The Jeans Episode: How Custom Denim Finally Solves the Fit Problem

Interview
Written By Blair Petroni

with Andre Ramirez of Neems

If you’ve ever cried in a fitting room, blamed your body, or wondered why jeans are so impossibly hard, this episode is for you. In this episode of Style Rebellion, hosts Blair Petroni and Erin Cox sit down with Andre Ramirez, co-founder of Neems, to talk about what’s actually broken in the denim industry, and how custom, made-to-order jeans are changing everything.

Andre shares how years of frustration with off-the-rack jeans led him and his wife to build Neems: a custom denim company that uses precise body scanning technology, ethical manufacturing, and made-to-order production to create jeans that fit right out of the box.

Together, Blair, Erin, and Andre dive into:

  • Why off-the-rack jeans fail nearly everyone

  • How Neems’ mobile body scan creates a true custom fit in under a minute

  • Why tailoring after the fact often misses the mark

  • Sustainability, ethical labor, and eliminating overproduction in fashion

  • Neems’ “Clone My Jeans” program and why it’s a game changer

Use the discount code “MAEVE20” for 20% off your ENTIRE first order at neemsjeans.com.

  • Blair Petroni 0:14

    Welcome everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of style rebellion, the podcast. I'm Blair Petroni, your image consultant and lead host. We have the beautiful Erin Cox with us today. Hello, Miss Erin. How are you? Hello, Blair. I see you're in a whole new location. Look at you with that like incredible little background.

    Erin Cox 0:44

    I am in a new location. We are. We have teamed up with a fantastic production and editing team, and I am in their studio here in Knoxville. And so it's gonna be a great a great episode with great video and audio quality.

    Blair Petroni 1:00

    I love that you look so good, and they're not even a joke. When you walked on screen, I was like, oh,

    Erin Cox 1:08

    happen to know this young image consultant who make made me look absolutely fabulous. And if you need her, Oh, wait, it's you.

    Blair Petroni 1:17

    That's why. That's why she said, Oh, wait It's you. It's because I'm not young, you guys very old.

    Erin Cox 1:26

    I mean, I'm approaching stinility. So my adjectives are falling off.

    Blair Petroni 1:31

    According to my birth certificate, I turned 37 this year. I still tell people I turned 21 again,

    Erin Cox 1:38

    yeah, just keep turning 21 and then when they put geriatric pregnancy on your file,

    Blair Petroni 1:45

    they already said that, dude, when I turned what was it when I had when I was like, 34 they were like, you know, you're geriatric. And I was like, your crotch is really close to my foot. Really careful. Yeah, be real, real close. Yeah, really careful. Because, oh yeah, there's a knee jerk reaction there when you say, Gerry, actually, Jesus. But anyway, we when, okay, this is the episode that I am so excited about and here's the reason why you guys, every year I chat with my admin, and I tell her, like, at the beginning of the year, this is the year that I'm gonna solve X for my clients. And at the beginning of 2025, I looked at her, and I was like, I'm gonna solve genes. And she was like, I don't even know what that means. I'm ready for that. She's like, I don't know what that means. I don't know where we're going. I don't know how that's gonna work. And the reason why I said that is because I have so many clients, and honestly, not even just clients, like friends, family, strangers. On the internet, everyone complains about how hard it is to find jeans, to find pants that fit, to find anything, because we're all different, all of us, whether it has nothing to do with weight, and we'll get into that in a little while, because Aaron, you and I were like waxing poetic about this yesterday when we were talking about the episode, and I was like, hold on, hold on. We have to hold this for tomorrow, because this is such good we

    Erin Cox 3:27

    record right now. I know

    Blair Petroni 3:29

    you're like, stop talking about this, but we, when I was talking to Lauren, she was like, Okay, but how are you going to do that? I said, do? I don't even know, but I'm gonna figure it out. And so then I just like, stumble, stumble. Fell upon this company flat on my face, in I don't mean maybe it was August, and I was like, but oh my god, they did it. They literally solved genes. And I immediately texted Aaron, and I was like, dude, dude, I think they did it. And so we got in contact with them, and we started working out how we were going to get them on the podcast and get pairs to try and all these different things. And so I'm really, really excited to tell you guys that they're here, and because here's the problem, like finding jeans that is truly, truly perfect for each individual, it's like hunting for a unicorn, right? Because denim is like the, one of the biggest pain points for people across the board. Like each person has a body with specific lines, with tailoring needs, with a soul, like your essence, right? That needs to shine, and nobody ever does like ready to wear denim that accommodates everything except for these guys. We're talking to neems today. You guys, N, E, E, M, S, they are not sponsoring. This podcast at all. In fact, we begged them to come on. We were like, please, please come and tell everyone the glory of your genes, because they need to know. And Aaron, do you want to tell the story about when you were like, Blair, you need to post on Insta and like, ask people how many jeans they would buy.

    Erin Cox 5:25

    Yeah, we so we were in communication with memes and just talking about developing a relationship for the podcast, and then also for for sales and cross promotion and cross pollination and all of the fun things that happen when you're in business. And I said to Blair, you, we should really put a poll on your Instagram and on the podcast Instagram and just ask people, hey, if I could magic up this custom pair of jeans just for you, and it would be perfect. How many pairs would you buy?

    Blair Petroni 5:56

    And I told them I was like, Guys, it's gonna be like, better quality than legends, and better quality than Veronica beard, and they're gonna fit you like a glove. And you can tell them exactly the cut, exactly the inseam like you don't even have to tell them, because they're gonna measure you properly to do all of this and what? And what was it like an hour, it was like, over 250 pairs, and we had, like, over like 80 plus people that had given their number. There were some people that were like, dude, I'll buy 10 pairs. Like, don't play. And I told them, I was like, they're gonna be 200 bucks a pair, but they're gonna be the best jeans you've ever had, and they're gonna last you 10 plus years. And they were like,

    Erin Cox 6:42

    what if they wear out? Oh my gosh, you can get them again. It's not. They haven't floated off into the universe to disappear somewhere into the abyss of like, jeans that we used to love that don't exist anymore.

    Blair Petroni 6:55

    Yeah, it was amazing. So we were like, what so after so many like, fruitless and frustrating attempts to find jeans that fit well. Our guest today is the co founder that literally took matters into his own hands by creating a company that offers denim custom made y'all custom made to your personal measurements. Could this be the end of our denim fit woes. I think so please. Welcome to style rebellion. Andre Ramirez co founder of gene of neems. Excuse me, I'm gonna do that one more time. You guys, please. Welcome to style rebellion podcast. Andre Ramirez co founder of neems. Hi, Andre

    Andre Ramirez 7:42

    how's it going? What an introduction. What an introduction that is hard to follow. And also, anytime that you want to come speak on behalf of neems, you are absolutely welcome, because I don't think you could have nailed it any better.

    Blair Petroni 7:57

    We're in love with you guys, and I don't think I could fan girl any harder? Like, every time we talk to somebody about you, they're like, do they peg? You know, we just love them. We just love the concept, just we believe

    Erin Cox 8:10

    in sharing the things that that work right, like we want to give away the secrets that make your life easier, and, holy heck, getting a pair of jeans that fits is going to save you hours of your life and hours of frustration and a lot of tears and some laughter and a whole bunch of other things. So we were just super pumped to kind of pull back the curtain and have a conversation with you about the company and about the product and all about jeans.

