How Underdays Is Reinventing Women's Underwear w/ Oria & Amelie || Underdays

0:00Everyone says naivety is like your complete superpower. Yeah, ignorance is this. 100 % because I actually, I don't know, you know, if you knew too much at that stage, maybe we would have never done it. Well, it's crazy that we read the labels of food and we are all about clean beauty, but like no one talks about clean clothing. And we can see now actually that there's been a change. And obviously people are talking about like how bad like synthetic workout wear is for your hormones. We realised that women were starting to question a lot more everything that they were exposed to in their daily lives.

0:32And so we realised that actually there's a real opportunity to create a health first underwear. Has there been another like DM or message that you've had that's like made you both go, wow, this is like what we're doing is like really changing lives? I think there's been one from a woman who was like in her 60s who was recovering from cancer. she was saying that this is the first time since her surgeries that she's found a pair of pants that has truly fit her properly and made her feel good about herself women have like um i don't know eight ten twelve step skincare routine but then when it comes to their most intimate part they'll put like a three pound polyester and they're happy to spend you know women are happy to spend like 80 pounds on a beauty product or a serum or a face cream or gym wear but then they're they find sort of 20 pound knickers too expensive.

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3:58Trust me, you're going to absolutely love it. Welcome to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, we have Amelie and Aurea, the founders of The Under Days, and I'm so excited to welcome on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. I was just looking at, I was thinking about how I found out about you guys and saw all you guys and was like, I must get in touch. It was obviously Instagram and you did a big influencer campaign with some people that I follow and a lot of them was promoting you. and then I ordered some and I was like oh my god I'm obsessed with this and then my friend ordered some and she got the denim bag and she was like they'd be really cool to interview and I was like why don't I just instagram them and then yeah I did and we're here so thank you very much good to know our bags are they are they're all over Catherine oh my gosh good advertising for us absolutely like you should spend a day just doing the common and you would be shocked all the girls yeah yeah I'll send a picture now and what's that you every time because all the time people love the underdays bags I love it underdays in the world it is it's fun when you what's that like actually when you see someone like using the bag out and about like the toe it's happened more to you than to me I feel yeah it happens to me quite often and then people will stop me and being like oh my god I love your tank top is it from the underdays and I'm like yeah it's from the under days my favorite brand yeah I also start yeah yeah um so let's go right back to the beginning before the underdays existed what was your relationship like kind of with underwear before and I guess where yeah what were you doing how did you meet give us the kind of the details on that yeah so we we met at work um and our relationship with underwear was really we just treated it as an afterthought which is really why we started the business I think it's not like we were two people who loved and were obsessed with lingerie or something we really I think we started the business because we both realized that women are just not prioritizing their what they wear underneath and you know we as we worked in fashion and we worked in the fashion industry and we just loved obviously you know apparel beauty activewear and then we kind of realized like why is there this one category that is just completely overlooked by our kind of generation which at the time we were both like in our mid-20s and you know obviously dating going out being with friends going to work going to the gym and we just thought like why isn't there an underwear product that kind of does it all yeah because your stuff it's really stylish while also being like super comfortable and stuff that you want to wear on like a run or a date like it doesn't matter exactly it's very much sort of being able to wear it on every sort of life occasion absolutely and also it doesn't have to be a boring product I think that's ultimately what it was also about because we realized that as Aria said you know we were seeing that there was there were so many changes happening in different industries like the beauty industry active wear industry where you had all these brands that were really sort of challenging their their space and make creating a product that's a lot more exciting modern but then the underwear space when you looked at it it's it was still very much that all sort of old school lacy strappy lingerie play that felt very outdated and not at all what or and I as customers were looking for so you met at work how did you guys come together and go do you want to start an underwear round together we actually went to an underwear sample sale okay um and I think it was like Emily had just gone through a breakup and she was like come with me to the sample sale and I was like okay and so we went and you know it was like it was so old school and it was obviously it was it was a you know you can guess which brand it was it was a really sort of luxurious lacy underwear brand very expensive and it was like I think we were just looking around and there was nothing nothing that we kind of even wanted to buy and I said to Emily I was like I've always had this crazy idea of starting like a beauty brand that was kind of like Lossier but for underwear and then Emily was like that's a great idea let's do it and I was like are you joking I love that it's a brilliant idea let's do it and then literally from that yeah and I think ultimately it was very much like we always say it's like um ignorance is bliss in a way because we had no idea how to go about it but we're like okay just let's go for it and then I'm sure we'll figure it out along the way so it's not like we knew you know we both didn't have any sort of entrepreneurship experience we never did an MBA or any sort of um training you know to be an entrepreneur it kind of just you know fell into and we fell into it organically and we just went for it and we used to meet like after work like literally we would go to like the the coffee shop outside of our office and like just sit there with our notebooks and like write down ideas it was really like grassroots and like What do you miss about those early days?

8:38Because obviously now you've probably got like lots of worries. You were speaking earlier about some things that were going on in the business. But now what do you miss about those like early days when I guess you were quite naive to everything? Yeah, so naive. Didn't know anything. Almost like I say it again and again on the podcast, but everyone says naivety is like your complete superpower. Yeah, ignorance is this. Because actually, I don't know, you know, if you knew too much of that stage, maybe we would have never done it. Because we would have seen all the problems that could come along our way.

9:04but the fact that we you know we went for it in a complete sort of novice way it was just yeah I think it was a good thing ultimately absolutely and um okay so you're meeting outside you're writing everything down in your in your notebooks what then came next how did you I guess go to like figuring out a manufacturer and suppose obviously you worked in fashion so you might have had an idea of how that stuff sort of worked I think we were also you know obviously it was then it was 2020 so obviously COVID happened and the pandemic and we were not going into the office anymore so suddenly we actually really had the time to kind of accelerate this forward and bring this idea to life so that's when really it went from like us you know meeting after work with our notebooks to actually sitting around the kitchen table and I think one of the first things we did is we found a designer because obviously we're our background is marketing so like actually designing underwear is not yeah not something we know um and so we obviously found you know an amazing graduate from a fashion school here in the UK and she kind of joined the team really early so it was the three of us and then we started meeting like literally at my kitchen table during the pandemic and that's when really we were able to like have calls with factories we found someone you know a person to help us with the sourcing of a factory and we really were able to like like take it from just an idea to actually being a reality.

