Latest / The Interline Podcast / Why Fashion Still Over-Develops
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hey, welcome back to the Interline Podcast. We've done a lot of very focused interviews lately, and I like doing those because depth is what we've always been about at the Interline. That's why we've been in the long-form written content game for so long. And it's why these prestigey hour-long interview shows still run weekly alongside our breezier news analysis show, The Edit. One of those is definitely easier to plan for and record than the other. There's a bunch you can do in an hour or two that you can't do in less than half an hour, basically. And grilling guests who specialize in a particular area is one good example of that. Today, though, I purposely want to do something higher level and broader. Rather than picking apart one stage of the product journey or one tranche of technology, I want to talk about it all. And specifically, I want to talk about where tech adoption dovetails with the strategic goals that survey data tells us are common across all brands and retailers. Everyone wants to improve profitability, everybody wants to reduce risk, and everybody wants to get agile enough to be able to go after new market opportunities. To have that chat, I'm bringing on Lisa Amlani, who's one of two people behind Retail Strategy Group, which is a boutique advisory practice that works with apparel companies and other retail businesses to help increase their chances of hitting those goals. Lisa's also a sometime contributor to the Interline. She's a merchant herself in her former life and an author. So between us we have a few touchstones, a few different formats, a few different media to draw on when it comes to exploring these bigger topics. So without further ado, let's get rolling. Okay, Lisa Ramlani, welcome to the Insigned Podcast. speaker-1: Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. speaker-0: Likewise, I'm excited to talk to you. Let's start the way we usually kick these things off, which is by getting a feel for what the guest day-to-day job looks like. Now, you have a lot going on. I know this because you and I have known each other for a little while. I know this because of what the amount of stuff that's contained in your email signature, let's say. So you're the prince you're a principal and founder of Retail Strategy Group, which partners with brands and retailers with the aim of maximizing profit. Now that's a very timely objective, and I'm gonna dig into that shortly. You also go by the chief merchant title, you write the merchant life, ⁓ you teach at FIT, you sit on boards and you've just put a book out into the world. You got a lot of irons in the fire. Which of those takes up the most time? speaker-1: That is a great question. And I I'll have to say, watching the World Cup is what has taken up the most amount of time. but in all seriousness, you know, I have a a partner that I work with in the business and ⁓ he's really helpful in, you know, helping me be efficient with everything I have on my plate. My goal is to create dramatic results for my clients, including value like full price sales, improving margin, and accelerating speed to market. And the key is to do that rapidly. So just having someone in the background helping me to be more efficient has been a real asset for sure. I don't do this alone. Let's just say it that way. speaker-0: Okay, good to know. And just walk me through you mentioned your clients there. Walk me through how retail strategy group works with clients and maybe give me an indication of who those clients are without giving anything ⁓ under NDA away. speaker-1: Sure, sure. I I mean, we work in a number of ways, right? It really depends on, you know, what the client is looking for, what outcomes they're looking to achieve, and how do I get them to that end goal fast and efficiently. ⁓ brands and retailers are my clients across the globe. And I work with a lot of apparel brands. And I'd say this is where it's been really interesting for me. you know, across soft lines, so apparel, accessories, footwear, is that because I was a merchant for over 20 years, I'm I really can put myself in my clients' shoes. And I think that is is where I'm able to not only create the most value, but really understand how their day-to-day is impacted by, for example, the processes that they've been using to develop product to create assortments for decades. And I lived that and I know that a lot of brands still work in the same way that I was working in for over 20 years, which is using Excel, excessive overdevelopment and sampling, and, you know, using physical samples as a touch crutch, that sort of thing. So I really take my own experiences and use that to help really create value for the brands and retailers that I work with. speaker-0: Okay. Now the second thing we do is we get our guests to define something. and I'm actually going to break with tradition a bit today and I'm going to get you to define two things separately. I'll start with the first one. To keep the thread going and to give you an easier entry point first, I want you to define the thing that you offer to your clients, one of the things you offer your clients, maximizing profitability. I want you to define what profitability is. Not in the basic sense, like I am I'm not I'm not an idiot. I understand you have to make margin by selling something for more than it's cost of goods sold. But specifically in fashion, tell me what you think are the most important levers that brands and retailers have at their disposal to pull ⁓ that allows them to actually increase the chances of making a profit on a given style. speaker-1: I'd like to start by saying process is profit. And in fact, process innovation is the most underrated opportunity in the apparel supply chain today. Superior processes, I believe, Trump's superior process any day of the week. And you brought up our latest book earlier, The