Ep. 31: Ministry of Supply designs scientifically engineered clothing Ankit Podcast

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Ep. 31: Ministry of Supply designs scientifically engineered clothing

In this episode of The WTiN Podcast, we talk to the CEO and co-founder of Ministry of Supply, Aman Advani.

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 Amman Advani, who is the CEO and co founder of Ministry of Supply. Aman, talks about the brand's engineered clothing, such as the kinetic suit which he wore to his own wedding, how the company has been coping with COVID 19, and how growth and comfort rarely co exist. Well, hello and good morning. Aman, lovely to have you on the show today, and thank you very much for joining me. So tell me what you guys at Ministry of Supply do then exactly, because you look like a normal clothing brand. And then when I digs a little deeper onto your website, there's an awful lot of science and research involved in what you do. So if you could tell me a bit about your what you do, that'd be great. Yeah,

Aman Advani
that's great. I like that introduction. I think we we sometimes appreciate that. From a fashion side, we almost fly under the radar, where we say we make the 50% of your closet that you wear 80% of the time those staple pieces, but backing up a second, the premise of the brand is, and always has been, about making products that is scientifically better. So how do we take all the technology and performance behind your favorite gym or lounge clothes and infuse that into the rest of your wardrobe? So think building clothes, engineering clothing for motion, ease of care and the planet. We'll

Jessica Owen
come back to what you've just mentioned there. But before we do that, do you do you mind just telling me a bit about how the company was founded, I think, as I understand it, it was born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Is, I think most people know it as. So just tell me a bit about that and how you came to launch the company.

Aman Advani
Yeah, absolutely. So we actually met my partner, Guillaume, and I met in 2011 I had just come to MIT to pursue my MBA after an undergraduate in engineering, and he was just finishing his degrees in engineering as well. And we found it just bizarre and serendipitous that the two of us had both been hand hacking prototypes, hand sewing samples of what we at the time were referring to as performance professional taking pieces of fabrics from high performing gear and sewing them into the silhouettes of dress clothing. So in his case, he was cutting out the center back and underarm panels of dress shirts and replacing them with his running shirts as an avid runner. And in my case, I was cutting out the soles of Nike Running Socks and replacing the soles of kind of a traditional black dress sock. So I would walk around and feel like this cushy moisture wicking in a dry foot, but looked like a dress sock. And in both cases, it was about, how do we take advantage of or understand how your body expels heat, odor, moisture, pressure, strain, how your skin stretches, how your skin breathes, and take that into consideration when engineering something that would make you a lot more comfortable and consequently, a lot more productive throughout your day. So

Jessica Owen
you said, there you that you both did a degree in engineering. So how did the textiles come into it?

Aman Advani
Yeah, you can imagine that two engineers meeting at MIT's campus, proposing and suggesting launching a fashion brand was not initially the most exciting thing that the institution right in a sea of apps at the time, we certainly stood out as a bit of an anomaly. What we really focused on, though, as engineers, was, how do we apply the scientific method to anything right, in this case, to fashion? How do we start with a problem statement, what do you not like about your clothing today? And we found that by asking that question with a fairly open ended opportunity to answer, we were getting just hundreds of responses that were just, you know, I despise irons. I hate figuring out how to use the iron in my local hotel room. Or I can't stand, you know, dry cleaners and the bill and the time and the hassle, and, you know, I hate when it's time I get to a client site and a consulting, you know, gig that I get to the client side after flying in town Monday morning, and my shirts half untucked, disheveled, there's sweat stains, wrinkles, and it was these pain points that really motivated us to say, well, let's engineer solutions, and let's, let's kind of see what happens when we put an engineering hat in a place where it is not traditionally kind of used or even in some cases welcome, and by partnering with minds that were really intelligent and experienced in fashion, we were able to do that without being totally tone deaf.

