🧵 CHRIS KOLBE // HYPERNATURAL FOUNDER

24:38It all started with COVID. You know, COVID, inflation, tariffs, war, you know, repeat, right? You know, so, and so, you know, not to go down that road, But I would tell you that, you know, we've been trying not to die for three years, right? You know, because it's been that tenuous in terms of uncertainty, difficult to find capital, very difficult to get people to want to do anything different. Right. Literally, like the status quo is so locked in in this environment because people are just afraid to change on anything business wise. And so we've had to walk a real narrow path and we have not died.

25:26We have actually gotten to a point now where it's like, okay, now I think the world's more ready for this now. But it's taken three years, you know, and it's, you know, I've self-funded most of the business to a point where I have a great personal risk in the success of this. And I didn't set out for it to be that way, but I believe so much in it that I realized that that is the only way it will make it is if I can walk this narrow path. And so we're doing that. And I'm really proud that we're now starting to accelerate. But it has been the last three or four years has been unlike anything I've seen in my 30 years in the industry.

26:06Chris Kolbe:Wow. And, yeah, I mean, you have the receipts for that. Like, you know how this industry works. It's not like you just jumped into it cold and said, I want to build a T-shirt company. You know the big mechanics called the macro mechanics at play in the industry. Yeah. And then you couple all this with AI that's happened. And so AI is great. Trust me, we use it a lot on things that don't touch the customer too much. But it's also taken most of the capital in the market. So from a funding perspective, funding early stage product companies has been a really bad neighborhood for investors to go into.

26:41They've avoided us no matter what. You know, we have patents and stuff. I mean, we have all these things that investors usually would want. But what we've run into is that, you know, so much has gone to AI related investment that it's just taken all the oxygen out of early stage stuff. And so we're just going through this wildly unique period to do something. And if I didn't see so many proof points for what we're doing and why the world wants it and needs it, I would have quit a long time ago. But I think, you know, it's just one of those things where we've been tested all the way and we're still standing.

27:23Chris Kolbe:What should we do about that? not necessarily about your situation specifically, but where do you feel like something's got to give in the world of, you know, venture related to consumer? And one of the things that has been kind of living rent-free in my head is that venture is not venturing right now. Like it's starting to get very, very private equity flavored in a way, or what I would have five or 10 years ago characterized as like, oh, you're looking for something that's like proven and practically profitable as like all of these like reliability signals that do have nothing to do with being venturesome in my opinion.

28:06Yeah, I think it's really hard one because venture change too, right? In a lot of ways and where funding is coming from has changed a lot in the last year. um it's just you know there's it really it's not an environment where quality is enough of what you're doing uh there's a lot of luck uh there's a lot of you know access if you will it's really really important um but on just quality of met of your merits isn't enough yeah um and that's that's the sad truth is that you know and it used to be the opposite which is you didn't have to have a quality. You just were just in the right place, right time you got funded.

28:48Now you have to be near perfect, I would say, in what you're doing. And so for us, it's taken longer to get funding raised, but when we get to the right people, it's worth it. And so our first investors that came into the company were the original founders of Land's End, which I happened to be the president of at one point. And unrelated, I found them literally like, you know, many years later. But they're really amazing people who know this business. They're really ethically driven. They have really great values. They have to live 15 minutes from my house. However, I went all over the world for funding.

29:29So it all came back to this, like, natural place of where we found the right people. And it just comes down to you got to find people who care about what you care about. They are out there. um and in our case uh um it helped being in the industry for 30 years because you know i knew a few people but i would tell you that even then it was very very difficult

29:52Chris Kolbe:do you are you like a a wartime founder or a peacetime founder like how much is this pressure especially like the financial aspect of it an environment that you thrive in and is like helping you stay hungry, drive innovation, all of that stuff versus like, oh, dear God, let this end as fast as it can. Like, I want to get around the corner. And I'm not necessarily characterizing one is better than the other necessarily, or at least I hope I'm not overcharacterizing it. But is this part like just the hard thing about hard things and you'll get around the corner to it? Or do you find yourself like drawn like a moth to the flame, biting off really big, hairy things?

