natural fibers. But they were surprised to discover that customers did not care. They’re like, this is great. This is even cheaper. It’s really bright. It doesn’t get wrinkly, I’m sold.

Janine

Yeah, and I can say, anecdotally, when I was at Banana Republic, during this time, I started working there in June of 2010. And I was there until August of 2013. So I was there, like in the peak of this cotton crisis. And it was crazy. Everybody was like, how are we going to do this? What are we going to do? Like, how do we maintain our same margin? We’re going to talk about this a little bit later, but maintain the margin and profitability that I originally had on this garment when the cost has gone up. And the logical thing to do is to raise the price of that T-shirt or that sock or pair of jeans or whatever to say, Okay, well, it now costs us $15 To make this thing that it used to cost us $12 To make. So we’ll just pass on that price increase to the customer. But as Amanda mentioned, like, in 2008. I mean, the idea of raising prices to customers, when you’re still dealing with the fallout of the financial crisis, was not an attractive option at all. Nobody wanted to raise prices, I mean, if anything, you were just like, that’s just going to be death. Like if I raise the price on this thing, just no one’s gonna buy it, and blah, blah, blah. And so really, the only solution was to mix into synthetics, and then hope for the best. And then I can also say, anecdotally, when I talked to all of my friends, when I asked people if they know the difference between a natural fiber and synthetic fiber, I mean, it’s comical, nobody knows the difference. And so the customer is not also really informed, even if they were to look at the fiber content on the tag. And it says polyester versus viscose versus cotton. I saw one the other day that was TencelI don’t even know what tensile is. There’s always things on there that the customer, even if they are maybe a more informed customer, it’s hard. It’s hard to even know what they are.

Amanda

Yeah, no, absolutely. I will say Tencel does come from cellulose. But it’s also really bad for the environment in a different way. Because so many trees must be grown and then cut down. And there’s a lot of processing in between. It’s just as problematic. It’s not made of plastic, but it’s pretty, pretty rough. Polyester itself and synthetics, As Janine mentioned, are plastic. They are derived from petrochemicals, generally a mixture of oil, water, coal and air, they are non biodegradable. I mean, they may break down over several 100,000 years. But to me that’s non biodegradable for my purposes. So when they go to the landfill, they just stay there forever. Furthermore, and this is almost the scarier part, the production of synthetic fabric sheds microplastics into the water supply. And then even worse, every time the owner of a synthetic garment does a load of laundry, more microplastics are released into the water supply. I read somewhere recently that the average person eats a whole credit card size, serving of microplastics in one year from fish from water from agriculture. I mean, it’s it’s so gross and disturbing. That’s so gross. So gross. It made my stomach sort of clench up when I said it out loud. I’m saying so polishers, pretty depressing. And I think we’re agreeing like the more we hear about it, the less appealing it sounds. But I’m here to tell you that polyester accounts for 51% of textile production worldwide. So it’s huge. And you might think that you don’t own a lot of polyester clothing because you know, when you think of polyester, you’re thinking about the 70s and like leisure suits and it’s really thick and it makes you sweaty and smelly. But the reality is that these synthetics sneak into our lives in a lot of different ways. So lycra, lycra is in swimwear and workout clothes. It’s in some of your undergarments. elastin is in any stretch jeans, your jeggings are a problem. Nylon and your tights and underwear and As Janine mentioned, poly blend tees are ubiquitous. A lot of people think they hold their shape better. They are a little less shrink proof, if you will. They’re soft, they’re soft, definitely soft, and they take color really well like you. I can see why they’re so desirable. Like when you see them on the shelf, you’re not disgusted, you know, but it’s it. There’s plastic in there. A lot of those cozy synthetic fleeces are also hella synthetic. And my favorite synthetic is vegan leather, aka polyurethane leather, which is completely oil basically with some other like razzmatazz or an M, and will melt, possibly, if exposed to flame. But also, you know, the most inexpensive shaqab chiffon clothing is also polyester. And a lot of sweaters now, are a mixture of some sort of natural fiber like wool, and then acrylic blend acrylic. Also plastic.

Janine

Acrylic is definitely plastic, acrylic, like acrylic nails that are the same as acrylic.

Amanda

Yeah, that’s so gross. When you say it like that is right there. It’s okay, so far, we have a list of gross things we talked about already. One is eating your credit card worth of plastic, and next to the acrylic nails and your sweater, which is so visceral. So, then you’re like, Okay, well, you know what, I’m just gonna go buy some natural fabrics like cotton or bamboo. And they’re nice because they’re biodegradable, they aren’t perfect, because they tend to be grown using a lot of pesticides and a whole lot of water. So the organic versions are a lot more expensive. So we’re already starting to talk about, okay, if you want something to be good, if you will, it’s going to be a little bit more expensive.

Janine

And the other natural fibers, I feel like I think of our wool and silk. And I think people also naturally associate those fibers with higher price, right? If you’re getting something that’s 100%, well, cashmere, alpaca, all of this stuff silk, for sure. You just know it’s going to be more expensive, just because the way that it’s produced drives a higher price.