10:24And did you hand in your notice at work on the same day? No, staggered, but pretty much around the same time. I think, yeah, it was during that COVID period where we were both transitioning into basically leaving our corporate job and then not starting full-time under days. Yeah. And there's so much conversation at the moment around like what we put into our bodies and like how what we're putting into our bodies is like incredibly important in how you feel in your mental health um in the healthiness of like looking at back of pack and like really looking at ingredients but you're right nobody is talking about it in the clothing space yeah so is that was that the premise of kind of the under days when you sat around that kitchen table I think it's really developed because when we first started it it was really we had this it was first working in fashion at the time it was like why is there you know on the one side you've got like really tight um sexy lingerie and um that's really uncomfortable and then on the other side you've got sort of granny pants from mns that's sort of beige and boring and we were like why can't there be something in the middle so that's really how we started under days but then when we were sitting around the kitchen table we were actually like hang on like we are young women we're going to the gym we're going to work we're you know i think i was pregnant at the time we're about to get pregnant and we were like we actually need underwear that's fit for our lives and fit for different needs and actually our health as well so i think it's something that developed as we grew the product um and then we actually realized that that like style aesthetic layer was more of an overlay versus like the core usp which the core usp is really like helping young women to prioritize their intimate health and make more informed choices with their underwear yeah and i actually think now if you were to bring a product to market any sector if you didn't look at the sustainability sustainability aspect of it but also like how good it is for you you'd really suffer as a brand because nobody would want to buy it yeah so that's really core to everything that you guys now do and when is that was a was that a big part of like the spot that you realized was missing in the wellness industry yeah we definitely saw an opportunity I think the main thing was that we realized that women were starting to question a lot more everything that they were exposed to in their daily lives and we also started to see that um um well-being was becoming a non-negotiable and from there um you know we saw that the line between health and fashion was starting to disappear and so we realized that actually there's a real opportunity to um to create a health first underwear and ultimately we believe that on the days that that type of product health first underwear is going to become less of a just a niche product but more of a necessity and and a sort of expected product and let's say five years time and it's it's very much part of educating women that you know improving and using better everyday essentials will be a game changer in your day-to-day life it's one of those things that when you're when you're younger you never think about no yeah like it's it's really weird how food is such a big part of like exactly what you like learn about growing up but like nothing about your pants right it's crazy that we read the labels of food and we are all you know all about clean beauty but like no one talks about clean clothing and it's and i we can see now actually that there's been a change and obviously people are talking about like how bad like synthetic workout wear is for your hormones and that kind of conversation is really starting but we really i think we were doing it you know way before any of these other people are now talking about it so i think we're super happy that we were kind of there first and we saw it first but it's great that now people are starting to be a bit more aware of like the ingredients that they put on their skin also matters it's so important and it's something that's like so overlooked so I'm really glad like there's an amazing brand out there like you guys and was there an early um iteration of the under days that is very different to what it is today early iteration um I would say in terms of the brand mission we've been very you know faithful to what we were trying to do from the very beginning i think along the way you learn how to pivot yeah and there's certain things you know on a marketing side that we've learned to sort of you know pivot because obviously you're not a big brand so you need to think of ways of reaching your customers in a more impactful way but obviously not with the same budgets as some of the corporate brands that we've worked for before so i think you just you know you learn along the way to do things differently because ultimately you have certain limitations but we've always been very faithful to our core mission and it's always you know it's very it's always been about educating our customer about what they're putting on their body matters and that the fabric that touches your most intimate part matters and that health isn't just about comfort but it's also a um you know a key aspect of your everyday life and um and so for us translating that through marketing has obviously been obviously super important but we've been learning to do marketing in a more efficient way yeah I would say that we were started off quite glossy yeah so we came from obviously working in luxury fashion and we were like oh we're gonna do like huge shoots we're gonna spend a lot of money on those shoots and like we had like I mean it was crazy we like all laugh as a team when we think back of it like we were big brand mentality big brand mentality we're like pr like amazing shoots great models and then obviously you realize like that is just not viable at all but also that's also not us like we're all about our community and we're all about like you know like ugc community members real life authenticity so actually that kind of glossy sort of very editorial look is not under days at all and And so, you know, but we, that was a perfect example of like, you only know once you go.

