The Business of Sustainability in Fashion | Senza Tempo, Unspun, IEEE Standards | PI Apparel

I'm Rudy Schubert. I am with the IEEE. For those who don't know what the IEEE is, we're a nonprofit technical organization of about 400,000 members. The area that I'm in is standards. We do thousands of standards in different areas of technology, do lots of publications, lots of conferences. And my particular role is twofold. One, I do energy issues, renewable energy, energy storage, things like that. So that makes you wonder why is he running a panel at PI Apparel? Well, my other hat is doing emerging technology, the next generation of standards, and for about 5 years or so now, we've had a group that has done 3D body scanning, which is how I first got involved with PI Apparel. I know Dinesh is in the back. He's been a member of that for a long time, and others are here as well. So we've had this group doing that for a while, but more recently within IEEE, we've been getting more involved with sustainability issues. And so that's how this panel started to come about. And before we get started and get into the panel, I'm just gonna ask each of the panelists just to introduce themselves for a, give like a 30-second pitch of who you are and why you're on the panel.

Okay, I'll start. Hi, I'm Carolyn DeBayer. I work in the footwear industry. I teach shoe design at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and I, I help brands that are looking to source and manufacture footwear as a consultant, and I also do expert witness work for patent and trademark and trade dress litigation. So I work and am retained by the attorneys on intellectual property cases where I opine on footwear intellectual property.

Hi everyone, my name's Beth Espinet. I'm with Unspun. I'm one of the founders. We make custom-fit jeans from body scans, but we really started with this idea of how can we make on demand? How can we flip the way that clothing is produced today? So, um, later this year we'll also be launching our 3D weaving.

I'm John. I work with Rudy in the IEEE Standards Association. I recently was named as head of sustainability at We Have a Practice. I also helped lead with about 700 volunteers IEEE's largest artificial intelligence and ethics program. I'm now leading a new campaign we have called Planet Positive 2030, which I'll be pitching all of you to join at some point in the conference. Enjoy.

Hi, I'm Kristin Van Arakis. I'm the founder and creative director of Senza Tempo Fashion, which is a women's luxury line made a few blocks away from here, and downtown at an atelier right around the corner. I am also, I also spend my, do spend some of my time working in financial policy consulting in the last few years have been focused heavily on sustainability from the regulatory perspective. So that is how I have ended up on the panel.

Great, great. So we're going to jump in. Let me just frame the conversation a little bit. So sustainability, it means so many different things to so many different people. You hear sustainability, sustainable development, sustainable practices. But then if you think about the energy sector versus the consumer sector versus the— the water sector, whatever sector you might— everybody looks at it through their own lens. It means different things to different people. And so what is sustainability, you know, from the perspective of a customer? And so that's one of the aspects that we're going to tend to look at. Another area that I'm going to ask the panelists to touch on periodically is how do you measure sustainability? Are we becoming more sustainable? How do we know when we've achieved sustainability? What does it actually mean? There's not really a lot out there when it comes to metrics from a financial perspective. There are ESGs, but that has its own separate meaning. It's not necessarily something that the consumer might say, oh, I care about an ESG rating, but do they even know what that actually means? And then, you know, again, you know, I talk about the lens of different industries, but there's the lens of the customer as well. So if a customer is saying, I'm big into sustainable products, right? So if they're looking at apparel versus their consumer electronics that they might buy, or their food, they want their food to be sustainable. Do they look at them all the same? Do they look at them all different? Which ones do they put more importance on? It's kind of a challenge of, I want to be sustainable, but what does that really mean? So the first two questions I'm going to pose to the panel, and the way we're going to do this, I'm going to throw out the question and then just give each of the panelists a minute or two to give their thoughts about this. So the first two questions are going to be a little bit more from that consumer perspective. So the first one, and first I want to say thanks to all the panelists. They gave me lots of ideas, and I tried to distill about 20 different ideas into about 4 questions to fit our time frame. So the first one is sustainability carries a cost. You know, if companies are implementing sustainable practices, it's not a trivial effort. And again, there is how do you demonstrate that you're sustainable? Yet at the same time, consumers are very often looking for low cost, and particularly even more so now with inflationary pressures. People are worried about how they're spending their money. How do you reconcile building sustainability into the products while still keeping the products at a cost point that is going to work for the average buyer? So I'll go down the line. I'll start with Carolyn.

