Sustainability, Traceability, and Performance in Supply Chains | Everlane | PI Apparel

I'm very excited to be here. I just want to make a quick introduction for those of you that are not familiar. I'm Jordana Guimarães and I'm the co-founder of Fashionovation. Fashionovation, just in the last 5 years since we launched, has had over 750 CEOs, founders, and leaders across the space of fashion and tech speak at our events. Um, beginning of this year was a monumental moment for us when we got asked by NASDAQ to ring the opening bell, and that really gave us a lot of validation in in terms of technology and the importance it plays when it comes to the fashion industry adopting more sustainability throughout supply chain. And I'm super happy to be here with all of you today and these two incredible women from two brands that I'm a huge fan and admirer of, and fortunate to say that both of them have spoken at Fashionovation in the past as well. So we're going to get started, and what I'm going to do, I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves. We have Dana Davis, the VP of Sustainability for Product and Business Strategy at Mara Hoffman, Would you like to introduce yourself, Dina?

Sure. Hi everyone, thanks Jordana. So as Jordana mentioned, I work for a company called Mara Hoffman. We're a women's contemporary brand based here in New York. We're a privately held company and we're 23 years old. We were not built on sustainability, but 15 years into the business was when the big transition happened. It came from Mara herself who approached me with really understanding the impacts of the industry and saying we must change or we need to to shut this business down. I saw that as a big opportunity to transform the company, my role included, and it's been 10 years that we've been focusing on looking at supply chain transparency, traceability within our products, our material portfolio, and social impact within our supply chain and here within our communities. And I'm really excited for this conversation today.

Thank you so much. And we also have Katina Boutis, the Director of Sustainability for Everlane.

Yeah, hi everybody. Thank you, thanks for having me. So I'm Katina, I'm the Director of Sustainability for a direct-to-consumer brand called Everlane. We are based out of San Francisco, California, and similar to Tamara Hoffman, we also were not necessarily founded with the ideals of sustainability sort of written out, but we were founded on the ideals of transparency, and that has really sort of evolved and shifted throughout the years. We're turning 12 this year, or maybe in the next month or so. So we've got a little bit of history, and I'm really excited to be here to chat more about transparency and traceability and all of these topics as it relates to sustainability, because we really feel that it's part of the foundation and the critical issues that we really need to be able to solve to achieve our goals in sustainability, both socially and environmentally speaking. So yeah.

I think that's amazing that both brands weren't born in sustainability and you've managed to do so many incredible things and it shows how much is possible. So super cool. So the first question is to you. Sustainability being a huge topic that has been for quite some time, what would you say has been the secret to the success for Mara Hoffman as a brand that you've had in being— sorry, being able to adapt and implement sustainable practices including everything from circularity, resale, materials used in collection, fairness in the way everyone is treated, I feel like you've done so much. What has been kind of like your secret sauce, let's say?

Well, thank you. I think there's a few things. First is the ability to be nimble. And I know that coming from a small company and privately held that I have that ability. Also, when you're in a company where it is coming from the top down, where it's really across all parts of the business how we operate, and it's prioritized in every decision that we're making, I think it's also understanding that there's a lot of fear around sustainability, but kind of letting go of that and knowing that maybe there's not, you know, right now the perfect solution, but you need to kind of take that step forward regardless and be willing to try different things. I also think it's really important to have buy-in within the company. So something that we really focused on 10 years ago was how do we get everybody in all departments involved and understand what it is and the work that doing, so whether that's through collective meetings where people can bring their ideas or different types of training. And then, you know, what we did realize through this is that it's not just about kind of the internal work, but how do you also kind of communicate that. And I know that through the years that's gotten a lot harder, especially with a lot of kind of green hushing versus the greenwashing that we're seeing. And so for us, what we do is it's about really leading with sustainability in some of our messaging, but also kind of Understanding that the customer, it's really hard to navigate. It's hard to navigate on the internal side within a company. So how do you give the customer the right information so that they can make those informed decisions themselves also?