16:17Yeah. Yeah. And actually now you say that is exactly why I bought it. I bought it because of that community aspect. It felt like the girls that promoted it, it was a real genuine, genuine. Yeah. And that's really hard to like replicate. Sometimes you see, you watch influencers and being like, oh, I've started, you haven't started using this product recently. Like you don't really like it. They just paid you a lot of money to put on your stuff. and you can tell because authenticity is like if it's authentic it's really easy to tell and if it's not it's really really easy to tell it's not yeah yeah i think what i think i say new founders or people about to start a brand don't realize is that that genuine relationship takes time to build it's not you know you can do the full-blown marketing thing where you gift everyone and anyone under the sun and then you know yeah maybe you'll get lots of mentions but is there a genuine way to communicate with your customer and your community probably not so to build an authentic relationship that one-to-one conversation with your customer with your community it takes time and I think that's also what we've realized you know we're we're only five years into our journey but you know we've obviously learned a lot through that through that um time but what we've realized is you don't build a brand overnight it takes time and to build authenticity it takes time um I think you know we've done a really good job um but I think yeah you have to be really patient and you really have to put a lot of effort in building that one-to-one conversation along the way 100 % and it goes with a lot of things like thinking about my podcast it's taken quite a long time for people to really trust it and yeah want to come on and share their story with the audience because you have to build like I am you know I have a name for myself now like people want to come on the podcast they want to share their story with my community because I've never forced it on anyone it's very much like if you'd love to listen I'd love you to listen but I've never like in none of my events where I go right get your phones out and follow me like that would be so on my style it's very much like people generally come up after and go I really enjoyed that like where can I listen to more and that's how you kind of build the connection thing because ultimately like relationships are especially with the rise of AI and that's a whole other thing like that's true relationships gonna be the one thing that like it's irreplaceable yeah um and was there something in the early days that you really got wrong about the customer yeah I think we we had a line called the lingerie yeah um and that was like a sexier but so we had when we started we had like what we have now the workout the everyday and then we had one called the lingerie so we kind of like as we said designing for a full spectrum of a woman's life so you know thinking okay what's her sort of going out underwear god who actually wear sex yeah anymore though like genuinely like yeah hence why that collection didn't last and it was a real example of why like always start your product catalog small you know be very considered because I think although it was a good product definitely it just actually wasn't right for our target demographic and like even us really so like everyone immediately went gravitated towards the sort of breathability angle of our everyday range and the sort of the intimate health benefits of that fabric and then as well as obviously the workout range being really important to obviously anyone who goes to the gym and works out so yeah it was I think it's for us as founders it was a lesson to like you don't need to start with like so many SKUs you don't need to start with this huge catalog which I think we didn't really understand because we'd obviously only ever worked for retailers so we were like oh let's have everything um but actually having a really edited product capsule is so much better for a DTC brand I really do believe that yeah and you don't really know your customer at that stage like you know there's no you can anticipate who you're going to be talking to before launching the brand but until you haven't put your product out there it's really hard to really know who you're speaking to at the end of the day so that again also takes time and you need to learn how to pivot to really be able to then um target the right customer and who you want to ultimately target but um yeah I think initially we had you know we had an idea of who we wanted to speak to but I think we were a little too broad and again that's also a dangerous position to be in initially you'd rather be a bit more niche yeah and then start broadening your your product catalog and we tried to do everything and speak to everyone perfect I think we were like let's do the shoot let's do a full catalog let's have an amazing website like yeah we wanted to do it all but I think now looking back like you really just have to start small and test and then once you have something that's working then you go and invest you know real money into it yeah yeah it's interesting actually because you're right like with with my job and like the retail side of it you you get lost if it's one skew whereas actually for you guys and what you're doing it's really important to have one really good skew yeah especially if people don't know who you are then they're landing on their website you then you're immediately overwhelming them whereas if you're like really precise you know this is what we do this is what we sell this is our usp that's what really works for DTC yeah and also then I'd fall on your um fall on your page and be like they're clearly experts in that yeah they clearly yeah yeah trust yeah absolutely and was there something in the beginning that um stopped you from launching at all the pandemic COVID yeah COVID really that was a big one for you I think COVID yeah um I think we also you know again because we didn't have any experience from a supply chain perspective we really had to sort of trust that process and we had some advisors on board who helped us finding a factory initially in Europe to keep things close to home because again we didn't know how long the pandemic would last and we wanted to be sure that we were able even if you know if there were some restrictions we would still be able to travel there um but you know again we didn't really know the timelines at that point we didn't know how COVID would play out um so you know also the launch date got moved a few times initially we wanted to launch after summer we ended up launching um around christmas time just before christmas which was not ideal um so i think you know i would say we were very determined there was never a moment where we thought okay this is never happening anymore um but we had to do all of our fit sessions on zoom so it was like we would be like all in different places around the world because we all like had to you know went home for covid or whatever it was and then literally had like one of the founders in their underwear on the screen yeah literally yeah so a lot of people were like what are they doing yeah um but yeah we and then also like traveling because our first factory was in Romania traveling to Romania like in the middle of the the pandemic with you know vaccines and face masks in the middle of the night I remember that yeah so it was just a lot of so much extra admin yeah yeah we were yeah I think a lot yeah the fit sessions on zoom were definitely interesting because we had the you know the pattern experts on zoom then we had our designer on zoom us on zoom and it's just like you know you you literally have to be with your bum against the the screen yeah just kind of moving around and and hoping for the best that you know you can see and the adjustments etc but yeah I think we were very determined so there was never a moment where we thought this is never going to happen um but we definitely had to face you know a lot of challenges with the remote working with yeah COVID with just you know trusting the factory process um yeah so I think you know ultimately it was not the easiest way to start but you know I'm sure as you've seen from other brands a lot of great brands were born during that time and um ultimately was a good way to also reassess you know and kind of get all together and and um yeah and make the most out of that that time where we were all stuck at home and you know it's where so many brands did evolve from you're right like people had all that extra time right they weren't socializing so they were like right well i can't go out drinking with my friends i'll sit down and what if i was creative you find creative ways to do stuff and if you could go back to day one what would you tell yourself to worry less about i think being perfect yeah yeah yeah yeah it doesn't all need to be right when you launch yeah in fact i think there's more pressure now because now we have an existing community yeah we're in our fifth year um you know we have a core customer base that you know know the quality levels and just yeah that we offer so if we come up with new products they need to be as good as what we've put out there so now there's actually more pressure but we were putting this pressure already on us we could have been way more scrappy to start and then gone from there and with your products it's um there's an educate educational piece around it as well because you've got to obviously tell the story of like why the current underwear that girls are buying aren't great and then obviously kind of sell sell the under days and how did you decide to do the educational part without it feeling overwhelming because i think so many some brands throw so much information at you you almost like you kind of feel a bit like oh god maybe I should buy but I don't really know why I'm buying and it's a lot of information I've just taken in so how did you balance the kind of educational piece with your product I think we always thought what was relevant to the customer so obviously we are all in the team actually like you know our target demographic we are the customer and you know we've got different age ranges different you know everyone has like different sort of requirements and we always when we focused on the education piece it was like what would we want to read what do we care about and so that's why it always just felt relevant to our product and to our customer I think we didn't try to do everything we're not we can't solve every single problem we can't solve you know we can't educate we can't do numerous sort of reels and carousels and whatnot on different things but we focused on like what what really mattered to our sort of target demo and that us as a team would care about and want to read yeah I guess the idea was never about scaring women about what we're trying to do it was very much about empowering women with better basics um and that comfort isn't a luxury it's it's a health signal um and then ultimately that education doesn't have to be you know clinical uh to be credible there's many different ways you can encourage education without being so descriptive so you know we've we've used different marketing channels both on a physical front and a digital front to to bring that message out um and to ultimately encourage women to look at the fabric that they're wearing down there and and make better choices and that's through our community that's through our content that's through our physical events we do a lot of panel talks we work with female health experts um you know we do pop-ups so it's just you know we we try to diversify the way we convey education um through our various marketing channels but the idea is very much sort of you know just encouraging women um to yeah wear better basics and you do it in a way a way that's like very stylish like yeah every time I look at your Instagram and I'm reading about it and I'm looking at it and even looking at your tagged pics so like who's tagging you in and having a look at it it's all in a really stylish way that makes me want to get involved I've never sat there going this is a really scary brand it's more like oh my gosh I've learned a lot from just that bit of information I think we're not trying to tell people what to do exactly we're trying to have a conversation with yeah and you know the responses the feedback we love that like whether it's positive or negative we pretty much always take it on board yeah and just use that to spark other ideas and other sort of conversations to have with our community definitely and you mentioned about when you first joined you know that you had like a big um the big business spring where you were thinking like big spend big media big VR if that was one thing you had to unlearn what would be another thing that you had to unlearn I guess from like the fashion industry that you were working into what you do now so many things I think because it's such a different model to what we do now I think for us it's probably sort of the approach around health over trends maybe because I think you know you can easily get sucked into trends and trying to keep up with the fashion calendar um and getting lost in that maybe whereas we've always been sticking to that health angle and health positioning and the mission we're trying to convey so that has really helped us I think initially we were trying to just to give you an example so what three months in we launched a new color yeah so three months into the business we launched a new color we made a whole shebang about it it was you know huge campaign lots of PR put a lot of money into it so again it was kind of similar pattern but it was just a color launch there was nothing special about it it was literally our core product just in a different color that was a bit of a trending color in the fashion calendar so we thought okay this must be a big moment for us and it didn't end up being a big moment because even from a PR perspective there wasn't that much to say it wasn't really a story it was just a new color and that's where we realized that actually you know we shouldn't be focusing on these sort of small color drops as like a big marketing or sort of mission-led moment there's other things that are way more important as part of our mission that we should be making a fuss about um but yeah so it kind of falls into that choosing health wealth sorry choosing health over trends um yeah and if you've in that sort of luxury fashion space it's always about newness and it's always about trends and the more on the more on your catalog the better so i think we've also made mistakes by oh let's introduce this let's introduce that let's introduce that and of course we want to do more of that and we want to continue expanding our catalog but we don't need to do that right away yeah you need to you just stick to what you know and what you what feels very genuine to you and then you know you can organically move into new to new categories yeah and also there's a really big trend with fashion i think that actually like less is more invest in like you know one for example sake 150 quid cashmere jumper than having like five or six ones from h &m that bubble and don't look great after like a few wears but you've got that one core gorgeous navy jumper that you know is like really good quality 100 cashmere that you'll wear and wear again and it won't wear so actually having less it's becoming more of a trend like look at vintage like people are rebuying other people's like expensive stuff because they can't buy it retail and actually i think have investing in the good really good basics like everyone says invest in a really good structured white tea you can kind of do anything once you have that as like with a jean it's same with underwear like you don't actually need to have a ridiculously large catalog because then you're actually just diluting your core product and that's exactly what you set out to do.