Yeah, okay.

Well, I know that it doesn't have to be more expensive. I believe it doesn't. You know, it was a great example to sort of start off and kick it off. You know, I work with sugarcane-based EVA. Versus polyurethane, and the cost of the outsole that I was making was the same. So it doesn't always have to be, I think, more expensive, and I think that the consumer, as long as we're honest with them and transparent and tell them what we're doing and why, you know, kind of separate from it not always having to cost more, I think that, um, as long as they're educated and understand what the benefits are, I think that that's going to be important. And also, there's more longevity frequently with products that are higher quality or more sustainably sourced. So, again, you know, you're paying potentially for a product that will last longer, and how do you educate the consumer to know that it's going to last a bit longer? There's more longevity, they won't have to buy things as often, and that will be to their benefit.

So—

I think a lot of it's about education and just telling them, and people will be on board. They'll be more engaged, too, with your storytelling. So kind of a lot of different things, but go ahead.

Yeah, I would agree with Carolyn. And actually, we call that cost per wear. You probably speak about that as well, right? Like, is there a way that we can get people to adopt that metric of, I'm going to wear this how many times, so therefore it will cost that much less? I think I've seen generally as people get older, they like to have fewer things and have their life kind of more more in order, and I've seen them kind of invest as they, of course, have more money in things, and so cost per wear becomes more of an option for those people. For this question, I think a lot of times we frame sustainability around the materials we use, which are incredibly important, and I think that's something we should be doing, but I think we sometimes miss that bigger picture of process, and I think process is something that we can even be implementing today And to your point, doesn't always have to be more expensive. Right now, when the industry produces, we make 30% more than we expect to sell because we don't know what people are going to buy at the end of the day. So we're making stuff that will not sell. That's just wasted goods, wasted money. So is there a way that we can flip that and make product when people buy it? And that's something that we're really working on. That's something we believe can help us both with sustainability and with that bottom line.

Thanks. John?

Pretty cool. Well, I used to be an actor. I'm also still a writer. And words and narratives really matter. So I think one thing is, let's stop using the word consumer. I wrote a paper years ago with a friend. We did a survey of like 5,000 companies— I'm sorry, 5,000 people. It was a Canadian company. And just asked people, would you rather be called consumers customers, and we had like a third term that was synonymous, but it was basically the same. It was like 90% of people were like, call me a customer. Here's why. If you define people as consumers, their only value comes when they consume. And so then the larger narrative means, by definition, I'm saying you only have worth in that system. The thing I've been thinking about more and more is my kids and my grandkids. And outside of narratives or how we're defining sustainability without going to the negative, because there's also a lot of reports about fear doesn't drive change. But we have to be emotional, right? Not just detached. And if we think about in 20, 30 years, and 2050 is only 20 years away, it's not the planet that's really at risk, right? The planet's gonna be here. She's just gonna be a lot hotter. It's my kids and grandkids where I want them to say to me, thank you for fighting to change the narratives or the systems especially the socioeconomic systems. Where, by the way, brands and companies sustaining, awesome. Unilever, Patagonia, the Paul Polmans are teaching us how. But I think there is your point about what do we tell consumers? A, you're not just a consumer, and B, the reason that we're helping you change behaviors, we all have to, so that our kids and grandkids can have the same beautiful planet that you have now.

