'Stores have always been a part of our story': Argent CEO Sali Christeson on the women's workwear brand's growth plans

0:03Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast.

0:30but you know what I mean? No, no, no, no. I agree. And I'm not offended by that comment at all. That's exactly right. COVID added a few mystery years, though. They just sort of like snuck in there. Yeah. And I want to talk about all that, just sort of the state of workwear over the years, specifically post-COVID, because that has been a whirlwind in terms of trends, in terms of economic factors, in terms of how people buy things. And I want to just talk about your plans, because you've had some new things announced on the business model side over the last few months. I know that you have some new stores.

1:01I believe you have some new wholesale accounts, if I'm not mistaken. I want to get into all of that. But Sally, how are you doing? Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me. I'm doing great. We're busy. So I'm excited to touch on all of the things that you just mentioned. That's great. So first, just give us a little bit about your background, who you are, because I know that you came into workwear from a more untraditional, not necessarily from the apparel side, right? I'm the consumer of what we're building, for sure. this was born from a personal pain point of mine for some reason and every like every woman will validate this work where for women has long been overlooked it's been the afterthought of fashion and we've all experienced it firsthand so I started my career in finance and banking in Chicago I went back and got my MBA with a focus focus on supply chain and then went and worked in tech at Cisco for a few years.

1:58Most recently, I was working in cloud, which was a new initiative for Cisco. So I did that for a little over a year and then read a study that showed that women are judged based on appearance and they quantify the impact of what you wear on your bottom line over your lifetime. And so I read that and after experiencing the just the frustration of shopping for workwear and working across different industries with different dress codes, I just quit my job because I was like, I just see an opportunity to create a workwear authority and really redefine both the product and introduce things like functionality, things as simple as pockets, versatility, comfort, you know, and really just start with a consumer.

2:42But the thing that really excites me, which will come out as we talk about it, is on the brand side and the opportunity to really capture and speak to professional women and model that in a way that inspires our community and future creators and builders and innovators. So Argent was founded in 2016, quit my job in 2015. The rest is history. I usually ask, you know, what was the initial thesis or idea, but I actually want to slightly tweak it. is Argent now in 2023 radically different from what your idea was in 2016, or is it generally the same in an evolution of what you thought it would be? It's generally the same.

3:24I would say that as with all companies, we present very differently, but our founding mission remains, which is to equip women to take their seat at the table. The pillars from a product perspective are the same, comfort, versatility, functionality, style and quality. The goal is the same, to create a one-stop shop for women who are going to work in any capacity. It can be work from home or fully suited and to be a destination where you can confidently step in and know that you'll walk out with something you'll feel great in and that is work appropriate. I think just the time factor is something that can't be underestimated.

4:04The fact that historically, for me, for example, I was having to run around places very last minute to try and piece something together that I always just felt meh in. And so I think that it's largely the same. What's interesting is that COVID actually accelerated consumer demand toward what we've been doing since day one. So women are really looking to streamline. And I think we've been doing that. And I think now we're in a place where seven years is really the sweet spot in retail. We've made every mistake imaginable. And we spent a long time like identifying our brand identity and rolling out consistency at every touch point.

4:44And, you know, it feels like you're always juggling something when you're getting something like this off the ground. And at this point, I feel like it's quite tight. And we've had the luxury of time to really get it to a place where it's really more about scale. So what has the line changed? Or have you expanded the line? And what are some of the more emblematic mistakes that you've now corrected? Oh, the line has evolved. I would say for the first time in the last one to two years, we're fully delivering on what my original vision was for Argent from a product perspective. Those things just take time.

5:18I think the most notable one is that we introduced denim in partnership with A. Goldie last fall. We collaborated with them as denim experts that they are on creating custom work denim. so we went at it through the lens of what are the pain points that our customers are still experiencing when it comes to denim being introduced to the dress code a lot of it is around the fact that it's like being overwhelmed by having too many options and a lot of them are distressed or they have holes or the washes they're not really sure which one's work appropriate so we really went to a goldie with that in mind and created styles that are work appropriate across different washes, cleaned up all the distressing, et cetera, and made them work appropriate.