31:25And that's why we always like talk about cost per wear over cost per pair like we're you know it's a huge marketing message for us is just like you know spend a little bit more but you'll have a product that actually stands the test of time and will give you so much more than if you you know went to a supermarket retailer and spent five like five quid on something yeah. Because so many pairs of knickers do just not stand the test of time. No I mean a lot of them tend to just you know after two washes they're barely holding onto a string so and color and color and they go weird they stiffen the fabric stiffens you have sort of that scratchy lace harsh seams so you know ultimately what we wanted to create as a superior product that survives multiple washes that you can keep for years but that also has that soft breathable um cloud-like fabric where you know you've you know you feel good but also it looks good on you and um and that middle ground ultimately is what made our customers so excited about the product honestly everyone listening like you if you haven't you absolutely have to go it's genuinely like life-changing like i'll never buy another pair of pants again in my life like i just it's really actually that's another thing is that once you buy you can't go back yeah yeah like it's you try on like another pair and you're like these are awful we have so many customers that say they're just addicted to every time we launch a color drop they're like we have to get another pair yeah yeah well i think also you know we've seen that a lot with sort of the purchasing behavior a lot of our customers initially will come on underdays and buy one pair because they've heard of us but they're like a bit skeptical to buy underwear online um so they'll buy one pair and then you we often see that sort of that second or third order is like a proper replan where they buy six seven eight uh pairs in one go and they just completely replenish the underwear wardrobe um so yeah we often get comments like oh I've just thrown out my whole cupboard and redone my underwear wardrobe from scratch with under days yeah I've got so many of my friends I've got my auntie on I've got my mom on them like yeah yeah like we're all a bit obsessed now um and was there you mentioned about a customer popping you a message and saying like I can't live without it has there has there been another like dm or message that you've had that's like made you both go wow this is like what we're doing is like really changing lives yeah we've had a few I mean I think there's been one one from a woman who was like in her 60s yeah who was recovering from cancer and she was and this was unexpected for us because obviously we this was you know not an intended cause of of the pants originally and she was saying that this is this is the first time since her surgeries that she's found a pair of pants that has truly fit her properly and made her feel good about herself and that was really interesting for us because actually that's been a demographic that has come into play for under days not on purpose but has they really are like part of our community now is the sort of sort of plus 55 year olds and that's really interesting to us as well and we're leaning into that too because you know there's so many women who've had c-sections or they've had surgeries or they just you know feel like they can't not finding the sort of the pants that offer the sort of the right high waist for them and they've really like under days has connected with them and yeah i think we've really loved that yeah yeah that was definitely um yeah it was a cervical cancer yeah um and I think it just shows that you know even though we didn't reinvent the wheel with our underwear we've made some very meticulous thought through um changes to the product that have actually proven to be much better for our customers so things like having a two centimeters longer gusset which is that internal lining it gives that extra support and protection to someone who's recovering from cervical cancer you get that extra support by having that longer gusset it's it protects you much more than your traditional underwear we have um a stretchy waistband where you can choose your rise so if you want it to cup you a bit more you can sort of lift it up higher if you prefer it a bit lower you can have it like that um we don't we don't use any harsh seams so our we have very thin leg elastics around the product which means that there's no harsh sort of doesn't cut exactly it doesn't cut in there's no harsh seams that are cutting in um the product has these leg elastics that kind of just cut the legs and the body nicely um and then we have a very breathable fabric so we used micro modal which is um a uh fabric made of beech trees and it's it's twice as soft as cotton it's much more breathable it doesn't trap bacteria so it's it's ultimately a great fabric if you know you deal with a lot of um female health problems infections etc um so all these things you know even though again we're not reinventing the wheel with underwear it's structurally speaking it's underwear like everyone else's product we have made some conscious choices here and there to improve the product and and think of these sort of everyday life experiences that women can go through yeah it's a really special product and i think actually the more you can like shout about it and tell people like and i think once people try they don't go back so like it's a completely winning formula i think it's interesting because it's you're truly trying to change the purchasing habits of people because it's just not a product that people prioritize you know everyone prioritizes their gym wear or their beauty products um it's because it's not on show as much exactly yeah exactly it's something you don't you don't walk down the street in your underwear exactly but we always say like what though what yeah we would love that yeah we totally should we always say why is it you know that women have like um i don't know eight ten twelve step skincare routine but then when it comes to their most intimate part they'll put like a three pound polyester and they're happy to spend you know women are happy to spend like 80 pounds on a beauty product or a serum or a face cream or gym wear but then they're they find sort of 20 pound knickers too expensive and that's really so much of our marketing has actually been around that which is so it's really about changing the way women have spend their money which is has been a big you know education piece for us yeah hugely it's like I think we're ingrained I mean as a kid god I'm thinking of when I was at uni and school we'd all go to Primark and buy the three pound lace packs yeah and unlearning that three quid knickers aren't good for you is half the battle because it's just you're right it's so habitual it's so habitual and then obviously M &S as well as a huge part of the culture here and I mean obviously we also love M &S but it's just to you know show women that you can spend a little bit more and you can get something that really lasts and and does it and caters to your day-to-day yeah and what do you think most brands still get wrong about women's well-being good question I think that they try to they don't they don't try they just try to sort of overlook women's well-being you know or tell them what they should buy versus interacting with them so I think we listen to our community and then we create our products we're not prescribing anything we're not telling you how you should do something I think it's truly about that genuine conversation and I think for so long we were just sort of you know buy these products these are what you wear and don't worry about the ingredient label kind of thing and now I think the actual education and conversation that brands are having with women has really changed and that's why there has been all these incredible female founded brands that have come onto the market that are really listening to their customers and thinking about them versus you know we went to a trade show in Paris I was gonna say that um that was just it was a lingerie trade show you know our category and they were only men there so yeah it's ultimately been a very male-dominated industry for a very long time so it was very much sort of that one-to-one conversation with the customer was between a male-dominated brand to a female customer and you know if you think about it how can a man know or be the customer yeah bizarre yeah how can he how can he know what a woman's needs would be so I think the first step was ultimately you know for the industry to have a bit of a change and having female leaders re-looking at the category re-looking at the industry and thinking okay what do women actually want what does the modern woman look like and what does she need and you know for us it's been an easy process in that from that perspective because we were the customer from the get-go so even to think that you know in a man in that position could think of what a woman's needs would be I don't I would find it quite hard but I think it's an industry that's been very outdated and old school from for decades and um it was about time that you know all these new underwear brands were coming to the market to be able to change the narrative and and and actually be able to relate to women's day-to-day struggles health problems etc and and create a product that's actually fit for purpose yeah for sure it's so refreshing to have like a disruptor in the category because you're right how can a man decide like what it is that we need in that area like you don't have one of the things that we have right so like you don't even if they want it they're just not they they're not the customers so it would be very difficult to translate and I think also like you know d2c brands female founded brands like there's also agility we can look at something and do it be doing a fit session and be like actually that doesn't work or this fee this customer has said they don't like this about our product let's change it so we can react really quickly to the insights that we get and actually change something whereas I think these big corporates that have existed for so long they're not changing and modifying their product they're just this is what we sell and so i think that's what really gives us a big competitive advantage is we actually listen we listen we read every single dm every single email we take that into account with everything we do yeah we have a dedicated slack channel where we we put any screenshots of comments and feedback we receive so the whole team can see and then usually there's some sort of um take away from that and we can either implement into the design process or it's marketing uh comments so yeah i guess at this stage we can be extremely reactive and and pivot very quickly if we need to incorporate something new that's coming from our customer and that's the benefit as well of like being a small team in a small business at this point like you can be really reactive you can see things that big businesses can maybe you can see but do not have they can't turn it around in six months too expensive yeah yeah yeah and talking about scaling so you guys are definitely one of the most effective influencer marketing campaigns i've actually ever seen like if you look at gymshark and what they did in the day they were probably the first one i'd say really understood the influencer world you know they had all the people wearing and gymshark's huge right they really got that i'd say you guys are next like i I really see how successful it's been and I want to ask how intentional was that strategy from day one and did it were you maybe surprised as well at how well it went or was it you knew it would always be super successful I think it was very intentional I think we always knew we wanted to grow on social first as a community first brand so we didn't like from the day one like we literally had we got stickers printed before we had a product and we like had nothing else but these stickers yeah and we and we literally wrote notes in our office our co-working space being like this underwear brand is coming soon and the sticker said underwear has got a new face beyond today's and we shipped that to to women all across the UK yeah literally and you know some of those women are still part of our community today that got those stickers I mean it's it's really sweet and And we actually even went around London and like was sticking stickers in pubs and like everywhere.

