Ep. 30: Unspun: The perfect jeans on-demand Ankit Podcast

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Ep. 30: Unspun: The perfect jeans on-demand

In this episode of The WTiN Podcast, we talk to Beth Esponnette, co-founder of the tailor-made jeans company Unspun.

Jessica Owen
Hello. My name is Jessica Owen, and I am the Deputy digital editor at WTIN, and this is the WTIN podcast. For this series, I'll be talking to startups and other new brands across the textile and apparel industry, from sustainable swimsuits to jackets inspired by NASA technology. We talk about products the highs and lows of starting a business, and advice for others interested in entering this space. This week, I am joined by Beth Esponnette, who is one of the founders of the tailor made jeans company, unspun Beth talks about the brand's on demand approach finding customers their perfect jeans, and how COVID 19 has pushed the company to develop some new technology. Welcome to the WTI N podcast, Beth. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today. So as I understand it, you are one of the co founders of the custom built jeans brand unspun. So just tell me a bit about who else is involved and why did you decide that unspun should have a place in this industry?

Beth Esponnette
Well, first, thanks for inviting me to this podcast. This is very exciting to be here and to talk about unspun that's one of my favorite things to talk about. So yes, I am one of the co founders. There are three of us, and we have a team of just under 20 people. The other co founders are Walden lamb and Kevin Martin, and we found we were very, very intentional about putting together this founding team of an engineer, a business person and a designer. We really wanted the specific skill sets coming together. We felt like there, there would be the right discussions happening in the room. And so far in our three years going now that it's, it feels like it's, it's going in the right direction. And so, yeah, it's very exciting to be, to be working alongside them. And what we're trying to do in this industry is, is make it a little more thoughtful. We feel like there's a huge mismatch between what is produced and what people actually buy and what they want to buy. Sometimes they even buy things they don't want to buy because not quite the right thing was made. So we're just very frustrated with the way that mass manufacturing functions today and the way that it's kind of worked itself into into a hole like it's it's been so incrementally optimized, the point where we can't really back out of it. So we feel like our role in the industry is to be that startup that has a fresh a fresh start, and to to rethink if we were to create the fashion industry today using technology that's out there, and then developing our own technology. What? What could that look like? Could we make an industry that's intentional, where everything that it's produced is is made and has a home immediately, and everything that's bought? So on the other end, everything that people receive, they they love and they want to wear, and it's, it's the first thing they reached for in their closet, and we feel like today, with with a massive amount of waste and frustration, actually, that a lot of customers have in trying to find something that works for them or something that even just fits, is it's a huge opportunity for the industry, and It really comes down to on demand production. And I can, yeah, I can tell you more about on demand production. That would be kind of the the focus for today, absolutely.

Jessica Owen
Well, I mean, I'd love to talk more about that actually, and understand the whole waste situation within the textile industry a bit better in a minute or so. But just coming back to how you first launched the brand then, and you said you're working with two other people, and you all have these sort of perfect skill sets that complement each other. I mean, is that just by chance, or did you three know each other beforehand? And how did you get together? And what was that sort of point at which you sat down and decided, actually, let's, let's try and make a go with this. Yeah, that's a