30:36Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely the moth of the flame. And you know what? You can't be in my industry and be anything other because it's the apparel business is very, very, very difficult. And it is very different than most other businesses, the way it works. And so I guess you have to be a little bit of a masochist to really, you know, do well. And I work well under pressure for sure. uh and i do think you know right now we are in a limit we're living in a world where a lot of the current environment is getting rid of the the crap that's out there in a good way because that's it's been a couple decades of in my industry of things that are you know fast fashion all this stuff that just it just it just isn't good in the end it's just it's filler empty calories it's processed foods, you know, and all of this stuff is starting to suffer and go away in a very good thing.

31:32So the creative destruction, I think, is good. Standing through it requires a lot of fortitude and it requires some perspective. I'm fortunate I've been around long enough to see it a few times. This is just unusually hard, this one, because of all the things I mentioned. But I would say that the purpose, my purpose has never been greater. So much so that I'm willing to take great personal risks to do this because I basically decided I don't want to die knowing that all I'd sold to people is a bunch of plastic crap they didn't need over my career. And I didn't want my kids to sort of see me as this peddler of plastic who, you know, made a good living selling people stuff like that.

32:20And then that was it. uh and actually so what i what i'm really proud of is my kids are watching me do this and they're learning that this isn't easy this is really really hard but if it's worth it then yeah do it

32:36Chris Kolbe:and it'll be and if it's worth it it'll be it'll be fun i think i think that's the biggest difference for for me is that like if i'm when i'm the most self-actualized in whatever i'm doing that's like the hard foundry, like unsolved problem, nobody here to help. I'm alone. And I'm like, oh, but this is a game. And like, and this is a puzzle that I want to solve. And I, that's when I'm, that's when I'm most at like the balance of peacefulness in it. Like there's a type of Zen in the struggle of it all. There is. Well, there's, there's, there's purpose in it. And so I'll tell you that in my career, my best relationships, my best friends, my best memories are the ones I went through with in a very difficult way.

33:25The cotton crisis, the Great Recession, all of these stories that I have, my best friends and relationships, and this hypernatural will be no different, will come from all of those struggles and making it through. and there is no better way to say that life isn't supposed to be easy and if you do those hard things there's nothing more gratifying

33:54Chris Kolbe:my my connection just went weird for a sec but we're back i think we're back all right the things that i would have said if we hadn't like one shot at this recording are we can edit anything you want uh it's recording on the side and we'll do a fake goodbye at the end and then we'll do a real goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm good with that. And I figured so, but, um, um, yeah, no, this is, this is fun. So, um, what else can I share with you? I, I want to know about the cotton crisis. Um, tell us, tell us the story of the cotton crisis. Uh, yeah. So I was the president of Land's End. Uh, it was 2010, 2011.

34:35when I look back now and it's sort of it's almost cute but you know all of a sudden like you're in a business where you know you know the cost of apparel or since 1990 yeah in total has gone up an average of seven percent where the cost of everything else has gone up 150 percent since 1990. So apparel's had no inflation for the last 26 years. And so when your cotton prices, which is a commodity, right? If the cotton crop isn't good, the harvest is bad, you know, storms, when all these things happen around the world, all of a sudden your prices will double overnight and your cost input all of a sudden is dramatically higher.

35:22And then you have to find a way to manage that in your business when most of what in this case we did was cotton and and so how you can't just raise all your prices uh people won't pay more for things that that they thought you know cost the same as last year right and so when you're in a business with commodities you run into so we had a cotton crisis drove up the prices dramatically we basically had to find a way to hide the margin hit and try to take prices up slowly and the one of the ways we did it is we offered more new product in better quality but we had to charge more so we added things like supima cotton which was the best one percent of cotton in the world grown in the united states and lands end used to be famous for we brought it back and we put into more things and we charged more but it was a better product yeah that had some elasticity to it that worked the things that cost more but they were exactly the same as before those things dropped 30 percent instantly.

36:23If your prices went up 30%, the business went down 30%. Just economics. And so you just start learning, like, it's just economics 101 every day with each and every product you're making is, what can you charge? What can you not charge? And so cotton will bubble up and then cotton will come down, you know, and so you're constantly riding these waves. But in this case, it went up dramatically overnight. That is very minor compared to what happened with tariffs and more recently all the supply chain things because now everything just went up overnight instantly. And as I mentioned, apparel has not gone up in price for 26 years.

