018 — Start To Finish: How We Design And Market Our Products

This is for the free thinkers, and curious beings that swim upstream will see possibilities not problems. That learn from the past, live by the present and create the future. This is the Isle of the Audio Show. A lot of people ask for it, so now we've done it. In this episode, our digital director will go deep into a conversation with myself on the inner workings of how our clothing collections are put together. From the budgets and range planning, all the way to the marketing, this gives you a deep insight into the depths we go to to put each garment together, which you probably weren't to wear off. From how we choose the fabrics, how we pick the trends, how we decide which garments to cut in the sampling stage, and how we bring the clothes to market. For all those in industry, or those that are interested in the behind the scenes of how our fashion brand works and runs, you'll find a lot of value and a lot of enjoyment from this episode. Enjoy. It's up to you. You all will. How's it, Brad? Good. I'm good. So take me through it. How does it all start? Where does it? How far ahead? Does the process start when we're doing these collections and putting out these out of the way we close? So we start six months ahead. So before the customer actually sees the product on the racks or on the website, we've started that process six months ago. In some cases, even longer, and in any given time, there's multiple collections that are at different stages of that six month cycle. So say, for example, we just finished June 2020 collection. So we wrapped that up a couple of weeks ago. That was a slightly earlier because Chinese New Year's a little bit earlier this year. Yeah. So basically, we get all the budget, first and foremost, it begins with the budget based off our projected sales and also how our sales have been tracking leading up to our collection as well. And it basically dictates and drives how much money we can spend on a collection. To say, for example, we call it an OTB, which is an open to buy for those depending how advanced or how big the businesses are to highly recommend it. If you're doing over a million bucks, a couple million bucks of revenue in your fashion company or any type of inventory company, an open to buy is highly recommended, I'd probably just Google it. What it means, but it basically dictates how much money you should spend on inventory based on forecasted sales and also the sales which you have been doing. So say, say, for example, June 2020, it might tell us to spend 200 or 250 grand of stock. So we get that number and then our merchandise manager then kind of breaks it down into different categories. So say spend 50,000, these are just random numbers, 50,000 dollars on pants, 50,000 dollars on watches, 50,000 dollars on accessories, 50,000 dollars on hoods and then from there we've got the budgets, we've got how much is to be allocated towards each category and then it's over to the design team and that's where we have our meetings with yourself, digital. We've got our merch planner and we've got our ops planner and even our retail guys as well and we basically discuss, we've usually got notes on the previous month from the previous year. So we had all our as example, we had all our notes from June 2019, sorry, 2019 and 2018 and this is where it was like, say for example, we were too loud on hoodies or we didn't have enough winter socks or didn't have enough beanies or we didn't have enough products that cater to the Northern Hemisphere and we basically get all that information. This is before we even design anything, we get all that information but design team, get all that information and it's like K versus this is a starting block, this is how we start so we know what to do, what not to do, how much to spend and how much to do for each particular category. So do you find that the category trends change year to year, like sustain, you're talking about June, is that June like what we're putting out, is that consistent through the years or do you find that it changes over time? I think it changes in a dangerous thing, the good thing, the bittersweet thing about data is it tells you everything you need to know, but it doesn't actually tell you what you're missing. So say for example in June, it might say that hoodies were okay, like didn't sell very well but then if you look back, maybe we didn't have enough hoodies in stock. So it's a little bit misleading so you just, that's why it's really important to make notes and have commentary around what happened from a year prior because you're honestly you're always going to forget there's too many factors in your business and you're going to lose kind of, you're going to lose track of what you know what worked, what didn't but absolutely man trends change like say for example like this November, December shorts for some reason were didn't fire as early as they did last year, why that is, I don't know it could be people would route way where pants, it could be the temperatures are getting hot, it's getting hotter later, like I don't, it could be the product was off you know and that's why it's so important once you do a collection and release a collection and now as soon as we release a collection for month after, we've got all the data, we've got all the fresh reasons why things worked, why didn't work and just record that so that way you've almost got like a Bible to reflect on for previous, you know the next year following season so yeah it turns your question, yeah it's always changing, it's always, yeah always tweaking pulling strings adjusting because you can only know to an extent right like at the end of the day there is like there's a chunk of it that's guesswork that you're predicting what the customer is going to like for sure man definitely well in our business you know we've got our core range which probably makes up about 70% of our sales so that's just all our black basic pants and hoodies and teas and this and that, that stuff's cool and put it doesn't get people excited and it's a bit especially in our industry where we're, I'd say we are a fashion company and fashion means that you have to innovate and do things differently, you have to be relevant, you have to see in the foreseeable future about what's going to be trending colors and shapes and sizes and that that's the element of like a risk and the unknown and keeps things exciting and that's also what can absolutely yeah explode for company into a different stratosphere but at the same time it can also screw you up if you get the balance incorrect if you do way too much out there, buzzy stuff and not enough simple core, bread and butter stuff so how do you how do you fight that balance between creating kind of the simple stuff that the customers like and you know they're going to like and then creating like that wild piece that's like pushing the boundary and you're like using more of your intuition and gut feeling like how do you balance those two? I think like having a set of design principles and rules and also over the time like I've been designing now for over 11 years and I kind of know within me what works what doesn't don't get me wrong every I'm not perfect every time and that's why we have people like you know we have an open transparent policy