I love that. And I think you do a great job at it. And I also feel like what you said about being nimble as a small company, but for bigger companies, every step counts. And I think that's super important. Thank you so much. And for you, Katina, what would you say has been some of the key elements that you focused on to ensure a more sustainable path?

Honestly, fairly similar answers. I think one of the biggest things that has helped us in the past couple of years is really formalizing a strategy. As I mentioned, we have sort of evolved from a basis of transparency first and foremost to now being able to comprehensively think about a wealth of impacts across environmental indicators and social impact endeavors, but being able to to sort of formalize some of those goals and those strategies and progress is really contingent on having a proper roadmap in place. So we've invested a lot of time in developing both a short and a long-term strategic plan for 5 years and 10 years down the road, built around 3 key pillars. So we try to keep things, I think, simple as well. So our 3 pillars are keep Earth clean, keep Earth Productive-culottes and do right by people. And within those three spheres, we have a lot of overlapping impacts and opportunities across our value chain, but also across our operations, and that are embedded into the product that we're creating. So we've invested a ton of time in developing this strategy, and also ensuring that all teams across our organization, no matter your level, no matter your team, can really feel bought into these ideals. So I think the second piece after having the strategy strategy in place and making sure that your senior leaders, your board, everybody from the top down to the bottom up is really invested in that is formalizing these goals and aligning them within the broader goals of the context of the business. So we have, again, invested a lot of energy and effort in educating our teams, but also aligning our sustainability goals within the broader goals of the business. So everybody from our design team to our raw materials, product developers, sourcing, all the way through to marketing and creative and copy have goals around our sustainability vision. And that, I think, has really been the key to driving a lot of our success forward in the past couple of years, because it's really sort of harmonizing everybody around these social and environmental impacts that we feel are so important. And then I think the final thing to build off of what Dana was saying is bringing our customer along the journey. We will not be successful as a brand in doing any of this work if we're not able to successfully communicate the work that we're doing, the progress we've had, and the challenges that we are faced with to our customer base or our community that we're trying to build. And we really like to think of our customers as sort of an extension of our community as the Everlane team. And it's really difficult. I mean, we have a very short amount of time and space to be able to talk to customers and give them enough information where you don't need a PhD to understand understand what it is we're talking about and why it's important. But we also are up against such immense challenges in the industry and globally speaking that you don't want to trivialize what's going on at the same time. So, there's a really interesting balance of sort of the technical, scientific, fact-based information that we need to be able to share, but doing it in a way that feels accessible to our customer and sort of helps them buy in and understand the work that we're trying to move.

Yeah, I think that's super important. I feel like I speak to so many people that are not in these rooms and in these conversations, and when I talk about sustainability, 90% of them are like, "What is that exactly?" They really don't know. So I feel like that's super important. So I always, I have this saying in my life, sharing is caring, and I feel like not only to consumers but to industry when it comes to technology and innovation, and I'd love for both of you to answer this question, what have been some pivotal innovations that you've used throughout the process of sustainability throughout the different things that you're doing? And what are some technologies that you're excited about that you see that are coming out that could also be implemented into the businesses? And we can start with you, Dina.

