Welcome to imagination in action, where we have conversations with compelling people driving the action that will power our futures. These are successful Imaginators you want to know?
So welcome everyone to imagination action. Tonight we're talking about the future of apparel. And it's going to be really interesting. We have Gihon, who's actually in Norway. Today, he's going to be calling in. He's keeping East Coast time while he's in Norway. And he's doing some really interesting things. And MIT grad, who ran track it at MIT. And I think he designed his own shoe and that led to him getting in the apparel business, he can tell us much more. But to kick us off, I want to welcome Haley. She's our artist and resident. She was in Europe, writing great folk music. And so we think, I think there's feedback. So So Hayley, why don't you kick us off? Keihan Hi to everyone.
Hey, everyone has gone. I'm excited to be here. And my co founder, Mike will be joining us as well.
So, Hayley, why don't you play something and honor the future of apparel?
Okay, it's good to be here. I have some, some Ministry of Supply masks, and I'm excited for this conversation. This is a song I wrote during my residency. This just came out last week. It's called a week in Berlin and I dedicated to the future of apparel. Is 2am Emily Kimberlin? For the first two shifts, you're on your way into that restaurant on 12 that I never liked. There's a word for this feeling here. I need some chi. Well, missy, you are traveling back home to the place where we live. Now you live there long where we hide from the landlord. And the weird girls, upstate, my guitars in your closet until it saves there. And I finally figured it out. For the first time something is clear. There's no way of summing this up. Except to say, I don't know how I feel. And I'm not sure I ever
know thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Great and Max we'll we'll call on you and Cory in a little bit but Gihon tell us about you How did you get into apparel? What makes you credible? I know you were talking about the Moore's Law of clothes and our carbon footprint and and you know people think of cars and heating buildings is a carbon thing but but apparel plays a big role in it and and what are you doing so kind of introduce yourself?
Yeah, I'm excited to be here. My name is Gihan Amarasiriwardena. I'm one of the co-founders Ministry of Supply, and my passion for soft goods started a long time ago. It was back when I was a boy scout growing up in New England. I grew up in Amherst mass, so not too far from Boston, and I went camping every month and just fell in love with Outdoor Gear and started making everything from rain jackets to sleeping bags, you know, and snow days and school vacations. You know, I would take space blankets and run them through my parents paper shredder and use as a retro reflective insulation in my sleeping bags. I would well first I was making like a windproof fleece and I use trash bags and and laminate that to ripstop and polar fleece and quickly realized that, you know, trash bags aren't that breathable. And that's my kind of first first experience with performance materials and go dumpster diving, finding, you know, Tyvek home rap and making jackets out of that. So this kind of idea of hacking materials was something I've just loved from a young age. And then kind of coming to MIT where I went to college, I studied chemical and biological engineering and was really able to kind of dive deeper into the materials development process. And then also kind of the synthetic biology that goes into kind of some of the modern fibers that we're starting to use today. But during that time, had the opportunity to work at the sports Tech Institute in the UK, working with brands like Lululemon and, and new balance on kind of their advanced research projects. And I was an athlete, I ran cross country and track and so it was kind of a natural opportunity to see how you could take kind of the engineering principles, the but then apply them to performance athletics. And when it when it came to kind of, you know, starting my professional career, it's been a brief stint at IDEO learning, you know, the fundamentals of human centered design there as a as an intern, and really wanted to kind of take everything I've experienced and learned in the material sector. But applying that to what can be worn around the city and, and really taking off of the mountain off the track, for example, and into the places that we spend most of our time, so. And then, and with that, I was I was at MIT Trust Center. And coincidentally, there was another student who was working the exact same project. And then Bill Allah, who runs the Entrepreneurship Center at MIT, introduced us and says, My co founder, Vaughn, he's a he's gonna join us here. And actually,
I see him on in the room. And you when you finish, just introduce yourself, let's have him on also introduce himself.
Yeah, yeah. And this is the perfect segue. So avanti. Want to tell a bit about your back?
And actually Gihon you were the CEO? And now you're the president. Have you guys like traded that title back and forth?
We trade that title back and forth? Exactly. Yeah. I tend to focus a little bit more on the product development and, and engineering and kind of like the supply side of business in mind focuses a little bit more on the demand side of business. But if you
ran a marathon, wearing the your your clothes, right?
Yeah, that's right. Yep. Yeah, my wife and I both ran half half marathons in our seats and set the Guinness World Records for has fastest half marathons. And that was kind of our, our field testing of the product.
Yeah, so so for those who are not familiar with Ministry of Supply, some of it's kind of, like, pretty well designed formal way or how do you describe it?
Yeah, we find the time now is as work leisure, it's taking, you know, all the performance materials from the outdoor athletic sector and, and that comforts, stretch, ease of care, but designing it for for the work day. And that's really evolved, you know, that, that used to be for the office for business travel for commuting. And now that can be for the hybrid office, it can be from working from home, but it's this idea of comfort and looking sharp coming together.
So, Aman, can you maybe talk a little bit about your journey into starting this company and why you're passionate about it?
Yeah, absolutely. I'll keep mine short. Because Gihon is generally in most ways more impressive than mine. So I'll be brief here but I you know, I think our our backgrounds, as you probably heard are pretty similar and kind of this deep passion that that manifests in different ways for us when I came out of undergrad into consulting getting on a flight every Monday morning off of flight every Thursday night, you know, hacking hotel irons and living that kind of business casual life and all of the challenges come along with that right stiff shoes, you know, tight belts, dry cleaners every Sunday, half on tuck shirts, sweat stains, that kind of thing. And so when I came to grad school in 2011, that was I was desperate to find a way out of it and and went so far even before that to cut up old Nike socks and so the soles into the insoles of these god awful gold toe socks that kind of come to offer $1 at Costco and, and I, you know, I wear these things is almost a secret weapon and being as comfortable as I am, you know, with my loungy socks and a pair of dress shoes. And that was the intent from the beginning. And so, so when you had I met in 2011, and had these hand hacked prototypes that, you know, function the same way we're taking the best of our comfortable clothes and working them into the silhouettes of our more presentable clothes. It was a it was a no brainer to partner up. Because what are the odds? You know, two kids in engineering school care this much about such at the time a unique concept and it's become more of a red ocean in the last couple of years, but at the time was quite novel. And so we felt almost an obligation to join hands and go at it together.
Great So, Alison, you know, I'm interested in trends in apparel. But would you have a question you want to ask our co founders?
Well, it's just so fascinating because apparel is such an enormous market. And so, I'd love to better understand, as you sort of see the fashions that come across, what part of the fashion world do you guys see as your sweet spot? And what parts? Do you decide? Were never gonna touch? I mean, is that is footwear out? Is glam wear out? Like, how do you define the terrain you're operating in?
Yeah, that's such a good question. Like, I think we are really kind of in this new category, we're calling it you know, work leisure, it's kind of evolving recently, but it's trying to focus on, you know, really the the time that you're working, but acknowledging that, especially in the past, you know, couple years that, oh, our work in our day are very much intertwined. You know, it used to be that you would have, you know, your your, your business, casual outfits, and then you come back home and switch to the t shirt and jeans or something comfortable. And that would be the delineation of work in life. And what we've tried to focus on is this seamless, singular wardrobe that can that can take you between your work and your home life. And what that has meant for us is that we're probably less playing into the temporal, you know, six months, six week seasonal trends, but really trying to build the foundation of your wardrobe. So, you know, a great pair of basic pants that you can build your daily outfit on. And we've also have, you know, a line of over shirts, shortcodes, etc, which are these, which are really kind of signifiers of this evolving wardrobe, where people are kind of seeing, for example, the shortcode as the replacement to the blazer, they're seeing the overture as the replacement to the cardigan, right? These are all pieces that kind of show how they're they're meant to fit in your your office place where your office where the virtual office and, and where you can look sharp, but at the same time, feel comfortable and competent.
So you guys, can you talk about carbon and apparel? What should we know? And how is that informing you on the decisions around your product? When someone wears a t shirt? You know, are they hurting the environment? And what do you think's going to happen in the future?
I'll let you take the bulk of this one, because I think he's pioneered some really novel ways of thinking about this topic. But I will bridge the gap between that last answer and this next one. And one of the most shocking things to me. That's, that's come with, you know, utilization and durability, and its impact on on sustainability. I think what he was describing was what we, you know, internally in our kind of own nerdy language use this called single closet theory, this idea that, you know, our parents grew up with a winter and summer closet, or a formal and casual one, this idea of all of us being united in the same place, that actually plays nicely into kind of a minimalist mindset and a progressive kind of fewer better things mindset. But also, bridges are really good entrance point to sustainability, where, you know, so much of the carbon footprint of the clothes we were, is reliant upon the life that we give it and the life after we give it and I think that's been probably my most interesting and exciting understanding of how clothing and carbon work together is, isn't that kind of durability and usage metric, but yet, I'll pass it on to you for the actual science behind it.
Yeah, no, it's something where we have anyone who gets into soft goods manufacturing, and you spend, you know, weeks at the factory, you you start to see how dirty like the production process is, you know, you're starting from raw materials from, you know, basic, you know, P T polyester that has to be extruded under high temperature, you know, typically, these factories will have, you know, unreliable electricity. So, they'll be running on local, you know, even, you know, individual, you know, coal, fire plants that are power plants that they're, they're operating, and you start to kind of see, see how fragmented the local production can be. And that's how most of our products are made. Some parts are made at scale, but a lot of it is in particular, for apparel. The interesting thing about apparel is that it is a production technique that requires relatively low capital investment, and it's mostly sewing machines for the most part. And it tends to be one of the first industries that goes into an area that is going under economic development and so because of that, you tend to be manufacturing in place that may have, you know, underdeveloped, you know, power supply and infrastructure. And it's also much more labor intensive. So it's exciting in the one hand because apparel has over the history, you know, past 160 years, you know, two years has been really a tool for industrialization for economic development. But at the same time, it tends to be in a place where that infrastructure has been developed. So we've seen that firsthand.
