Boys Lie Founders Drop A Masterclass On Celeb Marketing, Building a Cult Brand And Navigating Cancel Culture

0:28Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. and all comfort clothes that you could possibly imagine. And it's not just wearing sweats. It's like wearing your heart on your sleeve. But I will say there are a lot of brands now that have come out kind of with that same type of feeling, meaning, structure. And I feel like we were the first to do it. We were. Not to pat myself on the back. Yes. I'm too pregnant for this chair. Okay, you guys launched in 2018. Yes. We launched as a beauty brand. Yes. Yeah, yeah. We failed miserably. I think there's something so special about people who actually talk about their failures in general.

1:02And our failure was pretty big. Yep. Do you want to get into it first? We totally thought we were going to be the next Kylie Cosmetics, I swear. And we're both from Wayne, Pennsylvania. And so I don't know where our minds went, but we totally believed in our product and the brand. And I also think that's probably another reason why we are here today. Because when we were failing in makeup, we kind of also had each other to bounce off of. I also don't know how people do it alone. It must be really tough. We had seen each other go through some pretty crazy ups and downs in relationships. Leah and I have known each other since we've been 12 years old and we're 31 now.

1:36So we've been close friends for a long time. For a long time now. And getting out of college, we had both separate jobs. I had moved back home from Arizona. She was in New York and we got drunk one night in New York City. I was already doing manufacturing, white label for different cosmetic brands. and I was like we were boys I was always just something we said yeah get drunk it would be like you're drunk with your best friends getting ready screaming to the streets boys lie seeing each other go through crazy relationships and you know it was St. Patrick's Day and we were like let's do something with this yeah uh long story short we end up moving to California to start a cosmetic brand boys lie and we based our structure off of Pat McGrath and Jerry Lorenzo if you guys don't know Jerry Lorenzo's brand it's called Fear of God and basically he started with one SKU item which was a hoodie and he had a hoodie like starting out for a few years and his company now is huge I mean he's gotten he's gigantic um Pat McGrath she's amazing in makeup she actually had a couple merch pieces and I had realized that they had sold out I was like this is such a good idea let's pair the makeup with clothing because you can go anywhere to a store I'm wearing red nail polish right now right you can just go buy red you don't really need to know oh is that opi is that essie is that l 'oreal like what are you wearing it's more so oh it's just a color so i think there's a difference between cosmetics versus apparel obviously um well it's also funny because there are two pieces of apparel that we first launched with were very much like representations of like the both of us i remember like we had one hoodie where i had a quote on the back i can never remember it fully but essentially it's like if you love somebody you can love them enough to walk away and still know your worth um so that was one of them it's called the denim hoodie it still like remains one of our top sellers and then the other one said what are you gonna do without him on the front and on the back it said whatever I want so people really loved those and I'll never forget the first time we ever even got our first DM about the clothes it was from Ming Lee Simmons and shout out to her because we're still good friends with her today but yeah like you know like freaking out freaking out so how did you come to the decision to close down beauty and focus on apparel so we failed we put every bit of trust into the wrong people um coming from wayne pennsylvania we totally i mean had our asses handed to us oh can i cuss on this okay had our asses handed to us when we got out here and it borrowed money from friends and family to start so we were like completely out of funds after kind of creating our own makeup line essentially with these few pieces of merch and we were just shipping at that point to anyone like any gifting we possibly could in hopes that somebody it would reach someone somewhat someday and um in the height of her breakup with Tyler Cameron Gigi Aditi came downstairs in a full paparazzi moment head to toe in boys lie and the brand just took off and like I took off I mean the first year we did 250k in rev and then the following year uh we did five million so we needed to learn how to scale really really quickly how did Gigi Aditi find out about the brand so I went to ASU in Arizona and it's kind of such a great territory because you have access to Los Angeles you have access to Vegas you have access to Palm Springs so I'd meet all these people when I went to concerts like Coachella and I became friends with people who would have friends of someone else who was friends of someone else and at that point we were kind of just reaching out to close friends of both of ours where I was like look you don't have to vouch for me I know you're friends with this person or you know someone if you can just get me an address I'm just going to kind of like blindly ship this gift and if they love it they'll wear it and if they don't like maybe this life isn't for us I don't know and which I also want to say at this point in time we would never blindly ever ship something because we want to make sure we don't want to be wasteful but it worked for us at the time and because of the that connection that you have like when we were also shipping the makeup we were shipping the clothing so when DG got her box at some point she got both but she decided to wear the clothes and so that's kind of when we knew like we needed to switch also what's funny about that story is we were we were having a meeting I'm pretty sure that day about like closing up shop and then she she literally there's a like an us uh us magazine or something came out with it I don't know if it was us magazine I know I forget what it was but we were like what like yeah it was just didn't say I think it was daily mail actually it was probably daily mail but it was during the meeting that we were like we have to end this business and then that in the middle of the universe yeah it was insane it was really insane so after that covid hit and we really had to figure out how to rescale our business properly where it couldn't just be the two of us figuring out like oh like this is for urban outfitters this is for revolve this is for so those besties were just a turkey yeah yeah and an assistant to an outfit is and revolve in the beginning so speaking of people that we hired uh for help that we are relied in that kind of took advantage and I actually will say with this company who we had worked with it was it was almost like we helped each other mutually so they didn't take advantage to start out so we got lucky there um and I think they had known our brand would have been in like a high demand because after that gg moment again and like we didn't realize the effect and impact that would have on our business and they saw that firsthand so they were the first people to kind of come in and swoop us up.

