Advice Line with Michael Preysman of Everlane

27:29But the true inspiration was these pair of pants that my son wore and they were just a cotton jersey pant they wore when he was one and then he kept wearing them when he was two and they started to turn into shorter pants he was three and then four they were shorts and they wore them pajamas he wore them for five years and so I just thought these pants are amazing um why can't all kids clothing evolve with them like these pants and yeah that was really the inspiration I love it so okay when did you guys launch when did you when did you start We launched three months ago, but we started three years ago working on it.

28:06And right now you're selling it direct to consumer through your website. Yes, but we just opened a pop-up in Bondi a month ago. In Sydney. Nice. In Sydney. And tell me what, before I forget to ask you, what's your question for us today? So the number one request we receive from our customers is to create adults' clothing. So nearly every second day on Instagram someone's saying, please create an adults line. And so the problem we went out to solve was the fact that kids grow up so quickly and, you know, create so much waste, but adults don't grow up. They grow out perhaps but not grow up. And so that's not sort of an area.

28:50We want to go, you know, look at babies and then older children, but we're never going to do adults. So how do you know when to pivot and listen to your customer, even if it sort of strays from your original business intent? That's interesting. So you've got the whole idea was to make it so parents wouldn't have to buy a bunch of crap every year and throw it away. But now you've got the parents saying, hey, I want this stuff for my size. I want this comfortable Jersey cotton to wear around the house. Michael Praseman, what do you think? I mean, her customers are asking for this, but she's so early in the business.

29:30What does she do? Oh, my goodness. I mean, first of all, I'm with you. What a great idea. I have a seven-month-old, and so as we think about all the clothes you've got to buy, it's like every two, three months, new clothes. It's always – it's just a train of new clothes. And then you're just hoping you have more kids that they can grow into, and then eventually you have to give it all away. So it's a very cool idea. And what I like about what you're doing is the positioning. And I was telling Guy, positioning is so important. You have a very clear positioning in the market. And I guess my question for you is, what are adults looking for in your clothes?

30:09Like, what are they? Do they just love how they bought it for their kids and they just love how comfortable it is? Like, what's the story there? They love the natural mineral dye colorways. I think it's also the comfort too, but everyone is drawn to the colours. So that's sort of something, our main focus was the fit, you know, when we went out to design these pieces. But we managed to find this factory in Portugal and they've patented this technology to use natural mineral dyes that don't run. And so we sort of got lucky and everyone is obsessed and so drawn in by these colours because they're these quite unique muted tones that you can't get.

30:49Yeah, they're cool. It's like lavenders and like these greens I'm seeing and these sort of blues. Dusty rose. Yeah. So they're just like, oh, my God, I want that for myself. And I think also there's that whole market of matching with your kids that adults, I don't do that, but some people do that. Yeah. And so it's if we were to introduce adults, is it still is a different sort of section of the brand or. Yeah, it's it's hard to know. I think, yeah, I mean, what I would say is sometimes we start and this was guy knows is like we started Everlane, we started selling phone cases, and then it ended up looking like radical transparency.

31:41So it's pretty, pretty different, right? And I think we always had this idea of like, at the core, reinventing retail and creating a better experience. When I look at what you're doing, I would just say, I hear the words Earthlings United, and I hear better for the planet. Yes. And then I see your site, and I see both it's better because we don't have to grow by as much clothes. But I also see it's organic, it's mineral dyed, and it's trust and grace. And there's a lot of goodness in that as well. So I think at the core for me is that Earthlings United, which is such a fun name, and the logo you have.

32:20Agree. You know, I totally agree with that, Michael. We did a story maybe a year or two ago, and it's worth listening to, Anna, with a brand called Primary. And their whole point was, hey, we want to make kids basics that's less expensive, that is without a label. without, you know, and eventually the adults were asking for stuff. And so now they do adult clothing as well. So I agree with with Michael here, I'm looking at your website, I see Earthlings United. And yeah, I might say, hey, kids grow up clothes should too. But we could also have a window that says, hey, we make stuff for grownups too.