And what we're trying to really look at is have we dove deep on one of our products, it's our it's our arrow, Drescher. It's a dress shirt, it's a dress shirt that's machine washable, wrinkle free, it's made out of polyester. And that was kind of the original version of it. That was, instead of when a lot of brands do their kind of like eco wines, they'll oftentimes create a small limited run, and put a green label on it, right. But when we really want to dive into the footprint, and LC, the lifecycle analysis of our of our products, we wanted to make sure we were starting from one of our highest volume pieces, and at the time, that was those dress shirts. And so we went all the way down, you know, with through our supply chain to is what they call the scope three, which is have like your supplier supplier of raw materials and energy. And that meant, you know, going down to the polyester pellet level, and understanding what the emissions were for extruding that polyester to spinning it, to weaving it, to cutting and sewing it to transporting it and all the way to end of life as well for the customer, which includes washing and drying time, right? If you have a cotton fabric as a polyester fabric, you have different drying times. And so what we did is we looked at all these components of the life cycle. And we're able to do this pretty standardized process, which is the lifecycle analysis. But through this, we were able to understand it really that the principle carbon emissions come from three spots, it's what are your raw materials. And so in our case, for example, we're talking about what was originally a a polyester dress shirt. And we found that by replacing that with recycled polyester, and not just regular recycled polyester, but recycled polyester that we we actually sourced in Japan. And the reason it's interesting why Japan is because the incinerate most of the trash there. And so if you go to like any office building, you'll see like seven recycling bins right before this final bin. So you'll see it says paper, clear plastic clear bottles, you know, aluminum steel, and then finally there's a little red trash can at the end with a little flame on and it's to signify that, hey, whatever you don't sort is going to get incinerated and not too far from from your city. And so what happens is there's a very strict and it's built on the culture of separating the materials. And so we're able to get with a high purity, clear plastic p t, that we can use to make optically white dress shirts. And this was a big challenge for us. You know, usually what happens with recycled materials is they get us kind of mixed in together. And they really just end up cutting downgrades, I mean, we've all seen like, the new decks that are made of recycled plastic, and there's a bunch of colors in there, and they kind of diet so that it kind of masks the color. But that's what happens with recycled materials, it's very hard to kind of get that original purity and the purity matters both for the aesthetics, but even more importantly, the structural integrity of the product. So you don't want to sacrifice purity, or, you know, sustainability for a material that can actually break down faster. So that's this is just like where we had to dive deep into so we realized Doing this allows us to reduce our carbon emissions by 52% for the raw materials alone. And that's because you don't have to do the raw material extraction, you don't have to do the refinement from the crude oil. Because that was like one of the biggest ones this the other one is, you know, what's, what's your your manufacturing process. And so in our case, we use a lot of computerized knitting and our products which are virtually zero waste, essentially. So that allows us to produce a product, both on demand but also with with zero waste. And so we do that for many of our products. But that's another way to again, further reduce the material consumption of your products. And then lastly, kind of one of these other kind of shocking insights was how big of a difference see versus air shipping makes and so, for example, it's about nine times higher emissions to ship a kilo gram of material by sea versus air. And so if you're if you're spending, you're emitting nine times as much carbon to airship a product that can end up being 20 to 40% of the emissions for the entire product just in getting into your warehouse. So it's just this reminder
that Wait, did I hear that right? So by plane is nine times worse in terms of impacting the environment? Yep, yep. Then, and for, you know, as there's more and more pressure to get products faster, there's gonna be more pressure to put on using air travel, I bet.
Yeah, and especially with right now, like, the supply chain challenges that, you know, brands are trying to figure out how do we just get inventory on our shelves right now? So everyone's looking at me there.
Gihon let me just jump in here. So we have four of our artists in residence and you heard from Haley at the beginning. I'm now gonna turn to max you know, we've heard some great stuff from Gihon and Aman, can you just play a short piece and dedicated to all of us who were close and for these guys being great leaders and innovators in apparel Sure absolutely.
Great that was Max home one of our artists in residence playing some jazz live, he didn't push play on an mp3 player. That was him lives. Thank you. And next week on imagination, action Imaginators. Kathy Murphy, she just retired as the number two at a little company called fidelity. And over half the company reported to her and she grew a business from 850 billion to 4.4 trillion. Can't wait for everyone to meet her next week. This time. Alison, what's on your mind? We're talking apparel, and we got two experts and Yogi hands in Norway, and Amman. I'm not sure where you are. But I know you guys are leading.
Well, I find the story so interesting. And for our audience, if you haven't already done it, I urge you to go on to www dot Ministry of Supply comm I'm finding just about anything I need for the next year on your site. And I love you have a guide to what is work leisure, which no one has quite defined anymore, but started getting the dry cleaner, which is great. But I'm kind of fascinated by the fact if I understand right that you're on Newbury Street. And I'm really interested, you know, how have the traditional fashion companies responded to you because it feels like fashion has become a bit of a contradiction in terms where it doesn't feel like it's about comfort and it doesn't feel like it's about you know, the individual and testing so, which brands have sort of welcomed you and have any sort of frozen you out?
Yeah, I'll jump in here. That is such a good question that I really love how you phrase that I think it's it's it's, you know, fashion, as we learned early on can be wildly inclusive or unwelcoming deeply depending on where you are. We found early on, we would go to these trade shows. And you know, we were proposing this idea of a new category and attempting to sell to department stores whose very name implies their adherence and allegiance to a department and to the idea of not having new categories. And so we found ourselves just constantly pitching and pitching and pitching in which no avail customers were liking the product when we kind of explained to them directly but but having really no luck with with these trade shows, we'd set up these booths and they were cooler in our first booth has thermal mirror to show how heat was managed in a garment. And you know, to no one's surprise there were no other thermal mirrors since then, or before then and we were so so so we quickly found that that was not going to be the way we'd kind of speak was through a traditional ecosystem so we you know, this was still in the earlier days of direct consumer decided to go all in you know, it's kind of a little bit of a sour grapes. Well, if they don't want us and we'll we'll go this way now. and found that on the other side, the startup community has just been incredibly welcoming. I mean, so many of our peers here in Boston, you know, we're constantly sharing secrets tips, if we discover something, we send it out to the first five people we think of, and they did the same. And it's amazing to see, the kind of clothing support system here in Boston, I would even say nationwide, is incredibly welcoming, inclusive and encouraging in a way that we think needed. And appreciate so deeply.
Let me ask you guys about 3d printing. You know, when it came on the scene, I think people predicted that would change everything. And there's additive printing. And if you have a plane and you need a piece, you can print something. What is 3d printing mean, for clothes? Like? Are we going to have devices, like the replicator and Star Trek where we can create clothes at home? You talked about the nine times. Boats, first planes in terms of moving product is everything comes from different places around the world? How are you tracking 3d printing? And and how are you using it? And what should we know?
Yeah, this is an interesting spot for for us because in many ways that the future is here. Additive Manufacturing, as it's called, is basically like any process where you're taking your kind of raw material and building the final product up from scratch that way versus, you know, cutting the material out. And so what's really cool about computerized knitting is it's it's like 3d printing. But instead of building layers of plastic on top of each other, and fusing them together, what you're actually doing is you're knitting these little knots, and you can always think these little knots like a pixel in an image. And by putting all of these knots together and laying them in a row, and what you actually end up doing is each layer gets knit into the previous layer. Whereas if you've seen like a 3d printed plastic piece before, it tends to have like these lines through them, and the piece will usually snap there, because you're just relying on those two layers, just being at the right temperature, so that they won't, so that they that there'll be a fuse together. And that fusing isn't as strong as the the raw material itself. Whereas what's interesting about 3d knitting is that it actually, integrally knits each layer into each other. So it is one of the most durable ways of actually producing apparel. And it's something where we've seen not only the ability to kind of create products on demand, but you can actually control a bunch of other parameters, you can change the material composition, you can change the tension in different areas, you can have porosity, in an area under the arms, for example. And then you can also have a low tension area at the elbows so that it'll articulate the way your body moves, you can create three dimensional conformation so that you can create a shoulder seam that looks like a molded piece, but it's actually knit as one. And that's what really unlocks this. It's the ability to do two things. It's one knit a produce a product of one, which is kind of the devalued 3d printing. But the other part is that we can modulate other elements like sizing, for example, right, we can, we can modulate the colors of the products in real time, just by switching yarns in the machine. And so this is something that allows us to actually operate one of these machines in our store in Boston. Back in 2017, we put a machine in the store and we started knitting Blazers there. And we put the latest version of the machine in our store on Newbury Street, where we've been developing and doing r&d. And most recently, we produce masks. And this was, you know, in kind of week, two of the or week, one of the day that was like March 12. Within eight days, we were able to design develop and prototype, a mask that we could deploy for healthcare workers within 10 days. And that's just something that I think is the promise of additive manufacturing is you can do rapid prototyping. But in this case with computers, you can actually do rapid manufacturing. So we were able to scale us up to several 1000 mass and just the order of weeks. And that's something that we couldn't have done with traditional manufacturing techniques. So it's a very exciting piece of machinery. It's driving a big impact in the footwear industry right now. And we're really trying to see that come to life in in apparel.