6:58It's hard to when you do get into wholesale and what a lot of people probably don't know is that you could make you could send out like 100 blind emails a day or you could call as many people that you can find numbers on LinkedIn. But like, if you don't have that connection or like that status, like someone to put your their foot in the door for you to open up the conversation and bridge it for you, you really can't get into those stores unless if somehow I know that ariana maddox um in the height of scandaval a bravo moment uh she had worn boys light of the reunion and that added a shift to retailers being like i'm a super bravo fan oh my god i can't believe ariana wore this can we please get you in our store so that was like a huge change but nordstrom emailed us directly after seeing ariana and it's saying i saw ariana walking in in this we want to bring you in stores so that was like kind of like the first reach out that we actually got at that time that was huge it was huge a huge retailer yeah but it is hard to get started do you need to have somebody that knows what they're doing it has already probably built connections somehow and like is trusted so they can vouch for your brand and like the buyer will actually trust them because we were so small at the time and also people don't realize too it's better to go d2c because when you go to have to pack out orders for instance for like a revolve or a nordstrom they come with so many compliance um regulations as well as like you have to produce tags for it You have to have all these pack out pieces that go to the manufacturer.

8:26And by the way, like, or not manufacturer that go to the retailer, you have to front all the money firsthand for the manufacturing. And it doesn't mean that the day that the retailer gets it, it's actually received to their warehouse. So this is so important to say. It's like you might not get paid for months. Yeah. Like I would always stick to net 30 terms for anyone starting out a business and getting into a retail store. Like don't allow it to exceed that net 30 day period. And the reason being is like, for instance, we could deliver something to Revolve today, but they might actually not receive it internally with their machines or with their computers until like two weeks.

9:01Yeah, it's usually two weeks. So it might actually not technically be like net 45, even though it's net 30 or net 60. Like they get deliveries every day and we're a small brand and they're huge retailer store. I also think boutiques are great to work with and you have a bigger margin there. So I recommend going smaller before you go bigger and kind of taking those stepping stones. We had to acclimate really, really quickly. What does your retail strategy look like now? Are you focused on DTC? Are you still in a load of retail? Where are you looking? We're 60-40. So we're majority direct to consumer versus wholesale.