Beth Esponnette
good question. I'm sure it's really different for every, every company, and for us, it was a few years actually, for it to all kind of roll into one. It really, it started when I was sensing I was getting frustrated, actually, at one of my jobs was working in the outdoor clothing industry. I love what the outdoor clothing industry stands for. It's, it's absolutely at the forefront of of environmental change when it comes to policy and and really pushing, like pushing government to to think about. How it protects the environment, but also trying to encourage consumers and people to get outside and appreciate nature. But on the business level of actually producing product, it still falls into that same wasteful production cycle, and I found myself at meetings where we would have to decide what to do with the excess inventory that we had created, where that was just sitting there no one wanted, and it always came down to three, three options, and one was to incinerate it, one was to send it to landfill, or the other was to send it to another, another country, typically, like a third world country, that didn't really have a choice of whether they wanted it or not, and it was kind of deciding between, you know, which, which was a lesser evil. And those are really frustrating conversations to have when you knew that on the face of the company that it was all about, let's save the environment, but we were still falling into those traps. So that was, that was a big frustration that kind of led to the question of, like, Why do why do we make things before people even want them? Why we can't predict the future? We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what people are going to want at a particular time for in a particular season, or the color, the size and location. Like, there's too many there too many variables to get right. So going going with that and landing in Silicon Valley around the same time, actually, I had just gotten to the Bay Area around that time, and my previous experiences had been mostly just in the fashion industry, and hadn't been in contact with technology as much. So I think it just happened to be that that seed was planted, that there must be something in technology. And 3d printing actually was, was becoming popular around that time. This is around 2013 and everyone kind of thought three printing would would save the world, and who knows, maybe it's still well, but we have yet to see that. And so those, those definitely planted some seeds. And at the end of my grad school at Stanford, I met, I met Walden, and he was actually also graduating from grad school, and both of us had jobs, but, but I knew that this company should start. I knew it should be a thing. And so he I learned that he had worked as a consultant in the fashion industry, like for a little while, but mostly, mostly, he had a strength in in business models and creativity and in the business realm, with a mix of like accounting and really hard business skills that I will probably never have. So who knows? Probably, yeah, probably never in this lifetime. So yeah, it became like, Okay, we need to do this, but we know we can't do this alone, a tech company with just the two of us, like we're not we can. We can talk about this, and we can make some really embarrassing prototypes, but we are not quite the right team to convince someone to put money into this quite yet, we had small amounts of money to get things rolling a little bit, but nothing, nothing too crazy, and so we actually we searched on the internet. We like to joke that we found Kevin on the tinder of the startup. We found him through Angel List and or maybe he would say he found us. In any case, we were very lucky find him an entire year later. So we searched for a full year, but because we had jobs on the side, we weren't quite as desperate for someone, and we found that we could be a little bit more thoughtful about who we were bringing on. And yeah, we haven't looked back since. So

Jessica Owen
talk me about what the company actually does then. So they're custom built jeans. But what exactly do you mean by that? How does it work?

Beth Esponnette
Yeah, that's a great question, and we purposely hide a lot of it, but I'm excited to tell you more about it. Okay, so we on the I mentioned earlier that we are building on demand, and so that's like a multiple step process. The first step is like you're saying building custom fit, and the second would be, how do you, how do you actually automate the production of those? But so far we have, we have commercialized and you've probably seen on the website, you can go to the website now and see custom fit genes, and they're, I say they're only $200 that's that's been one of our challenges. Has been convincing or telling consumers like that's actually a really good price for custom fit. It's only made for it's made just for you and no one else. But So how it works is you get a body scan. And so there are so many ways in the world to get a body scan these days, but the ones that we. We've had the best luck with have been infrared body scans. So we're using the same technology that's in a in a phone to scan your face. Absolutely the same thing, but we're just on a bigger, slightly bigger scale, to get your full body. And we typically had done this up until COVID. We were doing this in our storefronts. But after COVID, we pivoted, and we've been able to do this through phones, so people can actually scan in their homes using their phones now. So basically you hold up your phone with it with an app, and if you have tight clothing on, it will be a really good scan. And basically the infrared is just bouncing off your body and going back to the phone and kind of creating a point cloud. So imagine like you're 100,000 dots, and that becomes like a full avatar, or like a digital twin of you. And so you exist in in like on the computer, as this digital twin. And what's really cool about that is, rather than boiling you down to, like, 10 to 30 measurements, which is kind of a it's simplifying the human body. The human body is so complex, like, just to take some cross sections, isn't quite enough for a really good fit. So working around that 3d like digital avatar is really exciting, because it's almost like we're building the jeans around a person. That's, it's almost like they're standing there, and we're actually tailoring it around them while they're there. So what's great about that is it allows us to just do the one fitting, if you will. It's like a digital fitting. It's, you don't have to make multiple pairs to get it right, like a lot of tailors have to do. And something else that's allowed us to really reduce the price is from, you know, typical tailored genes can be 1000 $1,500 because of the amount of labor that goes into making the pattern and then making those three or four iterations. Instead, what we do is it's all in the computer. Computers, as you know, are very cost effective, so we can bring that, like pattern making costs down to basically $0 after we've developed the algorithms. So there's, there are really exciting things around being able to reduce the cost by automating those parts. And