So you guys, Google Glass came out in 2013. They spent $2 billion on it. It was 2010 technology in 2013. It was a heads up display. You looked at this little centimeter by seven to meter, and it was really underwhelming and they positioned it not in the right way. I think if it had gone enterprise, it probably would have done really well. Apple Newton was a smartphone before smartphones, it didn't do very well. Where is Moore's Law and clothes and wearables going? And is that part of your overall strategy? Or Not really? And do you have any insight into that world?
Gihon, I'll pass the mic to you on where Moore's law will take us because I think there's a pretty bright future ahead, but I will have a heavy moment of vulnerability be the first to admit that we were way too early on 3d printing. We were we were so excited about this, I remember when we first kind of caught wind that this could be something we can work with and hack away at. It was a no brainer was how quickly can we get one of these machines and start playing. And at the time, I think the market wasn't really ready or interested in I mean, it was a novelty in our store printing these blazers, as he noted, and the products that were coming off of it weren't quite ready for, you know, mass market now that has changed dramatically over the over the last five years or so that we've been tinkering. But in a nice kind of worked out, okay, and that we perfected this skill set. And maybe that's a generous word, but grew this skill set over a couple of years without anything to kind of apply to it had it had a hammer without the right nail, as our colleague, Brian would say. And it was important for us to figure out where to place this or abandon it right, we don't need to keep pouring resources into it if we don't have a clear place. And then the pandemic came about, and we were able to rapidly 3d print masks at a speed that was pretty unparalleled at the time, because we had perfected this skill set quietly, before we even knew we needed it. So while normally we wait for a market poll to answer and solve the problem, in this case, we did kind of let technology push get the best of us and we let ourselves play and tinker. And it worked out nicely. And I think it got us to the point where we're really optimistic about what what can happen in the next decade with with 3d printing.
So Gihon wearables and Moore's law. And then after that, we'll have our next artist and resident Cory, play a piece, and then we'll go to Allison.
Yeah, in terms of wearables, we've been looking at the market, and a lot of it is focused on biometric sensing, right, it's looking at heart rate is looking at, you know, breath rate, and really trying to give information that can in many cases, you know, help an athlete train. But what we find is, a lot of times that data is an open loop, right? You we're extracting data, you know, as we're going through our day, but the Garmin isn't actually taking action based on that. And that's where we think there's a huge opportunity for for wearables, which is, you know, much like, you know, the the promise of the self driving car is the fact that it has this incredible battery technology, it has a you know, a DC motor or AC motor in there, and then it's got all the sensing, right. And that sensing allows you to have automatic steering, to control the speed, etc. And it creates this closed loop, right, it's aware of it's running through where what the car is doing, it modulates what it does based on that. And, and that's what we think that apparel should do, you know, you know, smart world products should be aware of what the wearer is doing, and what the environment around is doing. And then modulate its capability. So in this case, we actually launched a product called the mercury intelligent Heated Jacket back in 2018. And it's a, it looks like a really sleek ski jacket, for example. But on the interior, it's got these carbon fiber heating panels. And so it runs off of like a USB charging brick, kind of similar to what you charge your phone on. But one of the things that it does is so those carbon fiber gene panels heat up much like the car seat heaters in your car. And so what it does, though, is many, many times we think of, well, how do you control heat, we think about a thermostat, right? We think about essentially having a little temperature sensor, and if the body temperature elevates, we'll turn the heat down, right and vice versa. But one of our kind of learnings Was that was that our winter skin temperature elevates, we're already too hot, we're probably going to be sweating pretty soon. And so we really tracked just the the cost of accelerometers. And they just plummeted over the past 10 years, right, really driven by, you know, cell phones in particular. And that unlock the ability for us to have a really well
in LiDAR, you know, LIDAR your ability to scan everything around you and have a information is coming down dramatically because self driving cars so it's fine aren't going to be in the Close.
It may be and I think that's kind of like where like this awareness of your surroundings kind of plays plays a huge role. And I think with with the accelerometer was like just the ability to say, Hey, you're standing at a cold bus stop, crank the heat up all the way, right. But if you've been walking now for two or three minutes, we can anticipate that you will be hot, and you'll start to sweat in five or six minutes. And kind of one of the surprising facts was that, you know, when you're standing still, your body's creating 50 watts of heat, essentially. But when you're walking, you're creating 100 watts of heat. And if you're walking quickly, you're your torso is creating 150 watts of heat. And so it's three times as much heat that's being generated there. And that's the number one kind of correlation between how warm you're going to be is how active you are. So our intelligent Heated Jacket uses that accelerometer to figure that out. And then the other part that's cool about it is we have a Bluetooth enabled app. And so you can modulate the temperature. But one of the things it does is it actually takes into account your preferences. So if you start saying, you know, I'm feeling hot right now, compared to kind of what our trained data and there is saying, it'll learn that you you run hot. And so it's a simple kind of ml algorithm that we have in there that allows it to learn on device ml
machine learning for those who may not be familiar with it.
Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know, what's super cool is like, this is kind of the future of AI is it's like, focus on on edge computing. And so this is something where we've got a little microcontroller embedded in the jacket, that's learning your preferences reacting to the environment. And but when you look at the product, it's not gonna look like Google Glass, and it looks like something familiar. But you will feel the difference when you're wearing it.
It's great. So let me just jump in here. In a moment, we'll hear from Allison want to point out that I mentioned next week, the Imaginator is number former number two at fidelity as of a few weeks ago, has since retired the week after that. We've actually moved next that show a week later. And the week after that, we're gonna have a lady that was the head of penguins. For years at the New England Aquarium, she went down to Antarctica to help with a penny penguin rescue of hundreds of 1000s of penguins after an oil spill. And we're gonna have a great conversation with her. And then we do have a another talk. The Imaginator is creating the future of wood using rice to create a wood substitute that you think is mahogany, but it's not and how that's helping the environment and you don't have to cut down trees. But now I'd like to introduce Corey, one of our artists and residents. He showed up at the New England Conservatory one of the top conservatories and said I want to be here and they said but you play the accordion that's not our thing. And he said I want to be a great musician and you're gonna you're gonna teach me and they did and he's now like the Tom Brady of accordion so what do you got for us and celebration of apparel?
Well, I heard Guinness World Record as well in here so well to Guinness. We have two Guinness world record holders in Wales I bet I didn't for longest longest accordion playing. So which I would rather play for 32 hours and run a half marathon fully clothed I think but so I give it to you. Max, he played some fantastic jazz so I will stay away from that and oh Karolina po do some great classical so maybe I'll do something more European something totally, totally different. See Great, thank you.
And one other thing I didn't mention is the penguin lady's email is the penguin lady. So Diane is so into it that her email is her passion. Alison, what do you got and I to those listening. This is imagination in action where we get people who are using their imagination and putting into action. We have MIT undergrad and a Sloan Business School, MIT grad who founded a company on their passion, and they are doing some great things, and they are making action happen. And we look forward to getting our audience involved and asking questions. This is a two hour show when we're just getting started. And we also have Esther Dyson on the stage, one of our favorite Imaginators. And we also have Caroline, who's the great artists and resident musician resident who will play a little bit later. But Allison, what's on your mind?
Well, this is so fascinating, I have to admit, I've never felt fashion was a compelling topic. But I think the two of you make it so interesting. And, and your website is just extraordinary, linked at the top of this, but you made this commitment to be carbon neutral from day zero, which is something many, many companies are completely struggling with. And I'd love to understand what things that prevented you from doing in fashion, what things were easiest to do, like, you know, socks or knitting. And, you know, what you're most proud
of? What's the worst in terms of carbon footprint? Terms of apparel? Like what should we avoid wearing?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, it's a lot of it comes down to two things, its materials and and how that was gone to you delivered to you. And so I'd say, you know, on the spectrum there, there's certainly, you know, materials like regular polyester, which, you know, have a crude oil origin, for example. So there's inherent emissions related to that. But you have to look at kind of the end of life cycle. So what's the drying time that's gonna be associated with it. On the other hand, there's materials that, you know, I love merino wool, I love wearing as an athlete, and kind of like, especially for wintertime. But it's just shocking, you know, what the emissions are per kilogram of it. So for context, it's a wool t shirt will probably be about two and a half times higher carbon emissions than a similar athletic one that's made of performance polyester, for example. So it's these kind of shocking things. And we certainly use some Merino in our products, and we're trying to figure out ways that we can find some of the best attributes of natural materials. But at the same time, you know, bring them into, you know, cover modern life where you don't have to worry about taking care of them through the the dry cleaner, or, you know, having to go through a very rigorous, you know, ease of use of care. So, I would say that, like, you know, from the shocking moments, I think, recycled materials, you know, when we dove into polyester, that was one that really motivated us to switch over our product line, in terms of our recycled content. And so, now, over 60% of the material content in our product line, that's polyester is recycled. And that was something that took, you know, three, four years to do. And, you know, the challenges are really about how do you make sure that sustainability isn't at odds with durability, because in many cases, actually, you know, what is good in the like, the short terms, you know, lifecycle analysis of the product, which is looking at like, you know, how much emissions or emissions are generated to get it to your doorstep. But versus looking at the how many wares you can get, you know, a lot of times, you know, these recycled materials are going to break down faster, because they have a lot of contaminants in them. And so, like, we were talking about the arrows, zero shirt, it was a very long process in developing the yarn, developing the fiber going through the trials to develop it, and making sure that it met people's expectations from an aesthetic standpoint, but also our durability expectations. So that I would say, you know, kind of the three big changes we did, we're moving our raw materials, recycled materials wherever possible. Switching to additive manufacturing. So we're talking about computerized knitting. We've used that extensively enterprise land about 26% of our production in 2020. In early 2001 was was on additive manufacturing, machines or computers, knitting machines, and then switching from air freight to sea freight. It's one of those things that once you learn not only how how much it costs To airship something, but also how carbon intensive it is. You can't, you can't forget that. So I think those were kind of the three learnings there. Yeah, but at the same time, there's some really interesting stuff in, you know, there's almost kind of like three eras of materials, there is the original natural fibers that give your your cotton's your linens, your your walls, for example, then there is the era of the synthetic fibers, which is really the second half of the 20th century now. And what's kind of bout recently has been this burgeoning field of bio based fibers that are kind of taking a lot of the principles of, you know, the brewing process, and applying that towards developing all sorts of bio based fibers that are based on for example, you know, wood pulp, or, you know, waste, you know, organic matter, and fermenting and creating in the pants of mine right now, are actually 17% Corn based polyester. So it's the remnants of corn husks, that can be polymerized into polyester. And it's a really, really exciting space right now, because, you know, all of the development in the biotech sphere is is making its way into material. So it's something that's where we really kind of had our, our eyes on in terms of reducing carbon emissions. Because those materials,
yeah, yes, sorry. So I'm standing next to an astronaut suit. And I'm standing next to a 3d printer. And I just walked in to your your tours, John. John, sales guys, and there's tons of great plants all over the store. I don't know if they're fake, you 3d printing them or they're real, but and there's a lot of great clothes, but I just realized I happen to be in the neighborhood. So I'm interviewing you guys, you're in Norway. Gihon. And I thought I actually experienced it. I'm sorry, you guys can't see anything because it's social audio. But But I'm here. We have Esther Dyson, you know, in the room, I think he's she's come to just about every one of our shows. She emailed me saying she's gonna be late the next two weeks, but she'll be there. Ladies and gentlemen. Gihon and Aman, you're gonna be Esther. Esther, what's your question?