Amanda

And if you do see cashmere, or alpaca at a smokin hot price, there’s something going on there. That’s not good. And it’s a blend. Yeah, exactly. Read your tags.

Janine

They can say I forget what I even remember from Banana Republic. We had these socks that we called a cashmere blend, and I think you only had to have 15% cashmere.

Amanda

Wow, that’s like nothing.

Janine

Because you’re in it in order to call it a cashmere blend. Who knows what else it was mixed with actually, cotton and wool. But regardless. Like, it’s not 100% cashmere?

Amanda

Yeah, I’m far from it. You know, I always, I don’t know, this is something I’ve done my whole life. But I always think about percentages in terms of how I would feel about them as a grade in school. So when I care, 15% I’m like, you failed, you failed, this is a bad scene. And now you’re gonna have to explain this to your mom, and you’re definitely gonna get grounded. So there you go, I hear 15% I’m panicked. I’m so Okay, so that’s the fabric, right. And don’t forget, that also has to be died, you know. And often, especially when we’re dealing with these synthetics that are as we’ve noted plastic, they need to be washed in chemicals to improve the feel of the fabric. And so both of these actions can be incredibly toxic and polluting, they use up a ton of water, and they add cost into your garment. So just another thing to think about.

Next is print. My closet is full of prints, I think they’re fun. Making your own prints is really expensive. And you need a designer who specializes in prints or you can buy them from freelance print designers, you’re going to have to pay them. So that’s just going to add a little bit more onto the cost. And then you also if you want to do your own print, and not buy something that already exists out there in the market, you’re also going to need a high minimum quantity of fabric, also known as an MOQ for custom design, because they’re going to print a whole huge bolt, it’s not the size of bolt of fabric that you see Joann like we’re talking you need a truck to take it somewhere, right. So lots and lots of lots of garments need to be made in order to have a custom print. And there’s a lot of fabric waste involved. You know, just cutting out the patterns. I mean, you know, if you’ve cut anything out, trace your hand on a piece of paper, cut it out, you have this weird scrap of paper left that you can’t really do much with and fabric is pretty similar in that way. Now factories want to get every last cent out of a roll of fabric and, you know, fashion is a cents game. It’s not just dollars. There’s like it’s all about shaving off every cent and so they often use software to determine the layout of the pattern on the fabric in order to waste the least amount of fabric but the reality is a lot of fabric is going to the landfill before anything is even sewn.

Janine

The way that you set the pattern onto the fabric should go with the grain of the fabric, so either directly up and down or directly perpendicular. And if you’re trying to squeeze things in, you could turn things to the side slightly. And if you’ve ever had a knit shirt that you put it in the wash, and then the seam somehow is now going like diagonally across the front of your belly and then across your back. That’s because they stretch the fabric to squeeze it in. And then it’s just a way it’s just something that’s done like when they’re just being cheap. And then you have this and it looks fine when you buy it because it’s been steamed and pressed to sit the right way. But as soon as you watch it, the seams like the fabric return to its natural shape. And then you just end up with these really wonky seams. I remember I had a pair of jeans where the seam was like coming down my leg and then slowly but surely, like making its way across like to the middle of my shoulder.

Amanda

You know, at ModCloth, I developed a lot of printed dresses, all those novelty prints. And it will cost us a little bit extra. Like when I say a little I actually mean a couple of dollars in cost to make sure that the images lined up. And you want that because otherwise it looks cheap. Or there’s the other thing, which I don’t see as often as I used to but it was just a classic standard at Forever 21 where maybe the front of the shirt or dress was printed but about the solid. Do you remember that? Oh, I hate that. You can never turn around. Like exit rooms backwards?

Janine

Yeah, where you’d like embroidery or some type of embellishment. Yeah. On the main body but not on the sleeves.

Amanda

Yeah, yeah, sequined in the front, nothing in the back, maybe it’ll be a knit t-shirt back. Just just a night, just a nightmare. And those things when you wash them, they twist and are even crazier, because they’re often two different fabrics. Not the same content, things get weird. They get wobbly, and there’s just so many things that can happen there. But that’s how you know that’s kind of how you make that margin, which we’re going to get to in a few. So, next, okay, we’ve got our fabric that’s like the main ingredient, right? But now we got to like, make it happen. And the sewing part of the process is called the make. So that’s you know, sewing it together for one but also details every detail you add on as a little bit more cost so oh you like pockets in your dresses. There’s $1 You like a nice hidden zipper. That’s YKK and metal and gonna last the test of time. Okay, there’s a couple dollars. Do you want your seems to be, you know, reinforced and hidden and lay flat. no raw edges. I hate raw edge knits in general, like make me so angry. So basically we’re saying, the better it fits and feels and looks, the more expensive it was to make. So going back to this idea of like, the front of the shirt has embroidery, but the sleeves in the back. Don’t you know, that’s how you keep prices low. Right? So Janine, what is the detail that just makes or breaks the grammar for you like something you just will not buy or will drive you up the wall?

