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What It Takes To Run A Fashion Brand With A Social Conscience · The Interline Podcast

• speaker-0: Hey, welcome back to the Interline Podcast. We've had a lot of technology executives on the show lately, and we have another tech CEO next week. So today we're going for a change of pace, and I mean that in a bunch of ways. My guest for the show is Rosie McKissick, who's brand director for Toast, a brand that prides itself on two things: designing for longevity and operating with a rigorously documented social conscience. Thematically and practically, both of those lend themselves to a slower, more deliberate, and more holistically aware approach to fashion than the one we've ended up talking about a lot here recently, where AI is promising to kick everything into a massively higher gear. Now, I can promise you, the brand and the assortment you're picturing when I use words like slow and holistic are probably quite close to what toast. Which is a Welsh company founded in the late nineties, offers across women's wear, men's wear, and home. Think campaigns in farmland locations with earthy, sustainably sourced knitwear and loose cuts. Or campaigns in the kinds of neighborhoods in London and San Francisco where people dress as though they might be about to read Walden or A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to you. I'm being a bit cheeky there, but I'm kind of poking fun at myself. You're listening to a guy who lives in the countryside? And who owns a chainsaw and has more than my share of fleeces and hiking boots. I hate to dispel the mystique that this show is recorded in some kind of gleaming studio in the city, but most episodes, this one included, are taped from my house, and are usually horses visible outside the window. One time I nearly ran over a deer coming up the road. I'm trying to put you in the right aesthetic frame of mind here, right? But for all that kind of connectivity to the land and Traditional craft and natural materials. There's really a lot of technology, governance, process, and operational analysis in today's episode. Toast publishes an annual social conscience report that's full of claims like: quote: 99% of our 2025 clothing collections were made from solely natural fibers or cellulosic fibers from certified sources. And We work with external auditors because we believe in holding ourselves and our business accountable and offering transparency to our customers. I, these are not claims that you can just make without having the data and the systems to back them up. Toast works with Segura, which you may have heard of, on granular global supply chain mapping and transparency. Their Toast Circle program of renew, repair, and exchange, which they say has kept more than 25,000 pieces in circulation, is run on software from Circulo. Which they use to coordinate the extended post purchase and end of life journey. And like any brand, they have to introduce newness, right? But they're they're having to do it within a much narrower envelope because of their commitment to preferred materials, which leads to some process and design development ingenuity. And we're also not leaving more frontier tech off the table today either. If you're a regular listener, you'll know that I've recently shifted to doing more and more of my everyday work in Codex, the desktop app from OpenAI. This has been a change for me as the last holdout here at the Interline who insisted on running things like Slack as desktop apps rather rather than browser tabs. But the appeal of having multiple browser windows, markdown files, AI chat, etc., all running in a single dual pane application was strong, and I'm getting a lot out of working that way. That sounds like a digression, but actually it's relevant because in the process of researching this week's show inside Codex, I discovered that the Toast website exposed a bunch of AI agent tools through Web MCP, which Codex flags up to you. Not really what you would expect for this kind of brand necessarily. So I'm really curious to see where that came from, and I want to know what it can tell us about the parts of technology, particularly in selling, that companies consider to be essential. And needless to say, I want to use that then as a jumping off point to ask Rosie whether Toast would generate any PDP or campaign images. And if not, whether the objection there would be environmental, ethical, or both. So yeah, a different kind of pace and a different lens today, but we're still walking in the same tracks we usually do on the Interline podcasts. They're just a bit muddier, and somebody probably drove a Land Rover through them this morning. Let's get into my chat with Rosie. Okay. Rosie McKissick, welcome to the Entire Podcast. speaker-1: Thank you very much, lovely to be here. speaker-0: Lovely to have you. It's nice to have a brand on. We've had a spate of technology executives recently. so it's nice to have somebody from the other side of the aisle. Now, to that end, we always start the show with two things. We take a look at what the guest's day-to-day job is and then we ask them to define something. we'll start with your job. if you work for a different type of business, i.e., not Brand. I think I'd maybe have an easier time instinctively understanding what a brand director does. I can understand that for a technology company. I can understand that for some other roles. For toast, it seems like the brand and the communication around the product is kind of synonymous with everything that goes into the product and everything that happens around it as well. It sounds like quite a holistic role, for want of a better word. Tell me how much of your time in an average week is kind of spent on telling the toast story. versus how much of it goes into letting that story influence the product, the supply chain, the sustainability and everything else? speaker-1: Well first I think it's a really interesting observation around the idea of what does a brand director do for a brand like Toast? Because I think Toast is absolutely as a brand and it's kind more than a clothing brand I would say, like very much rooted in craftsmanship, timeless design, community and this just more thoughtful way of living. So as you see quite a holistic proposition. I've been with Toast two years and my first observation was also how singularly the brand was understood and communicated by both the internal teams and also