So this is a bit of a curveball, but I'm really wondering what you know, you, you seem to be very much on the edge with 3d printing. So when? When we're all in the metaverse and suddenly you don't need to wear clothes that get shipped anywhere. What do you and I mean, this is serious people wear clothes, obviously, for physical reasons, but they also wear them to express their personalities to absolute like it or not to show that they have enough money to spend on buying useless things. You know, the joke about my tie cost $500 While my tie costs $800. What do you what do you see happening? And personally? Do you care? I mean, do you want to do stuff in the metaverse? Are you interested in clothing as a symbol or just clothing as something physical? Just take this question and run with it.
Yeah, yeah, the, the fact that like, we've seen that clothing play both the functional role, but then also the identity role. And and they're inseparable. But at the same time, one of the reasons we found that people come to purchase our products and particulars, they, they almost want our price to create a foundation like a blank slate for them to, to for their work to shine. And I think, you know, there's there's different roles and different reasons people will buy products. But if someone's looking for a garment, explicitly for the purpose of almost wearing something that's in the form of as a piece of art, right, that's, that's one role to show artistic expression or expression to that regard. But there are other ways where it's, in many cases, a uniform, and it's it's a form of like, identity and an identity in their workplace and, and acknowledging the kind of like our workspace is changing. But we found that like for a lot of our customers that they want this uniform to be part of their identity. It allows them to reduce the number of decisions that they had to make. And so when we think about, you know, kind of the metaverse, it's like, I can imagine that that same desire for identity in a uniform may still translate. And yeah, it's it's one of the spaces where computer design has really taken off, you know, over the past 30 years, and it worked really well for hardgoods right? like tables, chairs, etc, like those have been modeled and rendered for quite a long time. But what's interesting is in the past 1015 years, with just the kind of expansion of CGI in the like movie industry, and the video game space, that there was a need for having costumes and, and, and layer like garments for these avatars and these, these characters. And so there became this entire industry around developing, designing and developing for the 3d world that's existed for like, many years. I mean, you can think of, you know, the the films that we've all seen the past few decades, and someone designed those clothes in 3d for them. And so what's interesting is, we're actually starting to use those same tools as one called clo, 3d. And it's kind of the leader in the space and interesting, they started off as they wanted to be a tool for apparel designers, they realized the market was for the CGI industry. And then now it's finally kind of coming back into the physical world. But it's, we've we've used it quite a bit for understanding and evolving our iterations where, you know, when you can design in 3d, you can save yourself, you know, a month to get one single prototype, right? You can go through 50 prototypes, in a day, just sitting there and iterating, the Fit iterating the style of swapping out the patterns. And, and we've, we've witnessed this ourselves, having done a lot of 3d CAD for our stores, for example, and realizing this saves us an incredible amount of time and heartache. Because we can go through more iterations digitally before we go to the physical version. So my hope is that there are things that we learn from the metaverse where it's like, maybe becomes this digital testbed for products, right? Where we, we kind of see what are the what are the styles and silhouettes that you know, are gaining traction. And instead of, you know, in the fast fashion world where it's like, you know, make a ton of products, see what sticks. And then trash the rest? Maybe what ends up happening is like fast fashion moves into the metaverse, there's a ton of options there, and we see what works. And we make the physical versions from you know, and we only make the ones that have kind of the the volume that can sustain, like sustainable production for those products, right. And so my hope is that maybe that's a positive outcome of having this kind of digital world where we can really see, you know, it is a market, right? So people are actually having to decide, do I like this piece? Does this fit with my identity and that they had the option to have a physical version of it, then that that becomes a choice. So yeah, it's a really, really interesting question that we've been kind of seeing both sides from where the the state of the art right now for digital rendering or clothing has has been strongest in CGI realm. Right is is it looks photorealistic. But there's still some things that we haven't quite.
So let's jump in here. So again, I'm in your store, and I'm happying this if I were to buy Allison a shirt? And is that going to be a better carbon footprint than her ordering it online? I'm now rubbing the phone on your 3d printer and the fabrics. So I'm curious about that. And I'm also curious, you know, when there's gaps in every town, you know, a generation ago, clothing was sort of homogenized. And as the world becomes smaller for your design, because a big big part of is the manufacturing side, but for the style design. Are you looking at any cultures? Are you looking at any Marvel comic characters or Star Trek characters? Like Like, how are you coming up with the designs? And where do you see things heading? And are you able to kind of change the vector of popular designs, and I also want to say to the audience, if anyone wants a shirt, let me know. I'll pick you up. And then we do want to open this up to the audience in a moment. We'll also hear from Caroline, who is a fantastic virtuoso on the violin. And again you're watching you're listening to imagination action and are imagining or is Gihon who is extraordinary started this company for with great clothes and as I walked into a store there's a big sign saying if you don't have the means to buy this clothes will help you out and you know, it's another statement of they're they're aware of society and the social economic stuff.
And if you can just also include in your Answer to John, something about branding and intellectual property because that's clearly going to be a big issue as things become more easily reproducible, duplicatable versus NF T's, which are at least in theory unique.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That kind of at the first point about, you know, where, where we, we see our inspiration coming from. If everyone's wondering where we're the brand name came from, it's, if you've ever watched James Bond movies before, there's there's always a scene where bond goes and sees Q and and he gets outfitted for the mission. And Q, you know, is the, the person in the lab, you know, they've got a team of engineers and scientists, you know, inventing all of these solutions, and they, they create this product and bond takes on the mission. Right? And, and always use it in a different way than you'd expect. But I think that, you know, well, our styling is kind of, you know, I wouldn't say James Bond, you know, exactly, but there's the the story is what inspires us rate of people being on a mission, people wanting to look sharp, no matter what situation they end up in wherever they end up. And, and the our products, not only being something that, that, you know, that doesn't hold you back, but actually enables you to get through the different parts of your day. And the moments where we say our price real staying out is like, where it connects you. So it's like commuting is something that's been really big, it's, it's whether it's, you know, the, you know, 30 minute phone call walk that you're going to take, or it's you know, getting to, you know, walk into your office, instead of taking public transit, right. These are trends that we're seeing right now. And the fact that our clothes allow you to kind of ease between things is is really inspired by this, like, kind of people on a mission concepts. And then when it comes to IP, I'd say, Yeah, fashion is, is challenging, because IP is actually generally kind of overlooked, right? Most of the intellectual property is in the design, where we have tried to really focus on is our process so whether that's, you know, our selection of materials, our testing, so every product we create goes through 50 ASTM tests ASTM, Americans standards and testing, measurements of safe testing measurements, and and basically what allows us to do is really rigorously test all of our fabrics, all of our garments, to see if they meet abrasion, pilling, color fastness, you know, wash durability standards. And that kind of scientific engineering driven approach is what separates our products. And so, it's it's not like a fiber technology necessarily. There is tech, you know, IP that we're starting to generate in products like our Mercury jacket, where both in the microcontroller setup that we have there, and then also the algorithm that's running on the garment. So that's an interesting spot, I think is is, you know, we were talking about where Moore's Law meets clothing. And the exciting part of Moore's law is that, you know, transistors get, you know, twice as small and get 20, twice as many on a on a chip, every two years. And for physical products like clothing. The rate of change isn't as fast, you're limited by really kind of fundamental material physics, and that moves at a much slower rate. And so I think what we're realizing is that, like, when those two play together, it's pretty exciting, because, you know, we can develop our Mercury jacket, and then launch a software update and unlock capabilities, right after the garments out there, right. Usually, most products get worse with time, right? They wear out. But ours, we hope, that with the kind of promise of wearable devices is that they actually are better with time.