Material Life. And that is really about the importance of how. How we create the product is more important than what we're creating. We're in a situation today, especially, where I'm seeing brands just tripping over themselves, you know, with outdated processes, archaic processes. And what that is doing is it's translating into things like overdevelopment, harming brand and vendor relationships, and just not being able to keep pace with the customer. We know the customer is transforming. drastically. And and we'll get into that in a minute. But fit is a perfect example of the final point that I just made, where fit today is so dynamic, yet the way that we create product, the way that we are merchandising and allocating and planning is static. So that's I think a really important point to make and and we'll get into that in a bit. And the last thing I'll say is that the industry cannot out skew itself out of poor processes to improve margin and profit. And we're seeing that, especially in all these earnings calls that have been coming up lately, that we're hearing about SKU rationalization as this, you know, new amazing thing that's happening with with the brands today. And that's what they're working on. And they're really excited. They've cut SKUs by 30 to 40% or whatever the number is. But the fact is that we've as a merchant, I'll tell you, we do that every season anyway, you know, we cut bottom sellers, focus on the top sellers, what is driving the customer in the store, et cetera. And when we look at the likes of Uniqlo, Quince, Inditex, there's no accident that they're really enabling superior processes to get to market. And to get to market in a very innovative or a very accelerated way. speaker-0: Let's loop back around to profitability for a second. And let me be more specific. Where does margin leak out? And so think about just park park process innovation for a minute. And let's say with it taking the processes that are established, as you said, and that have become entrenched over decades, where does margin leak out the most strongly? Where are the biggest holes? speaker-1: Margin leaks significantly throughout the development process. What I see is consistently this overdevelopment of materials, this over-assorting of the assortment because merchants can't decide what they want until the very last minute. And then what they're doing is airing products or reworking the assortment or late ads. All of these things add up significantly to the cost of the goods. And we're allowing this to happen, and I was allowing this to happen when I was a merchant as well. We would have things like development ratios. Here's what you're allowed to overdevelop. Why are we even saying that overdevelopment is a normal process? This is what is, this is what is adding to the cost of. The product being created. And then think about physical sampling. Now, this is something I talk about a lot. We have a touch crutch. We are addicted to touching and feeling garments before we approve them, even if we've seen them before. And I've been in many, many showrooms where I consistently see core product, seasonless basic product that is being redeveloped and recreated every season. And if we go backwards into the process, We're doing the same thing with materials. This is, I believe, where we are losing margin and we are impacting our time to market, our cost of goods sold. And this is where I think we need to really focus in. Get that magnifying glass out, you know? I would say this is this is the number one thing. And then there's there's a lot of other things, but that is the number one thing. speaker-0: Prioritization counts here. So you mentioned before about SKU rationalization and how that's something that's something that the company and the merchants and the merch people have always done. Taking that thread and just pulling on it a little bit, what's the difference between process innovation, which you're hanging a lot of weight on, and everyday process improvement? Because y you could say to the same thing, you could say, well, everybody would Well, I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to, I'm trying to optimize the processes that I have in front of me. Trying to cut waste, I'm trying to cut time, I'm trying to become more efficient. What distinguishes process innovation from just everyday process improvement? speaker-1: Say that process innovation is almost like this fundamental shift in the mindset where we look at what we've been doing all the time, or we've always done it this way, and then asking ourselves is there a better way? Because there's always a better way. And then when we talk about process improvement, that could be as simple as looking at your TNA. So your calendar of events that lead up to your milestone moments and just cutting a step here or there. So I think there is a difference between improvement and innovating the process. Because improvement is always needed, of course, but I think there's very simple things that we can do to imp really improve our process. But innovating our process requires A mindset shift, and I'd say that is the key difference. speaker-0: I agree with that. I think I think it takes it's it's very similar to sort of digital transformation versus everyday software implementation. Same thing. One requires you to one requires you to reinterrogate the way that you work and be willing to build things back up from the foundations. The other is saying I think there's a more efficient way to do the thing we're already doing. speaker-1: Absolutely. And I think today it's even more of a challenge because with so much technology coming at at us from every angle, every part of the retail end-to-end, there is this need to balance high tech and high touch. And this is something that is, you know, it's it's not a new idea, right? But the more we invest in technology, we must invest accordingly in human touch. We have to balance that out. And I think self-checkout is