Ep. 30: How Heddels Built a 'Buy Less Buy Better' Community with Nick Coe and David Shuck

Heddels began as Rawr Denim, a blog for selvedge lovers, and has grown into one of the strongest independent voices in slow fashion. Andrew talks with founders Nick Coe and David Shuck about their philosophy of buying less, buying better, and why keeping what you already own is often the most sustainable choice.

Nick shares how a pair of APC jeans started his obsession with raw denim and eventually led to building Heddels. David recalls a trip to Tokyo that opened his eyes to Japanese selvedge and set him on the path to join as partner and writer. Together, they explain how the site evolved from focusing on denim to covering anything that wears in, not out—like leather boots, canvas bags, and even cast iron pans.

The conversation covers ethical sourcing, what it means to make well-made goods, and how Heddels has built a diverse, loyal audience without clickbait or outside investors.

This episode is for anyone who cares about quality, sustainability, and resisting the disposable side of consumer culture. 

Learn more at heddels.com

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Nothing is more sustainable than buying great products that last a lifetime for almost that long. Heddels started in 2011 as RAWR Denim, a blog for the selvedge obsessed who photograph their fades like proud parents. But the publication refreshingly evolved into a buy less, buy better mantra in a world that mostly demands faster, cheaper, and dumber. They do it without investors, without PR stuff, and without watering it down just for the clicks. Again, I have good fortune. I have two gentlemen that I want to introduce, David Schuck and Nick Coe. Best way for us to do this is if both of you guys tell our listeners who you are, what you do, and how you got here. By the way, I have all these dinners that I've done in my career all the time. And I would invite people who are all from different parts of the textile industry, cotton people to fashion people, to designers, to this and that. And I always say to them, before we order drinks, you have to all stand up and say how you got here.

Speaker 1:02

Bus, taxi, on foot, uh, or a little bit more existential.

Speaker 1 1:07

More existential, yeah.

Speaker 1:09

So Nick, uh, you got to the Heddels table first. Uh would you mind kicking off?

Speaker 2 1:13

Yeah, of course. So Nick Coe from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and how I got here was maybe just out of personal curiosity. And I mean, really, it started with me traveling. I was, you know, in my early 20s and needing a new pair of jeans. And I don't can't remember exactly. I I must have just come across this idea of raw denim. And I remember the first pair I picked up were a pair of APC new standards. And I remember I wore these, basically, they were threadbare. And I came back from this trip and it was kind of studying abroad and some backpacking and just looking at these things completely shredded and um basically just wanting more of it and going down the rabbit hole. And then leading to the point of uh jumping ahead to just kind of getting interested in wanting to do something entrepreneurial and starting up a few different types of websites and blogs. And I kind of thought, well, you know, raw denim is something I'm interested in, but I don't really like going to the forums and getting beat up. And it's kind of a pain in the butt to go get the information really from all these other fragmented places. So just thinking, what if what if there was somewhere that brought it together? And it was that simple. Really, that's it in a nutshell. And then we we've evolved and grown along the way. Yeah. How about you, David?