Jessica Owen
Okay, and so the company then you obviously. Had these ideas and sort of looking for feedback as well. So when the company launched in 2012 was that straight after your degree? Did you just go straight into it? Or what was the sort of steps that you took to get it off the ground? Yeah, so

Aman Advani
when we were engineering this stuff in the early days, when we were trekking over at a bus to the New York Garment District to get you know, prototypes and samples made every month or so. We were spinning out a new sample batch between one and 30 pieces, handing them to friends, just getting all the feedback we could. I mean, our biggest fear was that we had solved the problem that was unique to ourselves, and that no one else would care, and that, you know, people maybe were mildly interested, but wouldn't really turn out when it came time to pay up. And so by putting out what amount to be about 13 or 14 different prototypes before we actually launched anything, we were a lot more confident that it was not just our problem. And so we decided, at that point, having no idea how big this issue was or opportunity was, we put it up on Kickstarter from the summer of 2012 and Kickstarter was a very different entity back then. It was great then, and it's great now. And we've really enjoyed working with them. But we put it up and we said, let's see if we can sell $30,000 worth of kind of a performance dress shirt. If we can sell $30,000 in a month, we think there's a real idea here. That was our bar, that was the supply chain, required that for a minimum order quantity, you know, that that was our kind of mentally said, Okay, that's, that's a real business, if you can do that in your first month. And we were blown away that first month. We, you know, we did almost half a million bucks in that 30 day span. We beat that goal by 14x you know, which led to a host of other challenges, right, actually fulfilling those orders, but at least we had gotten the verification that we were seeking, that people cared. Well, I

Jessica Owen
mean, Kickstarter just seems to be the perfect way for so many sort of startups to really get their product out there and gave them more feedback as well, actually. But I really want to talk about your products then and your technology as well. So, I mean, I've had a look on your website, and I've had a look through some of your products, and I think one of the ones that struck me was the Apollo dress shirt. I think I read that this is made with the same phase change materials that NASA invented to control astronauts or body temperature. So tell me about this shirt and why you decided to sort of combine this sort of NASA technology with just a normal shirt? 

Aman Advani
Yeah, it's a really great question. That was actually one of our first products, and it was the one that I mentioned in that Kickstarter, you know, early on. And even now, we're not a huge over about 50 people who are, you know, team based here in Boston, Massachusetts. We've got to be crafty and careful in how we expend our resources. And so sometimes that means creating technology out of thin air, you know, creating a fiber fabrication method or construction method completely from scratch. And sometimes that means repurposing what's already out there, right? And in this case, NASA has developed this beautiful technology called phase change materials that's actually open source, that's available for usage by anyone. And they encourage people to use it. They love the idea that there's return on investment beyond space travel to use this material called a phase change material. In fact, if you go to NASA's website, it's nasa.gov and you search dress shirts, you'll find an article about the work we do with them and how much we enjoy each other existing. But this phase change material is brilliant and beautiful because it's meant to actually buffer astronauts temperatures when in space where there's wild temperature fluctuations. It's a polymer, a waxy polymer, that melts or freezes at roughly the ideal skin temperature. And so what happens in the energy transfer of that phase change process when that is going from liquid to solid, or solid or solid to liquid, which is embedded in the fiber you won't feel it, it actually does buffer your temperature by about a degree and a half. So it keeps you a little bit cooler when you know you enter that heated outdoors, or it's slightly warmer, and kind of puts that energy back when, when you are kind of enter that AC office. So it starts to create a slightly narrower temperature band for your own body that people find to be quite a bit more comfortable.

Jessica Owen
Well, it's actually really interesting. You say that in our office, when we're usually in it anyway, we have this big debate over the air conditioning. And in the summer months, you want to dress for the summer, but then you know that you're going to step into this freezing cold office, and you should probably dress for winter or bring a blanket in. So that kind of shirt would just be ideal for me.

