Episode 221: The Jeans That Might Save The Planet | Beth Esponnette | Co-Founder of Unspun
Can you love fashion and still fight for the planet? Beth Esponnette says yes, and she’s proving it. As the co-founder of Unspun, Beth is building a future where clothes are made on-demand, with zero waste and local manufacturing. In this episode, she shares how her team is using 3D weaving to change the way we think about fit, sustainability, and circular design. We talk about purpose-driven careers, redefining success, entrepreneurship, and what it takes to challenge a deeply entrenched global industry. Whether you're curious about sustainable fashion or navigating your own path as a change maker, this episode is full of practical insights and inspiring motivation.
“What I’m asking now is can the duration of the physical life of a product match the duration of the trend of that product?”
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Follow along using the Transcript
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Redesigning fashion for people and planet
01:20 Why custom-fit jeans can change everything
03:15 What makes the fashion industry broken
05:00 Creating tech that weaves clothes on demand
07:15 How Beth’s team is scaling through partnerships
10:00 The hidden cost of mass production and waste
12:00 Beth’s New England roots and maker mindset
14:30 What factory owners are saying about labor
16:45 Can we localize production again?
20:00 Balancing sustainability with trend cycles
22:00 Fashion’s problem with planned obsolescence
28:00 Building a startup that challenges the norm
30:30 Why Gen Z values don’t match their shopping habits
34:00 Beth’s ask: A board member to scale impact
We are a company that's trying to change the way that clothing is manufactured and we wanna make the industry much more intentional. We wanna make it on demand. We only make what we need and we wanna make it circular. So that is that's just adding a lot to already a lot on our plate, but we have plans for getting there.
That's Beth Esponnette. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Let's tell everyone who you are, where you are in the world, and what you're up to. Yeah. Hi everyone.
My name's Beth Esponnette. I am calling from San Francisco today. It is raining again. I don't know. What happened to the world? I think everyone was ready for the rain to be done after this crazy season and the world is just like throwing another curve ball at us.
So I love it, that nature is doing this to us. But also I'm ready to put away my rain jacket. I, what am I up to today? We're taking a bunch of fun outputs off of our 3D weaving machine today, so I'm really excited about that.
That is very exciting. I spent a long time in the product world and getting to see prototypes, new materials.
Final samples. It's like Christmas
it. Yeah, it really is. And it's like at the point where I'm almost expecting something every day and it's not, maybe not the best place to be in from a mental standpoint, but it is exciting.
I'd love to dive into on Spun a bit because it is a brand that is committed to achieving a lot of different things.
So let's walk people through who aren't familiar with the brand. What is it? What are your core values and how are you trying to tackle those?
Yeah. Thank you for asking. We are a company that's trying to change the way that clothing is manufactured, and we wanna make the industry much more intentional.
We wanna make it on demand so that we only make what we need and we wanna make it circular. So that is that's just adding a lot to already a lot on our plate. But we have plans for getting there and we've. Taken relatively bite-sized pieces to get to that point. So far we have unlocked custom fit for, I don't wanna say the masses yet.
It's still $200 price point. It's still three week turnaround, but we're getting a lot closer to democratizing custom fit for. For consumers, and that's something you can see on our website today. We focus on custom jeans. We are also working with other brands to bring this technology to them so that their customers can get a body scan and then have that.
Product that, that a brand offers custom fit to them so that we feel like we've done a good job with checking off that box and automating that process. But our next step is to make on demand more accessible in the market. It's not everyone has this, it's still a, an industry that is a push model where you make a lot of product, push it out into the market, and then fingers crossed that people like what they're going to get at the end of the day and they'll buy it.
Doesn't work that way. At least 30% goes straight to landfill after that because it's just it's such a Guss game. It's really difficult. So what we're doing now is instead of sending our patterns to a cut and sew facility, that has to lay one layer of it at a time, cut out one unique pattern at a time and make those into unique genes, instead we can send that, those instructions to our 3D weaving machine, which would, can then weave that person's unique.
Pair of jeans right on the machine. So we feel like that's the next big step for us to getting this out into the market. And right now we're very focused on getting business partners so that we can scale this faster because. I love the Unspun brand. I love what we're doing, but we aren't going to be able to make the impact that we really wanna make just through the Unspun brand.
We need to be able to do this through the biggest retailers in the world and bring this technology to them.
