Primary: Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard

26:34And I definitely was crying. Christina, you were ready to go. You were itching to try something new. But your mom had raised you to never be dependent on anyone to – I mean were you in a position? where, you know, if this didn't work out, you'd be fine? I was by that point, and I was grateful for that. And I do think that I felt like I had earned it. I had finally reached a point in my life where I could take risks like this. And why not? And there was a lot to believe in. There was an idea to believe in. There was a partnership to believe in. We had done enough thinking to really believe that there was a business model behind this.

27:12And I remember thinking to myself, we have every reason to believe this could be a huge success. But if it isn't, I know it's going to be an amazing experience. When we come back in just a moment, how Galen and Christina's idea went from a business plan to a hugely successful launch. And how a few months later, it almost fell apart because of a critical mistake. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

27:42If you've been listening to the show these last couple of episodes, you've probably heard me mention the Airbnb original experience that I'm hosting. And I'm so excited to have a chance to connect with listeners in a completely new way. It's called the Reinvention Lab, and it's designed to help you think about how to unlock your next big move in your career or even in your life. I'll help you discover your own story in ways I do on this show with my guests. And attendees will get a chance to take a deeper dive with me on so many lessons I've learned from this show. Lessons that have transformed how I work and think about the future.

28:21All proceeds from the event will go to support the Ronald McDonald houses that helps families stay near their children who are being treated at nearby hospitals. It's going to be really fun and I can't wait to meet you. So come join me in San Francisco and take your idea to the next level. To grab your spot, visit Airbnb.com slash Guy. It's going to be great. This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo, the only CRM built for B2C and the key to making Black Friday and Cyber Monday your biggest wins yet. When the holidays hit, your competition only gets louder. That's why the most successful brands use Klaviyo to cut through the noise and build personalized relationships that drive more revenue.

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30:36Get to know your glucose and learn about how to build healthy habits that work for you with Lingo, designed for you by Abbott. Through November 30th, use code GUI10 on HelloLingo.com to get 10 % off a Lingo plan purchase, one use per customer. This offer cannot be combined with other offers, U.S., Puerto Rico, and U.K. only. The Lingo glucose system is for users 18 years and older, not on insulin. It is not intended for diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes. Individual responses may vary. my name is nazar i'm from washington dc and hands down my favorite episode of how i built this was with tristan walker of walker and company i can't tell you how many times i've listened to this episode whether it be for a pick-me-up or a bit of inspiration tristan's words and his faith just always seem to do the trick for me and i'm now on a similar path as a young black entrepreneur one that was undoubtedly influenced by something tristan had said that episode which is that you should do the thing that you're uniquely positioned to do.

31:39If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why. A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at hibt at id.wondery.com and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now, back to the show.

32:11Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014, and Christina and Galen have just quit their jobs. They're determined to start a direct-to-consumer kids' clothing brand, and the idea is to sell just the essentials in solid colors at an affordable price. And of course, the first order of business is to write up a business plan. I think we actually said to each other, like, let's just take a week to get our hair cut, to maybe go to the dentist, to catch up with the kids, and then we'll start. So we had a little one-week catch-up, and then we felt like we needed to just immediately start working on the business plan.

32:53And so we found a space that we were really excited to work from. WeWork had just started around then and we sort of looked at it, but it felt expensive. And so we actually both joined the Reebok Sports Club on the Upper West Side in New York and worked from there for like more, maybe six months or more. We met every morning like in workout clothes with sort of like the loose intent to maybe exercise that day. We very rarely did, but they had great Wi-Fi and they had a cafe with delicious food. And so that's where we pulled our business plan together from the Reebok Sports Club. Just working out and then having coffee.

33:32Not working out. Not working out. Not working out. OK. All right. Nothing. No judgment. Not judging you. And the idea, Christina, from the beginning was to raise money, was to find investors and to see if you can start that way. It was. I think we knew that we would need a significant amount of seed money in order to build a website and hire a small team. I think, Galen, at the time that we launched, were we six people? I think we were six. Yeah. And so how much did you guys think you needed to raise? Our target was$750 ,000 to basically get us to the point where we were ready to launch. So our first inventory by obviously some product development along the way.

34:15And then mostly otherwise it was people who could help us build a website, could help us think through sort of the creative and what does the brand look like, and also sort of start to get clothing designed and made. So let's start with just the fundraising because I want to break it down how you really got off the ground. I have to imagine two Harvard MBAs, deep experience in retail, in startups, in consumer and direct to consumer. This was like a no brainer. Like you guys walk in and you could raise the money pretty easily. I wish that was true.