43:45But we I think for us, we've always looked at influences as not like not like influences. We've looked at it as a recommendation from friends. So we've actually targeted women that we were like, you would be an under days customer. We think you'd love our product. Can we send you something? And that was always the strategy from day one is it was really organic. We picked friendship groups. we picked women who we thought would like our product and were sort of like-minded and then we sent them gifting and that was really like from day one I think that was core to our strategy yeah 100 % yeah I think that's where that authenticity we were mentioning earlier came from um it was very sort of grassroots um yeah grassroots approach trying to to reach our customer the best way we could and with the budget we had and um there were a lot of sort of mass gifting campaigns along the way um they all was all done in a very authentic way and it was very it was never just purely sort of commercial relationships no we never did like sort of very sort of expensive influencer campaigns that were just sort of a sort of sponsored by under days like we it was always had to be a conversation it had to be real and it had to feel like a recommendation from a friend so and I think that's where you can look at us like where we have had true success is our social media growth you know we've never paid for a follower we've never we've never struggled to grow in followers because we've just always been very very social first and really speaking to our community and thinking about what would entertain them what would they like and what would they want to see from us I think that's key it's thinking about thinking always putting your brain in like the customer like what do they want to see from you and I think that's how you you can grow really organically is really looking at and thinking that's something they'd want to see that's content that they'd want to follow yeah um and was there like a particular influencer or someone that really like stepped on your following or that you can put quite a lot of success to a day in d2c2 definitely in the early days yeah I would say in the early days we were more reliant on certain creators like there was so much excitement of like a macro influencer posted about us in the early days and like we directly see the really we'd see the correlation with revenue now it's hard to tell yeah now it's a bit harder yeah okay also because we work with more people yeah like in the days it was like yeah one that was performing well yeah you could see it instantly on revenue um but along the way we've really built sort of a core group of women that we we regularly re-engage and not just on a digital side we also do a lot of physical events where we always try to bring them to the event we do physical sort of gifting events gym classes sponsored classes we always try to sort of re-engage them beyond just sending product and i think that's also really helped in building um a close relationship with all these women along the way and i think also you know we've really learned that obviously micro influences are are best suited to our to under days like we've obviously worked with some amazing macros and they've been you know they've done a lot of great things for the business but having that community of of women who are building their own following who are starting their own careers they truly have been like the biggest benefit to us yeah yeah I also think sometimes when they get too macro which is so unfair to say because ultimately like they've just done a very good job of growing their following like ultimately but in on the flip side of it you do lose a bit of authenticity and i think in who you become exactly you also become a bit less relatable yeah yeah so some really big influencers that yeah they may have started with like obviously would have started with one follower one day but now if they're in the millions your lifestyle is very different to mine yeah like i can't do what you do so like yeah you can promote something but like it's not relevant to like my day-to-day exactly and we're like they're gonna those people are posting about chanel handbags like a mares that like got an appointment and i'm like well good for you honey yeah like i don't yeah it's very different to us yeah and i think at that level you they're very i mean in most cases it's their primary activity i think when you look at micro influences and nano influences a lot of times they have a main job that sort of trickles into what they what they promote so we've worked with obviously fitness instructors female fitness instructors female chefs um you You know, all kinds of disciplines that women are involved in.

48:14Football players. Yeah, football players. Like Olympians. Yeah, that's super interesting for us because we can contextualize our product into an environment that we would love to tap into and grow into. And so for us, it's a lot more interesting from a marketing perspective as well in terms of commissioning content and, yeah, and having our product in a different environment. I think that's interesting what you asked us earlier about, like, what's changed from us working in fashion to to this but like we actually don't in terms of influencers we wouldn't go for just the fashion girlies we would much more go for girls who've got like life a lifestyle sort of influencers so artists sports nutritionists women nutritionists you know that's that's much more under days in terms of listening to like what a woman does and how she lives her how she carries about her day and what has influencer marketing taught to you that traditional marketing couldn't?