6:04So I think, yeah, I think in the last year or so, we've introduced new categories that really articulate our goal of dressing women at work in all forms of work. We introduced sweaters last fall, denim last fall, and dresses are really a focal point right now. So we're kind of building on some key products within the business. Mistakes. I don't even know where to start with mistakes. I mean, I think the goal of every founder should be to fail fast. And it's such a cliche thing to say, but fail and fail fast and make sure that they're not fatal, right? And make them small failures toward some sort of learning.

6:54One of ours, I think everything has worked out in the way that it was supposed to, but a huge wholesale partner approached us in 2018, wanting to grow their work offering. And we, I think, had a bit of hubris and we're like, no, we're building a direct business. Like we're not interested, et cetera. We're going to build it on our own. We have such traction and momentum. I do think that that could have allowed us to break through in a bigger way. But I also think that that ended up being a blessing because we didn't have to roll that back in 2020 and we didn't get burned in 2020. We were very slow in turning on performance marketing at a time where there were arbitrage opportunities, 2016, 2017, 2018, like it was very compelling to like ramp spend.

7:49And I think all of these decisions were probably right. And in hindsight, it's easy to say that they were failures, but they all allowed us to get to this point with the right offering. Like one of the challenges, you don't want to turn up performance marketing when you don't feel like the assets are in the place that they need to be. So like whether it's photography or brand identity or your messaging, Like there's just so much that goes into it. And that's why it takes about seven years to get to a place where you've iterated with your customer and internally with your team to get it to where it is today for us.

8:23It's just not something that happens overnight. So, I mean, and then there are a million operational failures that I'm happy to get into or hiring failures, et cetera. But yeah. No, that makes sense. The performance marketing, something is really interesting because I think I hear two different polls from founders who are either, you know, performance marketing was what got them to where they needed to be. But then iOS 14, blah, blah, blah. And other ones being pretty much exactly like you. We were too slow with it. And then iOS 14. And so I wonder if there ever is a good answer. And hindsight is always 20-20.

8:53I think it works out for every company, right? Whatever you're building, every founder has a different approach. And so it all serves the end goal. and for some ramping sooner, like that works out with like the overarching goal. And for us, it was about perfecting what we were doing before we got to that. So I think that I would say that we've made all the decisions that we needed to, to now know what we know and have line of sight to scale that we do. Got it, got it. Makes sense. I wanted to ask, cause you said something really interesting and it surprised me. I didn't expect this, but you pretty much said during COVID, you had the right type of selection or like you were able to make it work.

9:35So can you talk about the demand you saw through COVID? Because there were so many different, they were more formal wear companies, but because work became so focused on the home. So what exactly worked and how, did you have to tweak anything or was it just you had the right offering at the time? Oh yeah, no, no. To early 2020, we were crushing as most companies were. And March, mid-March happened and we went to$0. I mean, even negative days where customers are like, like, hi, can I return everything I just bought? I see no need to go into the office. So it really became about survival and hunkering down and going lean and figuring out what our strategy was going to be.

10:17The thing that to this day we benefit from is the fact that we saw it sooner than anyone else. So I immediately negotiated out of four retail leases mid-March when everyone was sending those emails that were like, in two weeks, we look forward to seeing you again. We didn't do that. We were like, you know what, there's something here that's going to be longer term. And I don't think that people recognize that yet. So we went lean very quickly. And I immediately recognized the fact that, okay, if we're stepping back from work, that it will rebound, it will return. Like there's no scenario where we aren't going back into offices at some point.

10:57And how do we set ourselves up for success in that moment? Or like, do we shudder, which is also something that we talked about. I believe so much in what we're building and that women deserve Argent that I chose to survive. And to keep our team energized, the lean team that we kept on, we focused on brand aligned initiatives. So in 2020, we launched a partnership with supermajority centered around the election. We had a hot pink suit. We had marketing muscle that we knew we could bring to them. They're a nonprofit focused on women recognizing their collective power as a voting bloc because they make up the super majority or the majority of voters in the country.