Aman Advani
It's such a good point, this idea of a personal thermostat, you know, we we talk about nets thermostats a lot, in these kind of learning thermostats, and they start to get better over time. It's actually why, a couple years ago, we launched a heated jacket that does the same thing and says, Hey, look, my cold is not your cold. It's, you know, we've experienced temperatures in such a different way what we find comfortable. And so we launched a jacket with a computer in it to actually modulate heat output based upon your temperature internally, the external temperature and your motion, and then, most importantly, along with your preferences, which it learns over. Time, and so doing exactly what you just said, which is you go in these massive fluctuations. You run to a bus stop and you wait, and it gets colder, and then you get warmer, and you enter an a seat office. You want to keep it on for a few minutes. When you get inside all of these different situations our bodies go through, and how we personally interact to them, is exactly what motivates us.

Jessica Owen
That's very cool. Yeah. So another of your designs, and that I want to mention, I think the aero zero dress shirt, which you say is the world's first carbon neutral dress shirt. So tell me about this then, and how you've managed to sort of achieve that carbon neutrality.

Aman Advani
Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I think it's funny that the arrows story has evolved over time. It's a shirt we've had in the collection for over five years, and we've loved it. It's been iterated many times. It's got so many great kind of features to it. It's got these six laser perforations under the arms to encourage ventilation. It fundamentally does not want to hold sweat stains, so if and when you do sweat, it evaporates quite quickly. You can have it balled up in a backpack, and within 10 minutes of putting on your body, it'll be wrinkle free. It's got this beautiful three shaped collar, and it's got built in collar stays. But you're right to point out the most exciting feature is that it was our first fully recycled dress shirt. And what that means is we use this process through an organization that actually my partner, Gihon, is on the board up called Climate Neutral. Is a global certification for climate neutrality and carbon neutrality. And what we do is, by process that they developed called measure, reduce offset, we can achieve that neutrality. So what we do is we measure the footprint of any garment. We find the massive opportunities for reduction. In this case, specifically, it was by using no version fibers so entirely made of recycled fibers, and reduce that footprint quite a bit, quite dramatically. It can reduce that footprint, and then what remains in that footprint can be offset through clean energy. So in our case, through the purchase of solar energy, which we quite deeply believe in you get that net carbon footprint down to a true zero, and that's what we achieved, not only for that shirt, but shortly after for the entire company. And then we actually went a step further and retroactively offset our entire historical footprint, so that our company's total carbon footprint since day zero is zero,

Jessica Owen
right? So sustainability, then, is something that must be quite important to you guys, by the sounds of it.

Aman Advani
Yeah, you know, we often talk about it as a feature, right? It's, you know, it's machine washable, wrinkle free, sweat stain free, super soft and cozy and net carbon neutral. And it's just like that. It's right. We hope and expect that the rest of the industry kind of picks up on that and continues to do the same right, and we happily open up our playbook to show them how we did it. But by doing so, and by customers starting to really demand that being a function in their shirt a bullet point on that product description, and willing to kind of stand for that, we think there's tremendous amount that the industry can grow and change from that perspective. I

Jessica Owen
mean, that's something I was going to ask there you saying about sort of offsetting the carbon and things like that. I mean, is it pretty easy to do? I mean, could other companies quite easily take the same route? I mean, what do you think is maybe stopping those who don't already do it?

Aman Advani
Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a few things. The Challenger one is a lot of the perceptions around it, right? That somehow you make a worse product when you take dramatic reduction efforts. We've actually found the opposite when we've taken our most dramatic steps in the direction of Sustainability, for instance, using fully, fully recycled fabrics. We found that you can actually completely make the garment better. So you can improve its durability, you can improve its abrasion resistance. There's so much you can do to actually improve it that also coincides with its carbon footprint being reduced. So there is a win, win. And the second challenge people tend to face is, how, where do I start? Right? And in that case, I think we've been super proud to partner with climate neutral and have the ability to actually have a guide through that process, to get the math right and to find the right place to invest in getting those offsets is a critical piece of the journey. So we find those to be the two biggest barriers to people taking the next step. Now

Jessica Owen
another product that I wanted to mention, I think, is a suit called kinetic, and on your website, it says that it ran a record shattering half marathon. I mean, is that really true? And what's so special about it?