people outside the brands, the customers, industry peers and press. And I think my role really is about being a kind of custodian of all those touch points outside of product. So if product is a bit of the brand that you take home, my role is really about being responsible for the experience of the brand beyond that, making sure that it's consistently felt and understood. So just for the benefit of anybody unfamiliar with this specific interpretation of a brand director, my role covers our marketing and our brand creative teams, but also e-commerce, social conscience and customer service. So it is working across those teams to deliver this very rich and textured experience of toast. Thinking then about your point around how much time is spent between telling the story, I suppose, and letting that story influence the product. Internally, think it's more a question of ensuring that we're putting our decision making through that kind of brand filter. So do the decisions that we're making ladder up to the brand promise that we've made to ourselves and to our customers. And that I would say probably is a big portion of my time reviewing projects, reviewing assets with the teams through that lens so that we keep things consistent and we keep them all moving forward. Externally though, I think it's a slightly different emphasis. So a huge portion of my time in my external dealings with people across different parts of the industry, customers, et cetera, is focused on telling that toast story. So while it's very well understood internally, we do also have an exceptionally high level of customer engagement with the people that know us. So I suppose even in the UK, which is our most mature market, I think we still feel it's this huge opportunity to increase engagement, reach more people who share the kind of values of the brand but perhaps haven't come across us yet. So telling that story in the UK is very important from an engagement point of view. And then over the last few years we've been looking at growth and our big focus growth market is the US which is actually where I am today. So we've been opening stores in the US off the back of a successful growth period on our online business. And obviously being a smaller fish in that US pond does demand quite regular storytelling. speaker-0: How do you approach internationalizing that story? Because I'm I'm curious about this. I have I have a friend who runs a menswear brand and he and his co-founder did a whole kind of let's go to America and let's see how well the brand that we've built and the promise and the product and stuff resonates with American audiences. And I'm just curious, is it like is it the same story? Is it does it change in the telling? like when you when you take something like that internationally, something that is rooted in in craft of maturity in a particular region, I just I guess I'm just curious to see how that changes how you talk about. Well speaker-1: Well, actually we found it doesn't change a great deal. Partly, Toast is a very thoughtful brand. We don't tend to be, I suppose, reactive in the traditional sense. So we built our online community for five or six years before we even opened a store here. So that online proposition was extremely consistent across all of our markets, whether that's UK, US, whether that's into Europe or even Asia. And so people were starting to kind of build a connection with the brand on the same basis that they were in the UK, which is great. So when we started to open stores, we already had these kind of inbuilt communities who had this kind of consistent understanding, but we do see it's very, I would say our kind of demographic, if you like, is very values oriented as opposed to gender or age or anything like that. So it tends to be very much a case of shared values, which does allow you to be very consistent, I think, in the way that you present the brand. And even in terms of the products, our best sellers in one market are typically the best sellers in another market. We don't see nearly the variation, I think, that other brands do in that sense either. speaker-0: Interesting. Let's talk about those values and let's talk about what you mean by social conscience. Now, we're used to thinking about individual conscience, right? We're used to people understanding that the actions that they take affect other people. We're also used to talking, or I mean some of us are, I can't speak for all politicians, about collective action problems that require people to align their individual incentives to solve something bigger. What does it mean for a brand to have a social conscience and to be an actor in that regard? So the the uncharitable, the cynical read would be how how much of a conscience can you really have? How much influence and how much can you really solve about society by selling products? But a more favorable one would be, hey, maybe you can make a difference there and you can change some of the prevailing conditions of an industry that has a long way to go when it comes to managing its impact on planet and people and taking account of how it affects society. And then there's the extra wrinkle that the social side of sustainability. so a lot of pe a lot of brands talk about being sustainable and that usually just means environmentally conscious rather than socially conscious. So the social side plays second fiddle to a lot of that, whereas you're putting it first. Help me understand the distinction and help me understand what you mean by social conscious. speaker-1: So going back to your first point, the distinction between social conscience for you or I as an individual versus any brand. I think for a brand to have a social conscience, it's about recognizing the business that you're in. We do make and sell products. However, the kind of function of having a social conscience, if you like, is to ensure that in the process of doing so, you're trying to minimize your negative impact. So I'm not sure that our goal is to influence or solve all the problems of society, for example. But it would be nice to think that we could model a way of operating a commercially successful business that also sets ambitious standards about the way that it works with a view to influencing pure brands, encouraging customers to make maybe different choices about where, when, and how they shop. And honestly, I do think we talk a lot internally about how we can help to inspire that next generation of