37:09All of a sudden, everything is going to be just a lot more expensive. People won't pay more. So when prices go up, demand will go down. And so we've been dealing with that in the last three years between tariffs and inflation, hitting everything in a category where people are feeling squeezed. Right. And so there's just these are the things like how do you how do you communicate to people the value of what you do when the inputs are going up dramatically?

37:40Chris Kolbe:Why has the price of apparel not grown like the price of milk or gas or anything else? Well, it's economics. So in 1990s, we started offshoring our production of textiles and manufacturing. And so what was costing$6 an hour here would cost a dollar an hour over there. Right. So offshoring started in the 90s in a very big way. In the last 25 years, that has bend the cost curve down dramatically. We've also shifted a lot of our textiles to plastic. And so, you know, petroleum, you don't have to grow. There's no farmer. People just come in, oh, you want more? We'll just make more. Give them more oil.

38:30Just make it, right? So when you start shifting things to petroleum-based things, things became more cost-effective. more easier to control the costs in the overall supply chain. And so all of these things were working towards lowering costs while increasing the output, right? And so what came of that? Fast fashion, right? Started selling millions and millions more units of stuff, buy it, wear it three times, throw it away, right? We started making athletic apparel. Plastic is tech gear. That is performance. You should want this. It quick dries, does all these things. We sell more and more and more plastic, right?

39:11Because the market has been convinced that's worth more, but actually costs a lot less to make plastic versus cotton and wool. And so all of these things have bent the cost curve down over the last 26 years in a way that people just don't think they should pay more than$25 for a t-shirt. And the truth is, you should be the most afraid of the$20 t-shirt. Because that thing is probably laced with all kinds of stuff you don't want versus the all cotton shirt that is organic or Supima. Like, yeah, it's going to cost you probably 70 or 80 dollars, but it's not going to harm you. And so all of these sort of things have come up with economics as the underpinning of the current state.

40:03You know, what people will pay, what things really cost.

40:07Chris Kolbe:It's fascinating when you talk about kind of, you know, you have, I think, the benefit of all of this experience and also just that kind of hyper-educated lens on what are the mechanics and levers that are making the whole business tick, which I find fascinating. And now I really kind of want to pay$70 for my T-shirt. You're doing a good job of convincing me. Well, one of the things I learned at Kohl's is that, you know, what people truly equate as value is how many times they can wear something. Like there's a value equation in that. And so if you wear things three times and you have to throw it away versus if you can wear things like one good thing, but wear it for three to five years, like that's value too.

40:57And we just got to train people to think more that way. that you don't need like 100 cheap things. You need 10 good ones, right? And those 10 good ones should be good for you and good for everyone else. And the 100 things should never have been made in the first place.

41:13Chris Kolbe:There was, as a much younger entrepreneur, I wanted to build apps. And I was like, you know, it'd be really cool. And someone has to have done this. And if not, here's a free idea. So please vibe code this and let us know next week. We'll have you on the podcast. But like a cost amortizer per wear. So like I'd put something in my closet, I'd take a picture of it, and then I'd, you know, somehow calculate, I mean, manually, you could calculate how many times you've worn it and then be like, that dress cost you$300 to wear that one time. And I felt like that was a great responsible usage of the things that I bought.

41:51Chris Kolbe:Like there's a$600 coat in it because you had to go to Montana once. It was going to be really cold. you should probably take another trip well yeah so you know just people don't have much they don't pay a lot of attention to what they wear let alone how often they wear it or what's the true value of like if i bought this how many times have i worn it you know just don't people think a whole lot about it but you know the thing i've learned in this business as a merchandiser is you know everybody has a uniform everybody particularly after the age of 40 you pretty much have a uniform you stick with it you know what works for you and you just you know listen i'm it's great it's it's perfect because once you figure out the uniform of your customer you just iterate on that all day long and so the things that you wear most of the time you know 80 of the day 80 of the week those are the things you should invest in and have the best quality that you know the natural fibers, you know, the things that are, you can wear here and there.