Speaker 2:36

Yeah, thanks, Nick. Sort of similar journey that came to appreciate denim, not in this country. Uh, someone that had enjoyed clothing for a while, but didn't really consider myself a fashionista or a clotheshorse. But I was on a trip to Tokyo when I was 20, and uh I had a Japanese history professor at the time, and I asked him, like, I'm going to Tokyo, what should I do? Because he had studied in Kyoto for eight years. And he said, like, go to Iseitan or any of the other big department stores in Genza and like don't buy anything. You won't be able to buy anything, but just start on the bottom floor and go up every single floor and just look at the stuff because it's like no retail experience you will ever see anywhere else. And you'll see the square watermelons and you'll see the Sentoku knives and you'll see the hall of just rice cookers. And as I'm going through and sort of having my mind blown, I end up in the menswear corner where they have like a section just for denim. And I go, oh, maybe this is something that is actually kind of familiar to me. And I saw that they had jeans with arcs on them that look like Levi's, and I was like, oh, I guess they're importing Levi's here. But the the prices were $300, $400, $500 equivalent. The yen was pretty strong back then. And I was just sort of amused of like, is it cost that much to import Levi's here? I don't understand. And then there was a uh store clerk there who looked like you know a Japanese version of James Dean came over and you saw that I was sort of confused, and he told me all about Japanese reverse engineering of classic Levi's models and the appreciation for salvage denim and narrow gauge looms. And I was like, wow, that's that's interesting, but I do not have the money to buy this, nor if I did do I think I would. So I went back to the States, and that bug just sort of stayed in my head of like, why are they doing that over there? What is the anthropological reason for this? How did this get started? What's going on? And that led me to the forums to try to understand Japanese detub, and like it was at that point I'd been thinking about it long enough that I wanted to buy some. My first pair, I think, was unbranded. It was right after they had started in 2011. And that led me to see, like, after I got out of college, that Nick at RAWR denham was looking for writers, I think a year after the site had started. And I said, like, hey, I'm out of college, I want to keep writing. Um, I wrote for my school's paper, can I join up? And he said, Great, we'd love to have you on board. That was in 2012, and then after a couple years, yeah, the site was doing well, and I came on as a partner with Nick. And yeah, it's just sort of been a wild ride ever since then. That little did I know that one little uh speck of interest had I not gone over to that corner of that department store, who knows where I'd be right now.

Speaker 1 5:26

That's a nice story. Both of your stories are nice. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. So when you started RAWR, and then you you you started RAWR, you ran that for a few years, and then you decided to like I don't like this word, but it's the appropriate word to pivot and do something else a little bit different. When did you realize that denim wasn't enough and and you needed to broaden the mission, Nick?

Speaker 2 5:47

I mean, we thought about it. I mean, I probably thought about it a bit before working closer with David, but I think we we really, I mean, probably entered our minds like just after David joined, and we kind of maybe just naturally were thinking, like, what's next? What's next? But I mean, we did see that we wanted to share more about other things that had the same quality as raw denim, like things that wore in, not wore out. And we had this idea that, you know, this is a lifestyle and consumer mindset. It maybe starts with jeans and and raw denim jeans, but it goes into so many other places, like leather boots, canvas goods. I mean, David, I love your example always of cast iron pans, even. And we we kept getting feedback from readers and the acidity, like anytime we would kind of go into, you know, talk about maybe Red Wing boots, we would get the feedback of, hey, just stick with raw denim. You guys are raw denim, just stay in your lane. And we actually even tried, and this is a long time ago, but it was probably around 2013, we did launch a totally separate website and blog. It was called repository. And repository was a similar type idea of uh RAWR denim, but really having broader coverage. And so, yeah, the idea was simple like repository would be that place and that host for more than just denim, and then RAWR would stay as RAWR. Um, but really it didn't take off as RAWR did. There just was something kind of missing. And, you know, I'd found that I was in over my head very, very quickly, like trying to manage this new site and all the social media accounts and all the things that come with scaling. So we tried to figure out different ways to make this expansion happen. And ultimately we just decided, you know, around 2014, 2015, we're gonna just have to rebrand and kind of take this new direction. And as these things go, some people were very supportive of the shift and the new name, and some people hated it. And we still get some different uh hate mail today around the name change. And we hate mail and hate comments for sure. And um, you know, look, I I don't take it negatively, I think it's actually uh very thoughtful of people to care that much about that name. And we s we still get people who write in and they'll start off by saying, I've been reading since RAWR, and then they'll go on and you know ask their question or share whatever they have with us. So nice. Uh yeah, it was a journey.

Speaker 1 8:17

And how much of your business is is women's? And what do you guys think about the women's wear business when it comes to denim?