    Andre Ramirez 8:39

    Yeah, no, I'm super excited. I think you guys hit the nail on the head, across, really, across the board with, with everything you said. And I think what makes it a, you know, a really strong project that we took on five years ago. I say we, my co founder and I, who's also my wife. Her name is Danny. Unfortunately, she couldn't be here today, but, but I'm super excited to dive in. Yeah, the reason I say it's such a passion project we took on is because it was founded from personal frustration. This wasn't just, you know, market research of what are people struggling with? Because we just want to go do something that could be, you know, could be high potential. No, we literally suffered through it ourselves. And out of that said, we think there could be something better. And I think you hit the nail on the head, Blair, it's, you know, while weight can be a component, it's not the component. I think people default to, oh, it's just for insert, insert a box here, type of people. And the reality is, no, it's not you know your different proportions of your body, of your lower body, from your waist to your hips, your butt, your thighs, your calves, your ankles, your inseam, your rise, even your front rise and back rise. Heck, even some people have a left thigh. Eye that's different from their right thigh, that has nothing to do with with weight, that has to do with your body, how you you know how your different proportions are distributed. And it's impossible for brands that are off the rack that mass produce, you know, 10s, if not hundreds of 1000s of garments at once to make it for every single permutation. That's just not possible. So the only model to do it is custom made and made to order, right? We'll make we'll actually design, cut and sew your jeans after your order has been placed, because it's 100% bespoke to you. There's nothing pre made here,

    Blair Petroni 10:35

    and I think that's so incredible, and fits so hand in glove with how Aaron and I truly, truly believe people are, and the reason why is we practice what's called Kibbe body types when it comes to styling. And we tell people, you can gain or lose 100 pounds, and your Kibbe body type is exactly the same. It has nothing to do with the hourglass system, because that is based off of circumference all the way around. Kibbe is based off of your vertical and your width. We look at you like you are 2d doll. And so that's based off of Ding, ding, ding, proportion, the proportion of your head to the width of your shoulders, to the length of your torso, to the length of your legs, to the width of your thigh, to the you will proportionally gain and lose weight within that entire structure. It's just like when you go and you work with a physical trainer and they're like, sorry, babe, you can't spot reduce and you're like, Shit, I would love to, like, take some of this off of my stomach and put it on my ass. And they're like, don't work like that. Boo Boo, right? It's, you said the perfect thing. Like, we have clients all the time that are like, this is so hard. Why can't pants just fit me perfectly? And I was like, just hold on until January, because they can and they will, because we were so excited to talk to

    Andre Ramirez 12:07

    you. Amazing. Likewise. Thank you for having us.

    Erin Cox 12:10

    Well, we've all had a miserable experience shopping for denim, right? I mean, I know I have, I'm assuming you have, right? So whether you're trying to shimmy into that pair that's just not working. Or you're grabbing a stack of denim this high and going to the dressing room and coming out empty handed, maybe with some tears on your eyes, or ordering a truckload of like a giant box to your house only to find that nothing works. We've all we've all been through it so real quick, let's go around the table and let's talk about your dreaded denim experience, your misery, your memorable dreaded denim experience.

    Blair Petroni 12:49

    Do you want to go yours is the funniest. Erin, do you want to go first? Do you want to go yours is so funny.

    Erin Cox 12:55

    So I have permission from my husband to share this story, because he's an introvert. But we were, I can't remember if we were newly married or if we were about to be married, but he desperately needed some new jeans. He had, it had been a minute for him, because he was living on a tight budget and all the things. And my sister in law owns a showroom in Atlanta, and so I said, Well, hey, we're gonna come visit. I can let's, let's take, let's take him shopping. And she's like, understood the assignment. We're gonna go to the sacked denim bar. We'll have a great time, etc. So we go to the denim bar. And my husband is very like, he's probably a dramatic or a dramatic classic for the listeners. He's very narrow in his upper body, very small waist, but he is so muscular in his legs because he runs a lot, and so he can't do like the men's skinny jeans were kind of in vogue at the moment or at the time. And so, I mean, they're just, they're just not gonna work for him. So this very, very colorful, big personalities. Sales Associate goes around the store, probably grabs 20 pair of jeans, puts my husband in the dressing room. My husband comes out of the dressing I can't even tell this without laughing because the jeans were so tight on him, like, literally everywhere, that my sister in law just took her hand and she goes, I don't know where to look. That feels appropriate.

    Blair Petroni 14:34

    So the package was so tight. That's what Aaron is not. You Kennedy, that's what Aaron is not saying you guys, is like the Bulge was bulging. You could not there was nowhere to look you were just like, everyone was just like, Oh, my partner.

    Erin Cox 14:54

    And even I'm a little uncomfortable. Anyway, so the sales that says. It comes back in, and he just leans back and he goes, oh, oh no, no, no. He's like, You give me that pair and that pair and that and by the time he was done removing that pair, there were no pears left in the dressing room. So that's my memorable, dreaded denim shopping experience.

    Andre Ramirez 15:26

    That's amazing. That's honestly not, not too dissimilar for for for us. I think I mentioned earlier this all started, really. The shopping experience was in 2018 we used to live in Dallas at the time, and it was a, it was a Black Friday. Was Black Friday, 2018 my wife and I, we needed jeans amongst the one thing, you know, one thing that was on our list that we needed, and we went into, I think, three or four different stores, and the exact same thing, I think, we each tried on three to five pairs across every single store, and ended up leaving the mall empty handed. And we're like, how did we just go three hours make a real effort to go ahead and make a purchase today and yet not buy anything? We went to three different brands. We tried the slim fit, the athletic cut. Well, I'm talking about me now, the athletic cut, the slim fit that this and that, and again, going back to proportions, it was either right on my thighs and super loose on my waist. So I had to wear, you know, a belt that secured it the three at the three extra inches it was on the waist, or fit me in the waist, and it was super tight on my thighs, and it looked like those skinny jeans that are way too skinny for my preference. My inseam is also, I like, you know, I like it just flush with the ankles. So I'm right in between, like a 29 and a 30, which is a hard combination to find with with these thighs and waist sort of proportions that I mentioned, super frustrating. And for Danny, it's the it's the hips to the waist. She has waist gap just based on her proportions. And again, pair after pair after pair. And so we left, and I think the only word you can use to describe the situation is deflated. Just like, what happened? Like, what is something wrong with us? Like, see a lot of people buying here, like, Is it us? Like, what's going on here? And so the cool thing is, it didn't just end there. The very next day, we came back to that same exact Mall. So now it's what the Saturday after Black Friday. We bought, I think, 20 to 30 Starbucks gift cards, and we just stopped random people in the mall said, Hey, can you give us five minutes and we'll give you a $10 Starbucks gift card? And we just asked people about how their experience with jeans were, if it was easy, if they struggled, where they struggled, etc. And it was, it was super enlightening, because we left and we said, Ah, it's not just us. It's pretty much everyone that you talk to, either you're settling or you feel like we feel very few people were like, Oh no, that's easy. I'm this size, and it fits me perfectly, and it hugs me exactly the way I want to. And if I want to re buy it in two years, it's always available. Said no one ever. So that's when we were like, Okay, there's something here. We need to do something about it.

    Blair Petroni 18:20

    That's fantastic. That's genius. So you guys went in and we're like, we're gonna do some market research real quick.

    Andre Ramirez 18:28

    I love that day after, literally amazing.