Aman Advani
I like, I like that you've picked up on all the and we didn't, we didn't prep these questions, so I'm appreciating them as they're coming in. You've hit on all of my favorites, and there's a couple more favorites to come that we might dig up. But the Connecticut, my single favorite product. I mean, I, you know, I my wedding was in a kinetic suit, and it was just a, you know, gorgeous and perfect the outside. What's special about kinetic, it is, it is our number one selling platform. We make it and but. With men's and women's and pants and tops and jackets as well. And what's so special about it is that people you know don't often know this but, but you're you're a fashion or industry insiders will appreciate it. It is actually a warp knit. It looks like a woven it is a very clean, matte finished, dense garment that just has this beautiful hand feel to it. It's stretchy, but still maintains a really great structure to it, and doesn't kind of bow out, bow out. It's this beautiful fabric that we've just spent so much time working on and perfecting and and it's also very athletically oriented, for lack of a better word, it performs at an extremely higher rate. And so what we did to kind of prove that, and we didn't realize it was going to end up being some end up being such a big story was my partner, Guillaume, signed up for a half marathon. So let me put this thing to the test. Let me see if I can run a half marathon and see what comes out of it. And sure enough, and we timed it, we measured it, and we were careful about it. And afterwards, we kind of realized, wait a second, he just broke the current Guinness world record for fastest half marathon in a suit and be a very fast runner to begin with. It wasn't the suit made him faster, but it appeared certainly not to make him slower, and it was a really great sign that the moisture wicking and the breathability of the garments was was tremendous. So he was wearing a full suit in this a year later, his fiance, also a very fast runner to begin with, did the same thing on the women's side. And so she set the Guinness world record for fastest Mary, fastest half marathon in a suit for women. I think gi Hun is my partner again. Record, I think has since been broken a few times. People got excited and said, I can only try that and and his, in his his wife's case, Caro, she I think her record may still stand, but that's the quick story behind that. It was a fun day in both cases, just playing just playing outside and getting to a put the products to a fairly extreme test.

Jessica Owen
And, I mean, obviously, like the you've just sort of demonstrated the extremes of being able to wear this suit. Um, but do you find that people are probably the main reason people buy this is just for the comfort element of it, because, I mean, normal suits are quite rigid, and sitting for maybe, I don't know, seven, eight hours in an office isn't isn't exactly the most fun if you're setting something like that. Yeah,

Aman Advani
it's really good question. One of the things, particularly kind of coming coming out of quarantine, that we find is that people are naturally a lot more productive and just generally happier when they feel good, when they're not super constrained by their clothes, but they don't feel stiff and stuffy. So whether that's a suit or even just a polo and a pair of pants, there's this innate, deep need to be comfortable. I mean, I found that when I was consulting for several years and getting home from clients, I changed into my gym clothes and head back down to the hotel lobby and keep working, and that's where the real work would get done. And so I think what we found is that if we can, first and foremost, make sure that, from it, from a technology standpoint, we're focusing on comfort and performance, but then couple it with looking sharp, right? This esthetic need that we all naturally have to present ourselves at our best, you know, put together is a word we often use that if you could both look sharp and feel great. That's where you really unlock productivity in both mental and physical confidence. And so that's what it's all about. You know, very simply, it's form and function, living together gracefully, in fact, multiplying each other.