Speaker 8:24

Well, it's something that we try not to think of it necessarily as gendered, because you know, women uh are included, obviously, in what we're doing, and like anyone is welcome to read uh what we're doing and wear the clothes, because we get a lot of people that from all walks of life and all backgrounds, and that the clothing itself doesn't have a gender. Historically, a lot of the styles that we're covering of military and workwear were originally worn by men and men's professions, but that doesn't mean that it's who has to wear it now is um and we might get into demographics in a bit, but our latest demo like survey that we've done shows us about 60-40 men to women. So we're not trying to present or write to necessarily a gendered POV, but it's just the sort of thick, hard wearing, you know, worn-in stuff tends to be seen usually from a masculine lens, but uh that's not necessarily who we're trying to cater to.

Speaker 1 9:23

Marilyn Monroe warm ends.

Speaker 9:24

Yeah, absolutely. We're better than just about anybody.

Speaker 1 9:28

Exactly.

Speaker 2 9:28

And what are your demographics? It's very diverse, other than where people are based. So we're mostly mostly from the US. Um, you know, when we've looked in our their latest demos, it's about 55%.

Speaker 1 9:41

But the kind of cool sorry, stop there for a second. 55% of your audience is from the United States. Correct. Where's the other 45?

Speaker 2 9:49

It's a mix. Uh, UK, Canada, different parts of Europe, different parts of Asia. It's cool. It's really good. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. No, I mean, and the other kind of neat thing, and this is something that like I think David and I are are really proud of with the Heddels audience is that, you know, it's it's evenly spread age-wise and household income-wise. I mean, I mean, I'm I I've got it in front of me here and seen that about 13% of our audience is younger than than 18, um, 25%, 25 to 34, 23%, 35 to 44, and then 21%, 45 to 55 years old, and about 20%, a little under 20% older than 55. And you know, we we even get feedback from people like we we we try to make a habit of, of course, like uh talking with our readers and and communicating with them. And when we do hop on calls or email threads, and we try to just ask simple questions like, why do you care about HEDLs? Like, how did you even find us? And a lot of people will just come back and say, I've been reading you again, maybe since RAWR. Um, but some will even say, I've been reading you for 10 years. And in some ways, um, some people have obviously grown up, you know, maybe like me, you know, starting kind of in my 20s and now I'm uh just about a month away from from turning 40. So have kind of grown up with the site. Um, so obviously they've they've changed in their lives, but they've they've stayed and continued to subscribe to HEDL's over 10, 15 years. But yeah, it's completely diverse.

Speaker 1 11:28

Your um demographic distribution would be a target for any business school. I mean, if they're teaching kids about what you want, you got it exactly what you want.

Speaker 11:38

Yeah. We're not really through any intention. It's just sort of like the the stuff that we're writing about and the uh ideas we're espousing and the brands and things we're promoting are uh hit all those quadrants. It's sort of um surprising to us as well, but it must be doing something right. You are.

Speaker 2 11:58

Yeah, the other maybe cool part too is that like it's not as if HEDLES caters to any particular person with like a certain amount of experience in this stuff, right? Um and I say stuff like anything that that wears well. Like we have some people that they've never worn a pair of raw denim jeans or they have no idea about like good your welted boots. Um they come to the site, they find kind of a beginner's guide, they start to read a little bit, and then they, you know, they find the right brand for them, they they make their splash. Then we have other people that they're considered, you know, the heads and they've been in this for 10 plus years and they continue to come back. So yeah, we're we're very uh grateful that people make time for us and they they still continue to care about huddles and visit the site or subscribe to the newsletter all these years later.

