#16 - Julia Dietmar

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of The Ambitious Altruist, where we interview leaders from a diverse range of backgrounds on what they are doing to help our world. Our guest today is Julia Dietmar. Julia, how are you doing today?

I'm great. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. So Julia is the CEO and co-founder of Open Wardrobe. She spent more than 20 years building products in Silicon Valley. She led products at Yahoo, shaped e-commerce at Walmart, and served as Chief Product Officer at Vue.ai, creating AI tools that helped global retailers rethink everything from inventory to personalization. With a computer science degree from UC Berkeley and an MBA from INSEAD. INSEAD, is that how they say it?

That's how it's pronounced. That's right. INSEAD.

She brings heavyweight experience to one of the fashion industry's biggest challenges. So, Julie, great to have you today. Tell us, what are you doing to help our world?

Thanks, Dominick. So at Open Wardrobe, we are helping consumers which is all of us, to make sustainable fashion choices effortlessly. We have a platform that encourages mindful dressing, and we empower everyone who has to get dressed, which is all of us, to make choices that are both sustainable and stylish. And the bigger picture of that, what it means is we really are hoping to inspire all of the consumers of fashion and apparel to make sustainable choices in a way that helps our planet by using what they already have. And when they choose to bring something new into their wardrobe, do so more mindfully so that we reduce the carbon footprint of logistics, especially when you're buying online and when you're returning things, and reducing as much as possible overproduction, right?

Yeah, the, uh, you know, fashion and cloth is kind of a shockingly impactful industry, right? I know I have a friend who was working at a startup where they try to recycle different fibers, and she shared some statistics that were kind of shocking and how much space it takes up in landfills and all that.

Yeah, um, annually we throw out 11.3 million tons of textiles. Every year. So if you just think about it and you imagine all the pictures that we see everywhere on clothing on the beach in third world countries and literally mountains and mountains of textiles being thrown out, it adds up. Fashion environmentally, if fashion was a country, it would be the third largest polluter in the world.

Really? Wow.

Wow.

So how did you get into this? I'm looking at your background at Yahoo and Walmart and kind of tell me a little bit about how you ended up here.

Yeah, so I was a software engineer, started out as a software engineer and then got more into product management but stayed within technology. And back in 2010, I was working for a startup that got acquired by Walmart. That's how I got into retail space. And at Walmart, I worked with merchants across different verticals, office supplies and food and apparel. And apparel became super fascinating to me, just the problems that exist with accurate forecasting of demand, like what people would want. It's very, very difficult to predict. And then I, after Walmart, I joined the company that was in secondhand clothing. So that's how I got into circular economy in more sustainable fashion. And from there, I went on to work at a deep tech company that used computer vision to solve retail problems around personalization experiences on e-commerce sites. And there, 90% of our customers at the time were apparel brands. And I really started to understand all the challenges they're having with figuring figuring out what people would want, what to produce, how much of that to produce. And they all wanted to understand more about the customers. So that's where the idea was born. And then the idea was always to help the industry to reduce overproduction. How to do it? There are many different ways that could potentially be solved. We decided to focus on the consumer and give consumer tools to be able to make better decisions when buying. So that, you know, we all have a problem of full closet, nothing to wear. So solving that problem and in the process creating better signals for the industry.

So is fashion on a consumer level, is that, has that been a big interest of yours too? Are you a big kind of, is that a means of expression for you and how you dress?

Well, I mean, I always loved clothing. I can't say that I'm a fashionista or, you know, I'm absolutely obsessed with clothes. Now, I always liked it and I always liked to dress up. It was always very interesting personally, and I do believe that clothes as a tool of self-expression is very important. So you can tell the world a lot about yourself without even ever opening your mouth, just by the way you dress and you look. So I think it's very, very interesting in that regard. So yes, clothing was very interesting, and then in the, just as an industry and the issues and problems that apparel industry faces versus, let's say, books or electronics, it's very different. And that was just fascinating to me.

