James Perse

29:51Yeah. And so they wouldn't have any way in knowing that. No, there's no way. So I'd approve myself. Yeah. And the best thing is then Southwest Airlines had two for one deals to Vegas. And we would stay up around the clock, printing t -shirts, printing t -shirts, printing t -shirts. We were printing them in -house. I had my, I was running my own operation. I was buying even bigger, more, more printers, more printers. And we would put them in these boxes, throw them on Southwest. I have a bunch of friends go with me. We would get them. We would just get a room. We'd finish tagging them all in the room.

30:26Put them, you know, one of those, the cart that you put all your luggage on. And we'd pile up all the boxes. We'd roll it down and deliver it to the store. And then we'd hang out in Vegas for the weekend and sort of celebrate. So we made the delivery. Such a great story. It's an amazing story. It was fun. You know, at the end of the day, it was passion. And I was so driven. And all of this, it just started to come organically. And I remember when I was saying to my father and my mother and saying, like, I don't want to go to school anymore. Like this is crazy. I mean, it goes, this is before the hard rock.

31:04But, you know, I was paying my own bills. And they're like, you know, but you sure and I just said, listen, when my friends come out of college, I need this head start. I don't want to be a kid who comes out of school and is sort of like, now what, what am I going to do? And then I discovered. And what are the opportunities? And I said, I'm on a roll. It's calling me. So then what started to happen is that grew from hard rock and it grew into, you know, I think one time I was doing planet Hollywood and I was doing hard rock. And I was doing big things with the movie studios and, you know, like Jurassic Park and they'd order 50 ,000 hats.

31:42And like, you know, I was turning into this whole business. But what I started to realize is I'm not in control of my own destiny because a lot of them started taking things that I was creating and then just getting it made cheaper, cheaper and then just cutting the out of the deal. They might not have cared about the quality like you didn't care about the quality. So they were then started going into the cheaper out, but they were my ideas, my designs. And, you know, so that's when I started to say, I got to, I've got to get more and more. I got to be in control of this. I got to be in my own destiny here.

32:17Like, like this something's not going right here. And, and so then I knew how to manufacture the point. You had to create things. I knew how to, you know, so I had gotten some, got it under my belt a little bit. And so I ended up creating this whole little capsule off to the right of a bunch of different t -shirt ideas. And so I found some local showroom and they started putting it in, you know, Fred Seagull and all these little boutiques. They just started placing it in all these little boutiques. And it just started to take off. But what were you making at that point? So, so at that point, it was ironically, it started with women's.

33:06But also the women's t -shirt was the first one that really blew up at the hard rock. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. So back then, the men's business was a sleepy business. And the women's business was just on fire. And so that's what Seagull got planted right away with women's t -shirts and a little more fashionable t -shirts. And, and next thing I know a business is born. Like it just, it just happened. But those t -shirts were blank t -shirts. They were, they were, they were solid t, well, there was a lot of different style t -shirts. But they were like, think of them a little bit more like they were.

33:48They were not the basics. I hadn't gotten to the basics yet. They were a little more like a blouse. Like, like, like, like when I say a blouse, like, meaning all kinds of different necklines, boat necks and scoop necks and deep v -necks. And like, so there was just tons of different necklines, but not the casualty as it is today. It was a little bit more like women's fashion sensibility converting into jerseys. So not the basics. It wasn't a brand shirt. No love. It was a plain shirt. Completely. The gene business was exploding. The contemporary gene business was exploding. And then they remember which were the brands that were hot in jeans at that time.

34:34So what started with Earl Jean, I don't know if you remember, Earl Jean. So it was a great gene jacket I remember. Yeah. So Earl Jean was one of the really early ones. And so they were in our showroom also. So our sales team, they basically said, I'm going to put this t -shirt with these jeans. And I'm going to sell this to everybody. And so we were just literally, that was the formula. Every account was buying an Earl Jean and it James first, you know, t -shirts. How do you decide to call it your name? You know, that's one of my borderline biggest regrets that I would say to this day. It actually started as JP Classics.

35:15That was the very first label. It was called JP Classics. It was almost because it was JP Classics. Did everyone started referring to my name or something like that, like in the showroom or whatever it is. And then I almost feel like someone made a suggestion of like, it'll seem more designer -like. But honestly, if I went back in time, I absolutely would have not associated my name. I mean, well, I shouldn't say that. Because your name is on it, you feel a responsibility. It's true. Be a perfectionist. To care that much. Because I take everything that goes on in the company, everything that goes on in the store, every single product, it's personal.

36:03It's personal. And it sort of points back to me. So in a way, I'd say it kicked my butt to maintain the integrity. And to always have a personal connection to it. So I probably shouldn't say because maybe if it was a name or a brand, maybe I wouldn't have cared as much. It's funny because I was literally joking. I think what I say yesterday is like, you get tired of yourself. People are saying your name all day long at work. And on one note, there's a complete separation between the person and the brand. But somehow it morphed into that. And in general, I'm a really super private person. I know that's why I asked.

36:55No, it's funny. Yeah, but the funny thing is nobody knows who I am. So in a weird way, I'm completely remain like, I get to live my life. I still live private life. I mean, the reality is they probably should have been a little more vocal and a little more, you know, let people understand the essence of where this is coming from. But I felt like what I was building and the environments, the spaces, the experience and people were reinterpreting it back to me exactly the way I'd hoped it to become. So I wanted to do it my way. And my way was mixing the world that I grew up in in sunny California with this down to earth sort of doesn't matter who's who, what's what, you know, as I grew up as a kid, there was a lot of, you know, some kids' parents were big, you know, entertainment moguls and some kids' parents, you know, it was every walk of life.

37:59And it didn't matter. It just was about friends and a bond and a being happy kids. And I wanted that, especially like when I went to boarding school, you know, the first thing I had everyone's mouth is do you surf, you know, you're from California. And it realized there's such a culture and an identity of what California represented, but I wanted to elevate it. I wanted to put a little more sophistication and taste into the products that were coming out of California that really stemmed from the umbrella of what I was educated under with my father. And so I started mixing that sort of sensibility and blending it with the spirit of, you know, who I am and how I grew up.