Janine

I will say even though I already said I did this but uh, the fabric is the most important to me. So I have to feel something. It has to be natural fiber. As I said, my aversion to polyester is real and strong. That also is really annoying to me. Because I get it. We’re in 2020. But I hate shopping online because I want to touch everything. And so actually for the COVID crisis that we’re in right now, this is really great for my wallet because I’m just not buying anything because I can’t touch anything. So fabric is the number one and then the other. The other thing that just really I cannot deal with is elastic around my waist like oh, yeah, ever bought a whopper like a cheap cheaply made romper? Yeah, that has an elastic waist on it to like cinch it in the middle. Like the cheap way to do that is just put elastic in verses and then sell it in a small medium large. Instead of actually bringing the waist in with darts or like some other construction method to make it actually fit someone and then you would have to sell it in more sizes. You’d have to sell it in like a 4-6-8-10-12 or something like that. You couldn’t sell it in small, medium, or large. But the cheap way to do it is with a zipper and just the idea that’s where the food goes like I don’t want any yeah my belly you know of course, like I wear pants that have a waist and stuff like that but I hate the idea of like a stretchy piece of elastic like, like just constricting itself around my stomach and same same with any elastic sleeve like anything elastic on the sleeve that would like touch my arm in that way like no, absolutely not the sleeve or the leg.

Amanda

The elastic is so gross when you just like shift your shirt and you can see the line digging into your flash I just, it makes me feel so gross. Yeah and sweaty. It’s just, it’s just not good. So not good trends and embellishments are the next thing we’ve kind of touched on this but you know, things like sequins and embroidery. Those are embellishment but also thinking about snaps buttons, buttonholes, appliques, the zippers, I would say the trim that I cannot handle are cheap plastic side zippers, like I if you’ve had a dress like this, you know my pain. Couple wears it gets stuck at a certain point. And you’re stuck in the garment. I was on a date one time. This was in the early aughts. And I was wearing a romper from H&M. It didn’t have an elastic waist, but it did have a side zipper that was plastic under my arm. And I went to the bathroom and took care of business, went to put my point romper back up, zipped it halfway and it wouldn’t sit the rest of the way. It was like trying everything I could. I had some hand lotion in my purse and I tried to lube it up and ultimately, oh my god, a woman came into the bathroom and helped me. It would take both of us. And we were both like if we pulled too hard. This is that. Yeah, and this was a really important thing to me. Out there and like in a broken zipper, I would have had to just like immediately leave and go home. I wouldn’t have been able to even say goodbye. But fortunately, it all worked out. But I was in the bathroom for 35 minutes.

Janine

Oh my god, I bet he thought you had food poisoning.

Amanda

I know. I know. And I was just like, oh, there was someone else in the bathroom who was having problems with her clothes to help her. But that’s actually me. So I hate a crappy plastic side zipper. Like I just can’t. I mean, the interesting thing about these bad zippers is that they’re not just a fast fashion thing either. I’ve bought more expensive brands and had a similar experience. And I think zippers are really expensive to install. And just to buy, you know, and so they’re also like, really challenging, like not every sower can do it well. And so there’s still a lot of different margins of air. And if you have a larger chest it’s a little bit more challenging. It’s it’s slippers are rough business. Still not as bad though, I guess is an elastic waist and a romper. Like now I’m fixating on that.

Janine

I am imagining, though, like what could you do if you didn’t have a zipper and I just had an idea of you being velcroed into.

Amanda

Like I carry Velcro, I will tell you that this was the beginning of me carrying safety pins, like a whole ton of safety pins with me everywhere. Because theoretically, I could have safety pinned it a whole bunch of times and it would have been not the most attractive thing. But if I had kept by one arm down…

So embellishments, trims, they generate cost. Next, this is something you’re probably not thinking about. But the labels that are sewn inside, you know there’s the brand and size label. If you’ve ever gone down into the lower part of a dress or a romper or your pants, you’ve probably seen additional tags that talk about country of origin and care instructions. And those are actually required by law. So to get those printed, someone has to design them. They have to be printed, and they also have to be sewn in and then hang tags for brands. i I hate hang tags, because everywhere I’ve worked, we took them off before we put the product on the floor. So like if we were selling Levi’s, we would remove all of the shenanigans that came on there before we hung it and added it to the sales floor. So it’s just like, more garbage and it’s like instinct garbage. You know?

Janine

Well, and on the flip side, when I was at ModCloth and we had stores before we had physical retail we didn’t have hang tags because it didn’t matter. Like there’s nothing I mean just coming in a polybag and whatever you know it came from ModCloth but when we had the store, there was this like I don’t even know like feel that we needed to have hang tags so that like these things had more like ModCloth branding on them so that like the customer really knew this is ModCloth branded product, blah, blah, blah. And so we had to not only design and purchase hand tags or hang tags, but then because our product was produced without them, someone had to manually pin them.

Amanda

Ah, I hate that.

Janine

Pretty sure they had the store associates do it because I don’t think they I think they were like, Oh, we’re not gonna buy enough for like, wasn’t like, Oh, we’re going to add this into the cost of the product? Because it was expensive, because I think they were like, I’m gonna say not quite $1. But like $1 because they were really nice.