So, so something before, before we started recording, we were talking about both of our families coming from the Eastern Bloc, yours from Lithuania, mine from former Czechoslovakia, and both of our families actually escaped at a similar time in the late '80s. I'm very curious, tell me a little bit about your upbringing there and what sort of impact it may have had on where you find yourself now.

Yeah, my family, I grew up basically between Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine because parts of my family were in different parts of the Soviet Union then. So yeah, I was a teenager when the family left. I came to the United States, did not speak any English. It was kind of difficult with schooling and all of that. So got into Berkeley for computer science. And actually, it's funny because my parents were remodeling their house recently and throwing out stuff. And my mother called me and she said, there are a bunch of your old textbooks, like, do you want them? And I was just curious, like, I went and I picked them up. And I saw that I was translating. I had like transliteration translations written on top of the English text because, you know, I needed to figure out what the two books were talking about. It was kind of nostalgic to look at that. But anyways, yeah, it was tough, but, you know, it was very different, very, very, very different. So when my family left, it was still Soviet Union, right? It was the Before the wall came down, it was very much an iron curtain. We didn't know anything about this culture. So culturally, it was shocking, but I'm sure it was much more difficult for my parents than for me and my brother because we were in our teen years and it was more of an adventure. So yeah, but it's, it's been amazing since then.

Yeah, so something that came to mind when you spoke, um, you know, I was talking to my grandma about what things were like, you know, back, back then. And, uh, one of the things she said— well, I'll say this. So, so I grew up, both my parents escaped, um, had a lot of other Czech friends who kind of left. And, you know, everyone was very much against that system. And so I always grew up believing that, you know, that communism and everything was terrible. And so one time I was talking to my grandma And I said, like, oh, Grandma, you know, I've heard all these stories about how bad it was. Like, I want to talk to somebody who liked it. And she said, well, actually, I liked it. I was like, what? No way. Like, that was such a bombshell. And I was like, why? What did you like about it? And she said a couple of things that jumped out at me. And one thing that she said is Everybody had the same stuff. Like, nobody's clothes were nicer than everybody else's. Nobody was like superior to another. And that we didn't need much. So, you know, one, obviously back then people didn't have as many choices in what to do. But, you know, here we are in this society where clothing specifically is far overproduced and thrown away. It's not really a question there, just I'll throw that out there, curious what comes to your mind.

No, that's, that's super interesting because I remember when I was growing up, you're right, no, not a lot of choices. And I, I remember, so I went to school, school uniforms were mandatory for everybody, and so everybody looked completely the same. And it's not like you had several different dresses on rotation. You had one dress, one dress that you would wash on the weekend and then you wear the whole week and that would be it. And outside of school, there was also not a lot of choice. So the self-expression came out in different ways. And by the way, we were not allowed crazy stuff like makeup in school or different hair color or piercings or anything like, you know, teenagers here can do potentially to express themselves. No, nothing like that was allowed. So yeah, in that sense, everybody was equal and pretty much the same. And I remember my mom was always very fashionable and she loved to get dressed up. And in terms of choices, that were available for purchase, it was pretty much nonexistent. So people who could sew and who could, like, tailor, they were very, very popular. So everything, not everything, but a lot of things were handmade. A lot of things were completely bespoke because they were made by a seamstress slash, you know, tailor, stylist, you know, call her whatever you want. Those people were actually very creative and they could make a decent living because they were providing a service that people couldn't get anywhere else. And the result of that was that I remember my grandmother, she had dresses that were decades old and she wore them and she loved them because they were always made very, very quality craftsmanship to her body, to her measurements. It fit perfect like a glove. And fabrics were also a big problem because you needed to find fabrics. But if you could find quality fabric and you could find a seamstress who could make a dress to your measurements, that would be something that people would wear for years and years and years. Nobody had huge closets. Like walk-ins. That word even did not exist. People's apartments were not as big as some of the walk-in closets that I've seen here, but everybody had clothes that fit them at least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are different times. Yeah, I remember my grandma telling me that she sewed everything they wore. And so yeah, looking at the culture we live in today around clothing, It's a question I like to ask people. Let's say, you know, you magically get the power to pass any law that you can think of or any sort of, you know, rules or regulations in this country. What would you pass to kind of try to solve the problems that you see?