9:36Almost actually 70-30, I'd say. This year has been really, really heavy DTC, which is great for our margins and great for the business. So we actually kind of prefer that. um but we also enjoy like obviously being in revolve nordstrom urban outfit we love our partnerships but i think for us it shows that there's value in the actual core of who the business is and what it is and at boysly official.com not just searching something like on revolve or you know those businesses help us greatly and we love them and we love working with them but having knowing where home is and knowing that that's your home base and that it's so great to have those pillars but you can still lift yourself up on your own is so crucial hearing your story especially those like first few years one of the ways it sounds like you really got traction was through celebrity placements and celebrity marketing yeah and I'm really curious about how that's evolved over the last are you guys seven years in is that right I think this is our seventh yeah okay how that's evolved over the last seven years and what you're doing now to work with celebs like are they are they just coming to you now or are you still actively like pitching like what's the setup so something I think that's so special about our brand in particular is that we don't have any ambassador programs meaning like we don't have any hashtag boys live partnership whatever it is we do do a lot of reach out internally and we do receive a lot of reach out so that's really exciting whether that be from stylists of them reaching out to us directly um or i know we saw randomly someone from cat's eye was wearing boys eye for instance in a music video we just recently saw that and we were like oh my god how did they get our stuff like we don't even know trisha paid us recently purchased from our store we saw her wearing her stuff and we were like how did she get her stuff oh my god and then same with megan fox oh yeah megan fox also one of love her yeah we were like megan fox bought from our store like what but we have really good relationships too with like the people that have consistently been in our DMs, whether that be celebrities or influencers.

11:35But we still do our best to like actively reach out to people that we think would be a great fit for the brand. I think it's, I would say it's like 50-50. Yeah. I just love that because it's not an ambassador program, people are like in the true means of organic and being authentic to who and what Boyzly is. They're truly wearing it because they enjoy it. And that's something that I feel like that's why the direct-to-consumer is so powerful. Can you rattle off some other slips that have won the brand oh my gosh ariana grande duolipa um bell hadid yep gg as we said i was just recently wearing it kim kardashian kylie wow there's we have a whole list is that just wild it's right as used to it now i don't think we'll ever get used to it i think it's always gonna oh jessica alba i was another person who i love her she's a huge fan i don't think we'll ever get used to it i think now it's just something that's so exciting and it's always going to be very very exciting but I feel like it's always going to make our day you know it's never gonna be like oh like we don't care it's very cool to see and it's like such a wide range of celebrities like it's not just like your actors and your actresses are like a Kardashian it's like we have these huge Bravo celebs too Bravo-lebrities that I adore and love and honestly I love the Bravo-lebs same and do you still see I feel like the landscape has like changed a bit But do you still see a big lift in sales or traffic when celebs wear the brand?

13:00Or is it like certain people that drive it? It's a lesson. It's certain people. And Leah and I had to learn this actually in the beginning is it doesn't matter how many followers you have. It doesn't mean someone has buying power. And that's something that we're super particular about when it comes to gifting. Someone who's super special and who I hold near and dear to my heart in regards to Boy's Lies, Alex Earl. and she actually worked in a retail store that carried our stuff a small boutique and she we met her at the people's choice awards in person and she's like you don't understand like I worked at this small boutique in Miami and I would spend every paycheck I had on boys line she's like I'll forever be a fan because of that and I think it's truly just well it's also interesting because like you're saying we don't have we really don't pay like we don't have a brand ambassador program so like there's really no technically direct way to track like what celebrities are making an impact but even amanda patula you can see when someone wears it yeah there's a shift yeah she wore like a set from like 2022 or something in the last season of summer house and our coo texas the next day he's like we just sold out of this set from like 2022 what happened like amanda patula wore it and that's all it took which was really crazy but she's somebody another person i think yeah she sold out of our sport in like one day after wearing it on summer house so there are certain bravo liberties or i mean i consider alex erlo an a-list celebrity at this point she's on dancing with the stars but um certain celebrities that will wear it and you see a direct instant return and it's so gratifying like you just feel validated at every which way of being like i it's not just me that loves this brand as much as me it's like Like, thank God someone else loves it as much as I do too.