Jessica Owen
so once then the customer has done the scan, whether it be in store on the phone, do they then go through the process of choosing like the fit and the color, and can you even maybe get like the rips on the thighs and that sort of thing? Yeah,

Beth Esponnette
great question. This is the second step. So two step process, like you said, get a get a phone scan, and then the second step is personalize the genes. I love this part so you get to choose a number of things. It really depends on who we're talking to, though, some some of our customers hate making decisions and would rather just have us recommend a particular kind of combination of things for them, and we're always happy to do that. That's actually probably half of our entire customer base would would rather not think about it and say, you've got my scan. You know what's going to look good like? I know it's going to fit you. Just you just give me the combo. But for that other half, they're really excited to make choices. So, so they choose their style. So that's, how tight is it in different areas, how loose? What's, what's the kind of look you're going for? They choose the fabric. So there are stretchy to more rigid fabrics that we have with with varying contents and varying dyes and coloration, definitely varying weights, considering that we both were we are based in both Hong Kong and San Francisco, so they're very different climates, and we cater to both, which pretty much covers the whole world, if you can cater to both those those places. So after that, you the customer, can also choose the color of their thread. So that actually makes a huge difference. It seems like a tiny detail, but if you're within like five feet of someone, the color of the thread makes a big difference. Like you can get one that really blends in, and then it becomes a very professional looking pant, or you can get, like, a crazy color pop that just makes it very fresh, like we've, we've started doing a white thread, and I, I've wear my white I'm actually wearing them right now. My white jeans are, yeah, they're, they're just very, they feel very fun. They're very like a young feeling Jean. And then the last two that we focus on, well, you mentioned like potentially distressing and washing I can talk about that in a second, but the last two options are, how high you like the rise? So where does the waist go? And I always go for the ultra high. I just love being sucked in. And it's funny how this just asking people about. The rise of their pants, like really solicits a lot of interesting conversation, because there's people really had their preferences on that area, which is funny, and then the the length of the hem, and so you can get it all the way down to rolled or or cropped. So you can choose between those and so. In as far as distressing and washing goes, we've actually been very we've put our foot down on that, or we had until, until this week, actually, we're launching our first wash, which we're very excited about. So we waited a couple of years before launching anything but raw denim. Basically, we would do a rinse, and we would do enough to make sure that the denim would not be shrinking on a customer. Because, of course, if you you have the right fit, you need to make sure it's not going to shrink at it like it wouldn't make any sense to give someone perfect fit and then have it shrink. So in the past, we've been able to rinse it and sampleize and get it down to the right the right place, so it doesn't drink. But at this point, we've finally found a wash that we're excited about that's not using harmful chemicals. You could do an entire podcast, maybe you have on how awful that the industry has been, not only for the dyes, but also for the for washing and just what it's done to its workers and to the waterways and to the environment around production facilities. So yes, those are five of the options that customers get, and it's really fun to mix and match. But as I mentioned, we're really happy to recommend as well.

Jessica Owen
It's funny, like you say, I'm definitely an ultra high rise person as well. Yeah, and being able to choose, actually the length where it comes down to around the ankles, great, because I seem to have shorter legs the most genes, and so I always turn them up. And so that would be a dream for me.

Beth Esponnette
Yes, absolutely. It's funny, because when like someone who's who has shorter legs, or someone has taller legs, they're so used to compensating for that. So like a few weeks ago, someone who had I was talking to someone who had taller they were just taller, and they said, Well, I typically have to get along, so I guess I'll get I'll choose the rolled option here so it will show up in the right place. I was like that, but I think you're missing the point. Like, yeah, we put it exactly on you. Like, it's not about any sort of template. It's like it's built around you. So if you actually want it to be default place, and let's choose the let's choose the regular length. 