38:55And when you put them together, that's what the brand became. And it didn't exist. It wasn't out there. And there's lots of elements. You're taking lots of pieces from, you know, where you grew up, but you're reinterpreting. And you're reimagining and you're setting a new standard and you're setting a new path. And piece by piece, you know, as we were talking about the evolution of, you know, it was merchandising. And then, you know, when I did start to do my own brand and I started to go to these trade shows, I would watch what other brands like Calvin Klein and Massimo and the storytelling that they were putting together.

39:41And I was like, I want to do this. This is what I want to do. And I also grew up in a umbrella under Chrome Hearts. You know, it started right under my nose, you know, at zero, you know, in Maxwell. And I started to make some Chrome Hearts hats at one point. And I'd go hang out, you know, Richard had his first office. And I'd go deliver the boxes. And then I'd go hang out with him. And when he left that office, that became my first office. So there was like this special connection to, you know, what was kind of the world that I grew up in. And Richard used to, you know, he had all these carpenters.

40:23And, you know, he had this insane, like he just started building this incredible infrastructure. And he had a wood shop. And they were, you know, and he was building furniture. And he was building out all his cabinets. And he was doing his jewelry. And then he was doing his clothing. And he was, you know, and so, you know, he'd have his guys build me build out my office and like build out, you know, the deaths. And, you know, we still funny enough. The, the deaths that he built for me close to 30 years ago is still sitting in my warehouse. Now, and they still actually work at the desk in the warehouse.

41:03It's the, it's literally the same death. So cool. And, but Richard was a huge inspiration to me because when they built their first store and they started to put all the pieces together in the environment. My father and Richard did this together. And I got another taste of this is what I want to do. This is the retail side. This is the retail. This is I want an environment. I want to build a thing. I want to tell this story. I want to, like, so I got a taste.

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43:08It's different than having a t -shirt in Fred Siegel's. Versus somebody coming into your world and seeing all your stuff like a gallery. Totally. And when we would do the trade show booths because I was the first step, I just became obsessed with that. So I would build these mini stores. That's where I started to learn a little bit about building and visual merchandising and telling you know how pieces start to come together. How important were those shows? Because they were important to beginning. All your buyers were going to the shows. It was great exposure and that's how ultimately you would get to department stores.

43:44They'd see you and they'd discover you. And the shows was an amazing learning experience because I had to learn every piece of the business. And so when you get to go to the shows and you're interfacing with all the buyers and you're learning about buying and you're learning about visual merchandising and how you have to sell the product. Our situation at one point, we got so successful with certain items that that's all anybody kept buying. And our only outlet was a wholesale outlet. So I can't control it. And I went through a period many, many years ago where the sales started going down. And I couldn't get them to buy something new to get the volume back up.

44:42And I didn't know anything about finance in those days. So I didn't realize I had built an infrastructure. I had a bunch of overhead and all of a sudden my sales are dipping. And I'm spending money. And I don't realize at some point it's going to start affecting my cash flow. And I just don't know anything about it. So I got myself into trouble. And I'll never forget it because people always say as a department store can put you out of business. And you're always like, why? I don't understand. What is it? But in the nutshell, it was a simple game of your guaranteeing margins for department stores.

45:25So you're effectively guaranteeing, like, they don't want excess inventory and they want to maintain a certain margin. So if they have to discount your merchandise at a certain point and it erodes their margin, they're going to ask for you that money back. And so you're like writing checks back while they want to send you back excess inventory for the willingness to take new inventory. I never knew any of this. That was the game. That was the game. And the game was this rotation. So they have no risk, essentially. Essentially it minimizes their risks. That's effectively the game that was played or is played and went on for years and years and years.

46:13And if you don't manage it well, you will go out of business. And it's a dangerous game that you have to understand. Because in your mind, the more they take the more they can sell, but if they take a lot and they don't sell them, it's your problem. Exactly. And when you're kind of up and coming, you're like, how much can you even afford? And then what they do is they put it on a, they'd call it a charge back and they put it on a system. They would post it. So all the creditors would have access to the system. And they would say, I'm going to charge you back 100 grand or whatever it is. And if they saw that, because in those days you use, it's called a factor.

46:59And what the factor does is they advance you 85 % of the invoice that you ship to the department store. They'll give you the front load you money because they need it for working capital. And they will front load that money so you keep buying merchandise, making merchandise and paying your payroll. And I had somebody who read it on the system. This was from, it's like a bank is basically what it is. And they read it on the system and they decided to cut off all my credit facility overnight. And I had already pre -planned what it was supposed to be. And they just didn't do what it was supposed to be.

47:41And so I'm sitting there trying to figure out, you know, now you've worried about payroll. And so effectively what I went through was the brink of going out of business because of the way this game is being played. And I got connected with a new accountant. He walked in the door. He taught me all about budgets and projections. Which he'd never done before. And I spent the entire weekend mastering this thing. He gave me these parameters of what I was going to have to cut to get things in line. And so I just started going after all these variable expenses that I could get rid of basically. Yeah, it wasn't what made the stuff you were making good.

48:34Right. Even I think trade shows might have fallen. There was some things that just the math wasn't there. And so I was getting rid of it, getting rid of getting rid of it, getting rid of it. So I basically got all the expenses down, locked myself in a room and I created what I always wanted to create it, which was the essential business, the core basics. Because I had told in my hard rock days I used to go to these guys that would make the T -shirts for me. And I would go to, they were big distributors. And they have a hains and this and I would sit there and I go, do you understand that if you just made your neckline just a little bit thinner.

49:19And if you just, the cotton was a little bit lighter and the shape was a little bit, you could sell zillions of it. They just came out of my office, just came out of my office. They were amazing for me with the merchandise because they wanted the volume of what was going on. But they had no interest in what I was actually doing. They just wanted to pump things through the system. And so I said to myself, there's a hains t -shirt and there's a Jill Sonder t -shirt and there's nothing in between. And that's where I created the standard collection at the time we called it, which was the basic t -shirt that lives with us to this day.

