From Vintage to Visionary: Chief Creative, Brand, and Digital Officer Dmitri Siegel on AI, Gen Z, and the Future of Urban Outfitters

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We'Re leaning into our store experience too. I mean we have a couple hundred stores across the United States that are really platforms for interacting, creating community and that's really what we're seeing drives online too. So like obviously TikTok social, huge focus for our consumer. But what works there we're seeing is really real life experiences amplified through that channel. And the more we issue content in our stores or hold events in our stores, that's the best performing stuff on our social channels.

To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Cult.

Today we're excited to be joined by Dimitri Siegel, a seasoned creative executive currently serving as chief creative, brand and digital officer at Urban Outfitters. Dimitri, so great to see you. Thanks for joining today.

Thanks man. It's great to be here.

Absolutely. I was looking at your background. It was interesting to me because it looks like you had a stint at Urban Outfitters way back in 2006. You were there for five years, ended up kind of going round trip and coming back to the company. Talk to us about your original experience at Urban Outfitters and what drew you there to begin with.

I had an amazing experience my first run at Urban. I think it's indicative of the kind of company it is too. So I came to Urban as a creative director. I had studied design, got my MFA and came as a digital creative director. And in my time at Urban in that stint got the Opportunity to take on a whole bunch of marketing functions. We launched social marketing. That was the early days of performance marketing. So I ended up doing, really buying on a spreadsheet. We used to just send an actual spreadsheet to Google AdWords. Just crazy to think about. And ended up as the executive director of marketing. So overseeing e commerce business. Back then there was a catalog business too and the creative. So it's a kind of career opportunity that wouldn't happen at a lot of places. You know, a young person with design degree. But Urban is such a creative driven company and they really taught me so much at that time in my career and unlocked a lot of potential in me that I didn't even really know was there. So I had an amazing experience at Urban the first time around.

Yeah. And I noticed in just reviewing the notes that you actually reported to the CEO at the tail end of your stint there when you were originally there at Urban Outfitters. Talk to us about, I guess, the benefits. I'm sure there's so many of them in terms of reporting to a CEO and getting that type of exposure at such an early informative point in your career.

It was an amazing opportunity and I'm still grateful to have had the opportunity to report to CEOs and founders and learn from them. But also learn that creativity, it fits in many different places in the P and L, if you will. And really understanding how creativity is part of an overall business, it's not something that operates in isolation of the business. I've come to believe that all value is created through creativity in business. So it's either a product or marketing campaign that creates growth and value. And that's been validated in everywhere I've worked. But when you're working with a CEO or a founder, you realize that there's a lot of other pieces to the puzzle. And marketing has to be part of an overall business strategy and fit with that business strategy. It's kind of not productive to come in with like your idea of what the marketing strategy should be without understanding how that fits into an overall business strategy.

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that because I've been at the Cannes Lions Awards, which I'm sure you have as well over the years. And sometimes you see this creativity to celebrate it and there's no mention of business results. And I think in this world of performance marketing and the amount of data and big data that brands have access to, there's really no getting around the fact that your creative has to be accountable and you can come up with some great whiz bang idea that quote, unquote buzzy. But if you can't connect it to business results, well, then you're not really playing in the world of business. You're just playing in the world of art, which is fine, but then don't go work for profit business, I guess. Has that changed the way that you've approached creative, like having that impact early in your career? Were you able to see the correlation between ideation and creativity and business results? Had that as a result changed the way that you look at sort of the creative process?

Yeah, I think, like I've been fortunate to work for amazing founders and CEOs who intuitively and in their bones like understand the value of brand and that there's a real business imperative, particularly with the brands that I've worked on. And to use Urban Outfitters as an example, I mean, there's no question that creativity adds value when you work at Urban Outfitters. Like that isn't something that you have to argue for. Definitely been in other situations where you do have to argue for it. And that is painful for sure. So look, I've been fortunate, but the way it changes my approaches. I've always had a left brain, right brain experience as a marketer. I grew up with that sort of performance marketing revolution, even though I had this creative background as a design student and an art student before that. And now I think we're at the tail end of that performance marketing wave. I think it's kind of run its course, but there's always been a sense of the balance and that you have to understand the art and science of what we're trying to do. And because I've also run an E commerce P and L usually in tandem with running marketing, you sort of like have to connect that into an overall P and L structure and your strategy into an overall structure and not think like in the abstract. I'd love to do this creative thing. I do think that is how value is created. So I don't want to underplay the really cool ad that you saw at Cannes. I think those things do create value. There's a reason why people do this, but that has to be put in the context of like, are we in growth mode as a business? Are we optimizing for profit? Are we about to go public? There's just a lot of bigger context to what a marketing objective is in that moment in a company's life cycle.