14:44When you look at the other things that you're doing really intentionally to grow this business and get this traction, like what else do you think is really working? And from the lens of like someone who is listening and wants to build a brand that has the success that you guys have had, what are those things that you're doing? Truly, like the most important thing is just expect to fail every day and that you'll have so many failures and you'll make so many mistakes. and if you don't make the same mistakes twice and you constantly know like I can't continue on working this way I need to change something in order to adapt and evolve that's such a crucial part of success in my opinion and if there's a will there truly is a way like we started a makeup we failed we almost shut down we were working two jobs it was crazy it was crazy and I won't I I will say this might not work for everybody and everybody might not want to do this but Tori and are very face forward with the brand and we always have been and so even in the beginning when we were pivoting to clothing obviously there was like manufacturing delays like the world shut down so we were also really open and honest with our customers like if we were late on a product or something wasn't able to ship when we said it was going to ship we'd also get on our instagram and be like hey guys we just want to let you know here's exactly what's happening here's exactly why and we were really honest with everybody and i do feel like from the beginning that did have a play a big role in there's not a corporate constructive way of like a narrative that was just oh this is this is the same response and it's like robotic PR training at that yeah no PR training just telling the truth and I think that really but that even came to like customer service emails and I remember them getting I mean we were responding to each one the best that we could and being honest being like hey we're two girls just kind of like figuring it out but I promise you we want your order to get to you as bad as you want the order like yeah we're dying for it to get to you yeah and their customers really respected that sometimes you'll get the occasional that are still upset but we try our best to just to be completely open and honest and tell them exactly what's going on look and if it's a physical product you're selling like hold low inventory when we first started we made it more of a pre-order structure so we made enough samples to do the shipping for gifting as well as do photo shoot and we held on to that our customers wait Like just because in today's era, people are used to like, oh, the Amazon Prime thing.

17:03They will also wait for a product that they really, really, really want. Yeah. And I think there's so much pressure. And I think that content is so consumable that people just envision it constantly being something that you need to be accessible instantly. That's actually not true. There's like a huge misconception of that between product to delivery. That's so interesting. I want to talk about, you mentioned before about being really forward facing. and I want to talk about this with you both because it's so true, very forward-facing founders. I'm sure there's like good and bad that comes with that.

17:32Yes. Sure is. Absolutely. Talk me through how you feel about that now. Again, like seven years in, platforms have changed as well. I feel like probably when you started it wasn't quite the same as the virality that you get now on like TikTok and how has that experience shaped how you feel about being a business owner And is it something that you would like genuinely recommend to other people? Well, it puts you in a very vulnerable place too, because not only are you the founder of the business, but you are also going to be like face forward, the one to blame for everything, which I think we both signed ourselves up for and that we knew.

18:10I don't think it's for everybody. That's for sure. But there was also a shift in our business where we were, we started very face forward. And then we started being more behind the scenes where we were hiring models to shoot our clothes and we weren't even in the shoot. We had to learn how to scale. so like there was a piece where in the beginning you know we were on instagram every friday ask us anything ask us about the business whatever it is what do you want to see all the things and like that had to slow down for us to pick up a role on the back end to say like we're in the trenches here and we need to bring a team that we of people that we trust into what we're doing and that took a second and like that following year after the five million we did about five five because we had cut off doing um having a wholesale partner at that point leah was building all the rebuilding all these relationships with these wholesale companies that we were had been working with all these different retailers um i'm mainly focused in design and direct to consumer facing so also not just producing a good that was direct to consumer focus but one that was wholesale geared as well um explaining our top sellers forecasting sales like those were all things that we we need to evolve and adapt to to understand our business on a high scaling level as to like how to grow yeah so I think being face forward it does come with things that aren't pleasant and it comes with things that are actually really really rewarding um we model for the brand still to this day like I love that piece to it it shows that you know we love what we do we put a lot of care and what we do I still design for the brand um and I don't imagine that changing anytime soon but you know if there's a will there's a way and I I need to like harp on that because like you said this isn't for the faint of the heart not everyone can do it and if everyone could do it they would yeah and if it's not for everybody to be forward-facing but if you if you don't want to do it I would recommend like at least having somebody that like fits exactly what you're looking to sell um and I think for that obviously it's it's as but like look at skims right like Kim Kardashian is the face of the brand and look at look at what she's doing but she's also Kim Kardashian I think a lot of these other brands too like Dairy Boy like patrons is also I don't even know if it's like full face sporting or if the brand just needs some sort of personification so like for us Boys Lie is so personified especially now that we have this branch of our own podcast where we have you know people submit their stories and we're reading their stories and sharing experiences on the podcast that builds an added piece to the community that we already had.