Well, one thing I actually don't even need to imagine anything there. There are laws and regulations that are being passed in Europe right now. Around traceability of textiles and supply chain and clothing. So many European brands are now producing garments with what they call digital passports. So every garment has their own unique passport. And we as consumers can scan, it's a little QR code, typically QR code, scan that QR code and understand where it was produced, which factories, what was the supply chain, what materials were used, what dyes were used. So people who choose to be sustainable in that way, like buy from brands who use good practices, that already exists. I think United States and North America will probably follow soon. There will be maybe not as strict, but there would be some sort of regulations for traceability, at least so that we know where our Already those regulations exist around food, right? We know where the food comes from. The same thing will be around textiles. And then for those of us who don't necessarily care about what kind of brands we're buying from, at least our tools, what we provide is education and tools for you to be able to utilize what you buy. So when it's produced, it's done, right? Like regardless how it was produced, from which materials, it's done. So now that garment exists. So can you make that sustainable at that point? And the answer is yes, if the life cycle of the garment is at least 30 wears. But on average, if you think about how we use our clothing on average, we wear them 7 times. And it's an average.

7 on average?

7 on average. And we need to wear it at least 30.

So that's insane. 7 times for a piece of clothing.

Yeah, because if you think about how, I mean, men are better at that typically. Women and especially younger generation, Everything that's been in the media, in social media especially, the focus has been on newness. Get something new, you cannot be seen in the same dress twice, and so on and so forth, instead of quality, right? So if we put the focus on quality instead of newness and show people that if you buy something that fits you like a glove, Fits your body, fits your personality, fits your hair color, whatever that is, right? It just fits you and you can wear it in many different ways. 30 is not such a huge number. And then if it needs to be altered, you lost weight, you gained weight, something happened, it needs to be altered or repaired. Easy ways. So we have an integration with alterations and repair service that makes it super easy. You just, we give you a shipping label. It's free shipping both ways. You just tell us what you need and it's all done for you. And if the item's job is done for you, but it's still in good quality, we have integrations with resale platforms. Just one button click, everything is done for you. You just send it to a secondhand platform for selling. So it's really, the tools that we've designed are really designed just to be able to help you extend the life of the clothes you already have and not throw it out. And so it does not end up in landfill for as long as possible. Eventually it probably will.

Yeah, that's, that's really cool. So the, uh, um, so, so tell me more about that. Tell me more about the, the user experience while we're on that note. You know, somebody comes on your website, um, tell me about your kind of ideal customer, what their experience is like from, from joining to, you know, spending a lot of time on there.