creatives and business leaders when they pick up the baton. So we should all aspire to leave things better than we find them. I think that's what we mean really when we talk about social conscience. speaker-0: I think that's a good answer. Just to pick up on one thing that you mentioned there. Now, commercially successful brand with a social conscience. I think a lot of people see those as maybe not like oxymoronic necessarily, but I think I think a lot of people would say you can be sustainable, values-driven, active in areas, or you can be commercially successful. The two exist in some kind of tension with one another. I'm guessing you've not seen that, and I'm guessing you see that you can be. commercially successful and have a social conscience. Just just just give me a give me a breast text answer. It is a profitable brand that is also socially driven. speaker-1: Absolutely. speaker-0: Perfect. Carry on then. That's that's all I wanted to ask. speaker-1: I think that it's interesting that you also you made a point around one element playing kind of second fiddle to the other and I think We don't see it necessarily that way. I think we want to do what we can to protect the long-term health of the planet in the same way that we want to champion the wellbeing of those who live on it. that point around social conscience in terms of environment and the point around social conscience in terms of people and society, I do think go hand in hand. And I think that when you talk about kind of being commercially successful, I think often when industry or brands are talking about. sustainability per se. They do typically gravitate towards things like materials and process which do have kind of specific impact on product costs and of course those things are really important like it's fundamentally essential to understand what the physical act of manufacturing does but I think it's also about focusing on community. We do a lot of work both in terms of the people that create the products but also initiatives that are not profit driven, so where we are not making a commercial gain. We have a program called New Makers, for example, which is very much around every year we we receive a number of applications. We pick out a handful, five typically, of people who are at the beginning of this kind of creative career, if you like, and we work with them, we mentor them, we give them a platform, we support them in developing, you know, whatever their ambitions are. And those things, I think, social conscience is so much bigger than this point just around environmental impact. I think that's, I think it's also why if you're looking at all of those different bits, it becomes part of the whole value chain, if you like. And that does allow you to be, I think much more kind of commercially successful because it's baked into the way that the brand exists in every single facet. speaker-0: I think that's I think that's right, because I think you do hear big brands in particular will say, Okay, well, let's do a sustainable collection, let's do a collection that and it but that doesn't make it part of the institution, that doesn't make it part of their operations. It doesn't it doesn't align the incentives the same way that you've just described. speaker-1: No, and it means that you become so focused on the kind P &L impact. It would be cheaper if we didn't use organic something or certified something else. And I think it has to be a much bigger conversation and it has to be a much bigger part of your value system as an organization. Otherwise, it does become a conversation around cost. And I think that's, devalues the kind of benefit of really investing in that. speaker-0: Yep, yeah, yeah. I think I think that's correct. Okay. So you talked about the the brand promise and the product promise before. you talk about building products to last. I like in principle, I think everybody agrees that that's a good thing. I think that has two elements to it. it has a design component in the sense that if you're creating something to last, it needs to be timeless rather than like on of the moment or anchored to a particular kind of short-term fad or trend. And it also needs to be Durable and needs to last. you the the constructions of materials and so on, it's something that needs to be around in a pure existence context and in a this is still something that I want to wear and want to be seen wearing context. Tell me what it means practically to do both of those things through design, development, consumer testing and and the brand story. And tell me how you bundle both of those bits up into that promise to the consumer. speaker-1: Well, the circularity starts at the design stage for us. So it's considered through all the materials, the pattern, the construction, a garment is made and how it's going to actually be used. But I think fundamentally, some of this goes back to the point you made in your very first question around the identity of the brand. And I think the identity of the brand is so distinctly felt that the way that the design team approached the collection is always through that kind of toast aesthetic and a seasonal concept that they develop in-house rather than fashion trends. So you're immediately outside of that, my god, it's this this season, it's something else next season. And that distinctive brand aesthetic has a real ease and functionality to it. That means that it doesn't necessarily age or date in the way that a trend led proposition would. And often actually when we host, we do a lot of kind of community events where our customers will come and join us. And often they will come in their oldest pieces to demonstrate the connection to the brand over time and they're still wearing them kind of. with real pride and often have been through multiple repairs and regeneration over time as well. On the point around durability though, I think that's very much about understanding the properties of the materials that we use. the choices we make are very much guided by a desire to use natural fibres wherever possible. And we do do product testing, of course, and typically we do prefer materials that age beautifully. And I think how natural materials respond to time and wear is really part of what makes the materials so special, but also the clothing. We make a virtue out of that, I think, in our commitment to the customer. So natural materials will evolve in a way that man-made ones don't. And where we go outside of that