I totally think creativity and I agree with your point earlier in terms of whether it's on the product side or the marketing side? Creativity is where value is created. I guess my only point is there have been instances where I've been exposed to where it was sort of disconnected from it. And the whole notion of measuring how that creative drive business results sort of got thrown out the window. And I think I also agree with you that we then went to a point where the pendulum swung the other way where it's all about performance marketing. When you say we're at the tail end of I guess that kind of momentum swing into performance marketing, why do you say that?

I think that it's sort of an observation about the online experience. It's become so pay to play. If you just think about a Google's search results page, yeah started there were three ads that you could buy at the top of that page and the rest was organic. And now I challenge you to find the organic search result on a Google search results page. And that applies to all these quote unquote performance mediums. And so the ability to break through and the ability to actually connect with consumers that way is becoming just really a function of how much you're going to spend. So I think that's what one reason it's at the tail end of it. I think also that there's a big disruption happening in big tech itself where their priorities are shifting. AI is becoming the North Star priority for these platforms and helping us lowly e commerce businesses generate traffic is really not the primary priority anymore. And I think what we're seeing is that you need to have great creative, you need to be able to actually connect with consumers for real. In a broader sense, those tech companies and those platforms, they were taking a whole bunch of venture capital money and subsidizing all of our marketing efforts with it to convince us that this was like these were the greatest advertising platforms in the history of the world. Now when they have to become profitable and they can no longer subsidize our marketing efforts, all of a sudden it's like really becomes a question about whether that dollar is best spent on a tech platform or a brand activation or more traditional advertising medium. I think that just sort of the playing field between platforms has leveled out a lot more.

Not to mention the changes in privacy and cookies and pixels and everything else that kind of create that magic that we saw from let's just say 2017 to 2021, 2022, when you had the birth of all these D2C companies, whether it be Warby Parker or Allbirds, these companies that were able to drive dramatic returns for their shareholders because it was incredible targeting in a lot of cases, violating some ideals of consumer privacy. So I think as that has and continues to get torn down with the crumbling of the cookie, I think that also takes away some of the efficacy of performance based marketing.

Yeah. And don't forget most of those companies were never profitable. So they were using all that activity. And it was great for us advertisers for a while. But certainly when Facebook went public, I think that was the first pending that dropped in terms of how this was going to go. And I also think there's been hearing the phrase a lot online. The Internet just isn't fun anymore. And I think there is really a shift in the experience of users that is undermining that as a marketing platform for us. And we as marketers, we always have to be adaptive to what the consumer experiences and where they want it and what's fun for them. And I wouldn't say whole cloth that the Internet's just not fun anymore, but it's not as fun as it used to be. I think I can definitely say that.

Well, we live in such a more divisive culture too. I think if you look at any open platform where people could freely share ideas, so much of it has become political and ugly as well. And that's kind of taken over the tenor of so much user generated content.

Yeah, I think it's a regression to that balance between art and science. Like there's always been art and science to marketing. Media mix modeling is 50 years old. It's not like a new technology. There's always been that sort of analytical component to it. And I think we went way into the, you know, you could just give this platform money and they'll give you back traffic. Now we're just regressing back to like. I always grew up with the rule of thumb of Creative is a 40% kicker on your media spend. And I think we're getting back to that understanding of like, it's not just enough to like buy the media. Like the creative and the brand and the message all really matters as well.

So you also had a pretty interesting experience and were there for quite a while at Sonos, which I'm personally a huge fan of. And it piqued my curiosity in terms of your time there, because Sonos is such an interesting brand to me because it's not a big tech player, so to speak, but plays such a big role in terms of the ecosystem of the smart home and kind of the consumer entertainment experience. What was it like during those I guess high growth, exciting years at Sonos. And what were some of your takeaways about your experience there?