Jessica Owen
Yeah, it's just ingrained in people to do that, yeah. So what's your supply chain like then? I mean, you mentioned that you're also based in Hong Kong and San Francisco. So where do you actually manufacture your genes and how long from this scan and choosing the options, will they then receive the genes as well?

Beth Esponnette
Yeah, we have been very choosy about about this, and we can be because, you know, because we're a small brand, we only essentially sell one product. It kind of depends on how you look at it. We sell either one product or infinite products. It kind of depends on how you phrase it. But since we sell one product, and we really focus on that, we we've put a lot of time into sourcing. It's it's allowed us to narrow down to three mills that we feel very good about with with the the denim. So we source from three places. One is EVOX in France and Morocco. The other is prosperity in China, and then the third is Candiani in Italy. And we just really respect what each one is doing around their water use and recycling the water that they're using. And also, e blocks has this really great program that we're we're excited to support them in and for other brands to be joining in as well. They take back old denim and tear it up and build it into new denim. So the jeans that I'm actually wearing as well same, the same white thread ones. Those are those utilize the E blocks. One of our E blocks fabrics that has this really interesting speckled look to it, because it's made of old denim. And so it has lots of, like, torn up little pieces of old fibers that are worked back into this fabric. And it ends up having, like, a thicker hand and but a lot more visual interest, and it kind of gives a washed look without actually needing to wash it, which is great. And then you mentioned Sorry to keep going where, where we're producing. So we produce both in China and in San Francisco. In China we produce at a factory called frontline, and in San Francisco we produce in a factory called. National apparel. We've again, small brands. So we can, we can, like every brand should, know their their their factories really well. We are on, you know, first name basis. Can go in basically whenever we want, and how long it takes to get, to get the genes at the end of the day, this is something that we've been surprised, that people are like in an Amazon age, people are absolutely willing to wait the three weeks that it takes to get their genes. I think they recognize. People are starting to recognize, and this is where there's a kind of a division between like our customer and then other people. So our customer absolutely is willing to wait that time, because they recognize that this is one layer of fabric being laid down, and they're very unique pattern being cut out of that one layer, and then that goes through and is made as an individual pair of jeans, whereas anywhere else you know, you have stack of like 100 to 200 layers of fabric, and you can just mass produce them. It's, it's much quicker that, of course, that takes, like, six months. But it's, it's the kind of because it's so much product, it takes a lot of time to turn around, but because it's made at the beginning, before anyone wants it, it's ready to wear, people can buy it right off the shelf. But I think, yeah, I think customers are starting to recognize the just how special it is for something made just for them, and they're willing to wait that that time. Well,

Jessica Owen
I mean, I wanted to talk more about this actually, and that issue of waste and how polluting the industry is. I mean, I think COVID actually has sort of sparked that sort of interest, maybe more in sustainability, among both sort of consumers and retailers. I mean, what's your opinion on it? Why don't you think that the rest of the industry does change to become more circular or greener and and do you think it ever could become fully circular? 