50:03And I repositioned everything, product lines, what the mission was going to be. I went back to the marketplace, I got all my expenses in line. You know what I had to do? My accountant helped me do this. But to stay in business, we had a tax refund that had not come yet. And he was able to sign over the tax refund to the bank to give me the credit facility that I needed to stay alive. And that move, that maneuver is what kept me in business. How many years ended this happened? It happened probably after I had started my own brand, three, four years in. But it was at that time when I could, they were going so well that I couldn't get anybody to buy anything else.

51:02And you don't ever want to be that one hit wonder or that item. You don't want to be too hot. You don't want to, you know, so from all those learning lessons, I started to pull back. And essentially I controlled the distribution. And I was controlling how much I would put out. And I was doing it in steps, like brick by brick. I wouldn't let it explode. I would say to a department store, I'm not going to give you more than this. That's all you're going to get for me. They blow out of it in five seconds or whatever. And then they'd want more. And I'd say, sorry. It changed the whole nature of the relationship.

51:36Totally. And so, and I was going to build this again, my way contained the way I want, you know, like everything was about now how I wanted to do it. And the amazing thing that I had learned from department stores, this was the greatest education that I got as a merchant was how to be a merchant at the end of the day. Meaning, you mean seeing what they did right and seeing what they did right. No, no, it was a game of inventory management control. So there's almost an art and science to buying and controlling your inventory. So there's these big spreadsheets and charts that basically you watch your performance.

52:20And we call it, well, they're selling reports, but you're managing yourself through. So if I bought 100 units that I sell 50 and I sell 60, they sell 70. So you're managing all these components between your margin, you know, your sell through, you know, and we call it like kind of the turn how fast, how many weeks of supply. So you become a supply chain expert a little bit. And you start to manage how you buy, how you manage the inventory, how you manage a margin. How long does it take to refill? Like how long do you have to wait to get more? I mean, it depends at which point in time. But in certain products, we set it up.

53:00We're already in an immediate position because we're carrying inventory to replenish. So there's a category that we replenish that's immediate because we're sitting on the stock. There's a category where we call it PFT is prepared for die where the garments are made, but they haven't been died into a color yet. Then we have a category where it's sitting in fabric. So we just need to cut sell make, you know, and then we have a category that's a longer early time where you have to start at zero in order. So you have all these sections based upon when you introduce something new. How do you deal with it?

53:38Well, it depends what you think it's going to be, right? So if we make a product that we believe is going to be foundational in a long term product, we will take the risk of already prepositioning ourselves, whether it's in fabric. Before you sell one. Before you sell one. That's the art and science. The art and science is sort of your gut and your instinct has got to play a role. An experience. And experience. For sure. All of them. And then the math and how you manage it is like the foundation and the tools. And so what what has happened is over many, many years is my experiences of almost going out of business, you know, three or four years into this taught me everything about finance.

54:30I didn't just walk away from that like I became obsessed with learning about finance, budgeting, you know, I call it the keys to the kingdom because with that visibility, you're not going to have the fear anymore because you understand how to keep the, you know, the levers, you know, where they need to be. And so that gives you confidence. So understanding finance, gaming confidence, understanding merchandising made me a strategic weapon. It made me a strategic weapon because if I could take the creative of understanding products and designs, but understanding it from a controlled environment of how to build programs and how to manage inventory and how to, you know, position.

55:20You know, your supply chain and connect it with your gut in your instinct. And merchandising goes to even like I can go on and on and on, but there are high level strategies that can move the entire financial needle of the company as well. So I just give you an example we call them a URs is like an average unit retail. So if you took everything you're selling and then you looked at it and you said, price when it was $200 average across all these categories, all these products. That's your reoccurring number that you're always watching and monitoring. But if you decided to, I'm going to start selling more cashmere, more higher price cashmere, more sweater jacket cashmere.

56:12And I'm going to in shop the price point that's going to start rebalancing the averages so that if your lower price point thing is pulling down the AOR, these pushes are going to start bringing up the averages. So you can grow your business just by changing your mix and your assortments and your average price points. You don't even have to add another store. You don't have to do anything. You can just rethink the strategies of your price point strategies and so on and so forth. So effectively I ended up learning all these different components and then that just becomes the circle of how the whole system works.

56:59But when I went to open a store now when was the first store? The first store now was probably pushing if I want to say 18, 19 years ago. Well, long probably close to maybe 18 years ago. First store was on Melrose across the street from my father's store. Oh cool. Yeah. And it's still there. Cool. And when I built the first store is when I had to say, okay, okay. Like you made products. But now you got to piece this whole thing together. What does this brand look like? What are your hang tags? What is your logo? What is your labels? What is your merchandising? What are your mannequins? Your forms?

57:43Your hangers? Your fixture? And my whole attitude was I don't want to look like a retail store. I want it to be like a home. I want every store we do to be a special environment. I want it to be experiential. And in those days most retail was very retail. It was here's a cookie cutter formula. And how do we build a hundred of these as fast as you can? And I just started was more interested in the idea of probably because I was obsessed with architecture. I just want to do different things every time I was doing it and just enjoy the process. You want to make it a place that you'd want to hang out in?

58:20Was that part of it? That was the idea. I wanted it to feel like home to you. I wanted you to feel like I wanted you to be inspired. I wanted you to feel like I want my house to feel like this. I want. And I'm just so comfortable that I'm here for an extra two hours. I don't really want to leave. When we opened the second Malibu store meaning not the original one but the bigger one now. And we created that whole outdoor deck. It's funny because I'm paying rent for that outdoor deck because it was supposed to be inside space. But I designed the building and took the square footage and made the deck.

58:58So I have to pay rent like as if it was enclosed but aesthetically I wanted it to be this experience. And it was amazing the way people overnight they'd come and they just sit there and lay out on the deck. They'd bring their dogs a dog would be on one chase and they'd be on the other chase. So in the case we would serve them a drink and they'd hang out and enjoy themselves and just that's what I wanted. And so opening store after store it allowed me to just keep exploring new ideas, new thoughts, new experiences. But then I had sort of graduated to saying, okay it's such about the home. I wanted to take my customer through a journey into now let's get serious because we had so many people that just were like can you do my home or can you.