actually a prime example of this. I was in Costco ⁓ a two weeks ago. And it was so interesting because I never go into the store. I get everything delivered. But I was I was traveling and, you know, heading to a board meeting and I stopped in at Costco. And I always use a self-checkout because I find it's faster. I was in the self-checkout line, and what was different. in my experience is that there was this wonderful person walking around, walking the line back and forth, asking if people wanted to pre-checkout. I was like, ⁓ what is this? I was like, sure, let's do it. I d I didn't know what it actually was. And what they did was they scanned everything in my cart. I get to the the till at the self-checkout area and I scanned my Costco card and everything that was Pre-scanned popped up. And I was like, ⁓ my God, this is incredible. Because it not only saved me the effort of taking everything out of my card and putting it back in, but it really sped up the process and it was delightful as well, which is not something you really hear about a self-checkout process unless you're at an amazing decathlon store with a great customer service person beside you. So I think that there's, there's really this. incredible balance of technology and touch that that we need to focus on when we're implementing technology, when we're, you know, looking at digital transformation. I think I've totally gone off topic, but I do think that there is this need to balance tech and touch in in anything that we're looking at from a technology perspective. speaker-0: I think that's true. And I think that transcends in house use cases as much as it does kind of downstream consumer facing ones as well. I will say I also don't go shopping very often. ⁓ I I try I make an exception for Costco though. And ⁓ some of that's d some of that's down to the free samples, I won't lie. But ⁓ the rest the rest of it it is it's a very different very different shopping experience. ⁓ and for anyone who lives in a country listening to this who does not have a Costco, you're missing out on the free samples side of things. ⁓ I will say that. Now your book We've referenced it a couple of times, the material life. If I understand the central contention of it correctly, it's that most brands are either design-led or merchant-led to their detriment. So you're saying that materials should be elevated to that leading status. And the materials should be at the vanguard of all kind of decision making. I want to try and understand something here. Now, a lot of luxury companies work that way. A lot of luxury companies start with the fabric. they let the silhouette emerge from that. A lot of more mass market or premium brands are driven by the vision of, you know, potentially in some cases a solo designer or a big design department. Now, is is your contention as simple as more companies should follow the luxury playbook? Is it a case of saying, well, material procurement and development is so complicated that it should be what determines the viability and the direction of product development in general? What does it mean practically to be material led? speaker-1: Typically what I've seen at I would say 80% of brands is that when we look at the product creation process, that typically the designer will start with a design brief. Then they will create sketches, they will design based on the line plan, right? What's happening here is that two things actually. So materials teams are today looked at as service providers. So when designers are off sketching and designing, then they'll go to the materials teams and they'll request a new design or development of a material. A material constitutes color, fabric, trim, and print and pattern. They don't necessarily use what is already available because that is not the way that they have typically worked. Material libraries are not always utilized. And what I'd like to do is give you give you an example of working in a kitchen. And I find this example resonates. So if we think of the kitchen pantry and using what's in that pantry, so when you look at Top chef dire or any of these reality chef shows. There's there's ingredients that are available in the pantry or they're given a list. And then the chefs use that to create a recipe and create something wonderful and delightful and amazing. Now think of, I don't know if you watch reality or not reality TV, any shows, but the bear is something that I was addicted to and I just finished the last season. The chef, Carmi, would send his team scrambling because he would change what he wanted to create every single day. And what that cost him was that his teams were reactive, they couldn't find what they were looking for, they were surcharges were costing them even more for ingredients that they didn't plan for. And the teams would scramble. So There is this incredible opportunity if we innovate the process, if we elevate materials, and then design starts designing into those materials, like in Top Chef, and using what's available in the pantry. You save time on iteration, you save time and resources and effort on creating materials that will never be used. And you are, you have this ability to significantly reduce overdevelopment. And that is the concept of the material life and our book. speaker-0: Okay, that's a good analogy. And I am I don't watch much TV, I will admit. Very busy, busy job, three kids. I did I did watch at least some I did watch at least some of The Bear. And from what I remember, Carmi trained at the French laundry. So there is there's your luxury link from there. Like top end Michel-top-end Michelin-starred restaurant down to everyday ⁓ use case. Same same with this. Okay. I'm gonna dip into our archives at the Interline a bit for this one, but you wrote a piece for us in twenty twenty You wrote a piece for us in twenty twenty-three, which was called Velocity Over Speed. ⁓ and in that you drew a distinction between going fast, which you know, anybody can do, you just