Sure. Yeah, I love the sharing is caring because I think that's something that maybe Katina and I didn't touch on but is so important, especially between the two organizations and some of you I see in the room who are also part of this. It's very much about community and sharing because we cannot do this alone. So as far as technologies, we've really leaned into a lot of technologies. Again, being a small brand and being nimble, we've been able to pilot a lot of things around some transparency softwares that are out there. So a few years back, we piloted Textile Genesis. For the past about 5 months, we've been working with a tech platform called Retraced, which has been a really interesting process when we talk about trying to really have that transparent supply chain. And getting our suppliers to onboard into a new platform has been a big challenge of ours, but something that we really believe. And so as a brand, we continuously get them to understand the importance of working with this new platform. And we hope that a lot of other brands will start to require the same thing so that our suppliers will get really comfortable with this. A big thing for us has been around material technology. Most recently, we launched a collaboration with Circ, which is a tech company that has figured out how to take poly-cotton blends, separate them, and reuse both of those fibers into new materials. So we just launched that, which is really exciting. So the idea for us is we put this into— it's in a lyocell form, and our hopes are within 3 years to ensure that all of our lyocell in our collection comes from Circ. We've also prioritized just recycled materials in general. So we work with mechanical recyclers, in Turkey, and how do we ensure that that material is scaled up in our collection. We launched back in 2021 with Pyrotex. Our biggest challenge is swimwear. So if you're in the swimwear space and you're in this room, you know how hard it is to move away from fossil fuel-reliant materials. So what we really do is we prioritize technologies that are focusing on in that space. Pyrotex was a— is a company that we were able to take away the use of the polyester and nylon. We're still relying on elastane, but it It's also a man-made cellulosic swimsuit with some elastane in it. So it's a step forward. Again, we know that this isn't 100% the solution, but it's something right now. And as we're focusing on what would that take back look like, how could we ensure that that material would be able to be recycled? So who are the recyclers in the space? What are the schemes that exist as far as even getting the materials back to the hands of the recyclers? So we're really focused on that whole circular aspect, not just, yes, the resale, which is great, but we know that that's kind of the arc, and we've got to create that whole circle, so that's something that we're really focused on.

Thank you so much. That was amazing. Katina?

Yes, that was amazing. I take a lot of personal inspiration from Dana and actually many other mostly women who I see out in this room and in the audience too. Yeah, I think we think of innovation in a couple of different ways. I think material innovation certainly Process innovations in manufacturing has also been really critical for us, especially in some really high-impact categories like denim, which we really love to make, we love to wear. But also, I think on the side of supply chain transparency and traceability, there have been a lot of new and up-and-coming software systems and traceability platforms that are gaining a lot of traction and I think are really important. So we've invested, again, a lot of effort and energy in building our own systems for how to trace product backward, traceability, and gain transparency and visibility throughout our value chain that way. I think what some of the tools today that are most exciting to me personally are some of the fiber-forward opportunities to build traceability and transparency from the ground up. So these are things that we are starting to pilot with a couple of different innovators that are offering these types of solutions. We haven't officially signed on yet, 'cause they are a huge investment, and I think that's part of the challenge for us, even as a sort of medium-sized company, is the cost of implementing some of these solutions can be really prohibitive, but we're trying to, you know, understand the full breadth of what the solution could be, and invest in that from the beginning. Through those fiber-forward opportunities.

Incredible. Thank you, guys. So when it comes to transparency, I feel like certain people, like, don't think as much as a brand is being transparent, sometimes they're being transparent enough, like radical transparency. Like, what keeps you up, I guess, at night, let's say, thinking about the whole transparency thing? And like, you know, what's the one big challenge I feel feel like maybe that you haven't figured out how to solve or looking to solve in that realm?

I think transparency as a whole is just the big challenge. We know this industry is so fragmented and brands have just been so far removed from very deep into their supply chain. So what keeps me up at night right now, I would say, is very different than what did 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it was more of just like, oh my God, my brain was exploding around how complex everything was. And I'd been doing this already for 20 years and I I really thought I understood what the supply chain looked like and who was involved until I was really on the ground and traveling around the world. And it wasn't what I thought it was. There was so many individuals that were being subcontracted. And it is very, very hard to get a truly transparent supply chain, especially if you're kind of turning the ship around and trying to work with the suppliers and partners that you've worked with historically. If you're building new programs, I would say that the key to now is to really build them from the ground up, which my I know Mara Hoffman has been successful at Everlane, and that those types of programs do exist. I think right now, I mentioned kind of the software aspect and really getting the suppliers to actually trust us in putting their information into this database, and for them to understand the value that exists by them doing that, for them to understand that there is a lot of policy that's coming down the pipeline, that this will be required. But the training has been really hard. We're a very, very small company, like, under 20 employees, just to paint a picture. So it's really hard to kind of take on that work internally. So you really want your supply chain partners to invest their time in it. So that kind of that collaboration with your supply chain partners is really key, but also very challenging.