59:50I want my home to look like you know our store and they'd come in with their contractors and you know look at you know. I've done it myself. And so you know then we started to go into all the home furnishings and we started going into blankets and furniture.

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1:01:49How many stores are there now? I think there's somewhere between 60 to 70 stores. Mostly in the US? A lot in the US. International stores are just in Japan, Canada and London and Mexico. What's been amazing too is that even though we've built it heavily in the US, there's been such an international sort of draw as they're coming through the US and education to the brand that we're not starting at zero when we show up in different spots around the world. How much is the online part of the business? The online piece of the business, I want to say it's 15 to 20 % of the business which is still a very small percentage of most people's business and it's exploded for us.

1:02:41So we had a lot of catching up to do because we had built brick and mortar in a big way and then e -commerce. So COVID really expedited it for us and now it's a major. Now the whole game has changed. The game is now all consumer centric, all digital centric, all marketing centric. My only marketing to date was building stores, my environments. There was no messaging, there was no big advertising. No advertising. There was none of that. It was just this grassroots business that organically, but now that you're in a digital space and with the world of social and the world of building this e -commerce business, the game has completely changed.

1:03:31So I'm actually flip -flopping our entire process so that I'm now about telling stories. It's almost like when you have stores and environments, you can get away with a lot because you're making products and you're putting in your environments, you have a team there that can communicate things. The physical experience provides a lot of the stories. And now online you don't get that. Exactly. And we were not very good at it. And now it's time and we've taken the strength of our team that have been with us for years and we're all moving over to a digital position and marketing position. And we flip -flopped the process so that we, instead of looking at everything from a selling and a reactionary perspective to dictate what we were going to develop on the next cycle, we now start the story and the marketing first.

1:04:34Meaning the analytics are already there. We know when we sell shorts, we know when we sell sweaters, we know when we sell jackets, we know what we need to talk about. When, we need to talk about it. So it's now more focused on how do you tell your story. Is the story what differentiates your sweater from someone else's? I think that the story is about the brand. So what we're doing is it's all a sense of place and environment. It starts as this California brand. And in this California brand, you have all kinds of different experiences, whether you're in Malibu or you're in L .A. or you're in Monocito or you're in Mammoth or you're in the desert and Joshua Tree or you're in Palm Springs.

1:05:24You had a t -shirt with all the neighbors on it. I loved that t -shirt. It's such a cool t -shirt. That actually became almost like a branded t -shirt to us. It was the essence of telling the California story. And we're starting to shape products around a sense of place, in a sense of environment so that our stories can get clearer. Because you have to take a whole internal operation and get everybody on a page. Because the same people who are making clothing are not making bags and shoes. And the same people doing that are not making surfboards. And the same people... You've got to pull a lot of pieces together to tell one simplistic story.

1:06:08So if the story is the foundation, then they all can work towards the story instead of everybody on their own page and nothing comes together. So I've been playing the glue of the vision of the story and this foundation that we're sort of putting into play. But this whole thing is an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem that these experiential destinations and locations also are surrounded with products. Not in a commercial way in a very social way. And in a place and in the same way that if you went to a friend's house and he has a really comfy sofa... Exactly. And you say, I'd like this in my house.

1:06:49Where do you get it? It's the same idea. Exactly. And so you have your product piece of the business, which it was a peril and fashion, you know, the shoes and accessories and all that. And then you have home furnishings and the interiors. And then you get these experiential destinations and locations that are filled with all of the products. And so effectively, it's a new form of retail for us because it's a showroom. It's a way to experience and live in that environment. And the intention is it just keeps sort of, you know, feeding the ecosystem and... Plan on doing more of those. We do plan on doing more of those.

1:07:29And right now it's actually kind of graduating to a much larger community hotel -like experience. Meaning all of them operate like a hotel right now anyways. It's full kind of service and experience and end. But now when you grow into a community, it's at the scale of a hotel. So, you know, and then we're sort of venturing into that, you know, channel. And you plan on doing them all over the world? Or would you like to? In fact, now it's reversing itself. Now we have the possibilities of when we enter into a market. We're going to enter with everything at one shot. Yeah. Instead of like the bit by bit by bit, you get the full immersive experience.

1:08:17So we're going to build the hotel with the retail component, both home furnishings and apparel. And all the experiential. So for us, the game has changed because we're basically getting to do everything at once at the same time. Yeah, which is great. Yeah, exactly. Brand -wise. Who else is in the space? It's so specific what you do. It's funny because that's kind of the nice thing. I think, you know, there are people competing in certain product categories. But when you pull the brand together, it sort of sits a little bit on its own island a little bit. I think that was always the plan. That was always the hope.

1:09:07So it's funny because I was just with somebody of the day and they just started saying, you know, they're saying something similar to what you just said. Like I can't think of what... What do you compare it to? There is. Yeah, you have to chop it up to compare it. You have to say, oh, this person makes t -shirts or this person. You know, like if you take a brand like a Brinello Cuccinelli as an example, which, you know, is built an amazing business and there was always people who would talk about some interesting similarities. But we come from different worlds. And the experience couldn't be more different.

1:09:44Right, exactly. And they say different things. But that's what I always hope. I wanted them to feel like it was their brand. It was part of their life. It's part of their memories. Because, you know, 25 years ago, the world was a very different place. And so the world has become incredibly casual compared to where it was. I mean, obviously, COVID knocked that off the charts. Even before that. But even before that. True. Like when I would go to Tokyo, it used to be very conservative. And you'd always see everyone in suits and so... Now you can kind of walk around or even years ago, you could identify neighborhoods and you can pick up on personalities and you could look at it by the way that they're dressed.

1:10:34And, or do they have a stroller and do they have kids? And then you'd be like, oh, this is like Brentwood. Like I can see, you know, families versus young kids versus young professionals versus, you know, so I'm very fortunate. And grateful to have been there at the right time. You know, where it kind of wasn't on the map. And so we were able to build like sort of a brand that people now can rely on the brand and the quality and the quality. And the consistency versus just think of it as the category or the item. But I don't think of anything else in the category. They're streetwear, which it's not.

