My Favourite Failure: How Knockoffs Killed the Leisure Suit Revolution - Jerry Rosengarten

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0:35Personio constantly adds new features like this to make your life easier and your company more successful. You can get set up with them incredibly quickly, which is great if you're time poor. So, if you're leading a growing business and want to offer a better employee experience for less effort, then book a demo at personio.com forward slash secret leaders. That's personio.com forward slash secret leaders. There's a link in the show notes. It was just seconds. I mean, there was no thinking process. She just said that. And then all of a sudden it's in the papers and so forth. Then Johnny Carson's wearing it on The Tonight Show and things like that.

1:18Jerry Rosengarten is the kind of guy I'd like to sit on a porch with, in a rocking chair, drinking bourbon. He's developed businesses in a lot of industries, but he sees himself more as a designer than an entrepreneur. He once built a film and music studio where Beyoncé filmed her infamous Pepsi commercial for the Super Bowl. It took a year to build, and on one day, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the whole site. But that's not the failure we're here to chat about. We're going to hear about the most in-demand clothing invention you've never heard of.

1:55Jerry doesn't mind a grind. He's worked since he was 13 and got into the textile industry to make something of himself. But I ended up making this garment. And I was showing it to buyers, an in-war woman who was the fashion editor of Men's Wear Daily, which was the major newspaper for the men's wear industry. And she looked at it and said, that'll sell. And I'm going to call it the leisure suit. She's a writer, right? So the next thing that happens is the leisure suit is now a name. This editor had just stumbled on Jerry and his new invention. After she wrote about it and coined the leisure suit, the venture popped off.

2:39So then we went into production. And within a matter of six months, I think, we're in production. And the demand was outrageous. And people were knocking it off in ways that were wrong, like with regular fabrics. They were dying a bad death, and this thing was in that much demand. And there was a limited supply of the fabric at the time. People didn't even know how to sew the fabric at the time. So it built up a demand, I guess, viscerally in the newspapers and stuff like that. And then eventually Johnny Carson wore it on the show. The fact that he wore it is inconsequential to the fact that it was what it was.

3:18Of course, it had already taken off before that. This crazy fabric was a double-knit polyester. The wonderful uniqueness of it was that the fabric had a strength and stability to basically form over your shoulder, and it didn't need a pad to hold it up. right? So in essence, it was a very casual feeling. Jerry thought he was looking at a home run with the leisure suit. But after several years pushing the business uphill, it came apart at the seams and he had to lay off all of his employees. Most had been with him for over six years and had become good friends. He felt like he'd failed them. Where did it all go wrong?

4:01The product got bastardized by knockoffs. Then you get very technical because the development of the product was really expanding into the point that everyone would be wearing that product today because the technology was going in like it was an 18 gauge and they were making a 24 gauge and it was like making silk fabric or feeling like silk. All this stuff was going on but the industry got killed. The knockoffs became a joke, and there was no more business. To understand why this is so catastrophic, you need to understand the fabric. A fabric is 100 % textured polyester, or it's 100 % polyester textured.

4:48Did I just say the same thing twice? But the answer is I didn't. I said just the reverse. So textured polyester is a set yarn. The polyester itself is a set yarn and it's a filament straight on through. The other version is, how should I say, it's like a cotton yarn wrapped with polyester. So it's two separate types of yarns, okay? It's less expensive, of course the most expensive at that time was polyester. It was less expensive and it was less durable. So before when I said to you that the garment hung straight and hung well and so forth and so on. That's true. But when you use it with the other yarn, it starts to pill, grow, all sorts of problems happen with it.

5:37And the public, it was just cheaper manufacturers, cheaper garments that were out there and that killed it. Jerry has worn many hats in his career. So what are his biggest lessons for building a business? There are two most important things in business. One is to be able to pivot. No matter what road you're on, things come up and you have to pivot. Otherwise it throws you off the road. So that's number one. Number two is a drizzler. No one knows what a drizzler is except me. I'm the one who coined the word. But the drizzler was made by a manufacturer called London Fog who made a raincoat. And he also made this short little jacket, right?

6:23But the short little jacket, there was not a day he didn't make that jacket. That short little jacket was a drizzler. And that short little jacket was what paid the rent, paid the overhead. Everyone needs a drizzler, even if a drizzler is a job. You can take risks. It certainly is, you can take risks, but you should always still have that fallback of a drizzler. That was Gerry Rosengarten, who thinks being a good entrepreneur is being a good pivoter. Thanks for listening to this episode. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter.

7:05If you enjoyed this episode and found it useful, please write us a review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. It makes a real difference and we genuinely love reading what you think. We read every single review. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Serta, and we'll be back next week with more lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders. See you next time.