Thank you. Katsina?

I think the biggest challenge is really just the nature of our supply chains in general. I think I think that feels like a very simple answer, but I think it's true. Even as a company that does put a lot of importance and emphasis on transparency and traceability and investing a ton of time in building our own surveys and cascading approaches to understanding that kind of product backward situation of transparency within our own supply chain, I think our, our value chains are incredibly complex and they are often not stagnant, at least for long. So even whenever we do have really robust data and really great systems in place to sort of trace back to origin, that may only be valid for a specific point in time or a specific supply chain that you're working within, or it might only be applicable to a couple of purchase orders, and then it changes depending on, you know, where the supplier can buy the organic cotton at that time, or whatever the case may be. So I know we like to sort of simplify our processes by putting— sort of building these tiers. Like tier 1 is cut-sew. Tier 2 is your fabric manufacturing, all the way to tier 4. And in reality, the nodes in our value chains are like 12, 13, 15 steps. So we try to simplify things so that we're not crying ourselves to sleep every night, and it's not what's keeping us up. But the reality is that that is, I think, I think what's keeping us up. And I think this is also where some of these opportunities to sort of flip the business as usual of maybe sourcing from a fabric vendor and building your— having that be the starting point to starting from the ground up. So building more close relationships with farm-forward programs, I think, is really critical, and being able to offer buying agreements or security to these organizations or these farming groups, cooperatives, who are doing the work in either transitioning to a better material base, whether that's organic or regenerative or something else, is really critical in sort of showing that and power of the purchasing power, which is, you know, what we have as brands in the room. So we're trying to do more and more of that type of work of kind kind of challenging the notions of how our value chains are typically set up and trying to build that from the ground up. But it's incredibly complex, especially if you have a lot of materials that you're using. And our biggest material category is, or our biggest raw material is cotton, and cotton just has a ton of challenges within traceability and transparency, so. Um, yeah, that's what keeps me up at night. Just that.

Just kidding.

Um, but that's amazing. Thank you. Um, so I was really excited and proud to see Mara Hoffman, uh, this year win the CFDA 2023 Environmental Sustainability Award. That was really cool. Um, and I wanted to know, for you, your team, Mara, everyone, like, what that moment felt like, and more so What did you— what do you want the industry to get from that moment? Like, the message, let's say, that you want to push out with that moment?

Well, thank you. So we were the third recipients ever of this award. The first was Patagonia, and the next was United Nations, and then came Mara Hoffman. So that felt pretty awesome. Thank you, thank you. When Mara got the call from the CFDA, she called me and she She was like hysterical crying, and I kind of freaked out and started panicking. I was like, "What's going on? What's going on?" And she was just so overwhelmed and so excited. I think what this shows, though, out to the industry is that you can be of any size and you can do this work. And what— if you had a chance to see the award ceremony or hear Mara's speech, it was really a call to action. So we kind of flipped it and said, okay, We're a brand that's been willing to take this leap, and a lot of challenges have come with it, especially financial challenges, right? A privately held company making this. But where is the industry going to— when are we going to show up and really join this work in that it is very collaborative? 10 years ago, Katina and I sat in some rooms where we were seeing small labs show us new fiber materials that they said, we'll be able to scale this. These are solutions that will exist. Been watching these, and now these solutions exist. They are scaled, they are viable, and they are ready to be purchased. Brands aren't stepping up to purchase them. So my hopes are really that we can show that anybody can do this work. We just really need brands to start investing.

Agree. And I liked when she made her speech and she was like, so we're all going to start doing better. And then she asked again for everyone to be like, yeah. That was really cool. So you answered this next question, which I'll ask you, Katina, but in terms of the UI, us, how far along do you think we are in terms of truly becoming a sustainable industry?

