Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong

I built this is pleased to have Upwork as our presenting sponsor. Visit Upwork.com to get hiring. Upwork has a message for you. Everything you know about business, it was made up by a bunch of guys a hundred years ago. Don't stay bound to their antiquated rules like the nine to five workday, commuting to an empty office building, or only hiring full timers. Embrace a new way of working with Upwork. It's a portal to the future of business, and it's disguised as a website. Go to Upwork.com, there you'll see the light and also find talent for projects of any size, from simple deliverables to complex projects, from short term help to full-time hires. You can finally let those old business titans and their tired ideas rest in peace. This is how we work now. Visit Upwork.com to get hiring talented professionals today.

Hey, it's Guy here, and before we get to the show, you know that feeling when you think back to some of your early work and you cringe? Well, I recently spoke with Tom Hanks, and he told me he gets that feeling too. He can't even watch his own movies. And for a man widely known as the nicest person in Hollywood, Tom Hanks also struggles with what it means to be authentic. Check out our conversation on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the Great Creators with Guy Raz, wherever you listen to podcasts. And now. On to today's show.

There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal. that did a blind test on suiting. And Our website blew up. And I'm like, okay.

We gotta capture this momentum. I mean, this is a dream. We're doing an opening, we have all kinds of press coming. you know, it's I think six, seven hundred people on the guest list. This was the moment. Alright. And

two days or day before opening, I get a call from this landlord I say, her and your herd are you gonna open tomorrow? I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all done. I mean, uh, you know. Big opening. Yeah, you're still uh don't have your permit closed out, so that's not gonna happen.

And I'm like. Shit. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built.

I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how Foca de Yang started by selling suits out of his dorm room in Amsterdam. and grew suit supply into a global fashion brand. Today's story is about improvising. And improvising is an important word here because Every single entrepreneur will have to just figure it out multiple times along their journey.

For example, you can't plan for a city inspector to threatened to shut down your business because you violated an obscure zoning code. You can't plan on a supplier refusing to sell you goods. You can't plan on the factory that makes your stuff. Messing up all your product.

You can't plan on your well laid plan? Falling apart. But no matter what happens, your job is to solve the problem in a creative way, and preferably quickly. And that Is the story of suit supply.

It's a fashion brand with around 150 locations around the world. Suit Supply sells men's clothing and also makes made to measure suits. And like some of the higher end designer brands All of its fabrics come from Italy. But suit supply sells high-quality suits at a fraction of the price.

This was Fuca de Yang's model from the very beginning. To build an efficient manufacturing and supply chain that would allow him to cut out unnecessary costs and drastically reduce the price of a high-end suit. And by two thousand The year suit supply was officially founded? Focus was selling those suits online. In fact, Suit Supply was one of the earliest e-commerce retailers in Europe. And today,

Around a third of its business happens online. Foko was born in the ear nineteen seventies and grew up in a small town in the Netherlands. He studied law and economics at the University of Amsterdam, and after graduating, he got one of those fancy management training jobs at Procter Gamble. A job that practically guaranteed a stable career, but It

wasn't the life Foko was looking for. He wanted to be his own boss. And it just so happened that while he was a student in the late nineteen nineties, Fokup came up with the idea for selling suits, which began When he needed to buy one himself.

When my grandfather died at a very old age, uh you know, for his funeral I needed a suit and a nice suit. I want to have a nice suit and then somebody knew a guy that knew a guy that was selling suits straight out of Italy from a factory and and You know, I met this guy, bought a suit, and then I thought Okay. he was using this connection to buy leftover fabrics that were produced into suits and it was very nice products.

I was still studying, I needed a sort of a you know, some some ways of actually making a little money. to get by and and I thought, y you know what, I'm gonna sell suits to my fellow students for, you know, their interviews, graduation parties, and all that kinda stuff. You you said I'm gonna sell suits to my fellow

college students, but how were you going to you were gonna go get them from that same factory or from that guy that you bought? You were bas basically saying to them, Hey, let me just buy s a bunch of suits from you and then I'll resell them, I'll mark them up twenty percent or something. Exactly. Right. And uh and he was giving me a discount if I bought some more and then you know, I I I was basically, you know, a little distributor. And folding up my bed in my dorm room when, you know, some of my buddies

to f to come and fit. And then The problem was with student business, it was only a few times a year, right? When there were graduations or the when there were parties. Yeah, it was not consistent. So when these events were not there, I was like okay You know, where else can I? sell them. And that's how I

Ended up Ringing doorbells. No, we went All the way up to

You know, d even I remember having events in the the Dutch national bank. Wow. And Heineken. It's not that something you know, you you sort of you have to talk to them a little bit and you know, it's just that we did these events there and there. It's maybe something for you guys. I mean d do you think the guys are dressing well here? And I said no, they could use some help. They would always say they could use some help. And that was sort of the hockey. Okay. And then I guess at some point you decide to actually go to that factory in Italy to say, you know what, I'm working with this guy, but why don't I just go directly to the factory in Italy and see if I could just buy it from them? Yeah, exactly. And did that by the way, did that guy that you were buying them from get hi did he get annoyed

That you were bypassing the middleman? No, I sort of at some point my business got a little bigger, right? And this this guy that was g giving me stuff was running to its limits, right? How many how many suits were you selling a week? I was I think I you know I did Every Friday I had one of these events, uh and then I think I was doing probably forty, fifty a week. Forty suits a week.

Something like that. Yeah. The p the problem was what what actually happened was was his business model and he made this sort of deal where the factory in Italy was producing suits for some of the bigger brands. Yeah. They would tell these brands. Uh yeah, well you give me this cloth to make you a product And we need three point one meter.

to make this product. But in reality when they were really efficient, they only needed three meters or two point nine. So you know they always kept over and they they left over a little bit of fabric that they then made the same product for and they just resold it to that channel. Wow. So they would essentially have excess material that was gonna be for like I don't know, let's just say a name. Armani or something, whatever, who whatever brand. They had extra material and they're like, Well let's just make a couple more suits and we'll just sell'em without the label. And um men would show up and say, Yeah, you know, you can get this quarter the price that it would cost in a store. It was uh yeah, it was a quarter of the price. And then what happened, of course, I was selling more and I was telling the guys, so but can't you give me more? And even have more because this excess fabric, they ran out. So Then I said, okay, but let me then talk to your source to see if I can work something out with them because I have I think I have a bigger market.

Wow. Alright, so you go to this factory and What did you say to them? I just said I need more suits. And then I sort of found out what the whole business model was and why it was constrained. And

They said, Well we can give you more, but then you have to buy your own fabric. I see. So they would they they were willing to make the suits for you, but but you had to buy the fabric. Yeah. So you could basically get These factories to make an unlabeled, you know, unbranded.

suit but the same quality For uh A third of the price, or a fourth of the price. Yes. And what I sort of you know, I d I was new to this business. I've n I had no idea how it worked, right? It it's not like I was In my

Twenty. and wanted to be the next Tom Ford or something. I just you know, it was It was it sort of started as a side hustle and then I've found Out.