I love that perspective of the consumer because I actually call my customers clients instead because I felt like that had a better relationship management type connotation to it. So, I spent years working on a sales desk, so that was— and Wall Street trading, so that sort of resonated with me. But I sort of agree with everyone here. And one of the things I think education is absolutely crucial, and I think especially for the younger generation and younger consumers, they really don't remember when things were more expensive. And so a lot of times on my social media, I talk a lot about, you know, people will complain about how a $50 t-shirt that's made in America is very expensive today. But if you actually look at the— if you calculate the cost, you know, if you calculate inflation from the mid-'90s to today, that $50 t-shirt is the same as what the Gap t-shirt, you know, if you bought something from the Gap. And the Gap in the '90s was considered moderately expensive. It was not considered very expensive. And I look at the comments on social media, and people think a $50 t-shirt is very, very expensive today. And so I think as we have these conversations, education is, beyond crucial. And we really need to frame the conversations with more data and perspective. Coming from a quantitative background, I really like using data because I think it's a lot harder for people to argue with. I do think we have to be emotional about it to persuade people. But I would sort of—

What do you mean by that?

Yeah. And so I would echo all of those points. But I think reframing the conversation with data and using that, I think that would— I think that's an important aspect of it.

OK, well, in the interest of educational considerations, and I will say for customers, not for consumers, we'll go in reverse this time so Kristen doesn't have to think of something that nobody else said yet. So more and more, we see things with eco-labeling. And then there's always the concern about greenwashing. And it becomes more confusing for a customer because it does— is this label, is it meaningful, or did somebody just slap a logo on it and say, "Trust me, it's good"? You know, what are your thoughts on what we can do to educate customers to see where the labeling actually is meaningful versus perhaps not?

So this is one of my favorite topics.

Which is another reason I decided to start this one with you.

So there, I mean, I think we all know there's way too many certifications, and Again, from my background, the biggest problem with a lot of these certifications are, you know, most consumers don't know what most of them mean. There are way too many of them, and none of them are either audited or regulated by the government. So at the end of the day, there aren't any consequences for violating them. And so I think if we are to make any real progress on the sustainability front, we have to see, I think, a convergence around these standards. Internationally. It's not just in the US. We have to see this. This has to be, you know, some sort of international standard where, I mean, there's some— somebody— we agree somehow. And I think that there needs to be— we need to have better oversight. I mean, people calling that out, you know, people calling out the brands. And you're seeing that more and more. I think it was Changing Markets Foundation that just came out with a website. I think it's called greenwashing.org, where they're They're doing the research on brands, calling these brands out. And so, yeah, I think that there's a lot of work. I think without the clear definition, we're never, it's gonna be a huge problem. But I think slapping a label on something and saying, you are sustainable, you are not, is not really the, it's not really the answer without kind of meaning behind it, without true meaning behind it.

Yeah, that was great. Thank you. Just to build off of that, I think one thing is, it's interesting how often customers or consumers are asked to do the work. But metrics, which I've studied for the past 10 years, many of them focused on human well-being, there's this really false notion that metrics around happiness are fake. Where I can measure, as a geek, 'cause we're, Rudy and I are geeks, you know, galvanic skin temperature, that's nervousness, recognizes nervousness. I can put you in an MRI and watch the brain patterns change based on emotion. There's this logic that, especially in the West, that rationality is all. But most of the conversations I've had today are, isn't this crazy, we're back around people. We have the human side of us, the relational side of us, which is as much about our rationality It's a yin and yang. Yin and yang isn't A or B. Westerners also tend to be very, very binary. And binary, knowing my work in AI in general, is also embodied in code, ones and zeros. But that's not how spirituality works, et cetera. So I'm saying this because one thing is to recognize also, I'm a parent, accountability is not always bad. Accountability means you tell your child, don't run in the street, I don't want you to get hurt. Or accountability as a child the first time they punch someone on the playground. You say, listen, do you see why they're crying? You have to be taught. And also accountability is, we're at a point where the urgency I mentioned before, whatever the narratives are, the science is pretty clear. We have 20 years, 2050, right? And that's beyond the breaking point. 2030 is really where the UN is like, we have to have massive disruptive change. 50% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions, taking desertified land and making it regenerative. So the joyful opportunity for brands, but also for individuals, is to say, "It's okay to be accountable. It's okay to change my behavior." But that message is changing from the fundamental message for the past 70 years driven by GDP metrics. That only measure exponential growth. And GDP, this is where we're allowed to be emotional too. I have a daughter. Are there any women in the room? I think there are. The point is GDP wasn't built to measure women or caregiving or the planet. So to have businesses from shareholders down have the pressure of every quarter mainly having, are your numbers being met? And it's only fiscal and it comes first. Working with engineers, what I know is that sets up the design constraints and that is the metrics of success. We can talk about sustainability as long as we want, but when you walk in a room and your CMO says, "Great, that's for the brand," it's at an operations level stuff has to change, and prioritizing planet and people with accountable metrics that actually do exist, that's the way to get to a joyful opportunity for brands where you being accountable and people knowing it, that's where they trust you.