I think this is an interesting point because so often we think, okay, we have this great idea. We have to keep it, we have to optimize it. Where did the idea of sharing it come from? Was it.
An obvious choice for you? Was it from the beginning? Was there a moment that happened? You're like, okay, we the only, like our true purpose is sharing this even more than potentially the brand itself?
Yeah. We actually started out this way. We said, we wanna build this technology for the industry let's get it out there.
And so we tried, but it's just a huge beast of an industry. Yes, there's so much inertia. The way that it's running right now is somewhat tried and true. It just feels like the way to be doing it for a lot of people because it works. There are a lot of problems with it, but it works. And so making a change like this takes, it takes a lot.
So we have to slowly kind of show and build trust, like this actually works in the world. Become the experts and how this works with consumers. And then from there build our brand partners and all of our partnerships. Weekday with h and m, Collina, Estrada, Panaya, all of them actually came through our brand.
We had people from those brands trying out Unspun custom Fit jeans. They tried it and they said, wow, these fit amazingly, and we need to bring this to our brand. And so it really has helped us to get out there with our own brand. But ultimately the goal is just, yeah get this out quicker to through brands themselves.
I see it every day in my role as a business coach of having to help people unlearn processes and systems, whether they're personal habits or. How to have a marketing agency or how to work in an e-commerce platform, and it's amazing to me how many steps we're doing that we actually don't want to do and we haven't chosen, we're just following the path that's already been laid out in front of us and there's no room for fun or creativity or really making it.
Custom to you, which I think is even more appropriate with the custom element you have with every product that you're making for people. But it really is interesting how ingrained. In the apparel and footwear in particular, the systems and structures are like, we're constantly trying to be innovative in the designs or maybe even materials if we can decide how innovative that is.
But we don't wanna look at anything else because the everything else is usually what terrifies people. How are you breaking that down with the people you're working with to get them to be creative in a space that usually doesn't have a lot of creative people in it?
Yeah, that's a really good point that every little piece, every niche of this industry has been optimized so much for speed and cost especially.
And so thinking about. Changing the way those function is a lot to wrap your head around and often I have to sit down and think through it myself. Like it, it is really challenging and I think that's where us showing through our brand has played a big role. I think that we are going to have to be as vertically integrated as possible from the beginning to almost work around what the industry already has.
I think that's been a big challenge for a lot of startups in the fashion industry is they have to either. They have to like slide in to what the industry already is, but a lot of their processes are different. And so they can't just be placed in a factory as an alternative without changing a bunch of other processes.
They have to convince someone to spend more money or change the amount of heat that they're applying or they have to change something and it's usually too big of a thing to, to bite off. So we're. Taking an also a scary approach where we're saying maybe just ignore what is goes on right now and let's do the side thing and show that you can skirt a lot of the steps of the process by going from yarn to final product.
And then maybe at the end of it we incorporate a little bit of the finishing steps and the logistics. But that's really it. So it is. That in itself is scary too. It's it is faster to market 'cause you don't have to try to fit in with it what's already been done. But it needs to start as a pilot, like a small scale thing, and that's something we're doing this year into next year.
And hopefully with that, then we just build more machines. That's, it. Sounds very easy, but I'm sure it won't be that easy at the end of the day,
as someone who has made so many calendars and so many correlating SOPs with every single deliverable in them. I am elated knowing how many steps can be deleted because of this process.
And I also am thinking, while there's so many sustainability and minimalistic elements to this opportunity, I also hear opportunities to bring more manufacturing back to the US or any local area that hasn't had it because. It sounds ha, having the machines is very different than meeting the machines and the labor force and everything to support the 50 steps that would go with just making one item normally.
Yeah, absolutely. And some of our biggest customers and clients and partners are ones who are US based and we love that. Like we would love to bring this to us soil and start there. I think. The ones that are the fastest moving are actually in Europe. Europe is very progressive with how they approach things.
They've already passed the, the zero waste ban in, in France, and they also are thinking about, extended producer responsibility requirements with law. And that's things that, those are things that fortunately they trickle into California, into New York and eventually the us but it still takes five to 10 years from Europe.
But yeah, Europe is probably pushing the hardest for this, but we personally would love to start this off in, in the US because that's where we started, that's where we're based. And absolutely we can by, by automating a lot of the process, by removing the it's good and bad. There, there are a lot of places in the world that have been able to lift themselves up.