20:38And I think that that is such a pillar of personifying our brand and its narrative. And I think that if other brands carry that with them, that's something that's so crucial in today's world, because so many people care about these experiences that they have with what they're wearing or what they're doing on a day to day basis. Even if you're not making like high impact in the big world it makes you feel good it makes you feel like you're doing something for yourself how have you both been up leveling and growing as leaders and founders listening to you talk about those early days of just the two of you and like you're trying to figure this out and now you've built this business that how many how many team members did you say you have I think 14 yeah and you are like so much more visible and the revenue's been growing and I don't know like to me that takes a lot of like personal growth growth as a human to be able to do that and I do think that often it's like the fact if the business can't outgrow a founder and so I want to know what you've been doing if anything or if it's just been like learning on the job and building confidence in yourself that way I think it's both I mean personally like I have been seeing a therapist for like two-ish years now and that's also really been helpful for me to like mentally like honestly decompress every week and like kind of get everything that I'm feeling like out of my body and out of my system and just like because being a founder obviously it's it's difficult and you but having I think working with Tori and like have known her for so long and being together all the time it's such a like it's also very extremely rewarding and I really don't think that we would ever be here if it weren't for that trust and that bond but we also like kind of lift each other up and learn from each other every day which not everybody gets to have yeah I would like harp on that too I'd say it's more so being so will willingly vulnerable and that means like not just you know between Lee and I but with our entire team and being having empathy if like I'll give you an example what I've realized is that you know there are certain weeks oh my god if one of our employees watches this album I'll cry but uh there's certain weeks where our one of our employees will be like Tori um I'm like really struggling today and I think I like I need to work from home and actually I see the work being more effective and efficient by them having that one allowance of the work home day versus me being like, no, you need to be.

23:12Yeah. And like, versus me being like, this is a corporate dominant structure. Yeah. I think the world isn't able to fully function on that corporate level in certain businesses anymore. I do believe in a corporate structure, by the way, just so that people are very well aware. I do believe in that. It's just with our business in particular, it has to be tailored to be a little bit more rounded to evolve into what we want to be in. yeah future and I say with each employee we have I have a different personality for each one of them because it was exactly what I was going to say you talk to each person differently in general in your life um you know I talked to my mom different than I would my dad and I think it goes the same with having a team and your team is there to support you you're on the same team even though people have different opinions and it's important you hear each one even though you may not agree with them do you guys work with the business coach at all no no I have someone great if you honestly that'd be great if you want them we need a mentor we are each other's coaches no we have a great um mentor right now we have a couple of them yeah one of them she she's amazing and anyone who's listening to this you should look her up her name's jody gerson she grew up in um the same town we did she went to actually my alma mater baldwin was a high school and now she's the CEO of Universal Music Records and she is just amazing outstanding I like can't give her any more praise than I already do I call her mom sometimes like I text her yesterday and I was like hey it's us your kids like I wouldn't be just like her when I grow up no literally I aspire to be like her um and if anybody's interested definitely look at her backstory she is unbelievable okay how did you land her as a mentor and like for people who want an amazing mentor how do you how do you make that happen oh god Julian's gonna kill me and um the person who is an agent of Megan Maroney I have a weird personal connection with through my sister-in-law and we had met because Megan became such a big fan of Boy's Lie um so Julian is actually Jodi's son and we didn't know that Jodi even had the Baldwin background or was from from an area yeah yeah okay so it was honestly it was like a it was brandon the stars for us to meet her at some point yeah we didn't like go reaching out or like we weren't searching for it but I think that's with even with the gifting and I think that even with the people I'd met at school where I was like oh can I get an address whatever it is my goal and yours as well and meeting new people was never like oh we need to do this to network like networking I hate that term because it just should happen as an ebb and flow of you just being a good human being and wanting to meet good people yeah organically yeah and attracting that and being able to know like where your boundaries lie with certain people and I think no matter what as you said I think Jodi would have ended up we would have somehow yeah us in the universe but i think that in finding a mentor it it will happen naturally and it'll happen as someone that you naturally look up to that you engage with so is boys life still fully re-strapped what did you say are you fully re-strapped do you guys have any investors oh no yeah no um we're out of the block so like out of even being owing money back to friends and family so that's amazing yeah that's not something you're interested in doing I'm never gonna say never um we've talked about it like it's not something that we're yeah it's not so we're ever gonna say no to but I think for now I think yeah I mean we've gotten also now as of last year was our first year we got an offers um as to somebody who wanted to buy us so you know we're we're never saying no to everything yeah we're always open to a good meeting we're always open to hearing people or you want to buy the company yeah we're open to consideration for anything but it needs to be and I think we both know what we want out of that and like it just needs to align perfectly and also that came on our plates like organically totally out of sight out of mind and it still isn't something to this day I'm like we need to do this right like I'm in a rush to do this if it happens and it's the right partner they'll come along in the same way like when you meet the right people you meet the right people and you engage with the right people and it's not networking you don't have that intention it's I'm a good person I'm going to meet other good people is the plan to sell the business one day I don't know yeah for the right price yeah that's what we always talk about this and like when we do talk about it we're like we don't know but I think like you said like it has to it has to work in a way where we know for a fact that that the DNA and the core of the brand won't change because like we can't do that to our customers and that has to remain true to what we started that's a blessing and a curse within itself right because we know that no matter what even if we did sell the business and it was a great partner last year who wanted to buy in as like our first opportunity that came around the corner no matter what we know that we'd still have to be involved in the business heavily for the first few years of that so it's also like who do we want to actually work for yeah totally yeah yeah like who do we want to be our boss yeah Yeah, that's scary.