Experience that Sonos was amazing in a lot of ways, but one of them you alluded to there was just being really in the center of the big tech competition, frenemy system that exists between those giant tech companies. And we were really there for the advent of voice control, which was a massive disruption. It was really the first wave of this AI assistant thing that's still happening. And Sonos was really at the core of that. So two big disruptions in technology. Streaming. So like audio streaming. Sonos was right in the middle of that and AI voice control right in the middle of that. And some of the crazy experiences of just having to triangulate between Apple, Amazon and Google at the high levels of their product organizations to say, like, no, you're going to be able to listen to Amazon music and Apple music and Spotify all on the same device. I mean, there's no other tech platform that does that. So it was a very unique position. We had to do some very interesting things to maintain that position. And some of those had to do with marketing, some of those had to do with relationships that we developed through marketing. But that's where I think I really became also very aware of, like, any company existing in the world today has to develop a strategy about how they relate to big tech. You can't avoid it. It's like it's an index fund of the entire economy and what they do drives a massive disruption for everybody downstream from them, and that's all of us. So we were constantly evaluating our strategy in relation to those companies and what they were doing next and what their priorities were and what their strategies were, which of course change over time. So one of the most sort of like, traumatic experiences that I've had in life or business. Shortly after I started at Seminos, I was headed to my first executive off site and I was in the car with the founder and I was like, what do you think we'll talk about today? And he said, oh, Apple's launching a Sonos killer speaker and they're building it in the same factory as us, the HomePod.

Right?

This was the Lodge of the HomePod. And it's like, yeah, you can imagine that's your worst nightmare. Okay, Apple is directly targeting us. And then Tim Cook goes on stage at WWDC and puts up a picture of a Sonos speaker and is like, we're going to destroy sonos with the HomePod. Like, I mean, it's like literally business nightmare.

And yet they didn't. Right. So what happens?

And prior to that, Amazon come out with the echo. Facebook had launched speakers, Google had launched speakers that ended up losing a lawsuit to some of us related to the IP that they put in them. So it was this existential experience of, okay, we're the little guy, you know, we're this independent tech company in Southern California and we got all the biggest companies in the world that are targeting us basically because they want to get their voice assistants in the home. And we really had to like find our center, play our game. Like there were just so much that went into surviving that and going public and having great IPO and all that stuff. It was the best learning experience could ever hope to have. In the end, as hard as it was in the moment, but brand played a huge role in that. We had to change what we meant to consumers. Sonos was the tech disruptor in an audio category. And then all of a sudden you had all these tech companies coming in and we couldn't be the tech disruptor anymore. Like we couldn't out tech. Amazon and Apple and Google, we had to change what our brand meant to people. So yeah, it was a great experience. Amazing people there. They have an amazing CEO, amazing founder.

We actually have the CMO of Sonos on an upcoming podcast. So looking forward to that. But the other interesting thing about Sonos, I think is if you look at hardware, which is generally been an unsexy category unless you are named Apple in the last decade, I think one thing that Sonos did or does that other hardware component manufacturers don't is they do create good software that's easy to use, that creates some type of lock in effect, where if you look at like your television, whatever television that you have in the home, you're probably not even using their interface. You're probably using Apple TV or using a Netflix interface or whatever it may be, because they just aren't good at it. And ultimately that just means they're a low margin component company that's right for disruption. And that's why companies like Vizio could come in and have a lower priced product and really disrupt the market. Where I think Sonos, there's an ecosystem where at a minimum, just the notion of you connecting your Spotify account and you connecting these other accounts to Sonos and then you having the speakers that are all connected and naming the speakers and setting it up, that creates a very high switching cost for them. You come in and just get one HomePod device, like there's no way I'm going to switch out of Sonos because I'm just too invested in it at this point.

Yeah, I mean, they really are predominantly like a software company. They're like 55% software, 45% hardware. I'm sure Digital have another clever way or better way of saying, yeah, exactly. But it's really true. And it's what we. They always talked about the fear of being a dumb speaker. Like, if you're a dumb speaker, then you could just go buy a $75, you know, Bluetooth speaker to the bottom.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. So and so this year in February, you rejoined at Urban Outfitters as Chief Creative, Brand and Digital Officer. So what led you back to Urban Outfitters? Did you ever think that you'd be coming back to work there one day when you left 15 years ago? And tell us about the impetus behind your return.