11:41We partnered with them and created a viral campaign around the election and just dressed activists and celebrities, et cetera, and really plugged people into volunteering around the election. In less than 24 hours, we blew through our entire inventory of pink suits like it was staggering for the time because everyone was working from home and everyone's somehow justifying buying this hot pink suit so that was really encouraging and exciting and like one big moment that uh kept us going and then in 2021 we started to see some return and that happened slowly and I would say not until spring of 2022 or fall of 2022 is when we nailed the product offering, but we spent all of COVID preparing for that.

12:30In no other world do you have a scenario where you don't have the day-to-day pressure of like building the plane while you're flying the plane. And so I was able to work with a merchant, able to work with our creative director, bring on the right creative director, and really set us up for success. We now have the best team we've ever had, the best product offering we've ever had. Everything just feels very tight, very focused, and timely. And that, I would say, is our number one. And were you able to do that because you just had the right, okay runway in order to be able to take a pause, know that you would probably take a loss, but then be able to build the next thing?

13:12Yeah, our investors certainly supported us through these years. We did have a loss in both 2020 and 2021, but a pretty small loss, all things considered. And now, I mean, in 2022, organically, without putting much into marketing, we had a really strong year. 2023, we've never seen numbers the way that we're seeing now. So I just think that as a founder, I always saw beyond COVID. And I don't think that that's the way people are conditioned. Like we were getting approached by journalists who were telling me that suiting was dead forever and what would we do? Or I would get, I remember vividly an investor sent me an article from CNN that was like, work where we'll never recover with a text we should talk, you know?

14:04And so it's like, cool, cool, cool. But like, it's how obvious is it? It's a massive opportunity. It's a massive white space. People will absolutely be returning to work. How do we deliver to that consumer when she goes back? And it's all now happening. So I just think that the, I think it's more compelling now than ever. I wanted to talk about organic because you kind of hit on this and you talked about the super majority thing. You guys had a lot of, I guess maybe they're early adopters, maybe they're mid adopters who are very well-known politicians or, you know, people, people. So Hillary Clinton is one that comes to mind, Huma Abedin, right?

14:43Was that group of women who were able to, with that specific campaign, able to get it to that moment? Or sort of how do you approach that? Was that all done based on earned media that they just liked your product? How do you approach that entire thing? Because that's a pretty strong base to have who's making posts in your suits. yeah so I would say from early days it's been obvious that we are catering to an underserved market at all levels I I had the I mean luck I don't know what you want to call it but I I I wanted this but as a founder I always set these crazy aspirations and like maybe one lands you know and then that whatever it is so I wanted to dress Hillary Clinton I felt like she was the model of like what we were building Argent for.

15:32And I ended up meeting her in her first huge post-election public event, ended up in a photo line and literally just held open my jacket. So we have interior pockets on our blazers. It is such a simple innovation that men get and women have never gotten. And we all see the memes around pockets for women and her jaw dropped. Like she literally had a physical reaction to what we're building. And from that day, I think the product coupled with what the company stands for, it really just checks every box for her. And I think that's the same for everyone that we dress. We've had such organic support from those individuals because they live their values.

16:19And we are a reflection, I think, of... We want gender equity and we want to give women the tools they need to succeed in their career. That's truly the reason why we exist. And I think that matches the women that we're dressing. From a product perspective, we've innovated the product. For the first time, women are able to dress for work and feel great in what they're wearing. And it seems so simple, but we all derive confidence from what we're wearing and to step onto stage or to step in front of, you know, an executive audience and to be able to get out of your head around what you're wearing and be able to focus on the underlying work and let the clothes work for you in a way that is an extension of your personal brand, but to be able to focus on the work, like that's such a luxury for women that have been ignored for so long in this category.