framework, we would only ever do it to improve the durability of a product. This does tend to be, I would say it's more specifically around components like buttons, zips, things like that. They would be areas where we aren't necessarily using the same sort of natural fibers. And we would look for options that have the lightest impact. recycles, for example. speaker-0: Yeah. There are only so many places you can get zippers and polars realistically as well. It's a fairly consolidated supply chain. You just mentioned the material stuff. Your social conscience report uses the phrase preferred materials, which a lot of a lot of reports do. That's accepted industry lexicon. It can mean something different to every company, right? The reason that you prefer one material over another can be, as you just said, like performance-driven, durability-driven, it can be impact-driven, or so on. your specific criteria on top of the ones you just talked about favor organic, regenerative, recycled, natural fibers, and so on. It's no secret that even though that phrase means something different to every brand, there's still broadly on aggregate, there's a delta between fashion's demand for preferred materials and availability and the actual global supply. so walk me through how you make sure you can back up that product promise and ensure consistent performance and so on. with the availability of the materials you need to to keep that because it's it's one thing to say, okay, we work with a lot of synthetics this and synth fossil derived synthetics make up something like sixty to seventy percent of all new textile development or something in in a given period, which definitionally means you are sourcing some you're sourcing outside the mainstream and you're sourcing outside the mainstream as demand is increasing. So how do you make sure that you can secure those inputs and you can continue to keep that promise over time. speaker-1: Well, I have to say all credit to our production and design teams here. So they are really rigorous in their selection and actually have spent over a long period of time developing a really tight library, both of materials and suppliers that cover a large portion of a collection. So we trust and work with those suppliers to deliver each season, which means that we are able to kind of secure the base material for the majority of the collection kind of in a fairly consistent way. We don't really proliferate unnecessarily into lots of different versions of things. We do innovate, but we also have this, as I say, a core base of fabrics and components. So you have a bit of a level of confidence in terms of knowing what we're going to be delivering. And that also gives the team the headspace to innovate with real intention. So where they are bringing something new in, it's for a specific purpose and has a kind of, I suppose we're able to kind of forecast and project that a little bit more specifically. And that means we don't have to change everything every season. And I think for a lot of suppliers, that consistency and that predictability makes us, I think, a good partner. think, I guess we also work to very much on a kind buy now, wear now model. So we're able to phase our orders and shipments to align to monthly drops. So that means we can nuance a little bit and avoid ordering more than we need to. Like our nightmare scenario would always be to end up with, you know, unwanted product. not, we don't want people to buy more things. We want people, more people to make good choice in the things that they do buy. So. We try to be as effective as we can at that kind of prediction and I think that's an important part of it too. speaker-0: Cool. And then when you think about the values that you've talked about and the material supply and stuff you've talked about, I'm I'm keen to learn a little bit about how you approach product innovation. Because I'm sure you do end up using some synthetic fibers from time to time, but you're you're mostly operating in a pretty narrow envelope for what you can bring in as an input for new ideas. Especially when you have to minimize the amount of preferred materials that you're wasting in the development process. unlike somebody who's working with predominantly high availability synthetics where you can do multiple rounds of sampling and you can have fairly high fabric waste and low utilization and yield and stuff if you feel like it. That doesn't apply to the kind of model that you have here. So how do you approach this? And Do you already or would you think about developing new ideas virtually in three D, for instance, or maybe even virtualizing some part of garment testing so that you reduce the potential wastage for preferred materials in the innovation and development process? speaker-1: Yeah, I don't think we're necessarily against that. think there is always a point at which, particularly with the type of materials that we use, there is always going to be a point where you need to see something on a body. You're going to need to see it physically. But I think, yeah, I don't think we're against the idea of finding those kind of new efficient ways, particularly at the beginning of the process. I mean, we have done quite a lot of work. in terms of design development and pattern exploration and how we are more effective there to reduce our sampling of materials at an early work stage or an early stage of the work. So that is an area I think if we were looking to introduce more technology that would be the stage at which that would be most relevant I think later on. As I say, you do get into a point where you need a prototype. mean, innovation can take many forms. think, you know, often the industry probably driven by the sports industry, I would think has convinced us that it always needs to be technology related. And I just don't think that's the case. Innovation should be about adding real value. And sometimes really what you need is just newness as opposed to true innovation. I think there are a few areas where we seek to innovate on products. So we are looking at fabrications, although as you rightly say, it is within some fairly tight parameters. And of course suppliers are doing interesting things and you do get these particularly kind of bio-based materials. There are really interesting things that do kind of pop up from time to time and we're interested in testing those and figuring out what's scalable and what's not. But we don't like to