I'm glad you bring that up because you've probably seen the New York Fashion Act come up recently, and and fingers crossed that it passes. I mean, the thing with that is we're only holding brands accountable for 50% of the products that they put out there. So that's a good start, because we really don't know a lot about what we're putting out into the world. But it's still not fast enough, like you're alluding to. Yeah, I think that on a short term, this is a huge challenge. I think a long term, we're going to take inspiration from farming and food, like you had mentioned. The local movement has really taken hold of farming and food. It's not as big as it should be, but I think it's gaining traction, and often fashion kind of follows in the footsteps of food. And I'd like to see in the future where we have fiber sheds of clothing where, you know, you can trace everything back to exactly where it came from, it's even in your backyard. It's close to you because there are so many things that we can grow and we can get right from, right near us. So being able to localize production, bring it close to ourselves, now at that point, there's really, the transparency doesn't have to be something we push towards. It doesn't have to be a friction thing. It's more of an experience. And then people get to actually experience their clothing being made, their fiber being grown, being spun, being woven. I think that's gonna be a really great opportunity for us, and I, fingers crossed, it's in the next 10 to 15 years that that happens.

That's great. So, as far as the group, there's a group I'm involved with that is the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, FDRA, and they have a, you know, they've got a sustainability working group, right, that is working really hard to make change or to educate people, to get people in the footwear industry on board. And they're having, you know, these audits and this yearly meetings and all of these things, and they're getting brands and factories on board that are willing to do this. And it's— kind of this thing that, you know, the more people do it, the more people are excited to join in. And so I think it was they started with something like— they were trying to do this shoe waste program, right, of gathering shoe waste and reducing shoe waste. And it was, you know, 19 factories on board, I think, in 2019. And then in 2020, it was like 30 factories on board. And then now it's gotten to be more and more. And I think that, you know, when we talk about education and certifications or things like that, I think that— The more some people do it, the more people will join in because they see the benefits. And I think it's a lot about that. Just again, engaging in storytelling. And it does come back to the customer knowing and learning about people and brands doing this. But you have to spread the word. So is it through Instagram? Is it through social media? Is it a TikTok video or whatever it might be? Because the more the customer sees that it's happening, It might not have to be knowing what a certification exactly means, but the more they're seeing happening, the more they will demand it. So I think it just is this wonderful— hitting my microphone— this wonderful circular thing that can happen from a customer perspective as well, not just a certification that we might have.

All right, thanks for those. So we've touched on a number of points. I'm going to try to skew it more to the company viewpoint a bit more. From the things that you see happening in the industry right now, things that you think should be happening, what are the things that companies should be doing based on best practices and successes of others? What's the low-hanging fruit for a return on investment? Recognizing that a lot of things are hard, but there are some things that perhaps some companies are not doing yet and it would be very easy for them to do. We'll start with you this time.

No, no, no, come on.

All right, I'll mix it up. We'll go Beth.