34:54Yeah. I mean, I think we going into it, Guy, if we're being honest, probably thought kind of like you described. I mean, you knew Mark Lurie. He was probably going to introduce you to a bunch of people. I mean, your resume is alone. No brainer, right? Yes. And he definitely did. He and Vinny were so helpful with introductions. Yeah. But I think we like just grossly underestimated how hard it would be. And also how being honest, like how much we didn't love it. I think communicating our vision when it was so crystal clear to us, we could like see it perfectly, like communicating that to someone who, you know, had less experience in the apparel category, maybe didn't shop for their kids clothes was hard.

35:40Yeah. And I think also it just felt like salesy to us. Like we have this idea and we often would walk into a pitch knowing that we needed to be like, and this is the most amazing idea you've ever heard. And instead authentic to us, we were sort of like, yeah, well, we have this, you know, we have an idea for a clothing brand that we think is going to be pretty great. So it just wasn't it wasn't awesome out of the gate. Were there were there, I mean, you know, in some of these meetings, investors, were there any investors are like, look, you've got to put a logo on there. You know, you've got to have a big P or something that – and were you guys, if you heard that, were you just like, no, the whole point of this is to not have a logo or to be sort of brand name focused?

36:24Yes, this is maybe one of our favorite stories. And it happened in the Reebok Sports Club in one of their tiny phone booths that we had to fight people for every day. But an investor, definitely early investor call, suggested exactly what you said, that the clothing needed to be recognizable on the playground. How could it ever work if it wasn't? But rather than suggesting a logo, actually suggested that we put huge expletive zippers on everything, like as an example. You just said expletive. They didn't want the zippers to have expletives. No, but like huge effing zipper was like the recommendation.

37:01Big zippers, like a giant zipper on like the hoodie. Yes, that was the recommendation. It's not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. I think I can see, I can see like a big fat zipper, like a three inch zipper. That's kind of cool. That was a suggestion. Well, that can be yours. That's a free idea for you guys. I'm starting my new zipper apparel line. Not today. Big zipper. Bigzipper.com. But so, you know, but I understand the thinking behind it, right? I mean, somebody is saying, can it be replicated? Can you actually protect your brand or product? But you can understand the skepticism from some people initially when they're like, wait, it's just a basic shirt.

37:45Exactly. And that for us, it was like, yes, exactly. It's just a basic shirt. And it's so hard to find. So I think that was part of it, too, was that we kind of knew from shopping this category so much and from all of our friends who were doing the same, that although it seems like it's everywhere and so easy to do, it just wasn't. And also, I think as we learned and got into it, by focusing on it, we could actually do it really well in a way that was sort of profitable and, you know, a solid business and the basis of an amazing customer relationship where, yes, a bunch of other companies could and do sell a basic white T-shirt sort of in the corner of their store.

38:23But it's an afterthought. And so the experience around it and sort of the benefit of it is just very different for those brands. And here, the other question is, I mean, the kids market is, it's an interesting market because, of course, unlike adult apparel, kids have to, you know, they grow out of stuff. They got to buy a bunch of stuff. But I also wonder whether it's a more fickle market in some ways that like kids like one toy and then it's hot for a month and then that's it. They like nobody's talking about it anymore. You know, fidget spinners. Who's doing fidget spinners, right? Is there that kind of ephemeral quality to kids' clothing?

39:04I think I would say that one end of the spectrum, sure, there's a lot of fun in shopping for trendy, fashion-driven clothing and trying new things all the time. But at the other end of the spectrum, you do want some go-tos, some things you can count on. And one thing that we've really learned even more so over time about kids is that comfort really matters. And so when they find a legging that feels just right, you know, or a sweatshirt that is super comfortable, they want to be able to get it again. And at all of our competitors, everything was changing, even those basics, every single season so that the next time around it was made from a slightly different fabric or it had a different fit or now it had a ruffle on it.

39:44And so for those go-tos, they just didn't exist in the same way everywhere else. And there is definitely a need for those for kids and for parents so that you're not reinventing the wheel every time. Do you just want a shirt without Bart Simpson on it? Please. Please. Or mommy's little slugger. That was our favorite slogan. Or, I mean, admittedly, I bought one of my kids were little. I bought them like punk band shirts just because I thought it was funny. Sure. You know, the Ramones. Do as much as you can before they can speak. Yeah. Yeah. I just throw that on them. So. All right. Right. So you have this, you've got the pitch and you also wanted in your pitch to offer the clothing for under 25 bucks.