Amanda

Yeah, no, that sounds about right. To me. I worked for a startup that had a similar practice. And the hang tags were really expensive. There was a special string. And then special, there was special. And that was special and special safety pins that were like, at this place. And so they were like matte black. They were not the kind of things I was carrying around in case I had a romper emergency, right? No. So this, like, infuriates me, because so much you just take it away. No, and it goes in the trash is trash in the trash. It’s just so gross. And it doesn’t make me feel more connected to the brain. It’s so stupid.

Janine

If anything when I see it, especially the ones that are safety pinned on, I just get annoyed because I’m like, this is trash. I know. And I literally, and I feel somehow obligated to save the safety pin because I’m like, maybe I could reuse the safety pin. But then it’s like literally just put it in the trash.

Amanda

Yeah. Well, the strange thing about those safety pins is that they are fine for holding on a tag but they won’t do anything else. Yet, no, they won’t and I will say that they’re not. When I see that kind of like hang tag safety pin combo special string on a garment, I immediately lose respect for the retailer or brand associated with it. I’m like they don’t care about sustainability. They care about some random marketing blobby blog, Google Doc that tells them that they should be doing this to have brand recognition that they don’t need. You know, like, it’s just so, so silly. It’s like, giveaways at conventions, you know, it’s so silly. It does. It doesn’t, it doesn’t do anything, right. And think about it doesn’t do anything about how many hang tags and little special safety pins are in landfills right now. Because there’s nothing you can do with them. So yeah, so labels, tags, more costs. And as you know, some of these tags can cost $1, which is my experience as well, too. We’re talking like fancy cardstock. Some next if you want these garments to fit well. And make sense from a design perspective. You have to pay specialized designers and technicians to perfect the fit to do the technical design. If you’ve ever bought something that had a zipper that was just a little too short or long for the garment, I see this a lot with really cheap dresses where the zippers maybe only like four or six inches long the back and you’re like, what this means probably they didn’t have the right technical design, or they didn’t have one at all, you know that they sent a photo to the factory and we’re like, can you just try to mock this up somehow. So there’s some more expense and in this situation, the more you spend on something to make it right. The more the garments gonna cost, but in my opinion, the more likely it’s it’s worth a greater cost to the customer. Right? It’s gonna be a better experience.

So next, things are getting really dry, right? You probably thought we were done. You were like, Okay, I see I can picture the garment. I see the hang tag I see. But transportation, getting it from the factory to the retailer’s warehouse or fulfillment center. I mean that that costs the money, right? So during the 60s, a long time ago, 95% of all clothing worn in the US was made in America. That’s wild today. I know. It’s crazy to think about working in the industry now. Today a mirror. This is so depressing. Are you guys ready thinking about this? If you got this grade on a test, are you ready? Brace yourself. 2% of Americans’ clothes are made within domestic borders as in here in the United States. So we’re talking about a lot of shipping. And we’re going to talk about how fast fashion has impacted that shipping in just a moment. But we’re not just talking about fast fashion here. luxury brands, you know them like Gucci or Commes de Garcon… I’m so not a luxury person, I have to hesitate to think of them, they actually do the bulk of their manufacturing in Asia as well with just finishing domestically. So just enough to say something is made in Italy, it’s, it’s still a lot of transportation, all of all the stuff that we associate with fast fashion.

Janine

I will also say though, just because something is made overseas, and especially in China, does not mean that it was made poorly. And we’re going to talk a little bit about the different kinds of factories later, but you can, you can get something made in China that is extremely, extremely, extremely well constructed, and well produced and inexpensive and high quality. And you can get something that is, you know, that you would get from Alibaba or Amazon or whatever, that would be cheap and is made of plastic. But I think it’s important to clarify that just because it was made overseas doesn’t mean that it’s shit. And then and just because it was made in America doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s quality, it’s certainly going to cost more to have the production done here, because we have the minimum wage that we have to pay people here certainly much higher than in China or in India. But there’s a whole gamut of quality of production overseas.

Amanda

I mean, I would just tag on there saying made in the USA does not mean better. We are at Nasty Gal, we actually did a lot of knits like T shirts, bodysuits underwear, here in the USA, and they were abysmal. And As Janine mentioned, the hourly wage hires were paying more for the help. The Nasty customer didn’t want to pay 20 extra dollars for a bodysuit because it was made in the USA. So we had to cut the cost out somewhere. And it was generally the fabric that suffered. And the sewing was just not not good. You know, because the the teams here, like might be being paid more to sew, which is also not always true. But they’re being rushed through it and working under also tough conditions like no air conditioning in downtown LA and we are going to have a future episode about Made in America. And I will tell you that the person who I’m working on said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since which is made in the USA was the greenwashing before greenwashing oh my god, it’s so true. So true, right? It’s a marketing message.