Jessica Owen
And I mean, is that something, then, that your consumers and wider consumers are looking for, in general, just sort of clothes that aren't just clothes, but actually do something a bit more like, there's just so much more thought that goes into it. Maybe it's, it's smart textiles. Like, do you think the way we look at clothes is is changing a lot more now, and we'll do we'll continue to do so in future. I

Aman Advani
do, yeah. I mean, I think, I think, certainly, that the last few months here in quarantine have accelerated that. But I think there was already an existing trend away from kind of really descriptive dress codes of the office, for instance, you know, you must wear a button down shirt and pants, towards much more prescriptive, right, look sharp, you know, look put together, right? And so by shifting our mentality away from a uniform and towards encouraging discretion clothing, all of a sudden you're asking a lot more from your clothes, right? The same clothes you wear on a Monday morning may be also the ones you wear on a Saturday afternoon. And avoiding that kind of two separate work and not work, wardrobe mentality means that you have one closet and ideally fewer things that are performing a much higher and more versatile rate, and so that's really where we want to plug in, right? We don't, we don't consider ourselves to make dress clothes, or specifically clothes for work, but clothes that you live in, and clothes that you can wear in any situation, and not worry that all of a sudden you end up running into somebody, you know, getting off a plane, or you end up going to a meeting that you didn't expect to, that these are all situations that come up and you end up in several different climates and different formalities of situations in a given day. How can we make one more drug that satisfies all of those needs? And

Jessica Owen
I mean, is there any other company that you know of that sort of offers products such as yours, or maybe approaches design in the same way that you do? Or do you think you're sort of maybe one of the sort of leaders in this area? You

Aman Advani
know, when we started the company, there was, you know, you couldn't find a suit with, you know, with, with even a couple percent of spandex to give you a little bit of stretch and breathing room. And now, you know, you probably can't find one that doesn't we've seen the industry start to really pick up on us, which we think is fantastic, right? If everybody's, you know, happier and more aware of what their clothing can do, it should provide advantage to anyone who is thinking progressively. We find there's a good bit of inspiration outside of fashion as well. If you look at a number of companies that really do a good job of just more broadly, using science to blend form and function, Dyson is a great example that we really love to look at and say they've done it just a phenomenal job of blending, you know, how does it look? How does it feel? It's in my home, it's visually available. But also, how does it perform? Is it the best thing that's that's ever kind of been used by, you know, that by that setting? And so by using science to drive that graceful marriage of kind of left brain, right brain, we've found that there's a massive unlock that we've used to our advantage.

Jessica Owen
And are there any other cool developments that your company's sort of known for, or what you're doing at the moment that I've not picked up on?

Aman Advani
Yeah, that's such a great question. I think you've touched on quite a bit here. And I think there's, there's so many more. Kind of do want to stories, whether it's 3d printing clothing, whether it's, you know, now we're actually three printing in our Boston store here, just a block away from where I am in the office. You know, whether it's using coffee beans infusing our socks to fight odor, I think you really touched on this idea of, how do we kind of really just take a specific garment, a specific use case, a specific opportunity, and use so much science that you don't even know it right? As a user, you don't need to know about phase change materials. You don't need to know that you know our Paula dresser does 19 times more breathable than a traditional one. All you need to know is that when you put it on, it feels better and different and you're excited about it, right? And so I think ultimately, I won't bog you down and bore you with every detail that drives what, but that we really hope that customers achieve that what and then can they can go and achieve whatever goals they're set out to do.

Jessica Owen
Right? So, Ministry of Supply, then you've just said you're based in Boston. Are your products all manufactured there? Or is this done elsewhere? 

Aman Advani
We do it all over the world. So our general kind of supply chain theory is largely driven by ethics and capabilities. So are these factories. We visit every factory we work in before we ever place a single order. We meet with leadership. We speak with employees on the floor. Is this a place that we would send our own family to work at if this was their vocation? And then we look at their capabilities, not only in their actual equipment on hand. But their mindset, are they willing to invest in a ultrasonic welders? That's we find important. And so by really getting a sense for is this progressive and innovative manufacturer or partner, we can make that thing so we produce truly over the world. I mean, Honduras, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Taiwan, Los Angeles, New York. We've got several active sites right now that all meet our criteria. 