So Gihon This isn't wasn't planned, but I'm wearing your suit. And I plan to work today. And yes, I live in Boston know that it's pretty rainy and icy out. And I wore my top of the line. snow pants, and I wore my North Face jacket over and I got to my meeting and I just took it off. But I did feel like James Bond I even remember. And my sneakers are totally soaked. And they smell but I'm not wearing them because I switched into shoes and I have my bag and you know, I'm doing great. I'm sort of dreading putting those sneakers on by comb. But But But I get that I just want to say that Gihon is speaking at our TEDx Boston on March 7. And we're gonna have three cameras, one's gonna be on the audience. And I haven't told Gihon this, but I was thinking, maybe he could 3d print some red masks, that that, and maybe we can have sharpies or some way to put words on the masks and as one of the cameras in the audience, that that people can express themselves by wearing these masks, it'll be an element in these talks, and remind us of this pandemic period. And, and you can be part of that. So you're just because I'm bringing up doesn't mean, you'll see Yes, but that gave me gave me a thought. So this is imagination action. In a few minutes, we'll hear from Caroline, but, Alison, any other questions, and we're going to go to the audience they see there a few people on stage, we're excited to get the people asking our Imaginator de Haan questions, because he certainly is an expert at building a an apparel company, he knows about the technology, he knows about fashion. And he's trying to build something that'll go the test of time.
So I'm just curious sort of in your 10 year plan here, Gihon, because it's so exciting to see where you are today, but is part of your vision to kind of take the fashion world by storm and have a runway type thing, or as part of your vision to reinvent fashion and get rid of the runway and create a whole different image.
Yeah, I think we really want to focus on on this idea of like, this minimal versal wardrobe, and it's kind of the antithesis of, of the runway, which is, these styles are designed to last 510 years, right? Like, they're classic pieces that, you know, when you see a picture of yourself in our garments, perhaps and, you know, a hologram. And in two or three decades from now, our hope is that they won't look dated, you know, and from, from an aesthetic standpoint, that's important to us, but we'd rather spend, you know, there's kind of like brain energy can either be spent on on coming up with a new style and Jarlath, our design director, he was the foreign design director of Brooks Brothers in theory, and he had been in the industry for over three decades, really driving, you know, this cyclical process. And he left the fashion industry and went into interiors, and joined us, you know, right at the beginning. And what he said was, like, it was refreshing to actually think about apparel, in this idea of how does apparel actually get better with time? Right? How do we make sure that we're pulling industry forward in a direction where, you know, our customers can can try our products and feel like they're getting more functionality than they, they had the in their mirror, their grandfather's dresser or their father's stretcher? Right? So these kind of new materials, new manufacturing techniques, and Charles said is like, I It's like, I've been given like an entirely new toolbox, you know, midway through my career. So I keep coming to that kind of moment of like, how do we what happens when designers and engineers work together, in fact, Jonathan, I, our design director, we, we co taught a class with MIT and fit on this and it was so cool to see what came out just a, an entirely different approach to apparel that's, you know, going to pull us, I hope in the right direction, where instead of styles just being like, like openings, oscillating between being narrow and wide, right? If you're in the fashion industry for 25 years, you'll notice that they'll just go in these these cycles, and it kind of feels like it's in vain, right? Like, you'll spend all this time iterating something but you don't know if you're actually getting better. And that's, I think the the kind of opportunity, we think it was how do we how do we, you know, encourage the industry to kind of go in this direction.
And let me just follow up with the question of who would be your ideal spokesperson for this? Look, I mean, is it? Do you think Steve Jobs sort of helped to invent it? Is it you know, out in the world right now, and sort of go like, yeah, if you had a runway, so other than John, who would you put on?
Yeah, it's interesting, like our, we kind of say, like, are super customers there, and the people who find the most value in our product, or are they tend to be, you know, founders, business owners, we've done well in finance, healthcare and tech, in particular. And I think it's because their work environments where they're, they're growing scaling companies. At the same time, there's kind of pushing the bounds on, you know, productivity and profession on what being professional looks like, right? And so that's kind of the workspace and so, you know, it's really like, you know, the the most recent founders right like, those are the those are kind of like the the aspiration aspirational looking at customers that we see that like, we've really liked this kind of growth or brands like Rafah track Smith, who really kind of put these attainable, aspirational folks within reach and those the ones that we think are the ones who kind of define our brand. So yeah, there's
Yeah, I'm, I'm in your store, and I'm sitting on a Delta seat is this as people put on your clothes, you want them to know what it's like to sit as they're, they're traveling? Just kind of curious why these two? I don't know if they're first class or business class seats are here. And John, want to say Hi, again. Hey, everybody. So he's a very nice sales guy offered me some water. And after you answer that, love to hear Carolyn, dedicate some, some beautiful music to apparel, and then let's go to our audience's imagination, action, we're an hour in, we have another hour. And you're we have a world expert on apparel. And he's not only an expert, but he's also a practitioner, and having built his own company, and if you want to build a competitor's company, or build a a partner company, he can give you the roadmap. But yeah, so what's this about this chair here?
The Chair? Yeah, yeah. So it is a domestic first class seat from an MB ad. And in Yeah, we, we love, you know, travel as like, kind of the ultimate test of our products. Because when you're traveling, you want to go fast and light. And it's kind of this test of, you know, when you when you just travel with a backpack, that's kind of our our mantra is one week, one backpack, what would you pack in there, and what you end up doing is it's, it's your, your favorite products and the price you can depend on, and it's the price you'd feel comfortable, you feel that you could wear in any environment, right? And they're easy to take care of. Right? Like that's, that's really the the test that we put our products through. And so you know, we we find that a lot of our customers kind of live this lifestyle, even if they're not traveling now, they've in kind of live this idea of a capsule wardrobe. Travel is this thing that allows us to go into many different workspaces into many different cultures, etc. And it becomes this test for a product is like, not not, how can you how can our products instead of packing a massive rolly bag that you have to check in at the airport? How can you actually have fewer pieces that will work in all those scenarios? And that's where it needs to work aesthetically, it needs to work functionally. And it needs to work, you know, from a user care perspective.
Great. So Carolyn, can you play something in honor of peril? And, and then we're going to get to some audience questions and I'll ask Hayley and Cory if they have any questions too, so be ready to pass or ask a question.
Great to wear a year into imagination action. It's great having these incredibly talented musicians in residence. Thank you, Carolyn. I think you were with all the top orchestras are in Ohio and now you're recording something and you've been nominated for like Emmys and all sorts of to things and we're really proud to have you and all the other musicians. I asked a nice, Kelly, stat. So Kelly's been our biggest fan and comes all our shows and, and she's one of the leaders of clubhouse, who said, I want to build great programming. And thank you for recognizing us as a program, worth listening to and thinking, thank you for your support and spending time with us tonight in other nights and asked to see Pam in the room. Pam, you've been to all our shows, and welcome you ask questions you always ask such great questions. I also want to say that Gihon doesn't have 100 followers. So if you want to follow him, feel free to follow him. And let's see if by the end of the show, he might have followers. And as always, I don't think I've ever said this. But oh, Allison and I, you'll you'll get pinged or something when we open up the show, and maybe you'll come and join us. Alright, let's go to questions. Haley, do you want to ask a question? To Gihon?
Um, no, I don't know that I have. I have a question. This is all super interesting. And
yeah, well, we'll we'll call on you to play another musical interlude. So thank you, Bev. And we're going to snack questions. So this is as tradition, we have our audience members, ask a bunch of questions. And then Gihon, you should take a pencil and write them down or pen or whatever, whatever you have near you. And then you can answer them any way you want. You can summarize or or take them one by one or in reverse order, or, or you could skip a question, and maybe people won't notice if you don't want to answer. First question. Do you have one?
Yes. I love clothes. Always have my men also very much into climate. How do I, how do I avoid this supply chain? I know I can go online. And I can I can go online? I can try on clothes? holographically. I can do all that. But can I avoid the side chain? The supply chain? Get it to me? And you maybe you already had that figured out? Thank you? I
don't know. So before you answer, you got to get a whole bunch. Room, I recognize you you come to many of our shows. Great to have you back. What's your question?
Thank you, John, for always hosting these amazing, groundbreaking rooms. With technological advancement. I really am inspired by this technology. Actually, I hosted a room a week ago on, you know, space tech. And we were discussing this glove by NASA, which is a technological marvel. And I see Gihon that you have used that phase change material. And you would not believe that week, I was hoping that somebody would adopt the technology from NASA because I live in Louisiana and the weather changes like you know, all different colors throughout the day. So my question is that this phase change material that is being used? Is it able to, like withstand rain and heat and cold and everything? Or do you have different lines for different weather's?
Great. All right, next question. Thank you for that one. The guy in the hat. Do you have a question?
Yeah, I was listening in. I came in late some sorry. But we're talking about, you know, the CGA space and, and wearables. Is that something that you guys are going to or you see happening, that manufacturers of clothing are going to get into this digital apparel space, as well.
Great, excellent question. I know, he touched on that, but I'm sure there's more to say, Joyce, do you have a question?
Well, that might be related to the past one, but I was wondering about like measuring heart rate and doing ECG. Those are great interests of mine. Thanks.
Great subs. Do you have a question? No, I don't. I'm just listening for the Great. Thanks for coming on stage. Roland, do you have a question?
And thanks, John. Thanks, Alison, for inviting Yep. So you've talked about the change in materials for clothing, you've looked at the sustainability dimension. What I want to do, if possible, is to share your insights across the integration of apparel and technology, as well as the health dimension in terms of not just looking at comfort in the apparel, but also some elements that were referred to with regards to me Tracking vitals from the body. And taking that possibly a step further, to look at how a parallel can be a tool for enlightenment for the individual. Thanks,
great inquiry and then Esther and then we'll let you answer whichever ones you want however you want. Cory, do you have a question?