    Blair Petroni 18:32

    Because you guys are serial entrepreneurs, right? Like, both of you have it, like, that internal spark inside of you where you're like, if we have this problem, we know other people have this problem, and I bet correct me if I'm wrong, I bet you guys went home that night and you're like, little entrepreneur brains were like, and y'all probably couldn't stop talking about it, could you

    Andre Ramirez 18:54

    That's exactly right. It just takes over everything you're thinking about. And that's all we could talk about that day and the next day.

    Blair Petroni 19:00

    And then you were like, what if we went and got Starbucks gift card, and then we went back to the mall

    Erin Cox 19:06

    and we talked to people exactly this group were a massive sample size, when every single person you talk to is like, miserable. I hate this. So says the exact

    Blair Petroni 19:15

    same thing. I want to my, my, my experience, it's not going to be dissimilar from anybody else's, but it's just going to be from a different perspective. So there's a reason I say you are your body type, whether you gain or lose 100 pounds. And I have in my life, I have gained and lost 100 pounds in my life, and I remember when I was on the heavier side. And I went and tried to go find jeans, and I went to all of these different stores that claimed, like, we love plus size women, we love curves. We've created jeans and pants and clothing for them. And I'm like, hell yeah. Like, I don't care. What your body type is. I am known to my clients as someone and by the way, I have a ton of clients that tell me this. They're like, Girl I came to you because I'm a size zero, and I'm like, if she's a size 1618, and she can dress people that are any size, clearly she's the stylist for me. So I know when I was like, a much larger size. I went to these stores, and I started trying on jeans, and I'm like, How the hell do none of these work? Like I would try on this pair and that pair, and I would try on straight versus flare, versus boot cut versus wide leg. And it different sizes, different washes, different nothing felt right, nothing, and even I knew, you know, I could get stuff tailored, but nothing was the quality that I would want to get tailored. That's the difference, because as a plus size woman, hear me, guys, when I say this, my experience has been even now, even now, as a stylist with my plus size women, there are not high quality jeans that I tell my women, yeah, I really think you should Go get those tailored. I think they're worth it. Doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. So the second I found names, and I was like, Shut the front door. You're telling me that they're just gonna take my measurements in this little app. That's like a magician, and then they're just gonna make my jeans. I was like, oh, so just from this, you know, it doesn't matter what size you are, but I wanted to speak to the women that are like 16 plus, which, by the way, is now become the norm in America. Size 16 has become the norm. And being able to look at women and say there's actually not genes that I would say are high quality enough right now that I would tell you to go get tailored, and I can point them to names and go, you should go ahead and use them. That's a big deal. And by the way, guys stick around until the end, because we have a code for you to use to be able to get some percentage and discount off of your genes. And we'll, we'll tell you at the end what that's going to be, because Andre has been really, really kind and has given us a code for you guys. So we're really grateful for that. All right, Miss Erin, did you want to go to the next thing?

    Erin Cox 22:31

    Okay, so we've talked a little bit about some of it already, but I don't know. Do we just, do you want to just do you want to just kind of skip the next system? Or is basically why denim and how did you choose it? But we covered that. So do you want to

    Andre Ramirez 22:46

    just, I can give a you want to?

    Blair Petroni 22:49

    Oh, I think there's so much more. No, I think there's so much more that Andre would probably love to cover in this, because this seems like a man that wants to go deep. I want to hear him tell us all the answers. Tell me everything. I'll ask this part. Go for it. So this is, this is the part where we've deemed, like, the history of names, okay, the end. The reason I say that is, like, tell me about your background. Tell me about Danny's background, like, whatever you want to share with us. And then we'll go down the questions that we have, because I want to know.

    Andre Ramirez 23:20

    Irritating. Yeah. Apparently, yeah, we're worse. And yeah, we, I guess we, we can refer to ourselves as that now, but it didn't start that way. You know, if you go way back, you know, we certainly were tinkerers in our childhood. For me, it was, you know, physical tinkering. I loved Legos. I love just building things out of random things. And so I did love, like building and experimenting and just solving problems. Danny was a creative a tinkerer in the creative sense. So she is a classically trained, super talented, and I can't stress the word super enough there musician. And so all her life, and a musician that plays piano really well, but her strongest instrument is actually her voice. She's a singer. She studied voice and opera in college. And so we've always been tinkerers in our own sense, and we didn't connect the dots. That actually was a really strong ground for entrepreneurship and for sort of doing our own thing, until much later in life. We met each other in college. We didn't end up, you know, becoming close until my last year, her semi last year. I'm a year older. After college, we both went into consulting, business consulting, management consulting for two different firms. The thought process there was, hey, we just graduated. You kind of don't really know anything about how the world works. You know all this theory and you know all of these different subjects. We don't know how the world works. Let's go learn from these management consulting firms to. Be put on across tons of different projects, and just start absorbing things. And so that's exactly what we did. We traveled a lot, we worked on a ton of different projects. We met a ton of different people. And what we call that period of time, it was two years for me, three years for Danny, was just sort of accelerated, real world college 2.0 in a much more practical sense, what we learned there in terms of how to structure problems, how to interact with vendors and suppliers, how to think about profitability and what revenue and costs were, how to think about setting up businesses, how to think of marketing, et cetera, we learned those sort of two three years gave us the confidence to then go unlock that, that tinkering side that I alluded to earlier. So it was the perfect timing. It was literally at the end of my second year when I described that Black Friday day and and so we said, hey, this is a real problem. We struggle with it a lot, and we have learned a ton of tools that gives us enough confidence to go, give it a shot, give it a try. Now, over the past five years, my God, we have amplified those learnings to the max, because until you're doing it yourself, there's no substitute for that. But it gave us the good foundation to feel confident to go, take that leap, versus, oh, I think there's something here, but I have no idea where to start or what to do, or I'm too scared to do so. So it was really that background that always lived in us, with those two to three years after college, that I think prepared us to take that first leap. And that's all it is taking the first leap, because then the road sort of unwinds. Once you do take the first leap. You never plan exactly how it's going to go or what it's going to look like from day one, right? You just need to be prepared to adapt and go from

    Blair Petroni 26:47

    there. Yeah, were either of you at McKinsey?

    Andre Ramirez 26:51

    No, I was at Bain, which is a top competitor of McKinsey, and Danny was at Deloitte.

    Blair Petroni 26:56

    Close enough, close enough. They pay the they you. So I worked at an excessive amount of fortune, 500 companies. Don't worry, when you're on the other side, we pay you the exact same amount of money. It doesn't matter which one of those three you pick our listeners, but it doesn't matter McKinsey Bain or Deloitte, you're paying the exact same one of the three. I literally could have said any of those three, and you'd be paying them the same amount of money. So they're all very high level. That's incredible. So you guys were literally like MBA level, course, working there, of just like hands on experience of immediately seeing like, this is how you build companies. This is how you make them better. This is how you fail fast and fail forward very quickly.

    Andre Ramirez 27:53

    Yeah, that's exactly right. Nothing to do with fashion, nothing to do with apparel. But that's, I think, the beauty of it. It doesn't matter. It's a sort of very similar approach, and the similar fundamentals to business applied to really anything that you look at. So it gave us the confidence to go ahead and take that first step.

    Blair Petroni 28:10

    You're like, we don't care. Also, question, did it also give you the potential investors that you knew that you could go to and go, Okay, I know you have a couple doll hairs in the bank. We got an idea.