33:00You know, I mean, I don't I don't see a whole lot of problem because your name Earthlings United doesn't say, hey, this is just for kids. it's like it could be a universal brand. So I think it's a really interesting thing to consider. Yeah, the way I would think about it is do a couple pieces for adults and see how they sell because it might be that the notion is that the – and again, I think about positioning. The positioning becomes the eco-friendly first through the lens of the fabric and then the kids becomes a subset of that. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Like maybe we test out a couple of sweaters or something and do a smaller run and that could almost be exclusive or something just to test the adult market.

33:58But I did take a lot of inspiration from listening to your podcast episode, Michael, because I remember you saying and I took this inspiration when I was walking past this site before we opened this pop-up because I remember you saying, oh, we never intended to do brick and mortar stores. And it's very early days, but I was walking past this closed down location and I just happened to inquire. And so we've kind of taken a bit of a leap by opening this little pop-up. But I think that's a good example, I guess, of just sort of pivoting in your business and seeing how it goes, I guess. Yeah, I think that you have the opportunity to create like a hype machine.

34:40You got to do a drop. You're going to do just like have a we're going to do a limited drop of adult, you know, maybe just do two sizes of adults, too, or something, you know, two men's sizes, two women's sizes. And for now, and you just try them out. Because, you know, performance were really kind of exploded in the last 20 years. Lululemon really was one of the first pioneers of this. And I think a lot of people, they love it. They appreciate performance wear, but they are looking a lot. A lot of people are starting to look for natural organic versions of this, which essentially is what we wore in the 70s and 80s.

35:17Right. It was just cotton sweats. Like all, you know, that's what athletes wore. But I think there's a there is an opportunity around that. And I really think that trying it as a limited time drop could be really cool because it's it. Because you already have, right? I mean, you're already working with manufacturers and suppliers who presumably could just make bigger sizes of this stuff. Yeah, I really like that guy, what you said about just still do two sizes, because that is another one of our points of communication. We say just two sizes, and maybe that's how we can carry that into the adults and streamline it.

35:55But the one thing I'll tell you is don't get too hung up on your communication, because that might not be what the consumer is hearing. what I'm hearing you say is that the consumer is hearing these incredible dyes. And one of the things I've always seen with founders is these, what do I call sacred cows? And the question is, for me, what are the sacred cows to the consumer? What do they really care about as it relates to your brand? Is it the eco-friendly? Is it the quality and the comfort? Is it the fact that you only do two sizes? and knowing that hierarchy from your consumer allows you to figure out what you're talking about and maybe change some things in the future because otherwise you can get stuck.

36:40Yeah, and I think that's such an important point, right? And maybe it might be worthwhile and you may be doing some of this, but it might be worthwhile to even do a limited survey. Ask people, what is it about our clothing that was interesting to you? And find out, is it the two sizes? Is it the fact that it's cotton? Is it the fact that it's natural dyes? Because I think, Michael, you're onto something here. I think you might be surprised about what you learn. Yeah, I think that's really good advice, actually, because you get stuck in your head. You're just like operating this vacuum and you make all these assumptions.

37:14And I think that's a really good idea that we should conduct a survey because I think we'd be quite surprised. Awesome. All right. Well, I really I can't wait to see. I'm going to keep checking your website out because if you make an adult size, I'm going to order one. The brand is called Earthlings United. Anna Babbage, thank you so much for calling in. Good luck. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Guy. Thank you. I want to go to Bondi Beach right now. I want to go there now. I want to be sitting on Bondi Beach and just watching the sunset. I don't know if the sunset, if it sets there.

37:49I don't know the geographic orientation. I don't know if it does. It probably does. I think it does, and I think it's pretty beautiful. Oh, it's East Coast. It's East Coast of Australia. The sun sets in the West, but maybe it doesn't in Australia because it's on the other side of the Earth. I don't know. I think she's making cool stuff. I think it's fun. Totally. Absolutely. Okay, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.