take on too many at once. I think we're very tactical about it. So we'd rather do one thing well, really land it, then keep throwing new things out there just to see what happens. speaker-0: And is is that newness tend to then be led by material availability in an inventory, or is it led more by okay, we have an idea for a new silhouette, we have an idea for a new category or something along those lines? speaker-1: bit of both, I think. Sometimes, over the last few years, been so much upheaval in terms of the, I suppose, globally, even just the impact on shipping. We've had so many challenges over the last few years. So looking at finding a supplier in a different region that can produce something that you used to buy somewhere else. There's some of that, but then sometimes it is genuinely about, my goodness, we'd like to create a product like this, how could we do it? I suppose the other area from a product point of view where we look to innovate is really on kind of craft techniques. I question as I say it, whether the word innovation is right there, just in the sense that typically we're most interested in traditional techniques. So they're innovative in the sense that they're not always things that are accessible to mass market. but they are actually very traditional in terms of the way that they operate. And we have a number of techniques that we go back to time and time again. But we do find that area, that kind of craft area, which as I say, a lot of brands would consider too complex or too expensive potentially to kind of include in their collections, is an area where we get an incredible return on investment because our customers really love those pieces where the process can be discerned in the product that they wear. The other area of innovation, you'll indulge me, is through the lens of collaboration. So what would a third party do to that kind of toast brand elastic? So an example of this, we have a collection. We started doing this really last year as an extension of Toast Circle, which is our circularity proposition. And this particular component is called Renewed By, where we invite a designer to reimagine a capsule collection using garments and fabrics that we couldn't use ourselves elsewhere. So that typically brings quite a fresh take on the brand that I think I would consider to be quite innovative. Innovation also exists in our service propositions. So Toast Circle, for people not familiar with it, that covers a number of different circularity initiatives. So from our repair service, which is a kind of free service that we offer, exchange events where people can kind of bring in pieces that they don't want and switch them. We have ReWarn, which is pieces that are donated to us, we repair them and then we can kind of sell them back. And then Renewed, which is kind of reimagining pieces that maybe were rejected for quality reasons or whatever. That whole process we've actually just spent the last year digitizing with a tech partner called Circular. And I think this is a kind of really special, really unique customer experience that I think is going to help us unlock so much more for our customers through kind of CRM. everything there was previously done on paper. So that's been quite an exciting development. And I think, as I say, beyond just the products that we make, think, feels like a really innovative move at Toast. speaker-0: I think I think that's right. When we're we're familiar with circular, we've we've come across them before. So but yeah, I agree. the innovation in the customer-facing proposition as much as the proposition is is important. I think one of the realities maybe of operating with a social conscience is that sometimes you have to accept the limits of it. Or you have to accept the limits of how far it can go in terms of being supported or not by the infrastructure that exists, right? So in I read through your social conscience report for 2025. And you have example of that in a director farm cotton pilot that worked, but that you're not intending to repeat because it couldn't really scale. Now, I think towards the end of probably about this time last year, actually, I had a similar conversation with the founder of Men's World Brand Neem London, a guy called Nick Reed. He piloted a full Made in the UK collection, and it got to market, but ended up same deal, ended up saying he wouldn't do it again because The volumes a small brand needed to make it to actually make it viable were impractical. And then he found that there just wasn't the manufacturer material supplier support available in the UK to make it to make it work. What do you think would need to change for some of these kinds of pilots, some of these kinds of like full end-to-end observable things to be more viable? And do you think maybe, you know, novel materials, new fibers, some of those kinds of innovations could maybe close some of the gaps? speaker-1: Well, my view on pilots is that, I mean, they won't always work. And I think there's certainly there are infrastructure challenges, particularly around circularity. But pilots really, for me, they should open up an industry discussion. What would need to be true for this to be successful? Who else would benefit? How can we challenge that? How can we create those conditions? I think from our point of view, we're not interested in only presenting the things that work. I think there is a level of transparency required in terms of the things that fail as well. Because the likelihood if something works, will be adopted more broadly anyway. Brilliant. You look around the industry, you see somebody else doing something, you think that looks interesting, and if it's successful, you can jump on the bandwagon. The real challenge is when the things fail. So the role of things that should be about challenging the status quo. However, I think in the short term, you're also right. Having clear principles. are a very values-led organization. means that sometimes you're saying no to something as often as you're saying yes, because it just... doesn't make sense at that moment in time and I think that's okay. speaker-0: Yeah. No, I think that's a good attitude to take to it. You talking to things that did work, or that sounds like they work. the projects that you've done with Segura, who again we're we're familiar with that seems to have brought more of your supply chain into view. including and I and by your more of your supply chain, I mean the multi-tier