within the company and if I think it's personally awesome dope and everyone else thinks it's whack you know the jury is spoken I just got to go with it and swallow my pride and just can the idea and push harder and progress and try to do something but it's a real it's a real balancing act but I think so long as you've got that set of rules about you know things like what our formula say for example for us it's like we know that if we do something in the middle ground where we're trying to push the boundaries and do something real out there whack innovative if we're not pushing a boundaries enough it actually falls short like it's not crazy enough so for us if we're going to go crazy you go crazy yeah if you're going to go clean go clean yeah the middle ground for us doesn't really work and that's that's just something which I've learned over time but man who knows like soon that might even change again you just got to be adaptive you got to yeah constantly have those tough conversations and constantly be looking at the data and asking the right questions you're going to get you're going to get the right answers based off asking the right questions if you ask yourself oh why doesn't this work that's a stupid question you gotta yeah you gotta ask yourself you gotta ask a cut even asking a customer as a slight yeah I think that's a really important part you can't overlook it's having like a direct clear open communication with the customer about the garments as well yeah definitely man because their their feedback is just so important so valuable man they know it's pretty clearly whereas for us it's like we have a tendency you know to to over complicate it and I think I'm just straight down the pipeline asking them why I'll give you the answer man but sometimes at the same time I don't know you know Henry Ford says this here if he asked what they wanted to ask for a faster horse yeah and that there's a lot of truth to that as well so and that's where the magic of you know company culture and being entrepreneurs and designers comes into play because you create things and people's lives they didn't even know they wanted or needed or existed yeah Steve Jobs and master but what Steve Jobs also did is he started with what the customer wanted and worked backwards and I think it's such a smart way of looking at it you know the man 'cause the thing is, is like, if you just create what you want, I know we always, you and me, have these conversations. Like, I'll present a range or show you a range and you'll be like, ah, nod onto that. But I'm like, bro, are you nodding to it? Or is it like, is that your personal taste? Or do you think the customer's nodding to it? And it's like a real important distinction. And we always, it's really hard balance. It's very hard balance, definitely. Especially, and especially as a designer, yeah? But I've really learned to really kind of separate myself from it now, and that's why it's so good. We can be ruthlessly honest and not what's gonna be offended, which is great. And we can apply that to all aspects of the business. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, once the merchandise planner has everything sort of, they've got the budget, you know, this is kind of the silhouette that we need for this month and everything. Obviously, it flows into the design process from there. And so, you've been designing for 11 years, you said, how does, what's your method for that? Where do you draw your inspiration? Do you, has it changed over time? Or do you have a set design process of how you work? That's a good question, bro. Sometimes it just really flows out, almost effortlessly. And sometimes it's hard. And in terms of dancers, I basically get, I get as much information as I can. So it's like KV's in my parameters. 'Cause the thing is, if I just go off and try to get inspired, I'm basically, you know, I'm just working aimlessly, is like I made it need to be like a new puffer jacket or jacket. I'm sorry, I'm inspired by a puffer jacket or a jacket, but there may be no need for that in the particular collection. So I basically get all the information. And then I just go off on my rant. I do my research and I just try to get inspired. And I do that, I go to the library on Tumblr, on research, looking at other brands, go to other shops, just try to just kind of get the buzz going. But also, more often than not, what's really kind of got me inspired nowadays is actually getting all the teams inspiration. 'Cause that's certain things that I'm not looking at. So it's new to me. So it just sparks an idea in my mind. And once, honestly, it can take what's it saying? It just takes like a spark to create a bushfire. And it's the same thing for creativity as well. One spark, one new fresh idea. I can spark a whole new collection. But yeah, there's no like set formula. Sometimes I try to force it. Sometimes I try to work it. Sometimes I come to work six o'clock in the morning, 5.30 in the morning to get into it. But I'm just not feeling it, man. I can't feel it. So what do you do in those times when you're not feeling it? Oh, what I try to do is I try to work for creative, just wake up for creative muscle. So I'll probably do something else creative, wherever it be like. So write articles, or something to do with interior design, or something completely different. And once I'm kind of working and working up, I can start applying it into garments. But I just, and at the same time, I try to just try to chip away at it as opposed to doing it in all in one session, because it's exhausting, you can spend eight hours in the day designing and only do one t-shirt, or one jacket. But that one jacket can spark the flow and the vibe and the ideas for the full collection. So yeah, it's nowhere else set piece. There is deadlines that you need to meet. And I think deadlines are good because they put the pressure on you. And then also the fact that we're a small team and I'm still doing, now I'm 100% designing again, which I haven't really done on years, on top of my other day-to-day roles of the company and stuff. That's a lot of pressure as well. But I just learn to get used to it and deal with it. And how would you say your design process has changed since a decade ago, way more disciplined because I don't have a luxury of time. A decade ago, I could run my own timelines. Just if I didn't meet the eleventh of December, doesn't matter, there's no backlog, you know. But now we've got factories that are reliant on our orders every single month coming in. But they've also got their own schedules. And we've got our timelines and production has to get things on C freight rather than air freight 'cause the thing is if we see freight, if we, sorry, air freight 5,000 pieces, that's a huge bill. And that's gonna erode your margin. And then she's driven off her KPIs, a margin driven. So it's just like, you know what I mean? It's like the repercussions are being late now. When you're playing at a professional level can no longer be. And I think that's the difference between now and previously as now, we've got a whole business that's reliant on running to a strict timeline. And if we don't, it's just a domino effect, you know. Rangers are late, you're yourself, you've got your targets to meet for the online sales. And if it's running a week late, man, you've got