The truth. Thanks. I think I'm a little discouraged in many ways. Just the continuous record setting of warming indices that we continue to see month after month within this year, beating all the records from last year. Just like a week and a half ago, we surpassed the 2 degrees Celsius threshold for a day. That's 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit for those of us that can't quite understand what Celsius is, and I'm one of those people. I think climate change is here. It is absolutely happening, and it's cumulative. So I think I'm very much worried that we, We are not acting fast enough, and we are not taking bold enough actions as an industry, as a world, as nations, everything. But I will say, I am really encouraged by a lot of the regulatory proposals that— some of which have gone through in the United States, and some of which are still on the table. And this has been an area of sort of activation for Everlane in the past couple of years that we've been really proud to start investing our own time in, and investing engaging in feedback sessions with a lot of legislative actors to help them understand what would be important for a brand like us within the industry, and how we can actually act on different types of regulatory frameworks that are put into place. So just last month, California signed into bills to, or into law, to climate bills, which Everlane, we're a California company, we were very much active around supporting these two bills in particular, and they're just climate disclosure laws or climate-related to financial risk disclosures. But it's gonna be really huge, and I think whenever those come into effect in 2025 and 2026 and beyond, we're going to start seeing the conversation shift, I think, pretty massively, because a lot of companies who just do business in California, which we know is one of the largest economies not just in the States, but also in the world, I think it's going to lead to a lot of change. And I think that disclosure is just sort of the first step to many, but it is, I think, a really crucial step or sort of like the toe in the door to sort of kick it open. Another one I think that we're really proud to be supporting and one that we've done a lot of work in engaging on is the New York Fashion Act, which is another really— we got some fans in the room— which I think is another really important one. For us as an industry to be really supporting from a brand's perspective. We've given a lot of feedback sessions to the authors of that bill and to various people who are trying to push it through Congress. But I think I'm personally energized to see a lot of activation around these types of new laws, but it's not enough. Whenever I think about how long it may take for the Fashion Act to go into effect or even the Fabric Act, which is something that's been proposed on a national level within this Congress, I think it's a little challenging, but very excited about the two California climate bills. Cool.

I wonder sometimes if we as an industry do a better job at educating the consumers in a way that they'll understand and they'll request more sustainable products, if brands will start to care more because the profit will be higher, consumers wanting it. I feel like some, I don't know, I always think about putting everyone in a room and be like, how do we get this done? Because that's, I think, a huge part of it. And speaking of news with Mara Hoffman, I saw you guys recently had a dress made of waste materials, which I thought was super cool. Can you tell us just a little bit more about that project? And will this be carrying on to a bigger collection at Mara?

Yeah, so I spoke a little bit about that when we talked about kind of the technologies that we lean into. So we partnered with Circ that I mentioned. And so, gosh, we met them back in 2018. Katina was there as well. We were at another conference in Copenhagen. They were a— previously had been working in the tobacco space, so they had been a hydrothermal process with tobacco to turn it into a biofuel. And somebody had once asked them, oh, do you think that you could do the same thing with paper? And so they tried paper, and they were successful. And then someone was like, well, if you could do paper, what about cotton? Okay, they were successful. Okay, what about a poly-cotton blend? And they were successful. So when I met them, they had this very small vial of white powder that they had kind of turn from this separating out these polycotton blends, and they're like, we are going to be able to turn this into a viable fiber. And I was very intrigued, and I said, okay, I want to continue being kept up to speed with what's going on. And we stayed in touch, formed— I think the important part is really forming relationships. I think Bjorn had mentioned, right, we're not just in this to kind of dip in and dip out of these, you know, working with supply chain partners. We're really trying to create long-term partnerships. They had a viable solution to a problem that is one of ours and one of anybody's who is in this space where we have way too much waste that ends up in the landfill. So we started talking about how we could— when they had fiber available, how we could work with our supply chain directly to bring their fiber into our supply chain. That's a very important part of this. When you work with a new innovator, how do you bring them into your existing supply chain in order to continue continue to scale it. And we were very— we had a very specific approach with our supply chain partners. So we looked at who in our supply chain was working with other brands that we knew would be willing to also support this innovation as it scaled. And I think that's something really important when you kind of pick the right partners who also has brands that will ultimately get behind and support these. Because to put that pressure on your supply chain partners to fund these projects and to constantly kind of work at a loss, and then brands, again, not kind of show up and support these makes it really challenging. So we worked with one of our supply chain partners. If anybody's interested in the supply chain, please let me know. I'm happy to share all of the information. We are also extremely transparent with our supply chain partners. We also list them on our website, and we list them on Open Supply Hub. Thank you. And so we created 35 unique dresses. We also partner with Avery Dennison to create a unique QR code for each dress, which you, when you scan the code, you can also see the entire supply chain. But this was just The dress was just a catalyst to start the conversation with the customer and to really talk about how we plan to, again, transform our material portfolio and lean into Cirx fiber for our man-made cellulosic materials moving forward.

