Investing in perfect fit for intimates at ThirdLove

Woo! Woo! Woo!

So ThirdLove is a women's intimates company. It's about 6 years old and really all about the perfect fit. We offer up to 78 sizes in any style, which makes it really challenging to be able to manufacture, but it's enabled us to reach customers who previously haven't been able to find a great fitting bra before. We pioneered half cup sizes, so we invented like A and a half, B and a half, which, you know, as a man, I didn't realize was a void in the market.

Yeah, I would have thought that would have happened a long time ago, but yeah, that was something that we invented.

And my role at ThirdLove is I am Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, so my team is responsible for sourcing, production, through quality assurance as well as warehousing and logistics.

Well, that must be pretty difficult across 78 different sizes for one product.

It is.

Wow.

Definitely.

How do you manage the inventory then? Do you have to make all of these things and just hope that they sell, or how do you manage that side of things?

Well, that is challenging. So inventory management and planning, I think, is a challenge for almost every retailer. But yes, you have to make sure, you have to be able to make and keep all sizes in every style in stock to be able to service your customers. But we don't do that perfectly. There are times when customers will come on the site and can't find her size, unfortunately. So that's part of my job, is to figure out how can we get our supply chain to be more responsive to our inventory needs and demand planning.

It'd be great if the industry could get to a point where you design, sell, and then make the product. Yeah, because obviously you could then, you know, have as many sizes as you want.

Yeah, in fact, ThirdLove began as an on-demand manufacturer or on-demand service, and so that was the intention of the company, but found that the supply chain wasn't there to be able to respond to and make personalized product for every person.

Well, this is really interesting because what do we as an industry need to do to get to that point? Let's take Bra or Intimates as an example. How can we get to that point? What's stopping us being there? Because we all want to be there.

Yeah, I think that there are a few things that made it challenging for ThirdLove. First, it's starting a business, so when you have no scale, it's very difficult to be able to, you know, every product does not have economies of scale or cost efficiencies, so the product ends up being very expensive if you're just making a one-off. So I think it's more possible if you're larger, but bras in particular are very, very complex. There are more than 30 components that go into any one piece. And so you have to have the supply chain ready to be able to tap into the hooks and eyes or the rings and sliders. And all of those come across different sizes as well. So it's a really complex product. And I think that a lot will have to change in the ecosystem to be able to make that a reality someday.

Absolutely. What kind of things, for example?

So I think you'd have to build out the infrastructure of raw materials to be— if you wanted to manufacture in the US, for example, you don't have all of the raw materials made in, in the nearshore. So it's really, really challenging to get high-quality raw materials in this hemisphere. And then it's also challenging to get really high-quality sewing talent to be able to make the product because it's quite complex and elevated as well. And our product is really high quality. And so, you know, we use a proprietary memory foam that we developed. It's not like a bralette. There's a lot that goes into it.

So super high quality intimates with a very technical product design and manufacturing process. Not only making it hard for yourselves. Yes, but that's— but obviously the light at the end of the tunnel is that excellent finished product.

Yes, yeah, and even though I've never used the product myself, the people I know who have love it and swear by it.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have really delighted customers.

You haven't tested it yourself? I've not. Being productive is one thing, but obviously there's the raw materials, as you said, and the lack of the talent. You know, the skilled workers are not here because it's been phased out over, you know, decades. Is that one of the biggest challenges to bring production back to nearshores?

Yeah, I think talent and factory capabilities. So because the US in particular hasn't been manufacturing garments for decades, you know, the trend had been to offshore overseas. There haven't been the investment in technology in US factories that there have been in other countries. And so when you go to a factory in Asia, You know, there's a lot of technology from laser cutting machines to, you know, the PLM systems that they use to just, you know, it's much more automated than the factories that I've seen in the US. And so talent is one part of it, but the second part is the quality of the factories themselves and the ability to keep pace with the technological change that's happened in the industry over the past 10 to 20 years.

Yeah, it's been pretty rapid, hasn't it?

Yes.

Yeah. And I guess you've seen that over the last 5 years as well?

Yeah, definitely. So I've worked in factories in over 20 countries, you know, done a lot of manufacturing in the US as well, or tried to, and it's very difficult based on, you know, factory capabilities as well as the local talent that is or is not available.

Obviously, the industry is going through huge amounts of change at the moment. What would you put your finger on as being one of the largest changes of the last couple of years?

Yeah, so I think, you know, I've been doing this for 15, 20 years, and there definitely has been a shift from cost to speed. And, you know, when I started in the industry, quota was still here. And so we were really in a situation when you were chasing quota and finding the lowest cost place where you could produce a certain good. And now, because of fast fashion, because of instant gratification on the consumer's part where they expect to see something on Instagram and buy it immediately. It's much more about speed, and companies, I think, now are taking the total cost of inventory into account as well. It's not just the cost of goods, but how long does that good sit on your shelf and what is the cost of that? What's the opportunity cost of demand that you can't meet? What's the cost of highly promotional cycle. So there's so many more factors to cost than just your average unit cost, which was what everybody talked about 15 or 20 years ago.