you just push, and going fast in a clear direction with everybody aligned to a common vision. Now, the reason I'm dredging that up now, three years later, is that I would argue that the most successful brand at the moment is probably Sheehan. and I would argue that they have all the speed and none of the velocity and they're successful anyway. Now, they're introducing thousands of new stars a week. They don't really have a clear, unifying vision. They have no objective really besides capitalizing on a market opportunity at the lowest possible cost. You talked before and you're you know, about railing against overdevelopment. I think that's right for a lot of the market. I think it's right for the mid market and upwards. It's certainly right in premium and so on. If you have the scale of a Sheehan or somebody like that. Seems to me like you can just spread bet your way out of that problem. speaker-1: Well, I would actually argue that Sheen does have velocity because they understand who their ideal buyer is. And I think that's where a lot of the issue starts with brands in general, is that they don't know who their ideal buyer is because they are planning a year or more out what they want to assort. And they're hoping that it'll sell at full price. So I would say that first off, brands need to understand who their ideal buyer is, because Shane definitely does, even though we might not agree with their model and they absolutely overassort and overdevelop. And you know, consumerism has a lot to do with that as well. I would also say that it's important for us to build processes around who our ideal buyer is and then deliver on what they want. So avoiding, you know, the losers of the assortment instead of accepting them. Like, okay, you know, let's just try it and see what happens. This concept of more supply will equal more demand. I also want to bring up Reformation, because Reformation recently disclosed their IPO findings and And ⁓ how they go to market. And the reason I bring them up is because I would say that they are similar to the Sheehan model where they do test and learn and they replenish into best sellers and they react to market signals from their ideal buyer. So when we look at what Sheehan does and why they're successful, is because they are some would say a technology company, just like Amazon. But what they are doing is that they lean into product that their ideal buyer wants and then they replenish that product. And replenishing into the best sellers and then going to market and ⁓ really building on that, I think the better question is always to ask how can we deliver in the way the ideal buyer wants us to? So Reformation is doing quite well in that aspect where they are. giving their ideal buyer what they want, replenishing into what is already selling, and then using those market signals from their ideal buyer to create new products that they are, they already predict that the customer is going to buy. speaker-0: That's that's that's really good framing. So we're using a bunch of examples from outside of fashion here, we've between Costco and everything else. ⁓ I like the framing you've just used because it reminds me of I might mangle this because I don't take a lot of domestic flights in the US, but I think it's Southwestern Airlines. ⁓ what the CEO of one of those companies said the sole decision-making criterion that he would use was for anything from like how many how do you distribute peanuts to how do we sell tickets and everything else. Say, well, does this decision make us the lowest cost airline? If not, then ⁓ it's not a choice that I'm making. ⁓ and I think that's got some alignment with what you're describing about understanding who your ideal buyer is. ⁓ I'm I think I think you I think you're probably correct that Sheehan, they they want to be cheap, they wanna be high volume, but I think they do have a very canny understanding of the kind of person who likes cheap high volume fashion. speaker-1: Yes, they absolutely do. And you know what was this is a total sidebar. But when I was teaching at FIT, I guess this was a couple of years ago, my this is what my students told me, how much they were just they loved thrifting because it was sustainable, you know, they loved vintage because of all all those things as well. But then they would show up in Shein in my class. So I was like, you know, this this doesn't make sense to me. But then when you think about it, they really do know their ideal buyer. They understand, yes, of course they have values, but in some cases it's more important for them to show up and fit in and, you know, find things that are really relevant to their own personal style. And she offers so like such a vast product assortment that they're able to do that. So it's really interesting what. What I've been seeing with ⁓ you know, folks that are actually buying Sheen, I see the same thing at Brandy Melville, right? I I don't know if you have that store in the UK actually. Okay, so this is a very interesting model. I'm definitely, you know, going off script here, but it's it's an interesting point to make because Brandy Melville has this concept of one size fits most. So they really do only have one size of product. speaker-0: We don't, I believe. speaker-1: And even though the customer complains about it and they've even shut down their fitting rooms, the customer is still buying the product. And I was in front of the store a couple of weeks ago, lineup, and they're known for this. They have a lineup every single day. And it's fascinating to see that they have this model. They are releasing thousands of SKUs. I can't even imagine the overdevelopment there. But what they have solved for is the size issue, because they only have one size. So they're actually not creating multiple sizes of a garment. They don't have excess inventory from a size depth perspective. And it's a fascinating model, but they know exactly who their ideal buyer is and why she shops