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40:55Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Michael Praseman, the founder of the online clothing retailer Everlane. All right, let's bring our next caller. Hello. Welcome to The Advice Line. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hey, Guy. Hey, Michael. I am calling from British Columbia, Canada, and my business is called Mr. Lid. We make a plastic container with an attached lid so you never lose the lid. And tell us your name. Oh, Paul Musayev. Paul Musayev. Paul, I believe we have met before. Yes, sir.

41:31I believe we met at a trade show that I went to speak at. Yes, sir. Yeah, I remember Mr. Lid. I'm so glad I got a chance to run into you, guy. Well, so tell us about Mr. Lid. So Mr. Lid is a plastic container attached lid. Never lose the lid. Nice. Solving one of the biggest frustrations people have in the storage game. You've been in my kitchen and you've seen all the empty lids that I have, the missing orphaned lids. Yes, keep going. So Mr. Lid's actually been around since 2011. I am not the original founder of Mr. Lid. I ended up buying the company just over a year ago. It's made in Wisconsin.

42:14It's a USA-made product. I bought it because I saw a need for a container company to be fun, to be trendy, to be modern. We did that. And then people started to write in saying, hey, love what you guys are doing. Love. I've been using Mr. Lid for over 10 years. In fact, I still have some of the same containers. And that's what really prompted us to develop this vision around replacing single use containers. So we're very much focused on reusability. We're focused on alternative materials. And that's kind of the purpose of the company moving forward. Where are you selling right now? MrLid.com and Amazon.

43:02Got it. Okay. And tell me a little bit about the challenges that you face. I mean, you bought this, I guess, in 2023. And it was an established brand. But are you, I mean, are you facing any challenges? Are you facing any headwinds? or so far smooth sailing? The response to the brand is good. We have a lot of work to do, but we have some early signs that our messaging is working. We're obviously going against some very big competitors in this space, some longstanding competitors, kind of timely with some of the news that came out yesterday. You're talking about Tupperware, right? Because Tupperware just declared bankruptcy.

43:41Correct. And if I could say, I actually sat on Mr. Lid for a while before I purchased it. One of the reasons I bought Mr. Lid was reading Tupperware's earnings report from early April. Despite some of the issues, they had claimed in their report that they were having a hard time connecting with the younger audience. Yes. And that set off a light bulb. I said, you know what? Well, first things first, you got to understand your audience. So we went out there and I polled and I asked questions and I wanted to know what did a younger audience want from a container. And that I thought I thought Mr.

44:18Lidd had some of those attributes. Paul, I'm looking at your website, and I see your bio and it says a longtime tech entrepreneur. How did you go from tech to to getting this plastic container company? So that's right. I was an entrepreneur at the age of 16. I was very, very much engulfed in tech. I loved, you know, I was friends with my janitors at school because I was tinkering in the computer lab. So I found a passion very early on. I kind of grew up in the VC era, thought I should be able to invest in companies. And I tried and I failed and I'd consult. And then I tried again and I failed and I'd consult.

45:00And I went through this cycle of trying to get, you know, one startup off the ground at a time. And I just remember the last one that we were involved in, And I said to myself, I said, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I want to find boring, profitable companies where I can add my flair, my personality, my ideas into and grow. So when I had the chance meeting of meeting the owners of Mr. Lid, when I heard container with a lid attached, I just said, oh my gosh, this is so simple. I can understand this. Everyone can understand this. There wasn't a six month sales cycle. You know, there wasn't, it was just, oh, container with a lid attached.

45:43It just made so much sense. Yeah, I love that story. It's like, why don't more people just buy laundromats or car washes? You know, like these businesses that just have this recurring cash flow. Anyway, that's a different conversation. Paul, tell us what your question is for us. Well, so I mentioned, baked into our vision statement is this idea of replacing single use containers. So how can we change consumer behavior and turn Mr. Lid into an accessory that replaces takeout containers? Interesting. Okay. That is a big challenge, right, to create a whole category or I guess to change consumer behavior, not a category.