Esther, do you have another question?
I do. And apologies, I didn't look at your website or so I'm just curious, do you do only outer garments? Or do I do underwear? Because that's also an interesting area where there's kind of a different kind of utility, but I think I would love your underwear if you made it.
Alright, so Gihon take these questions any way you want. Love to hear from you. The audience has spoken.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm the first one of like, you know, how to avoid the supply chain? And definitely, you know, the first and most important thing is like, how do we get the most wear out of our existing garments, that's how you can have the biggest emissions. If you think about your emissions per wear of a garment, that's where you can start the interior point, I think it's spot on, which is how they're over the past, you know, 10 to 10 years, as e Commerce has kind of taken off, there has been a focus on, you know, free free returns and shipping. And that was really to kind of get people over the, you know, kind of, you know, over the barrier of it trying ecommerce out. But it's it's a, it's a very costly behavior, not just from a economic standpoint, but really, from an admission standpoint. And so while there's, there's a lot of great services out there, like happy returns, for example that we use, that will do a lot of the aggregation. It's it's interesting to see, you know, how the kind of the digital clothing space will allow us to do this, I think, kind of Lupien, fcgi. And wearables. I think that this is where we actually, if you look at our Apollo shirts, and arrow shirts, on our website, for example, you'll see this avatar come up, and you can put in your body measurements in there. And it'll project the garment on to a 3d model of you. And so this has actually helped us lower our return rate for our products. And it gives you a sense of the fit of the product in real time on the site. And so this is actually where we think the kind of the digital renderings the avatars of the products are actually going to help the our emissions per transaction or kind of like, per per order. So yeah, definitely a very exciting space. And I think this idea of having a digital twin to our physical products is something that will, we'll likely see as the the metaverse comes to fruition that people look for, for kind of digital identity, and they will look for physical identity. But I'm excited most about that being a space that we can kind of you know, validate styles and concepts. Moving on to the PCM. So glad this came up. phase change materials are kind of like our flagship technology, we launched on Kickstarter, actually 10 years ago, back in 2012. And it started off with Dresher, aptly called the Apollo Dresher. And it features a phase change material. So yeah, NASA has been using them in the liners of gloves for spacesuits. And what a phase change material is, is it's a material that that switches between either liquid and solid or liquid and gas phases. And the simplest one you can think of is, is you can think of an ice cube, for example, alright, and ice cube is at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you hold that in your hand, that heat from the palm of your hand is gonna cause it to melt. And for a brief moment, that water will also be 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so they're both at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so they'll feel the same temperature. But the the liquid water, the cold ice, water has absorbed all that heat from your hand. So it acts kind of like a thermal battery, it can absorb heat in that process of melting, and then release heat as it freezes. So this is a really unique phenomenon. to certain material though most materials go through a phase change, but materials that have this kind of what's called the heat of fusion or heated melting essentially allow you to actually store a lot of energy there. So another one you may be familiar with is like coconut oil Brian RTV, then we'll call it camp for this analogy, which was, you know, if you look at, you know, coconut oil, it tends to be solid, just about room temperature BP heated up a little bit, it'll melt. And that is exactly the kind of the same type of material that we're using in the course of our fiber. So we're actually using a bio based wax in the cores of a fiber sieve, think of our fibers like a plastic straw, and they're filled with wax inside them, and that wax melts and freezes right around your skin temperature, and that melting is going to absorb that heat. So, you know, if you, you walk out of your car on a hot summer day, that pang of the heat, it'll instantly you know, melt, and kind of absorb some of that heat. So you won't feel as cold. And then when you go into, you know, over a seed, you know, building, for example, instead of feeling that shock of cold, it'll actually freeze and release that heat back to you. So it's a technology that we've used in a fair number of products over Apollo products, for example, even though do they recently to help with temperature regulation during the night. So a very exciting one. And then
I'll jump into kind of the the health and wearable space. This is, you know, we've we've been very much interested in, again, closing the loop where possible, right, taking action on the data. But for a lot of sensing, it's required, you know, we've thought about, can we make an, you know, an ECG monitor, electrocardiogram via something that can measure heart rate, something that can fit on the body, you know, using contact, right with the skin. And what's interesting is our, you know, there are other sensing platforms that we use, we use accelerometers, we can use a string monitor, for example, to figure out what your breath rate is, right? We can, you know, figure out what your activity levels is from an accelerometer, all of these pieces of data, when you aggregate them, you can actually infer what else is happening. And typically, this would have to have been done, you know, either, you know, you'd have to, you know, wirelessly transmit that data to your phone and process there, or onto the cloud for, you know, some some ML to happen to recognize what's what's going on. But what's happened recently is, there's been this kind of explosion of microprocessors that are now powerful enough to run with called Tiny ml, so tiny machine learning. And there's also software firmware that's been developed that can do that. And so we're going to be seeing this happen in the next two or three years, it's really starting to take off and past 18 months, we happen to be using it in our Mercury jackets, I've got some prototypes right here, right in front of me. And it's amazing, it's you can run all this on something that says a postage stamp, and it'll run off of a coin cell battery. So I think what it's going to lock is us to use other types of sensing to infer, you know, what our Health says is what our activity level is. But I, that last part about will lead to enlightenment. You know, I think, I don't know if it's gonna lead to enlightenment, but there are certainly stress signals or anxiety signals that we've typically used, like, you know, heart rate monitors or, you know, ECG or brain scans word that perhaps we could, you could we could infer from this other data. So, if, and this is where the closed loop can come into play, right is, can we sense what our what our body is telling us? And then be that gentle reminder before May we're consciously aware of it. Hey, it's like start some deep breathing or whatnot. So I think some of that is already starting to come into into the world right now, especially with like the Apple Watch, but I could see that being an application. Oh, and one last one on the underwear. Yes. We, we actually want to underwear for the first time. It was a highly requested product and we launched it back two months ago, and we're practically sold out. And our perspective there was really thinking about there's kind of two camps of underwear there's no traditional cotton based underwear and then there's performance underwear, which is really designed for, you know, running, cycling, active use, where you're sweating a lot, but you're moving fast, right? So the airflow is going to wick away the moisture. It's going to keep it dry. But what we try to focus on is this concept of long duration comfort, endurance, comfort. You know, that's why we have those airplane seats in our in our stores is thinking about that like success. Our you know, transcontinental flight right or, you know, you know, traveling to Europe for example, right that like those are many hours sitting in a seat or even today when we're when we're working right? In your bodies, maybe you're not moving as much, but you are generating heat and humidity. And so we use actually a blend of Merino wool utensil and then some synthetic fibers to create this great blend that can manage moisture, or humidity and heat. So and we pair that with some target ventilation panels. So it's a it's an approach that just launched it's been doing very well.
Yeah, I want to ask you a slightly tangential question. But can you explain to us how sizing works in the fashion world? Like, it may just be totally my fantasy, but I feel like when we, like 20 years ago, there wasn't a size zero. And now we both have extreme large sizes and small sizes as a small entrepreneurial company. How do you navigate that? And what exactly are the sizing trends? We're seeing?
Yeah, sizing has become very much, you know, is a critical topic. Going back to Yeah. Going back to this challenge of returns, right, where in the previous world when you could try a product on in store. Sizing accuracy was
three years ago, his first one of his first entrepreneurial forays was buying all these tuxedos when he was in undergrad at Princeton. And what he didn't realize was this tuxedos were the full range of sizes. But the people who wanted them were not the full range. So he thought he got a good deal, when he realized that he had all these sizes that no one wanted to wear, it gave him pause. So he said, That was a great learning lesson. So I don't know if that's totally relevant here. But Allison, you made me think of it, and I was referring to one of our past Imaginators.
Yeah, it's something where we, we think there's there's two answers. One is, how can we be consistent in the sizing so that not only are we consistent with our own brand, but that we're consistent with, you know, other brands of our cohort. So there's a standards organization that ASTM, and they have standards of, of certain, you know, anthropometric measurements that correlate to numeric sizes for a product. So that's what we use for our sizing. And that helps us at least have, you know, a guide of, you know, other industry industry for the specific sizes. But then we'll also do light fittings. And so that's something where, you know, we will use these these standardized sizes and mannequins to give us a sense of what the core fit is, but we think it's so critical to test the product on people, right, because you know, we are all going to have different morphologies. And that's important in the design of the product. And particularly, not just when we're standing still, but when we're moving. And that's something that we try to consider. But But sizing, consistency, and being able to show that and render that is also important, which is where we think the kind of the digital clothing space is going to play a big role.
Super and we have at least two more questions on stage and anyone else who wants to ask one, please just raise your hand if you're new to clubhouse. That's easy to do and we'll call you up on stage but Sonia, do you have a question for Gihon?
Sonia if you do your unmute and hi
thank you for give all the opportunity to talk my question is I went to your website in navigate a little bit I'm very on like fashion is a lady I like like the top you know do you plan to make like sell Are there more colors more ice is more basic colors like you know growing your inventory or is going to be on this line of you have now on your website. Thank you again. This is Sonia talking.
Yeah, absolutely.
That may be good. He had to go a little bit deeper. But yeah, it is really interesting. I was looking at your site and thinking about color which you have abundantly in the socks but not in other things. And I just wonder I mean how does color in fabrics affect your Zero Carbon commitment.