17:07So I think that we've built a rock star community of women. The ones that excite me the most are the ones that are doing work that you know, but you don't even know their names. And we've built an entire franchise around, like editorial franchise around that and highlighting those women because we think that women deserve to be celebrated. And as a result, we've definitely had organic relationships form with women that are higher profile. And for politicians specifically, I think that we're interesting because we are excessively priced. We do a lot of production in the US. We are female founded.

17:43We have a very diverse team across the board, and we're intentionally building out content and tools to just help women succeed. And I think that there's just this collective sort of community uptick that comes from that because we all want those things, you know? Got it. So the lesson here is if, you know, shoot your shot, you know, go up to Hillary Clinton and show the pockets in your suit, and maybe she'll start wearing your product. She doesn't just wear it either. She has been unbelievably supportive. I mean, she'll go out of her way to talk about it in press. She is always intentional about wearing Argent when she knows she's going to get photographed.

18:17I mean, still to this day, she's one of our most vocal supporters. And the number of customers that we have from word of mouth from the secretary is like she's one of our biggest word of mouth supporters. It's crazy. Can you talk about the editorial side of things? So has that always been a part of your program? How did you grow that? What is how do you approach distribution? Is that just Instagram posts, blogs on the website? How are you thinking about all that? We were slower with the editorial piece because I wanted us to be ready to start that conversation. We touched on it a little bit. We dress such cool women.

18:51And I always knew there was like a storytelling opportunity there as well as a content opportunity around solving real problems for our community. And so we did not bring on an editorial director until late 2021. I mean, early 2022, really. and her entire focus is on enhancing the storytelling and on standing up new like content franchises essentially um and I'm so glad that we waited to do it right because I feel like it's really landing and it's very intentional it's very thoughtful and um we have right now our work friends franchise which is our marquee franchise we photograph women for our community as part of our two photo shoot campaigns that we do.

19:39And so we cast them as models and we lean into the storytelling aspect of that and we try and make it a diverse group. So in an effort to inspire our community because they're all just rock stars and there are so many rock star women. We have office hours, which is our response to the fact that like women, as they get higher up on the ladder, generally get more and more inbound requests for their time. So how do we scale their time? So that's really an effort to just get 30 minutes with the fully booked and feed that into our community. We have a number of styling franchises and we're just about to roll one out that I'm really excited about.

20:20I don't think I can talk about yet, but that's going to be a fun one. But it's been, and the way we distribute it is both on our website and then through our catalog. Sometimes we'll do some content in those and then obviously on social. How important is the catalog? I feel like some companies still do it. It sounds like you use that for these franchises. What is the role? Is it a sales engine? Is it just another visual marketing platform? How do you think about catalogs? A little bit of everything. So I think that it depends on the purpose of the catalog. So we've done brand catalogs, which are more about enhancing the brand, giving the brand credibility and storytelling around some of the franchises I just spoke to.

21:01So I think reinforcing who we are and what we stand for. Those would have more editorial content. And then there are performance-driven catalogs, which in our experience outperform digital. It's comparable to a Facebook-Google spin is how we would see it. And yes, it always outperforms. Catalogs crash for us. Really? that's wild what works with your catalogs is it just that you you have such a core you know you have shoppers who know and love you guys is there is there some tweaks that you've made what what exactly makes a performance catalogs such a monster success great for lead generation for us uh it's especially successful i mean it all works together the hardest part about building a company like a retail company specifically is that you have to get everything to work together and support, like everything sort of supports everything else.

21:57And so one thing that works with catalog is that it's a vehicle to drive store traffic. And then when you get store traffic, you know that 50 % of people that walk in the door convert and they converted a very high AOV. Or, you know, it's just, I don't, it's a combination of things. It's our photography working, it's the product working, it's lead generation, it's bringing existing customers back into the fold. It gives you legitimacy and credibility. As we expand wholesale, people might see the catalog and then see it in a Nordstrom or what have you. It's just a little bit of everything working together.