a week of sales to catch up on. Yeah, and you know, our business is all based off, it's products, man. Like, people shop with. People are, you know, engage with Isle of Ugly because of the clothes we make. And people want newness all the time. They want innovation, but at the same time, they want consistency in the same thing and they want the same t-shirt always in stock. Yeah, so it's a real, real kind of balancing act, but yeah. And so, we put out a collection every month. And obviously that's a lot different to other fashion brands and companies. Does that add, obviously that adds a whole lot more pressure instead of doing it quarterly, seasonally, doing it every month. What was the main reason behind chopping it up like that? And do you think you'd ever go back to more of a seasonal thing? I don't think, I don't think we'd go back to a seasonal thing, like, say, four collections a year, because it's all. It would be easier though, right? It would be easier, absolutely. But at the same time, I think our whole business model and financial model and everything is built off monthly collections. And even, say, for October, our anniversary collection, we did, what was it, 10 releases in 20 days. So it released every two days, but some of these releases consisted of four pieces. So it was insane. And the thing is, people, we've almost trained now our customer to know that I love ugly releases sporadically. And we've trained well. Yeah, we've trained them well and we've focused on. But I think going back to the other way, we've tried to go back to the past, like, which is more of a traditional distribution model where you do four collections a year, you're super in advance, say, 12 months in advance, and then they buy it all. It's all consolidated, this and that. And, yeah, I personally think it's for old model. It allows you to move very fast as well. It allows you to move very fast. So change, if you need to change things, like the regular collections. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Definitely, man. It gives you so much flexibility and you can do exciting things. It's awesome for sales, it's supposed to get a bit of a huge spikiness. Because the thing is, as late nowadays, people see a collection, you get these brands releasing. And I'm not saying our ways, the best way of the only way, but you get brands releasing 100 police collections, and people are sick of it after a week or two. But then that's them for the next four months. That's all they've got to do. And I feel that it's a pretty risky way to run your business. You see most companies now that it's just all about newness. You got like chocolate companies, beverage companies, everything, but I've already seen co-labs, new flavors, and they're doing it regularly. And I think you need to do that. And then for us to also fill the gaps, so we're not just pushing product for the sake of it. That's why we do podcasts and other things as well. I value in other ways. - Yeah, absolutely, man. - And so, say you've done the design process. You've got the first draft done. - Yeah. - What happens there? - First design process, draft done. I then send it to your ops to yourself and to Melissa and production. And what we're getting at is we're getting a full 360 point of view from everybody. Everyone's got different tests, and everybody's going to be looking at for collections with for different lens. In your case, you're going to be looking at what's going to drive for most, based off data, what's going to drive for most hype or the most sales or interest or shareability. And then for the operations, it's like real what's the most commercially viable thing for the average kind of average Joe, you know? And then you've got myself, it's like what's pushing the most creative boundaries and like really growing the brand and expanding the brand. And then you've got the production going. She's just making sure we've got covering all bases for categories. So it's like a real good way to get a full holistic view of the collections and after that first draft, you pretty quickly start to see the gaps. Or were you too heavy or too light in certain things? And once that, I basically make everybody give their comments, take on the comments, no offense taken, and then back to the drone board and do the draft too. Usually we probably do about, we repeat that process probably free. - Two or three times, yeah. - Two or three, some cases four times. And then at that point, once that's done, we're ready to turn to collection and to individual spec sheets and start getting into the sampling process. - So tell me a little bit about that. So you've got the collection and then you're working with production. - Yep. - And so you have to go through every spec then every garment. - Every single garment, every detail, every button, every zip, everything is specified. - And how long does that take? - It takes like, it's out. So you got that, you got hours like, yeah, could be 50. Could be a couple of days. 50 plus hours to do the collection and all the detailing, all the artwork and all the trims associated with it. You then give it to production. A lot of magic happens in the process as well. So her and me as I get it to a point where I've got like an overview of what the garments to look like. And when I'm handing it over to her and explaining it, she's basically recording all the information on the spec sheet and then we're vibing and bouncing a lot of ideas. What about us? What about that? And that's when we go. So is that where you find the actual fabrics itself? So yeah, yeah, and at that point. So we're doing the detail hand over, the zips, the artwork, for little details, for pips, for labels, and we do the fabric choice as well. And that's where we've got in the back of our studio, we've got, I don't know, a 10,000 fabric swatches. And a lot of that's hand-sourced by myself and production. And it's not enough. And China, it's not enough, we've run out. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And yes, we go for all that and you pick fabrics and you get your envisage it in your mind and it comes back and it's just completely off and that's part of a game as well, you know? But yeah, that's a very laborious process. And also, some of them mentioned as well as majority of our fabrics, especially in our knits and stuff and knitted from scratch. So we've got a pantone book. We're picking all the different colors. We want, sometimes we're lab-dipping, which means sampling, you know, 10 to 20 different colors. Right. We get all those dips back, they're like a little two by two centimeter or one by one inch square. Well, for colors on it. And these are actual color lab-dips on fabric. And we've got it out of this. So it's like you're picking a one color and then they're giving you 10, 20 variations of that exact color. Yeah, that color. Or we've got a whole bunch of colors and they're giving variations of that. And we're getting swatches samples of the fabric, which we're knitting from scratch. So the whole process for majority of our garments knitted from scratch. So we're a straight, not seed to sow, but fabric, raw fabric, grayed color to full-finished garment. And that's all and it's all part of the process. Yeah, it sounds like there's actually a ton of detail. There's a ton of detail. And I think, you