46:27But Michael, we can go to Paul's question, but you may have questions of your own for him. So please. Well, yeah, first of all, I love the idea of buying a business. You know, it's having being somebody who helps people start them and starting them myself. It's like, why not just go out and take something that's already working a little bit and say, hey, let's let's not create something completely new. Let's build on what's out there. So congrats on that. You know, it's a big vision to say, let's create a new category like a water bottle. What's what's the use case? Can you tell us where would we take this?

47:05How would we take it? How would we use it when you think about it replacing the world of takeout containers? So the first use case we were going after is very specifically when you go out for lunch, when you get some fries with the guys and you got some leftovers. We are trying to encourage the behavior where you reach into your bag and you pull out your litty and you say instead of taking home a piece of garbage, i.e. the container that they provide you. So you asked the server, can I please put that in my Mr. Lid? So we're trying to take that on first before we take on bigger use cases. It's interesting because I would have thought about this a bit differently, which is it's so hard to change consumer behavior, you know, to get someone to take something like this and put it in their bag and carry it around and then go to the store.

47:58whereas and it took a long time for you know it started with by the way water bottles that were throwaway to then getting people to move to refillable water bottles that were for performance to then moving towards stanley's or whatever it is where people carry them all day so these things take decades to switch you know what i instantly started to think about is like how do you get these restaurants or these grocery stores to start packaging things in Mr. Lid like a tote to say, this is a reusable container. This is a Mr. Lid. It's super cool. It's super rad. And you can reuse this forever. I love it, Michael.

48:38I tried. I feel like a lot of restaurants are so they're very busy. They're focused on their food. They're focused on their experience. when a guy wants to talk to them about containers, they kind of say, okay, I'm too busy. But I do think there is a world where a restaurant would be excited by the fact that they're able to sell a reusable container. They can minimize how many of the singles that they're purchasing. They encourage customers to bring it back, possibly for a dollar off their meal, pay for the container. And one of the things we can do with the Mr. Lid is it's called IML. It's baked into the plastic graphics.

49:18So now you're putting a container in someone's house with your graphics on it, reminding them that you're a brand that cares about reusability. The optics of that are very positive. So we do, I will say, we actually had a really recent development where a school district has called us and they're ordering 3000 of our containers to hand out to young school children, elementary school children, to teach the benefits of reusability. And so when that occurs, that's in discussion right now. When that occurs, we're going to jump all over that with our press team and try to encourage other schools to follow that sort of behavior.

49:59I mean, that's what gets me excited. There's a couple of sayings, and I can't pin the one for this one. One of them is education requires tuition, and tuition is expensive. And so to get people to re-educate them on how to use this product is hard. and and that's where i like all the opportunity you have in the branding and the storytelling and creating this sort of reusable container and making it fun that i get excited about i love it i do too yeah one of the things that i keep where my brain keeps coming back to and michael you're going to deal with this in your when your little girl is uh in just a few years which is school lunches and i know and i'm looking at your website i know you've got like a bento box insert and stuff but that to me seems like a real opportunity to like really use fun pops of color and maybe even like i don't know maybe there maybe mr lid is a character maybe mr lid is like i like where you're going with that monster like a friendly monster with a you know with a lid head or something yeah you know where where it's like a there's a character here and he's mr lid and he's on the side of your bento box.

51:12I don't know. I love it. I love it. And so Michael, guy, I have three little girls, nine, seven, and seven. I've got identical twins. And I could tell you, kids are the biggest lid losers around. So making the product accessible, regardless of if it's for school-age children or adults, having that design or brand affiliation or collab, there's no reason we can't do a collab with like a famous singer or an NFL team it creates that connection to the product it's a bit of a signal and it's really key to making this something that people actually want to take out you know the reason I think it doesn't occur now is there's a bit of a stigma around it or it just doesn't look cool I think I think building on what Guy says I'm like yeah where do all these lids go Mr.