Okay. Well, I mean, I'm very biased, but I think that making on demand makes a lot of sense, and I would like to see more companies adopt this model. I think that given supply chains today, I'm sure a lot of you are seeing that China right now is starting to close up. If you're making things in China, go check on your factories. They might be closing for the next— I think next week they're closed. So you might not get product for a little while. So there are a lot of issues with— with factories, right? So being able to consolidate things, being able to, yeah, have that— a clear line from what someone has bought to making it, I think, is one of those things that maybe a lot of companies aren't ready to go full-scale yet, because consumers still expect to have product right in front of them when they purchase it, and they're expecting it faster and faster. But— I've been buying things ready-to-wear, ready-made, and it's still been taking 6 weeks to show up at my doorstep. If you're making things on demand, there's even a chance you can get it faster because you could produce it at something— at a place that is just more reliable, more convenient. So I think it's actually going to be faster, even faster than we thought, to be making on demand. So I think that's something that a lot of brands should be— really, really looking into.

So let's go back to Carolyn now. And then we'll go to Kristin.

So, yeah, sorry. So one of the things that I've been dreaming of is setting up this microfactory, right? I've been wanting to do a microfactory, and I think about, gosh, if I could just do a local microfactory and travel around the country. And I know it's a little off topic, but the idea of on-demand manufacturing and having a brand that could just make your product for you is, you know, ideal, right? So how do you get that? How do you source the materials that you need? And to me, I think the biggest challenge for a brand is getting the materials they need if it's going to be locally manufactured or if it's going to be that you want to manufacture everything. I'm working in Brazil right now on a shoe project, and we want to source everything in Brazil rather than flying things in from Asia, or from Italy, or from wherever, Chile even. But how do we do that? So again, it's a matter of do you make the whole thing domestically, locally, and then ship it here, or are you shipping from all over the world? I just want a domestic factory that's a microfactory that I can drive around the country with.

But anyway.

OK. All right, Kristen, please.

So I sort of have two different takes. I think if you're like low-hanging fruit that ever— if we wanted to go back to your offices tomorrow to think about how could I— what could I implement or what could I do different tomorrow, I think every brand here could go to their customers and explain all the steps involved, which we all know how labor-intensive and how technical and how many steps are involved in making a single garment or a single shoe. And I think the average consumer maybe knows an inch, you know, and that step, you know, the steps are miles long. That's something that you could do tomorrow, and everybody, and that's a long lead time that can, I think, could really have a long payoff that we've talked about. But I think the other thing is, the other thing is reducing the disposability of, you know, and just changing the strategy. It again goes back to your longevity and thinking about what is it, your cost per wear and the same thing. And that's the strategy is how to, you know, instead of when you're designing a new collection or, you know, whatever you're designing is how can you reduce disposability. So I just recently, just a, you know, small silly example, but I just wanted to get rid of plastic hangers. And so, you know, just, and so it just was, I looked at, you know, what were, you know, kind of paper hangers, like something, you know, was something that was recyclable. And then I ended up just upgrading and getting the nice wood hangers that people will keep forever. And everybody will be very happy with them because they're nice. You know, they're nice, you'll keep it forever. Again, in my luxury line, these are easier things to implement. But I think that always having an eye towards reducing disposability would probably get us in the right, you know, would put us in the right direction, no matter what your sustainability goals are.

Let me add, before we go to John, since I know we're having a great discussion, instead of going to my last questions, I want the audience to think about a question after John. So it doesn't have to be a question from me. I want somebody from the audience to ask the next one. So, and we'll open it up. I'll let John finish this question out.

First of all, I wanna say, like, if you get a good cedar hanger, it also smells really nice, you know? So the visceral experience of dressing. Anyway, random. You couldn't find cedar?

All right.