I always had an amazing gratitude to Urban for what they did for me in my career, the opportunities and education that they gave me, the talent of the founders. So I was always open to coming back. I would say. And another thing for me was like, I've had three sort of personal experiences with Urban Outfitters. As a customer walking into Store 5 in Georgetown, seeing the broken glass window, thinking, what the heck is that? Walking in, seeing the display of vintage Revis, I mean, and then going downstairs into the men's. I can picture every moment of my first Urban Outfitters experience. So as a customer and someone who was in a band and went to art school, I was like, oh, this is a place for people like me. And I didn't feel like that about other stores. I felt like other stores were trying to sell me a uniform to fit in with everybody else. Then I had this amazing experience in my career which we've talked about, where I was like, wow, this company is made up of people like me and they're successful and they're using creativity and all these things that I love to actually win in the marketplace. And then I had kids and now I have two Gen Z weirdos living in my house and I'm like, I want there to be a place for them. I really do see Urban as filling this place in the culture of a shopping experience and an outfitter, if you will, for people who are creative and define themselves against the mainstream. And I see in my kids lives they have a lot more options for sure than I did, but they still resonate with the brand. They still see it as like, different and speaking to them. And so I don't know. There's partially like a sense of that sense of purpose and coming back as well as just like loving the company and the people involved.

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When you describe the store layout when you first went there, it's very much the same today. But at the same time, no company can be successful and have the staying power that Urban Outfitters has without evolving with the times. So as much as things have stayed the same, what were the biggest changes that you observed about the organization either internally or externally, from your first stint there to you returning to the company this year?

One internal thing is just the sophistication of the company from a data perspective, warming perspective. When I left, like I said, it was really early days of digital. We were let's go in and put up our Facebook page like any consumer would do. Again, we're like doing performance marketing on a spreadsheet and completely disconnected from any other reporting in the business. So coming back I was like, wow, this company has great data, has great platforms. The level of analytics that are that are possible I would say is like, I don't want to say superior to what I experienced in working for a tech company, but like definitely on par. So that was one thing. I think the biggest difference overall is just that their customer has changed. We have a Gen Z consumer and the gap between Millennials and Gen Z is really profound. It's a lot like the gap between baby Boomers and Gen X. There is a generation gap here that I think it's forcing us to really think about our customer much more deeply and really like spend time with them and listen to them and really understand how their points of view on things like coming of age, which is kind of the life stage that we service. They're really different. They have a really different experience than millennials and people before them. And we're only going to be successful if we really are obsessed with who they are and listen to them and know them really well. So the archetype of urban hasn't changed. It's really this brand for that creative person in their coming of age time. But that person is so different now. And that's really what's driving a lot of the change and a lot of the things that we're doing inside the brand and externally.

And from a merchandising standpoint, I have to believe that that's not an easy challenge to solve because it's not like you just sell one type of good. When you go into urban, there's all different sorts of things you can buy there, from record players and records to T shirts and accessories and all sorts of different things. So I guess paint the picture of your new consumer through your merchandising strategy. Must be something that's quite complex to make sure everything kind of fits together into the genre of who is your current consumer.

Absolutely. I describe it as a very thin slice of a department store for a very specific person. It's got everything. It's got men's, women's home and then merchandising, which is not what I do for a company, but like I'm in awe of what they do. It's really insight based. It's really specific. It's like one thing about this consumer, for example, is they really put a high value on things that existed before the Internet. So like we're selling CD players and tape players and vinyl through the like crazy. And part of that is this nostalgia for the past.

It's amazing. Yeah.

But it's also like a value that I think that's if something's could be important before the Internet, then it's really important. Like if something's important now on the Internet, they sort of discount that a little bit. Like, yeah, that's just the Internet, you know, that's just TikTok or whatever. So there was just these really interesting specific insights about like what drives what they're interested in. And we have a team of amazing merchants that are just all day, every day thinking about that, testing product, looking at what works, listening to consumers. It's endlessly fascinating.

And in terms of effectively reaching those consumers and breaking through the clutter in a way that isn't the performance based, more like race to the bottom type of activity that we were discussing earlier, but instead focusing on outreach and content that really adds value to the lives of your consumer. What are some of the things that you have your eyes on in terms of things that are working or do you want to be doing more of?