So anyway, moving on. So here’s the deal. Shipping via ocean is cheaper, but it takes about a month to get to the retailer. Right, so the boats are slow, I mean, they’re actually moving really fast, but a lot of space. Air shipping takes just a few days, but it’s also really expensive. And it’s about 12 to 16 times the cost of shipping via boat. I mean, it’s really expensive. So the cost of shipping is added to the cost of the garment for accounting purposes. And since retailers don’t want to raise the price that the customer pays for the garment, as we’ve already talked about. They have to cut costs in other places if they want to ship via air. So it’s cheaper fabrics, trims less one less fit session, maybe changing up the dye, Zara, I thought okay, so I’m going to tell you, I thought I was gonna dig into this and find out that Zara shipped 100% of their product via air, but it’s actually only 40%, which is still a lot. But they have these crazy ships, where they put the mostly finished product they load it on. And then in the month it takes to ship to the US. They do the finishing. So they sewl on the tags. They do all the finishing and it’s so wild. I mean, they are geniuses of cutting out all the costs.

Janine

That’s innovative, to say the least.

Amanda

So when Janine and I were prepping for this episode, we talked sort of anecdotally about how we felt that there had been a huge shift from ocean to air shipping and in our careers. I couldn’t find any data for the entire industry. But I will say that in the early aughts, when I began my buying career, shipping via air was very rare. And you often had to request special permission from upper management to do it. Like you had to make a really good case like we’re going to run out this is our number one style. Losing four weeks of sales would mean that we would lose you know this amount of money like you really had to come to the table with a compelling argument and then maybe upper management would sign off on it. But now in the past few years, in my career I have found that air is more often what’s happening and ocean is almost the exception.

Janine

Yeah, and I can attest to this too. Like when I was at Banana Republic, everything was by boat and I worked in non apparel. So like socks and jewelry and whatever. And so jewelry is basically the lightest, smallest, most expensive thing that you could air that doesn’t take up space and isn’t heavy, and you can still sell it for 25 or $30 or something like that. In me, be me maybe once or twice a year, maybe you would get approved to air in jewelry, maybe. But everything, I mean, everything everything was but by boat. And then when I was at ModCloth, I don’t think we ever, I don’t think we ever since they voted anything. I don’t think we ever. I don’t think we ever received anything by boat, I think during there was kind of an initiative, sort of towards the end that was like this cost saving initiative where they were trying to figure out if we could receive things by boat, but you have to build that additional month into your timeline. And by that point in our production, like going to market calendar. We just didn’t have the month. And so maybe we could maybe a boat reorders like basic T shirts or basic sweaters, or things like that. It was just we were just reordering something that we already had. But we certainly were never putting anything by boat that was brand new product because we didn’t have the time. And so that really that incentive to get things to market as fast as possible is also kind of indicative of this whole fast fashion trend. Where it’s really about getting the product to the customer in as little turnaround time as possible.

Amanda

Absolutely. And I have noticed a trend also in terms of buying, you know, in the beginning of my career, we would place our orders almost six months out for certain categories because we want to accommodate for boat, we wanted to accommodate for extra fittings, quality assurance, etc. Every month, you get a number of receipts, which are your budget for how much you can buy that month. And often we would fill almost all of those receipts in advance, maybe we would let the little tiny open in case we needed to chase into a reorder of a surprise bestseller. But in the past five or six years of my career, I have noticed a shift into only spending about half of that until the month before that delivery, so that we can react fast chasing the trends that we may have missed. There’s also a lot of fearfulness about buying the wrong thing. I mean, you heard, Jeanine mentioned that one of her jobs is to make sure we deal with stuff that no one wants to buy. And so we all are fearful of the things no one wants to buy. And so chasing at the very last minute and shipping stuff via air gives us a little extra reassurance that it’s the right trend. So that’s the air that’s why air is more popular.

We think of it as like, you know, Forever 21 or Boohoo or Nasty Gal. But the reality is that the entire fashion industry has, adopted this approach to buying, so they are all airing stuff. And so you know, we could have a long conversation about semantics of fast fashion. Is Gap fast fashion? Is J Crew? Is Urban Outfitters? That’s a whole other episode. But what I will say is that all brands have kind of become fast fashion because of this, that fast fashion is not what you think it is.

Janine

And I would also love to know, and I doubt, I would highly doubt this data exists. But I would love to know if by placing these bets closer in, are you actually are you making up the money that you’re spending on the air, right? Because the whole point is like, oh, like, we can react to trend more and blah, blah, blah. And so we’ll be able to make a more informed decision about the product that we’re buying that it’s right for the customer. But because you are spent just because you are spending this money and you’re making the decision closer in doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually picked a winner. You can still be wrong.

Amanda

Yeah, I definitely worked places that follow this fast fashion model of shipping and ordering whatnot. And they have bought plenty of the wrong things.

Janine

I mean,because it’s just an impossible job no matter what but I would love as a data driven person myself, I would love to actually know is there the return on investment there? And you would have to have a lot of data over time for a lot of products and you would have to have the success rate of the shipped product versus the aired product. But I would be really curious. Maybe it is I mean maybe there maybe that ROI is there. But it certainly is something that adds a significant, significant amount to the final cost of the product for sure.