By having really strong commercial cut and sew facilities and, pull their populations out of poverty. Poverty. But once they've done that, no one wants those jobs anymore. So yeah, we saw this happen from China to Southeast Asia and now Southeast Asia to Northern Africa. We were in a factory in China recently and.
The factory owner said, we can't get anyone to work here. We have no labor, no one wants to sew anymore. We need more automation to keep our facilities going. And also it's just too expensive there. The cost of goods in China is. It sounds silly to say, but it's only one quarter of the cost that it would take to do this.
In the US you look at Northern Africa and it's one 50th, the cost of the us. Really this is a cost game in the apparel industry. And so if you can automate those processes and you can make those jobs more interesting and you can really. Win the game of decentralizing production and localize it so that you have what people call fiber sheds of production, where they can have it local to wherever you're selling,
which save on so many other steps and time and impacts from a economic perspective.
I, I think people also forget that we're running out of places to find the cheap labor. When I started in the industry, most things were still, even still in Korea. Like it all started in Korea and Japan, and then they were too expensive. Went to China and I was part of opening up some of the other Southeast Asia markets and like I haven't worked for a hundred years, so like it, it's happening in five year, 10 year increments where things are getting out-priced so quickly.
Good because we're increasing standard of living for lots of people around the world. Bad. We haven't adjusted What things cost? You said at the beginning that your denims around $200 for a custom pair, and I'm like, that is a steal, like $200 of jeans. You get it. Yep. That fit you perfectly. Like I have a body type that almost every pair of pants I buy have to be tailored.
And so automatically, whatever pair of jeans I'm buying, I'm adding on 20 to $50, depending on how complicated it is. So yeah. To have $200 pairs that are built specifically for me and I don't need to go through the pain and suffering of the emotional turmoil of trying on a hundred pair of jeans and none work.
And you're like, okay, at some point it has to be me. Like not having to go through that. It's not all you. Yeah. Yeah. It just sounds really nice. It sounds like a cost savings and a time savings element for me as well as a customer.
Absolutely.
I read as well that we are both from New England.
Ooh, where are you from? I grew up north of Boston in Georgetown.
Oh,
amazing.
I was just on the phone with someone from Boston and I was like, I'm from near there, and she's like, where? And I said, Maine. She's oh, okay. That doesn't really, I think she was looking for really close by.
What part of Maine did you
grow up in? I grew up in Auburn, Maine, just off the 95. Do you know it? One of my best friends is from Sydney, Maine. Yes, I do. Whoa, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I miss it. And I think people don't realize as well how much of an apparel and footwear market their, like the history of the US was in New England and I've been impressed seeing some unexpected brands going back to Maine to start doing US manufacturing.
And they've had the similar challenges that you talked about where the knowledge is either aged out or it's not the right technology demographic for what they need. So it's, I am, I'm starting to get to a loss of like, where can we make things in the US and who wants to make them. Because I saw something recently that there's this guy who has a, he's a multimillionaire entrepreneur, but he's focused a hundred percent on blue collar professions and how people don't think that there's actual huge opportunities in those spaces. And I'm hoping that there's gonna be a little bit of a revolution about.
How much you can earn in all these jobs that people don't usually give like cache to. Because we need people who want to be craftspeople and want to be makers of things. 'cause we all like things, whether we try to be minimalistic or not. We still need stuff. We need things repaired and made for the first time.
How has your experience growing up in Maine and New England impacted how you think about. The quality of things and the durability of things, and even just the sustainability element.
Yeah. There's so much there. I, growing up in Maine was amazing, and I feel bad living in California and raising my kids here.
I, it's such, there's so much opportunity here. I shouldn't feel bad. It's a really great place but Maine is just it's so spread out. There's so few people. You really get to be outside all the time and really get to know nature and I really miss that aspect. Not to say that Berkeley is not beautiful, I really do love it here, but there's just something special about Maine.
Maine also, like to your point about blue collar. Absolutely a really beautiful mix of like blue collar, white collar all through the state. No matter where you go. Of course there's gonna be some places that are a little more concentrated Portland's gonna be a little more white collar, but you still will have the fishermen coming in and hanging out with the business people.
I think it's really beautiful. Yeah, so I think growing up I was exposed to like blue collar from the start. My dad's side of the family were all truckers, and I remember them talking about. Like bragging about the salaries they got and like how proud they were. And I remember my dad, talking about how respectable like the jobs are and how much you really do have to know and how much you have to be trained in things.