Speaker 1 12:48

And you have this this philosophy of own your things forever. So I'm kind of fascinated by that because I've always loved that. So I have to go back to a story is when I first started in this business, my very first trip was in the mid-70s. It's a long time ago, in Northern Ireland when there was basically um all hell going on. And the guy that picked me up wore this um tweed hat and this tweed jacket, and he had a jaguar, he had a really old jaguar. I don't know how old it was, I wasn't not sophisticated, but what I noticed about his jaguar was it smelled like his pipe. It just absolutely just stuffed full of that particular smell, and that the leather everywhere had faded like my jeans. And I wasn't a gene nut or anything. I just I just noticed that it was the same kind of sentiment, and then I got in there and I told my wife when I came back, I said, when I got married eventually, I said, I only want to buy one car in my life and I want it to look like that after like 25 years. That would be the car that I want. And that's what I did actually. And I I I bought that car in '83 and I got rid of it. Like I still have it actually. And uh I don't drive it. But I love the concept, love the concept that people treat consumerism and buying for things that they can wear that they could wear or use forever. I just love that.

Speaker 14:11

Yeah, thank you. How did you get onto that? Uh, this is something that we thought about for a really, really long time as we were developing um, you know, Hedles as a uh a new brand. And it's like, what is the through line between all these things that we we love, whether it's yeah, raw denim or leather that patinas or something that that builds up a uh seasoning like a frying pan of like what is the thing that's that's better about all this stuff? And it's something that is better used than it is new. So much about consumerism, as you mentioned, is about being perpetually dissatisfied with everything that you own. You know, your iPhone 15 becomes outdated by the iPhone 16. The pair of patent leather shoes that you have like maybe get scuffed or just things are constantly in a state of diminishing. But if you have, you know, uh a pair of Iron Hearts or like Levi Shrink to fits and you've broken them in, you would rather keep that pair than have a brand new pair that you would have to break in again. It's just about having something that you would want to use forever, but you don't always get the opportunity to use them forever because you know they they break down and fade away and eventually things have to be retired. But the idea, and and maybe it's a little bit going too precious with this, but I think more people should think of buying clothing or any consumer good like a uh there's a responsibility inherent in it, you know, like adopting a puppy or something like that, because there's so much material and human hours that go into creating such a thing, and our consumer culture is just designed to throw it away and uh buy more at the drop of a hat. I think that like the average person buys about 50 new articles of clothing a year in the United States, and we throw away about 80 pounds worth of textile goods. So it's just this unsustainable and really, I don't know, irresponsible and sort of perverse method that we wanted to push back against that it's not fashion, it's sort of how can you break out of this cycle and lead a life where you're actually happy with the things that you have? You know, your Jaguar, that's a thing like I've only ever had one car that I got when I was 16. I have a 2000 Subaru Outback that probably should have died a long time ago, but you know, I just have so much emotional heft and memories tied up in the thing that I'm gonna keep it running way longer than it ever needs to be. Right. Right. So yeah, it's something we really try to live and hope other people can find, you know, the the joy in saving money and saving time and just sort of living a more satisfied life through doing it.

Speaker 1 16:48

What you haven't mentioned is that it's probably one of the most sustainable things people can do. I mean, people talk about sustainability and they get into the minutiae of is this more sustainable than something else? But actually not buying something that you don't need is the most sustainable decision you can make. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17:05

Yeah, absolutely. And just the thing you already have is the most environmentally friendly uh thing that you could get. So just finding a way to make that connection and feel like you know what you already have is better than anything that you could buy.

Speaker 1 17:18

Totally. All right, let's just change gears for a second. You've written about brands like Ironheart 316, the Flathead. Do you ever um report on their labor conditions in the factory? Are you guys interested in that? Is your customer interested in that?

Speaker 17:32

It's a difficult thing in some of these brands, is like 316 that you mentioned, that they don't have their own manufacturing and their own production. So they're producing in like India, Portugal, Vietnam, the US, and others that are made in Japan, maybe it's a bit easier to track them. And it's something that we would want if you're gonna have that connection with a piece of clothing, you'd want to be not shocked by the conditions in which it was created. But it's something that I think a lot of governments are having trouble monitoring how things are made. Even up until um a couple years ago here in California, that garment workers in downtown LA were being paid piecework like $6 an hour or less. So it's very, very difficult to know where things are being produced. Like I've been to factories in Pakistan that looked like they were better conditions and they were air-conditioned and people had more space than ones that I've seen in the US. So it's difficult to monitor and say, like, okay, this is the line where something is ethically made and this is where it isn't. But we do strive for people that are being uh the conditions under which the clothing that we try to feature were made, you know, without forced or child labor, with people that are being paid a living and livable wage and have the ability to address uh their grievances and to have a safe and non-threatening working environment in which they exist in.