1:11:19And then there's Gucci, which it's not. Right, exactly. It's a different thing. Well, you know what's funny is after COVID, you've got other... I don't even say after COVID. That's not even the right thing. Let's just say two years ago, a year ago. Everyone's just pounding. Collaborations, pounding, streetwear, novelty, loud, loud, loud. And then that kind of, you know, the tides change. And then all of a sudden they say, quiet luxury. They start using these buzzwords. And everyone said, it's about quiet luxury. And then brands start coming in. It's about quiet luxury. And I'm just sitting there laughing and going, hello.

1:12:04I've been doing quiet luxury for 30 years. That is what we are. Now, what I have witnessed over, you know, years is you're watching a lot of the luxury brands casualize. So they themselves have trying to become more and more and more casual. But we still sit in this world that is approachable, obtainable, makes you feel good. And, you know, it's funny because while I've been building this brand for all these years, I go to work every day. I live in a uniform. I basically don't change very much. I'm kind of probably the most boring of the whole equation. And you just go into, you know, you're just going into comfort.

1:12:57And you're just going there. Do you work? Do your work? Do your work? And yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I wore a new t -shirt. I wore a colored t -shirt. And a pair of white pants. And everybody in the house kind of goes, whoa. Like, everybody commented, whoa, you look nice today. And then everybody worked, wow, where are you coming? And I just laughing because I was just saying, at the end of the day, all I did was change the color. It was the same uniform I wear every single day. It just, I literally put on a pair of white pair of pants instead of my usual earthy, whatever. And then instead of a white t -shirt, you know, I put in an actual color and then I transformed.

1:13:45And so it was, I even myself was like, I'm pretty pathetic. You talk about comfort. And I think that's a big key. Streetwear isn't designed necessarily to be comfortable. It has a different purpose. Gucci isn't designed to be comfortable. It's got a different purpose. Right. I feel like your clothing is much more for the benefit of the wearer, not the perception from the outside. Yeah. I would say for sure. I think it's trying to build things that last. And I think that you have to try to, you know, my biggest thing is trying to get all the kinks out that are the difference between, do I want this or do I not want this?

1:14:33Does it annoy me or does it not annoy me? Is it comfortable? Is it uncomfortable? But it's, sometimes it's the subtlest things. It's your pocket bag, you know, like I sit there and I hammer when they do pocket bags that are too short and your keys fall out of your pocket is driving me bananas. And it's like you've got to get the functionality just right. Because if you get annoyed by that, like my whole thing is you can't agitate anybody. You can't annoy them. You can't have, you can't find a way. You don't want them thinking about it. You can't have them thinking about that. They can't be repeating that.

1:15:08It has to be the opposite. They have to just sit there and love it and keep wanting more, you know. So those little things are the things you have to keep sort of ironing out. And when you do become bigger and you're creating more, it gets a little more difficult to be so attention to detail on everything you're doing. However, I still always reel it back in and say, less is more, engineer it to last. And let's spend the time and energy on making this great, not processing, not just getting it out the door, not just another season. Look at what performs. Look at Liz with us forever. We have shirts that have been with us for 20 years.

1:15:56That's where the energy goes. And so, you know, you have to remind people, you remind people, because you're running a business and you're running a process and you're running a machine. Tell me from the beginning of an idea, do you have the idea or does someone else have the idea? It's a combination of both. Do you have people pitch you ideas? Well, when it comes to making garments, I spend a lot of time on making sure the boat is heading in the morning. And I spend a lot of time on making the direction that I wanted to head. So, I spend my time thinking about everything. Always everything. My brain goes to literally everything at once.

1:16:37It does not think about just the one specific thing. It thinks about the story, the environment, the space, the visual. It thinks about the business. It thinks about how we're going to approach this. Then I start honing in on the edit and the curation of it, which also involves adjustments and changes. And also, let's just say, holes that don't exist. Where you're leading the process as a merchant saying, we need to be doing this. And we need to be working on this. And we need to be doing more of this. And then I just go into idea mode. And then I go into idea mode of how do you take something you love and how do you play with different fabrics and what are the different possibilities of different fabrics.

1:17:27Or if I am with a garment, I'm sitting there saying, you know, then you start going into what you like and you don't like. But then there's, you know, and then the most important thing is to surround yourself with a phenomenal team. How do you find the team? You know, some of my team has been with me for years and years and years and we know each other like back of our hand. Some of the team, as you explore, it's difficult. What I would tell you is coming from Los Angeles, there's always, there's pros and cons. The pro is I always wanted to be on my own island and I'm officially on my own island.

1:18:02And I had this canvas to work from. The con is I'm not in the network of where a lot of the best talent pools and resources are. You know, so - This is not the center of the fashion world. No, it's not the center of the fashion world. There's needles in haystack around here but it's definitely not the center of, you know, the fashion world. Which was funny because every time I've seen, you know, years ago, they would keep trying, they would try to bring a fashion, like do a fashion week in L .A. And I would just be like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, why would you ever try to compete with what's going on in Europe, let alone in New York?

1:18:44But like, you're just like, this is ridiculous. This is just going to make us look silly. Which I think they have discovered over time is like, you're like, we're the source of inspiration. We're the source of experience. You miss the lifestyle aspect of what's going on here. And that we need a formula that is feeding like a diluted version of what the most cutting -edge creators in the world are doing. Like, you're kidding me? Like, what do we want to look at that for? But they're inspired by us. So embrace that. Be who you are. Do you ever look at trends of what else is going on in the world or does that not apply?

1:19:27In the big picture, not really. We were never following a trend, like ever. Like, if certain tops were in or whatever, you know, like kind of in the heyday. My attitude was like, I'm just going to become that because everyone's wearing it. Like, there are moments where you can create your own interpretation of something that's in at the moment. Like, so take, for example, like a Birkenstock. You know, the interesting funny thing is that obviously Birkenstock's been around for a long, long, long time. Well, obviously, you know, going to the great for the head. You know, that's all I'm saying. I've seen my share of Birkenstock.