A little bit. Because I had to go through the motions of how inefficient that whole business worked, because this factory They made a beautiful product. Yeah. But then you know, if you look at How it was sold. They made a product for a brand and then this brand goes into a trade show.

And these trade show the customers and there's agents bringing in these customers or agents selling it to you know, independent stores again. And if you then add it all up, because I sort of knew how much this suit costs, right? And how much I could sell it for, which was A fourth.

Of the price w it was at a um the luxury store. It was the same product. So didn't you start figuring out why is that?

Right. How is that possible? And who is making all the money here? And then you find out that It's A lot of inefficiency

Of how the whole business was structured. that price ends up to be the price at some point. Right. And my my distribution was I didn't have to deal with all these people in between. I just think that's a good thing.

Exactly. I didn't have this whole Big overhead. Occupancy costs. You know, remember it was in two thousand, right? It was not the direct to consumer market.

There's not. Really you know, invented yet. I was basically able to Yeah, reinvent.

the whole business model from scratch. you were also able to take advantage of changes in European law, right? Which is which is that you could have those shipped from Italy without dealing with customs or taxes or I mean, because it was now relatively easy to to get things back and forth between European countries. Yeah. I mean that that h it was at the time that Europe was becoming one market And but also one currency.

And then It also coincided with the moment that e commerce started to happen. I think that was the biggest change at the time. So I made a website and I was had this whole idea Of selling

High quality suiting shirts and you know what goes with it. Online. Online, yeah. And I think at some point that was the point that I sort of You know, quit Proctor and Gamble.

I thought you know This is something I have in my hands now, you know, let me focus on building something around this. You know, I I'm curious because w we've had people on the show, right, who've done things like like work at a big company like Procter Gamble. uh for a few years and then you know, before going on to start to start their own thing.

And the argument is that, you know, this is gonna give you exposure. to a whole new world and and how a big corporation runs. And it's gonna give you insights and connections that you know that that might help you build your own business, right? So I know you decided to leave. Uh, but do you think that if you had stayed at PNG for longer that That might have been beneficial. No, I don't think so. Um

You know, what are you gonna learn in an organization like that is You know, first of all, fifty, sixty percent of the of the effort in an organization like that goes to the political process, right? Positioning yourself well and all that kinda stuff. It is not It's not just doing stuff, right? There's a whole lot of thing that that that goes along with it. And There's also a risk, right?

Um comfortably, you know, you might think, okay, this is great, I make some money, etc. And are you actually then gonna make the jump? five years from now when you're beginning your thirties, you make this nice salary, you bought this house, you met your first you know, wife or friend, or you know, are you then gonna make the jump? And the question is how relevant is th are those experiences of being in a big company, right? They're probably very irrelevant at some point if you have your own company that's really big, but at the beginning, you know, they're not I don't think they're relevant. Th the the most things you learn

Doing stuff. Alright, so you leave Proctor and Gamble and you realize and you decide I'm gonna focus my attention on the suit business. When you first went to that factory in Italy

and you're in your ear twenties and you're like, Hey can you make me a bunch of suits? They they they were like yeah, no problem. I mean they They took you seriously and It was relatively straightforward. I mean this is these are factories that were used to working with big brands and big labels, so why

Why? Would they be willing to work with like a Twenty three year old. Kid. Well that's a good question.

you know, buying already some of the leftover stuff, right? So I had a relationship with him. Yeah. And I was actually paying Yeah, it was I was a legit customer. I was paying them cash. Yeah. And I came back and I got more and I paid it. So You know, getting it sued together was not the hardest thing in these factors. What was the hardest thing

Getting fabric. Right. The the the fabric business was in combo. Right in the in the north of Italy. Around Lake Como. around Lake Como and you know, it's there because it already for a few hundred years because the water coming from the mountain is extremely

Um Soft and it's great to wash your wool in and that's where the best fabrics in the world come from. And I wanted to have the best fabrics. And these these the the only way to do that is to put orders in trade shows that they would have, you know, they would have this w every season this convention on the Lake Como, very fancy. But I was not able to get invited there. You know, you have to be very legit uh to to get in there. Yeah. And

You know, I had to do that. through somebody else that was, you know, already a customer of some of these these mills to be able to buy fabric. Right, because it's a r these are relationship businesses. It's not like you can just call up and say, Hey, can I order twenty I mean it might be different today, but then you couldn't just say, can I order, you know, forty reams of fabric. they only sold to specific clients, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, these were the mills like uh Vidala, Barbera, Zenya, all these kind of guys, they were also really protective for their Yeah, they didn't suddenly want their their high end fabrics and then sold for a price that they could have never imagined their product was being sold for. So how are you able to so you had to find somebody who was an existing customer and have them buy it for you and then you bought it from them?

Exactly. It was just getting in between. How did you find that person? Um That person already had a You know, w a little business that he was doing in Holland. Okay. And I just paid him a markup.

Yeah. It's it's a little bit like wine. Like you can't just go to a burgundy maker and just go and buy their wine. Like they have or they're selling it. It's already spoken for, like some restaurants are gonna get it and some collectors are gonna get it and some shops and that's it. And if you wanna buy that wine, you've gotta go to the other person who's who's already on that list to get it. You can't just get it. Yes. And what I also learned is that you know if These people are also running businesses, right? And

If you are if you're able to show that you're actually you know, you're legit, you're doing business, you can convince them of doing business with you. It took me some time, you know, I for the first years they wouldn't even talk to me, right? Yeah. And and you know, and then you get a few ones on board and see how you know, that was s espe specially when we went into online and they saw that we were maybe potentially the new thing that was gonna happen in the business. stuff started opening up and now our business is by by far the biggest customer of all these mills In Italy. Alright, you were the pariah then, now obviously it's changed, but w let's go back to when you bef even before you were the pariah, which is

You're just a small time guy. trying to just do a hustle here getting a bunch of suits and selling'em in in but now you're buying more And and still, even in those early days, you're not doing this through a shop. You're doing this really uh just by going to businesses, from business to business in Amsterdam mainly.

And trying to sell suits. When did you actually open your first book? Brick and mortar s store. What year? Two thousand. Okay. Wha what happened is And I think that was really the breakthrough.

Because you know Now I'm having this online business, an online store and it went pretty okay. It went pretty well. You know, people were buying stuff, but I with this product people wanted to have, you know, a place where they can do their alterations, fitting, see the product. That's still the case, actually, with fashion. That people want to have some

Physical presence. So then I But thinking okay, where because I didn't have a lot of money to open a whole, you know, store on an expensive location. And Uh I was thinking, okay, where if I'm looking at my customers, where are they? You know, and most customers were

driving and commuting, you know, back and forth from offices and and appointments between the two biggest cities in h in Holland, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Big highway. I thought, you know what, I'm gonna make this whole a little experience center and pick up point and and tailoring and where can people, you know, pick up their product, see it. Next to the highway.

On the highway between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Yeah. Because that's that's where the business commuters were going. Where the business commuters were going. Mm-hmm. Which was Of course, insane in the eyes of the whole industry. Insane that it was off the highway? Well it it's insane to have a business where you sell high end quality suits on the highway.