    Andre Ramirez 28:27

    You know, that's funny. We it's really funny. You mentioned that we didn't take investment until last year. We did a friends and family round. So the first four years were all what's called Bootstrap, which just means it was our savings. What's funny about it is just now, as we start thinking about what does the future of neems look like, and what's required to get there, that's certainly something that we're thinking about a lot. And what's really cool about these firms is not just the relationships that you build with you know, people that you know, might have a healthier nest egg than the average person might. That's certainly a thing, but they also have cool programs for alumni, whether it's alumni venture capital firms, where they only invest in alumni founded firms, or angel investor programs within some of the more senior peoples in these firms, so we haven't tapped into it yet, but we do have good relationships with some of these folks, and it's something that we're actively considering for for the future of memes.

    Blair Petroni 29:29

    So you guys haven't even done a series a yet. You've just done friends and family. So far. You let me know if we're friends Andre we're friends yet,

    Andre Ramirez 29:40

    after today, we're friends, for sure, great.

    Blair Petroni 29:46

    Because, guys, I'm completely serious, like the second my marketing brain, the second I saw names and with my stylist credentials and the way that I work with clients, I was like, oh my god, this is the future. Like, just on. Understanding how all this works. It's if and if, if you buy, like, not if, sorry, when, when you buy your first pair, and you feel them glide over your body and it just closes, and everything is perfect, and you should. And I know this sounds very dramatic, it's my body type, when you shed that first tear of like, holy crap, everything is perfect on me. You're welcome. They did it.

    Andre Ramirez 30:29

    It's one of the it's one of the coolest feelings. It's one of the coolest feelings. You'll see whether people email us, every once in a while, we hop on calls with customers or the reviews that people leave on the website. I always like to take a step back when we're on calls with the rest of our team. We're a pretty virtual team, and say guys like, we're not just selling memes like, read what people are saying. Tell me what other sort of website, what other product you see this level of emotion and what people are writing like we're changing lives. And as crazy as that sounds like, helping give people their confidence back, helping people feel like there's nothing wrong with them, like we talked about earlier, it's really cool, and that's one of the most rewarding things.

    Erin Cox 31:17

    Well that take you down like a miserable shopping experience. And as a teenager, as a young woman, it was always for me, it was always like, what's wrong with me? That this is so emotional, but when you go in and item after item just doesn't look and feel like you right, doesn't fit you well, doesn't make you feel good and who you are, you do question everything, and that's that's really, really frustrating, and can be very upsetting as well,

    Blair Petroni 31:50

    totally well. And the reason I'd love to lend some words, if I can, as to why, just based off of my clients and what they've told me, okay, is they will. What I tell people is what I do is way more like therapy than you would think, Okay, I'm not telling you. Like, come to me. I'm your therapist. But like, when you come and work with me, I will hold a mirror up to your face and say, this is actually who you are biologically. This these are your colors, which is your undertone. This is your body type, which is your Kibbe, and that never changes. And this is your essence, which is your soul, and that never changes. If you can never change any of these three things, you should probably love it, and that, in and of itself, is a lot of things that a lot of people have never come to grips with because they are trying to fight themselves, tooth and nail and fashion, in and of itself, has told us you are imperfect, therefore our clothes will make you perfect if you buy Oh, sorry, go ahead.

    Erin Cox 32:59

    No, I was gonna say I started as Blair's client, and one of the things that I have tried to do my entire life is stuff my shoulders into narrow seams because I was so self conscious about the natural width that I have in my frame. And so learning about my body type has given me permission, not only to embrace this beautiful structure that I have, but also look and feel more comfortable in my clothes. And having done personal shopping with Blair, having experienced that there are times where I put things on and she just looked at me and said, You're too beautiful for that. Take it off like that doesn't serve you, like that's not you know that, not That's not for you, but not in a negative way, in a that is not honoring the beauty that exists within who you are. And so let's go find the thing that does. And so to be able to create a piece that does that is, I'm like, edge of my seat excited about what this is going to mean for Blair's clients, for our listeners, and honestly, for myself, real selfishly, because I, like,

    Blair Petroni 34:00

    Aaron's like, I can't wait to order my jeans. We've already talked about it. And that's the best part about this. Is all 10 of the Kibbe body types. There's a reason why certain cuts and certain lengths and certain like height and all that is going to be best on them. And so we're going to actually be putting out a guide about what is going to be best for each body type and what they should be buying from you guys, and saying, Hey guys, our recommendations if you're going to be grabbing your pairs from memes or, sorry, not if, why do I keep saying if, When we're production team, go back together a guide. So when you grab your jeans from names, you're going to know exactly which cuts we're recommending, exactly which heights you're going to be telling names in the customization that you're going to tell them. Hey, I need you to trim it here. I need you to go all the way to the ground or I. Need you to cut in here or whatever. Because guess what? Guys, neems does that. It's amazing.

    Andre Ramirez 35:08

    That's That's amazing. You say that because, you know, one thing that we've learned over the past few years is the fact that we offer it is obviously a huge step forward, but there's still so much uncertainty at the moment of ordering. People are happy that there's going to be a solution for them, but then they're presented with choice. Should I do wide leg? Should I do straight? Is skinny still in? Is it not in? What does my frame look best in? Or what makes my frame look best? Stretch or no stretch. How long should I get them? I'm very tall, so typically I have to get or actually I'm very short, so typically I have to get cropped for that to be full length on me. But no, don't order cropped. Order full length because it's custom made to you. You no longer have to order cropped so that it's full length on you. Right? So navigating the process is, is going back to the word, it is emotional, and it's, it's not easy, and we've tried to make it as you know, simple as possible. You know, there's, there's other offerings out there, typically overseas brands, where you go through 15 types of questions, what thread color? What thread color for the back pockets and the front pockets and type of button, and what shape do you want the pocket, and do you want it curved or pointed? And this and that. And you're like, Well, I don't even know where to start, right? So we've really tried to make it as distilled to the things that matter as possible. Cut your wash your eyes. Where do you want it to sit on you? How long do you want them to go and do you want 100% cotton or stretch in them? We'll take it from there. But even that is is an overwhelming experience for some people, and I and you understand why, and so that's amazing to hear that the guide matching Kibbe body types or Kibbe sort of frameworks to what they should order, I think, bridges that gap and allows us to do okay, now let us do what we're really good at and make these for you and bring them to life for you.

    Erin Cox 37:08

    Yeah, and decision fatigue is a very, very real thing when it comes to shopping and dressing, and part of the benefit of knowing your colors and your style and your essence is that it reduces the decision fatigue substantially when you're in your wardrobe, because everything works together. Everything plays nicely. You can pair it however you want, and it's going to work because you know that it's specific to who you are as a human being. And so, yeah, yeah. I just love that. I love that.

    Blair Petroni 37:40

    I call it granimals for adults. For adults. If you do know granimals is, it's that clothing line from Walmart for kids, where, like, all the clothes match together. So like, all the clothes for boys match, and all the clothes for girls match. And that's what every single human being is look is looking for. Probably Danny too. If you ask her where she as a husband, you would probably know this where she's like, I just want everything in my closet to go together. I don't want it to look like 43 people live in my house and in my closet. What I really want is I want to be able to go in there and in 90 seconds pick out something, an entire outfit that loves me back. Well, when you know your colors, your body type, so your guidelines, basically how of the clothes that should love you back, like the shirts, the pants, the skirts, the accessories, whatever, and then your essence, which is the vibe of your clothes, what they should look like. When you know all those things, and you put, take, condense or make sure your closet looks like all those things. It's granimals for adults, and you can get dressed in 90 seconds. And a lot of people are like, that's a dream. Nope, it's real. It's ask every client that I have. It's 100% real. That's amazing. It's crazy. Cool. Here's Okay, I want to stop, we have to stop, we have to stop talking about us. Because here's the next question that I have for you that I'm dying to ask. Okay, so how did you go through the process of taking this from your idea to this, like marketable product?