Thank you so much. I love the transparency and all the information you both are sharing, so thank you. I want to leave room for the audience questions. I have one question, Katina. What has been the most exciting project at Everlane, and what was the most rewarding, and was it the same project? Project?

Um, I think I can choose one that, uh, I think satisfies both. Um, so whenever I joined the team, uh, at the end of 2020, early 2021, um, I was really excited to set a formal, uh, climate, uh, mitigation target. Um, so in late 2021, on the anniversary of our 10 our 10th birthday as a company, we actually set a 10-year climate mitigation publicly committed, verified, and validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative climate mitigation target, and then an even longer-term one for 2050 to achieve net-zero emissions. So that was, I think, a really big symbolic initiative that we launched, and we were really excited and happy to be able to commit to something that was so, scientifically relevant but also validated in that way. But to build on that, at the end of 2022 last year, we had actually already been able to reduce our per-product emissions by 22%, which is almost halfway towards achieving our goal. And that is just the progress we were able to make in a 2-year time frame by leveraging a lot of really simple, direct impacts within our operations and our supply chain. So things like avoiding air freighting as much as possible, which also has a really clear financial return to the impact of the margin of our product, as well as transitioning to lower impact material alternatives, which we've really been able to accelerate in the past 2 years. And we're actually seeing that on the sort of balance sheet of our greenhouse gas inventory at the end of each year. So I think both of those kind of tied together are huge successes that we're really proud of as a company, and I think just proves that it absolutely can be done, and it doesn't necessarily have to add a lot of complexity to your value chain, and it doesn't have to add cost either, because we've actually been able to hit our revenue and margin targets at the same time that we've been making these really incredible changes to the raw material base and the supply chain base of our operations.

Thank you. Do we have audio? I don't have my glasses on, but let me see what I can do. OK. So the first question is, what is Everlane fiber-forward platforms they use?

So we are trialing a couple right now, one of them being Textile Genesis, which I think is a really important platform. They are also partnering with a lot of organizations like Textile Exchange, like Supima, like the Good Cashmere Standard, and European Flax as their sort of traceability and transparency mechanism to trace fiber from the origin through to finished product. So that's one that we're trialing right now, but we're also actively using one called Fibertrace, which has been important for a couple of farm-specific programs like Good Earth Cotton, which is a transitional regenerative and organic cotton Source, as well as ZQ RX, which is a regenerative merino wool farm. So those are programs where there's actually a physical fiber tracer that's added into the fiber, and then you're actually able to see that and trace it forward through your product at each and every stage of the supply chain to ensure that your product is actually what you think it is.

Awesome, thank you. The other one is, are you noticing consumers' increasing willingness to pay for sustainable products in any particular product categories within your businesses? It could be for both of you.