40:29That was the idea. Everything was under 25 bucks. That was the idea. Yes. My God, these investors must have been like, wait, so you want to no brand and under 25 bucks and you want my money? In hindsight, it does sound funny. It's a tough proposition to get behind. But yeah, we wanted the clothing to just be clearly accessible. I think we wanted to make incredibly high quality fabric, durable, soft, all those things. But we wanted people to be able to buy these as sort of like easy, no-brainer go-tos. Not the cheapest in the market, but also not expensive. Got it. OK. So the idea was you wanted to raise$750 ,000.

41:10I think you actually raised more than$2 million. We did. We did manage to find people who weren't skeptical. We did. We found some people. We followed all the breadcrumbs. I think we've said we had probably more than 50 meetings. Ended up with two sort of lead venture investors as well as like a bunch of friends and family who were sort of excited about the idea and wanted to be supportive. So, yeah, we raised$2.5 million in that seed round. All right. So you get the$2.5 million. This is June of 2014, I think. And with that money, presumably, you want to create a number of different pieces of apparel.

41:49And you've got to manufacture it and you've got to design them. So with that money, what did you initially do? I mean, I'm assuming the first thing you did was hire a couple people. Yeah, we did. And I think we started – well, there were sort of two pieces of it. One were the sort of things that we had had direct experience with before, which was sort of like the building of the website and creative. of what do we want the brand to look like and the photography and things like that. And then the hardest work, I think, for us was just figuring out how to make great quality clothing, which we hadn't had any direct experience making clothing and just completely underestimated how hard that was to do when you had never done it before.

42:30And so that was the thing we spent the most time on was trying to figure out like who to partner with, what factories would make these clothes? How do we figure out what fabric to buy? That led us to just ask for help from anyone we could who had any connection to the apparel industry at all. Were either of you guys prepared to design the clothing? Did you feel confident that maybe you guys could sketch out some designs? Well, sketching, no. But I think we felt like we had a really strong point of view in terms of what we wanted the clothing to look like and we could reasonably represent it with you know combinations of things that we could shop in the market um we also had a really clear sense of what we wanted the color palette to be which um was another big differentiator so and just clear like primary color yellow greens blues reds yes all the colors so when we launched i think we had 35 styles in total.

43:27And most of them came in over 20 colors. 35 styles. So like what? T-shirts? Give me a sense of it. Yeah. So for kids, it was T-shirts, PJs, leggings, pants, sweatshirts, joggers. And then for baby too, we had baby suits and zip footie, PJs and things like that. So that was sort of the crux of the assortment. We had a little cardigan sweater. Yes, pretty basic assortment. And then I have to assume that during that time, you're trying to figure out, trying to locate a factory or factories that can make this stuff for you at reasonable costs. So how did you tell me about the process of trying to find those places?

44:07So as Galen said, we were way underestimated what it would take to figure out how to connect with factories and get the clothing made. And in the beginning, we tried to do it ourselves. We tried to get leads on specific factories and actually call someone there. And we also learned that those are often well-kept secrets. People don't want to always share that information either. In the end, we got a good reference to an agent. And I think what we concluded was that we were going to need one, an agent who would be the intermediary between us and factories that they knew well and could connect us with.

44:40In China? China and India. All right. So primary.com, you launch March 31st of 2015. 31 styles for babies, girls and boys, everything under 25 bucks, which sounds like a great deal. So how did you how did it do? I mean, obviously, there are millions and millions of websites out there. You launch and people have to discover it. So how to do initially? First of all, the first thing we did from a marketing perspective is we armed everyone we knew, friends, family, and investors, with a personalized promotion code that gave anyone that used it free shipping for a year, which was kind of a crazy offer.

45:26And that was a really effective way to just leverage everyone we knew to get the word out on day one. What do you remember about the launch, Galen? I think two things. There's one before and one after. The immediate before the launch, Christina and I went to the warehouse to see the sort of first delivery of finished product that we were about to go live with. And we were opening boxes and pulling out product and looking at everything. And I mean, part of it was just so overwhelming that we'd been thinking about this for so long and now we were actually here and here was our primary clothing. So really proud on one hand.

46:05And on the other hand, there were definitely a lot of products that we opened up and sort of looked at and were like, this doesn't look great. And so I maybe was crying a little bit also. And one thing in particular, I mean, footie, zip footies for us have become like a pretty core product. But like we opened, there were a few colorways of that zip footie and the feet had somehow been cut as like triangles. I'm not kidding. It was it looked like little dinosaur feet on these footies. And we were like, oh, God, like we can't sell these. What is happening? And so, yeah, so there were a bunch of styles that just weren't weren't right.