    Andre Ramirez 39:15

    That's a loaded question, and the simple answer is, it went through so many I mean, it's kind of hilarious. It goes back to what I said earlier. You take the first step, and it unfolds. From there, you have to have, you know, going when I mentioned management consulting, you have to have what we call a thesis, a hypothesis, an initial thought to ground yourself on. And then go from there. You can't just not know and have a million paths to pursue, but boy, was our initial thesis and hypothesis so wrong, and it didn't matter, because it was a place to start. What was it? We thought. We thought it's hilarious to think. Remember, we had zero fashion experience, zero anything experience. We thought we could go ahead and. And produce what we called blanks, jeans that were 30% sewn with extra fabric down the leg, and then when an order came in, trim the leg according to to their measurements in the style that they ordered. Except there's a huge problem here, which is the waist, hips and rises are just as important, if not way more important where all the complexity lies. It's not just the leg is like 1/10 of what we need to consider here. And then it didn't solve the inventory problem, either. If you get really technical, if anything, it just made us, you know, have to make sure that we always had inventory of all these blanks in stock across all the different sizes, so that we could pull one off and finish the pair. So that was the idea that we went to at the time. I went to because I took, I had the initial responsibility on setting up the supply chain. So I take this idea to Los Angeles. We lived in Miami at the time, because it was during, you know, right before the pandemic. And we went from Dallas to Miami. I take this idea to Los Angeles, the denim capital and fashion capital of America. And I meet with like, 10 different vendors, and I say, Guys, this is how we're going to revolutionize the industry. We're going to carry blanks, and then we're just going to finish them once the order comes in. And they were all like, that's not going to work, that's not going to that's just, yeah, it's not going to work. And there was one vendor, no one was really helpful. They all just said, that's not going to work. Didn't really explain why, or even know how to articulate it. But there was this one vendor who we didn't end up working with them, but they said, hey, look, there's actually automated laser cutters and automated what's called pattern making and grading that exists so that you can actually custom design and custom cut for your customers, instead of having to carry this your idea of blank stock and have to finish it. So it's actually custom from the beginning, and it's made to order, instead of just trimmed and still stocked. And so that, you know, that was one meeting that just changed the trajectory of everything. And we started looking into that, really, starting with the laser cutter that made it manufacturable. And so we stumbled upon the company took a tech that that made this laser cutter, and it's really cool. Basically, is a computer hooked up to a big laser. You lay the fabric sheet flat, and it takes whatever digital design it has, and it'll tell the laser head where to go and cut. And so then that can go straight into sewing. And all those pieces were custom designed to you. A pair of jeans is made out of 16 different pieces. And so we connected with Touka tech, and they were super receptive and very helpful and willing to just partner with people that had a new vision for what fashion should be, for what apparel and fashion should be. And they kind of became mentors in their own way. We ended up buying the machine from them. It was like our first major investment, like $90,000 that came straight out of, yeah. It was our point of no turning back. Like, once you buy this machine, we are in this

    Blair Petroni 43:19

    committed we're buying another college degree. You guys

    Erin Cox 43:23

    exactly do it right? Like, yeah, for better, for worse, same. Here we go.

    Andre Ramirez 43:30

    You were like, We love you don't fuck us over. That's exactly right. It was really valuable, because without that commitment, as soon as it gets hard, you can kind of turn away, right? And we weren't going to turn away from that. So we bought the machine, and we learned a lot from Touka tech. And really over, over the next, geez, five years that it's been but really accelerated. In the beginning, we started figuring out, how do you, how do you actually do this? Okay, if you need a custom design. Who's going to be doing the custom designing? Okay, they're called pattern makers, but pattern makers, a a lot of them aren't trained on digital methods, but believe it or not, a lot of pattern makers are still working on on paper, drafting on paper. So okay, find the pattern makers that can digitally design, but then they're used off the rack in bulk production. So find the pattern makers that can help develop these rules with us. And it just became one thing after the next, after the next. You took one step and you figured out there's five more steps to figure out. Then you take those five and it just led you to the next five. And it was like that for the first three years, until we finally said, Okay, I think we have it figured out. I think we have it figured out for how it's going to work. Let's go ahead and start trying to sell this. And then that was a whole different world of figuring out how to sell it, right? I think being able to do it was one thing, actually figuring out how to sell it, and then doing it and actually manufacturing and fulfilling orders. It's funny, we actually have one. The very first pairs of jeans that we made, and we've kept it because at some point we were going to frame it and hang it up, because we are light years away where we started. We are we don't have the we did not have the quality of jeans and the quality of the fit and the quality of everything that we do, that we have now. We tell a joke. We want to take our first 100 customers on a trip one day because they spent $200 on something that, quite frankly, wasn't worth $200 or, you know, the cost and the love merited it, but the end product was just simply not there. And it's been lesson after lesson, iteration after iteration, step after step, that we can finally, you know where we are today. Say we think we have a very good process, a very good product, and we're making a ton of people very happy.

    Erin Cox 45:51

    I love that. Can we also double this episode as a master class in entrepreneurship? Yeah? Get going. Yeah, you guys have had to just take those steps and just keep taking the next one.

    Blair Petroni 46:10

    That's what you have to do as an entrepreneur. This is why Erin you and I talk about this a lot like Andre, Erin and I talk about the people that have to have the grit to be entrepreneurs, because there's people that we've seen that say they're going to start a podcast, or they're going to start a business, or they're just going to jump in with other people, or and she and I are like, they don't do they don't have what it takes. And it's not because we're saying, like, they don't have it. It's that they don't understand what it takes to do the sleepless nights and give up the birthday parties with your kids. And, like, literally, like,

    Erin Cox 46:54

    90 day on a piece of equipment.

    Blair Petroni 46:56

    Thank you. 90k on a piece of equipment. And like, you do, you know what I mean? Like, do all of these things that a lot of people just take for granted, like, there's this grit and this fall down 40 times, stand up 41 that you have to do. Like, when I say, fail forward and fail fast. Like, I'm not kidding, and you have to be a very certain type of person to be able to do that. And so the grit and the fearlessness that you have to have to be an entrepreneur like you guys are dead ass living that it's incredible.

    Andre Ramirez 47:37

    It's it's just point blank, the hardest thing that we've done, the highs are really high and the lows are super low. There's no like, and you have to learn that skill sort of even keel, don't it's funny enough to say, like, don't overly celebrate the good moments and then don't tear yourself down in the bad moments. Just like, learn to be a little bit more even keel. And that's something that we're still a skill we're still building and developing. But the thing about business is there has to be a why for why you're doing it, because it sucks in all points. It obviously sucks if it's not doing well, it's true. That's obvious. It sucks if it's kind of just stagnant and flat. But it also sucks when it's going really well, because then you run into other challenges. We just had our biggest month in November of this past year, and boy, did that unlock new challenges, like, if we all of a sudden go from what we were selling to what we are selling, and it's all custom made scale. You need to have exactly scale, the infrastructure, the team, the processes, the systems to be able to handle that. And we're, I mean, we're in the middle of it right now. It has been some of the toughest three to four weeks, and this is a good times, right? So business kind of sucks all the time. And if you don't have a why for why you're doing it, you don't keep going.