supply chain. And I can see the value of having that information, right? Because it's it's something that the majority of brands do not have. I think it's fair to say that on aggregate, your typical fashion brand has limited visibility beyond its Tier one production partners and potentially it's tier two material supply partners and so on. that kind of visibility, though, can also end up revealing less savory things. It can end up revealing something that complicates a material choice or or a deadline or commercial relationship. You know, you turn over a rock, you don't always like what you find, essentially. I'm interested for the kind of holistic values-driven brand that Toast is. What does it mean to you to build a culture that can act on the things that you find? instead of just nodding in the direction of the bad ones and going, Okay, we found something positive here, let's let's disclose around it. If somebody flags up a problem in that multi-tier supply chain, you know, have to give them the knowledge and the authority to change the plan. and you have to give them support when, as you said before, I think like i it can't just be cost driven. If somebody finds a a a a potential better alternative or a drawback You have to have a culture that's willing to go, we will accept some degree of compromise in our margin in order to improve the some other element of the product promise here. Thinking from that like holistic brand point of view, how do you build that culture? How do you get to that place where you can say, we're gonna find out some stuff and whether we like it or not, we are we have the culture to act on it. speaker-1: Yeah, I think we talked a little bit at the beginning of this conversation about the kind of community element of the value system at Toast. I think you're right that sometimes those things, if purely from a mathematical point of view, to solve some of those problems, and you do find problems that's And also that's the point of the transparency. That's the point of working with a partner like Segura. It'd be nice to think that everything was absolutely perfect and you could just tick all your boxes and move along. But of course there are instances where things are not as you would want to find them. But because of the kind community first value system, like I actually off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance where we've been like, my gosh, this supplier is not doing all the things that we would expect them to be doing. Therefore, we're just going to walk away. think typically what we would do is work with them to get them to a place where things are as you would want to find them. And I'm trying to think of the name of the conference. I went to a big sustainability conference in Amsterdam a couple of years ago and had this really fascinating conversation around audits and what is the purpose of an audit and the corrective measures and just how important it is. not to walk away when something's wrong. Actually, the most responsible thing you can do as a business is to try and fix the problem because otherwise somebody else is going to go into that supplier and things might not be as they should be and they might not feel compelled to address it or leave. So it just sustains the problem. I do think that some of that comes back to this idea of having a responsibility to the wider industry and to the people, the partners that we work with from a cultural point of view. I have found the culture at Toast to be extremely open. think we discuss everything across all layers of the business with absolute honesty and do make the calls together. I think across our senior leadership team, we actually have a really broad range of experience across different types and sizes of brands and businesses and everybody has their own area of specialisms. So the way we handle any of these issues is about airing it openly, talking about challenges. And I suppose understanding the impact for all the people involved, not just for the brand itself. I do have a really high level of confidence that we have a very capable team. And we do leverage our trusted partners, whether that's Segura, UKFT, we have a number of different kind of third parties that we also work with who've been really carefully chosen for their values alignment. with TURST as well as their expertise. So we're able to kind of work that through sometimes with some external perspectives as well. But I think, you know, you're right, you won't always find the answer that you want, but I think just to kind of ignore it and walk away is often the least responsible action you can take. speaker-0: I would agree with that. We're a technology publication, as we mentioned a couple of times, so we're always keen to tie things back to where technology supports the kind of work you're doing. You mentioned the work that you've done with Circular before. is there anything else about the digital side of your take back program or the managing the systems for repair tracking or things that because I think a lot of brands listening to this who don't have repair initiatives will well, there'll be two reasons for it. One is it's not the right category. They're not the right brand, it's not the right consumer to to s to to have or scale that kind of thing. The other is just the pure practicalities of it. The the other is is quite literally how do we manage something like that? Something that is yes, you can measure KPIs around customer loyalty and upselling and things like that. You can find value in it, but In order to find the value, you have to do some heavy lifting up front. You have to be willing to say, okay, this is a complex program and we need to keep track of it in a way that is not paper. as as you mentioned. Is there anything else about the digital systems there that you think is particularly interesting or is likely to resonate with our readership and our listeners? speaker-1: Well, I think the circular project, if you like, has been fascinating actually because the whole take-back scheme or our donate program at Toast, obviously the brand was much smaller when it first started offering some of those things and has grown and grown and as such demand for some of those services or initiatives has become higher as well and some of the ways of working just weren't scalable. So I think historically that was always a very manual process to think a little bit as you're describing there. fine if you've only got a few