Amanda

Yeah, my, the wheels are turning in my brain, I’m like, who would give us 10 or 15 years of data. So we could just look at it sounds so fun to me.

Janine

I have some ideas, but I won’t name names.

Amanda

We’ll talk about it later. So, I will say that not only is air shipping more expensive, and then impacting kind of quality of our product, when we finally receive it, it’s also estimated that moving just 1% of garment transportation from ship to air cargo can result in a 35% increase in carbon emissions, that is rough, we’re talking just 1%. So even just knowing Janine, I haven’t been able to give you any firm statistics here on the shift from ocean to air in the length of our career, but we know anecdotally, it was pretty extreme, I want you to think about the impact on carbon emissions that that shift has created. And try not to get too depressed. Yeah. So that’s transportation.

Next, I don’t want to go too hard into this. But this is part of the cost in some places you work, and that is design and production loads. So basically, what this is, someone in finance adds up all the salaries and operating budgets for the production and design department departments, they’ll model out how many units in in house design product the brand is going to buy that year, they sort of design, they divide the total budget by the number of units, this is a really simplified version, but they come to a cost per unit, that’s called the load. And that gets added on to the cost. So in a huge company, where almost all the product is in house designed that load can be pretty small, generally less than $1. A very small percentage of the total cost of the garment. But to name names here, because this company doesn’t exist anymore. At Nasty Gal, our load was five to $10, which is insane, which is insane. Because I mean, we haven’t talked numbers yet, but the average cost for I mean, let’s say just to a knit top would probably be like $5. And then like a dress could be 15, or $20. So adding five to $10 is like adding a minimum an additional 25% to the cost, which is crazy,

Janine

Insane. Insane.

Amanda

Yeah. So it meant in a lot of categories. It didn’t make financial sense for us to buy and house product, which is bad news, right? Basically what it means if your load has to be five to $10, a garment as opposed to maybe a back or last, what are you doing, it means that you’re I know, it means that your company is spending way too much on design and production in proportion to the size of the business. And I can say at Nasty Gal, we had more designers and production people than we had buyers like it was huge. And in house product was an initiative, but we could just never get it right. Like from a price point perspective. And on our site, the most expensive stuff we sold, right was the in house design product. And it was all really, really cool. But it was the least profitable. It was very niche, and it was the least profitable part of our business. Absolutely. And I do like when people ask me like, What do you think happened at Nasty Gal, I usually give them a list about four or five things, but that’s one of them. Like it just was drowning us financially.

Janine

I will say though, kudos to them for doing the fully loaded cost, because during my time at ModCloth. And when I first started working there, our in house production. So products, clothing and products that we produced ourselves was probably only about 15% of sales. And then there was an increasing effort over the years to drive a larger and larger contribution of sales from in house production for a variety of reasons. One of them being that it was proprietary, so this was product you couldn’t get anywhere else. And so that was a reason to come to the site. And then also in theory, it has a better margin. Because you’re not paying a middleman for it. Right. Right. But we were never able to to get to and agree on what this fully loaded cost was. And I don’t to be honest, because I wasn’t. It’s a cost accounting catastrophe, I will say and just like a huge work driver. But Amanda’s point is relatively simple. Like, take, take all the salaries of all the people that work on this stuff and sort of figure it out. I’d venture to guess it’s because any given year, the amount of products that we produced in house varied widely. So like one year, maybe we were producing I don’t know, 3030 garments per month, and then maybe another, maybe that went up to 150 At some point, right? Well, probably not that high, but probably like 120. Yeah, and so, but you’re still paying those people the same thing. So that cost per product is going to really vary quite widely. And then also our quantities that we were buying, we’re also going all over the place too. So I think at some point, they’re just like, forget it, like, this is too. This is too complicated. And we were just going to manage to our bottom line anyways, and we’re not going to worry about this. So I am actually I have to give credit where credit’s due from a cost accounting perspective and say, kudos, figured it out. And, and also had a real number like that five to $10. I’m surprised that somebody didn’t see that number and just torpedo the entire project, because that number would have said, this isn’t a business that we should be in, I saw your eyes that, like somebody figured out what the number was realized it was astronomical, and then chose to proceed with like waving this flag. But like, I mean, maybe it was just some like, you know, really, really honest accounting person that was just like, this is a number, this is the hill, I’m dying. Because that should have been that metric. And data point alone should have been enough reason for them to either stop doing that entirely, or to significantly change the way that they were doing it.

Amanda

I mean, it’s because I can’t stop laughing because I have to tell you, first off, any of my friends from Nasty that are listening to this are also laughing, but in that like, in that way that’s both evil and angry, sad at the same time. Because, yeah, it would make sense that you’d be like, okay, Something doesn’t add up here, right. But ultimately, and I could talk about this for hours, I’ve learned so much about the mistakes you can make in business from that job alone. The idea that came from upper from the top was that, hey, let’s just take up the retail prices, I mean, nasty house premium anyway. And so it turns out, our customer was like, no, no. So then it was just like, even more than we’re marking the stuff down, we’ve already paid this crazy load. I mean, no matter what we’re paying that load, because the operation costs of the company are this huge design and production team. And I will say not to insult them. Because all the people who worked and design and production, there were some of the most talented people I’ve ever met, like they were worth the money. And it’s sad that they couldn’t execute all the product they were able to, because the everything was such a mess financially, it had nothing to do with them.