    Blair Petroni 48:55

    All right? Simon Sinek, I see you. So what's y'all why? No, Aaron, that's true that that actually comes from Simon Sinek? No, it's true. That's from Simon Sinek. He wrote a book that's called Start With Why so Andre, what's yours why? Or are y'all's Why is different.

    Andre Ramirez 49:12

    I love that question, and maybe there's a quick follow up with Danny to give her why as well. I love that question. For us, it goes back to the realization that we're not selling jeans, we're selling an ability to feel great in yourself, feel confident in yourself, and empower yourself to be the best version of yourself that you can and so the why is helping people feel that way? Because we didn't feel that way, because we questioned ourselves, and if we did a lot of other people did, and it's that aha moment of I'm not just buying a widget. I'm buying an ability to feel like myself and feel proud to be in my own skin that ultimately just it's a responsibility now that we carry right to continue giving people that opportunity to feel that way. Yeah.

    Blair Petroni 50:00

    So my why as an image consultant is to hopefully put myself out of business one day. I do this so that it's so that hopefully I have and this is what I tell my clients. I'm a coach. So most of my clients see me three to five times, because when you relearn every like your colors and your body type and your essence, you're rematrixing your brain. You're relearning how to dress yourself. And hopefully I see enough people in my lifetime that I eventually put myself out of business, that you learn to love yourself and dress yourself. And I see so many people that one day I look up and I don't have any clients anymore because the world is so beautiful. And once you like you start dressing like yourself. And I know that sounds crazy. This is gonna sound insane, you come across more confidently. You love deeper. You care more you have, you look more trustworthy, you feel happier like you embrace people. It makes the world a better place, and it can dead ass. Start with a shirt. I do this so that one day I hopefully can put myself out of business, and that's the day the world is a better place. That is 100% true. Isn't that crazy? That's my why

    Erin Cox 51:29

    I love it. It's an honor just to sit here and get to listen to this conversation and be part of it and just be inspired by both of you guys and the different pathways that your journey is taking you on, but the ways that you are giving forward to people, and how impactful that is, not only in our own psyche, but for our wallets and for our world. And that's a big deal. That's a real big deal.

    Blair Petroni 51:54

    Did you have doubters Andre Did you guys have people that were like, we don't think this is gonna work, you guys,

    Andre Ramirez 52:04

    I think the question is, did you have believers early on? Damn everyone? Was it? Everyone was a doubter. Another be done now.

    Andre Ramirez 52:17

    And I don't blame them. I think here's another thing that we say, naivety was our superpower early on, not knowing was our superpower. Because if you knew everything that it entailed, you wouldn't start you'd say, Whoa. This is way too hard, that is for sure. And so everyone in the industry that knew what we were trying to do said, guys, you're trying to do this and you have no experience. Like, don't like, don't recommend it. And so naivety was our superpower, and I don't blame them for doubting from you know, the tech vendor, as I mentioned, took a tech early on. They were always really uplifting, but they made us sort of see the challenges to those 10 manufacturers we visited, to tailors that we visited in a trip to New York to just understand our thought process was, if you can learn more and understand tailoring well, then you can tackle it from the beginning. And I remember this one tailor specifically said it takes me three to four fittings to get it right here with my clients. You're going to try to get it right on the first time digitally without seeing them, no way. And so I left that tailor meeting being like, man, what did I just get myself into? Are we? Are we really doing this? So yes, there was no shortage of doubters, and I don't blame them.

    Blair Petroni 53:31

    So have you gone back to that tailor and looked at him and said, How do you like them apples? I Hey, boy, you like apples? Yeah, how do you like them apples?

    Andre Ramirez 53:51

    Offer your offer your clients or jeans. Will make their jeans. We should one day, but no, we, we haven't.

    Blair Petroni 54:00

    I would, I would dead ass. Do that be like, I would just walk in and just drop a pair of jeans and just go, just walk out,

    Erin Cox 54:15

    the kind of people who, when you have the naysayers that are like, Oh, you told me I can't watch me. Or did that really give you pause?

    Andre Ramirez 54:24

    Watch me, I think it fuels us. Like, look, if anything is possible, if we've put people on the moon, if cars are driving themselves. Now, if, if we've advanced, how much we've advanced, like making custom jeans, sure on the spectrum of difficulties, like, maybe was difficult to be, but come on, like, it has to be possible. So it did fuel us, and it continues fueling us, but we're not the top people to them to go, like, rub it into people's faces. We'll, like, let it fuel us and then just continue going,

    Blair Petroni 54:55

    Yeah, love that. Ooh. Aaron, do you want to talk. Talk about, like, the value of customization and like, if things are more ethical, or if we want to call it like the great denim rebellion. Do you want

    Erin Cox 55:10

    to talk about that? Yeah, so we at the style rebellion, and just in life views in general, are huge fans of things that are ethical and things that are sustainable. And Blair talks all the time with clients about price per wear and how when you are making an investment, you want to make the investment and you want to wear it all the time, because when you do that, you get the cost down to pennies per wear. But when you're buying things that are poor quality, maybe it's dollars per wear because there's a hole in it after you've launched it once, and so at the end of the day, there's a price tag on your clothing, right? But the cost of that is so much more deeper. Or, excuse me, so it is. The cost of that is so much deeper. When you think about the environmental implications of clothing production, when you think about the waste and the over buying that we generate, and so hang on, coming back. So the challenges of shopping for and finding denim have implications that go far beyond our own emotional turmoil. Right. There is the time spent. There's materials for shipping, there's emissions, there is environmental thought of returns. I learned just this year that there are companies that will just write off your returns and trash them because the cost of washing and sanitizing and repackaging for sale is so significant, and they can write off the loss for their taxes. So for those of you, oh, I just said that. So here we are. Thank you for our editors today, right? So what is your what is your experience and your perspective on this, and how did that affect how you guys approached the process of of your company development and your denim manufacturing?

    Andre Ramirez 56:58

    Yeah, no, that's absolutely right, and it was a forefront and how we thought about things and sustainability and ethical production and ethical businesses. It's a spectrum. You can be all the way to like 0% to try to chase being 100% and I think our goal is always be improving right the way that we thought about it was, the business model in itself, lends itself to be a lot more ethical and sustainable to begin with, right? So it's made to order custom made means it also has to be made to order. All we stock are the fabrics and the buttons and the pocket lining and the labels, right? But nothing is pre made. And so that means that we actually don't make it until a customer has decided that they wanted to place an order, and which cuts out one of the largest issues in the fashion industry, which is over production. You can over produce for a few different reasons. A lot of reasons. You can over produce because you don't exactly know which sizes are going to sell, and so you have to, you don't want to run out of stock in and one size. So you kind of have to over produce. It's a classic newspaper salesman problem. Do you under stock or overstock? And typically, in a maximize sales world, maximize you know, the total GMV we can do, brands will fall in the spectrum of over producing, not under. And so what do you do with that? A lot of brands will then, if they can't liquidate it in clearance channels, or if their brand doesn't align with liquidating it in clearance channels, it'll literally get disposed brand new garments in the hundreds of 1000s, disposed or incinerated overseas and the industry doesn't want you to know that that's a thing. So the model itself eliminated over production, which was a huge first step in the right direction. The next step was, okay, if we have a choice to source materials, let's go ahead and source the best materials. There's materials, denim, buttons, packaging that is more or less sustainable, right? So we decided from the very beginning we wanted to partner with the best materials. We're already starting from zero anyway, and we're not optimizing to sell the cheapest product we possibly can. So let's just go ahead and find great quality materials that are made well and made sustainably,

    Blair Petroni 59:23

    and yours are dead. It's dead stock. Is it dead stock denim?