Oh instead of in sort of like a on a fancy street in a downtown. Instead of on a fancy street. I think the newspapers were writing about this crazy store that was selling high end suiting next to the highway online but now opening stores, this was gonna revol uh revolutionize retail and, you know, all the uh high end streets in the in the middle of the cities were gonna disappear and this was all gonna happen, right? People when new change are happening, they're very hyperbolic. And so what what happened was You know, I opened this store, which was completely logical in my mind. I mean I was not really attached to this playbook. I just wanted to m have a store somewhere where was the most easiest

place where I thought my customers would be. Yeah, I'm just I was surprised with it. But what the effect of our business was suddenly people que were queuing up because we had so much PR. And and this store, as you say, um off the highway was not in Amsterdam. It was I think I think it was c it was closer to like Skipple Airport, right? Exactly.

It was no it was really next to a highway. We had a gas station. A store where they were selling magazines, cigarettes, and all that kind of stuff. And I rented a space next to it. Um Yeah, that was That was basically it.

And you called a suit supply? I call it suit supply. Um, and'cause that's what it was. You were supplying suits. I was like, you know, as as as um as straightforward as I could think. It's it's a very utilitarian aim. It doesn't actually scream out luxury. Like you hear that word, suit supply, and you wouldn't think

luxury, you would think, okay, that just that's what it does. Yeah. But at the time it made sense because it was we were direct to consumer you know, very uh you know, disrupting the market. And it was sort of a name that that Yeah, went well with that time moment. we were seen as the new the new solution to everything. Yeah. Uh w doing f which was also, by the way, imposed an im immediate problem.

Because these local retailers that were around them were looking at us with, you know, a little bit of an envy. I think. You mean competitive brands or competition? Competitors, yeah. Yeah. And what they did

They said to the municipality. are in somewhere where you cannot have retail. This is not zone for retail, it's guerilla retail. They said this store can't be there next to a gas station because it's not Uh

Wait, why but why would they say that? What argument would they have to make that Well they had the argument that the unit that I was in was not zoned for retail. I see. Okay. And then I get this, you know, guy from the municipality coming in and you know, we're helping us, Yes, well sorry, you you're having retail here, you cannot have that, you need to close down. Huh. I'm like

Shit. ten thousand bucks I had that and fifteen thousand bucks, I put everything in that store. And these guys were seriously coming to it with a letter that we were not zoned for retail and we had to close down. I mean I'm totally sympathetic to you. Like I would have been pissed. But that is a an amateur move, right? To open a store where there it's not zoned for that. Like you should have known.

Yeah, I should have known. I'm well, I mean, how could I known that? Because next to me there was two units, right? I was also like, I can't believe this. This is actually true, right? Because it was so obvious that it should have been zoned for retail. And I went to the municipality and I I I just wanted to see the plans, I wanted to see the blueprints. And I got the b and said, Well you can go there, just wait for you in this little room and we'll bring you the blueprints and then you could sit in that room and went over these big pile of blueprints. And then I saw the one of my building and it said exactly that unit next to us said with with with pencil it was written in there.

It said store. And my unit s said nothing. And So then I thought. Okay, I I took a pen.

Uh practiced as long as I could to, you know, have almost the same handwriting. as the unit where was store written in. And I just penciled store in my unit. And then I went back to the municipality and said, But guys, what do you mean on these g on these Uh blueprint it says store.

I said Oh. Oh, okay. Oh, we didn't know. Here it says storm like oh okay, all right. Exactly.

This seems crazy. They just wanted to get rid of the problem, right? They had complaining people that were s probably sympathetic of what we were doing, but they just needed an argument of getting rid of the problem. I didn't have I didn't know how to solve this problem other than that. And and I never heard anything of them ever since. Well we come back in just a moment. Foca takes suit supply global.

decides to move production out of Italy. And in the process almost destroys the business. Stay with us. Guy Raz and you're listening to how I built this.

Before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. It's usually just at the top of the app. Totally free. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's two thousand one and suit supply has been in business for a year. And it's doing pretty well. In fact, Foca just made under 10 million euros in revenue just selling suits in one store and online.

And then in two thousand two Foca decides to take on an investment from a larger Dutch fashion brand. I thought at the time it was gonna be beneficial for us to be part of a bigger business and that was public and you know we could learn something there. But it also uh the other side was is that that I didn't give away any governance, right? So it was still, you know, fully in control. Yeah. And basically their incentive was, you know, they needed to affiliate them with something that was online so that they could tell the markets, hey guys, we have a strategy of online and you know, we're also looking at online and this is the business that we've invested some money in. You know, at the end of the day, but we were not part of that business, but sort of

Yeah, n next to or you know, could tap into some of the resources. I don't know if that was really That helpful, to be honest. 'Cause these were these were just really Dutch fashion brands, right? Very Dutch focused.

What I wonder though is they put in about two hundred thousand Euros in two thousand two. But your business, your your revenue was like eight to ten million around that point. Time. Why do you think you needed that money? It doesn't sound like it sounds like you had enough m I mean if you're I mean I guess your margins were pretty thin. Margins were thin and it you needed you know I needed the two three hundred thousand. I I don't know the exact number here anymore, right? But it's some in that ballpark, plus it was a credit line.

Right. I d my my business was growing at the time, but I still had to prefinance all the fabrics, all the you had to pay for it in advance. Yeah. I mean I was you didn't have like th you couldn't like order it and then pay thirty or sixty days later. No, that was they were not giving me that credit yet. And you know, the f the thing is you buy your fabrics Then you have to send them to your factories. They have to produce it, then they have to send it to your stores. I mean

That whole process has your cash tied up before you uh way longer than than if you're just a h you know, a a business that buys wholesale. Yeah. Alright, so what now that you had this cash

this line of credit and this cash. What was the plan? I mean, was it to just Like another ten stores in the Netherlands. Yeah, I mean that that's the moment when, you know, the obvious wing was

to expand and and open more stores and I didn't have a still a lot of cash. So I I really went from you know, this this this crazy location into uh other cities, but still doing the same thing almost and finding spots that were, you know, interesting that I could create some kind of an experience in and it was easy for customers to go to. But

Still keeping our occupancy cost low. So you were not going to the high street, the main street in the towns where it was more expensive to the lease is more expensive. You were going like on the outskirts of town. outskirts or whatever, inside the town, but then not on main on main. Yeah. My customers were coming for, you know, the quality of the product, the fact that it was an attainable price point, and they were getting a great service. So why would I now then go by the standard playbook of how everybody was building A fashion brand, even though my you know, I knew the guys that put some money in was like No no no you have to go there and there and this is how you build a brand I was like, N no, not really because You know, I can build a brand

based on quality of product, based on quality of service, and just figure out to be more efficient so I can actually maintain that proposition. And how did people I mean Obviously you did not have a huge advertising or marketing budget, as you open the stores Like what would make them go in there? Were they it was it mainly word of mouth, like you have some guy wearing a suit and somebody would say, Hey, where'd you get that suit? It's really nice. Guess what? It was like

two hundred euros. I got it From the store called Suit Supply. Is that how people would find out? It's It's more or less it. Yeah. They talk about it. It becomes part of the conversation. That is the most important advertising you can get. If you don't have that, Forget about it.