Yeah, so, uh, typically there are two ways to start. The most popular way is digitize your closet. So what it means is you just, you take pictures of your clothes or you download your online purchases. We make it super easy. You can, there are many different methods, but it's actually kind of funny. We have millions and millions of items that's been uploaded on our platform and 93% of them are people actually taking pictures of their clothes. So you take pictures of your clothes, everything else is done for you. All you need to do is upload a picture. We categorize it, we extract all attributes, colors, and so that you can filter by it and you can search by it. And you can enter additional information, like for example, brand. We cannot always recognize the brand, or most often we cannot. We don't know how much you bought it for. So if you want to enter purchase price so that you can track all kinds of statistics around it, you enter that. But everything else is super easy. Then you plan outfits and you track wears. And then we provide very comprehensive statistics that you can not just see what's in your closet by color, by category, by patterns and whatnot, but also track your clothing utilization. So what you wear, what you don't wear, you see it very clearly. Things you don't wear, you can send to resale, for example, very easily. And you can track things like, oh, I spent most of my budget for my closet, I spent on this category, but that's the category that I wear the least, so maybe I need to rethink on how. So all kinds of statistics that some people care about. Some people are obsessed about cost per wear. 'Cause if you buy something for $100 and you wear it 100 times, it's only $1 per wear, right? But if you buy something for $100 and you don't wear it, or you just wore it once, it's an expensive item. So it's kind of easy to see how you are using what you own. So that's one way. And then of course there are all kinds of interesting things. You can open your closet to your friend or to your stylist. They can style you. And all that great stuff. Uh, the other way that people can, uh, start using it is if they don't want to digitize or don't, don't want to digitize yet, we have a product that kind of under— helps you understand more about you and what suits you. So it's called, it's called Style Blueprint and you go in and you answer, um, a few questions, takes about 5 minutes. And then we give you kind of your best colors, your best silhouettes, and brands that suit your style personality. So when you choose to buy something, you kind of have this information up front, and you're trying— not trying to fit into something that your friend looks good in. You're trying to fit into something that will work on you. And then when you order it online, especially when you're shopping, and then when you buy it, you are less likely way to return it, which again helps the planet. And then if you digitize your closet and you do go through that service, both things, then we have a super cool tool. It's a browser extension. When you shop or browse any e-commerce site, you access your digital wardrobe and our AI. Through that browser extension. So let's say you are on macy's.com, nordstrom.com, H&M, whatever site you typically shop on. You look at a sweater that you like, and you can do a couple of things. You can say, does it suit me? And it will say yes or no or maybe, and then styling tips on how to make it work. You can say, show me how I could wear it with clothes I already own. So it'll take that picture of that garment that you're looking at and start combining it with items from your digital wardrobe and throw out all kinds of ideas for you so that you can visualize, oh, I will be able to wear this 30 times. So, and it will make me look good. So yes, let's buy it. Or maybe no, let's not buy it because it's not great.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it really is. So, so it's like the one, one stop, just a complete service for somebody who wants to lessen the impact of of their fashion on the planet, right?

That's correct.

That, that's, that's so cool. I always love to see, um, you know, like the, the meshing of worlds, like bringing in all your experience from as a programmer and having worked at a big retailer and, um, you know, bringing it to, uh, you know, the, the world of sustainability, right? And personalizing the, the experience of a customer. So how is— what are— what are— do you have a relationship with, you know, My Open Wardrobe and let's say Macy's or the big retailers? Are you in communication with them or do you have any partnerships or what's sort of the relationship like or what are their thoughts on it if you've interacted?

Yes. So no, not yet. We don't have relationships with retailers or brands yet. It's coming. So the relationships that we've built are with services that kind of complete our ecosystem. So currently we have a partnership with Poshmark, which helps us to resell or send items to their platform for resale. And then we have a partnership with a company that provides alterations and repair services and just ensures the quality and consistency of the service. But yes, that's the dream, to work with brands and retailers and really help them with lessening their returns from online purchases and helping them provide the service to their customers so that customers can shop more mindfully. Basically, what we offer through our browser extension can be offered directly through the site.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, right? Finding the, uh, you know, finding where there's a harmony with their interests versus not, right? So, so it's obviously in the, in the interest— let's say you have a corporation that's just trying to make more money, uh, obviously they want to lessen returns, but, uh, on the same point, they may want people to buy more clothing than they need., right? You know, they may be interested in fast fashion and just selling more. Yeah, curious, curious your thoughts on that, you know, and how you see that.

Well, I mean, if you look at business of a retailer from their point of view, so their goal is to sell more. More of things that we maybe don't necessarily need, right? So, and that's normal. I mean, that's their business. That's why they exist. They need to sell stuff. So then the question becomes, okay, so they need to sell stuff. We want to buy potentially, if we want to be sustainable, maybe less stuff or better stuff or things that we actually going to use. So how can we, and we in this case being Open Wardrobe, can help that retailer provide the same service which will make the consumer kind of stop and think for a second, do I really need this? How this will work with everything I have? And am I going to use it and love it for years to come? Which on one hand you can think, oh, if I stop and think, then maybe I'm not going to buy, right? But then if I buy mindfully, I'm much less likely to return that item. So then what the— it's kind of a circle, right? It becomes then I buy something and I wear it. I send the signal to the brand that I wore it, I did not return it, I loved it. If my closet is well-curated and I love everything and I wear everything in it, then I am less likely to buy on impulse because I have nothing to wear. If I don't buy on impulse, then the signal is, oh, we are selling exactly what we're producing. If I'm buying on impulse and either returning this or I am not wearing this, right? And I continue buying on impulse, then the signal to the industry is, oh, there's lots of demand, we need to produce more. So it kind of becomes the signals that we are sending to the industry through our purchases and our behaviors are giving them this data about do we need to produce more? Do we need to produce different stuff? Or maybe we produce less. Of the correct stuff, which is super difficult. It's not easy at all. This is kind of utopia, right? But in ideal world, they produce exactly the amount that people need to buy and exactly what people need to buy, and they don't have to discount it. So their profits are actually better because they're not overproducing, they're not spending cost on that, and they're not incurring cost on discarding what they did not sell, and it becomes kind of the ideal situation. That will probably never happen, but we can help. We can help with our behavior.