42:54That's where we were focused on hypernatural. That's the stuff we want you to wear. And then those would be those fun, like once in a while things you wear or things are very occasion or they're very high seasonal. Those are great, but that, you know, they should, they don't have to be super nice because you're not going to wear them all the time. And, you know, even if they're plastic, you know, who cares, right? But your underwear, the things you're sweating in, the things that you wear 80 % of the time? Quality.

43:21Chris Kolbe:You should care. I think this is an Eileen Fisher anecdote, if I'm recalling it correctly. But that brand started as like in search of a uniform for like women in the workplace, basically. And that men have like a really easy go-to uniform and women didn't have the same sort of thing. And that always kind of stuck with me as like a lens to look at apparel on. It's like, well, what's your uniform? What is your uniform? It's a high-pronential shirt and my old Levi's. And, you know, maybe I'll throw a cardigan sweater over it on a cold day, you know. Nice. But Eileen Fisher is a great example of a brilliant business model.

44:06My partner actually makes fabric for her. They are very sustainable and clean, high quality. you know the stuff you'll you know it's mix and match where every day you know lasts for years yeah that's that you know and it's not inexpensive but but it's it's quality and and it's clean and i think there's just not enough businesses like that and so i think that to me is you know there are good examples out there for sure um my uniform is i actually i don't know

44:39Chris Kolbe:if it's good for me or not um but it's usually a t-shirt black or white and and this worked for me this is now i'll signal my age like uh like lululemon tights which worked for me for so many years and so i have just like the all of the all of the tights and t-shirts and then and then like usually like a shacket or something and i just don't have to think about it which is the mark zuckerberg school of thought which was like or maybe no he got it from steve jobs steve jobs school of thought of just like, you know, I think that's, I think that's 80 % of people, honestly. I love people don't want to think too much about it.

45:17So yeah.

45:17Chris Kolbe:Yeah. Um, it's yeah. Maybe, maybe less uncommon than I was giving it credit for of just like having the, having the go-to thing. Do you, um, how much more of the uniform do you think as a business you guys will take on overtime. You've got the top and some of the, you're moving to the bottom. Well, you know, I think, uh, uh, to me, like I like to cover that 80 % for people, uh, and, but do it in a really simple, versatile, smart way. So you're not like, if you want to detox your wardrobe, it's not like a complete, like, um, you have to come up with like$50 ,000 to do it. You know, you can, you can do it in a smart, you know, simple way.

45:59I think that's, that's the way we'd want to build it. I, and I think from the inside out, so what you wear on your first layer to your second layer, like, like that's what we would focus on. Like, I love to replace your leggings because a lot of, most leggings are not, you know, not, they're not natural. And, but it's, you know, these are things where over time with a little more R &D, we'll come up with ways to do that. But it's not easy. Like even the stuff that I want to do will take time to develop. And so how do you just walk people down a path of detoxification and wearable wellness in a way that it doesn't feel like you're overwhelmed or you have to take out a loan?

46:41Right.

46:41Chris Kolbe:Or that it's like, you know, as you said, people want to buy the best thing, particularly in the apparel category. And I think beyond what We can see kind of like very health driven behaviors permeating and then and then kind of like expanding in in the world of CPG more easily because it's so obvious that like putting things in our mouths and eating and drinking. But I have to imagine, as you implied at the beginning of the conversation, that that that buying behavior is really different when the kind of perceived ingestion of whatever it is, is like that much lower. Yeah. It's like one of my favorite quotes from our research is, you know, I realized polyester was bad for the environment, but I didn't realize it was bad for me, you know.

47:27And then it was like, well, now I care, you know. And so I do think that's how people think. And so I think getting people to understand just the connection with food and beauty and how it all relates to our environment that's creating, you know, all this chronic disease that we're living with is all related to our environments. The majority of it is not genetics. Genetics is a small percentage of what's driving it. But our environment is creating it. And our apparel is just part of that. And, you know, it doesn't have to be alarmist. You just have to be able to give them good information and better choices.

48:06And that's how, you know, that's how clean food and clean beauty became so big because consumers demanded it and they found better options.