Yeah, so that's been one of the big changes.

I think so. It's the focus on speed and setting up a supply chain to be responsive to trends. That's been a huge shift, and I don't think the supply chains in the apparel industry are quite— they're not there yet. You know, we're working, everybody's working on it, but there's so much work to be done still.

Well, I guess that's what we're trying to do here.

Yeah, absolutely.

How have you found found it so far at the event?

Yeah, the event's been great. I think that it's rare to be able to sit in a room with your peers and talk about technology and talk about sort of the future and think about where does the business need to be to meet the needs of the future. So it's great to have this space to think and to be inspired and to meet and hear from people and all the interesting things that they're doing in the industry.

And if you look into the future, I mean, in the next maybe 3 to 5 years, what do you see as the biggest changes that are going to take place, whether that's a business process whether that's a business model or whether that's even a new technology that's going to advance?

Yeah, there's a lot of talk about 3D technology here and just in the industry at large. I think that the technology still, you know, isn't 100% there, and I think that the adoption rate is much lower than people have expected. But I think we're all trying to figure out how can we use 3D to reduce the amount of sampling that we're doing, reduce our timelines, be able to get accurate in terms of fit, be able to try different styles, and really think through flexibility in new ways. So it's pretty exciting, but I think there's still a lot of investment that needs to be done to be able to make it an everyday practice for all companies.

Yeah, I would agree with that. ThirdLove, do you guys use 3D in any of your— no?

No, so we currently do not use 3D technology. One of our vendors at least does and has been pushing us to try to think about it. But, you know, as a company that's only 6 years old, we're still working on very fundamental processes before making some of those investments because it's not cheap to invest in 3D software, for example.

Absolutely. Yeah, it needs to be done right. Yeah. How do you do right-sizing without some form of 3D scan or something like that?

Yeah, so fit is incredibly important. And as a brand that offers what we call the perfect fit, our technical design team is really important. You know, we haven't used 3D technology yet. We're kind of analog in that respect, and we fit on real women. So we have fit models who are, you know, women who work for us, women in the community. We want to understand all of the, you know, the different sort of limitations of some of our component pieces. We want to understand comfort as it relates to all parts of the bra itself. And we need that feedback as well. So It's a dialogue that we enter into with our fit models to be able to achieve the perfect fit. A lot of it is psychological as well. Research shows that 80% of women are wearing the wrong fitting bra. So even if we had an avatar that told us what the perfect fit was, there's still a tremendous amount of education that needs to happen before we could psychologically meet her needs as well.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I just can't underestimate or I can't saying of how important that dialogue is, because perfect fit for someone may not actually mean the perfect fitting garment, but what's perfect for her to be able to feel confident and forget that she's wearing a bra.

It's a personalized experience and it's an intimate experience as well. It is. I mean, I kind of feel a bit weird, two guys sitting here talking about bra sizes.

I know, but I fit every day.

Yeah, exactly. You're certainly more qualified than I am, that's for sure. Talk to me a little bit about AI and machine learning and how that directly impacts the situation.

Yeah, so one of the tools that we use at ThirdLove is our Fit Finder tool, and it's the front-end tool that when a new customer comes to the website, she can take a really quick quiz and then we'll tell her what the perfect size and style bra is for her. And so that's primarily where we've used machine learning. We have millions of data points, which helps to feed the machine to be able to get smarter and smarter. And then it can then predict what the most successful bra style and size will be for that customer.

Interesting.

So that's actually how we were able to sort of grow our size offering. And that has an impact on the supply chain, obviously, because as you are bringing in more sizes, especially on the fringe sizes where you're not bringing in the same number of units as your core sizes, it does have an impact on your manufacturing.

Absolutely.

We haven't really used AI and machine learning in the supply chain itself, but the supply chain does have to respond to a lot of the tools that we've been implementing on the front end.

That's quite interesting. Tell me about this quiz. How many questions are in it?

I think there are 13. I can't remember exactly, but it's a really quick quiz and it's very visual. You know, we have line drawings of women's breast shapes. And so you can say, which breast shape do you most identify with? And we can help solve your fit challenges.

Because I would imagine that obviously there's a breast shape, but also there's a body shape as well.

Yeah, there is. But I think that when it comes to a bra, it's really much more about the breast shape and less about your total body.

I'll defer to you on that for sure. What can other industries learn from the fashion industry, do you feel?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I've been thinking about you know, what is the fashion industry doing that's new and different and innovative? I think it's almost, in my opinion, we're going back to our roots. You know, in the 1800s and before, you wouldn't wear a different outfit every day and you'd have high-quality garments that would stand the test of time, things that you could pass down to, you know, the next generation. I think that there's a new appreciation for quality in the apparel industry. And you see that in the secondhand market. You see that with The RealReal. You see that with rental services. It's really thinking about the end of life of a garment, which I think industries, other industries can think about as well. So when you think about consumer electronics and just how there's planned obsolescence in your iPhone, for example, or any device, you start to think about, well, what is the secondary market for that? And there is one, but Can we be more intentional about that so that we can be thoughtful about how we design things? And I'm not saying that the fashion industry is there by any means, but I do see a trend starting where people are thinking about that more now than at any other point in my career, and that's exciting to see this sort of back-to-the-basics trend where you're thinking about high quality.