there. speaker-0: useful reference. I know we don't we don't have it in the UK, but ⁓ for anyone in the US, I'm gonna imagine that reference lens. Yes. An another concept from your book is the idea of quote unquote acceptable inequality or the the understanding that different products are different levels of complexity should be treated differently. Now, I'd argue it's probably already the case in the extremes, right? Like I don't think anyone listening to this is proposing that the value chain for a basic T shirt should be the same as the one for a luxury handbag or technical mountaineering gear or what have you. Now, I'm guessing the nuance that you're talking about here is between more like broadly similar mark mass market categories where companies tend to just push everything through the same milestones, the same gates, the same systems, the same solutions. And they're missing an opportunity to optimize to do some like fine grain efficiency control of value chains for different product types. Tell me more about what you think that means. speaker-1: So I think that every brand can benefit from looking at their assortment in this manner, where not all products are equal, so they should not be created in the same way. We call this acceptable inequality. It's my version of AI. And if we look at, let's say, core basics, because we know every brand has core basics or a seasonless assortment that do not need to be recreated every season. Also, not every color has to be lab dipped. Again and again and again. And lastly, not everything needs a physical sample. So if we think about it from the vendor's point of view, one of one of them explained to me that sample capacity has to be treated as sacred. And I 100% agree with that. Because we should only be physically sampling net new products, or if we have something that's new and innovative, but your core And your seasonless assortment should not be physically sampled. And that when we start looking at the assortment in this way, where we, you know, we rate complexity of the garment, or we start using, really using our materials library instead of developing a new black or a new navy or a new pink that we already have these colors, we start to create time and space for true product innovation. Then we can actually create new and novel things and never been seen before products. And this needs to be the ongoing process and not a singular event. So when we create time and space for that by saying, okay, if we look at the complexity of our garments, we really like we're already assorting core, basic, or seasonless versus fashion in some way. So we need to look at, creating those products every season in that same way. speaker-0: Okay, I think that makes sense. ⁓ and I think that's that's a logical distinction between the tracks that different types and objectives move along. So I understand that one. You've you've mentioned overdevelopment a few times. Let's go straight for it. So let's talk about overdevelopment at both the product level and the component level. ⁓ because materials are definitely in there. So you cite some statistics where ⁓ a brand might adopt maybe only 20% of its color development and maybe around 35% of its textile development. That's a lot of material dev work that gets thrown away, but it's also a process that falls into a blurry ground, I think, between creative experimentation and just pure process bloat and waste inefficiency. I imagine there's a difference here between development that is objectively redundant. So you just talked about sampling seasonless styles that don't need it. Fine. Another example might be multiple people making requests for a sample of a zipper polo that already exists in a library, for example. And then on the other hand, you've got the development that falls into the, well, we needed to do these five failed approaches to find the sixth one that was good. The artistic argument for that. What does the reality behind the numbers look like? What's your suggestion for solving it? Like how do because I I imagine some people listening to this will say Yes, we overdevelop, but some measure of overdevelopment is necessary because those are kind of where the happy accidents originate. That's what allows us to get down to the stuff that we really want to take to market. speaker-1: And to be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't develop new materials or new products, right? What I'd love to walk through is th the typical process. So if we think about our concept to market process, our product creation process, after seasonal strategy, design will create a design brief. They start sketching into the line plan. Then designers will ask the material teams to Source, design, develop new fabrics, colors, trims, prints. They iterate until the designer approves. And the issue here is exactly what you said, that there are unnecessary developments, there are developments that never see the light of day. And what we come up with is really low adoption rates. In many instances, the Over development is not even being tracked. Neither are the adoption rates. And if we fast forward, when we're at proto prototype, the merchant decides whether they want to maybe they want to rework, they want to add something new, they want to, you know, exaggerate the print because they've seen something in market that they really liked. And what happens is we go backwards and we start again. And we have a new material developed, ⁓ more iterations, etc. So this is the typical process that happens. And when we're at proto, I will tell you, I have never seen development of materials tracked at proto. And as a merchant, I have seen for many, many years, as well as working with brands, that this is a real problem where the merchant is reworking the assortment. Either after it's locked or right before it's locked. And then we start the development process again. My suggestion is we have to start tracking. And tracking from the start of product