28:35It would change so much. It would change so much. It's a scary thing. Yeah, so like that's very, this is something that's very new to us. That was something that just, again, happened upon us last year. And we'll see, you know, what comes of the next few years. If you've got the big bucks, you know, email us. Yeah, hit me up. You know where to find me. The price is right. I want to go over the strategy or like the exact steps that you're following when you're launching new drops, when you're launching collections because um you guys are selling out you're like everything you do is so buzzy and hyped and i want to know exactly what the process is so should i start with the whole that's what i was about to say yeah so when we did uh switch and we started doing wholesale what we switched to as a pre-book model so right now tori's designing like fall 2026 yes and um so we're we're basically showing these collections to nordstrom revolve all of our boutiques like way ahead of time.

29:29So they're putting in their buys like half a year in advance. And so when we get those buys, we're actually able to look at the collection that Tori designed, see which pieces were really popular, see what wasn't, and kind of weed out the pieces that we know maybe won't be a fit for everybody. So that's kind of the start of how we start selling it. And it's, again, it's like six to seven, eight months in advance. Okay. So we have that pre-book model essentially for wholesale. That'll give us some sort of shift with direct-to-consumer where we can also say like, oh for this next upcoming month we're actually missing you know a couple silhouettes that I feel like we can remove the ick and like add in a couple new judge pieces that might fit better for the aesthetic of what people are looking for at this time period um from there we drop usually on Fridays unless if it's a collaboration we drop 11 months out of 12 months in a year and we have around 30 a little over 30 skews per drop so it's a lot to discipline yeah and she wants to kill us sometimes so we're like we need more like core basic wholesale pieces she's like i'm gonna kill you well no i also like it's like when somebody from wholesale is like can you design this this and this and i'm like but also the re i wanted to go back to the friday drop the reason we drop on friday is just because that's normally people's payday so we want to make sure that like Fridays are so big Fridays are so big not only in retail but in music as well everyone always drops at like midnight on the Thursday night for like Friday hello Taylor Swift yes um but I think there's such a rhythm to our direct to consumer basis I mean we shoot at least two months in advance then you have the items on apparel it's pitched out from press from there once you get your edits back.

31:15And we slowly, it takes about two and a half weeks for us to hint the product consistently, being that it is 30 SKUs. It's a lot to introduce and you have to do it in a way that's kind of like a slower rollout. Then we gift probably a week and a half to two weeks before dropping. And the reason why is because if I'm sending to somebody that's like an Alex Earl, well, Alex gets packages every day. She gets hundreds of packages, in fact, every day, whether that's brands like us, bigger skilled brands or people who just randomly had acquired her address. So it's going to take her about two and a half weeks to open.

31:54Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it takes four weeks right away. Yeah, sometimes it's literally delivered that day and it's on her body. And I'm like, I love you, Alex. Thank you so much. But the reason why we space it out like that is because of the amount of packages that people receive for gifting, unless if it's really specifically requested and they need it now. Yeah. And also when we do initially put in our production order for that month that is dropping, we do also put in an order for the gifting. So we know that we have X, Y, and Z quantities to make sure that we can fulfill the gifting purpose.