Janine

So yeah, I mean, it’s really a game of economies of scale. Yeah, and you can make it work if you have the scale. And this was also like the a miss, I’ll just say mistake that ModCloth made, or just something that like we had to contend with was as a growing emerging brand, we couldn’t possibly justify the quantities that we needed to buy, in order to get the economies of scale to make the costing work, so that we didn’t have that five to $10 load that we had, like, a lower a load, like a $2 load or $1.50 load or something like that. And so, over time, we were able to get there, but you can’t just it’s really difficult to just start a business and start a brand where you’re selling 2500 units of like a single piece. Yeah, it’s really hard to do that. And so like when I first started at ModCloth, we were buying anywhere from like 80 probably on the low end 80 units of a product Wow. 80 to 150, I would say in private label at 120 was like an average buy on the you know, sort of lower end and then 300 was absolutely a max. And so you’re just not going to get economies of scale with with that. So we worked our way towards buying 1000s of units of things. I think we bought 5000 of a beret.

But I mean, that’s how you get that’s how you can justify, okay, if I if I have to pay 10 People salary, or whatever, when you split it over five 1000 units of something it becomes it becomes less like less of a cost versus when you’re buying 120 units or 80 units of something. It just becomes ridiculous.

Amanda

So one last thing in the cost, I feel like we’re like baking a cake here. And now we’re just like, the last ingredient we’re going to add is like the vanilla extract, right? And that is the factory like, yes, we’re paying people to sell the stuff the factory plant, so the factory needs to get cut, too, right. And the factory partnership or lack thereof is very complicated. So one thing that I see people discussing the most on the internet, when they talk about garment production, is this misconception that most retailers own their factories. Reality is they do not, it’s actually risky to own your own factory, because, as we’ll talk about in future episodes, different regions of different countries do different things as their strongest suit, and they can’t do other things, and they don’t have access to other materials, and to have just one factory that your own would be a grave mistake. So often, retailers work via agents who find the factories, and they transmit the information back and forth, the agents take a cut as well. So let’s talk about that a little bit. Based on your experience, Janine, what do you think is one of the biggest drawbacks of working with these agents?

Janine

I mean, just complete lack of transparency, you just have no idea what’s going on? And that. So if you can imagine if you were any brand, starting to be a new brand right now, how would you even go find a factory in China? Or in India? Or Indonesia? Or something like, and how would you even know where to go? I think I remember correctly that a lot of Victoria’s Secret underwear is made in Indonesia. And I don’t know why I remember that. But how would you even know, oh, if I want a factory that makes good underwear? Or at least mediocre underwear, should I go to Indonesia? You don’t without doing a ton of research? And then even if you were to go there? How would you get an introduction to somebody who’s going to take a meeting with you? I actually don’t know what language they speak in Indonesia. So how are you going to communicate with this person? How are you going to know that you’re not going to get taken advantage of what’s a good deal versus what’s not a good deal? Say you met with this person? And maybe their quality was good, but they weren’t giving you an astronomical price? How would you negotiate it? Or would you just leave because you weren’t going to get a good deal? Like you just you. In fact, you don’t have a lot of agency in this situation. So you need someone who does, who can help you source of factory and getting finding a good factory is a huge part of getting a well made product in the end. And there’s naturally needs to be a lot of trust there. And so just trying to do that, just trying to find a factory is a monumental task, trying to find a good factory for a fair price is also a monumental task. Also, you can imagine that, like I was at a farmers market last weekend, and there was like, there were all these produce stands, but then there was like the one produce stand that apparently was the good produce stand and there was like a huge line for it. And the no lines at any of the other stands. And so I’m like, oh, that must be the good product stand. And so similarly with factories, they are the ones that are the good factories that are doing good work for good prices. They have a long line or they’re like you. You need to work with us. And so when I was at ModCloth, and we were doing this 120 units 300 units like thing, no one would even work with us, even if we paid them like an absurd price per piece, because they’re like, it’s not worth our time, like, where’s your where’s your 1500 units, like, You’re not worth it to us. And so, especially when you’re starting out, you don’t, you don’t have the negotiating power or anything like that. So it’s really important to even have this even it’s, it’s not important, but it’s, it’s amazing resource to even have an agent as an option. Because if you’re just out there on your own, I mean, I think you’d get taken advantage of not only in price and quality and everything, you would just get totally screwed. But when you have an agent, because there’s this middleman, you really don’t know, they may I mean, they probably would let you go visit some factory. But would you even know that this factory is actually producing your goods versus the one next door versus the one that’s 40 miles inland that you’ve never even seen. And so you may think that you know what you’re getting, but you really don’t, and even maybe say they’d like to run a line for you. So you come and visit when they’re producing your red t shirt or whatever, okay, just because like these 100 or so units of this red t shirt were produced here doesn’t mean that they hadn’t subcontracted tracted out the other 400 units, and like, all of the white t shirts are being made someplace else. And so you just lose a lot of that transparency when you’re working with an agent. But I would also just say this, like retailers claim to have to have an understanding of what’s going on with their factories. And just as someone who’s worked in the business, and this is completely anecdotal, this is my opinion, this is not necessarily based on facts. I just don’t really know how you can, unless you really have a really good strong working relationship, and you’re constantly visiting and checking in and even then, you don’t really know and people will try to pull a fast one on you. Because they can.