Speaker 1 19:01

Do your customers care?

Speaker 19:04

I'd like to think that they care. You know, everyone comes with a different thing into this, and I'm sure as you know much better than us that like at the end of the day, the price tag is sort of the the biggest thing that a lot of folks see on things like this. But I would like to think that people want to have who really aspire to have such a connection with their clothing, they want to understand the conditions under which it was created. Because there's also a real nerdy aspect of it, of a lot of these people that we have that read us, like they want to know not just where the genes were cut and sewn, but they want to know where they were milled and where the cotton was grown. And there have been a lot of intense debates about some of this stuff, as uh as I'm sure you know of the controversy surrounding cotton from Zimbabwe when it was under the control of Robert Mugabe in the the mid-2010s. And that was a really heated discussion that we had an article back then about should you be buying Zimbabwe in cotton? And a lot of people were didn't really know what side to come down on. Like, is this something that's supporting the people that are there, or is this something that's propping up uh a regime that's going to be suppressing and hindering and repressing the people there?

Speaker 1 20:13

I did a lot of business on Zimbabwe cotton from Japan, and I always wondered if it really was Zimbabwe.

Speaker 20:19

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 20:21

So before you get to what the conditions in Zimbabwe is really, is it what it is supposed to be? That's also another issue when when there's claims made. I mean, is there any method for you guys to have any kind of um what is the word, um, confidence in the claims that are made by your vendors?

Speaker 20:37

There's some of like you can look at certifications, you know, like ISO 8000 and other things, but they're very basic, I suppose. That really just the level of transparency that in small operations that we try to visit a lot of them. This was a thing when we were doing small product collaborations, we would physically visit the location where it was being produced, which all except for one we were able to do. But uh yeah, I think that's sort of the gold standard of like, can you walk the floor and will they show that to you? Right. Right. And a lot of brands that you know don't have their own manufacturing, I'm sure that they have these conflicts as well of trying to understand where their stuff is being made uh if they're even aware of, especially if they have production being done in you know a a dozen different countries and probably even more different uh vendors.

Speaker 1 21:27

It's incredibly complicated. I'll give you a funny story. So we set, I don't know how many years ago, before COVID, we set a standard for kingpins that every denim mill had to have a social compliance standard. We had 60 or 70 mills at the time. And I think when we checked at the beginning of that process, we had seven that had a certification. And we told everyone if you don't if you don't get a certification, you can't be in our show. Okay, that's simple. And it was effective. At the end of it, let's say we had sixty, fifty eight got their certifications within a year. We gave them a year. Didn't there was the Japanese and the reason the Japanese couldn't was because they dyed the yarn in this place, they packaged it in this place, they wove it in another place, it was like all over the place. So for them, a small little production, they had to have like six certifications. So there were some mills that were making 10 million yards a month, and these guys are making like 400,000 and they needed like six times more certifications. And they're like, please forgive us. We c we just can't afford. And we waved it and passed it and said, okay, we trust you. I mean, whatever. So it was it's funny. But it's very difficult for small companies to actually pay for the the the work that's required to certify, and very, very hard to um to get reality out of them for a host of reasons.

Speaker 22:48

Yeah, especially with very small operations. But yeah, that's great that you were able to get a lot of those uh mills into compliance.

Speaker 1 22:55

And well-made goods, is there a bar for you guys about what you will or won't accept as well-made? Like if I want it to be written about for you, what would be essential for you to look at?