Beth Esponnette
Yeah, this is the million dollar question. So I think the industry has really good intentions. I mean, we work really closely with H M, and they're, they're notorious in the industry for for its fast fashion, but I would say they are working really hard to mitigate that and to get rid of it, and to be a strong, like very responsible company. I don't think they're there yet. They're not even close, but they do, they do know they need to be there. And honestly I don't, I don't envy their position, like they're in a really, this is just an example, and it represents a lot of other fast fashion companies and a lot of other retailers as well. So they're in a really tough position, because they have to meet certain sales marks every every quarter, and they have both the both the stakeholders and their customers kind of breathing down their necks. And the stakeholders are saying, sell more and more and more, and the customers are saying, I'm not going to spend more than $5 on T shirts. And for them to be stuck in that place means trying to cut every little penny that they can investing in a whole new system. Is it's tricky, it's risky, it's very expensive. It's not quite there yet. So I think that a lot of these, these brands, have good intentions, but they're they're stuck in a system that has been just every little niche piece has been like perfected. It's such a broken industry that's broken down and siloed, like you'll have just the thread supplier, you have just the spinner, you have just the weaver. Like to have a fully vertical thing is very rare, because, because these are economies of scale, and they want to, they want to put together as much of the same thing as possible to really reduce the cost, and therefore the price at the end of the day, because that's what a lot of people are going after because that's what the customer is paying for. So it's they're in a really, really tricky situation. So that's where I think we have a unique opportunity as a startup with really no, not the same kind of pressure on us like we can, we can start from scratch and sit and say, what would this look like with technology? Can we sell things to customers before they exist, and have them wait three weeks and then sell them to the customers like we're compared to even other startups who are we're trying to do ready to wear. We're in a great position, because we receive the money for the product before we have to make the product, whereas they have to think about, well, no one knows our name yet, but let's make 1000 of these pieces, because that's the minimum at this factory. And and they have to put down the front. They have to front the cost for that. And that's a very, very risky thing. I am very optimistic. I think that we're, we're getting there. And like you said, COVID. I mean, COVID is. Obviously an awful thing for the world and in general, the the clothing industry has been probably the hurt, one of the worst hit industries. I mean, you could look at airlines and and cruises, they're not going to be seeing the same numbers as normal, but the fashion industry has been hit really hard, but I think it's really good for what the fashion industry needs, what the environment needs, the changes that we need to be making, making everything digital, making everything a little more thoughtful, recognizing that there are a lot of unforeseen things that happen in the in the world, and we can't just assume that a lot of people are going to be buying a particular thing and make hundreds and 1000s or even millions of something before people want

Jessica Owen
it. Well, it's almost like a wake up call, I guess, for everyone to sort of just sit back and rethink about maybe sort of better ways we could be doing things. We've all just gotten into this habit as consumers and as big brands as well, and it is just a matter of, sort of just trying to re jiggle it, I guess. But I mean, you mentioned COVID there. I mean, for some people, this has actually boosted their business, because it means that people have been having to go online, doing things digitally. I mean, even just for me, I'm having to use Microsoft Teams from home just to sort of do, like, talk to my colleagues. So I mean, for you. I mean, has that boosted your sales? I mean, if people can't go into a store and try on a pair of jeans like maybe they should go and scan their body and actually get sort of a perfect pair made for them.

Beth Esponnette
Yeah, at first, we were really hard hit because we couldn't sell anything. We were we had a brick and mortar store. We had had our pop up in Hong Kong, and then we also have our our brick and mortar in San Francisco, and we had to shut down like everyone else. And so we, we sat there for a few weeks and and we said, well, we know that we're working on this mobile scanning, this, this phone scanning, where people can scan wherever they are. Why don't we just try to expedite it? Let's take advantage of this situation. So with that, yes, we've been absolutely able to turn turn things around, and have been really excited to to test out things with with customers. It's still, I think it's been two, almost two months that we've launched, and so we haven't quite reached the number of sales that we did in our brick and mortar, just because, I think the word isn't quite out yet that we're doing this, but it's definitely it's going to surpass very quickly, because the scale, the opportunity to scale, is so much greater, like we were now actually. So we're actually seeing a number of customers coming from the UK, which is kind of fun, and I don't know, actually nowhere where they're hearing about us. Europe is, in general, very well known for sustainability and being very conscious about about use, and especially with fashion. So I think probably there's, there's some conversation there and people hearing about us. But yeah, it's very interesting and exciting to see the new places, new places pop up in the world and people are hearing about us.

Jessica Owen
Well, it's funny, actually, I didn't realize until having this conversation with you today, that the phone scan was only sort of fast forwarded because of COVID. I actually thought you had that as part of your business anyway. So that's quite interesting, that it's just sort of pushed you to sort of try and get that tech out there. Yeah, absolutely.