Against that. So you were really I mean, you had to be super efficient to squeeze profit because you were getting the fabric. It was being made in that factory. And was at that time it was made in the same factory that you had originally bought the suits from, still? No, I think we've expanded our fabric uh factory base by then. By then. Okay. I got it. So You were but but y and you had these suits coming in from Italy and um and I w I'm I'm trying to figure out like'cause you were getting attention in Holland. You were getting press attention, you were there was buzz around this business. And I think

I think by like two thousand three you had I think at least three stores in the country, right? Probably a little more, yeah. About about eight, nine stores. Eight or nine stores, okay. Something like that. And so I I know we m we mentioned this a little bit, but I'm curious about the competition particularly in in the Netherlands.'Cause

You know, I think a lot of people outside of You know, uh probably don't realize this, but in every European country there are multiple brands that really just kind of remain inside the country, right? Or maybe just in like the region or maybe only in Europe. And uh you know, it would be like if in the US every state had like twenty different fashion brands that were only in North Carolina or you know, only in in Alabama. And there are some there's a little bit of that, but not really that much of it, right

So At the time were the competitors in the Netherlands were they disparaging what you were doing? I mean were they 'Cause I think you were even sued by a competitor I I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but it's O G E R Ogre is how to pronounce it. And they sued you because they didn't like one of the advertisements. You you had mentioned like You know.

Yeah, ogre? O. J. Yeah. O. J forget. But they were like I don't know, what's the equivalent? The most premium luxury store in Holland. And at that time we opened a second store. We opened a store in Amsterdam in the city. But it was sort of, you know, in that area, but not in a main on Main Street, around the corner a little bit, et cetera. And then we had an ad that says For a beautiful suit you go to O J and then you take a left and a right.

Right. Basically. Just a route to go to our store. And it was sort of a little bit of a Ponaway joke, yes, that's right. It was a little tongue in cheek. And uh He went for it. He started suing us on that app.

Yeah, and and I still have to thank him for it because You know, it was it gave us a lot of momentum and a lot of uh publicity. Right. So that's the war. You know. took a huge uh Huge jump.

So you've got, you know Two thousand four or five, you you're really in still in the Netherlands in Hall Elm. When did you decide to move outside of Of Holland and open a store in the next country. I think you know, that's was one of the thing I think I've waited w for a little too long. Uh I think two thousand eight, nine I started with the first store in Belgium and then in London.

Yeah. And London was an interesting example because Very expensive to do business there. Extremely expensive.

And it's the lions then. From shooting, right? I mean you're basically going to London and saying, Hey, we can undercut their prices and offer the same quality. Yeah, so I wanted to open a store on Savile Row and funny thing with Savile Row was actually that that store was designed designated by the Crown of London. that could only have traditional English tailors there. On Savile Row.

On Sever Row. So we were trying to get locations but we're getting English. So we went, took a side street. And uh open the store there. You know, and then you know, my PR brainstorming about PR and You know, we gonna bolt your you we're gonna bolt you on the location on a bed and you're gonna sleep in there and then we have all these alarm clocks and then we bring in the press and uh we're gonna wake up Saval Row. Right, we're gonna be this whole new kid on the block. Wait, sorry. You literally brought a bed in there with a bunch of alarm clocks around you to attract We bolted the bed on the outside of the building, like ten meters high, and it was also like, you know, really scary. A bed on the outside of the building ten meters above the ground and you had alarm clocks around it and you slept in that bed and this was to attract

Media attention? Yeah, there was sort of the PR stunt. This was gonna be your PR stunt. I guess we have a g we have like a hundred or a thousand alarm clocks hung up on there and they were all gonna ring at the same time and we bring the press. And you were gonna be in the bed. Yeah. I mean I was you know spending a few hours in the morning in that bed, the press came, all the alarm clocks went off. Let's just do this stunt and we'll attract attention at least. Yeah, you know, we got this Amsterdam stunt where oh Mr Oj sort of bites. So let's let's see if we can, you know, stir up some trouble. Nothing happened. Um

They didn't have any customers. I mean it was it was Uh horrific. So you were in this bed and like no one Like you're just looking down at the ground and there's like four people.

Million. Yeah, th I think th it was not they was not gonna hit the main news. So then I Yeah, I started hiring actors to be in the store to sort of browse around and sort of we had some dynamic happening because it was really You just hired people like Yeah, and play custom. Yeah.

Just so to show that your store was busy. This guy was busy. It was something happening. It was very, very slowly picking up, picking up piece by piece by piece. I think we uh it was a hard market to crack. How long did it take? I think it took about Two years after this was

No two tausend nine ten it started to happen. People realise that. You know, this was a really good product for an interesting price. And what we also did I think back then we put

In the front of the store. Right. And so it was actually, you know, there were people working and suing and doing stuff, but it was Taylor was sewing right in the front of the store. Yeah, and so people passed by and said, Okay, you know, what's going on here was a little theater. You know, the store got busier and busier and busier. And It was doing a few million, then uh, you know, five, six, seven, eight. It was a gradual process.

So we slowly build a reputation. I mean there was was a key difference which was on Savile Row you go in, the ta they would fit you, the tailor would you know, depending on the store, the ta the tailor would then or the tailors would start manufacturing your suit on site in that store. You guys

In two thousand six, about two years before moved your manufacturing to China from Italy, where you were still sourcing your fabrics from But no longer making the suits in Italy. Tell me why you moved the manufacturing to China in two thousand six. Well w what happened is, you know, at the time in

Europe is that manufacturing got, you know, more and more and more scarce. People with the skill set were getting older, leaving factories. Young people didn't want to work in these factories anymore and and the skill set of making something really nice was slowly disappearing. The amount of people that were able to do it were getting smaller and smaller. And the amount of product that we were needing was getting bigger and bigger. Hm. So, you know, we had to find a solution. And I was reading the uh the annual report of Zenya at the time. Which is obviously one of the big premier luxury brands. Yeah. Suit brands yeah. Suit brands and they were, you know, expanding into China and they bought a joint venture into a Chinese

Garment manufacturer, suit manufacturer. in a town called Wenzhao. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. If they were also doing that, then there must be a certain level of, you know, high end quality there. So I'm calling this factory, I got the number and and Nobody picks up the phone or nobody speaks English in that factory, of course. Mm.

And uh so I'm thinking, okay, it's Christmas at that moment and I'm like, okay, I have nothing to do because everything's closed here in Europe anyway. You know what, I'll just take the plane and go to China. And go to knock on the door of this factory, right? How much time is it gonna cost me? A few days. And Um I'm and this is the time in China where you know, it's not like now is everything is fancy and nice airports. You land in Shanghai, you take a taxi for six hours, you come into this village where there's hardly any street lighting, and And there's one international hotel in the town. I re still remember the Victoria Hotel. And and I check in there.