Well, one of the things we've heard in all of our conversations with all of our consumers, every segment, is that they shop vintage that they love the experience of vintage. It's something that Urban Outfitters has always had. Like I said when I walked into the store when Georgetown all those years ago, vintage Levi's was, I remember, the very first merchandising display. So it's always been a part of our mix. I think that we got fragmented in how we presented that to the consumer and we didn't really stand for it as something that was part of the Urban Outfitters experience. And so this month we did a big relaunch of that under the vintage and remade banner. We brought together all of them. I mean, we have an incredible team in Los Angeles that sources one of a kind vintage and also does these amazing remade projects where they'll take dead stock or other items and make current items out of those. They collaborate with artists to do that. So we're putting a big push behind Vintage and Remade because it's something that we're hearing from the consumer they're really interested in. Similarly with music like we were talking about, music has always been a part of the urban outdoors experience where I think the second biggest vinyl retailer in the United States and certainly the broadest assortment. So the biggest ones would be those major retailers selling millions of copies of Taylor Swift's cd.

Right? Target. Yeah.

What we're doing is a much more broad. We just had an exclusive one of a kind vinyl release with Billie Eilish. We do a lot of exclusive vinyl releases. Like I said, we're leading the way on the CD trend, which blows my mind. So music is another component of that. We're leaning into our store experience too. I mean, we have a couple hundred stores across the United States that are really platforms for interacting, creating community. And that's really what we're seeing drives online too. So like obviously TikTok social, huge focus for our consumer. But what works there, we're seeing is really real life experiences amplified through that channel. And the more we issue content in our stores or hold events in our stores, that's the best performing stuff on our social channel. So I think those are the three of the things that we're really focused on. And then there's always this what the fuck factor with Urban Outfitters. Like there's always a product that will make you laugh or make you smile or start a conversation. And that brings me a really cool collaboration. I mean we just had Wiz Khalifa did a mushroom growing kit and we were selling it. It's like that type of stuff is just fun and people talk about it and it's in culture and so we really focused on amplifying that and that's part of who we've always been. That maybe got lost in the mix over the years that we're seeing this Gen Z consumer really respond to.

And when you launch that collaboration, the Gen Z mushroom growing kit, Wiz Khalifa, how much testing goes into a launch like that? Because it's so eclectic, it's so random. Part of it makes me feel like it's more like a loss leader. Like you're not really relying on a lot of volume but it's more something that creates buzz. But how much thought goes into those things?

Again this a merchant driven process. It's a burden science, just like marketing. Like there's so much research into what might be coming down the pike and then there's iteration and testing. So I'll give you another example. Like we do incredibly well with these Sunny Angels small figurines. So then the merchants are like, well what other small this is? So what people like about it is that it's this figurine, they can carry it around. It's like a totem. All of them are different. What else could we do? And then this year we're launching Munchichi. Like there's another kind of stab at the same thing. And they'll test a bunch of different things, products like that and they go after what works. So the beauty of E commerce in particular, but our platform is that we can launch products in the market really fast and learn really fast about what works and iterate on that really with like really what the consumer's buying and what they're interested in. But a lot of the stuff like the mushroom growing kit, like I wouldn't say it's a lost leader, but it's definitely. Our founder Dick Hayne was telling me, like they put wind up toys in the front of the very first store. Like that was there from the very beginning because he's like people would come in. First of all, it wasn't intimidating. Like do I go to the men's section or the women's section or are they jumping for what I'm wearing? Super not intimidating. Go in there, you play with these wind up toys, you get relaxed, you sort of have fun and you're smiling and you're laughing. It just sets the tone for the experience. So I think it's part of the overall like fun of shopping. And I think that's one thing it's easy to forget. Like the Roman Forum was part entertainment. It wasn't just a place to go and like get goat smoke or whatever. It was like partly a thing to do on a Sunday. Yeah, I think urban's always been really, really good at that part. And part of it is this. A huge part of it is the merchandising strategy.

Absolutely. And speaking of merchandising, another area of the business you oversee is Urban Outfitters e commerce business. So when you look at the world of apparel and all the other products that you sell, what makes E commerce a unique opportunity? What are some of the challenges that you face when competing with more mass e commerce players like Amazon in terms of creating value? And obviously, convenience is a huge piece of e commerce. So when you look at loyalty and shipping and all those things, how are you looking at the e commerce strategy?