Speaker 23:06

We tend to try to get hands-on on a brand before we uh make any feature or anything. So we have samples that are often sent back that we receive and we look for like number one, we still have that thing from RAWR denim. Is it raw? Is this thing pre-distressed? Is like yeah, we do not feature pre-digested things, uh for lack of a better term. So uh then we also look at okay, is this a kind of a style that's going to last for a a decently long time? Um, so it won't become obsolete or outdated? You know, is it something like parachute pants? Maybe someone's gonna be wearing those uh for five years, but more likely than not, is it something that's relatively timeless? Then also is it repairable that you could have something that's extremely hard wearing made out of a synthetic fabric? But you know, if you have some Gore-Tex shell and you burst through the elbow of it, how are you gonna repair that at home? Um, you really can't. So we tend to favor not in every case, but in many cases, natural materials like leather, cotton, linen, wool, things of that nature. And then as we talked about things that are made to hopefully a certain ethical standard, and things that you won't be tempted to upgrade or replace. So is it going to age with you and is it going to show how you use it? Is that going to be reflected in it in such a way that you feel some connection that whatever shiny or newer thing is not going to tempt you? So those are sort of the factors that are swimming around whenever we evaluate a new brand of like, okay, you know, not everyone has to have necessarily everything uh an A plus on it, but in a certain way of like, okay, is this going to work for us? Is this something that we could see one of our readers having that connection and becoming something that someone wants to use forever?

Speaker 2 25:00

The one thing I would just add, and I think you touched on this, David, is do they have a different perspective? I mean, I know that maybe another word for this could be like, what's the story, or why do people care about them? But really it's like, do they have a perspective that's different, fun, you know, maybe not necessarily better. I mean, there's certain categories where I think, David, like we were getting new pitches every single week, like in leather accessories or something. You know, there's just everyone was making, you know, belts and wallets. Maybe it was during the pandemic, and we were getting pitched all the time. And at some point you just have to ask yourself, geez, there's there's so many of these. So I mean, there has to be something. That's how I tell about genes. Fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, there's a lot of things.

Speaker 25:50

There's so many things. Uh uh, yeah, we could talk about what we would do if we had a brand uh later on, but yeah, yeah, it's just sort of a flood of you don't really realize how much is out there until you're having it presented to you, you know, daily in your inbox.

Speaker 1 26:06

You guys have this ability to persuade people. Do you use it to the brands that you like or the products that you think are the best? Do you use that?

Speaker 2 26:14

I mean, yeah, I I think if you're in a position as like you're you're a and again, I I mean this in the best way possible. Like we're we've I think earned a reputation as a destination for people to be finding certain brands, certain products at a certain standard. Um so I mean, in some ways, probably, like we are helping inform people's decisions. I mean, we see it in our data around how many people purchase as a result of HEDLs. I mean, probably, David, you're the better person to answer that as you know, leading our content and creative side for so many years. But I I mean, from my perspective, I I don't think we've outwardly ever said anything that would sway someone. We've more like kind of it's it's almost been us sharing our our personal interests.

Speaker 27:04

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's something that uh we realize that this yeah, with the the level of readership that we have, that it's a somewhat big responsibility and in a way that we want to use it effectively, because as Nick said, we've been around for like 14 years, which is practically cavemen and internet terms, that we're we're fossils in in like how many times the internet has turned over in terms of media publishing since uh it's founded in 2011. But if we were just out there saying, like, you should buy this, this is the the hot thing right now, you need to go out and get it, and people got it, and it wasn't anything that it it didn't meet the standards that we set up. People would stop reading us or they would complain and like no one would come back. So it's a thing that we've just, as Nick said, we tried to present it very objectively. These are the values that we're trying to promote. If they jive with you, here are some things that we think are uh live up to them, and here's why we think that. And if you want to try it out, if this would fit a need in your life, like go right ahead.

Speaker 1 28:10

And how does revenue play into that?