creation, whether you are materials-led, materials first, or if you have elevated your materials teams or not, you have to track your material development rates. And you have to do this. By category, by function, and then start holding teams accountable. And I've implemented this at a few brands, and we have seen a tremendous lift in adoption and a tremendous reduction in overdevelopment. Because then we start being creative about using what we've already developed for the last, I don't know, decades the brand has been creating. And we start using the library and then maybe we digitize the library and and we start digitally creating some products where we don't need to see a physical sample. That's when we think of those development lanes that I I was mentioning earlier. speaker-0: So let's let's talk about that. So digital product creation as a foil, as a foil for overdevelopment, right? So I can see that to some extent. And I wonder if you and I see it in the same way. So part of me thinks that the skill floor and the time investment that you need to design and then virtually engineer garments in 3D puts a calf on how much you can develop. It gets you it gets you away from overdevelopment just because the work Is is harder and more time consuming and happens all on in one place instead of being distributed. And obviously 3D is going to let you cut out sample rounds for because that's the the biggest demonstrable value that it's had in a lot of implementations. I'm struggling with the vision for using 3D to cut over development on two other ways, though. The first is that when you cut out a lot of early stage material development experimentation using 3D. You need a level of d material digitization, maturity, and adoption that the industry doesn't have. So you just mentioned let's let's go to the library, let's digitize the library. That's firmly a work in progress for most brands. And most companies do not have that material library digitized. The second is if what you're trying to do is curb the number of ideas you develop, ⁓ and if you're trying to kind of get a handle on what you present, what it makes it to line review, and so on. I feel like generative AI is maybe a better route to that than 3D would. ⁓ If what you're trying to do is just get ideas into the development stage, have people scrutinize them and then determine what you're going to adopt and take forward. Tell me the role that you think you see digital product creation playing in Cobing Oberdevelopment. speaker-1: Say that Gen AI is probably the least appealing idea here. And here's why. Technology should enable a designer's creativity and not limit it. So the intention is not to limit the ideas, but to limit the number of developments that send the rest of the organization into this reactive mode and into a wild goose chase. So if we use technology to take care of the things that we already that are already proven. Like our core basics, et cetera, and then digitize those things that are routine. That's where we'll start to see designers having the time to be more creative and go to market and go to the shows and see what's happening and get excited about creating, instead of thinking about all the rework that the merchant's gonna send their way, or, you know. If technology's gonna take their jobs away. And I think this is where digital libraries for color and fabric can be used to expedite the approval process and or serve up a menu of what already exists. Whatever the creative inspiration might be, there might already be a solution in the library, whether it's physical or digital, right? And I think that's where. We can really see this opportunity of giving creative teams time to be creative. speaker-0: Okay. And that's a good answer. Now, I think you've got the honor of being ahead of the curve a bit when it comes to mapping and understanding the impact of GLP ones. So Azempic, Monjaro, and now generics, depending on where you're in the world, on fashion. Now you did not only have you talked about it from a sizing point of view, you also did a thorough analysis of the parent company that developed Monjaro, so Eli Lilly, their race to market as part of your book. And you use that as a reference frame for how they were able to beat their closest competitor by cutting drug development times nearly in half. Now, everyone listening to this is gonna know GLP ones as the class of drugs that are behind a new era of size volatility, because every target demographic is suddenly a moving target in a way that it didn't used to be because people drop weight faster than any linear model would have suggested. you can respond to some of that by updating your sizing ranges, rebalancing your ratios, or doing what ⁓ Brandy, whatever the name was, ⁓ does with having one size fits most. but I feel like you have a keener exact angle here on how process innovation, material first workflows can insulate or prepare companies for size volatility, as well as using that as maybe a lighthouse for how they can think about process innovation as well. speaker-1: This is such this has been a fascinating space. And we we have been studying not only how Eli Lilly innovated their process to get to market faster to compete, but really the parallels of what brands need to do today. And I think what's really fascinating here is that GLP1s. I mean, they didn't suddenly create body changes, right? This is this is not a body transformation era. This is just one of the things, one of the factors that are impacting the shape of the customer's body and and the composition of the customer's body today. For example, you know, we talk about strength training in women, how it's more prevalent. How we're seeing more uses of supplements. And that's changing, you know, how the body is changing shape. Now, fit is a dynamic condition. Fit is dynamic, right? It's always, it's always changing. But what GLP1s have done is that they have become this magnifying glass on how broken the processes are in fashion. And We c we coined this term fit volatility, where brands can't keep up with the dynamic, constant changes of the customer's body shape and composition due to all of these factors, because those factors are happening so fast and the body shape is changing so quickly, but our processes are static and slow. And I brought this up earlier where it takes. 