49:10I mean, that's a good question. I think it's where you actually get the authenticity side of things out a lot more. I think with traditional marketing, it can feel very commercial at times. And whereas when you actually focus on the community and influencer marketing, you can contextualize the product as part of a wider story and share different stories and how the product has impacted their story. And I think that's where it's done so well for us because we were able to show through our influences that our product improved, I don't know, their fitness performance or, you know, we've got now we're working with girls who are prepping the London Marathon.

49:57And so you can, you know, contextualize the product in that journey. And so that feels a lot more genuine and exciting for our community to see than your traditional marketing that you know might be impactful from a commercial side but it doesn't have sort of that emotional trigger oh yeah I was gonna say it's much more organic yeah and you can land on things by accident that are absolute gems which you weren't intending to necessarily do but you're like wow she just said that that's incredible that's that's so under days that's so right for us and I think that's where influencer marketing can be just amazing you can get in the early days actually we used to get pieces of content that would be like oh my god like she is wearing the white underwear in the kitchen with her pots and pans and that looks insane and would become like a hero piece of content for us but by complete accident yeah it wasn't intended yeah and UGC is obviously so big because it gives you stuff that you wouldn't be able to do yourself it's very authentic yeah exactly it's authentic it's not so calculated and so interesting to see how other people you know interpret something yeah exactly how do they you know we didn't have that intention but they did and yeah so it's so cool and so interesting and for brands listening what's the biggest mistake you see people make with influencer marketing today i think they're like very paid for i mean of course pay i'm not saying not to pay influencers you must pay influencers but they're sort of very static deliver on this brief you know it's just a sort of very clear sort of partnership but there's not true sort of authenticity behind it it's not a sort of you're not giving the influencer a voice you're just telling them to sort of read a script or something like that yeah i think also you know people are a lot smarter nowadays in terms of when they consume content they can see if it's a genuine piece of content or if it's just a pure paid play you can definitely tell which you know again as aria said it's you know totally fine it should be like that that you obviously you know you're paying for certain types of content but it needs to the way it's being conveyed needs to feel authentic and it needs to feel like it has a real mission behind otherwise as you know i mean we're all on social media we can tell when a piece of content is just pure advertising and you know it just feels very forced um people hate being sold to exactly like people hate it and like the one example I talk about a lot is I had the the founder of Tenzing on the podcast and he's ex-head of marketing at Red Bull and he was saying how if you look on Red Bull's Instagram yeah there's not one Red Bull can yeah yeah it's true it's all about the mission and what you're supposed to it's about the sport they're you know doing backflips off whatever it's extreme sport that they're showing it's like we're you're buying into like that lifestyle you're not it's never like oh you can buy the buy a packet and i think that's so key because i don't follow social media to be sold to i follow it to see stories and see lives and see interesting things and if they happen to be wearing your underday set i'll be like oh that's really cool that that person's wearing it and i like what she's doing in her day yeah absolutely and um what does a normal day look like for you guys uh normal day looks like i mean we right now you know we're still a very lean team I think one thing to point out is that we're still the team that we started off with.

53:15I was shocked when I found that out. I know. Like when I met you and I was like, where's the team? You're like, it's us. I know. A lot of people think we're like a huge team. Yeah, I know. I thought you were huge. Like a 50-person situation. Even our office was like, so it's just you four. Yeah. And you're like, yeah. You're like, this is the under days. I'm like, yep, this is the under days. Yeah. Which is amazing. It clearly shows that you've given a global scale already. Yeah, I think it's, yeah, we're very good at, you know, acting like a big brand, but we're still a very lean team. Everyone that's on board has been on board since pre-launch, so five years ago.

53:50So our day-to-day is basically at this point right now, still very much, you know, wearing multiple hats. so it can be you know or you're working on the financials i'm drafting a contract then we have to review a product design then it's you know reviewing an influencer marketing strategy it's it's basically you know not no day is the same but we're very much sort of still wearing a lot of different hats all hands on deck yeah yeah which is really i think our team do love that because yeah you know as as young people it offers you so much sort of such a dynamic career you're really not like i mean if i compare it to previous jobs obviously i've had and amelie's had like you're not sitting there working on one thing you're doing so many different things and having to think so broadly and you can have a great idea and then it's like yeah let's just do that and then yeah that's really nice and also you've got a sounding board of like five core people that have been with you like the whole time yeah and everyone really believes in the mission um but yeah it's never a dull day at under days and you know every day is a problem to solve yeah Every day there's either, you know, a great thing to solve or a bad thing to solve.

54:55But, yeah, we all have to be very flexible in our to-dos just because, yeah, as I said, we're a very lean team. And we are looking to grow the team this year, but we are doing it very carefully because, obviously, we've been a core team since the beginning. And whoever… Well, we have a strong culture as well, which I think is really important. Yeah. So whoever joins the team really needs to fit the culture. and needs to believe, obviously, in the mission long term. Would you ever hire, have you got any men in the team at the moment? Like consultants. Consultants. They're actually great. And some of them really also get into the mind of the females.

55:34They're like, you've got to talk about yeast infections. Okay. Fair point, though. You do need to talk about all those things. And they're just so familiar, obviously, with our process. Yeah, I think you need to do more of the thong production. and then you know yeah you know it's just like but i think they're just not yeah you know a bit the sense to that is or to to in terms of what we're actually doing but it's also for so long i think like speaking about thongs or pants or like yeast infections in public's been like a big no-no whereas now it's just like oh my god we all have the same situation like the same things day in day out that we're like solving and trying i mean we're so we've we've done yeast infection ads yeah many times yeah yeah yeah we've done a few of those yeah it's so important though like bad pants are all good for you yeah exactly um and you guys are predominantly DTC as we've been speaking about um and kind of finding the right retail partners is really important because you want them to obviously have that under days experience yes um almost like without you there yeah um so how what's the kind of plan for more I guess brick and mortar yeah so I guess to take a step back you know when we were looking at wholesale we knew that we didn't want to go down the sort of traditional route of just placing our product everywhere and anywhere we always knew that we wanted to be very protective of our brand and very protective of the narrative behind our brand And so we never wanted to be in a position where we would be diluting the brand across multiple retail places.

57:06So the way we've been approaching retail, and obviously we're at the very beginning of that journey, we decided to look at places where we knew our customer would be. and not necessarily go down just a sort of traditional department store route where often cases you will end up you know on the fifth floor in the lingerie section at the very end on a hanger lost among a lot of different underwear brands with no sort of you know branding narrative context around what you your product is about whereas you know when we were looking at places like gyms, fitness studios. We realized that actually, even though, you know, you might not have a huge amount of stock displayed there, we knew that our customer and her lifestyle is very much around sort of fits and fitness and wellness.