Speaker 2 28:13

Oh well, yeah, I mean, it's it's been a journey for sure on that side because I think anybody in media faces this perennial challenge of how do you sustainably monetize? Like, how do you grow a business and and and really profit without uh making concessions? And so we've we've experimented for sure, like any other media company, maybe not to the extent of like a Buzzfeed, where they've done absolutely everything in the kitchen sink to monetize. Um, but for us, like we've tried a lot of different options and you know, we've come back to realizing it's really three main revenue streams. Um, the first is brand campaigns, and we can talk about if interested, Andrew, like around how we um even vet certain brands. Um, the second would be on the affiliate revenue stream, in of course, guiding people's decisions, presenting options, and then of course receiving a commission off of those. And then third would be e-commerce. Like we have a little shop um that sells some products and and some things like we've made ourselves, others are third party. And the mix of those is is what makes up the business of HEDLs.

Speaker 1 29:29

If you were starting the business today, what would you aim for first for revenue?

Speaker 2 29:34

As like a specific number or like a revenue?

Speaker 1 29:36

No, no, no, no, no. No, not numbers. Just as uh which one of those three would you go for the hardest if you were starting? Because when you start, you basically have one purpose, right? You start out really one way. So how would you start?

Speaker 2 29:47

I think it has it's it's a bigger question than that, and it's loaded. You you I think have to back up a few steps and even zoom out and think about why would someone care about whatever you're planning to publish or put out there? And what are some of the natural models that would sort of complement whatever you're doing? So, I mean, take for example, if if if we were gonna restart HEDLES today, just given what we've seen sort of in the media landscape, and again, this is this is gonna be oversimplified, so please nobody hold me to this. But I think you you can't deny the power of video today and the power of email marketing and and newsletters. And you know, thinking about really having better control of your audience um and really trying to see how you can have that direct um connection with them. So uh that said, I mean, of those three, I think they could all totally work. I mean, I think pick your favorite, you know, newsletter on Substack or your favorite YouTube creator and look at how they're they're growing their business. It's probably some mixture of those three. I mean, I think they all have different pros and cons, but probably some mixture of them and in a diverse way is gonna really help any media business.

Speaker 1 31:06

And if you were starting a brand, what would you guys want to do? If you had money and somebody wanted to invest in whatever you wanted to do, would you do it at all, do something else?

Speaker 31:16

Such a uh open-ended question is it's a thing that we've we've thought about and also in the way that we we were just saying, like there's so much out there that's the the question that we have to ask ourselves like, what would we be contributing if we were to make something? Because we see like so many of the best makers producing jeans and boots and backpacks and everything under the sun. It would be easy for us to say, like, okay, here's another 1947 cut uh 501 knockoff that has our uh leather patch on the back. And I'm sure it would sell okay from like the amount of brand cachet that we've built up, but I think it would be costing us more than we'd be gaining. So for that, I think we'd have to go, like, what would we be making? Because when we've done the collabs in the past, it was all about trying to tell the story of the brand through a novel product that they maybe would want to make, but they don't have a uh an audience to put it in front of. So it would either be something very, very strange and novel and weird. Like, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the uh the brand Mischief. You know, they spell it without any MSCHF. I've uh they're really obnoxious and really entertaining in both ways that they do things of like they made a Van's knockoff gobstopper shoe that was had like eight different colors of rubber on the sole, so as you like ground through the sole it had different colors. They did one where they made a shoe with little Nas X that had like a drop of his blood in eat the sole of each of them because it was a knockoff of something satanic, or they had another thing where like you could send them your gun, they did a fake buyback gun program, and they would melt it down and turn it into a sword and send it back to you. So just sort of weird sort of stunt things like that I've always enjoyed. Sort of like how when we made a shoe out of uh NASA spacesuit material with PF Flyers, or we went to Pakistan with AFGI to make a bandana. But on the other end of that, the the thing that I think is sort of lacking, if we had some like real funding and time and people more talented at design than us, um, that I don't think that there's a great entry-level option for raw denim. That a lot of the brands that we've discussed have been they're pretty high dollar. And if someone wants to say, like, I don't know if raw denim is for me, or wants to just dip their toe in the pool, that they shouldn't have to drop $150 or $200 to do so. So I would love it if there was a you know, like $50 offering of probably something non-selvage that was made from a decent denim that people could try out and see, like, okay, this is for me. I like how fading is, I like how it breaks in, and I'll move on from there into my my journey of hopefully being a uh Heddels type consumer.