And so, yes, you could, in theory, own your own factories. But that’s just so unlikely. I mean, as as you were saying about everybody has their own specialty too. There’s a denim factory, there’s a knit factory, there’s a shoe factory, there’s a belt factory, there’s this, that whatever underwear, all these different things that any any retailer would produce, has their own specialty, like a woven shirt, especially like a nice men’s woven shirt, you know, every factory is going to have their own specialty of what they’re good at. And so you would you not, you naturally need to be in business with a lot of different factories to produce everything to get a good quality product. And you just never own innumerable factories like that, unless maybe you were a Walmart when I was at old, maybe Old Navy. But even then I actually don’t think they own their factories. I’m not sure like. And even if we remember, like the really sad incident in Bangladesh, like I forget, like that was probably 10 years ago or so now, maybe a little bit less, where that factory collapsed. And it was like called out that like H&M and Gap. And all these people like had business in this factory. Those are giant retailers. If h&m can’t own their own factory, if GAP can’t own their own factory, because it doesn’t make sense, then like the tiny people are not going to do it either. And so like all that’s to say is that like, it logically makes sense that you work with a ton of different factories. And when the more factories you work with, the harder it is to know what’s going on with each individual one. And I think the giant the giant companies like Gap, like H&M because they’re so big, they like a gap, they have a hole. I don’t even know what they’re called, but like factory management, sustainability ethics, like department of people that work in San Francisco in the HQ and then also have like on the ground people in China and in the other places to manage these, like factories and make sure things are going are being done ethically. But can a tiny company have that? Can ModCloth have that? Absolutely not? Absolutely not. There’s no way and no way I would not have thought was making doing, you know, $150 million in revenue per year. There was no way that we could have ever like, what could have ever had that kind of team. It just was cost prohibitive. And so you you have I’m saying like, I guess you don’t have to but there there is some element of a lack of transparency. And that lack of knowing really what’s how your clothes are being produced. In any type of retailer. You just really I personally just think that you really can’t have complete transparency. Seeing complete knowledge unless you’re really watching where every single unit was produced. And that’s just not possible.

Amanda

Absolutely. And I think that’s why, like, I always think of this as an example Everlane just came out to, yeah, for all of the ethical and sustainable issues that Everlane speaks to, they never address the manufacturing. And I think that’s because my hope is they know that that would be that could just be a whole canopies waiting to get the lid ripped off. Because they just, they just don’t know, it’s probably okay, but it might not be okay. Okay. Great, but it might not be and so we really, really bad look for them to promise that right. And then one of their factories to collapse and like a year, or one of the factories they’re working with.

Janine

It’s like, oh, that’s what you built your whole brand.

Amanda

Yeah, yeah. So also just important to add these agents who connect you with factories and kind of manage that relationship. They also take a fee. Oh, so you know, they’re expensive. But as you need said, they’re doing so much stuff that the brands can’t do on their own. Yeah, I mean, they’re building those relationships, they’re on the ground. They’re the experts. And they keep it going, you know, they hold the factories accountable when things don’t go right. And the last piece of the puzzle, which I’m barely going to talk about, because it’s so complicated, and it’s really boring, our duties and tariffs. Like I, maybe someday we’ll talk about duties and tariffs and length, but it’s basically like, No, you got to pay to import stuff into the United States. And I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of wackadoo stuff going on with our current president, and raising duties against China, making imports more challenging for us in this very foolish attempt to bring manufacturing back into the United States. That’s all I’m gonna say about that, because I could go down a really big rabbit hole. But it can really be expensive. I mean, it can add a few dollars onto the cost, which once again, this is like a sense game. So $1 is like 100 cents. It’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Amanda

Hi, it’s me, Amanda. Again, Janine and I had such a blast talking. That was what was meant to be an hour long episode turned into almost three hours of talking shop. So surprise, this episode is ending with Stay tuned next week for the conclusion of this week’s episode. Next week, we will be continuing the conversation by talking about margin and well, WTF is margin. Along with why ethically manufactured products should be more expensive. And then the disappointing truth about why they’re actually more expensive. We will also touch on the #payup controversy ripped from the headlines, questions, comments, corrections? Or maybe just something you would like to hear in a future episode of close horse. You can reach us the semi old fashioned way, otherwise known as email, at clothes horse [email protected]. Or you can find us on the gram at closed horse podcast. Extra super special thanks to Dustin Travis white for creating our amazing music, while also acting as an incredibly patient and audio engineer and one man AV crew. Thank you so much for listening. Please come back next week.