Yep. Yeah, like, one of things you'll you'll you're spot on like our color palette is is largely blues and grays. And we are introducing, you know, some more neutral and some earth tones, but we try to keep our palette very tight for a couple of reasons. One is, you know, historically, these are kind of mainline colorways that have been timeless over decades. But also, one of the things that we've tried to focus on is kind of what is that mental energy, you know, one person, eventually we'll bring enlightenment. And then we think a lot about, like, where's our brainspace? Right. And, and every morning, you know that, that time that's spent on deciding what to wear, versus, you know, being able to either spend that with, you know, maybe kids in the morning, or getting ready for the day, right? Like that is is what we're trying to kind of unlock for our customers is some brain space and time. And having products that you don't have to think about whether those colors are going to match is something that's really important. So we, we focus a lot on the tonality and saturation of the products. I mean, then we did a process called lab depths. And we're notorious as a company for being pretty difficult on our lab depths. Because we really think that the, you know, we we think about shades of blue and saturated and blue, that need to work together across multiple different fabric types, and, and product lines. And that's something that is important from a versatility standpoint for the customer. And then also from a obsolescence perspective, which is, you know, while it's fun to create a seasonal color, there's a lot of risk with that. And to date, you know, that risk has been borne by, you know, producing the inventory, and then selling it right. But we've we've been talking about, you know, with with the metaverse, for example, and digital twins of his products, if we actually lead with these colorways. Right, we can see what sells, we can, we can see what does well, you know, for for kind of people's paths, and then produce. That's the mall model that we would like to do before kind of expanding our color palette. So yeah, it's it's, it's definitely reserved, it's intentional. But we also realized that, you know, people want more versatility there. So we're trying to do it in a responsible way.
It sort of reminds me of Obama saying that he only wanted one type of suit so he wouldn't have to spend I mean, it's like mindspace, Esther Arum, Joyce Rowland, maybe we'll do a second round. Esther, do you have a second question? If not, Aaron, do you have a second question?
Yes, Alison, thank you so much, actually, Gihon I was thinking, maybe a suggestion. If you guys could please consider making PJ's out of the phase change material, because of the temperature regulation. And my deepest wish is if you choose Elon as your brand ambassador.
Can you give us a sense? Why exactly he would be your first choice because,
you know, I'm Elon fan, Tesla owner, FSD beta tester and going for the Gigafactory opening, as Elon is changing the carbon footprint by moving the industry to Evie, and so many more projects that he has, you know, so he is the best bet for this brand. That's what I think
it's funny because, you know, we we have a weekly customer survey, or have reached out that we do to a customer the week and we always ask, you know, who's a public idol that you look up to? And I think it kind of shows like, it reinforces this idea for customers that they're innovators, entrepreneurs. And that's really kind of the mentality they have in the number one, you know, the to be like a clever, Michelle Obama And Elon Musk. So it gives some kind of indication of kind of how people think about their wardrobes and workspaces there.
And don't forget my PJ request.
Yes, yeah. Noted. The bedding Devey system is something that's been very interesting for us because we've kind of thought about kind of the 24 hours of our day, and we have products for working for working out in and the debate has been our first foray into sleep and recovery, which has gotten a lot more attention recently. In the context of productivity, right, which is, instead of just trying to squeeze another hour of the day, it's get that seven to eight hours of sleep, so that you can be productive when you're working. And I think that's where we want to make sure you get a good night's sleep so that you can have a great start to the morning. Yeah, so the the budgets over and over the holidays, kind of what we tried to do with that one was, you know, taking this the phase change material, which is really great a temperature regulation. And we combine that this goes, which is a cellulosic fiber, so it's coming from plant cell walls. That material is hydroscopic. So hygroscopic means like, you ever, ever seen like a book on a hot humid day, it just kind of gets it swells up, right? And that's what happens, right? It's, it's made of paper, it's cellulosic material, but it absorbs that excess moisture. And because of that, it doesn't feel as humidity as humid under the covers. So by addressing the heat and humidity, and also it has this kind of double panel system. So if you're co sleeping, you know, one, one person can have two layers, another person have one layer. But that's one of the critical ways that we think we can address heat and humidity fluctuations.
And forgive me, but when you do bathing suits, please let me be your tester. When every day, so I would love to do that.
Yeah, Esther has a pool and every city wherever she visits, she knows where she's gonna swim. A Keihan I'm biking home, I'm actually going to go stop at a dinner party and the CEO of Fast Company is there and I'll show him your suit. I'm under the Citgo sign right now by the new whoop, sign also, in Kenmore Square. I'm curious, you know, this is imagination action, this long form journalism, what's on your mind that isn't getting out there that no one's asked you about or that you think people should be thinking about that may not be mainstream, a lot of people have been talking about AI and drones. What are other things regarding the space you're in and what you're doing? And I apologize if there was already a question in queue, but it just wanted to put that out there.
Yeah, I think one thing, I think that's super important for kind of the carbon accounting discussion with me is like, so much of the focus has been on accounting at the end, right? It's a year end event, right? It's focused on, you know, what are all the activities you've done and looking at the current footprint. And that's a it's kind of a lagging metric. But what makes it most impactful is when you arm designers and developers, the people who are kind of creating the product, with that information, when they're making the selection of, you know, what, what fabric are we going to use, right? What, what we're what materials we're going to use, right? It's, it's arming the, you know, the supply chain manager, Operations Manager with you, knowing that it produces nine times as much emissions to airship, the product, right? It's giving this data at the moment where you're making the decision, that that's where you can have the base effect. And I think of like, you know, the calorie counting, for example, it's like when, when you know, what, you know, the calorie division with food, you can start to make some pattern recognition, right, and, and make choices based on that. But it's way better to do that than just weighing at the end of the year. And so it's it's very similar with the process of designing product is, this needs to be something that happens right at the beginning, right. And I can't can't stress that enough that it needs to be something that's really embracing the design community and the engineering community, and to internalize there.
That's a good again, we have two more questions on stage. But what you said just really inspired me to ask, is there any part of this that is visible to you in the same way that calorie counting is it feels like you had to really almost invent the metrics, and then really rethink the whole process of how production is done. Is there anything as somebody in the apparel business, that's a book you can open up and says, These fabrics from these sources have this type of carbon count?
Yeah, that's great. So I actually I sit on the board of climate neutral, which is a organization that is really helping consumer brands certify, measure, reduce and offset their carbon footprints. And one of the exciting things about this, this is a space where IP and competition are actually like, there's no one wins, right? If they're the earth warms, and that's something where there's a lot of collaboration here. So Climate Neutral has this system, it's called the be the brand emissions estimator. And it's a it's a database of materials manufacturing, you know, options, your carbon intensities for producing in certain areas. And so brands, can you use this tool to actually estimate their carbon emissions, and then even refine it, and figure out, you know, choices, right. And optionality to say, if I produce my product in this country of origin versus this one, what's the effect? So, interestingly, like, in the past 18 months, there's been a ton of interest in investment in carbon accounting, in particular, both on the nonprofit side, and then also in the kind of the VC space. And ultimately, kind of the challenges is really arming the decision makers for once, companies making physical product has to be a kind of design inception stage, that we're thinking for that perspective. But yeah, I'd say Climate Neutral is a great resource there. And there's a bunch of venture backed companies as well. And also, one of one of my favorite books is kind of ground yourself in kind of the mission generation, both from materials and manufacturing standpoint is Bill Gates recent book, how to how to avoid a climate crisis. And he just breaks it down really well into, you know, energy production, materials, production and food. And it's kind of like from first principles. And I found it very helpful to kind of understand navigate the space that way.
Super, so let's get to a couple more of the questions on stage. I think we have three people. And if anybody else has a question, please just raise your hand. But we'll go I believe you're next. Do you have a question?
Yes, I saw you website and I saw immense selection you have special denims and a new denim it is such an environment. Such a bad environment to back to the environment, because I'm working on with Indigo, you need to consume a lot of water. Like to see the the your your clients who love to have the women's women's denims? And why just know women's names? Does this my questions?
Yeah, yeah, we are product line. Most cases will have parity in terms of using the same fabric in both genders of our product. But in some cases, there are fabrics that are unique each so our Chroma Demin, for example, is in our men's line. But our Swift fabric is Irwin's line. So it's something where we, for almost probably 85% of our price, the fabric will be in both. But with regard to the water consumption, it's a it's actually kind of something that we really focused on in the private schools, the chroma denim. And it's called Chroma because it's a nod to the dyeing process that we've used. So we use a reaction dyeing process, which chemically and physically binds the Indigo tightly. So it's a modified version of the Indigo so that it tightly binds to the cotton fiber itself. So it's one it's going to bind faster dragonflies as much water, but also, it's going to prevent color bleeding so that it doesn't wash off, you know, as easily as traditional Indigo does. And that, you know, extends the life of the garment because it's going to look sharper for a longer period of time. But we're we're kind of shifting from is actually away from that kind of traditional denim style. And there's another product in there, it's called the kinetic FIVE POCKET twill. That's the one that we were talking about that has its it's got the the bio based yarn in there, that's made from from corn pts. So we're shifting towards that. And what's great about that is it's a fiber that is what's called a chaotic dyeing. And it's, it's a really interesting process that allows you to create that, that heathered natural organic look, but with multiple different types of performance yarns there. So you know, great, great question dying, dying is a big challenge. And it's one of the reasons we've kind of opted away from you know, traditional denim
super and Erica, do you have a question? Eric, if you have a question, you're on mute. Yeah. Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I think So I was just looking at the website right now as well. And I'm loving everything. One thing I had a question about was
oops, I think Erica, we lost you.
Okay, maybe Kylie, do you want to ask a question?