And and in the morning I'm sitting at the breakfast, there's uh there's only one European person there and it's an Italian guy. And I'm thinking, okay, this Italian guy is probably you know, part of the Zenya group, otherwise why would there be any Italian here? And so introduced myself and this was Tosco. And Tosco s was complaining about yeah, I'm just being put here with Zenya because we bought this factory and now I have to uh you know, produce because also part of our agreement in this joint venture is that we supply a certain amount of of production capacity. And I went into that factory with him and he gave me a tour. I was

Amazed. This was you know something I'm like I've never seen some so much quality and so much detail before. It was probably one of the best factories I've ever seen, better than ever anything I've seen in Italy. These were two brothers. that founded this, you know, from from a very young age. And they had just one thing in mind. You know, they were completely fanatic about it. They wanted to make the best suit in the world. Hm. And Uh they you looked at all the Italians, looked at all the brands and they were, you know

their pattern making, their quality, their level. Was fantastic. And Zenya figured that out. That's why they bought a joint venture in there. Wow. So I fought.

I struck. Oil. Right. I came back from that trip. I'm like guys We found the best factory in the world. Now our product can be so much better. And by the way, we can probably also make a little bit more margin on it. And that was not the main driver, but

You know, still it was gonna be more efficient. And and we have p you know enough production capacity there, you know, the guys wanna work with us because we're actually solving a problem for them because th they needed some extra You know. Food for the line. Yeah.

For the production line. They made all kinds of suits, and Zenya was you know the stars. seem to align perfectly. So I've had You know, guys, we're gonna move to China, everything for the next season to China. Boom. But then of course we you know, we didn't figure out all the logistics parts and the fabric got stuck at customs for a month. Then you know, these this factory we weren't used in working for international clients yet. So they made it in the wrong model because there was stuff going wrong in translation.

then you know they they had to send it out, uh and it was stuck in customs again. There was So much stuff that needed to, you know, iron out from a logistic perspective. So everything was You know, the quality was great and the craftsmanship was great, but everything else around it It was a nightmare. I almost tank the business with it. You almost tank the business by moving it to China.

In the beginning, yeah, because if we would have been out of product for two months, you know, how where are we gonna get revenue? So what'd you do? How did you resolve that? I had to run the business here and then I flew back almost every weekend, you know, for China to China. And be in a factory, just you know, pushing and and and uh You go to China multiple times a month? Oh yeah.

Yeah. I went on the plane. Five, six hours. And then Started to push. And and get things done and be there.

And then I got Somebody internally that you know was just out of university and working for us in the store and and I say, Guy, just come with me, why don't you stay here and just you know, the only thing you have to do is make sure that these fabric that are here are actually going into production, you know, and they're we're and call me if there's anything going wrong. Yeah. Um You know, this guy stay there and stayed there and uh slowly he actually helped us build up our whole production office in China. He learned Chinese in a in a in half a year and This was a Dutch guy? He's a Dutch guy. N nineteen years old. But he was a handy, smart guy, you know, great pusher.

And I just needed to have s I didn't needed also somebody that was crazy enough. to stay there, right? That didn't have uh a a you know, a family or you know, was tied into into Europe. So I just needed a smart guy to sort of oversee. Yeah. Alright, so you've got now. You work out the kinks, it's gonna take you about two or two years, and you've got your

person on site there in China making sure that they're making it to your specifications. But the quality is good. You're happy with the end product. I mean these It sounds like these Chinese um tailors are like uh like artisans, like the kind of artisans that might have been in Europe Thirty, forty years ago. Yeah, they were phenomenal. I mean, and they're just still are. I mean, their pride of being part of that business and making this product and You know if

pattern designer wanted to explain something to the team or the whole factory floor, it was silent. They were all sitting around him and listening in awe. Yeah. I find it extremely impressive to see. I mean everybody that discounts Chinese production, you know, it's it's I don't think know what they're talking about in a lot of cases. You had so you had Italian fabrics

being shipped to China, that's still your model today. And then Basically they were cut. the fabric was cut and the the material and the pieces those cut pieces were sewn into suits in China. Yes.

So now you've got this operation going. Now let's go back to London. In London you've got the store off Savile Row, but There probably still was in two thousand eight, two thousand nine a kind of a snobbyness or snootiness about something made in China, a suit made in China that that that some people wouldn't Find that to be

quality, a quality suit. You want it made in Italy or, you know, made in London, even though the manufacturing base in those countries are very low, very small today. How did you Your suits were. you know, a high quality product.

Because the price point was lower. So already there, you know, the sort of the psychology around that is like, Well, if it's so cheap, it must not be good. It started as In London? Unlike other stores we opened, it was more of a drip drip effect, right? There were a few people that came in that were surprised. about the actual product and the actual quality that we're bringing for the price point.

And I call it the Heineken effect. And we have a beer brand here in Holland. It's called Heineken. And you know, for us here that is sort of it's a great beer. Yeah. But it's just beer. Yeah. Well in you know.

Any country. It's a very premium mirror. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good analogy.

So the first customers that you're getting are customers that are A little curious. Right. They might not be The

Conformity driven people that are snobby and that they're just s shopping on Savile Row. I'm not gonna get a customer maybe that, you know, wants to have this at that moment this big brand name and say, Okay, about the um I don't know, the five thousand dollar Zenya suit or whatever But uh you get the customers in the beginning, hey, you know, this is interesting. These guys are doing something new.

That's helped us in London a lot because on one hand you had these Stores. that had all these craftsmanship and such. But he also had a lot of customers that actually knew a good product. Yeah.

The same as in Italy the same. You know, you could P people that feel say, Hey, this feels like good fabric and they fit it on and say, Hey, this actually really feels good feels good. So they I think at the end of the day in London the customer gave us the credibility. I think by two thousand ten you had three thirty two stores. And I think that was three countries. So between Belgium

uh, Holland, uh you had London, maybe you had uh one or two other countries still mainly Western all in Western Europe. So you decide and it makes sense because the if you r really wanna scale your brand, if you wanna be a global brand, You've gotta be in the United States, and so you knew. Probably b already by two thousand nine. ten that you were gonna eventually get get to the US. That that was part of your plan, I'm I'm assuming.

Yeah, it was the the um the biggest market, you know, it's everybody wants to be in the US because it's Such a buying power. But of course it's also an aspirational thing, right? You wanna make it you wanna make it there and and not just be a European brand. But

It was also you know, everybody was saying it's the hardest market to go into. The US consumer market is so competitive. There's a lot of red tape down there. You know, I I think the the amount of warnings that I got for going into the US was almost endless. But I was going there every now and then and looking around and you know, I thought What we're doing is not really here and I think at that moment also

I felt that the market in the US was was ripe for it. Just getting it done was seemed so Hard, right? Yeah. And so expensive. I mean New York was a you know, London was expensive, but going into New York was a completely different Uh ball game.

And presumably New York was gonna be your first location for obvious reasons. It's the capital of the fashion capital of the United States and also You could argue it's a suit capital of the US because there's so many people in finance. and law in New York men who wear suits to work. Yeah, and New York is the obvious uh location. But also the market most expensive Most expensive, most competitive. I guess well, you know, I'm I'm I'm just trying to get my feet wet here. You know, I didn't even know if we were actually gonna be successful in the US, right? I just wanted to get started.