I think one of the good things is that the operational and fulfillment components have really become commodity. So like, I think we can fine on. On shipping and people's expectations. I think we also saw people's expectations lower on that front during COVID Like I would say in the first early years of E commerce, it was like a race to just fastest, cheapest, freest. Like that was a mantra like you've got to be as fast and free as you can possibly be on shipping. And then I think people have now moderated on that a little bit. Like I'll preorder an item. It's not like food or something. I can wait for it. So part of it is the consumer's expectations, part of it is just like the capability. Urban Outfitters is pretty much on par with Amazon in terms of fulfillment. I think the challenge right now is really around the traffic, driving and marketing side of things. Like we were talking about earlier. Costs are going up for everybody. Big tech disruption around AI intercepting traffic. So you got the big tech platforms generating all this AI content and directing that traffic where they want to, versus the authors of content or the creators and culture like ourselves getting that traffic. So I think there's a real challenge there with e commerce in general. I hear that from all my peers who are running e commerce businesses. I think the beauty of ecommerce is that you can offer a really wide assortment without necessarily having that depth across the whole assortment. And I think we do that really well. So you get a clean look at like the really full idea of Urban Outfitters. But it's a super disruptive time. Like how much are people going to want to. And I wouldn't even say about is what the consumer wants, but TikTok's going to want you to buy within TikTok for sure. They've launched TikTok Shop. We're up on that, we're up on Instagram shopping, testing that, understanding it. But particularly TikTok is like I see them as much more of a trying to create a walled garden experience where you go all the way through the transaction. And so how many times will people actually come to our product detail pages anymore? Right Check out with us and what percentage? So it's not a huge part of the business right now, but certainly there's always a lot happening in E commerce. Part of why I love it, why I like you know, got into it in the first place. It's so dynamic and we think we're at one of those generational shifts right now with the advent of AI and TikTok as a different kind of platform.

So let's talk about AI and obviously it's growing importance to society and business overall. I'm sure Urban out there is not immune to a company that's looking at impact and trying to figure out how to put it into play for the business. Where are you right now and where do you see AI's impact head in the future for Urban?

Well, I think for our consumer what they're experiencing is this ever accelerating trend cycle around Cowboy QD or Coquette QT or cottage core. And then it's the AI is accelerating the generation and there and also the speed of death of these trend cycles. And we're really hearing from consumer and then we're retailers who are really bought into that and are really like their whole model is to basically spin up these TikTok trends from cheap product to market that capitalizes on them and then get out and get onto the next one. And they're AI driven as well. Those companies. We're really a people driven company. You know, we're a bunch of like creative weirdos trying to like make cool product and sell cool products. So our model is really kind of anathema to that. And I think what we're hearing from our consumers are getting exhausted by it. They're really exhausted with trying to keep up with all these trends. They don't like the waste of like buying a mob wife aesthetic outfit and wearing it once and taking a picture and throwing it away. Like it's kind of starting to creep them out and really just the exhaustion of keeping up with it because it's not human driven, it's machine learning driven. So it's actually moving faster than humans can really like enjoy. So I would say that's the biggest impact on our business right now and where we're really having to listen to our consumer and position our brand in a really, in a way that's really relevant to them. To say, like we're about your personal style, like not about manufacturing. TikTok trends. If your personal style involves a leopard print coat, we're all for you and we'll have it for you. But we're not going to cram down the latest AI generated trend down your throat. We're not expecting you to have a disposable approach to your aesthetic and your personal style. But AI is really impacting us there. I would say in the positive sense as a tool within the creative process is really interesting and actually has some really positive benefits even for the environment where we're able to design samples and create first versions of things without having to get product shipped from China back and forth or from different design, different factories around the world. So there's ways that it's really helping us. Empowering creativity, a human creative person trying to get a bunch of versions going, stuff like that. But I think culturally, I think there's this sense of like, again, this is like what we're hearing from our consumer of like, sure, do I even know what I like anymore? Do I like this because I like.

It or do I so interesting read.

It so many times that I like, think I like it. And they're really starting to question what is my personal style? What's my taste? How do I define my own self in a world where, look, every generation has to answer the question who am I?

Right, right.

There's never been a generation is being force fed more answers to that question. We had to go out and seek it and find the answer to who am I? They're getting bombarded with like, this is who you are. No, this is who you are. It's this trend. It's that trend. This is cool. That's cool. And so I think we play a role in sort of really building a community where like they can answer that question for themselves.