know, I take it for granted, people take it for granted. Maybe we need a better job of explaining it. Not all companies do this, but for us, consistency and quality is a real important value of ours. Yeah, we want to make it so people can come back in two years, three years' time and get a pair of our zesty smart pants. And it's exactly the same fabric, zips, buttons, trims, everything. And the only way to do that is to knit it from scratch as opposed to buying market fabrics, stock fabrics. And so when is that the same point when you'll put like, obviously in other ugly products, all throughout the history, there's been these quirky little details that are hidden in all the different garments. At what point do you make them and how do you count them? A lot of that. What's the reason for them? Like, why do you see that's important? Because it's obviously been important enough to consistently do it for a decade. Yeah, sure. Well, I think one of the main reasons is just point a difference and it makes it, it turns it from just a regular jacket or a regular t-shirt or shirt into something a little bit special and something a little bit more intimate. You know, we've got like a head of message or a detail and a garment that people, people when you're wearing it, other people can't see it, but you know, you see it, you know it. It just makes it that much more special. That's why we do that. We actually need to be doing more of that. We've spoken about this. But in terms of when that happens, it happens in different stages, but the trick is to try to get as much detail and thought and design into the garment once you hand it over 'cause doing it later in the process once you're in the sampling stage, it can just slow things down. And as I said, we're pretty tight on our timeline. So the more you can think about it and talk about it and discuss before you hand it over the better. Obviously, sometimes there's some last minute changes to improve a garment, but yeah, I'm always now I'm really trying to think about that. I'm also trying to get all the rest of the team to have that whole detail lens on. It's almost like the next step of the process once we design our collections and it's all together. It's almost like we want to put it on a rack and be like, hey, where's the details? Where's the specialness? Where's the X factor in these garments? What makes this black jacket different from the black jacket from that other so and so brand? So that's something real important to us and something that people have really grown to love about the brand, just those quirks and details. You know, we always have that quote, the details aren't the details of our design. And I think it still rings true to these details this day and it's a real core design principle of Isle of Ugly. Cool, you've handed it over. You've given all the specs all the details of the garment's to production and then what's her role with all of that information from there? It's basically conversing with factories. So basically. So they have to just create the document for people to be like a very detailed spec sheet with every inch and stitch detail and all the information in order to get the garment for first sample was accurate as possible, right? We have that point now. We've developed really good long-term relationships with our factories. So they kind of know our level of taste and also what we would accept and not accept. So it's pretty good, but you're always going to get stuff that just fails, flops crazily. And it's like, how often do they get that result, you know? And you're like stressing. It's pretty entertaining. It does have that. Yeah, yeah, it's like, what the-- how often would you design a garment? It gets handed over. You get the first sample. How often would you just completely cut that product? It'd be like, no, not feeling it. Sometimes, sometimes you want to, but I can see what it should be. And the changes are pretty good. And that's just, but you know what? The changes need to be made to make it pretty good. But from time to time, if you're in a second or third and it's still a dog, you've got to call it. You've got to make that shot. Sorry, you've got to make that call, because otherwise, it's like, man, if you don't make that call now, yeah, it's going to cost you sampling fees and it's going to cost you triple. Yeah, it's going to-- what? What your retail for $130, you have to pay 250 bucks because of a sampling. But it's far cheaper than producing something subpar. And you've ordered 200 of them. And that can't sell. So it's real good at making those decisions and making those cuts. But we'll always get, especially now, where we're really trying to push boundaries. We're always going to get garments that are just real, just completely off, completely shit. And you get stuff that just like completely blows you away, way better than you expected as well. And that's all part of the game, man. Like, you can see it-- look, it can look super dope on an illustrator file, Adobe Illustrator. And then when you kind of get in a real life, it's completely different. And that's just part of the game, man. But also factories play such a good, such a vital part. Yeah, their capabilities, their quality, their standards, their understanding of what your standards are. It's absolutely pivotal. And so just on the factories, obviously, you've got really good relationships with the factories we have now. How long did it take to find the factories that you could create that long term? Did you go through a bunch of trash ones? Yeah, yeah, man. Trash, lost heaps of money, heaps of trash products. Yeah, we just literally had to dump-- Not dump, but as in, like, sell for $5, you know, just to get rid of it. Or just suck it up and just eat it. And just store it, you know. But yeah, factories are like any relationship at a take time. It's a lot of investment of your time, a lot of investment of money. I've been to China, you know, dozens of times spent a lot of money, you know, just worth them. And yeah, just trying to get to know them as people. And like, which sounds something like you never think about about it. It's so important, because if they believe in your vision and your brand and yours a business owner, they, that's going to really shine in the product, which they make. But we've had a lot of dog factories over the years. And, you know, ones that you just pick up on Alibaba randomly and they quote you on a price that's, you know, 50% cheaper than your previous. It's like, yeah, that's where you can get in trouble. If you're solely driven. Like, even recently, you know, we've got a. - That's the day, John. - Yeah, we put our pants, a few factories wanted to quote our pants and they came back to, like, in some cases, $8 cheaper than we're currently doing. We're like, this doesn't sit right. We've got this relationship with this current factory that we've used for eight years. Their quality is phenomenal. Why do we want to change that? Yeah, you could save $8 and probably. - It's pretty common that a factory would say, yeah, we can give you this way, but all right. Just to get you in the door. Yeah, so. And that just comes with it as well, knowing that it's a different strategy. So it has to be a pretty compelling reason now, besides just price to switch. - So the factories that I've got all