Right, sort of get a little bit of experience, you know, see how many of all these warnings that people were giving me were actually true. And I remember at some point we were I was walking through Soho and you know, finding locations and at some point I was looking up because it I forgot about, you know, being on a ground floor, too expensive. Yeah, it was cost millions in rent a year. It was never going to be a millions in rent a year for one store.

for one store. That was sort of the ballpark, one point five two million a year. For a lease and you would have to sign it probably at Yeah, five years. And put guarantees behind it and all that kind of stuff. So we're doing okay, but it was not like we were not able to do that. And So at some point.

I see this little handwritten In a window on a second floor. Says for lease. And you know.

go up there is and there's there's this sort of furniture store on the second floor and Oh it's a little it's a little messy. And I call this numbered. And You know, the the guy uh landlord of that building.

You know, yeah, no problem. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. And it c and th this landlord was very happy to give me uh a year lease with a six month break, and if I couldn't make it after six months I could w happily walk away. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. So okay. All right. And and you know. It was not a shitty space. It was actually a nice spot, beautiful high ceilings, you know, something that could uh on the corner of Mercerram brooms, it was actually a typical Soho Loft space for

Four thousand square feet. And Later I find out why this was a handwritten piece of paper. And why this guy gave me this deal because He apparently was the landlord from hell and there was no legit broker that actually wanted to work with this guy anymore in the whole state of New York.

When we come back in just a moment. That landlord tries to stop suit supply from opening in New York. And Foca learns how an infusion of cash actually slows his company's momentum. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to how I built this.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2011, and Foca has decided to open a suit supply store in Soho, in New York. He's drawing up plans and getting ready to build out the store. And then what happens was our actually one of these moments that You know, you do a lot of hard work and sometimes you get lucky. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

that did a blind test on suiting. And we got out of that contest with a headline. that a six hundred dollar suit supply suit. was better or just as good as a thirty six hundred dollar Armani. That was the review they wrote after they ordered some stuff online. We were not even open yet.

Okay. We were or we were just shipping already stuffed online to the other. That's pretty great. I mean w what a what a lucky and fortuitous piece of media to get. It was Phenomenal.

Right. At that moment, you know, our our website blew up. And I'm like, okay. We gotta capture this momentum. We gotta we can't wait until we have all the permits done and and and because it's gonna take two months to get a permit even and and you know, design zone for the store. We gotta open this store now if we wanna Keep this going.

So We They did a quick design, had furniture made and shipped in a plane. All the lighting has to be done, and walls had to be placed in, you know, something had to be done to that store because it m it was a mess. So well, we found probably I don't know some kind of contractor with it was probably the equivalent of the Sopranos that was wanted to do it without permit. So I opened the store Uh it's almost done I mean, this is a dream.

We're doing an opening, we have all kinds of press coming you know, it was I think six, seven hundred people on the on the guest list. Some really important people for the industry that we were able to get on the back of the Wall Street Journal article. This was the moment.

Right. And so two days or day before opening, I get a call from this landlord And say, Her and your herd you gonna open tomorrow. I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all done. I mean, uh, you know.

Big opening. Yeah, you're still uh don't have your permit closed out, so that's not gonna happen. And I'm like

Shit, of course. I know Father had everything done and uh this guy. Well, I said don't worry about it. You know, all the permits are getting done, you know, our architect is working on it. It's uh according to him, self certified job, you know, uh some Phrasing I heard along the line. And uh it's gonna be done. Yeah.

And I said, Well if you can have a way because we d which is not uh something that you can do, uh figure it out with my lawyer, here's his number, call this lawyer. He says, Well, I'm gonna go on a holiday today, so it's not gonna happen. I'm like, Okay, this is We need to find a solution. So I called his landlord back and say Okay, I'm gonna give you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

for me to open tomorrow. and for you to allow me to do that. And if I close out the permits in two months, fine you give me the money back. And otherwise, you know, it's yours. This guy. Was having the baddest reputation you could ever imagine.

And he tells me, Well, how do you gonna put that in contract? I said, I'm not gonna put it in contract, I'm gonna trust you. I don't think everybody anybody would have In a long, long time. So

Yeah, I said he said, Well, okay. I'm thinking I'm never gonna get this hundred fifty thousand back. But okay, at least I'm gonna have my opening and I'm gonna keep my momentum, which is way more important right now. Oh. At the end of the day, we had our opening. We had a lot of people come in, it was fantastic and and the guy

Actually gave me my money back after treatment. You return the money when you got the permits. You returned it. But it was essential. for us to do it. I mean if you talk about momentum and that store was, you know, packed from the first moment and we had the first floor and then it was too small and we got the second floor and the third floor and the fourth floor and I think now it's it's six floors.

Yeah. W when you um I mean one of the things that you We're doing from the beginning was having tailors in the stores. And this is like this is not you know, it's not like a retail shop where you just have like

college students who are trained for, you know, a couple of days and then they are selling on the floor. This is like a highly skilled job. So What were you doing to make sure that you had Like were you putting your Taylor Struct training program? You know, before they even sat.

in the shop pr and presumably they were already Qualified tailors, I imagine. Yeah, there's d you know, finding quality staff and training them is is the hardest part there is. And in you know, in the beginning we were Bringing people from Europe and training them and the tailors but also especially the, you know, our style experts on the store floor.

Th these are two different jobs in our business, right? Somebody is selling it and pinning it and doing the measurements and somebody is doing the actual work of doing the alterations and doing the sewing if it's a s if it's a ready to wear suit that needs to be altered. Now both jobs. need a lot of training. Of course you have in a city like New York. you have tailors. So we were able to find them and and train them into how we want to do the work.

We have a relentless high end training program where we bring everybody to our one week onboarding program. when you finish that, you're brought into a store and you're paired with what we call a style expert. And

You're getting For two months more and more and more in in knowing all the details about style and about measurements and everything about the business. We don't spend the money on advertising, we spend the money on training our people. And we also follow the progress. Very carefully. We believe our store teams, we always say are our marketing teams.

I mean, I'm wondering how do you retain those people. Like for example, I'm in the Bay Area. So if I wanna go to the San Francisco store, I can set up an appointment I can go meet with a t stylist or a tailor or whatever, and there's an on site tailor and And we're now especially in the US and probably in Europe. Retail shops are having a hard time not just

finding people to work in those stores, but retaining people. So if you're investing all this money in training, How do you keep people. I mean they're they could get trained and then take off after a few months or a year. And then you've sunk all that money in training. Yeah. I think you know the the most important thing is first your selection of people, you know? You gotta

You kinda like your job. If you ask somebody at the Apple. Why do you work at Apple? Right. They're they're not gonna say, well, how great their benefit packages and what the remuneration. They say, you know, I like to work here because I like the technology, I like the product. I wanna be a programmer at some point, or a or a product designer, or or they resonate with the product. It's the same in our business.

If you you would wanna work with us if you like to dress and style people and make them go out of the door to look good. That's where you get your energy from. And then it's about Having a path for people, a career path for them. So

We we have what we call the sun and the moon path. um in our business. Where The sun and the moon are Both very important. And it makes sure that we have life on Earth.