58:04Our customer goes to the gym quite regularly. She'll go to Pilates studios. She'd go to traditional gyms. And so we realized that actually if we can try to stock our product in these places um we would probably reach our customer in a much more efficient way um and so that's what we've been doing mainly in the uk right now is sort of working with a bunch of studios around the country um and it's been great because ultimately you know as i said it's not you know at scale it really works and it's a good way to sort of acquire new customers um in some gyms were actually part of their like survival kit which means that if you do a you know a class there and you want to shower there but you forgot a fresh pair of underwear you can literally grab a pair of underdays at reception um and they'll you know they'll help you out so that's been a great sort of kind of scenario which we hadn't actually foreseen but for but ultimately makes sense um but now we're looking to scale it even further and we've just recently launched in the US.

59:08So we're looking to do a similar sort of approach in the US. So working with a lot of fitness studios, Pilates studios, sort of more specialty boutique studios. And then further down the line, you know, I think we're not saying no to department stores. I think we just would want to be able to work more closely with them in creating more of an experiential setup. And we had a brief sort of experience with that. I'd say two years ago, we did a pop up at Selfridges, which did really well during the christmas period and that was a good way for us to work with a department store where we weren't just you know on hangers somewhere um in the store but we actually had a proper stand where we could you know have a bit of you know storytelling around our product and we were able to also staff it ourselves so we could train the sales staffs in in in you know in how to pitching the brand and um telling the story of underdays so in these type of scenarios retail is good for us because we have more control but yeah I think initially we just want to be a bit careful and how we we know we place our product and how we dilute the brand do you think you guys would ever open your own store I mean we'd love to one day yeah I think that would be good just because we you know we do physical events quite regularly and obviously we have to always think of a space where we can conduct that um so obviously if we had a store you could kind kind of have that one evening could be yours exactly so nice yeah exactly and I think you learned like already in d2c we get to learn so much about our customer but then to have to be able to interact with customers live on a day-to-day basis yeah yeah oh my gosh you could like get so much from them right yeah exactly and um what has been hard what's been really hard about scaling a purpose-led brand that you didn't expect so many things yeah a lot of things yeah um i think education first and foremost i think what we were saying earlier is you know because we are purposeless brown we have a very clear mission around encouraging women to to rethink of what they're putting on their most intimate parts that education piece has been you know we're still you know even though we're five years in it's it's still you know a part of the business that we need to keep hammering on and we need to keep explaining to women why they need to rethink their their their underwear purchases and why they should be investing in their underwear and that's and that's i think it's like you know because we're a purpose-led brand people might not actually believe in the purpose yet so you you have to actually fight a lot harder yeah you have to really show people you know we've had to really fight hard to show our core customer why they should you know spend more to get a product that really delivers so you know it's it's got it's so much more than you know just getting people to fall in love with the aesthetic of your brand or you know all these things that I think we do well anyway yeah it's to really we had to really kind of sit there and we had to think about like what what what is going to get that woman to really stop scrolling and actually listen and I think the day that we actually unlocked that was the day that kind of changed the business absolutely yeah and speaking about kind of money and commercial like reality in the early days how did you fund the business so we funded it um through like friends we did like friends and family uh sort of investment round um so we really kind of leveraged people we knew actually and like you know people who who were regular investors and you know we go into VC or anything like that but so we started small but just leveraged sort of friends and family and at what point did cash flow like and forecasting become a daily concern as you grew immediately yeah I think it's very easy I think big lesson for us as well is like very easy to sort of forecast before you've launched so we're like okay yeah great we've launched the brand we've done this like small investment round and you know in January we're going to make this and in February we're going to make that and then yeah that was impossible and I think you don't actually you really just have no idea until you start the business and you know then you've got to find you've got to fight to find your way and what it actually you know to actually scale financially it takes a lot a lot of work and you have to really invest in what your customer likes and discover a bunch of things about them so I think for us it was really just like you know now it's really important because obviously now we're a much bigger business and making mistakes is a lot more expensive yeah i think in the early days actually it was like it was important but we we didn't know anything really and we learned by doing it's actually i'm finding like at the moment in year five i'm doing obviously working on the financials and the po planning and all of that kind of thing and it is there's almost no room for error which is much harder yeah yeah yeah but also at the beginning i mean when we had to do these projections at the very beginning like yeah no custom i mean no one knew us so to you know to think that you would do this number by you know by month three and then month six and the year's time it was basically impossible to really forecast for it because you haven't you know you have no customer you have no community at that stage yeah you don't know you don't know you have to find your je ne sais quoi you've got to find what why people come to you and we didn't know what that was when we launched the brand and now the challenge i would say further in and i think for us is probably that we've done so well in in you know there's things that have helped us to get from a to b but now you know as you keep growing there's more pressure and finding new ways to take you to that next phase where you know doing just the things you've been doing before are not enough so you know if you've if you've relied on certain you know um products and launches to get you to a certain um revenue number that's great but if you're trying to double that you need to think of other ways to to grow revenue so not just relying on the things you've done before um yeah thinking outside the box it's thinking outside the box and not just yeah I suppose relying on the things that have worked you just keep you have to keep innovating and thinking of other ways but then equally when you're bigger it's harder to just you know you can wing it quite a lot when you're small yeah yeah you can't get it wrong with you yeah you can't get it wrong now so that's where there's much more pressure on us actually now and what does financial success look like to both of you i think it's you know in the beginning of the launching the brand it's different phases so in the beginning for us it was just growth and scale and i think we were both very clear like we wanted to grow the brand quickly we didn't want is sort of this to take a long period of time but now as i said we're in year five so obviously things like profitability and financial health become a lot more important and that's what we're really prioritizing and trying to find a balance between growth and obviously profitability is is really important yeah for sure because obviously you need the growth but you also need to show that you're a bit yeah it's a healthy growth which i think is a challenge for any dtc brand because because it's very easy to overspend.

1:06:18Yeah. I mean, you just continue spending on marketing if you could. It's just like, it's a never ending. Yeah, yeah. You could go down that route, you know. But then, I mean, we've been exposed to founders in the DTC space, not necessarily in our product category that would tell us, I don't know, oh, we've made 8 million last year, but we've spent 8 million. And Ori and I would be like, well, I mean, to us, that would, you know, it would be more of a stressful situation to know that we've made the amount that we've spent then you know to make maybe a little less but you've you've spent way less than what you've made ultimately so yeah I think it's just finding that healthy balance which yeah any dtc founder you would speak to would say it's it's obviously that ideal middle ground that anyone would want to achieve absolutely and you don't want to scale too quick that like you can't fund it but then also you don't want to you want to scale quick enough that you can kind of use that cash to put back into the business exactly don't want it to take 20 years yeah yeah yeah it's finding that I and then I think it's just like practicing financial discipline absolutely I have so many questions left but I'm conscious of time so I'm gonna have think about where we go now I think we I want to speak about the future and a bit about kind of I guess competition that's entering and what makes you cautious