48:15Chris Kolbe:There's something so touching in the way that that's phrased because it really does say everything about how much we've dissociated ourselves from our environments. Like the difference between you and your environment is in that is in that sentence. But at the end of the day, that that should be like really narrow space, like the liminal space between you and your environment is is ought to be nothing. Or at least I think that that we'd all benefit from appreciating more how much we're a direct product of that and not just like, you know, an independent actor within it. Yeah. So, yeah, I think.

48:55Listen, if I had a spectrometer and go around and let everybody like take a quick measurement of the toxins in your clothes, or you had to put it on a hang tag on how much toxins that were in your clothes, it would change people dramatically. Right. You just instantly see the problem. But right now the problem is invisible. And you have, there's a bit of like, well, like, you know, where's the science on all this? And you're like, well, there is science on all this. It can't tell you clinically exactly how long this is going to impact you long term because your environment's contributing so many different things.

49:29But there are science around this. But people just they just don't believe. Right. They don't want to believe something they can't see. And so that's the hard thing with what we're doing. And, you know, I'll tell you a quick story. Like when I was at Land's End, about five years after I left, we used to do uniforms for airlines. And so we did the Delta Airlines uniforms in, I think it was 2008. It turned into a lawsuit because the flight attendants were having skin irritations and rashes, and some people were being hospitalized from these uniforms. and, you know, the flight attendants went to the unions.

50:14They basically refused to wear them. It became this big thing, and they were told that basically it's not the uniforms. That's not the problem. And so people were having all these people losing their jobs. There's all these things. Turned into a big lawsuit. Eventually it was the companies that made the product, including Land's End, were found not to be liable because they couldn't entirely prove the toxicity of what was in the clothes, even though it was pretty obvious. And so the burden of proof for this toxicity, very, very hard because it's all on the person that's doing it clean, on the victim.

50:56And it's very hard to be conclusive in the evidence in a legal format to actually have a conviction. And so I think the unfortunate truth is, you know, like lead and asbestos and all these things that happened over the last, it takes decades for these things to eventually become understood. Cigarettes, same thing. And this is probably just like that, where people can't draw a straight line to it all. Therefore, we kick the can. You know, it's inconclusive. You know, who knows? Maybe, maybe not. And nothing really changes until the consumer says, no, we don't want it anymore. We're not paying for it.

51:40We won't buy it. And then everything will change. And so that won't be the government. It won't be the judicial system. It'll be the consumer. That will make all the difference.

51:51Chris Kolbe:I feel like, you know, mothers against drunk driving. Got to stand up to it. How, okay, so that's a decades-long process at the least. um where are we on the beginning of awareness of these sorts of things and maybe where do you perceive that to have have started even on a timeline uh relative to where you think there will be enough consumer understanding and behavioral change to really like make it make an impact that let's let's the rest of the dominoes fall in the right direction of like the businesses start changing their textile by buying behavior say yeah so the the good news is And listen, we've done our own research, done some surveys.

52:34And when you speak to people who care about their wellness and they're into fitness and things like that, the awareness levels are like 40, 50 percent already. They're already aware of this and looking for alternatives. You talk about people are slightly concerned about it's almost 70 percent. So people that you would think that already detoxed other elements of their life, they're invested in wellness and health and fitness. Majority of people are very aware of this. the degree of the problem, what are the really, what are the real, you know, sort of better options? Very low awareness. And so there's a big gap between, I know a little bit, but I don't know what to do.

53:13And when you get beyond that, you get to a lot of general population where, you know, 20 to 30 percent just don't really care because they don't want to pay more.

53:23Chris Kolbe:Yeah. And so that you're always going to have that too, right? And so, but I, again, I look at it very much like food and beauty is that you know it wasn't like all the grocery stores overnight went organic it starts with the section right where you shop your organics and eventually there's a whole foods or there's a there's a specialized store that has all of these things but it's still the minority of the total but you start seeing that more and more offerings more and more offerings because that's what consumers want and i think this won't be any different you know like 10 15 years ago there's two or three clean beauty brands at Sephora.

53:56Now there's like over 200. And so this is what happens. And eventually the L 'Oreal's and the Lancome's change too. And that's how a market-based economy really will change.