Beth Esponnette
And I think if there's anything we can be grateful for in COVID, that's definitely one of them as a company.

Jessica Owen
Then how, I mean, you've mentioned that you're quite lucky with the consumers that you have and everything. So has the business actually been received really well by people so far? I mean, tell me about some of the feedback that you've had. Yeah,

Beth Esponnette
this is one of my favorite things. Is is working directly with customers. And I when, when I first, when we first started a company, one of my focuses was on the big systems and overhauling kind of the industry. And it still is, as a founder and someone running the company, but I think the thing that really drives me day to day are the individual customers and and, yeah, seeing, seeing their reactions like they have to wait the three weeks it's like, not only is it kind of anticipation for them. It's also anticipation for us, like they got their scan, like this is no potentially a very vulnerable process for them, because they probably never scan before, and people get really nervous about it, even though it's it's very i It's very approachable. I would call it fun. I mean, maybe I'm not the typical person, but I think it's kind of a fun experience. So waiting that time always builds anticipation. Then it's so fun to see see reactions a lot of lot of our customers are people who aren't finding the right fit at the store. And honestly, I. Kind of expected it to be like certain ends of the spectrum where they they just maybe weren't blanket covered by what you see at the store, but it ends up being people like in between things, or they, they just, there's just something particular about them that I looking at them like in or a normal person wouldn't really call it out, but people know themselves so intimately that they're like, I always have a problem with back gapping, or I always have a problem with it being too bunch of the knees. Or there's just like, my my hips are too big and my Otis is too small. And like, people just have these particular things about themselves that they they always say it's a problem with themselves and not with the system, which really bothers me, and I hope that changes soon. I hope we, I hope we throw sizes away. I mean, unspun, of course, has thrown sizes away, but I hope the whole industry throws sizes away very quickly, because it's just not, it's not healthy for us to compare ourselves to these, like, completely arbitrary systems. So yeah, seeing, seeing people who like, consider themselves like you would say that they're normal, whatever that means, like that you wouldn't bat an eye at them. They have particular things that they're insecure about, and so it's really fun to make them genes that are exactly for them, and they realize, like, it's not it's not the other genes, or it's not them, it's like the other the system and and how it's been set up.

Jessica Owen
I mean, I can agree more with that. I mean, because of COVID, I've been personally trying to do online shopping, and I personally hate it, because H M, for example, might have really big sizes, so in a UK size 10 or me might come up as like a UK size 12. And if you go into another shop, what I think of as a size 10 is actually like two sizes smaller, and it's so frustrating. There's a lot of difference and and as you say, if you've got larger hips but a smaller waist, then that doesn't fit into the sort of straighter sort of silhouette that these companies, I think, seem to sort of have. And you're right, it's just sort of not. It's not a one size fits all situation. There's so many different sort of variations. So definitely, I'm on board with the get rid of sizes. Definitely, okay. And so I also want to talk to you about some of your sort of ups and your downs since starting the business back in I think you said 2015 and you mentioned that the price has actually been something that is maybe taking some people time to sort of get their head around and and so on. But what other sort of challenges have you encountered?