46:45And so so that I remember very clearly. And then like the actual launch itself, I just think like felt so exciting. My kids were staying with my mom and sent me the cutest video like go get a mom. That was awesome. And, you know, our little team, there were six of us when we launched and we'd all been in the office late that night. It was just sort of like, oh, we did it. And so it was just a huge, like, proudest moment. I think I read you sold out all your inventory in that first, you know, couple weeks. We did. We sold through things more quickly than we thought. I think also we just had an enormous miscommunication, I think part of having never done this before ourselves, on the lead times to get back in stock on things.

47:36And so in our minds, we thought that when we placed a sort of reorder that we would be able to get back into product within eight weeks. And so we were very careful. We ordered, you know, enough inventory to start to last us at least that long, plus some cushion and safety stock formulas and all the analytics. But the reality was that to place a rebuy, like we weren't going to get product for like three to four months. And so things got really scary because not only did we sell through it faster than we thought, but also to get back in stock on product was going to be like two to three months longer than we thought it was going to be.

48:17And so then all of a sudden we have huge momentum from the launch. We're so excited. Everything's sort of like working to start. And then we have no inventory for like a couple months. And that was not good. So you basically sell it out, which is great. But then you've got nothing. Right. For months. Right. Exactly. Nothing to sell and not a lot of cash runway. And we just somehow totally missed like maybe the most critical detail of all like the first two years, which was how long the lead times are to get product. And so, yeah, I don't even like know how to explain it because we just totally missed it.

48:56We definitely missed it on getting in front of those lead times. And we, I think, also assumed it would be reliable. And the reality is it just isn't always reliable. Things are late sometimes. So the result of it really was that our intended year one just didn't quite materialize because we just didn't have the inventory for it. You had this amazing launch. Yes. But then it was like flat. Then we just had to almost go on pause. And so our plans for year one kind of got pushed into year two. By the time we got to year two, we figured those things out. We were able to get the inventory that we needed.

49:31And then we could have a more meaningful launch, essentially. It was kind of a take two on the launch in some ways. And that year raising that money, I guess you guys had a took a hit when one of your investors, something happened with an investor who had committed and then I guess pulled out what happened. Yeah, even sort of with all of these headwinds, little inventory happening. We knew we needed to raise our Series A. We did a bunch of pitches again, just like we had in the seed round. We ended up connecting with an investor who was really interested. We were really excited about, had a term sheet that we had signed and were just sort of waiting for the signature back.

50:15When we got an email, that was something to the effect of, you know, hey, guys, do you have a minute to jump on the phone? Which just is never a good thing. Never good. And so we jumped on the phone and, yeah, the message was, you know, I'm so sorry, but I have another company in my portfolio that is sort of pivoting into the same space and I can't make this investment now. And so more tears. That was like one of I mean, there were a lot of moments in that first year where we were like, oh, well, like this is this is over. And so that was really hard. But I think to the credit of our existing investors from our previous round, they were able to sort of bridge us into the spring so that we could sort of go back out and raise a proper Series A.

51:09I think you ended up doing about a million dollars in year one. Not bad at all. Pretty good, but probably lower than what you were hoping. That's exactly right. And it was a big learning year for us. As far as figuring out the marketing, we definitely had some misstarts there, too. We tried some ads on Facebook that basically flopped out of the gate. What did they say? Well, they said, brilliant basics under$25. Brilliant basics under$25. Here's the ad. Simple. It was, and it was straightforward, and it was the premise. But in the context of Facebook, it just didn't break through. And then at the same time, what was really interesting was from year one, we were getting a lot of great feedback from the customers who had shopped us.

51:54And we were noticing that the things that they were saying back to us about what they loved about our clothing were better than our ads. They would say things like, no crappy princesses, I'm down. Yeah. So our next ad went out, focused on our core babysuit product and said something like, not all baby suits need to say little slugger. And it was a night and day difference. That resonated with parents. Resonated, yes. Because it said, not all baby clothing needs to say little slugger. Okay. I get it. But here's a question, right? There is obviously a huge market for that stuff. I mean, you can go into, you know, Old Navy or any store.

52:35I'm just picking that one. And a lot of baby clothes say Daddy's Princess or, you know, I'm the boss or whatever. I'm just, you know, something like that, you know. So there is a risk to putting out an ad like that, right, because you're appealing just to a specific type of parent who doesn't like those. Like, I don't like them. Is that a big enough market? So there were two interesting things about it. The first point is that when we put that ad out there, that's exactly what people started talking about. Some people liked Little Slugger and some people didn't. And they started talking about it and these ads were getting a ton of engagement.