Speaker 1 34:02

You should speak to a factory about that.

Speaker 34:05

We've considered it, and some have uh some have thought it over, some haven't. Uh Nick, I know you have some of your own machinations.

Speaker 2 34:13

Uh no, no, it's it's not as well I do, but they're not as as fun as mischief. Um I mean for me, uh yeah, realistically, probably something in raw denim or in indigo, something along those lines. But yeah, I mean I I've I've always been interested, like outside of um raw denim and and again quality uh engineering clothing, I've always been interested in cooking and kitchenware, food and beverage, like in sort of objects that really help serve a real purpose. And I mean, I think similar to like how we, you know, most of us walk around all day and have to do stuff, and you know, you can wear raw denim jeans and see how it wears. And similarly, like most of us I think cook. And if if you've ever used like a Japanese steel knife or you've used a certain type of coffee machine, like a Mocha Master, I mean, you'll or a cast iron pan, there is just something about cooking with some different types of objects with certain materials that just makes the grind of cooking feel that much more joyful. And the cool thing is like a lot of these just wear in instead of wearing out. And, you know, I have a few Japanese steel knives now and then like an ingrained uh cutting board, and I wouldn't trade them for brand new versions of themselves. There's something about like a similarity between like raw denim and a lot of these types of things that I've just shared. Like maybe it's like slow living or functional art. But yeah, it's just amazing just to see how there are these similarities. I'd love to do something there with with huddles and products, but yeah, again, as David said, we have a few probably barriers to entry on it, and um probably have to make the first step into something maybe more a little more relevant for our audience first.

Speaker 1 36:09

Well, I think that what you guys are doing is incredible, and I think that your focus on lasting forever is way bigger than you can imagine. And I think that you really tapped into something which has a lot of power from a sustainable point of view and from a practical point of view, much more than any other brand. You have something, your concept is something which no other retailer even thinks about. And so it's just a question when people catch on to it because it's a a brilliant concept. So lots of kudos.

Speaker 36:39

Oh, thank you, Andrew. That really means a lot, especially coming from someone who is uh industry titan like yourself who has seen pretty much every aspect of this business.

Speaker 1 36:49

But it's so boring to constantly just you're talking about people shop and they buy so much stuff, and you look at the airport, everybody looks the same. I don't know why they even bother. You know, they should have stuck with the same thing they were wearing when they were 16. It would be fine now, be fashionable.

Speaker 37:06

You know, it's like it'll probably last a lot longer.

Speaker 1 37:09

Right. I don't even understand the whole process of everybody going running to stores and there's stores at the airport selling the same old stuff that you already have. The whole thing is so crazy. And um nobody ever says that, and nobody actually offers a sensible option. So anyway, I want to thank you both for doing this. Uh I think that our listeners will love it. Thanks so much, Andrew.

Speaker 37:30

I really appreciate you having us on.

Speaker 2 37:32

Yeah, thank you, Andrew. Really appreciate all your support too over the years. Yeah, fond memories of of Kingpins, of denim days, and it was you who uh really brought us out there. Thank you.

Speaker 37:42

Yeah, yeah, you've been a big supporter uh since it was RAWR denim. So we very much appreciate it. And I don't know if the site would be the same that it is today without uh your help.

Speaker 1 37:51

I don't think that I did anything but um just encourage you guys. Thanks. Thanks, Andrew.