Jessica Owen
You might get this question a lot, but, I mean, you're quite a sustainable brand, but do you find that maybe producing on all these different countries, does that affect sort of your carbon footprint, for example? I mean, how do you sort of go about China make sure that that's all done properly.

Aman Advani
Yeah, it's a really great question. I mean, the measure reduce offset, right? And keep coming back to that framework and saying, Where do we see the next biggest opportunity? Shipping is certainly a major, major contributor, and we need to continue to attack that. You know, the dying process, the waste during production, obsolescence, right? Garments that just go completely unused because the season is over and it's passed. All of these are areas with just a ton of opportunity for us to continue to attack. We started largely looking at the usage of version fibers and trying to avoid that. Right by next year, the majority of our product will utilize recycled fabrics, and so in doing so, we can kind of go one step at a time and continue to erode a lot of the norms in fashion and reset them, and use again that scientific framework to do the same thing we do to the garments, to the footprint. And so you're totally you're spot on that there's a huge contribution element from shipping and from shipping from factory to warehouse, but also from warehouse to customer, that is certainly up for optimization.

Jessica Owen
I quite like the way you use that. You said that's an opportunity. It's not actually something you're too worried about. It's just another area in which you can improve. That's quite a good way of looking at it. 

Aman Advani
I think, yeah, stuff keeps us up at night. I'll say it's an it's an opportunity, but a burning one that we're is our duty to seize it, right? We should. We should kind of look back on what we've built at any point and be proud of its impact, not only to our customers lives, but also to our community and our climate and so in that way, we owe it to ourselves and our customers and our base to continue to push as hard as we can there, right?

Jessica Owen
I. And so talk about the your customers then. I mean, are they mainly based in the in the US, or do you have quite a global reach these days?

Aman Advani
Yeah, I think. I mean, with with E commerce being the equalizer, the base is pretty International. We've got some quite, quite heavy spikes in the UK. We see a lot in Japan, Australia, a ton in Canada. The US is still our largest country by volume and sales by a fairly wide margin. But we do, you know the next number two through 10 make up a substantial portion of our business as well.

Jessica Owen
Moving on, then I one topic that I want to talk about is something that we're all sort of facing at the moment, and that is Coronavirus. So I think that ministry of supplies actually developed a face mask. So do you mind just telling me a bit about that and sort of the efforts that you're putting into this? Yeah,

Aman Advani
so the first thing we did when this all set out, would be, before we even got that far, was we started working with our factories to see how we could help in a massive global PPE shortage. And so we did is we worked with this network of suppliers that we happened to, you know, have on speed dial, and we said, you know, produce or procure every mask you can get your hands on. We'll figure out how to pay for it later. We need to get these things into hospitals, and if that's going to require a financial commitment, we're up for it. So I remember that that first, first first day that we really understood the gravity of the PPE shortage. We made a wire within six hours of decided, as we wired 50,000 bucks, you know, with nothing, with no contract, with no Po, with nothing to one of our suppliers, a long time supplier. We, of course, we have infinite trust in and said, Get us as many respirators as you possibly can, whether you make them or find them within your network, as long as we trust them deeply, and we have certifications from the FDA to prove it, get them over here. And so we just started donating at a rapid pace. I mean, we're talking they would show up at the port, we'd pick them up from the port and drive them directly to hospitals and shelters. And so we ended up, over the course of time and it, I don't know if it doesn't sound like a lot, but it was about 70,000 masks and respirators that we were able to donate. The vast majority of those were donated before we sold a single one. We just continued on the donation path until we felt really confident that that we could then start to open back up. Right? We also have to keep in mind our own financial picture where six US stores, all six were closed, all six had a group of employees that we continued to pay at full rate the entire time they were closed. So financially, we had to be kind of careful as well that we didn't over extend, but we had tremendous support from our customer base as well. And so maybe just about two months ago, we decided that we were in a position to continue donating, but to amplify those donation efforts by also selling. So we did a buy one donate one program where instead of it just being a straight donation, we were selling a customer mask and donating one as well. We happened to develop that mask with one of our partners in Los Angeles on the 3d print knit machine that we've long loved it can produce a mask every five or six minutes, and we just had these things. Our entire factory basically shut down and overnight and started making masks. Because we started ordering by the 10s of 1000s. We started ordering masks, and we worked with a custom die cutter and a filter maker to make insertable filters into those where we worked with Nelson labs to actually make sure that they they were up to snuff. So these are to be clear, the ones we sell on our website are purely for consumer use. All of the comparisons are made against not wearing a mask at all. They're not intended for medical use, but we do find through our research that they can have a benefit over not wearing a mask at all.