1:20:10The, the, but I don't know how many years ago was I was in the mood to, this is way before the craze. I was in the mood. I thought with our California sensibility and our attitude, it was time to curate and put that together with our product. So we actually started buying just straight up Birkenstocks. And it looked amazing. It looked amazing because we were sort of modernizing the look. It was sort of the way we can mix it with our products to sort of look like it was. Because you were not in the parking lot at the great for that. And then we did a little collaboration. It wasn't necessarily easy, but it's just a little minor collaboration.

1:21:00And then it became a craze. When I say craze, I mean, the Birkenstock is no longer the Birkenstock. It's the Krunek, meaning it's a staple silhouette. Everybody has an interpretation of the silhouette. And Birkenstock themselves just exploded. But every designer was doing an interpretation of a Birkenstock. And it was just madness and the craze. And so that was one of those where we caught the wave before the wave. And we were actually just interacting with Birkenstock. But that's an interesting one because that one actually then became actually a shape and a pattern. And now it's become a staple.

1:21:49And now it's become everybody has that staple reinterpreted in some shape or form. And effectively everybody kind of wins. Because Birkenstock just exploded as well. And it happened at one time with Uggboots, too. Do you remember when Uggboots sort of became the thing? Exactly. It's kind of like some of those guys are so powerful with what their creation that it became effectively a staple. But I look at the wave to figure out what wave I want to catch that's not the wave. Understood. So it tells me where the direction is going to go and where I have to place myself. You're doing alternative programming.

1:22:38Yeah, exactly. Instinctually that's more intriguing to me and it's always about repositioning and saying, well, if it's going there, it's definitely going to come back here. So I'm going to place myself over here. But at the end of the day, the majority of what we are is about foundational engineering to last. And we want to run a business that's more on a consistent basis. We don't want peaks and valleys. And we're not really interested in it. You don't want to be the hot thing. I never want to be too hot. Never. I want to be loved. Yes. But never too hot. Yeah. And so, and there's always a time to wake up and reinvent yourself and reposition yourself and evolve.

1:23:25And by the way, I learned these things very early on. And maybe those are the things that I became allergic to because they scared the crap out of me. And I got that taste of like how quickly something can go south. And so I was always more about controlled and steady. And the benefit is it's resulted in a brick by brick methodically built company. Probably could be two or three times as big as it is now. But I'm okay going at a controlled pace. There's a faster pace. But you give up something to get the faster pace. Yeah well, yeah well too fast, too fast. I can't say I'm, I haven't been slow.

1:24:17But I've also spent a lot of time and energy into these other areas to set the tone of what the next 20 years can be. So that took a lot of time. But now we're bringing it back and saying, you know, we want to store in Paris. We're opening a store in Dubai. We're opening a store in Abu Dhabi. Great. You know, we want to venture you know around the world. And it's been really fun again to travel. Yeah. And to get out there and say, wow, like I can't believe we're not even here. But my version of being there is how do I localize? How do I understand where we're going? How do I understand how we can collaborate with where we're going?

1:25:02Versus just sort of show up, you know, the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. It's just for me becomes a new canvas to play with. How difficult is it to get the manufacturing part right? The manufacturing part, that's all about experience and that's all about resources and that's all about, you know, so at the beginning, you're looking at the manufacturer. I would sit there in my Jeep and I would be moving boxes from downtown LA. But I'd stay up all night in the dye facilities, making sure the colors are exactly they were supposed to be. I mean, I was neurotic. Like when the inside of the garment died a different color than the outside.

1:25:49I'd sit there with a blow dryer. I was out of my mind, like because I was a perfectionist, because I felt like you get one shot. And I had this thing where if I said I was going to do something, I better do it exactly the way I said I was going to do it. I just, I care too much. It's good and bad. That's what consumes me. So over the years, we definitely had moments where you're like, okay, we have little issues over here or whatever. But that really comes down to resources and who you're working with. Because if you start finding the right resources and the right manufacturer, because we learn how to manufacture, you know, there's effectively like two versions for the types of stuff that we do.

1:26:38You can actually cut so and make the garment where you're buying the fabrics, you're sending it to a one person to cut it, another person selling it, another person's dying it, another person's finishing it. You know, it's a lot of steps. And then the other version is you're working with a manufacturer who's kind of just taking control and handing you a finished product. And you know, those tend to be a lot easier. However, there's something about the speed of what you can do and the flexibility. Because those things have minimums and they have this and they have that. And when you can just cut so and make your garments, you can be, you can work around some of those restrictions very easily.

1:27:26And so that's a nice thing is like, I guess by doing everything yourself. Is that how you do it? We do both. We do both. But I mean by my education, by learning and doing everything myself, the beauty of that is now when I'm interacting with any single department, I can speak to it. I understand what it is. You know what you're talking about? You've done all the steps. Yes. The only step I would say is when it comes to IT and technology, forget it. Like that's not my cup of tea. So I have an awesome group of guys that deal with that. But when it comes to software that's related to process in operating.

1:28:09I know I understand that up and down and left and right. Like that's a huge piece of how you can operate. Who were the designers that were inspirational to you at any point? For me, the heyday, the greatest moment in time was I was obsessed with helmet laying. Obviously the original helmet laying when he was doing his own brand, Jill Sonder. When Jill Sonder was running her own brand, you know, Margella, when Margella was running his brand. Those were probably my three all times. But always inspired by Yogi, Y3, but really Yogi. And over the years, Phoebe Filo is brilliant. And I remember that one of the first suits my dad had custom made for me with the Taylor upstairs from the shop.

1:29:08Was like mirroring in her money suit for four -year -old. There's photos of me in the suit. But I would say those are probably my favorite. Ralph. Oh, well no. But Ralph, he's God to me in the sense of storytelling and the environment and the lifestyle. When you talk about the term lifestyle and you pull the pieces together, there is no one better than Ralph. No one better than Ralph. I'm so enamored by the stories that he's doing and the environments and the merchandising and the visual merchandising. And the different types of products and the range that he's, you know, doing that. I almost don't even focus on the products because I'm so into how could anybody dream this up.