And so I definitely respect all blue collar jobs, like the amount that you. You need to know and how competent you need to be is actually the responsibility there is often more than those of us sitting at our computers. So I think,
Yeah, no one's asked me to take a test anytime soon.
Exactly.
Exactly. So I really do hope that comes back into the forefront again in our country. And just the appreciation for being able to work with your hands again. And we've all, I don't. I'm really fascinated by looking at kind of human trends over time and just how niche we've all gotten.
I feel like I might be a prime example of this, of like how specific my career is. Versus what we needed to be as humans a long time ago. We need to have skill sets and everything to be able to survive. Not everything, not garment making per se, but like being able to, make what you're wearing, make what your shelter is, find the food that you're going to eat, take care of your family.
Like all of those things run from wild, whatever like. It's a huge skill set that we were very, we were broad in, and now we're just very like t-shaped deep into something. So I think that's really interesting. But to kinda go back to your question about Maine I don't know for sure, but I feel like it must have instilled a kind of go get 'em, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Like just do it gritty like attitude. I feel like everyone has that there because. You are on your own a bit. It's, I don't wanna call it a lonely place at all, but it's definitely quieter and you don't rely on other people as much. And I just loved like. I, my first job was packing tomatoes.
It was just like very hands-on. And then working at like Tim Horton's, like just very that's not quite blue collar, but it's, but it was just fun to be out there and experiencing those things.
I do think there's something really unique about the sensibility of. I am gonna group it into a New England culture of there being a PR proud pride, excuse me, about what you're doing.
And that even the people who would have white collar jobs, there's still this desire to have that self-sufficiency and the pride of oh no. I shoveled my driveway, or no, I can still repair things in my house. There's this interesting. And maybe it's the deep root of Puritan values, I don't know.
But I also love all the anthropology of people and culture. So you're talking about that. I'm like, oh, where are we gonna go with this conversation? But there's something that I am, I miss living in California as well, of the, as you mentioned, that mixing and there, even though there's a lot of diversity economically and career-wise and everything else under the sun, there seems to be a little bit more universal approach of.
You need to be able to survive at a minimum all the seasons and know what to do, and know how to hunker down and know how to handle basic things so that you can literally survive in the environment that we're in, let alone uphold the cultural values that are in these communities. And the biggest shock for me moving to California, I think has been how few men have like traditional man skills like handiness.
I'm like. What I know how to fix that. You didn't know how to fix that. Okay. Like I wasn't expecting this. Yeah. But there is, there's such, and there's also I think that craftsman element. There's still a lot of everyone I knew a lot more makers personally and doers, more like you would know a farmer, you would know.
There's more depth, I think in the variety of people I knew and what they were doing than what I've experienced. And it's a little bit more bubbly, I think here of and siloed.
I would agree completely.
How did you end up in California?
That's a great question. I just have slowly moved west. I left, so undergrad was in upstate New York, and then I moved to Colorado because I met people in my undergrad who.
I really liked, I thought they were great people, and they told me I needed to live in Boulder, Colorado. And so that stuck in my head. And so when the day after graduation, I, my dad and I got in a car and we drove to Colorado. And then fortunately I found an internship a few days later and that turned into a job, met my husband there, like my, it wasn't husband at the time, but future husband like a few months later.
And he had gotten into school in California. So I. I guess I realized he was the one or decided he was going to be the one however he wanted however you wanna look at it. And we moved here together, so that was back in 2011. It was a long time ago.
That's when I I moved in January of 12.
Oh, nice. Yeah. Good time to move out here. Yeah. When you look at your journey from where you were to now, like if you go back to 8-year-old, you would she have imagined that this is your life and this is what your new mission is as an adult? Great question. I think
so. When I was eight I was really interested and still am in some, an art, and I remember thinking I had it in my head that I either wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.
I don't know why, but I really, as a really girl
does. Yes,
exactly. Yes. I think I, one of my friend's dads was an orthopedic surgeon and I had a lot of knee problems with soccer. Like I was always injuring my knee and so I got to see him a lot and see what he did, and I think. That really shapes like what you're around, really shapes what your interests are.