53:10And so it broke through and it was, you know, driving discussion. And the other thing I think we would say is that brands are not built by playing it straight down the middle. And so we felt strongly about leaning into our point of view. And our point of view doesn't have to be for everyone. And we're not against, you know, other brands doing other things. But we started to be pretty clear about the fact that we were no logos, no slogans, no sequence. It was a clear position, a clear point of view. And the brand really started to be formed. And when you – I mean one of the things that I'm curious about in terms of inventory is unlike a lot of apparel brands, you could probably overestimate or order more inventory than you needed because it wasn't like your styles were changing.

54:00These were evergreen styles, right? Yes, and that was a huge benefit for us, both in terms of sort of learning about demand from early on and not having to get it exactly right, because we knew whatever we weren't going to sell in that season, we could just keep on the site because it wasn't going out of fashion. and also kind of resulted in a really great customer experience because we could lean into inventory confidently. It just meant that we were in stock at a really high rate. And so, you know, we wanted to make sure that for these busy families, we always had the black leggings or the T-shirts that they needed.

54:36And we were able to do that because of this point. So sort of year two, which is 2016, you're starting to focus more on how to market it, right? And I think one of the things that you – one of the major changes or a major change you made, I guess, in 2016 is you basically stopped having boys and girls sections. You just went to the website and it was just ages. That's right. And in retrospect, I don't know why we didn't start that way. I think we probably did just think that we had to follow conventional wisdom there and how else will people know how to shop. But we had otherwise offered this assortment that was for everyone.

55:14We just offered it across boys and girls sections. And what was interesting was that our customers sort of called us out. We got notes from customers saying, why even have boys and girls sections? And we were like, yeah, why? And so we pretty quickly did away with those and started marketing just to baby and kids and have ever since. Yeah. And I'm curious to get your take on that. I mean, you know, we're living in a time where everything is unfortunately politicized. But I mean, was there any concern that by eliminating the boys and girls categories? Because most websites, you know, have men's, women's, children.

55:52You know, I'm curious, were you worried at all about any kind of backlash around that? So we actually weren't. I think, like Christina said, it just, you know, the second we heard it, it made so much sense. It was just sort of one step further from, you know, wanting my girls to be able to buy orange jackets at the beginning. We did get some questions, though, around the functionality, which is, you know, yes, every store has boys and girls sections. So aren't you worried that your conversion is going to fall off or customers might not be able to find what they're looking for? And I think we just felt like maybe that could be true, but also we weren't worried about it because we felt like it wouldn't be that hard for people to find clothing because our categories were very straightforward and our site experience was good.

56:39good. I think the other thing, too, that I would just add on, you know, sort of showing kind of every kid in every style is just that we've learned from customers, too, how meaningful it is for their own kids to sort of see themselves in our clothing. And so boys can feel comfortable buying anything they want, and same for girls. And so it just gave us a lot of conviction to keep going. When we come back in just a moment, how Christina and Galen credit their close relationship, they've called it their superpower, as one of the keys to their success as co-CEOs. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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59:19Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So by 2018, three years after launch, Primary is growing fast. They're up to a few dozen employees and around$30 million in revenue. But how to keep growing is always in the back of Christina and Galen's minds, all while trying to stay true to their brand and its style. One of the questions I have is like, you didn't really have to spend a lot on, I'm assuming, new designs or am I wrong? because so much of your designs are intentionally there to last forever. You're not like, or like at a certain point, did you guys have a conversation where you're like, hey, you know, we should have like a fall line or a winter line.

1:00:05Like we should have, you know, maybe do these more sort of seasonal lines or something like that or collections. So many conversations. Yeah, we did. And I think it was once we started seeing this sort of loyalty and repeat customer base that was continuing to come back at a pretty predictable rate that we started to feel more comfortable and confident leaning into kind of extensions on the core of what we had launched with. It was some new categories that we felt were sort of big and that we had kind of earned a right to play in like outerwear and swim. But also, you know, we had customers, too, who loved us for the simplicity of our solid, colorful basics.

1:00:51But we're also like, I don't know, maybe you guys think you could throw in a stripe or, you know, rainbows can be colors, too. And so then, you know, we sort of thought about it and stripes felt to us sort of almost as timeless and classic as solids in some instances. And so we started with stripes. You know, our rainbow striped T-shirt was maybe one of the best-selling items we had ever sold. It's amazing. It's like a shirt I wore as a kid. Right. I know. Isn't it so fun? I have that shirt. A version of that, yeah. Yes. It's so happy. But these extensions into sort of classic stripes and, you know, a star print or something like that felt reasonable.