52:06Lid can tell the story of where all these lids disappear into the world and why with Mr. Lid you don't have this problem. There's just so many fun stories to tell that way. That could be a really great angle because in this world, content matters. And so I think less about, I know your initial question was how do we change consumer behavior? And I think more about exactly what Guy's saying and you're building on, which is how do you create personality and personalization that gets people really excited and connected to this product and a part of their daily life. Yeah. I think there's a real opportunity to create some low-cost content here.

52:47None of you guys have teenage boys or middle school boys, so you may not know about Skibbity Toilet, but any parent listening knows what I'm talking about. It was teenage children or elementary school. This is a very weird phenomenon that started on the internet in the last couple of years. There's a toilet. It's videos of a toilet saying Skibbity Toilet, And every kid says this is so weird, but I can see like Mr. Lid, you know, like an animated Mr. Lid kind of thing, like munching up, you know, all this garbage and plastic or I don't know, something like that. Like stop motion, Mr. Lid, because it's attached to the thing.

53:22Yeah. I love it, Guy. And we're trying to create connection two ways. We want the product to be fun, but we also want to let people know how serious we are about reusability. usability. You know, one of my favorite emails is from a young woman who told me that her family bought Mr. Lid when she was 11. She's taken him to college with her. She's 22 now. They still work. She keeps one in her car to pay for the coffee, holds her change. It still works like they did on day one. And it just, it makes me so proud that, you know, we can do something to kind of mitigate how much of that garbage is being generated by throwaway containers.

54:01I love it. I love it Paul good luck the brand is called Mr. Lid we're going to cheer you on man good luck thanks guy thanks Michael congrats thanks so much thank you so much for calling in yeah I mean do you know what I'm talking about the skippity toilet you probably don't I do actually I've seen it before but he needs skippity lid skippity lid skippity lid skippity lid so crazy one of my kids was saying it like you know about a year ago and I just didn't know it it's so weird We live in a weird time. It'll only get weirder. Michael, before I let you go, and I'm super psyched about your new brand and it's going to be awesome.

54:40But when you started this out, you know, Everlane back 15 years ago, if there was something you kind of wish you knew at the time that would have been helpful to you, what do you think that might be? I'm going to say I'm a marketer. And so when we launched Everlane, it was so much about storytelling. And even when I do things today, it's always the positioning and the storytelling. And what I'll say is that what I think is so important if you want to build an enduring brand is that when you have phenomenal product that's differentiated, that's high quality or the lowest price, whatever it is, that the product itself delights people.

55:29boy it makes marketing's job 10 times easier yeah everlane was lucky in the early days because we were at a we had such a unique marketing position in a world that wasn't as crowded as it is today and eventually we our product caught up with our marketing but that didn't happen for five or six years and once we did that's when the brand went from 50 million to 200 million in two, in three years. And so I think I go back to the product has to be amazing. And if the product's amazing, it'll go a very long way. Michael Praiseman, thanks so much. Thank you. It's always fun. It's great having you back on.

56:10By the way, if you haven't heard Michael's original How I Built This Episode, you've got to go back and check it out. You can find a link to it in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. So the strangest thing you would never expect if you were to build a brand today and you start with a t-shirt, your next product might be denim. Our next product was literally ties and bow ties. Ties and bow ties. Ties and bow ties. It just seems like a kind of a, just throwing a dart at a dartboard. Let's do bow ties. It is weird, yeah. We didn't have a lot of connections and it was, we would have to wait 6 to 12 months to be able to launch a sweatshirt.

56:50And our alternative was we had a guy that could make ties and bow ties in two months. And how did those do? We never made ties and bow ties again. Let's just put it that way. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at GuyRoz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with.

57:30And hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hibtid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtina Rablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, Elaine Coates, JC Howard, Catherine Seifer, Devin Schwartz, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.

58:23If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.