Beth Esponnette
Wow, again, can do another podcast one time. Being a startup is very difficult. There are just a lot of a lot of things to overcome. But honestly, I think that's what makes it so exciting. If it were smooth sailing, it would be, it would just be less interesting. So something that that's been a challenge for us is what we do is it's a leap, like it's a leap not only for our B to B customers, like I mentioned, H M is, is a brand that we work or retailer that we work very closely with, and we have a few other brands that we we work with as well. Because, you know, we have, we have our own unspun brand, and we are able to showcase our technology through that and really, really push the industry to think, think about other ways of doing things. We love having that, that platform for it, but we know that we could have an even bigger impact if we were to bring our technology to already established brands and retailers, and so that's what we've we've been doing recently, and we found that, like you mentioned, COVID, COVID has spurred many more conversations than we would normally have, but it's also made some of the potential partners think a little bit shorter term than we expected, because I think a lot of them are seeing other companies go bankrupt, and they say, well, we need to have a quick solution. So rather than saying, Okay, we're gonna overhaul your whole system so you don't have sizes anymore and your customers can just scan and they get their product, because we're going to turn your product into its own algorithm, or into its own like set of instructions for the computer to build that product around a customer. That's a big that's a big leap for some, for a company to go into that and and H and M through its brand weekday has has been doing that. It's exciting to see, but it's a new way of thinking for for basically everyone at the company, like, from their pattern makers to to their developers to their designers, and they they have to reframe. Like, what does it mean to what does it mean to have a style? Like, what does a style mean on a lot of different figures? Because we typically just make a set of 10 of them, and that's the. So that's our graded, like, size chart range, and we know that those are within the style that we imagined. But if someone's vastly larger or smaller than what we anticipate, or has a completely different size, or maybe is differently abled, or like, there's just something that's a little different, how do we imagine that style working for them, and so it's kind of fun to stretch their imagination in that way. But it's also, for a lot of them, too big of a leap. So we're we've been working in ways to start to get them there. So there are a few brands that we've been working with on how to how to reimagine or remanufacture their dead stock, and where we can actually help them by like they have, they have product that's just sitting there. It's not getting to anyone, and it's just waste. If they were to remanufacture it into some other product, it could just become that again. So what we're doing is helping them with that, but also introducing this concept of on demand, where you don't make it before someone buys it. And so they, they're able to kind of sell this, this new product that's maybe like a color block or a patchwork or so there's something interesting about it, because it is remanufactured. It's it's built into something new, but the customer buys it first. So that's kind of one direction where we're going in, and it makes a lot of sense. It's it's part of our mission here. And another one is probably even more logical, or more in line with what these brands are looking for, and that's to help them understand their customer and the fit more so not necessarily going to the full leap all the way to custom fit, but, but saying, maybe we can scan more of our customers and get them either recommendation or start to understand where, where we can change things in our in our product lines to fit them. So, yeah, huge challenge has been that what we do is a little bit out there for a lot of these partners, but we can, we can start to build little stepping stones for them. We find that we find the same thing with a lot of customers, that it's definitely takes an adventurous person to say, I'm not going to look through the racks anymore. I'm not going to order three sizes and return to like that's, that's definitely something we've gotten used to, and I don't blame people for it. Like it's, it's really hard to know what the right thing to get it would be, especially if you're out there. But it takes an adventurous person to say, I'm going to throw out the way that I'm used to. I'm going to try this new thing that that scans my body because that the internet, everyone tells you scary things about, you know, what is? What is China doing with identifying people and giving them social numbers? Like, we have nothing to do with that, but just because it is technology, you kind of get sucked into that. So I think that's, that's maybe a challenge is, is disassociating ourselves from the negatives of technology and understanding that what what we're trying to do is, is actually make the industry more inclusive and more sustainable using technology like trying to do good things with it and not bad things with

Jessica Owen
it. So moving forward, then, have you, I mean, you've already sort of mentioned about things that you're setting out to do, but have you got any other sort of plans in the pipeline, or are the goals that you're working towards always? Yes,

Beth Esponnette
fun, exciting things that are happening. So we've just launched the mobile phone scanning, as I mentioned, and washed wash light colored genes, which is really exciting. And we're starting to test out some some visualization. So when you go to our website now, you don't, you don't necessarily see the full product before you press purchase, and you definitely don't see it on your avatar yet. But something that we're working on is being able to not only get that body scan and choose your genes, but also to, like, merge those two processes where you can actually see it on the computer, and we're able to do that on our end, but it's just a matter of making it something that people are excited to look at, because what we're looking at is much more. It's like very computerized, and maybe isn't something people are used to, right? So it's like making that leap, and how do we make that a more approachable leap for for someone? But that's, yeah, something we're excited about is people being able to kind of change out their styles on their avatar and kind of dress themselves. So that's one big thing, and others is working with more retailers. We have a big launch happening in this fall in Europe, actually, and so yeah, we're excited for that, and hope that it will be an example to other to other retailers, other brands that that they can do this too, that they can, they can take those baby steps to make the really big changes. Is to avoid all of the excess inventory that they're creating.