Jessica Owen
It's very cool that you just sort of just, well, just like many other companies at the moment, people are just getting on with it. No one's really, I mean, there is a lot of stress involved, but I like the fact that many people in sort of the textile industry are just sort of going, well, here's a challenge. Let's just get on with it. See what we can do, and hopefully we can help some way, but, um, but how's actually the Coronavirus? I mean, you mentioned there that your stores have had to shut, but how else has your company been affected? Are you managing to keep afloat? And do you think recovery for you guys will be pretty simple? Or what your thoughts? Yeah,

Aman Advani
I think we've been, we've been really fortunate. I mean, we took to start. We make, you know, to have two major disadvantages. One is that we're reliant on that store footprint. Right? Those stores collectively make up a substantial portion of their business, although not a majority of a significant portion. They're all shut down. And that doesn't naturally just come online. There are customers who prefer to shop offline. And the second disadvantage that we make clothing that is largely built for out of home use, and when you're stuck at home, that's not the first thing on your mind. You're not jumping to buy a polo or a dress or a dress shirt, right? And so during the kind of pit of quarantine those first few weeks where it was just really tough, we certainly felt the burn. But ultimately, I think we have a product that creates value in the product. Self, right? Our value proposition is not about our selling channels. It's not about our advertising. It's about purely the product has inherent value to your life. And so in that way, I think that's timeless. I think that kind of extends beyond outside of a micro anomaly, like a true full quarantine. We continue to drive value in people's lives, and they continue to kind of stick with us. And so in that way, I don't have a tremendous amount of fear for our long term. In fact, we've already seen the vast majority of the recovery start to happen. So I do think it'll be a really great back half of the year.

Jessica Owen
And so Ministry of Supply, then you guys have been around for about eight years now, and a Coronavirus probably is one of the biggest challenges, I'm assuming you've had to deal with. But tell me about some of the other sort of ups and downs that this sort of companies had to face over the years.

Aman Advani
Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know how long you've got, but I can list that. Yeah, we started this right then, 2012 like I said, with no background in fashion. In fact, no background in consumer products at all. And so those first couple years were really marked by just a tremendous amount of learning, a pace of learning that I hope to maintain for the rest of my career. I could be so lucky. But I mentioned early on, it was a teaser, and probably my most, the most entertaining story was we sold eight and 10,000 shirts in that first month on a supply chain that was really prepared to make three or 400 and so that first challenge was, holy cow, how do we make these shirts? You know, we started to sell colors in that that we didn't even know we could make. But we didn't know that colors were actually different, right? We thought this is all the same if we sell a black shirt, you know, we know we can make a white shirt. Of course we can make a black one. Well, it turns out the dye doesn't saturate quite as well because of that phase change material, the polymer, the dye doesn't handle black as well at the time. We've since found quite a bit of a solution for that and so on. Some of those challenge rates sold eight to 10,000 shirts, some of which were in colors that mill couldn't make, and we had nowhere to make them, and so all of a sudden we were just kind of thrown into the deep end. So four months to make these things. Let's see what happens. And then the second challenge that happened right afterwards, when we finally got out after it kind of months of just sleepless nights, and we realized pretty quickly that we had really overlooked the fashion element of this. And that sounds kind of silly to say, in hindsight, we were engineers, right? So the first thing we did was we went out and hired on our design director, who was formerly the design director at theory and Brooks Brothers, and his super sharp has been the industry for 30 years in quite a few senior leadership roles, who is still with us today, and still kind of what seven years after that, still with us, who he really taught us the value of the art of fashion, so we were pretty quick to course correct there. But those two mistakes kind of both packed into the first year, overselling first and then overlooking the esthetic portion of this were critical mistakes. So we made around, I think we were lucky to survive them and then grow off of that.