I'm so glad I didn't do it. I'm terrible at following rules. I'm terrible at following textbooks. Like I'm very impatient. I can't do the same thing over and over again. It would've been a really bad, I would've been terrible. Like I would be in knee surgery. I'd be like, oh, let's try something new today.
It's not what you wanted, a surgeon. So it's a good thing. I didn't go down that path. But I did try a, I shadowed some doctors just from my friend's dad, like connecting me to people and. I think I realized I needed windows and it's just a very inside kind of job. And again, very routine.
Like you do the same thing over and over again, but fascinating stuff. So I think my interest in science and art. Combined into, I actually decided when I was really little, probably not eight, but probably 13 with a friend. We're like, we're gonna be fashion designers, and we would sketch things and draw things and it was like the very glamorous kind of side of it.
So I had it in my head from an early stage that I wanted to do it when I was eight. Yeah, I was really a tomboy and I think that was like a little too early for me to think about what I wanted to do, but definitely science and art were on the, on there. And so I don't think she would be so surprised, though.
I'm often surprised just thinking about what I'm working on right now, so
it's
yeah. Who
knows? I remember when I was in design school I went after grad school and I was like, I don't wanna be a designer. Designers don't make any of the choices. It's true. I was like, no one told me that. I thought the designers decided everything, but they just are drawing everyone else's demands.
I'm like, Nope, I'm going a different path. And it's so the glamor of the fashion industry and everything that's adjacent to it. I think is really fascinating. I hosted a workshop in New York with some people who are stylists and other people who own some brands, and we were talking about how 90% of what we do in the industry is getting filthy, either like taking apart a machine or crawling on the ground, doing a fitting or unpacking boxes and being covered in things.
And schlepping stuff around there's so much schlepping that happens in this industry or just tidying up the office because things get outta control. And yes, there's amazing glamorous stuff and yes, that's what everyone sees, but it's such the tip of the iceberg of are you really willing to do this level of hard work?
And I think people forget how much spreadsheets are involved in fashion. And in my work I meet a lot of people who are spreadsheet phobia. So I think what's, what surprised you about the fashion space and what surprised you with, like what you've been drawn to follow in that area?
The thing that really hit me is along the lines of what you're talking about with it being much messier on the outside, on the inside than on the outside.
And it makes so much sense. It's like hindsight's 2020. Of course they're gonna, the industry's going to hide all of the things that are unsexy and unglamorous. Why would you wanna talk about the spreadsheets with the external world? Why do you wanna show their, your interns? And then even more so why do you wanna.
People to see Rona Plaza, see the the triangle fire, like the issues that we have with the industry because it's so manual, it really requires exploitation to hit those price points that people expect at the end of the day. So I was for sure surprised by that. It's weird to say that now though.
It's been almost 15 years that I have known that and now it seems. Like, why didn't I see that? Why didn't I know about that? And it's that I think that it's because we're so sheltered and we're so far removed from our industry because of globalization and because we have figured out how to outsource all of these needs so they can hide it really well.
And so one thing that I'm really hoping to do is just bring the industry back to people. Empower them again. In a way, then hopefully we can get rid of this injustice and these problems.
Whenever you read about like the economic impact, the environmental impact, the human rights impact of what the fashion industry has caused and continues to cause in some capacity, it's, it feels so overwhelming to figure out how do we pull back from it.
I think about things myself of, are people gonna choose. Fewer higher priced items because there's such a, like whenever people complain about why does the Louis Vuitton bag cost what it does, when you break the math down, like the math makes mostly sense now, is there a significant markup? Sure.
But everyone has usually some level of significant markup. But what are you people, there's such a disconnect, not just about where things are made and how messy they are when they're made, but also. How much things actually cost. So do you think especially American culture will come around to the true value of what we're purchasing?
Or will it constantly be a, how can I get it as cheap as possible approach?
It's a really good question. I think something that I've always had in the back of my mind a lot of tension is actually. Touched on something you brought up earlier like that what you make should have a lot of value and quality and last forever.
And I definitely grew up with that. But I also take inspiration from how nature does things and nature doesn't really work that way. And so I think if you're going to make something that is actually timeless and classic and can withstand not like more so the trends of a hundred years. Then you should make it to be durable.
But I think we make so much that the trend is only gonna last six months, but we don't actually know. But it's very likely, 'cause it's usually related to how long did it take for this to become a trend? And then it's usually like the same amount of time to go out of trend. So if it something builds up over a decade, then probably it's gonna be another decade.