the spec sheets for all the garments you've got for a specific collection. How long do you get to the first sample? - Generally, it takes about four to six weeks, depending on the complications. If we're doing custom artwork and embroidery and digital printing and stuff, usually we'll get a digital, we'll get a strike off, which is like not in a final garment. It's just like a piece of fabric with a print on it. And while we're doing that, we're making our sampling for silhouette. And once we approve a strike off in the silhouette, which is usually in different fabrics, not in your finished fabric, they're just a malgum at it together. And that usually, that's usually the second sample, called a pre-production sample too. And then. But yeah, so the first sample usually takes about four to six weeks, Generally, after that, it can take up to. want to two weeks for improvements after that or the adjustments and then the you have a process after that's pretty seamless and then we get a so that happens a couple of times. Some cases like especially for our core products or all things that we've been doing for years and we just changed color or just sometimes it won't even it will just be a straight pre-production. We'll just get the fabric which we approve and that's it they just they go for it. We have we get a ton with the amount of because you've got collections every month and the amount of products that are in a collection we get a ton of samples coming through. What's that process like when you're opening it up? You know it could be scary it could be amazing and that's my it's my favorite part of the job. It is. It's like Christmas almost. It is. It is. I saw a package when I left to do to do this and I was like oh yeah I went off to the roof until it see what it is. It's my favorite part of a job to be honest. Seeing it come to life. Yeah definitely. I think now because we've got our process and our factories dialed down so you know we've got we all play our factories to their strengths so I know that if I'm going to do denim or if I'm going to do a jacket with a particular factory that it's going to come back and it's going to look pretty damn good. Yeah. And especially when we push boundaries and done something innovative it's like a pretty awesome feeling. It's cool. We know straight away right when something is suit looking super dope and we're all hyped. It's a good feeling and we just can't wait to bring it forward but we have to wait six months usually. And so when at what point are you starting to do so we use the pretty much the pre shipping samples we would use them for photography. And so at what point so say all the product arrives. Yeah. What's the process from there. So we basically were for pre production samples which is for sample be used before it goes into bulk production. Yeah. That's what we use to do all the photoshoots of e-con for website photos and we do that. We usually for 100% some cases are not but sometimes we have to peg it or Photoshop it or whatever afterwards in the post production but more often not it's pretty good, pretty good. And then yeah so we do all our website imagery. We do all our campaign imagery by the time we do that the goods are on a boat and arrive into the warehouse. So you'll do all the e-com images in a studio, clean background and we've used the same photographer now for five, six years. And then we will get it all clear cut, we'll get images clear cut, the digital team will prep all the images for the website and yeah right, the description, the descriptions, all the dimensions, the size charts, everything on the show. At what point do we do the editorial? We pretty much do it same day or a day after we do the e-com, the website photos just because we're in that flow. So we kind of like compile it all and just do it because it takes up a lot of time and since you're in that campaign photography, state of mind, frame of mind it's best to just knock it off all in one go. It's really easy to just photograph a lot of the collection in a studio where it looks really clean and easy but then obviously if you keep doing that everything starts to look very similar. The role that editorial shoot plays is very important and how do you go about that choosing a theme for that, the environment, the models, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good point. I think we it all kind of comes to planning obviously if you do like an outdoor themed editorial every month, that can be the same problem as just doing it in the studio every month. So what we do is we kind of alternate it so we try to do about four bigger larger campaigns every year and then our campaigns what we're trying to do is convey the lifestyle about who the I love ugly person is and what they believe in and this and that. Say for example, the previous one we did last month, you know, we just did that at my house, we got, you know, we carefully curated all the books the guys were reading, like all the artwork, all the decor, all the garments and we actually got two different models to represent different types of demographics who shop with us and we got the older guy. But I get essentially what we're trying to do is like the clothing itself is as we try to make people feel really good in the campaigns, we try to make it super aspirational. So when people, you know, wear our clothes and engage with our brand, they feel inspired, you know, they feel like they've had a level of achievement. So we try to do those types of campaigns four times a year and then we also do campaigns to just a little bit more conceptual arty, you know, not too over four, the main primary focus is the clothing. Let's say for example, we shot January last week, January Collection, we didn't do a campaign, we just did like a editorial in the studio, we changed the background, we made it kind of fresh, kind of icy cool gray kind of colors and there's no real crazy theme behind it, didn't overthink it, we just did something kind of cool and things like that. So do you ever get a collection where you've photographed it and you're like, shit, I don't know if this is going to fire? I haven't had any. Obviously the amount of collections that you've put out, do you have a pretty good gut feeling of how well a collection is going to go? Yeah, I think so, I think so, but at the same time you never know exactly, sometimes the ones that you think are fine. Sometimes we get a random product that just goes banana and sometimes you get a product that we all love and you know, bit the house on and it just flops. But I think since I, like a few years ago, I really separated myself from the design process. I was more just creating. It's just hugely important. Yeah, hugely important and I felt I lost, I almost lost that connection with the product so I was coming and doing editorials, I was like, fuck, I don't really, it almost doesn't even feel like I love ugly. But now since I'm fully part of that process from plan to designing to be actual editorials, I kind of know, I know the products like the back of my hand and I've really familiarized myself throughout the whole process. But yeah, sometimes you get stuff and you're like, oh, but to be honest, it's happened less now because of our whole auditing, transparency, process and the planning is helped mitigate a lot of, I think I