Yeah, well said, I think. That's a very interesting point. You know, the iPhone, I like that, that phrase planned obsolescence. You know, it's— of course there's a market for everything of end of life, but the intention is, yeah, every year you upgrade. Yeah, that's the intention. And it's, um, I think what we'll see is that people will probably start to react to the consumer electronics industry the same way that they've been reacting to the fashion industry in recent times, because there's been a massive backlash about how the fashion industry operates. Um, certainly we've seen that a lot in the UK, and I know that there have been lots of stories in the US about more prevalence of people realizing how big a polluter it is as an industry. So it's quite interesting that other industries don't get the same stick as the fashion industry gets, even though, you know, in some ways their business models are just as wasteful.

Yeah, I've, I've thought that for many years. And I remember when I first started working in the industry, the company where I worked, our vice president of social responsibility said, I often go to cocktail parties and people say, "Hey, you know, I can't support your brand because I know that there's exploitation in the supply chain, that the workers who are making it aren't paid fairly." And he would say, "Well, you know, we're working on making things better, but have you ever thought about how this table is made or how that pencil is made?" There are similar issues in all supply chains, but for whatever reason, the apparel industry has had a heightened spotlight on it to be able to expose and also to fix these issues.

I think the Rana Plaza disaster changed things a little bit in that regard, which is a terrible thing, but maybe there's some light through that dark cloud.

Yeah, I think that the Rana Plaza disaster and the efforts of the Accord and the Alliance in the subsequent 5 years helped to improve the situation in Bangladesh, but there's still so much more work to be done. I don't think the 5 years was sufficient. I know that factories have improved. I've seen it in the course of my career in the last 5 years or 6 years specifically. But there's still a lot of work in Bangladesh and beyond that needs to happen to improve lives of workers.

Absolutely. Do you think that technology can help to do that?

I think technology can help when it comes to worker rights because of basic transparency. So what struck me in all my travels is that everybody has a mobile phone. And that wasn't true 10 years ago. Every worker has a mobile phone. And so how do we use technology, whether it's the phone or something else, to harness those experiences and to make that known to managers, to brands, to consumers? Here's exactly what's happening at the factory. Here's the worker, and here's her— this is who she is. This is her life. It's her family. Experience, bringing that to life in a meaningful way could be a catalyst for change.

Finally, I just want to ask you about whether you have any interesting facts. I mean, you've been working in this area for the last 15, 20 years. There's obviously been so much that, that goes on. Don't worry if you don't, that's fine. But yeah, I just wanted to know if you had any sort of interesting facts or anecdotes about the fashion industry, because we're trying to collate some.

At one company where I worked, we were trying to estimate the impact on the people in a factory and realized that for one pair of jeans, about 150 people touched that one pair of jeans in the factory. That's not counting the other subcontracting and processing that happens outside of the factory.

Wow. 150 people. Yes. It is quite staggering, you know, all the facts about how clothes are made. It's interesting that you said earlier on that we're going to go back to our roots.

Yeah, and I think that there's still opportunity to do that. So one of our best-selling laces is knit in the US, in Florida actually, and my team went to visit the mill. And one of the things that the team came back that was really— they were impressed by is how much people care. And so there's still a community that takes a lot of pride in the craftsmanship and the artistry of textile manufacturing and clothing manufacturing, and It's something that I think we need to amplify and to talk about more because the people who— it's their family-run businesses that have been doing this for generations. There's a lot of pride there and a lot that I think brands could start to message in order to play that up. There's a heritage that I think brands could really take advantage of.

You're absolutely right. There's so much craftsmanship in creating an apparel product. You know, as you said, it took 150 people just to to touch a pair of jeans just to get them made in the factory. You know, it takes a lot of work, and it's a highly skilled and highly technical product.

It is.

And, you know, people don't talk about it enough, as you were saying.

Yeah, I think people don't talk about it, and your consumer doesn't appreciate it. They don't know about it, so they don't realize that this piece of clothing that they might otherwise throw away, really, somebody put their heart and soul into it to make sure it was as perfect as possible.

Yeah. And they think, well, $30 or $18? Yeah, $18. Yeah.

I mean, it's hard to argue with that though.

Yeah, I know, I know. But you guys are a high-end intimates brand, so you have to try and get that point across. So how do you try and do that?

Yeah. So at ThirdLove, you know, we are a premium price product and it's really about investing in perfect fit, investing in your comfort, investing in your confidence. We know that, you know, it's a higher quality product. We take so much care in developing our proprietary memory foam, selecting the world's best fabrics, and we try to share that with our consumer so she knows that she's paying for something special and something that's going to last.

Absolutely. Well, all the best to you, Marcus. I want to just thank you for coming and joining us today. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Everybody get up.