Yeah, I understand that there's a lot of studies that are showing that customers aren't willing to pay more. As a brand who's been doing this and speaking publicly to our customer for about 8 years, I don't know if necessarily the same customer is willing to convert, but I believe that there's a customer who exist who's willing to make that investment. I also know that we are a very specific brand at a very specific price point. So I think there's also other ways to engage with your customer. Resale platforms is one. But it's shifting, maybe not at the speed and the rate that we need. But it doesn't mean that we're not going to give up. Yeah.

Yeah, we have a bit of a more, I think, what we would term like an accessible product price point. But I think what we're really trying to focus on, because I think it's sort of unclear where the customer is at right now, at the same time that we read a lot of really great customer insights reports by a lot of really expensive consulting groups, they're saying one thing about the consumer, but on the other side, we see the very rapid rise of ultrafast fashion, and those two things just don't really compute at the same time, but they're existing at the same time. I think what we're trying to do is really show a clear value proposition for the product that we're creating. So high-quality products with a very hopefully clear design intent that you can build as part of your wardrobe, made out of responsible materials at responsible suppliers, both mills and factories. I think that's sort of the— avenue that we're trying to educate our own consumer to sort of follow into that path. But yeah, I think it's a really challenging one because there are a lot of oxymorons happening within the industry.

The next question is, how do we make sustainability scalable without making sustainable products out of reach for the average consumer worldwide? To both of you.

I can start. I mean, I think that's sort of what we're challenging ourselves to do right now as a brand, as Everlane. And I think we're proving that it's possible. I think the real challenge for us is how do we sort of challenge some of the norms of the way that we typically source product, design product, operate within a supply chain, and sort of flip some of those notions on their heads to, again, build from the ground up. Or even start partnering within other parts of the supply chain that traditionally we haven't had much engagement with or direct relationships with. So I think there's a way to do this that won't necessarily increase complexity for your companies and doesn't necessarily add a ton of cost either. I think one thing that I've seen proven time and time again is if you're able to create those relationships with suppliers that are further upstream of your end product manufacturing, you can actually start to remove some of the compounded costs that occur as materials get, you know, sort of as they move throughout the value chain. So none of these are real, like, natural laws, like physics or chemistry or anything like that. These are just, like, constructed norms that have been evolving over hundreds of years, and I think I think that we're definitely trying to prove that you can still maintain quality and integrity of product and transparency of a value chain without having to necessarily be in the luxury sector.

So one thing also that I just quickly to talk about the consumer, I feel like sometimes I do research where I walk into a shopping mall and I just go into the stores and I ask the person who's working there, I just say, "Hey, is anything here sustainable? Do you know about the sustainability initiatives?" And they look at me like a deer in headlights. And then I'm like, you know, "Can you tell me where the clothes are being made?" And then they say, "Here's an 800 number you can call and maybe they can help you, or the manager will come back in an hour." So, I think also in terms of the bigger brands, even if they're not doing enough, let's say, sustainable efforts, whatever they are doing, doing a better job at trickling that down to their sales team, which at the end of the day is really interacting with the consumer. So, I wonder, you know, that's something. And then to finish this off, sum it all up, and you guys were so incredible. And honestly, the title of Transparency, how transparent both of you are, I really admire it. And I think it's really what's going to push people forward to implement some of those things. But what does sustainability mean to each of you?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So I, I always think of sort of the traditional definition, which is, you know, ensuring that you can meet your needs today. And I think needs is an important signifier so that you can— so that future generations can also meet their own needs. But I think what's really important important, and it's sort of contextualized within those very loose worded, loosely worded definition, is the nexus of both the environmental impacts and sort of material use, natural resources with living things, with people, with animals, with everything that is dependent on a lot of these environmental inputs and natural resources that we have. So I think we really like to think of sustainability sustainability as sort of being the interconnected points of both the environment and living beings.

Nina?

Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything Katina said. I think our approach is prioritizing the people, the planet, and all of its inhabitants, and keeping it as simple as possible, and putting that in front of mind when making business decisions versus just your typical return on investment.

Thank you all so much. Thank you, ladies, so much.