believe a lot of mistakes and that's why we've grown as a result of it. How important, obviously the systems, when you've got, you know, collections happening every month, you're, you essentially each month you have a different collection in six different stages, right? Yeah. Something like that. And so how important building the systems around that and how long did it, like how long did it take to actually build them and refine them and get them to a level wheeler, okay, we can do this collection every single month now with ease. It took probably, at any given stage, we had a system like we had to, but I feel-- Are you constantly trying to improve it? Constantly, man, like, you know, this bit of an anyone, we're constantly looking at ways of improving, not just in our product, but everything, but the system is like, if you don't have a system, you're running around like a headless chicken, when you're running around like a headless chicken, you're basically compromising quality because your lack of organization means you can spend less time on doing something and when you spend less time on doing something, it's not going to be as good as it could be. So I think like a system is a backbone to the business and I think fashion is so complicated, multifaceted, just so, so many different elements and needs to, you need it like any business, right? You need to have a wow oiled machine, you know, or amazing system because the thing is like, by creating a system, it's almost like you're creating a playground to be creative and create the best work. I think for us, it's like, yeah, our system's pretty, like, I'd say it's pretty dialed. It could always be better and probably like our-- It could always be better. Always be better. Always be better. But in saying that, you know, it's December, busiest time of the year, sales are twice as much as they are, previous months and we're all pretty chilled out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got everything in the pipe, you know, we've got everything in the sampling up until June 2020. And like, you know, we're processing double triple four times more orders than we usually would and we're not running around. And I think that's testament to our systems being strong. And just, but at the same time as well, you can have great, great systems but if you lack communication, the team, that system can fail because end of the day, it's human beings that run their system. So for us, you know, obviously communication, having great, you know, clear goals and objectives about why we're doing things and if anything is going to go, like, at the same time as well, when you've got humans handling things, it's going to be errors. It's always going to be error. Yeah, so we're just like, end things can be delayed, factories can screw things up. Like, you know, career company, like, trading companies can be backed up, like, a lot of things can go wrong and they do go wrong but it's almost creating a system to be able to handle that and we'll stand there and being on your toes constantly, like, we're constantly improvising things and doing, like, our watches, for example, you know, that was a month late and it's like, we had already projected and planned for the watches to come at a certain date and they didn't use a gap and it's like, okay, how do you deal with that? You need to have a system in place. with that, but if you didn't have a system, it just would have been, it just would have come whenever, so absolutely. Yeah, for them. Yeah. How do you, because we're offering to a global audience, obviously, you've simultaneously got different hemispheres, warning different types of clothing. Yeah. How do you balance that in the design process, catering for Northern hemisphere and Southern hemispheres? Yeah, I think what we do is we, here's obviously peak times in different seasons, so say, for example, November's a real peak time for the Southern hemisphere where it gets really hot, like, and it's also very, it's a very gift-buying season, so you're getting a lot of purchases under $100, because you got mums buying for their sons. At the same time, it goes very cold in the Northern hemisphere as well, so we cater to that. We make sure that we've got certain amounts of jackets, and we've got a ton of shorts for the Southern hemisphere, and that's just once again, it's just all part of a merch planning, so it's nothing really different. We just know that, you know, there's going to be four times a year where the seasons majorly change, and we're just going to make sure that we're offering products to cater to those core seasons. Obviously, since we've got New Zealand retail stores, people are more inclined to purchase more expensive things in retail stores because they can try it on, so in our New Zealand, Australia, Southern hemisphere, winters, we have a deeper jacket out of we're offering, but because people come in and not afraid to spend $300, $400 on a jacket because they can try it on, whereas in American, a US customer buying a jacket, $300 on loan, there's a lot of risk in that, you know? They have to pay taxes, import duties. There's also the possibility of not fitting and they're needing to send it back, so we just cater our, you know, we just adjust our jacket ordering for our season to be a little bit less because they buy less jackets, you know, just because it's a bit more risky. So yeah, once again, it's just planning and experience and just knowing, knowing certain things, but it is definitely a challenge. So we've released the collection to the customers, it's on the racks and the stores, it's online, on the website. Yeah. Then what's next stuff that? So I was basically launching it, so creating for pre-hype, launching it to market, giving it to our customers and making sales. So it's like sales, sales, how it is on. So obviously, this is something where you're deeply involved, like we need to plan like everything to a tee. So we use like apps like Trello, which are amazing ways to and slack to communicate and create flows of what we're doing, but it's even a question for you, where it's like we kind of launch it, it's like you've got, now it's a matter of distribution, right? All the clothes have been designed, they've been made, you've got all the campaign imagery, and now what do you do? Obviously, I'm still deeply involved in this process, but it's good hearing it from you. So what we would do typically, say we get a collection of 10, 15 different items, we would, in the background on the website, we have a lot of different targeting pools, and so if a customer goes on and looks at a certain hoodie, he will then be tagged with a certain hoodie interest. And then so whenever a new product will come out, if you're interested in, so say the SlimCovidPant, if you've been looking at them or if you've bought them, then and we put out a new SlimCovid, you're going to be sent those, the new SlimCovids, because we know that you're interested in them. And then so there's a lot of different ad strategies that we have. So there's also pushing the collection as a whole, so you'll be just pushing all of the product and just letting everybody on our, on our list know that, yep, we've got a new collection rolling, and so we'll also be sending out mailers, which is really, really big and really important for us. That's kind