1:30:07And his also so many products is hard to even know where to start. That's right. It's endless. It's endless. It's funny because I would say, you know, the different references and sources of inspiration for different reasons and different stuff. Ralph is, you know, almost allows me to be me in the sense that he's very East Coast and he has a very strong sensibility coming from sort of an East Coast lifestyle. That allows me to understand I'm so West Coast and I need to focus on what I know so well and what that sensibility is in those stories that I can tell and those life experiences that I can sell.

1:30:57So it's an incredible reference of teaching me how to build something that represents versus. You watch people sit there and tell stories and you're just like, there's no authenticity, you know, so that's when I am so blessed by is that everything that I'm doing is, it just feels like it's me. It's like it's real. All real in your real life story. It makes it easier. It makes it easier because I lived lived it and experienced it. I'm not just like pretending and making up this brand new story over here. I've been doing it for years and years and years and that makes it fun to me because you can really be yourself.

1:31:42How important is distribution? The distribution is always important for us today. We're primarily a vertical. So it's all our own stores. Your own stores online and that's it. Right. So we have... Can't buy it anywhere else? Well, no, no, you can on a very small scale. We sell to some smaller boutiques still. What I preserved is some of the smaller boutiques as in that's where we came from and that's where we started and I've sort of always continued to do business with smaller boutiques. When it comes to department stores, we only interact with blooming dails because we control our own concession.

1:32:28I see. So they're giving us the freedom to be us. And does it just get you into more places? Because I'm thinking what you're making is so beautiful and the stores are so great. And if I lived in a place where there wasn't one, I'd feel bad. Right. Right. Right. I haven't experienced the online enough to know that we can motivate you to buy. 100%. You know, and that's something we're working on heavily is because you'd say like why would I buy this versus this? Even within my own brand, why am I buying this T -shirt versus this T -shirt? So we've been working on this whole major 3 .0 site that hopefully is going to tell a much stronger story through a digital world the way we have in our brick and mortar.

1:33:13But you're exactly right. And that's where boutiques and sort of being in areas and locations that are not accessible. We don't have stores because there's a lot of them. Still is very valid. And the introduction to those customers and all that. And that's why we've kind of maintained the boutique attitude. It's really about the whole business in itself is intended to feel boutique. So even if we scale it. If you could have your stuff in whatever today's max field is in a place where there's no James Perstor, it seems like a good thing. Oh, right. Right. Right. Like a boutique store. Yeah, it is.

1:33:56It's a very good thing. At the end of the day, just the seeds that are being planted and those people's experiences for the first time and engaging with the company and the brand is huge. So it is. It's just it's hard internally to run different types of businesses at the same time because they're very different. So the whole process is different. Like when we develop and produce for our stores, we just can stick to a calendar because you can just say, I'll make X amount. Go. Right. When it's wholesale, you go through this selling period and it messes up the calendar. And so then you can only fix it longer.

1:34:38Everything gets longer. You can project it. It can create exposure or you have to minimize it so you can't offer all of the same amounts of product. So it's complicated. So that's a little bit of the challenge. Well, it just tells me that there's so much potential for the brand to grow. It's the type of timeless clothing that could work everywhere all over the world. Yeah, exactly. It's true. And honestly, as I've been traveling, I've just my eyes just keep opening up because I'm like, I can't believe we're not here. Yeah, we're not here. I can't believe there's a big world. It's a big world. And that's our next step is now focusing on the international aspect of the business.

1:35:22There's not a lot to figure out. It's just it's like time. It just needs to happen. We got to execute. And so we're refocusing on that game plan. But in the same breath, it's also it's like you're going to, you know, different places around the world. And the world is so different today that there are opportunities to embrace all these different places that you're going to. And find new methods of creating, manufacturing or localizing and being open to new ideas that even make sense. And not just a style perspective, but you know, I'm sort of at this age now where I want to listen and hear what a young generation is thinking.

1:36:17And, you know, yeah, I can sit here and say, I don't know what they're thinking about. You know, like, or I can listen and learn from where their heart is and where their thoughts are and raising two boys. It's been fascinating because I'll tell you this. I wasn't as in the fashion as my kids are. I had no, I mean, it's just a different world because they're being exposed to this content. And being influenced of where this and where that and it's funny because they're both on the same campus. So, you know, the older one just started at Malibu High. Because he had left for a bit and he's come back.

1:37:02I mean, he was going to school over the hill and then he came back. And day one of dropping him off at school when I pulled in and I looked at this scene. I mean, it was fast times at Ridgemont. I mean, it was the coolest. It was fantastic. These kids, the attitude, the styling, they're all friends from nothing. They've all grown up together, which to me is the most important thing in the world. It's that bond for life. But they're interests. Like, they were all hanging out in one area, one zone and you're just immediately looking at the styling that's going on. And when I was in high school, it was absolutely not like this.

1:37:45And of course, as you know, in Malibu, it's got a very retro sort of sensibility. And these kids are pulling their stripes socks all the way up. And it's got this sort of skater. It's like a hybrid of skate, surf, streetwear, all combined. But they're all on it, all of them. And in a very, I still want to say in a down to earth way, not in the, you have this and I have that. You know, these kids are trading stuff, which I actually love because they have no sense, they have no concept of what anything costs. They, you know, say the one kid's got this and it costs this. The other kid doesn't matter.

1:38:23They start trading sweatshirts. I like it. Yeah, what's cool? So they start trading things with each other. And I think that's fantastic. You get sick of something and then they start trading. But I'm blown away by the young generation and their interest in style. It is nothing like the way I grew up. I mean, yes, I had a father who had it, but my friends in us was like, forget it. Go back and look at the photos. There was no, but you're going to go back and look at these kids photos and you're going to say, wow, they represented a time period. And I say fast times, originally, I'm high because, I mean, really, it's that on point.

1:39:02And, but it's got a new, it's got a new, a little bit of a, you know, obviously update and a twist. So I'm very open. You know, I love to learn. I love to be educated. I love to be shown something new. What you know, great. You've experienced it. You've learned it. But it's not about sitting there and just honing in on what you know. I don't feel live unless somebody's teaching me something. Yeah. So much fun to learn new stuff. So much fun. The best. You know, it's been interesting since COVID where, you know, it's hard to get people back to the office. But I'll tell you, when you're in an empty space or you're just kind of on your own or whatever, I just don't do well with that.