1:07:36interesting um competition I would say you know we knew that there was competition when we started of the business it's not like we again we invented a new product I think where we um what we are trying to you know push is ultimately to be the first health first underwear and um and that's something that we've had to sort of you know really hammer on to be able to distinguish ourselves from our competitors out there um and it's been something that you know ultimately when we're just talking about growth like if there's a if there's an angle we want to really try to grow as quickly as possible is that health first angle because it's something that we want to own as a brand and want to ultimately be known for looking at all the competition we want to be the first underwear brand that is turning underwear into wellness product and i i don't think that there is actually a competitor doing that right now so no that's how i see you guys like you are the first and you're by far like superior to others like you have a very clear mission a very clear strategy you're not trying to do 150 things you're doing one thing and like very well yeah and I think that's why people buy into you because like they're an expert in their field I trust them it's relatable they're also two like women themselves like it's it's really like I'm sat here with you and I was thinking earlier I was like I totally go for like dinner with you guys and like have drinks and it wouldn't be it would just like work 100 % it's like very easy and I think that also is why I like I wanted you on the podcast because I was just like oh it's such a it's so refreshing when you just meet people that like have a really clear mission but like also that I just know that it's going to be super successful oh I love that yeah that's good to hear yeah it is I feel it um and if the under days is like truly successful so you know you go on to be on like a massive global business which girls it's happening yeah it's happening yeah what will it have changed for women I mean everything everything to be honest because you're looking at a product that is ultimately a necessity product so it's basically redefining how women you know start their day have a better you know first layer that is ultimately helping their female health um so i think for us you know again it's it's it's for us it's being that health first underwear brand that's changing a woman's day-to-day life and that's ultimately how we started the brand it's very much being an impactful product that's changing whichever you know daily banality they're going through um and you know we're actually doing a lot of um work on the product itself we've got some exciting new fabric treatments launching this year again all focusing on female health so yeah I think for us it's it's just you know if we can be the in every drawer around the world I think that would be success to us yeah and I think if we can encourage women on the whole to just see that making more considered purchases not just with underwear but with everything makes such a big difference because even for me as the founder I've changed my purchasing habits so much where, you know, five years ago, I'd be in the office ordering Zara or Asos or something like that.

1:10:58And, you know, now I've just, you know, from having under days and realizing like these, these, these, something so small can make such a big difference. And whether that's underwear or, you know, an alarm clock that's got natural lights or anything like that, like these small, these, these investment products, they truly can make a difference. And I hope that we can encourage a whole category of brands and, and women to sort of spend in that way. And now to flip it. So if the under days didn't exist, what would you both be doing? Oh, wow. Good question. I think. Would you still be in fashion?

1:11:36Probably, but I think, I mean, personally, I always knew I wanted to do my own thing. I think I always knew that I would want to do a few years in a corporate environment, try to learn as much as possible to then start my own thing. um so if it if it wouldn't have been under days it would have been something else I think probably still in in the retail space because ultimately that's yeah the career I chose um but I don't think I would still be working in a corporate job I think I would have still done something about you yeah I think that you know the obsession that's required to be an entrepreneur is something you kind of have or you don't have and I think now that I've discovered it maybe I didn't actually know it before when I was working in a corporate job so I could still be working in a corporate job but now that I've discovered it I could never let that go because it's like you're consistently trying to discover and unlock a problem yeah you're always solving for it so that obsession is really you know you'll do anything at all costs to solve that problem and and to make it right and I think that ultimately if I wasn't doing under days I'd be wanting to do that for something else yeah and the reality is I think I think we both could say that the amount that we've learned in five years we would have never learned it and oh my god no and that's the other thing it's like it's so much more than just the brand it's and the marketing there's you've got to learn the financials you've got to learn the operations you've got to learn about the supply chain you you know you can't it's it's not you've got to do hr you've really your brain just gets so unlocked in so many different levels and i think good founders are the founders who sit there and actually learn about every single piece of the business you've really you can't just do the sexy parts yeah no and listen like listening is such a big part of it I don't I think people are very like to listen is a really it's a hard thing when we're like distracted all the time but ultimately like if you sit and you really listen to what's going on around you what's happening on socials and and you learn so much more and actually you can take a step back from it and go that's really working I'm gonna like look at this more exactly um and what are you building now that your future will be grateful for oh our future or underdates his future your futures um that your kids get to wear great pants the kids yeah we need to do a kids line yes i couldn't even think about that you do yeah yeah um well i think you know i mean i don't have kids or as kids but i honestly by the way when you said that i honestly like my brain just like went to another planet because I did not think you had babies not that like yeah I don't know what that even means but you know what I mean like I was just like what I know because I yeah what I'm shocked at that I'm sometimes I'm shocked as well can't believe it yeah because yeah like I thought well you must be like I yeah I thought you're my age like really young I think you are you're not old you're not old you're not old no I mean I don't know I mean I don't have kids but I would say like you know the day I have kids I would say probably you know to you know hopefully you know having a mom that's passionate about yeah her job and her project and yeah you know is is busy building something I think that's a nice reflection on the kids and ultimately a nice you know it's yeah it's something I would love to be able to yeah I think it's so nice to one day think that kids will be proud of what their mom does yeah that's really just be like oh god you know my dad this or my which not to insult the men but like you know I think to have kids that are like really proud would potentially want to work for their mom or tell their friends about their mom and just in general just being a female-founded business to encourage other women to want to start their own businesses and to be empowered at the dinner table to be like wow this is what I did today you know I'm I'm I also deserve respect which absolutely yeah and do you see the under days with an exit in like five to ten years or is this something that you want your kids to be like right now you're going to be working in socials come on let's get you in business i think they're a bit young not yet not yet get them to work yeah um i mean who knows i mean listen like we never created under days to you know for a short you know short exit and just sort of you know have a very quick growth journey and then just drop it for us the idea of under days was very much about creating a long-term brand yeah that could you know stand the test the test of time um you know that being said if you know one day we have you know an incredible opportunity um would we consider it maybe i don't know but i think right now what we're focused on is to really build an a global underwear business um a health first underwear business and you know until we were not there right now there isn't really a conversation of exit or not um i'd really say like it's it's truly very genuine to both amelie and i that we're doing it for the solving the problem yeah like obviously making money everyone does care about that but it's for us what drives us and get us gets us up every day is is actually building this business and and our customers and and our products so for us it's whatever direction that takes us in you know we'll be happy to be there but it's truly about what gets us up and gets us excited is is building this brand yeah well i'm sold i was already but if all the men listening go and buy your girlfriends like a full set actually ellia i'm looking at you now you need to go get kate all the underdays it's valentine's day it is valentine's day come on it's time yeah um quick fire round with the founders of the underdays we have amelie and oria here so one belief you've changed since starting the business don't need to be perfect one decision that changed everything health over trends one thing you'd do again in a heartbeat start the business love that one thing you'd never do again overspin on marketing and finish the sentence what has getting to grow taught you?

1:17:51Everyone has a different story but they're equally important. Yeah. I think, yeah. The mission is basically the biggest driver ultimately. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.

1:18:14Thank you.