22:34Get the catalog, you get the Instagram ad. It all has to work together and it does. Got it. Got it. You mentioned stores. Let's talk about stores because you had stores before the pandemic. You said that you cut some leases as early into 2020 as you could. I know that you've just opened a few stores. Is that correct? We've opened Soho, New York. So we've reopened one physical store in New York. I love stores. They've always been a part of our story. They are such a huge part of, I think, articulating what we're building and like really, really delivering a brand experience. we're so focused on the professional woman and we understand who our customer is to a T.

23:19And so getting to offer Argent in physical form and have a gathering place and be able to bring people together or be able to bring people in individually is just really special. From a business perspective, they're immediately ROI positive every time we open a store. So it's not just about brand for us because I know a lot of companies that do stores and physical retail for the brand to play. It's really compelling for our product because as you can imagine, it's much easier to consume in person versus online in terms of getting the fit right, getting the sizing right, understanding the quality.

23:54We have such confidence in our product. It's hard to really communicate that online as easily as it is in store. The second someone converts in store, they become a lifetime customer. Got it. And so is the Soho store a store? Is it more of a showroom? How do you view that? It's a store and retail is a huge part of our growth strategy. We expect to open two additional stores this year. In the next five years, we have a pretty robust and aggressive retail strategy. And what's the footprint of the ideal Argent store? Yeah, so it's focused on a time-constrained, high-powered woman who never really takes breaks.

24:38And even when she tries to take breaks, sometimes gets sucked back into work. So in our stores, we try to keep them clean and to let the products be the hero and to deliver on some, I don't know, like above and beyond aspects for our customers. So allowing a meeting like Wi-Fi, chargers everywhere, spaces for private conference calls, meetings, what have you. we've had New York like New York Times journalists take calls in the fitting rooms and previous pop ups so like we've learned so much through um our pop-ups that like this woman really can't fully unplug but on the flip side we are trying to fully spoil her if she is really able to like step out because this can be such a treat to just try on clothes and like you know bring a friend etc so So it sort of delivers on both and it depends on what's needed in the moment.

25:33Yeah. What are the new geographies you're thinking of opening up in? Regional expansion is our goal this year. We have a couple of great markets and you can probably guess what they are in this neck of the woods. And then we'll supplement with pop-up activation. So each month we're targeting some of our major cities across the U.S. to spend a week just activating those in person. Conferences are a huge part of our marketing strategy. So just popping up again where we know that these women will be and plugging in to organizations that are values aligned, that are focused on giving women content or connection or network.

26:21Those are really easy to plug into. But this year it's about regional expansion. So when you say conferences, that's super interesting. So does that mean if there's like a women in business conference happening in Chicago, you're probably going to that same week open up a pop-up right near there? We'll try to be at the conference. So our goal would be to work with the conference to create, like carve out some space and do a physical activation at the conference and sell at the conference. And how does that always perform? How does that work? Talk to me through that. Not always. So one of my favorite days in Argent's history was our launch day.

26:52we launched at the Watermark Women's Conference in San Jose. And it was the first time that we were receiving some product. It was this beautiful activation. Companies have started doing this more, but at the time we were popped up next to like Pfizer and Bank of America and Target. And we had this beautiful elevated experience. 6 ,000 women that are all generally our target demographic. You've got great programming. You know that they're all there and they've carved out the time to be there. And so it's just a really great marketing play, but it's also fantastic for revenue. I mean, it's just, we crushed.

27:33We crushed day one out of the gates. It was obvious that we'd built something special. And so we've been slightly inconsistent in terms of how we've engaged with conferences, mostly because of COVID the last couple of years. And now we're trying to be a bit more formulaic around it. They do not always perform, but I think that now we're pretty seasoned. And again, this is where having seven years under your belt really serves you well because you know how to filter out the good from the bad. But those will continue being a huge part of our strategy now as we reenter post-COVID. Got it. Got it.