    Andre Ramirez 59:26

    Am stock? It started as dead stock. It did. We would in LA we'd work with a dead stock denim broker, and essentially the over production runs from Mills, he would buy and resell. So that's exactly what we worked with. As we scaled and grew, we realized that was not going to be possible, because consistency is key, and denim has a lot of complexity and nuances on how it shrinks, how it drapes, etc, that you just can't be switching. Fabric and mill every month because they're out of it. So that model served us for a part of our journey. It no longer serves us now, but it was part of our, part of our journey. And so we then went back to the drawing board and said, Okay, what are the mills? What are the denim mills that we want to partner with that do good work? And we found a few. And it all goes from how the cotton is grown to how it's you know, how it's spun, how it's died, how much water is used in the dying process, what type of dyes and fixins and toxic chemicals or lack thereof, they use. And so we work with with some of the best mills out there, there's a grading standard called a wecotex and one of the most sort of commonly seen if you're if you're doing good work when it comes to textiles and materials, is a wecotex standard. 100 and all our all our fabrics, sort of have that certification, which is really cool. Then finally, so materials, right? Recycled and compostable materials, paper, etc, instead of using sort of the cheapest type of plastic you can buy, sort of, etc. Then the third component of sustainability that we think about a lot is the people, the people that make your jeans. And that's something that, to Aaron's point earlier, shows itself in the price tag in hidden ways. You can either exploit people or you can treat them like humans, the way that we all deserve to be treated. And so we wanted to make sure that the vendors in the factories that we were working with, we'd be proud to literally go show the people making your jeans. And you can go on our Instagram and we post videos of our factory workers. We have dinner, breakfast with them when we go visit the factory. There's an amazing video that Danny put together of all of us waving like there's nothing to hide, like we will go to the factory and literally put you on live stream if we want to, because there's nothing to hide. We feel really proud about how they treat them.

    Blair Petroni 1:02:08

    To say that I love your videos on I totally shed a tear, but I'm a big softie. I totally shed a tear, and I liked every video that you guys had of like your people and your factory. It is so precious, you guys. They are so hard working, and they look so sweet. And every single person that was on the camera, I was like, I just want to go give them a hug, like they just look like they love their job, too.

    Erin Cox 1:02:34

    That's true. This is Blair, and I getting choked up, non sequitur, but my first exposure into the realm of fashion and style was being an Independent Ambassador for a company called New Day collection that works with artisan business owners in developing countries and sought to give them a marketplace for their goods so that they were able To create dignified in their communities and the the highlight of that time was being able to travel to Guatemala and meet the women who beaded the jewelry with their little babies running around, and meet the women who wove the textiles on a backstrap loom like out in the garden with their families, and just see just the Joy and dignity that was provided for them through that. So the human cost of the things that we consume is significant. And this is my natural essence coming through. But I mean, there is, there is enormous need and space for us to to love other people and to love them now, and their work, and how we treat their work is a very important way for us to do that.

    Speaker 1 1:03:49

    We didn't mean, didn't

    Andre Ramirez 1:03:53

    interrupt you, added that was, that was, that was wonderful, and it takes work to do so, because, naturally, people wanting things as cheaply as possible, as fast as possible, right? And that doesn't lend itself to, we're here for a reason, to treating people well. So it takes work to do that, and that was one of the core pillars early on, right? So that was our framework for what we call sustainability and ethical manufacturing and running an ethical business. And there's more to go here. I mentioned there's a spectrum. There's more to go here to figure out. You know, one thing that we transparently want to continue working on and improving is, okay, we do offer free remakes and alterations on your genes, because if for whatever reason, we didn't get it right the first time, we don't want you feeling like, oh my god, now I'm stuck with this, like we are committed until you feel amazing in them. And so when we do have remakes and alterate, well, alterations just get altered, and they get sent right back to you. Let's say the waist was a little bit big and it just needs to be cinched in. Or, let's say you. Want to hem it in an inch perfect. It gets altered that's included with your purchase. It gets sent back right back to you for remakes. We have those garments, right, and so we want to find ways to deploy those garments in in really sustainable and ethical ways as well. Historically, we've done things like recycling them, and they use those recycled fibers for different applications, like they'll make even insulation for low, low cost housing out of those fabrics. But there has to be a way to to sort of do more there. And so we've been toying around with the ideas. I don't think anything ready to share there, but that's something that's on our radar, that we want to continue improving and and continuing our journey on the spectrum of being an ethical and a sustainable business.

    Erin Cox 1:05:45

    That's, thank you for sharing all of that with us. That's, that's some solid stuff right there. Like I just enormous respect for you guys and how you are thinking about things and moving through this, and not just taking the cheapest, easy, easiest, most profitable way through. So thank you for that.

    Blair Petroni 1:06:05

    Yeah, agreed, and that was one of the things that I of the 8000 things as I was like, reading through the names website before I came to Erin, like, I don't know if Aaron remembers the day that I texted her. And I was like, Oh my God, you will not believe what I found. And just started like, I think it was actually a voice message. And I was like, guess what? And just started like, telling her all the things that was incredible about your website, and I loved that you guys talked about your people, and how you were dedicated to your people, and you were dedicated to making this incredible product, and that you had the remake guarantee that was on the website. So it was, as we looked at everything, it was literally a no brainer. It was like, if it's custom made to you, they're incredible quality. It's at an affordable price. And the reason why I say some people are going to think I'm insane, they're really Blair. $200 isn't affordable. I completely disagree with you. If you're going to be buying a $30 $35 pair of target jeans every single year, and you only end up wearing them for a year because they're a piece of crap, and they end up wearing out. Then you buy one pair of names for $200 at the end of 10 years, let's say and your names may be only last you 10 years. Highly doubtful. They're gonna last you way longer than that, because the denim is way more premium. But let's just call it 10 years. Okay, you spent $200 over 10 years, but you've spent about 303 50 at Target over 10 years. Guess what? Your dollar has gone way further with that one pair of jeans. Let's talk about economics, guys, that's just smart business. That's being a really smart consumer, that's being a smart shopper, that's ethical, if you want to know where your dollar is going, which a lot of consumers today are really concerned about, that. They're really concerned about knowing where their dollar is going, who their dollar is funding, all of these like traces that they can see with their money. Why not go with the company that is like, Excuse me, but like, opening the kimono, so to speak, like you guys have nothing to hide, which was something that was so refreshing for me. So I really appreciated it. I want to get into tailoring really, really quickly. Because if you are, let's just say, like able to find a pair of jeans. Because this is what I tell my clients anyway, when it comes to pants, that you as a human being are going to need to buy a pair of pants. It doesn't even matter what kind, usually a size, potentially two larger, and then they're going to need some type of tailoring to actually get to the size that you need them to be on you. So you need to add anywhere between 20 and $100 worth of tailoring on your pants anyway to get them to fit you perfectly. Okay? So you have to make an investment on top of purchasing that pair of pants. You have to be committed to tailoring. Then you also have to make the investment in the item. So instead of that rigmarole of finding and tailoring clearly, with memes, you can just have custom made jeans. No, it's not good to be true, excuse me, no, it's not too good to be true. No, we're not dreaming. So talk to me about how which I could just tell people how it worked, but I want you to tell them how it works, about how you guys are able to accurately take measurements for clients.