1:01:30And so those were the things that we started to introduce more seasonally, but like 10 % layers on to the core of the business, which was much more year-round. I mean, I'm curious about this idea of evergreen, really, because, I mean, what we think of as basics today, I think really we're thinking of like 80s clothing that really kind of blew up in the 80s. But how do you actually make something that is evergreen? Are the things that you guys make identical to basics from the 80s or are there updates that make them look like they're of our time now? I think it's a combination and I think it depends on the style.

1:02:11So when we started, our concept of evergreen was that if we were going to launch something, we needed to believe that we could sell it for at least five years. And so for us, I think it had to be evergreen forever and ever, but like five-year horizon. So it wasn't super trendy, but at the same time, we're shopping the market all the time and making sure that there isn't anything we're offering that is suddenly outdated that we just need to take another look at. To me, the concept of evergreen clothing is actually kind of genius because fashion changes so much. Even things like when I was a teenager, it was all baggy clothes.

1:02:51A lot of baggy and then it went skinny. And then I'm looking at my nephews and they're baggy again. And my son's baggy. He doesn't wear skinny. I'm still wearing skinny jeans like a weirdo. Like I'm a middle-aged man and I'm like, what happened? I'm like looking around. I'm like, I didn't get the memo. So, I mean, how do you adapt to those kinds of things? Yeah, I think I would say that we just continue to remind ourselves how enormous this market is and how many other people are doing those things. And so it takes the pressure off a little bit. A lot of people don't want the sort of like newest, latest trend and are just looking for the things that we were looking for when we started the company, which is solid, reliable, great quality, beautiful colored, you know, sort of gender neutral clothes that they can count on and come back to year after year as their kids grow.

1:03:48So because so many competitors aren't focused on that at all, we feel like there's just an enormous market still left for us, even if we don't do a lot of the trend. So it helps to take the temptation away a little bit. Tell me about your relationship as co-founders. I mean, Christina, you hired Gay Lynn, and I think both of you guys are co-CEOs, if I'm not mistaken. Is that right? We are. So how do you divide and conquer? I mean, how do you do you just sort of focus on areas that you're each of you are separately more interested in? So we have one main way that we divide and conquer that has evolved over time.

1:04:29And that is that Galen focuses more on everything to do with the clothing itself, from design and sourcing to merchandising and planning. And I focus more on the marketing and creative side. Beyond that, I do think we probably just, in different situations, play to our strengths or things we feel strongly about. And so we work together on all important decisions, but in lots of areas of the company, from operations to our customer care team to, you know, our financial planning. And we just both get involved and sort of divide and conquer as we go. Yeah, it was funny from the beginning because I think what we did see in the market was even co-founders that were much more complementary in terms of their backgrounds than Christina and I, who, as we've said, are basically the same person on paper.

1:05:20But I think we have worked together now for so long. So starting in 2010, so coming up on 14 years together, we know each other really well and we trust each other so much and I think just respect each other. it makes it easier to work together because of those things. And so even in the divide and conquer, it's so helpful to know each other so well because we can use judgment on things where I know when I hear something, whether I can just go ahead and make the decision and Christine is probably going to be fine with it. And we have gotten really efficient at knowing when to just like make a decision and go on our own versus bring it to the other person.

1:06:01In an instance where we don't totally agree. We're both very happy to sort of let the other person, whoever feels strongly, be the decider. How do you, I mean, I think just this year, 2023, the year we're talking, will hit profitability, which is awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. But that's still stressful. And stress can test any relationship. How have you guys withstood the stress of, the ups and downs of the business. I mean, have there been times where you've had arguments or there's been tension between you? I think the first point we would make is that in those times of stress, it helps to not be alone, to not feel alone.

1:06:44And so having each other usually alleviates a lot of that stress and we can work through it together. But do we have times of stress and tension? Sure. I think the rule between us that's been really important is that we never let that go on and fester. So if we start to feel like some sense of tension or someone's, you know, getting annoyed, maybe we're just stressed that day, we'd make a point to talk about it right away. Yeah, I agree. And actually, as an only child, like Christina has said that she feels like she sort of like taught me how to have a sister where you can have arguments and disagreements.