Oh, cedar can ruin the clothing. All right, so maybe a different option than cedar. All right, we'll move on. One thing is most of my, a lot of my heroes are women economists for whatever reason. So Elinor Ostrom is the only woman that ever won the Nobel Prize for Economics. This idea of commons and like commons is dead and all that stuff. These are terms and that can pull us out, especially in America if it seems it's Republican versus Democratic. There's so many good books I've been reading about sustainability writ large, which is a great thing to do for companies, but also as individuals, is try to meet someone where they are and identify your common values. That's why I often talk about kids. Because what does everyone sort of bond about if you're a parent or if you know kids, is that you want them to be safe. And then if it sort of moves beyond that, like, yeah, we'll keep the kids safe, let's get back to business, right? What does the phrase get back to business mean if in 20 or 25 or 30 years there's a strong possibility that the climate devastation that is already happening where I live in New Jersey has grown to such a degree? And if you look around the world, what people are already suffering through. So another thing I'll say there is read the work of Elinor Ostrom. Brilliant about the nature of things like cities, right? The cities as a commons model is growing local. That's all it is. So one thing is don't be so afraid of terms. Terms, if they're going to keep us from new solutions, lose the terms, right? We're at a point where humans are at risk of not being around. The other thing is diversity, equity, and inclusion. I've been reading all these books where this is a staggering interesting stat that 80% of the climate devastation happening in the US right now for the past 5 years happens primarily to the Black, Latin, and Indigenous— I'm sorry, Black, Brown, Latinx, and Indigenous populations. And I'm sure also any gender, you know, LGBTQ positive communities are in there as well. The point being that the marginalized are more marginalized. By climate issues. And I say this 'cause at IEEE, I greatly respect again this idea of like what are the design constraints for something? So if as companies we aren't thinking about 80% of all Americans, 8-0, are in those groups, then it'd be the same as say designing a shirt for people with 2 arms but they had 3, and that's not the best example, but like if everyone was a lefty and you only had a right-handed product, It doesn't have to be all these moral quagmire issues and whatever else, but you are— it's poor design. And then also here, climate justice is critical. I'm not interested anymore. I mean, I want to be polite and loving and respectful, but where the business environment, like we can't talk about climate justice. Yeah, I'm now focused on my kids and grandkids and yours having a livable, equitable place to live. And I'll make this because we might move to questions. The campaign we're doing called Planet Positive 2030, we'd love to have you join any committees. It's free. But really the logic is what does 2030 look like for you? Where you live, California, wherever. Who are your friends? Who are your kids? Are those Black, Brown, Latinx, and Indigenous populations even more marginalized? Or are they not? And what does that look like? And have a fun time like you were talking about storytelling. Storytelling is awesome. And we oftentimes go to the negative, so what does that positive world look like? Well, if you actually feel it's got to be equitable, so do I. Well, 2030 is 7 years, 8 years away. That means we may have to lose things like offshore tax havens to pay for them, because offshore tax havens only benefit a tiny portion of the world. Anyway, the point there being imagining is great, but if you have that metric of success, which is equitable distribution of all those resources, And the final thing I'll say here is the Earth is not a resource. The Earth is not just there like a Coke machine for us to grab from. I use the pronoun her for the Earth. The Earth is a living system we're a part of. So if you also start to think of that you're harming her, it changes your mindset. And so I say all this for brands, like be disruptive, but be disruptive in the sense of start talking about things that are these elephants in the rooms, because we have 20 or 30 years left, and are we gonna protect the elephants, or protect the future.

All right, let's open it up. I can barely see with all the lights here, but let's take a couple of questions. And I see a question all the way in the back.

Hi.

So I wanted to take it back to the conversation around educating customers on what's important and why it's important.

Two parts.

Do you have any examples Do you have any examples of what's been successful in communicating that education to customers? Just so that we can be clear, because I feel like I've taught sustainable fashion for a while prior to working for a technology company, and what I experience is that they have a hard time of grasping that from that perspective. How are we speaking? They'll see common things of greenwashing, and there's these terms and different words used to explain something, or even data sets throwing out numbers, but it's not exciting enough to draw them into that brand and for them to understand and to learn from that education. Any of you, really.

Go ahead.

Go ahead. You're ready for it.