52 weeks or longer for many brands to go to market. The customer's body shape and size is changing drastically, in fact, dropping two to three sizes in a season. Now, the other thing I'd like to bring up is fit intent. When we think about fit intent, we determine it early in the process, maybe at the design brief stage. Are we revisiting fit intent when we get insights from the customer or our ideal buyer that they're what they intend to wear is changing because their their body shape has changed. They want more let's say fitted silhouettes. They are buying more you know, certain types of styles of garments because they're more confident, etc. So that's fit intent. So not only are our processes really slow and static, but size lives in planning, fit lives in design. Retailers are commonly siloed. So if we're determining the size at line plan at the start of our process, like when we're planning line architecture based on historical data, market insights, et cetera, and then fast forward at right before proto review, we start fitting garments. And then The merchant team will commit, but they're using the size curves and the sizes planned at the start of the process. That's a disconnect in itself. And then the last thing I'll bring up, which is something that I've been thinking about a lot, is that the master fit block is owned by Tech Design. And that's updated every three to five years. So not only are we not allocating the right sizes, we're not evaluating. If our fit has changed, if the ideal buyer, our customer, if their body composition has completely changed because they're on a GLP one. So there's a lot of nuances and a lot of multiple forces here that are really having, I would say forcing brands now to take a closer look at their processes. speaker-0: Now we've talked about a lot of things today. So We have. Fit fit that fit volatility is one part. ⁓ we've talked about profitability. We've talked about process innovation. ⁓ all of those are big, big chunky issues to get your hands around. So let's try and end on a practical note. what can listeners take away from the show and do something about tomorrow, next week, rather than just making a few notes here and then filing them away as part of some nebulous long term digital transformation strategy? speaker-1: So I'm gonna leave you with a short list. The first thing is I think brands really need to audit the fit details and their fit process and product creation. So ask questions like: Is fit intent locked too early relative to our what we're learning from our customer, from our market insights? How often are those master fit blocks updated and our standard sizing reviewed? And then how off how well does our fit model represent the ideal buyer? I'll tell you that when I was with Ralph Lauren, if my fit model changed, ⁓ my God, it we would we would stop everything because we use the same fit model year after year. And those questions matter because we need to understand: does our ideal buyer map to how these impacts To the customer are changing the customer's body shape and composition. For example, like the GLP one demographics. The next thing I'll say is that process equals profit, especially if brands are taking 52 weeks or longer to go to market and have overlapping product creation calendars. And are they using that timeline for the majority of their product? Or are they creating all their product in the same way? Equally, right? And then audit that first and then start thinking about whether or not that approach makes sense for the entire assortment. Do we need to think about development lanes? Do we need to think about the balance of technology and touch when we are considering our product creation process and how we develop that product? And then finally, I would say we need to. start moving past transactional vendor relationships because brands are addicted to low-cost sourcing. It's the root cause of a lot of apparel inefficiencies. And brands that really true like forge this true partnership with the vendors, they will gain an edge. Because if we share a risk and we have this interdependence, the vendors are really good at what they do. And they have capabilities that can help. More often than not, right? And supply flexibility is a great example. ⁓ prepositioning fabrics, ⁓ looking at new approaches to creating product, for example. Vendors are very, very good at what they do. And leaning on vendors, I think, is a great way to start innovating the process and building relationships that are Pioneers instead of service providers. And I would say the same goes for internal teams like the materials teams, because they are very good at what they do. speaker-0: I think that's an important takeaway for anybody thinking about technology is remember that your teams are good at what they do ⁓ and allow them to exert as much influence as they can over technology selection and adoption. Lisa, it's been a pleasure having you on. Thanks for joining me. speaker-1: Absolutely, this was so fun. And I and I love that we also put Costco in into our conversation. speaker-0: Hey, there's never there's never a bad conversation to insert Gostko into. speaker-1: I agree. I agree. Thank you, Ben. speaker-0: And that's the end of my chat with Lisa. As you can probably tell, I'm keen on pinning sweeping terms like process innovation down to actual practical actions. So hopefully between the two of us, you've got a blend of top-level vision and tangible execution in there. We're gonna be back to a more focused topic next week, so I hope you enjoyed the momentary diversion. I'll speak to you again really soon.