Yeah. And I think that to your point earlier, that your physical stores give you a distinct advantage because there is this notion of authenticity and discoverability that you can't really get just having an E commerce platform. So that's a huge part that's central and core to the brand. That because that experience is different, there's no if, ands or buts about it. When you go into an urban, it's unlike any other store. And I think being able to hold onto that will allow you to kind of Carry through that sense of uniqueness online as well.

And that's coming through in the data too. The Business of Fashion published a research study about that that Gen Z is much more highly likely to want to shop in a store than Millennials. So they are also having that shift back to physical retail.

Interesting. Cool. So shifting gears, Danish, as we wrap up here, you've had a such a cool career and obviously in a great role at an iconic brand, Urban Outfitters. When you look back on your career journey and we talked about Sonos and we didn't even get a chance to touch upon your stint at Patagonia and you've worked at so many cool places throughout your career. What are some of the decisions that you think you've made right along the way to set yourself up to be in the seat that you're in today? What did you lean into that maybe was the right move or maybe made a leap at a certain point in your career that was the right move or connections or anything you can look back on? Like, wow, I'm glad I did that.

I guess there's. There's three things I would say. One is look for tailwinds in the economy. I was lucky that I went into E commerce when I did, and there are massive tailwinds in that. And then I went into the streaming business at a time tailwind. So realize that the world is bigger than you are and there's things that are driving the economy that can really help you along the way. I would say your dreams are important, but opportunities are more important. So follow the opportunities, not just your dreams. And then finally, I think something that's really important is like, take your lumps. Like when you make a mistake. Oh, no to it. Take the hit on that. And that could be something as big as, like, we bought the wrong product and we need to mark it down and make that decision fast and take your lumps on it fast. Or we launched this campaign and it just didn't work. Admit that to yourself as fast as you possibly can and take your lumps on it. You've got to disrupt yourself before something else disrupts you. And I think when people are very precious about the idea that you had or risk that you took, there's a huge cost to not accepting the truth faster and not taking their months faster. So those would be three things I would encourage people to do.

Oh, great advice. And I love the point of following the tailwinds, the industry, because I think a lot of people get romantic about what they think they're going to be. And then the timing just might not be right. And timing is so much of what constitutes success in business. And a lot of the timing has nothing to do with you. But to your point, external factors, then putting yourself in a position to win, I think is half the battle if you're ambitious.

Like, I went to grad school and for design with a lot of people that wanted to make art books. And I love art books and I covet them, I buy them. And there are people who are doing that to this day that are super happy with what they're doing. But if your goal is, you know, ambition and if you're kind of, you don't have that, like craftsman, I want to do this thing your whole life. Be flexible, like, really be open to what's happening in the world and recognize that this marketing and it's a commercial art, it's intertwined with business. That's what makes it fun. It's not isolated in a gallery somewhere removed from the economy. It's like you're in there in the streets and that's cool. It's fun.

Absolutely. So finally here, Demetri, we've covered so many great points today and interesting tidbits about the business and yourself. Is there a saying or mantra you like to live by that comes to mind in terms of how you approach your career and your professional life?

So I work for Yvonne Finard, who is the founder of Patagonia, and he says in his book Let My People Go Surfing, I don't know the exact quote of how he says it, but he talked about the Zen archer and that the Zen archer does not focus on the target. They focus on the feeling of the string between their fingers. And I go back to that. A lot of like, process oriented focus on what you're doing, not obsessing about the outcome. And that's a mantra for me in terms of like, as what we're doing today, the right things, does this feel right, that we're going in the right direction? Because, like, the arrow's not going to hit the target for a while now. So you really have to focus on the feeling of pulling back the bow much more than the target. So that's easier said than done, but that's something that I go back to a lot.

I love that. Well, this has been an awesome chat. I'm so appreciative of you taking time out of your busy schedule to share your background and thoughts and insights here with our audience at Speed to Culture podcast. So thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Matt Absolutely.

On behalf of Susie and Adwee team, thanks again Dimitri Siegel, Chief Creative, Brand and Digital Officer at Urban Outfitters, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the Speaker Culture Podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, peace and everyone. Take.

The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Susie as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and a Guest Creator Network. You can listen subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts to find out more about Susie, head to Suzy.com and make sure to search for the Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at.

Suzy, thanks for listening.

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