1:07:21And it doesn't mean that things are totally broken or not going to work. It's just like part of how relationships are. And so I've definitely evolved. There's so many things that you guys have done that have been counterintuitive, right? Like eliminating the boys and girls section or, you know, trying to build a company around primary basic clothing with primary colors, evergreen clothing. And those two things have worked. There's a third thing you did. You instituted a four-day work week. You're like France. You're like Sweden. I mean, I love that. I think it's awesome. I want to work one day a week, actually.

1:08:03One day work week and six days of just, you know, hiking and hanging out with your kids, hanging out with my wife. But tell me why you did that. Because I can hear a lot of leaders hearing this and thinking, OK, how does that work? So what was the – tell me the idea behind it. So the original idea actually was from a podcast. And you heard somebody talking about that we heard. So it was young me moon who is a professor at Harvard Business School. She was talking about the four day work week and how she herself was sort of disappointed that it hadn't become more of a thing in the U.S. And her sort of premise was that as a culture and a society, like the hallmark of advancement is more free time for people.

1:08:48But she hadn't seen that happening and just couldn't understand why. And so then COVID happened. And so I had this four-day workweek in the back of my mind. And in those moments, it felt sort of even more relevant. And so we just started with a little bit of an experiment that was just like we gave everyone Friday off, like maybe just starting as one Friday off, like a surprise sort of like everyone takes a day off tomorrow. And everyone was so appreciative. I think we all felt so much better coming back to work on Monday morning that we then sort of instituted that for like a month. And then we did it for the whole summer.

1:09:27And then, you know, we felt like we weren't really missing a beat work wise. It's always hard to know what the pro forma would have been like, but could you have grown faster? Could you have done more things working five days a week? The honest answer is who knows. But I think we just ourselves felt the personal benefit so much. The team was so appreciative and loved it so much that we decided to sort of keep it permanent. And the way we do it and describe it is not that no one's ever working on Friday. it's more meant to be sort of a catch-up day where we don't have meetings. And so it's just an extra day for people to recharge in sort of whatever way that means for them.

1:10:09I love this idea of a four-day workweek. I think it's awesome, right? But on the other hand, I can see the argument that a four-day workweek just limits productivity, that actually, and I don't know, I don't have the data on this. Maybe I'm totally wrong. Is, you know, Are you seeing changes in productivity? I think we would argue that it has benefited productivity as well as employee loyalty, which both have very tangible benefits for the company. And so, again, to be clear, when we went from five days to four days, it wasn't like we were strictly saying you will now work 32 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week.

1:10:48The idea was to offer people very meaningful flexibility by having no meeting Fridays. and allowing them to recharge and take care of personal things on that day and otherwise get their work done. And what we're finding is that people are getting their work done. They're meeting ambitious goals. We are having a great year this year, for example, growing and will be profitable. And we're doing that with a very productive team that is also very loyal. Most of our team has been here over four years. So in a sense, I mean, it is like another way to retain. We know this. Like when you lose an employee, it's a pain.

1:11:28It's expensive. Because it's expensive. You've got to retrain somebody new. It takes six to nine months to get them up to speed. Employee turnover is not ideal for companies. This is a way to keep people, to incentivize people to stay, I guess. Definitely. And you know, you often send surveys out to your team about various things. And it can be hard to get them to do them. You have to remind them. When we sent out the survey about the four-day workweek, I have never seen anyone respond faster. We got responses from the entire team within about eight minutes. And I think that they were maybe terrified that we were considering doing away with it and just wanted to make sure we knew how much they loved it.

1:12:06And, yeah, in all of our actual surveys about employee satisfaction, I think the two things that our team cites the most are our mission and the four-day workweek. I saw a story recently about how Columbia, I think it's Columbia Sportswear, they're shifting their manufacturing out of Asia to Central America because of COVID. Sort of that experience taught them that like this is, you know, you can't really bridge the Pacific as much as they thought they could. And it's interesting, they're opening all of these factories and Mexico apparently is really benefiting from this. A lot of factories opening in Mexico, in Guatemala, Central America, in Peru.

1:12:41Is there a world where you would look to this landmass here in North South America to bring more of your manufacturing there just in case there was a disruption? I think potentially. We have looked at it a little bit so far and sort of where we've netted out, at least to date, is that because those regions just have sort of less access to cotton, it is a little bit harder on both the development front, but also the sort of transport of the fabric, which you would need to potentially import into those countries before you make it. And so it adds a little bit of complexity. With that said, though, we're still curious about it.