So something that I've found successful to the extent that I'm actually in the process of working on a mini documentary on it is literally just filming and going through and showing people exactly all the steps that go into making a simple white shirt. Because I think about my grandmother made clothes for all of her kids. And so she— I mean, I learned my philosophy from my grandmother. My grandmother had the philosophy of buy the best you can possibly afford and take care of it. So I always, even growing up without, you know, didn't have tons of money, I always bought very, very nice clothes and always kept them. And I've just kept that philosophy and that's sort of how I run my brand. And so she understood that. She tried to teach me how to sew. I do not have the patience for sewing, so that's probably why I also really appreciate nice clothes because I know I can't do it. And so that has really— even I just, I've shared just very simple iPhone videos of people just just showing the work, you know, just kind of, and, you know, like the delicate nature and just kind of, and I think we have to be very careful because I think that you see a lot of ethical, sustainable, and I use that in quote marks, like brands being very preachy about it. And I think if taking it from the, from like just trying to educate people and just say, hey, did you know that if you do this, this, and this, people really appreciate it. I mean, a client had wrote in a question about something, and instead of just sort of like firing back off, you know, firing back off the assistants that work with me on my brand, they'll go out and they'll find sewing blogs, and they'll be like, "Well, this is why this is done this way, and this is why it's better." Sewing blogs I have nothing to do with. I mean, these are people I, they're just sort of we follow, or we just find the information. And I think educating and not preaching, but really breaking down the steps, It's like, and I think showing the time, you know, and so, like, you know, my factory works on a time basis. And so that's sort of the idea behind this documentary is really to show them this is all the effort that goes into making one shirt. And then, you know, people make 80. So I think kind of thinking about it from that perspective is really, I think, you know, that can be helpful rather than just saying, "If you do this, you're bad," or, Oh, just buy organic. If you buy organic cotton, that's really helpful. When you read the science, there's a lot, there's, you know, a lot of us probably know there's the science on that and there's research papers. It's very mixed as to whether it's better or whether, you know, if it's not better. So I do not like the buzzwords around sustainability at all. I have written about this. So yeah, so I just kind of just like, Just explaining to people, but not being preachy.

Got it.

That's my experience.

So I think education can be done in small snippets. It's like, just talk about the improvements that you're making. You know, if you make an improvement, like, I don't know, my example would be, you know, we had a 20% loss when we were cutting the patterns for the insoles. We changed the computer program and we went down to 5% loss. You can just throw that out there, right? Throw out a little video about it or a little snippet about it and people learn and they're being educated, but it's not overwhelming. You don't want to overwhelm them with a ton of, honestly, data or a ton of written word. You can do short, quick videos. You can talk about improvements as they happen. Again, it's part of the storytelling and part of engaging them, but as long as they feel they're a part of it or as long as you're just, you know, telling them something without overwhelming them, I think that's I think that's a good way to do it. And people love video. You know, they're all about this instant gratification, right? You order it, it's at your doorstep the next day. Well, it's the same with Instagram or the videos or whatever it might be. You just give them little bits at a time and they'll start to absorb it. And you can do it, you know, multiple times a week or something like that, and then it starts to sink in.

So, I—

I was gonna ask, so for that, would the— Sharing the 20% and the 5%, I still wonder, that's just data again. So how do you explain that to them on a scale of this is what 20% actually means in addition to the video? Is it just 20% of what you do as a business? Is it 20% of what's happening in the world and the whole production process?

Well, yeah. I mean, in that case, I was talking just about the cutting of a board for an insole, right?

Gotcha, okay.

So that was just an example of one part of the footbed that was being created. So it's more, I think, just talking about your own brand's improvements as you go. And yeah, that was just an example of my specific footbed.

Gotcha.

So, like, I think sort of making comparisons that they can relate to are always really helpful. So, I mean, I hate to do this because people get— have been getting snarky about this on Twitter about the Starbucks calculations, but people can think in, like, Starbucks multiples. But, you know, a Starbucks latte takes 5 minutes to make, and people have no problems paying $6 or $7 for it. You know, a t-shirt, people pay $6 or $7 for it, and that t-shirt can take 45 minutes to an hour and a half, 2 hours to make, depending on the details of it. Do the math. So I think context, I think that's a way to communicate those data points.