32:27And that way we can still drop our direct to consumer and our wholesale fulfill everybody. so if you are listening you want to start a business I would recommend doing it that way if you want a gift something that I've seen you doing a lot of that I'm curious about is um collaborations so obviously it's working because you keep doing them what's the strategy there and we've had ones that don't work so we've had some ones do what works and what doesn't work um the thing is is cancel culture is so real yeah these days and you know people will witch hunt brands, the witch hunt influencers. So we've had a couple instances, you know, where we were witch hunted after just announcing a huge, what we thought was a huge collaboration.

33:08And that's really hard because as a brand, you're like, I just thought this person was great, loved meeting them, thought they were good people, you know, and then we find out what the rest of the world, something maybe that was said or what happened. It's hard on us both because, you know, like we always are going to stick to what's true and best for our brand we've had one collaboration that we had to end up canceling because it just didn't align with our values and Tori and I took a long walk that day before we had to even announce it and we talked for like an hour he threw up yeah I literally well because at one point when you're bashed so hard it was like we never had the intention of this being portrayed as something that it shouldn't be because of this person that had gotten canceled and we're like we were just trying to have like a great drop and like being on good momentum we didn't know that some things might have and then you have these people that will just swarm you with the most horrible things hiding behind their screens and you it makes you feel sick in the west as well yeah yeah um and then you know you're graced again that's part of failing you're gonna fail sometimes then you get graced with people that are like megan maroney who I adore and admire so greatly and she is so successful and she's on such a great trajectory and those collaborations I mean Megan in the first not even 12 hours did around like 350 grand in sales wow so and the first collaboration before we had dropped within like five minutes not even it was like under 60 seconds we didn't realize that her inventory would move as quick uh as it did.

34:46And it was, it was insane. I mean, she's just, she's a monster in the best way. It's just great when you do collaborate with somebody who feels organic and natural to the brand, because then you also absorb each other's audiences. So like you're both kind of growing in that sense. And your audiences become these communities together. Yeah. Like that's such, that's the important piece of the collaboration. Yeah. The last thing I want to ask you about is for a quick resource recommendation. Something's been helping you as you've been building Boys Lie. this is an expensive subscription so i wouldn't go this route with subscribing to it but if you go on pinterest and you type up wgsn for fashion specifically they have anything that's trending between colors to styles to full designs that are you can expect to see in the following year wgsn is like the most insane uh design and fashion platform i think that there is existing I think the subscription is like 20k a year for just we'll do the Pinterest option yeah the Pinterest option is way better um for perspective on video there's a website called eye candy and I think it has three ends in it don't do the normal eye candy I think you'll be disappointed um but that's really great for like video perspective as to how to film something and then I would definitely say like use your use the easiest platforms and like tech that you possibly can So like Shopify has so many templates for websites that already work.

36:10And the reason why they have those templates is because they already work. They're already preexisting and use that to your benefit. You don't need to start from scratch. Lee and I started with blanks and now do everything cut and sew and custom knit. But like you don't have to, you really, you don't have to think too hard. Yeah, I would say if like on the other side of things too, if you can afford it, like a really great ERP system is worth it. We just switched over to one this year. It's called Apparel Magic. If you are also selling wholesale, New Order is where all of our products are based for all of our wholesale customers.

36:48And our ERP system links directly to New Order and to Shopify. So all you do is load the product in there and then it just literally blasts it. I love like a super tactical recommendation like that. That is so good. Well, it's also, it's super helpful because like it does everything all at once for you. So it puts the products on Shopify, it puts the products on New Order and it also connects to our 3PL, like she was saying. So it's a way to keep track of inventory where you can store all of your base costs, all of your pricing, to keep track of sales. Like it is a really great investment if you can afford it.

37:16And there's some cheaper options too. And I'd also say, keep your team small. Like at this rate, and like I feel like technology just grows every single day. You don't need a huge team to make an impact. Yeah, you need good people. Yeah, smart people. Thank you both so much for coming on Female Founder World. What an amazing story. Thanks for having us. Oh, my gosh. I'm so stoked. It's incredible what you guys have felt. I feel like people are going to get a lot out of seeing the behind the scenes of this. I hope so. It was great speaking with you. And we're happy that we finally got to sit here with you.

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