of them, but as that becomes a greater volume of pieces, became a lot of paperwork in store. Also, this thing about actually you'd go in and you would donate unwanted pieces and then they just kind of disappeared off into the ether from a customer point of view. That didn't really feel consistent for us with the level of transparency that we aspire to across the board. In reality, those pieces go through a rigorous assessment and repair process to ensure that we can maximize their life cycle. And our customers are so engaged, we really felt that actually giving them visibility of what happens next once they've dropped things off was important. Because I think a lot of brands have offered a kind of, you know, to take back product. And I think customers have lost confidence, there's been a lot of exposure of the reality of some of those programs. So we really felt that this was a kind of a very important point for us to invest in. So now when you donate a piece, it's entered digitally, customers receive acknowledgement, and they can also track whether a piece has gone, whether it's been repaired and into our reworn program, or whether it's been donated to a charity partner. And we've also been working to digitize repairs too, which is obviously one of the most utilized services that we offer. So again, customers can track through the same platform. It's a much richer experience for them, but I also think for our store teams, the feedback has been it's just a much slicker operation, takes so much less of their time. So I think that is a really lovely place where actually you're enhancing the service level at Toast, which is already very high, but we're also just making it much more efficient as well. speaker-0: Thank much for and and also giving people visibility into the fact that their val their own values driven choices do make a difference. but rather say, Okay, come in and get some level of visibility into how your action is manifesting. speaker-1: And our customers really, they love a dialogue with the brand. They are highly engaged in a way that I've never experienced anywhere else. So they do very much appreciate that kind of the recognition, as you say, for the act that they have kind of taken, but also knowing what happens next and feeling really confident that they've done the right thing. And I think that's why we get donations to us as opposed to even dropping them off at a charity shop. They feel really confident that we are going to make sure that they are extending their life cycle in some way. speaker-0: Maybe a little flip side to to this idea of an engaged values-driven consumer is something else I pulled from your social consciousness report, which is you did a reusable packaging pilot. and it's an interesting behavioral use case study for me because it seems like it was a success where it was used, in the sense that of the people who took it up, the majority of customers who paid the charge then did go on to engage with it, they went on to return the packaging and so on. But at the same time. I think you said around only a small percentage or a single digit or even a single percentage of eligible orders actually opted to use reusable packaging. this to me feels emblematic a bit of that kind of tension we've hinted at a couple of times, which is that when you slap a cost on the more sustainable option or the values-driven option, people don't tend to pick it. and normally we talk about that at the product level. Where you have something that's made of lower impact materials or it's manufactured in the UK, for instance, and you say, Okay, you can have this, but it's more expensive, and a good amount of people will go, Okay, fine, that that my my level of spend here pales in comparison. but it's more important than it is with my values are. but this is a really low cost option and it's demonstrably good for the environment and so on, and still the majority of people turn it down. Why do you think that is? What do you think is behind that behavior? speaker-1: Well, I I think you've hinted at it there anyway. It's a low cost, but it is still an additional cost. And I think psychologically for some customers, that is still a barrier. I think particularly online where you could walk away, come back to it, as opposed to in-store where it's more instantaneous. I think, so there is definitely a kind of communication challenge. And even our very engaged customers often are still keen to understand more of what the tangible benefit actually is. And I do think this is one of those areas where scale, like it's a little bit chicken and egg, right? Because if more people adopt it, that'll improve the cost and make it more viable for businesses and customers. So I'm not sure I really have the perfect answer here. I think it's something we are looking at how we do integrate that into a much bigger review of packaging, especially given our online business is something like 60 to 70 % of our sales. you know, it's so significant and actually. We would love to make even small improvements there because the cumulative impact is potentially huge. I do think it's how we serve that up to customers, making sure in the way that we've just done with the Circle and Circulo is helping them to understand if you make this choice, what is the impact? How can we make you feel good about having made that small investment? I think that is probably at the crux of it. speaker-0: Yeah. I think that's I think that's a good answer. before we finish, I've got a two pronged AI question. And you you might or might not be the person to answer it, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. the first prong is, so like I think an increasing number of people, I do I spend more of my working day nowadays in codec slash chat GPT, work claude clawed desktop equivalent sort of thing. and this had an interesting experience. When I was researching Toast, your website was the first time that the in-app chat GPT browser had offered me AI assistant agentic tools. so i y your website exposes a few of them. One is searching the catalog, one's looking at products, one's working with a basket, moving to checkout, and so on. that's all derived from the Web C P standard, I think. and I I I just wanted to know if it's something that you built, something that came bundled with another piece of your e commerce stack. I know it's not your area, but if you've got any visibility into it, I'd love to know. speaker-1: Yeah, sure. So