Jessica Owen
Well, I mean, that sounds very exciting. I think not only will the sort of having the avatars and being able to sort of picture the genes on them, it will also probably put customers minds at ease being able to see what they're actually ordering, which I imagine is something that maybe puts people off at first when they sort of use your technology.

Beth Esponnette
Oh, absolutely, yeah. And we, we have a free returns, free remakes, like policy we want. We believe so strongly in our fit and that in our product that we were willing to do that we say, like, if you, if these are not your favorite genes, like, Please, we will return your money. Like this. This really is our goal, is to make them your favorite genes. But I think even just getting the airspace to communicate that is difficult. And I think people assume like, Oh, if you're you're scanning me, you're making these just for me. There's no way that you would have a free return policy. This has to be a there has to be some stipulation. Yeah, that's that's not the case. So yes, I agree that that it does feel, yeah, it does feel very risky when you can't see it. But, but with, with that policy, it really does make it more palatable. Okay, well,

Jessica Owen
I mean, finally, Beth, what I wanted to ask you, really, was about any advice that you might have, really, for anyone else trying to start out in this industry. I mean, is there anything that you've learned along the way that you think would be really good if you knew this when you were first starting out? Wow,

Beth Esponnette
there are a lot of things, I think, one that I'm constantly reminded of through my teammates, and I think is a reason that we're we're still really changing things today and working working hard today is that you should not really like you should strive for perfection, but you should never really hit perfection before you launch something like it should be. You should be testing things as soon as as they can be tested. And something that's really exciting about being a new company is you have, you have the ability to launch things before, before they are ready, because you have the bandwidth to work with every single customer who walks through that door. Like, if someone walks in and they're, they're kind of an early adopter, like they become, they become a champion. They become kind of, they get doted on, basically, because they're, they're in the early stages, like they're a handful of people, and if they're willing to do that, then it might not work for them on the first go. But this, this happened to us in 2017 we launched. We did a few pop ups in Hong Kong, and we had about 50 people come through. And I would say, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it wasn't even half of them that worked the first time. But every single customer like they got a great experience, because they had so much one on one time with us, and we could work through, through everything, till till it was perfect. And so I think that's that's an advantage, and starting early. And the bigger one is that you actually work out the kinks before you launch. A lot of I've seen a lot of startups, actually, one that's related to us is called Zozo suit. It was in part of a company called Zozo town out of Japan, and they had a suit that people would wear, and they had polka dots on it, and they would scan but they had, like, a huge marketing budget, and they decided they would just secretly develop it and then throw marketing to the wind, and they would send out these suits for free. They lost so much money because they would send out the suit. And then sometimes people would order, and sometimes they wouldn't. And what they did order, it didn't work, because they really hadn't tested it enough. So that whole thing just went under within, I think it was within, like, four months or something. It was such a quick, quick thing and that that was just, it was unfortunate to see that they had spent so much money trying to to get the word out there. But a lot of times it's just about about iteration and just getting it, getting it right. So yeah, that's one. One bit of advice is like, go for it, try it. And if someone, you know, if someone bites, treat them really, really well and and recognize that, that's a huge opportunity for both of you, for them to to get something they've finally been looking for forever, and for you to work with them like customers. And getting their feedback is so invaluable, and that's one of, one of the best things you can find as a startup company and new company. Well,

Jessica Owen
Beth, I think, I think that's all we've really got time for today. But thank you very much again for your time today. I mean, it's been lovely to have the chance to sort of speak with you and learn all about unspun and how it works. So I. Yes, thank you and good luck with everything. Moving forward. 

Beth Esponnette
Thank you so much, Jessica, these are great questions. Really appreciate it.