of always been like a lifeblood of e-commerce businesses, your email list. And the reason why that's so important is because you control them. If you're on, say, a platform like Facebook or Instagram, then you know, you're at the mercy of their platform, but with the email list, you've always got those emails and you can move them around whenever you want. And so that always generates a massive amount of our traffic and getting people to the site. And then on top of the ad strategy, you've got basically targeting if people are looking at the product, they're going to be sent new product or complimentary product or if they haven't checked out different things like that. And then we'll do things like desktop notification, like if you go to our website on a fresh browser, it'll say I love ugly wants to send you a notification. And so when we release a new collection, you're on your little desktop, you'll get a notification being like, I love ugly's released a new collection. And how many people do we have on that now? So we did that about six months ago. I think that's around, it's around 10,000. Wow. We've got about 10,000 different people. And so there's constantly these new different ways of talking to your customer. But they all have different levels of importance. And you've got to treat them all separate and really, really different because the way customer interacts on a certain platform can be completely different to each other. And so say SMS, so text marketing is become pretty good at the moment because if you're getting a text message, you know, the open rate on that is you know, 199%. Yeah, over 95%. But then it's also way more personable because they're not used to getting text messages from businesses. It can be quite invasive as well. Absolutely. And so if you're sending too many text messages, people are going to get pissed off a lot faster than in an inbox because in the email inbox, people have been getting, you know, there's a dedicated spam folder for sure. And your inbox is just socially accepted. Absolutely. And so people, you know, like people will have an email inbox that has 10,000 if you have your unread emails because that's just where they get sent all their junk. So emails are really important. And SMS texting has become quite important. Yeah. Depending on the country that that in, it can be a lot more expensive. So in the US, the rates are really, really well. But in New Zealand, it's super duper expensive because we're located. Yeah. And so a bunch of different platforms like that addspin on different platforms. The Mala desktop notification, SMS, getting into all of those things. That's probably our key, those are our key different. So pretty much while we're, while we're doing this, developing a collections of brand to market, we're basically hustling on the side. Absolutely. Getting, like, just growing these different lists. So that way when we're ready to, ready to roll with a collection, that list is for goalers for the list to have grown and new people to come for and be presented products. Absolutely. Yeah. Because it's pretty much no matter what way a customer interacts with you. You'll see this when you go on any, any good website. If they, you can tell how good their marketing team is if you are getting, if you're seeing them pretty, pretty soon after that, you'll just leave their website. Yeah. And obviously with the targeting these days on advertising platforms, it's pretty somewhat invasive. But just, it's, most of it's pretty legal. So it's like, it's just really, really accurate. Yeah. For sure. And really, really strong. So you can, as I said, you can know the strength of marketing team of the business when you keep seeing them everywhere. And how much is it? Because I know we're real big on that as well as like, how much is too much? Because obviously right now we're in December. So we're heavily doing transactional marketing. But it's a heavily transactional part of the year. But how much, obviously, you can't do, or for us anyway, we know we can't do that too much. But what's the balance, like I know, the answer to this will be good. It's interesting for people. What's the balance between giving value-based brand kind of content and also actually just telling them, okay, new collection, new pants, new colors. I think it comes down to how the brand was built. Like you can get some businesses out there that are purely being built off social advertising. You know, and that's just the bread and butter there, business that. They don't have the time, the resources to build these massive campaigns, to build these videos, to build content. So to get their product out there, they just have to slam people with the product. But the problem with that is when the relationship is purely built off just product, if somebody can offer a similar product for a bit of price, there's no real loyalty there. And so the importance of doing non-product content is for us anyway, it is absolutely massive because you want to be engaging with your customer beyond just the product. Like that's one of our biggest questions that we ask in our digital marketing team is how we constantly engaging with our customer without even talking about product and how, and in that, how are we adding as much value to their life? Totally. It's absolutely possible. And then the more we do that, and so that drives like, you'll notice that in a lot of our marketing is, we'll be pushing this content that has nothing to do with clothing. And the reason for that is because if we can continue to engage with these people, we're building relationship. If somebody's just trying to sell you stuff all the time, you're not building a very good relationship. It's why, like, everybody shuts a door and no salesman's at turn. Exactly. Because they're only there for your money anyway. So sure. But if we're constantly trying to add value, then people are more willing to stick with us and hard times are more into spending their money of us, even if our items could be more expensive than another brand because they have this loyalty to us and then all the articles that we put out the podcast that we put out book recommendations, all these different things. If we can make an impact on somebody's life, if we can recommend a book to a customer and then that book ends up changing their life, that's absurd. You know, that's a customer for life, they're going to be like, man, when they need a tushua or a hoodie. Yeah, yeah, when they need a blank, when they need like an easy white t-shirt, they're going to buy it, I love ugly shirt, because they just want to rip that brand. So just based on that word value, it's kind of like a bit of a buzzword. How does a, and I might be deviating a little bit here, but it's kind of interesting anyway. How does a brand discover what their value is? Yeah, I guess it's all about, so a lot of this, probably one of the biggest people that promote this type of marketing, this value based marketing is Gary Vee. And so he, like he literally came out of a book called jab jab jab jab jab right hook. And so that basically just means give value, give value, give value, give value and then ask, ask them to buy. And so value based marketing can be really weird. You can see some companies that are just, you know, completely understood the concept, but they're just giving value that doesn't really relate to their actual brand and so for us, we are, we do portray more of a lifestyle brand and within that it is this push for personal development for self improvement. And so that concept itself has a lot of different arms to it below it. And so we can offer, you know, different, so many different things that are still within that realm. And obviously it's different for every single business, but that's kind of this, you know, this area that we have seen a ton of potential of the ways we can add value to our customers. So the different things like the articles, as we talked about, the podcasts, all these different things. It's like, and even our campaigns, it's like, love like us. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that recent campaign that you talked about earlier in November that we've used for November to December, so the people were looking at listening to this podcast, if you go back through our Instagram, you'll be able to see this kind of emphasis on over November to December, this emphasis on not just showing cool clothes because anybody can show cool clothes, but it's what goes beyond that, you know, if you can see yourself in that environment, you know, reading that book, you know, working on yourself, making those beats, doing all these different tasks, you're like, I can see myself doing that. And it just goes, it goes so beyond, so far beyond clothing and it changes the way you feel as well, which is super important. Absolutely. So when you wear our logo, it's like you're representing like a movement or a way of living. Absolutely. It's all about evoking an emotion. Yeah, for sure. Right. And so with all this different value-based content, it's like, if you can create a reaction and a customer, it actually steers something inside of them emotionally, you know, that's going to create a massive impact in their lives and it's only going to do wonders for sure. And the crazy thing is as well, and we always, you know, sometimes we have some internal conflicts about this as well, the long tail, versus the short tail, because a lot of what you're talking about, I'm 100% behind and obviously that's why you and me. It can be too much, sir. Yeah, it can be too much. And also we've been stung with that as well. Yeah. But I think it's very, it's sometimes very difficult to quantify everything what you're saying and actually just for it to be justified that it's actually working and shifting the deal. Yeah, yeah. How do you do that? How do you know if what you're doing is actually working? Because sometimes we can do these amazing campaigns. We can spend hundreds of hours and a lot of thousands of dollars on this podcast. But how do you actually know that it's actually going to be working or eventually? Because the end of a day, it's like we're a business, we need to be profitable, we need to make money. How do we know that eventually it's going to make money? Yeah, it's all, I think it just comes down to balance, right? It's like you can't just put all your eggs in there one basket. Yeah. And so you have to have, you know, obviously we, we all see and it depends on the people who are running the show, you know, do they have a belief in this, this way that we're doing it for sure. You know, in the long tail. And if they have that, you've got to be able to have people that buy into what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. But then on the flip side of that, you also have to have somebody else like our ops manager who can come look at what we're doing and say, okay, that's cool, creating all this long tail value based content. But how, you know, what are the strategies that we're ensuring in the short term are going to be keeping us flowed. Yeah, it's going to be the bridge between now and then. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's, it's really hard to find that balance. Yeah. But I think the environment and who you have in the team is probably the most important part of that. Yeah. But not everything has an ROI. Yeah. And Gary V says, you know, what's the ROI of your mother? Yeah. You know, some things, some things are just hard to measure. Yeah. But you can, but essentially like at the end of the day or at the end of the quarter of a year, like the end of the game is to grow over. There are a whole bunch of metrics. Yeah. A whole bunch of metrics. And you just have to have your finger on the pulse. Yeah. Like as the digital, in the digital team, it's like every single interaction about that our customer has on every single platform. We need to be reviewing that. Yeah. Yeah. And as much deep detail as we possibly can on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on our website, on Google Analytics, on every single platform that tracks any single metric. Because you know, we're putting, we put a lot of, not all the eggs, but we put a lot of eggs in this, in this basket of this long tail adding value. And so, you know, it's my job to literally come up with metrics that do indicate that they might, they might not be perfect, but they will indicate, you know, this is helping our bottom line. Yeah. This is increasing revenue. This is building acquisition into the company. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's, it's tough, but you can get there and it's all about how deep you want to go in the tracking. Yeah. I agree. It's so fascinating. Even for listeners, just to, just to even just kind of talk about this with you as well. It's the amount of time and how in depth we need to go, once for garments that are in. Yeah. I think we're foolish to thank that once you've got it, just put a photo on Instagram and, yeah. There's so much to it. But it's actually, it's actually not. Well, a lot of the decisions we make both are now marketing our product, dictated from data, the way people are engaging with it, what people are looking at and what people are buying. And I think it's also like a real foundation of everything we do is that it's a data part. Yeah. You've got to have all that data there. You've got to be looking at it, but then you've also got to be measuring how strong the correlation is. Yeah. Of all those metrics, too, increasing the most important part, which is revenue for the business. Yeah. For sure, man. Definitely. Yeah. Cool, man. So that's basically a bit of a wrap-up of the process from start to finish. Yeah. Is there anything else? Not on my end. Not on my end. But basically, just for listeners as well as what we're, what man will, talking about here, we're doing at any given time, there's six different collections that are at six different stages of a process, of that process. We're done with this. It's hectic. Yeah. It's very hectic, sir. But yeah, man. That was cool. That was fun. It's always good to kind of look at it, because I'm already thinking about a whole bunch of things, which we can improve on, so absolutely the list. The listener stops. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you everybody for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and found any type of value, please subscribe to our podcast, share with your friends, and give us a five-star review on iTunes to be in the drawer to win a $200 I love ugly gift voucher. We will be drawing a winner monthly, good luck, and see you on the next episode.