my understanding is that most, if not all of the web MCP tools are actually available to us because we're on Shopify. And Shopify switched these tools on in August this year actually for their customers. So that I think is why we have access to them. I think in terms of the benefit it's offering us, it's still a little bit soon for us to tell as they've been added so recently. And it's quite tricky to monitor AI traffic and all the traffic really effectively because you rely on someone. clicking through to your store directly. So at the moment, we believe we're getting relatively low traffic from LLMs with the majority of traffic coming from kind of chat GBT, but that doesn't necessarily give you all the answers. So yeah, but it's an area like we have a really incredible e-comm team who are real mavens of newness. So they are kind of really operating a very clever test and learn program at the moment. So we've got a really ambitious roadmap for the next 12 to 18 months looking at a lot of these things. And we've been a Shopify partner for a while. We work very closely with their teams to kind of learn how we're going to take advantage of all of this in a way that feels right. speaker-0: I think I think that's a really good answer. And we have similar visibility into or or lack thereof into the traffic that comes our way via LL via LLMs. Of referrals, it's about seven percent these days of referral that referral traffic comes to us from Chat GPT, primarily a tiny bit from perplexity. But that doesn't give you a lot of visibility into where you appeared in a query as a citation or a recommend a product recommendation in your case. And that then didn't translate into a website visit, but would have historically done under the traditional kind of Google model. So I I agree. It's it's it's an evolving space, and it sounds like you've got the right attitude to it. The second prong of this final question is for a brand in toast shoes, which as you said, so show social conscience of which environmental impact is a part. What's your take on the use of AI in general? Would you generate e-comm images or campaign images with AI, would you consider that to be a breach of the promise either ethically or environmentally? Because there's a there's a broad spread of opinions on where that fits in right now. And as the brand manager, you know, as somebody responsible for brand, feels like that falls within your limit maybe more than the Web MCP question did. speaker-1: Yeah, so mean, agentic commerce is one thing and I think that is now so integrated with so many of the standard tools that we use. I don't think it's very easy to extricate yourself as a brand or an individual. And I think we tread a cautious line at Toast in terms of improved efficiency versus brand control and also the point around environmental impact. That's something a lot of our team members have raised questions around. I think from a broader, more ethical point of view, Our focus has been very much on ensuring we don't displace creatives. We have a real commitment to creative communities. I think philosophically, we are quite an analogue brand in many ways. We have commitment to creators, but also one of our pillars is very much about sustaining traditional craft processes. That's embedded in our products, but I also think is reflected in our asset creation. So we should be protective of those processes in that sense too. No, I don't think we would want to generate PDP or campaign images through AI. That doesn't feel right for us. Certainly not right now. I can't see it being an area that we would want to move into. I don't really believe that that's aligned to our values. And I think if we start to compromise on those, then that's the point at which we would start to lose the brand. speaker-0: I think that's a good way to judge technology investments, technology frameworks and stuff in general, to be honest. the things that are aligned with the brands, the things that resonate and the things that to help to deliver on the on the the promise of the brand and the promise of the product. Rosie, that's all my questions. thanks very much for letting me quiz you on a pretty broad spectrum of stuff there. It's been it's been a pleasure having you on. speaker-1: Well, it's been lovely to be here and really lovely to meet you, speaker-0: Perfect. And that's the end of my conversation with Rosie. I hope you've enjoyed this break from the usual tech CEO talk. I certainly have. It's easy to fall into a bit of a rut with these things and then to look back and find out that you've been looking at fashion from one quite fixed vantage point for way too long. And there's nothing like talking to a brand to challenge or validate your patterns of thinking. We are, I'm afraid, back to tech executive territory next week. in the meantime though, enjoy the autumn. Fall, I guess I should say for our American and international listeners. If you haven't taken a hike in a while, you have my permission slash encouragement to go out and do so today, inspired by this episode. You might come back with some unexpected thoughts on technology for fashion, because as we've just heard, they cross over in places you might not always think about. And you also have my permission to read both Walden and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. They're both really good. maybe we'll do a the interline reading list at the end of the year if that's not too self indulgent. Either way, thanks for listening. Brace and I will be here on Tuesday with the next edition of the edit. I've been enjoying that format a lot now that we've been doing it for a good few months, and I know a bunch of our audience is into it as well. Then next Thursday I'm back on the one to one interview train as it barrels at breakneck speed towards the end of 2026. I think we've got another seven or so shows for this year after this one. then we're gonna be taking a break from both interviews and the edit over the holidays. After that, we'll be back at the start of 2027 with season three. You all seem to love what we're doing with both weekly shows based on the comments we get in person and remotely, so don't expect us to make any big format shifts, but there are some other ideas I'd like to play around with with this show in the new year. I'll I'll let you know if and when they start to come to fruition. For now, though. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again really soon.