Jessica Owen
And so what about some of the UPS then? I mean, what are some of the things that you've been most proud of since, since launching?

Aman Advani
Yeah, I think, you know, there's just countless stories and awards and stuff like this. NASA just gave us an Innovation Excellence Award. And to get an award from NASA is certainly something we never imagined. And you certainly get a high every time you see kind of a press quote that really puts it to the test and says, Okay, this is what they say it is. But I think we find the most joy at kind of two particular moments. One is when a new prototype comes in, when the, you know, when a box comes in from one of our factories, everybody rallies around the kitchen table, right? It's like Christmas morning just opening these things up and seeing, Oh my god, like that. You know, this double pocket shirt jacket came in that we've been so excited. Been so excited about and and we saw that thrill hasn't really dulled over time, that that excitement is as high as everyone we get to see what the next generation of product looks like. We're floored. And the second moment is the one that hits people's hands. We've got a really vocal customer base that we're just incredibly proud of. And I think in a lot of ways, feel lucky to have. I don't know why they are so vocal, but I'm so grateful they are. And they send these notes and that say, you know, I've got hyperhidrosis, and I, you know, my entire wardrobe is Ministry of Supply, because I have an issue with sweating and your clothes and long ones that can stand up to it. Or I, you know, I just had this marathon, 18 hour a day, and I wore it, you know, your shirt and pants the entire time, and I just have to tell you about it. Here's how it went. You know, we're someone that received it as a gift that was just kind of caught off guard by the impact it can have. And I think that's where, when we realize the impact that this can have on someone's goals in life. And it sounds silly to say that clothing can have such a dramatic impact, but in the cases it does, I think we we get so much fulfillment and joy of that, that that's kind of what fuels

Jessica Owen
us. I mean, it's not surprising, really. I mean, we live in clothes the entire day. I mean, some people really do, like, I don't know what people wear at night, but some people wear pajamas. And so that's 24 hours a day where you're in clothes. So really it should be help. You out it should be comfortable, and it should do all these things that you're sort of striving to achieve. So, yeah, it's very, very cool, but I guess we're sort of running out of time. But before we finish, is there any advice you have that you could give to anyone else or looking to start a brand in this industry? Yeah,

Aman Advani
you know, I think, I think there's some, some advice that comes to mind that's applicable both that story I told for our first year, but but even more applicable now, and it's it's advice that we heard early on that we've always really embraced. It's this idea that growth and comfort rarely coexist, and so there's moments where you end up feeling really uncomfortable, whether it's because a quarantine decimated your business or expectations, or whether you're in over your skis on production orders for 10,000 shirts that you didn't expect, that discomfort does always yield growth. It kind of back to what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? In this case, what makes you a little bit uncomfortable, it makes you smarter. And I think we've found that time and time again to be true in those moments where we're a little bit stressed out, a little bit, you know, on edge, are the moments that we see the most learning. And so I'd say in that, in that way, kind of embrace, that you're either growing or, you know, where you're comfortable, but rarely both,

Jessica Owen
yeah, very, very true. I think, well, Aman. I mean, it's been great to have the opportunity to chat with you today, but, I mean, I think we've, think we've run out of time, but I mean, it's been great to sort of learn about Ministry of Supply and all your products. And yes, I thank you very much again for your time, and I wish you and those and everyone else at Ministry of Supply, sort of the best of luck moving forward.

Aman Advani
Thank you so much. This was fantastic.