Something became cool this morning on TikTok. Probably is not gonna be cool in a few days. So I think we can take hints from that, but we'll never really know how long a trend will last. And so I think there, it's a very difficult thing to do, but just to think more about how long will this be in style?
How long will people actually want this for? 'cause we know people will not wear things. Some people will, most people will not wear things. If they're not cool anymore, they'll trash them. They'll end up wherever floating in the ocean in, in another country where it's polluting their waterways, et cetera.
Is there a way that we can match the duration of the, the actual physical life of that product with the duration of the trend? I think that's something to think about. Something that we're trying to go after in a longer term kind of way at Unspun, and this is that I mentioned like kinda the first part of custom fit jeans and attacking that.
And now the second part of being able to 3D, weave it. And so make it straight from yarn into a final product and be able to automate that process. But our third thing, which we're just now jump starting, is. If you can kind of basket, make your clothing and your products, can you go back again?
Can you weave it up and then unweave it? And so these are big questions. We're asking ourselves to think about supporting trends because I don't wanna fight human nature. I don't think that we should. It's always going to be a problem. Maybe it will be regulated, but I'm, I don't know. Will there be like, black markets for new products?
Like how, what is that gonna look like? So I think being able to break something down when it's no longer in trend and actually be able to sadly be able to support this need that people have. I would love for people to slow down and not always want that next thing, but it's in our human nature.
To want what's new and to just be relevant. It's, I don't know. I can't I, I'm not a historian, but I feel like that's. Always been the case.
I think it's such a push and pull for everyone who loves fashion for what? All the good parts of it. Everyone I know who works in this space, at whatever level or area, there's things that you love about the industry of oh, like I never thought about putting that together, or, look how amazing it is.
There's the. Art and excitement element that is so great about the industry. And then everyone who's in that same space is still oh, I want it, but I feel so guilty about it. And like right now we're just being mean to ourselves in so many ways. Yeah. But I love that idea of like, how do we make products last only as long as they need to?
Even thinking about. The planned obsolescence of anything and if the obsolescence actually just was decomposing or being deconstructed would be so much more interesting versus forcing everyone to wear organic linen, everything and just be really itchy all the time.
Yes, I agree.
When you look at where the industry is going and the conversations that are happening, what are the biggest roadblocks to making the progress happen at the speed that you would love to see it happen?
Ooh, that's tough. Like the goals that these companies are setting are good. They're audacious, they're needed, even the goals aren't strong enough to get to where we need to be, but. I am not gonna name any brands, but there was a brand last week that had set goals for 2030, and they realized they weren't on track, and they just moved them to 24 40 with no repercussions, nothing, just we're not on track for that, so let's just postpone it 10 years and we'll still get there.
And I think that's gonna be normal for brands. And that's something that we see behind the scenes in the industry because it's in all of our industry news, but consumers don't see it. And. Would consumers really care? They might care. They say they care. And you see all of these like McKinsey polls with Gen Z and how much they care about the planet and sustainability and they're always going to make the right choices.
And then you see numbers for shian exploding and it's, there's just a huge disconnect. And you might be able to trace it back to maybe growing populations, middle classes and other parts of the world are the ones supporting that, that growth. But I do think there is actually an interesting overlap with people who say they care and who still support these things.
They're not bad people. Like it's all of us, like I shop at Target. Okay. Like it's, it's it's just it's gonna be a big challenge to figure out for those brands. How they will hit the goals, first of all, for them to just sit in a room and put a goal on paper is a big challenge for them.
But to actually achieve that is something they haven't figured out yet. And it's gonna be a lot of little pieces coming together. I think that what's exciting is there's so many people, so many entrepreneurs and business people and policy makers, and just everyone from all sides who are really interested in solving this problem and the number of friends and relatives and colleagues who have come up to me recently who have said I wanna get into climate is probably everyone who's ever who's chatted with me in the last few weeks. It's a, it's really a big thing and I am so excited to see people taking pay cuts and like making sacrifices to get into this industry.
So I'm hopeful that there will be the solutions. But I think there is a little bit of a disconnect in those brands being willing to pay a little bit more to begin with. To get those things off the ground. But then also from the entrepreneurs and startup side, they need to be thinking a little bit more about how this turns into ROI and profits and, breaks even faster.