We would freeze to death at night, or we would wouldn't have the tides. They wouldn't Would not be a life. on on earth. Mm.

So we're very clear about always you know, you want a moon career, you want a sun career. The moon path is the mantra of the moon. Path is so we can only have eyes for our customers. And these are old jobs that make sure that, you know, everything works. that stuff is organized and stuff is managed and the roster is there and the product is in the store and So that

The other part of the business can focus on Only one thing is is is tiling customers and getting people into the door and and creating attraction. And there we have very specific career paths that are I think new or different than other retailers. You can become

a style expert in in in training other people, but you can also become what we call a key opinion leader where Uh we train you in how to represent the brand on social media or um outside of the store where you basically become sort of a I would say a mini influencer but with a very big difference that you're able Two. Book an appointment with you on the spot on your Instagram.

So your style advisors have their own Instagram pages and and and have built their own followings? They built their own following, they built their own Instagram pages. They we we Work with them to create content. We train them on how to do this. So We build these career paths.

That are Very one is more. Operational. And one is more creative and creating attraction with customers and creating Yeah, looks and style and that leads into the one path leads

You know, you could say at the end in a seal. And the other path leads into a brand director position as you know, in the top of the pyramid almost. So To your point, what does retention mean? Retention means that Yeah, you have to figure out how you can create growth

for these people so they also have a feeling that it's worthwhile for them to stay with your business. Fuck it, we had uh a couple weeks ago um on the show, we had Michael Koris, the fashion designer who turned his talent into a you know, one of the biggest fashion brands in the world. It's certainly one of the top fifty in you know, eight, nine billion dollar business. Um and he very consciously set out to do that, to become like a Tommy Hill figure or a Calvin Kleinbrand. And one of the ways he did that was by Making sure his

Products were available everywhere. Your products are only available in suit supply stores, but I have to imagine That in the past, and probably even now, there have been people who've come to you and said, Hey, open a suit supply, you know, a little shoplet inside of, you know

uh gallery Lafayette, or open a suit supply inside of Liberty, or open one inside of uh you know Bloomingdales and also sell suit supply stuff to Department stores. you'll be much bigger if you do that. You'll be a much bigger brand. What's been your reason for not doing that?

Yeah. You could do that and you probably get some m m money and it it's it's very different for different products, right? You know, I think Michael Cors is very successful in the accessory business and handbags, right? And You know, if you look at that business Uh the thing from a service perspective that you have to do is make sure, you know, you have a nice product and you have somebody in the store that gets you the the the right handbag. From the back of house and s and sells it to you.

Um The problem with our product is and the problem with our business is it is And I I would say the Goldman Sachs of retail. It's so execution intensive to do it right. You go to our store because you have a dinner, a date, uh an important event, a meeting, uh celebration, whatever, something.

You know, it is important for you. So this person that is gonna help you, yeah you know you gotta have trust with and you gotta th this person has to develop some kind of relationship with you. Then they have to do all the pinning right, the measurements right. Then we have to alter it or d or even if it's uh custom made suit make it for you and it has to come back on time and then we have to fit it again. So this is A very high touch.

That is Almost intangible connected to the product itself. You know, if I try to separate the two of them it's gonna give me a little short term success, but in the long term

I don't believe that I can separate the two from them and be a very successful brand. Over a longer period of time. But it's always gonna limit. Your

scalability, right? If you are only in suits of I'm not saying this as a criticism, I think that's a I actually like that'cause you can control quality, but it is gonna limit how big you can be So I don't know if it actually limits scalability. What it what it does do, it it uh underpins sustainability, right? I think But with doing that, we can protect the brand, we can m protect what actually drives us and what drives us as a brand. So you know

They always say, I you know, I go to my stores. Every Six months. I'm not saying all the stores, but probably eighty percent of them. And

course we celebrate everybody's success, but everybody has to Name. Two things. That we can do better. Now, they always tell me Yama Fuck you cannot do that when you have five hundred stores. I said, Okay, well, you know, I'll figure that out when I have five hundred stores, but

I'm pretty sure that the only way to get there in our model is to make sure that we keep control of execution and and excellence. Cause otherwise I have to change my model, I think. I have to start if I just put a product in a department store, Why would somebody buy our product and not something else? You know, the only way of doing that is then Start spending huge amount of money on advertising. Yeah. You bought you bought out your those guys who originally were original investors who had I think a third of the company. You bought them out.

in twenty fifteen. So now Back to being Essentially the majority shareholder or at that point or w were you the hundred would did you own a hundred percent of the company at that point? Yeah. Well,

Okay. around that year your revenue Your world worldwide revenue was about two hundred million dollars and you were growing What I'm wondering about is You're in a business that is

It's a high end product. Your margins are very, very thin because you're trying to So How were you able to Squeeze out more efficiency to make more money from this? Like what were your options? I think at the time, you know, if I look at the business itself

We weren't actually too many country well you know, we opened our business in the US, but also we were in Germany, we were in Italy, we were in Yeah, our business is inherently inefficient because we're in so many different places. But don't you have to expand? I mean th isn't your only option at that point to expand, expand, expand because your margins were so So thin. No I mean y yeah, you have to expand, but you also have to be

You know, careful of how to expand and what you do and it's We were able to rates were extremely low, capital markets were You know, flood it with cash. You could, you know, borrow it. Cheap to borrow money. So you were able to expand by obviously with these low rates and but you're saying the expansion was not

'Cause I would think the I mean, I think by twenty twenty, but before the pandemic you had one hundred and thirty five stores. Today's one hundred and fifty, but But you're saying that was not a good A not a good strategy? No, it's a good strategy. No, definitely a good strategy. But what I said is okay, when those rates were so low and money was abundant, you could, you know, suddenly

uh from a constantly cash trapped business We raised uh a lot of debt and suddenly we had a lot of cash. Yeah. Yeah, I've never had like you know, let's say, um this is the fifty million sitting on the bank account. Yeah. And as an entrepreneur, you have endless IDs.

Right? You always think, you know, I can do this and I can do that and then I can do that. And and naturally that's always circumvented by, you know not having enough money to do it all. And so this changed. So then I opened, you know, for okay, let's go full throttle. We open you know, we did a year when we opened Uh I think ten or twelve stores in the US when we only had ten or twelve, then you know, at the same point we started, you know, figuring out and opening a women's line and it was a few women's stores and

We did too much and instead of gaining a lot of momentum and gaining scale. What happens is that your execution starts to suffer. your momentum starts to slow and this big snowball that was rolling out of the mountain and accumulating a lot of that stops. And

Yeah, then then you have to spend a few years of You know, pushing it back in momentum again. I guess for you that that sort of breaking point uh both for a lot of businesses would would have been the beginning of the pandemic. March of twenty twenty, right? Where because I I mean you have at that point

A hundred and thirty five stores. You've got The the women's line. And uh All of a sudden.

Bus I mean, still, you were doing a lot of business online. I think about a third of your business already at that point was online, or maybe more, but Without the shops, I mean that's your That's your identity, that's the the customer relationship, right? And you have to shut them most of them. Down. Temporarily. Nobody you can create to be online, but if everybody's sitting at home, nobody needs our stuff.