1:13:26It's hard not to be when, you know, the lead times of getting something from Guatemala are three days on the water versus three weeks. And so it's definitely sort of on the radar. But for now, I think we're sort of firmly in Vietnam and India with still a little bit of production in China. Tell me a little bit about the endgame here. I mean, you know, whenever you go to investors, obviously, you know, they're giving you that kind of a timeline and they want a return eventually. And usually that means selling or going public. What are you thinking, Galen? I mean, you know, you know, that's the trajectory.

1:14:04So it has to be in the back of your mind what what's going to happen or where it's going to go. It's definitely in the back of our minds. I think I would say from the beginning, even though we did raise venture capital money and we sort of understood what came with that. Yeah, I think you've raised about$60 million over the course of eight years, right? Yes, exactly. we started this brand because we wanted to be the next gap and not because you know we thought that there could be like a quick exit or you know some sort of like quick cash and then we're on to the next idea and so we've always had probably a longer term mindset than maybe a lot of our investors but I think the other thing is that like the investors that we have they believe in us and They believe in our vision and they actually, hugely to their credit, haven't been antsy for an exit because I think we all see the possibility here.

1:15:04And now that we've hit profitability, you know, sort of feel even more so that we're really on to something. I think at the same time, we feel excited about getting to where we think we can go faster, which doesn't necessarily have to mean raising more money. But the idea of having a partner at some point in the future who maybe has some deeper pockets than we do and who also has had experience in additional distribution channels or physical retail or international or, you know, sort of other growth areas that Christina and I and our team haven't had direct experience with would be great. And so those are things I think that we will be exploring over the next couple of years just in terms of sort of next steps.

1:15:54So tell me about where you see this brand in. I mean, you mentioned Gap. You know, Gap started in the late 60s and, you know, it was a different time. And Gap is Gap. I mean, it has problems, but it's obviously an iconic American brand. You're now in year eight. So take me to year 15. Where do you see primary? What do you want it to be? I think when we look at the big players out there that have been around for a really long time, we think we can be a half billion to billion dollar brand just like they are. I think the question is how to get there. The fact that depending on how you approach it, it could take a really long time or it could happen a little faster.

1:16:36Right now, in our quest to get to profitability, which is happening this year, the truth is we're in a mode that we sometimes refer to as steady Eddie. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Right. Which is, I mean, especially in this market and even otherwise, right? You want to be able to, you want to be in control of your own destiny and that's the way to do it. We've built something we believe in so much. The last thing we want to do is blow it up for no reason. We don't need to add undue risk to this business. And at the same time, we don't want it to take 30 years. And so it's honestly something we're still navigating.

1:17:09And whether we end up having an opportunity to do that with a partner or with further investment could very well be part of it. So when you think about the journey you guys took and how you met and where you are today and you've got a pretty awesome brand that you've built and a company that's growing, how much of this place you're at now do you attribute to luck and how much do you think has to do with just the hard work you put in and your decisions and skills? Definitely a combination. I think examples for us of what has felt really lucky are, I mean, first of all, just meeting the right partner.

1:17:49A lot of people would like an amazing partner, but they're like, how do I find one? And, you know, sometimes when you want to find one, you can't just go find one. And I think those moments that hit you, that make you, that are just the spark of an idea, I mean, those are just lucky moments. The fact that Galen's girls couldn't find the orange jackets, as annoying as that was at the time, was the spark of an idea that I don't know if we would have come to otherwise. And at the same time, I think we would certainly say, in e-commerce in particular, if anyone thinks it's glamorous, it just isn't.

1:18:24And to be successful in e-commerce, I mean, it is just a lot of grinding it out, a lot of blocking and tackling. How many more cliches can I use? It just is. And so I think that there's no way that an enormous amount of hard work isn't necessary to be successful in this industry. I think we've just learned, too, how important timing is to whether something can work or not. And so I think probably on balance, I lean a little more luck as the answer. And I think, too, so many founders and companies have like worked so hard and had a good idea and been really smart about it, but it just didn't quite work.

1:19:15And so I think, yeah, there's a little bit of like we've been lucky on the timing and some of the decisions that we happen to get right. Because I think the difference between like a company that makes it and a company doesn't often comes down to something like really small. So feel very lucky to be where we are. That's Galen Bernard and Christina Carbonell. They're the co-founders and co-CEOs of Primary. By the way, of all the different colors they sell, they say one of the most consistently top-selling for both babies and kids is black. Apparently, it's pretty hard to find black in children's clothing.

1:19:58Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Erablui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce with research help from Chris Messini. Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Josh Newell. Our production staff also includes Neva Grant, J.C. Howard, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Sam Paulson, Carla Estevez, Catherine Seifer, and Malia Agudelo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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