54:12Chris Kolbe:Yeah. We've spent so much time, and thank you for indulging me because I love material science. So I've spent so much time talking about that. But I want to bring some light to the other aspects of this apparel that make it the best since we've identified it. That's like really the the the North Star of it all. How much is like fit and color and these other aspects of apparel design, which I'm probably butchering. So you could look, you could make me and everybody else smarter on that, too. But how much are these other aspects of of innovation, say, part of the R &D cycle for you? And and maybe just give us kind of a few tidbits about how you approach something like, you know, I don't know, collar design or like where the you know, where the end of the sleeve lands on the bicep and these other things that like make make a shirt perceivably quality or the best, whether or not you are wearing it or just like standing inside Nordstrom, like looking at it and saying, oh, this is really nice.

55:12yeah well i'll give you the merchandiser answer which is perfect that's what i'm signing up for yeah so the the industry insider would say uh particularly for men okay because that's what we're selling today um no matter what you're doing fit is number one and so if it doesn't fit well nothing else matters right and so either fits right and there's a lot of things that go making things fit well but has to fit well and fit consistently uh so that you can come back and buy more without any hesitation yeah um that's number one number two is fabric fabric you get a really nice fabric and fit you get loyalty uh people will come back and the fabrics are something that is more visceral and so you experience it you know it does this it does that or it does it like it clings to me and I hate it.

56:06You know, these are all the things that people love or hate once you start wearing something. And fabrics are, because they're so visceral, a lot of times people don't know why they like something or not. They can't tell you. It just feels good. Like women will say it feels flowy. There's all these like words that people use to describe things for the way they feel, but it's really, really important. And then third is styling in detail. And so people might say like, well, it has to look good, but if it, you know, yeah, of course. But if it doesn't fit well, have good fabrics that work for you, the styling doesn't matter usually.

56:46And this is more and more true as you go up the ladder of premium and luxury, right? and so the fit this fit styling uh comes a lot into detail color all these things they all matter and the other thing about doing what we do is you got to really get all three of those things to work most of the time because people are very unforgiving uh when it comes to if they don't like it they just return it you know if they don't you know if they don't like it they'll never come back and they won't tell you why and so i always work that way fit fabric styling and then once you've figured out the fit and fabric, the styling evolves, right?

57:23And so you change a color, you change a button, you change a pattern, and you iterate, iterate, iterate. And it's very easy for people that wear uniforms to follow along, right? You can stay with your favorite brand because, you know, the fit fabric and styling moves with you. And that's how you build a really nice business. But then occasionally you got to introduce new things. And so when there's a shift, And this is where women's is a lot harder than men's. All of a sudden people go from big over skinny to skinny with big on the bottom. And all of a sudden the whole thing flips.

57:59Chris Kolbe:That's my problem. And then all of a sudden like you got to like rewire the whole fit fabric construct and you have to start over. And so women's is harder. And so and women's is similar to what I described, but things will change quickly like that. And then you have to evolve how you do that. And so that's where having a good sensibility of your consumer and what they are, you know, who they are, what they wear, how they wear it is really, really important. And fashion is a hard business that way because there's a little bit of a it just feels right kind of thing to it where hard data analytics won't exactly tell you when that that big over skinny shift will happen.

58:39But I've worked at companies like particularly Urban Outfitters back in the day where we literally had things getting ready to leave the factory. We were like stopped it. We said, no, this is all wrong. And we like flipped it around and we had to fly in the goods just to get the right mix of product because the trend had changed. And so that's gotten easier with AI because you can now start testing things virtually and doing all these other things to kind of find out when things are going to shift. But the world moves faster than ever, and so do trends. I prefer to build a business that's built on consistency and quality because the fashion part is it's a game.

59:23It's very hard to keep up with over a longer period of time. And so in our case, fit fabric, good quality, good style. That's kind of how we're building out that 80 % of your wardrobe.