Nobody's needing, you know, short suits whatever, you know, we by then We've expanded our collection into way more stuff than just suits, right? We were, you know, in the more elevated casual part of stuff, but it's all product that you need if you go out. If you're social. If you're having if you're going on a nice date or a nice you know event. Those were not happening. So for us it was

Business was just Cratering. Your sales fell. Initially about forty percent. in in that year.

Tell me about what you were thinking because here you've got a business you started twenty years before that. It was just up, up, up and up and up and up every year. Growth, growth, growth, growth, up and up. And then Bam, you've got this. Calamitous year. So the question is, you're in the middle of a pandemic and you're thinking, holy, you know, crap, no one's gonna be buying suits. That's a conventional wisdom, right? And and so

You know it it would make sense to start thinking, well, maybe we should go into athleisure where and and there are examples of brands that really broadly expanded. Did you ever entertain anything like that? No, what we thought about is you know, what does the new suit look like? Yeah. People still want to have looks, right? And and it's just gonna get a lot harder for them because before it was a blue suit and a white shirt. And now it's suddenly

No, trousers, chinos, uh sweet sneakers, white sneakers or slip ons or whatever, five pair of different styles of shoes and then you can pair'em with a with a polo or a crew neck or a shirt or And then it's a jacket or you know, the amount of options Two Going to this elevated sort of replacement of that moment, of that dress moment, is suddenly endless. So we invented

Look builder. Where You could easily, you know, build your own looks. It's on the website. It's a feature of the website where you could click on the feature. It's in a model and you could just put on different clothes on on this model. And you know, the output of that technology would help us to create if you're shopping a certain item online, we could also immediately show you five different ways of wearing that item and actually be able to shop that look.

And then we came out of the pandemic And we were doing all that kind of stuff. And then on top of that A lot of people. suddenly wanted to dress up and wear suits for all kinds of reasons. So we were selling

Tana suits. And on top of that, our whole elevated casual and how we invented that W Also. Extremely successful.

You know, I'm curious about Uh financial side, which is you you own you still own a hundred percent of the company today, right? Yeah.

And so I'm sure that you get approached or have been approached by investors or private equity or venture folks who are like, look, let's we wanna buy a chunk of the this business. We will you know, I mean Michael Kors did this in two thousand four or five where, you know, some investors came in but a part of his business, but then helped him scale it, right? big hundred and fifty locations, but would you consider it would you say, you know what, I'll bring on

well, partners with big wallets, take some money off the table for me. And then we can use that money to fuel the growth of suit supply even further. Is that something that You would maybe do. Well, I mean the the you know, we get these calls All the time, of course.

And it's always nice to talk to people and sort of to learn But how they look at your business, right? I mean, you know, that's that's but You know, from a personal side. I I'm happy to say that I've made my dough and I you know, I I don't have to take money off the table, right? Um And on the business side.

I had these conversations many times. Um You know, I have to always say is that I ask myself Yeah. Mm because it sounds great, right? But it's important to understand is why do you like your business?

I like. in control, have the freedom and in this b running this business takes So much energy. It's sixteen hours a day. There's always something going on. Oh, a hundred percent. Seven days a week. Um um

Which I'm fine with. You know, if I have but it's taking a lot of energy, so you're almost fifty. I mean not to say I'm uh I'm too, so not an old guy, but that's it's a long time to work that hard. Yeah, but I'm I I um you know, I I like to put my energy in there and if I if I If you lose control or you have to really think about what it would mean if you change that, if you would still be able to put the same amount of energy in there.

I'm not saying we're never gonna do it or we're never gonna IPO the business or maybe at some point I think it's good for the business or it's a safer you know, it's I mean I'm I'm almost fifty, and I'm gonna how much maybe I'm gonna do this in another ten years, but It's also you have to think about how we're gonna bring the business into maybe a different I don't say stratosphere or whatever you call it. But I want to I wanna be able to at least feel that I can attribute the same amount of energy to it every day.

Okay, one of the things we ha we haven't talked about'cause there really isn't that much written about you, at least in English, and we've you know, we do a lot of research on on all our guests and Um so I just don't know uh much about your personal life, do you have a family? Do you have children? Did you get married? I mean, were you able to do that and all this work over the last twenty three years? I have two kids with my ex wife. Or I was never I was never married but my ex partner in that uh regard.

With all that with all that travel and all that work, sixteen hours a day, I mean probably there were some personal sacrifices. I imagine you you probably didn't get to Spend as much time with your kids maybe as you Would have liked. In the beginning where they were really babies and small and you know, d no, I d I didn't spend a lot of time with them.

On the other hand, I I d very consciously spend a lot of one on one time on them when they got older. And I could do stuff with them and have experiences with them. I took'em on travelling a lot with me. Uh you know, they they've I've uh there are not a lot of kids that have been in so many countries I think before they were eight or nine. They're your kids are are adults now? They're older right now. They're my my daughter is n nineteen and my son is seventeen. Either of them want to work for the business?

Um And I think by some I think his only choice is also being an entrepreneur because he's so stubborn. Uh so I don't

I don't know if we want to work in this business. And my daughter is um you know, very into design and and uh so could be, but if one or two would want that would be great. But I also have to say That's I think the f most fun of having a business is being able to build it yourself.

So you would encourage them to start their own thing? I would encourage them more to start their own thing than you know, to Start managing my headaches. Yeah. You know we've talked for a long time and you've had a long time to reflect on on your story and what you've

where you are today and obviously it's a really successful brand that you built. But when you think about this story, and I'm sure you haven't recounted it in such detail often in your life. How much of w where you are today do you think is is because of the hard work and the grind you put in and how much do you think has to do with luck? I think most of it has to do because

Yeah, hard work um doing so much stuff all the time all over the place and and You always think as an entrepreneur, you know, ten years I think it's someday is gonna be less and and less, but you know, it it never gets less because you also start doing, you know, more and more stuff again and

And Because Yeah, the luck. Somebody else said is with the hard working because You know, then then you also increase the chances of you know getting lucky every now and then. Right.

If you sit on the couch and nothing happened, you're not gonna get lucky. And Also going against the grain. a lot of times or following, you know, not the j the usual standard play books and not so much from any heritage as we wanna be different because

You know. you didn't have a choice. You had to be different or you had to be creative. to get to an end goal. Yeah. The the fun of it.

Right at the end of the day. It's Foka de Young. founder and CEO of Suit Supply. By the way, you remember how Foka would go into businesses and offer to improve the wardrobe of the workers? Well, Suit Supply still offers a corporate service and has helped outfit both male and female staff for brands like Four Seasons Hotels,

and Omega Watches. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to follow the show wherever you listen on any podcast app. Usually there's just a follow button right at the top, so you don't miss any new episodes and it is entirely free. If you want to contact our team Our email address is hibt at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramteen Erablui. It was edited by Casey Herman with research help from Sam Paulson.

Our production staff also includes Niva Grant, Elaine Coates, Liz Metzger, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Chris Masini, Carla Esteves, Sam Paulson. Kira Wakeem. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening. How I built this.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.