So I know we're starting to run over time, but I already saw 3 hands up there. I want to try to get to as many people. And if anybody really needs to go to lunch instead of listening to the conversation, that's fine too. But I'm going to try to get at least these 3 in. So we'll go back here first.

[SPEAKING CHINESE] highlighted how complex the issues are.

And I was wondering, to try to get some data on it, has there been any study about, for example, comparing the cost of materials versus process, as Beth highlighted?

Because process is the one thing that strikes me in this industry as something that could be made a lot more efficient.

And—

but has anyone quantified the impact of process versus materials versus reuse and those kinds of things so that we have some ammunition?

Yeah, great question. I guess I'll answer it because you're talking to me. So we do have kind of an operations model that I'd be happy to share with you directly. It's a little deep, but high level, it's not going to be one-to-one initially where you would say, oh, you're reducing 30% of the inventory that you're making. It's a 30% reduction. It's not that easy from a cost standpoint. From a sustainability standpoint, it actually gets pretty close to that. But from a costing standpoint, you have to invest a little bit, and then you reap the benefits later. But fortunately, the best way to go about doing this is through automation. And so eventually, these things become cheaper than the cheap prices that we're paying now. So it's not directly answering your question, You do save a little bit, but really the savings is on the 3- to 5-year timescale.

And I saw a question. Gabrielle?

Hi.

Very interesting conversation.

One of the things that I'm curious about is— Hello. One of the things I'm curious about is from the perspective of fashion designers, people putting this product out into the world, what are your thoughts about the reality that so much ends up in our oceans and, um, where— what level of responsibility should fashion companies take in, um, either trying to prevent that from happening or doing something to pour some of your profit into removing that from the oceans? I'm an art dealer, but also my background is that I'm an ethicist. I've seen so many art exhibitions in the last 10 years that are utilizing shoes taken out of the ocean particularly from, like, the migrant crisis in Northern Africa, and that washes up on the shores all over Western Africa. And we all have a stake in that. So what happens from the plastic going through my washing machine into the ocean, from, you know, cheap synthetic materials to just the dumping? Like, is there a way forward to allow the customer to return used clothing to you, and then you're responsible in some way for recycling that? Like, for everybody in the room, what are we gonna do about the oceans? In a 10-second response.

Right, you know, there are some footwear brands that are starting to do that. There's, um, I think you can drop off used shoes to DSW. Um, I've heard. Um, there are bins. And then there's, you know, Soles4Souls is a footwear organization where you send your used shoes, or some shoe brands sell excess or old samples, and those are refurbished and sent to, um, people in underserved communities. So there's a big program in the footwear industry through Soles4Souls and several others. And then the Footwear Distributors and Retailers, again, FDRA, is also working with brands on a few of those programs. We're kind of encouraging buyback programs or return programs, and it's become kind of a buzzword in footwear. I don't, you know, I don't know I don't know how people are gonna get into the oceans, but the idea is that it would reduce what is thrown out and what does make it there. But it has to come, I think, from the brands.

Producer taxes usually fix these things, too, 'cause it encourages lower volume. And so there's a new research paper out. I can send it to you if you come up— if you give me your contact information.

I think it's just crazy that we have to ask this question, right? That we pay for something, and then over time, sometimes it's a really short period of time, it loses all its value to the point where no one wants it anymore, and it ends up in the ocean. How crazy is that? I'm really hopeful that we can— I mean, obviously, that the employer— the brands will be responsible for what they produce, similar to the law that we're seeing in France. Is actually starting this year, where they have to— any excess that they create, they have to figure out a place for it. So eventually, that will become responsibility for the full lifecycle. And eventually, I think we'll produce in a way where what we create, even at the end of its lifetime when it's worn out— when shoes especially are a really hard one— that will still have value. To the brands and even to people where they want to bring it back and they want to be responsible for getting that back into the life cycle. So I think that's a huge question that we could talk about for a long time.