59:38Chris Kolbe:And to your, well, let me ask first, we're at time. I can get you out of here. Do you have a hard stop? I got a few minutes. Yeah. I'll ask you one or two more questions. If you could bring back the big over skinny trend, by the way, I'd be very grateful because I invested in a wardrobe. No, it's exactly that. I remember, so I was in high school when, like, I don't know, Britney Spears and J-Lo were really popular. And it was skinny over big, right? And everything was like a crop top and like a midriff showing. And that was really hard to be a 13-year-old within. exactly the wrong age everything was so awkward and like right like i don't you know i just didn't have it and and so then you know some numbers but say like at five by the time five years more or seven years more came around it was like okay well now what we're doing is we're doing skinny you know big over skinny and i was like well that's much better for me and we've given a gift to the world which is that we fought against like belly buttons like one and then it came right back and i just realized like i i i'm uh i just have to be i just have to be a passenger on it all yeah no um well the good news is the 90s have had a good run so the next will be the 2000s and we'll be back to low rise and i can't even remember yeah low rise and then yeah what was after that But then it was like cargo, maybe cargo on low rise were maybe around the same time.

1:01:13Yeah. Well, that's for early 2000s where skinny really took off. I was actually at Urban Outfitters at the time and were like, you know, skinny jeans, skinny jeans is like the big bet, you know, early 2001. Yeah. That went for like, you know, 20 years. Right.

1:01:28Chris Kolbe:So, yeah, it's a good run. I guess what you're saying is I had a good run. Yeah. Well, I'm saying like that's a good run in fashion. a decade is a really good run how often does okay so for something like the fit of a men's shirt which is i think on the scale of fashion a relatively predictable thing right there's a little baggier a little skinnier but generally speaking like i feel like that should be one of those things that's kind of closer to um you know i'm constantly renewing fashion or like not it doesn't change all that much not that unpredictable um i guess what i'm awkwardly trying to ask is is there like a platonic form of really good men's shirt fit that if you only knew what that was and maybe you do you could pattern match to that and then like people would just be happy and everyone who's sort of like missing that marker doesn't have that secret knowledge like you know they're they're the ones with the the ill-fitting shirt or how do you like how do you dial in on what that means at a given point in time and is it like one thing um there's there's there's some basics you know call it we call them fit camps so and they usually more really much today yeah they're more they're more related to body type probably than anything and so like in our in our case we make two men's shirts we make a classic fit fits most people pretty democratic and we do a skinny fit or a slim fit.

1:03:00And that fits people that are probably more fit or just, you know, like a closer to the body fit, right? The two preferences. And we can cover most people with both. And sometimes the same person can wear both, but they'll wear a different size in each, right? And so when we launched, you know, I kind of knew that's generally how it works. And so that's how we were able to kind of keep it simple. And so far, three years in, we haven't had to change it a lot. The only thing you'll change mainly, you maybe slightly make a sleeve longer or shorter or collar will be wider or narrower, but it's very, you know, evolutionary, right?

1:03:39And that's, that's the beauty of men's. Now, we just launched a loose fit unisex t-shirt last week that literally is for men's and men and women. And it is very under, under the age of 35, 90 styling. It's a lot cooler and it fits everybody, but not everybody wants to wear a loose fit boyfriend t-shirt. Right. But the, you know, it just comes down to preference. It's just preference.

1:04:09Chris Kolbe:Yeah. Well, honestly, you know, and I love it because, you know, now my kids are, they like what I'm doing because I got stuff they like. Right. And so, um, and so fit is a lot about sensibility. and then sometimes it's about body type if that if that makes sense and so that's where um but you can usually statistically get people into about six or seven different fit camps in in the population in the united states there's there's body measurement studies yeah and you can tell even like regionally like people in the southeast have a different body type than people in the Northeast. And there's all that kind of stuff, too.

1:04:52So I've seen both, but I generally have deduced it down to two or three things.

1:04:58Chris Kolbe:Oh, fascinating. I could keep asking you questions about this all day, and I can tell that you would keep patiently answering them. So for that, I'm very grateful. This has just been really, really wonderful. Thank you again for the time and for being such a wealth of knowledge in this space. I am definitely heading to your website to go get one of those big on the top, skinny bottom. Yes, I have a perfect 90s boyfriend tee for you with a smiling mushroom on the back. I will wear it with pride. Thanks again for coming. See you soon. My pleasure. See you. Bye. Thanks. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Commerce's Chaos.

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