Because I think a lot of them are presenting to brands. Like they'll have an alternative leather. Leather and it's like. Yeah, we're only three times as expensive as your current leather. Like I can think of a lot of brands like that and it's amazing what they're doing and it's justified that their price is like that, but they have no clear plan for how they're going to break even and how those brands are gonna be able to support it.
So I think that's another thing we need to solve.
I'm just, knowing that I fought people over pennies to say something's gonna go up three times, even though it might be the smallest piece of something, it has such a ripple effect at not even quantities of magnitude, just any quantities. It's, I've been exactly where you are in the frustrated space of.
Trying to push internally for more sustainable actions and all the data comes back that they say they consumers say they care. And then don't never make a buying decision based on it. Especially in the fashion area. If it's a self-expression category of the world, it's like really hard. If you're asking 'em to switch from, plastic Tupperware to glass, that seems to be a much easier conversion 'cause.
It's not part of their personal style most of the time. It's a really interesting dichotomy and I'm hoping that brands are realizing that they just have to choose that's part of what they are. Because no one's mad when something's sustainable. They just, it's not gonna be why you buy it.
Yeah, absolutely. Sexy is always gonna lead why we're buying something.
Yeah. Yeah. It has to be just table stakes, like exactly what you're saying. People are buying it because it's cool and then, oh, that's amazing that it's also sustainable and yeah we are really pushing hard to show brands that.
You, you're going to only break even from the beginning, but then it will be a better business move kind of year three, year four. And so it might be a little distracting for them for the first two years, but it's something that they'll, like localization and onshore production is going to be we think the way of the future and getting goods to consumers faster.
And we were talking to a brand a few weeks ago and they said they were trying to. Reduce their lead time on production from 18 months to 14 weeks, and both of those things are mind blowing to me. Yeah. You're at 18 months right now. That is insane. How big are those quantities? They're enormous. Yeah. And the guessing game you have to play at what people are gonna buy in a year and a half.
Like we didn't. The world is a crazy place now. We don't know what's gonna happen in, in a year and a half. There might be another pandemic. We just don't know. Yeah. And then 14 weeks for that to be a short, that's considered just in time manufacturing. That still blows my mind. So those are very easy things for us to to fix. And then to think about like we could do one to two day turnaround is very exciting.
I think there's also a whole level of conversation about like, how big do we need to be? Like there's, it's skewed so much When people started a business like we have to be multimillion business. I'm like, hold on, like you're one person first.
We need to replace your income. Then we can go from there. Like at what point are we sacrificing too much just to hit the next sales goal? And are we, I, there's so many companies that burn out. Like I'm sure you've talked to so many apparel startups. And they're not here anymore because they didn't have any sort of plan of what cash flow looks like.
It's, there's a I don't like planning five year plans even for my own business, but we need to have a vision for what five years should be and. Are like the, just the question of are you gonna wanna do this in five years? And it's, I think it's for those of us who want to be in business and stay, it's good.
We have a competitive advantage 'cause we actually care and we're thinking about it. But there's so much waste that goes into testing things or trying a new brand or, we should make something because it's trending. I, one of my last corporate jobs was building products for influencers.
And only building the product. 'cause they had a following. And it was very interesting. And I remember there was a, one of the influencers that we were working with was basically like an Instagram butt model. And they, she was like, I wanna sell a protein powder. And we're like. Your audience does not care about that at all.
Like you have a 95% male audience and then the women who are following you probably wanna get your fitness routine and they maybe wanna buy your bikinis like you're not, like that's not what people are coming to. And it was like really crazy conversation too. Have to talk about who your audience is and what you have room for, and if that's really what you wanna do, we have to make an entire brand shift.
Are you ready for that? And you'll probably lose a lot of your followers. And it's, it was interesting to see, not always that same ex example, but who was willing to choose what they really wanted to do and align with it, versus who was like, I'll just keep the followers and the money and figure out something else.
I'm like, okay, interesting. But I'm glad that's not the trend anymore and the whole influencer world is shifting, which I think is a healthier balance to where we need to be. So we ask everyone on the podcast where you put yourself on the Powerful Lady Scale. If zero is an average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself on that scale today and on an average day?
Oh, that's a great question. I would put myself at a three, four, moving into a five hopefully. I really love the idea of. Changing things where they need to be changed and making influence, but not brute forcing anything. So while, while we are thinking like this industry needs a to be flipped on its head, I think that we're going after the really big giants, but in a way that like it slides into kind of how they're doing things and it makes, it's not going to.