Yeah, that's interesting. Things must be moving that way, right, with online shopping and, you know, increasingly computer-automated manufacturing. Like, it's becoming less and less that a producer will just have to make a bunch of things and ship them to the store, and then people go, You know, the consumer is getting more and more directly connected to the production, right?

I mean, yeah, not, I mean, not directly connected to the production, but they're more directly, they're sending more direct signals to the manufacturers that they can be used to better plan their assortment and inventory. Yeah, let's put it that way.

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So, so tell me, you know, tell me a bit about the vision. Tell me, you know, if things, things go just about as well as you could imagine in the next, you know, 3 to 5 years, what's, what's happened? Where do you find yourself?

Yeah, so we'll be integrated with every fashion brand and retailer, and through our services, they'll be able to provide better service, better way of selling their garments to their customers. So that's kind of the ideal situation. So yeah, I mean, right now we're still focused on tools for consumers. We're expanding offering with our browser extensions. So does it suit me? And the next one is going to be, should I buy it? Because it's two different questions. If you already have 5 items that are similar to what you're looking at, maybe you should not buy it. So just again, kind of tools to help you make better decisions on how to— how you use what you own and how do you add to your wardrobe.

Yeah. So how has the creation of this affected your own, you know, fashion purchasing? Tell me a bit about, you know, how you find your own clothes and how that's changed as you built this out.

Yeah. So I don't buy nearly as much as I used to. I used to buy something almost every week, if not more often. It's— and I've had a typical full closet, nothing to wear problem. I still have that problem, but my wardrobe is much better curated. My problem is not necessarily that I have nothing to wear. My problem is that it's such a mess I cannot find it. So that is on my personal to-do list. I need to redo my physical closet. But my digital wardrobe is well organized and everything that's in it, I wear everything and I love everything. So I still buy new things, of course, but instead of like one a week or maybe a couple a week, it's reduced to maybe one every 2 months. So it's, it's definitely much less, maybe 5, 6 a year. So yeah, it's, it's much easier on my credit card. I have to tell you that.

Yeah. Well, amazing. Anything else you want to share? Anything else you want listeners to, to know?

Well, the only, the only thing I want people to take away from this is that Our goal is definitely help with sustainable and mindful dressing. But the tools can be applied to anybody. If you just want to be organized or you want to cure your shopping addiction or you just want to move to a smaller place with a smaller closet, we have tools for all of that. So it's very easy to be mindful when getting dressed. If you choose to do so.

Amazing, amazing. Well, very interesting. So, uh, Julia, thank you so much for coming on. Um, really, really fascinating, um, how you've built what you've built. And, you know, thank you for using your elite skill set to, to do something good. You know, there's, there's a lot of people who— I hear a lot of people, uh, complaining about how certain things need to change, but it's always refreshing to, to talk to someone who's found a way to do something about it.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. So how can people reach you? How can people utilize the service if anybody wants to check out what you're working on?

Yeah, if you want to check out our website, it's www.openwardrobe.co. It's.co, not.com. And you can sign up for the service right there. You can download the mobile app or you can use our web app. Most of the information is on the website and there is contact information. So I read every email. If you choose to contact me, ask questions or just to chat, I read every email.

Yeah, very cool. Well, I got a couple of people in mind who I think would be interested in what you're doing. Julia, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for what you do.

Thank you. Thanks, Dominic. All right. Bye.