1:39:50When I have energy surrounding me and I have groups of people surrounding me and we're bouncing ideas off of each other, I'm born again. Like, it's just like you come, you're alive. And I literally, I notice it to the day because I know which days everybody's in the office and I know which days get very light days. And without your team and without your, you know, it's everything. It's, it's, it's the passion. It's the ideas. It's the fun of creating things. It's the sheer energy, personalities, humor. Describe the environment where you meet with your team. Well, we have two different environments.

1:40:31So we have one facility in like the Marina, kind of near Venice area. And then we have an environment down in Downey, past downtown, which is sort of the operations facility where a lot of tech in the product development takes place. When we're in the Marina office, you know, it's a very kind of minimalist loft environment. Very warm wood, bow trust ceilings with sort of white cube objects, kind of creating a dramatic corridor down the center. When we kind of walk into the, what I've been doing is sort of converting it to trying to, you know, this whole marketing piece that never existed in the business is a new piece that I'm building, which is now all about renderings and digital communication and campaigns and even designing products.

1:41:41Digitally so that you can start to envision what these things look like and what the stories are going to look like. So it, it's transformed there to being much more of an environment of beautiful renderings and storytelling. So I like when I'm surrounded by my visual teams and the merchant teams and the marketing teams and, you know, graphic design teams and like when we're all in there and we're dreaming it up and we're talking it out. I feel like we're making progress. I feel like we're creating structure. We're seeing, you know, a light at the end of the tunnel and we're bouncing ideas off and I feel alive.

1:42:28I grew up being in these factories. Like if I walk into the warehouse or if I walk into a sample room, I come alive because it just reminds me it's just like that's where stuff happens. That's where it's made. That's where it's created. That's where you get my brain starts thinking about, you know, and every time I go into any place, how can I do it better? How can I do it better? How can I do it better? And the one thing I love about having, you know, my own businesses that, you know, you could spend a lot of time in a creative situation, but everything gets exhausting. I refresh by then going into this and it's like a whole new life complete palette cleanser.

1:43:11So how do you come back to the creative side? It's like, oh, this is fun. Totally. There are moments too, you know, when people create a bit, I'm sure you I'd be curious how you you deal with this because, you know, it doesn't always hit you over the head. Like somebody comes in that you like this, this or this and I and I sit there and go, I'm going to do it. I'm kind of in my brain going, I don't really like any of them, but I have to think about this. I can't answer why right now. And then I have to walk away. And I have to think about it. And then I have to sort of figure out, is there anything from it?

1:43:51Do I have to start from scratch or are there some moment of pull from it? Sure. Like it's amazing to me how the littlest thing can give you the biggest idea. Absolutely. It's crazy. It's miraculous. Yeah. It's true. And it can be a comment someone makes. Totally. It could be noticing a sign somewhere and you change everything in your life. It totally. But you know, the thing is I wish I actually, I mean, maybe I do, maybe I don't, but like I'm such an idea person that you forget your ideas. Yeah. You're rambling so many ideas. And then sometimes they come back 12 circle. And then sometimes they sometimes they vanish.

1:44:37I try to make notes. And sometimes I'll make a note and it'll be too vague. And then I come back to it later and I read the note. I have no idea what it is. I do the exact same thing. No idea what it means. No idea what it means. It's so funny because I just like a few days ago got this, there's this digital pad. I got to send this to you. There's this digital pad that's like this note taking pad. It's all digital. But it's simple enough. Because I have 5 ,000 pieces of paper. And I end up with all these pieces of paper. And I re -note the same thing. And I end up with duplicate notes and duplicate and I end up with it all over the place.

1:45:12I'm like, it's different type. Everything. So I want to make my notes. Essentially, it's kind of infinite at the end of the day. And yeah, and you just can sort of keep going. But I joke all the times that the exact same thing. I have no idea. Read my note again. First of all, half the time I can't even read my own writing. The other half the time, I can't remember what planet I was even thinking. And then there's the occasional, like I got it. I remember. When I listened to you, when you talk about the creative process, and you have such an incredible way of articulating a very complicated process.

1:45:53And to me, it's just I'm bouncing around. It's thoughts and ideas. And it's interesting how I'm becoming more aware. If you took before COVID, I worked around the clock for so many years and just grind it and grind it and grind it. But I always felt like I just loved what I was doing. And I just love that energy around me. I loved being creative. I love being passionate about everything that I was working on. So it didn't really feel like work. Of course, there's lots of headaches. And that's probably my least favorite part of the equation. Then COVID, and I learned to sort of slow down. And then that became kind of special a little bit.

1:46:52You know, you open your eyes, you slow down. But then I realized if there's a lack of energy surrounding me, and there's a lack of similar desires to create a result. It's almost depressing. It's because you've thrived on passion for so many years that nothing should feel like it's work or nothing should feel like you don't like what you're doing. But what's crazy is how fast that switch goes on that you put something exciting in front of me or just the beginnings of it's on. It's so weird. It's like it's just it's on. It's like I can be so frustrated and pissed off and agitated and this and that.

1:47:50And all of a sudden there's a shoe right in front of me and I can taste like the progress of what I was doing. And then I just wanted to have happen and then all of a sudden you're like thinking of 50 versions of something and it's on. And it's really hard when you thrive on passion and you go and you go and you go to get yourself to slow down is confusing. Because you don't like you just don't even know what that means like you don't what am I here for what am I here for or and then when you're too slow it can be depressing because you're sort of where's the energy. Now I don't mean mine or just the energy the thing that the thing that fulfills me the thing the thing that it sounds like when you go to Mexico you can turn it off a little bit.

1:48:43Exactly. It's exactly right. It's the one place where I can go because there's something about that even though I'm turning it off there's a force of energy that is with me. That is sort of soothing me and feels like I'm doing something when I'm not doing something. And that's what you know where I was talking about when we're talking about the waves and we're talking about Mexico, the time is in place. You can go to a place that's dead still and there's an extraordinary relaxing energy or you go somewhere that's dead still and there's no.