Affect their business in a bad way at all. And it really just makes sense to being influential and powerful in that way. Like I, I associate like power with influence. And yeah, influence how they do things and then hope that spreads like. Like wildly through the whole organization.
And then because they're so big that other brands it's actually a very small industry. You meet a few people and then suddenly you know everyone because they're all very connected. So I think that is, is what I'm aiming for and placing myself at a three, four, because what I talk about with them, with those like internal relat, the conversations and relationships within the industry.
It really it plants a seed. Like I can tell when I'm talking with them that I I remember there was someone from an organization who I really look up to who came and saw our machine running a few weeks ago and he is known for having kind of a poker face and just does not let people know what he is thinking, but just stared at the machine for a really long time and after he stopped it just continued to stare and we're like.
Hey, is everything okay? What do you think? Because we're all really nervous. And he just said, wow. I really didn't think manufacturing would change in my lifetime, because he's seen a lot. He's seen
what a compliment.
I know. I, and my mind was like, was completely blown. And I, that's really gonna stick with me forever.
And I think, three or four is probably not very high on your scale. But for me hearing that and thinking. I don't directly influence that much in the industry, but if I can influence the people like him in the industry, this could move. This could move a lot faster. And so I think that could move into A five very soon if we can get in touch with of those people as possible.
Yeah. And I think that's a good segue into what do the words powerful and ladies mean to you, and does their definition change when they're put next to each other?
Ooh. I think to me like being a powerful lady is about just being powerful in general is again, like knowing where you can influence things for the better.
But I think when you put those words together, one thing women can think about is taking advantage of their unique perspectives and unique things that they see. That someone who maybe isn't in the minority can see. 'cause it's really, I think, an advantage most of the time when you're the only person in the room who looks like you.
It's hard to get people to listen to you sometimes, but there are definitely, oops. Yeah. So it's very hard to sometimes get people to, to listen to you because you don't really fall by the wayside of the majority, but. There are unique perspectives that you can bring that, that other people don't see and don't feel.
And I think we're out of time, at least in my experience, that people are excited to hear even if it's not what they want to hear. And you're like confronting them on something. They are genuinely hungry to hear more of those perspectives and. Understand where they're blind and where they're not seeing things.
So I would say, be powerful, but also be, a powerful woman and recognizing your strengths in being a minority.
This is a pretty powerful audience and group and community, and we've also been asking everyone what do you need? What's on your wishlist? What are you trying to manifest, whether it's big or small how can we help you and put it out there to see who has the solution?
Ooh. We are looking for an independent board member for our board at the moment. We have. Five board slots. We have the three founders on the board, and then we have our lead investor, and we're looking for that fifth independent. We would love if it's a woman of course because the, I'm the only woman and then the three others are men.
Not, we're not restricting ourselves to that. But we still would love that. And we. Are on the lookout for someone who's in the industry, who has those connections, has the knowledge base and the experience to help us like scale up what we're working on and really build a lot of brand connections.
So I think my biggest ask would be, send any interesting people our way. Amazing. I
can definitely do that. It has been such a pleasure to meet you today. This is a fascinating conversation. I love that you exist and what you're doing and what you care about. If there's any ways that I can help you, please let me know 'cause I'm all on board for.
Doing things the right way and changing things to just be smarter and simpler at the same time. I'm really big on, the how do you have it all approach, and I like that's how you're approaching this kind of fashion challenge that we have of how can we have it all and not compromise while still making it better.
Thank you for doing that work. It makes me sleep better knowing that you are out there tackling that problem. Just, yeah, thank you for being a yesterday and sharing your story with this audience.
Thank you so much and thank you for doing what you do. I think it's incredible work and I'm so glad to be on here.
All the links to connect with Beth and Unspun, earn our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
Related Episodes
Episode 228: Burned Out in LA, She Rebuilt Her Life in Peru | Hannah Jenkinson | Founder, HJK Studio
Episode 153: How to Create a Successful Family Run & Sustainable Fashion Brand with Lauren Stephens
Episode 229: This Rancher is Reshaping the Fashion Industry | Jeanne Carver | Shaniko Wool Company & Responsible Wool Standard
Instagram: unspun.io
Website: unspun.io
LinkedIn: bethespo
Email: unspun@thenumber29.com
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