Yes. Hi, Alison, thank you for inviting me up. And you know, great to be in this room. I, you know, I looked at the the website, Ministry of Supply is a really, really great, you know, offering great products. Very exciting. My question to Gihan. Is that Residentie him again? Yeah, he has, right, yeah, yeah. Great. Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, great to meet you in this room? Yeah. My question is that I'm wondering, you know, in my work of, you know, we have seen a lot of come. I'm also, by the way, in the management consulting world. So similar with Allison, and some of my work, I've seen some companies during their product development and sourcing stage, they're, you know, trying to apply the newest technologies, or at least, you know, developing the initiatives in that direction, to go into the metaverse or at least the virtual world, having the 3d models and having, you know, all the the objects, files, and so that, during the product, product development and sourcing face, they are working with the manufacturers to you know, find out, you know, different alternatives with, you know, different parts of the products. And, you know, instead of having the manufacturer sending them, you know, first samples and second round round of samples, you know, and, you know, doing all those back and forth. mailings, you know, they could eliminate that face that that's at least the hope. And of course, you're not going to that direction would reduce the carbon footprint in the future. So I'm wondering, are you guys looking into the initiatives in that direction? Because I joined the room late. So I'm not sure whether you guys will have already talked about this?
Yeah, like digital prototyping is something that has only been accelerated, you know, in the in the past two years. There's, there's two parts to like, one is kind of the private life cycle management systems a PLM. That helps a lot in terms of just structuring the data so that it's easy to communicate across manufacturers, like what are the specs for the product. And then the other part is really the the 3d digital design, I think, you know, this is existed for, you know, hard goods for such a long time that you'd send a muscle like an STL file, and you could 3d print the product, right. And the, the CAD file for garment is oftentimes the pattern, but pattern making to date, it's certainly an art, there's a lot that goes into, you know, transforming transposing a two dimensional surface onto a three dimensional body, right. But one of the exciting things, it's been in the, you know, this, this three dimensional prototyping system is that, like, you're able to iterate that in real time, you can work with your manufacturers, for example, like we actually just had, we have emails going back and forth this week, with one of our suppliers to iterate the fit of our pants that we're launching. And we're getting modeled images of renderings of a person sitting in in the fabric, or in the in the pants in a chair, which is one of our tests to kind of see like, what does the garment feel like when you're sitting? So how do you how do you digitally get a sense of how it feels? Well, the great thing is that we can not only optically model the product, so we can see it, like what is the surface texture look like? And we can also physically model it. So we can basically look at all the physical parameters, the fabric, like, what's its drape, what's its density, what's its elasticity, we can put all these parameters in and actually emulate what's going to happen when someone puts on their body. And so we can see on a pressure map and a strain map, how the fabric is stretching, we're exerting pressure on the body. And we think that's really important for for comfort. So we're and this is stuff that we had to do somewhat anecdotally we you know, with, with, or just you know, having a lot People try it on and tell us what, what, what they're feeling. But now we can all see that, you know, I was looking at our company, Slack channel is our Design channel, it's like, there's, there's this image of these three different fits, and really kind of showing them side by side. And you can see the difference of we're pressures being treated in a way that, you know, I personally had just yearn for this for years. And to see this come to life is very, very exciting.
Super, can you tell us a little bit about em labs?
Yeah. M Labs is is bid jika, which is a Boston based organization that is working to really bring STEM education to high school students and through the lens of fab labs. So is a fabrication Labs is really kind of thinking about how do we bring accessibility to maker culture. And so they're an MIT startup, sort about, almost 10 years ago now, and work directly with the Boston Public Schools and several public school systems across the country. And for we've been partnering with Virginia for over five years now. And usually, it's the summer and April and February vacations that will host workshops at our store. And in our office, students will come over and we'll do prototyping sessions, we'll go through iteration design of various different products. And when the pandemic hit, one of the things that we we spoke to initial and routine with is that there's just one of the biggest challenges is, how do you how do you unlock the ability to have hands on STEM education, when kids aren't able to go to science classes, right, they're able to go to the laboratory, right, or they're not gonna have those resources at home. So we, we have these M lab starter kits, which are basically fabric Science Education kits, they're, they're kind of like, you know, the the chemistry kit that you might have gotten, you know, for your birthday, at one point when you're in fifth grade, speaking personally here, and we, we kind of designed it like that, but to bring fabric science, you know, to to all the students and one of the things that we found is that we really tried to ground it in things that they were excited about. So, you know, thinking about a lot of their athletic clothes, because a lot of students are Athens. And so this was something that, you know, they learn all about fabric microstructure writing about knits, wovens, learning about the fundamental difference between fibers, learning about how dyeing process works, and the chemistry behind that all through the series of at home science experiments, and showing also that there's science and engineering all around us, even in the clothes that we wear.
So Keihan let me just jump in here. So I've arrived at the dinner party and I walked around and the guy from Fast Company, the editor in chief here, told him I'm doing a show with the future of apparel and I'm wearing your suit and people are nodding and smiling. So, Haley, can you play something just in honor of the show? And then, Allison, you have such gifts at listening and kind of synthesizing love to hear your summation of tonight's show. So Haley, are you are you available to play sigh?
So maybe, Alison, is this a good time to do a wrap up?
Sure, I can definitely start and then maybe if Haley's there she can play us out. First of all, if you have what a totally inspirational company and what a really funny thing. So he Hannah and Aman from the Ministry of Supply covered the future of apparel. They're amazing clothing has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times Fast Company, lean Luxe, GQ, Forbes, Vogue, and NASA. I really can't think of another company that quite the same press range. We also heard sublime and stunning music from Hayley Max Korean Caroline's so you got really best of John's amazing musical talent for this evening. He hadn't described developing clothes for work leisure and for those who don't know what that is, that's, that's a space we're all living in during this time of COVID. Tricking performance materials into ones that are comfortable and look sharp. And we're talking about James bond shark. So it's not a it's not a wrinkled look. He described his childhood of hacking materials including dumpster diving and laminating plastic bags to polar fleece. Amazing combinations. I don't know what survived from his childhood. His background includes working at Lululemon IDEO and time at MIT. He applied MIT engineering principles to performance materials, and ran a half marathon with his wife while wearing their design suit and bike cross country wearing their Apollo Polo. So these are tested as well as by John who just biked across Boston wearing a shirt. He launched on Kickstarter with a proposal for a shirt made out of phase change material. And the Ministry of Supply makes a number of incredible guarantees that I haven't seen before. They guarantee all products for life that right there is extraordinary. And they guaranteed to be carbon neutral from day zero, which is super not easy to do, again, shared with us a one on one overview on the carbon footprint of the clothes we wear, and points out that it depends on the durability of usage, the life we give clothing, and the life after we are done, which is so interesting, because fashion is known for being a little ephemeral. He raised a great point that you don't have to make that you have to make sure sustainability isn't at odds with durability, so you don't want to make recycled clothing. Like some of the bags we get at the grocery store that sort of fall apart on the way home. He described re engineering carbon emissions from the three major sources that are key for apparel. The first is raw materials where they replace polyester with recycled polyester sourced in Japan. Secondly, the manufacturing process they virtualized knitting with zero waste. And third, interestingly enough how the product is shipped sea versus air makes a big difference. So air shipping products has a nine times higher emissions rate. So even after you're done making it you can blow the zero pledge just by how you ship it. So the journey he described for us tonight is the switch to additive manufacturing the switch to recycled materials and the switch from air to sea freight among all kinds of other innovative shifts. He had shared his early days when he launched he said fashion can be wildly inclusive or wildly unwelcoming. And in the early days, he found customers loved his products. But he found at trade shows retailers were not eager to pick it up. So they developed a direct to consumer amazing website that I recommend you all check out. He has shared with us an overview of the intersection of fashion and technology, including being one of the few people that teach a joint class between MIT and fit. Those of us in Cambridge know MIT and fit is the Fashion Institute of Technology if I'm right. He talked about things like 3d printing, which they use for prototyping the design and manufacturing mass for COVID In just a few weeks, and have gotten incredible write ups for their mouse. He talked about looking at wearables, not just for biometric sensing, and thinking about intelligent heated jackets. He talked about phase change materials to really manage wicking and humidity and temperature including the dew vase, he had described the three eras of materials. We started with natural fibers for hundreds of years than we had 50 years with synthetic fibers and he said now, we're just starting the world of bio based fibers, including an example he gave us of the remnants of corn house being used, among other things in fabrics. He said we've moved from manufacturing. To that we move from manufacturing to the more amorphous and rich roles that clothing plays in our life. He had talked about how clothing plays both a functional and an identity role. He described how we can use the metaverse to actually see what fashions are popular and work and then just manufacture those styles that are popular versus today where many fashion companies manufacture tons of clothings see what sells and then throw the rest away. He talked about using a set of smaller colors and blue and gray hues and subdued tones versus a whole new set of colors every quarter that get thrown out. He talked about bringing more durable in during questions like How does apparel get better with time rather than just popular for a season that then becomes obsolete? He talked about defining work leisure clothes as multiple use pieces with easy care no shrinking, no wrinkling and ditch the dry cleaner. Wow that would be a good savings for me. And he's looking for clothes that hold up in performance settings, whether that's airplanes biking or working. And finally, we discussed who are the best potential models for the Ministry of Supply. And our audience was not short of suggestions. We think Elon Musk and Michelle Obama could belong on the runway. And we talked about the next areas of development that we're recommending for the Ministry of Supply being bathing suits. And Esther offered to test these underwear or PJ's. So thank you so much behind. It was an incredible evening. I can't wait. I think John might have gotten the shirt for me. If not, I'll be very street. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. What a what an incredible vision to pull off.
Thank you, sir, for having me. And thanks for the awesome questions. This has been a lot of fun.
That sounds great. Well, we'd love to have you back anytime and your website's at the top of our show and just thank you for all your vision and thanks our audience for fantastic questions. Thank you