    Andre Ramirez 1:09:47

    Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to and one quick comment here on tailoring, because, you know, nowadays it's funny. Now nowadays you do get internet trolls that will sort of write comments on your ads or on. Website, and that's probably one of the more common ones that we get. Why would I pay 200 and whatever, dollars on your jeans when I can get cheaper jeans and just go get them tailored? Because the quality is garbage. Quality is different. That's exactly right. There's some things that you can't tailor. You can't add length the pants, right? We have very tall women who love their names because they've never there we go, because 34 inch in teams aren't tall, like there's, there's real tall people out there. And consider 34 we've gotten 44

    Blair Petroni 1:10:32

    we love it. Oh, gorgeous.

    Andre Ramirez 1:10:35

    That's our record. We'll see if we beat it one day. But 44 is our record right now for an instant, and so you can't tailor that right. And then the last thing is, there's something to it being right out of the bag. Like, yeah, if I go order a coffee and I want an iced coffee, I could get a hot one, and then, and then myself have to go add a ton of ice. Or I could just get my iced coffee from the beginning. And that's the same thing. Like, just get it right from the first time. Why then have to go to a tailor and have them spend an hour there, go back to the fitting. Something didn't work, change it again, like just get it right from the beginning. But to answer your question, that was another journey. That was another journey. We actually started with asking people to measure themselves with videos that we had on the website. It was nine different points of measurement, and we had videos to show you how to measure yourself. What we ended up finding was measuring yourself is an awkward and difficult thing to do. People are bad at it. Yeah, it's not it's not easy. I don't blame people. What what do you wear when you're measuring yourself? Where exactly in the waist do you measure yourself? You're not in front of a mirror, so you can't see if it's level when you're measuring yourself. And so we found that something wasn't clicking right. People would do it, but either the measurement sort of seemed off, or the real symptom was there was more remix than we would like. They'd say, Hey, I got it back, and it's it's not sort of fitting right here, and most of the time it could be attributed to the measurements that were fed in weren't right. So we knew, Okay, this is not tenable. This is not sustainable to do. It's not going to work. So we went and said, Okay, is there technology that that can play a role here that facilitates this? And so we have, over the past four years, because that was a year in tested, rigorously tested, a ton of different what we call the mobile body scanner to find the right one. And so the way it works is, you download the app, it takes a front picture of you, a side picture of you, and then you send it over to us, and it processes your images into measurements. And we actually have human review in every single order to make sure that we have that extra layer of quality control to adapt for maybe how your stance was, to adapt for maybe the clothing that you were wearing. It says form fitting, but if it's a little bit looser than where we're doing a manual review to make sure that the measurements that it's giving is, you know, are actually correct. But we've tested at least six to seven different versions of these mobile body scanners and and only found one that works, that works well, that works reliably, and it's the one that we use. The other ones, you know, oh, we're 90 to 95% accurate. Well, that 10% can translate to three inches very easily. And three inches off is useless. Like, if it's going to be three inches off in your waist, just go buy off the rack and tailor it three inches. Like, that's not what we're promising here. We need 99% accuracy, right? Not 90 or 95% accuracy. And that was another sort of challenge to solve, even though we weren't building the tech itself, even just finding the right tech to use was a challenge. And testing, and to this day, we always test. We need to stay sort of on top of what's the latest and greatest and continuing to make sure that the technology we are using is still the right one and sort of the best one. And so that's how it works. And and we're super fortunate to have them as as partners. We're super fortunate to to be able to have this that is sort of the backbone to everything. If you don't have measurements that are accurate, you don't have custom genes, and so it's so important. We're really grateful for it.

    Blair Petroni 1:14:21

    So if you guys want to hear about my experience with this app, shut up, Aaron. Shut up, Aaron.

    Erin Cox 1:14:30

    Because Aaron, I was gonna tell the story of you weren't. I was about to be like, do we need to talk about, Oh, shut

    Blair Petroni 1:14:35

    up, Aaron, yes, we have to tell this story. So I am. There's a reason why I have my admin Lauren. There's a reason why I have my incredible Mikey, who does all of the social media. There's a reason why Aaron is like podcast queen. There's a I have to have my people, otherwise I can't run anything, Andre just too many squirrels, because I have to. Take care of the clients. And so when we, when Aaron and I were in Palm Springs, out with our clients in early November, we were in November, um, she looked at me, and she was like, you have to take your names measurements. And I was like, You're right. I need the pants. And so we, I was like, how do we do this? And we looked over and, like, there was the Lulu outlet. And we, like, ducked in the Lululemon outlet, literally grabbed some leggings, went in the dressing room. And you guys, here's how cool this goes. Okay, I opened the email that neem sent me, and they were like, okay, download this little app. And so I downloaded the measurement app, and then it connected to my order on neems, and it said, Okay, now here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna put your phone against the wall. And so here's Aaron, and then one of our friends, who's also one of my clients, in the dressing room together, and this is the, my God, y'all, this is hungry. It's ridiculous. The and this is probably the biggest dressing room I've ever seen. Quite frankly, it was really, was really big dressing room. And, like, you put your phone on the floor in front of you, and it's like, leaned up a certain number of degrees, and you, like, stand at the front. And it's like, put your legs here and here, and it takes the photo of you. And then it's like, okay, now stand to the side and put your arm out, and then it took the photo right there, and then it lets you, like, like, move in the little line. So it's like, okay, this is actually where my leg is, and this is actually where my arm is. And then we put the leggings back and we walked out. We didn't buy the leggings from Lulu because we didn't need them. We just looked at the guy, and we were like, thank you. We just lucked out. But to to continue with what Andre says you guys about having people double check the measurements in order to make sure that one of my measurements for my waist was correct. Because I asked them for like, such a high rise on my pants, they actually had someone email me and say, Hey, girl, we want to double check what your waist measurement was. Can you actually take a soft waist tape, like a tape measure, and then measure your waist for us and take a photo of that so that we can make sure that your jeans are perfect? And I was like, I love this process. This is amazing, because it just speaks to the quality and how precise that you guys want to be in all of this. So I just wanted to give you, number one a giggle, but number two, the feedback of like, what it's been to work through my genes, and it's been really fun,

    Erin Cox 1:18:01

    and I would say in all between being in the dressing room, changing the clothes, taking the video and then answering the email, you probably invested seven minutes of your life. I mean that like maybe five Yes, including changing the clothes here,

    Blair Petroni 1:18:18

    yeah, yeah. And when

    Erin Cox 1:18:21

    you think about how long it takes to go in and try on pairs of jeans, like, yes please.

    Blair Petroni 1:18:28

    And that's the thing too. Is, the is, if you're one of those people, that's like, oh my god, I'm gonna feel like crap when I take the measurements, and it's gonna take so long. And no, you guys like, it was literally a nothing burger. And when I say nothing burger, I mean less than a nothing burger. I literally put on some damn leggings, and I like, tucked in my shirt, and I literally just, like, stood at the front and I stood at the side, and it was like, great job. And then it just sent my measurements in. Like it was 30 seconds. It was fine.

    Andre Ramirez 1:19:00

    So, and one thing that I want to even emphasize here for listeners, you know, one thing that we do want to improve with the workflow here is not having y'all edit the points, because it does give you that option. But the reality is, that's responsibility that shouldn't fall on you, that many people actually might not even know, technically, what that means or how to account for it. So because every scan is manually reviewed by our team, who are experts at doing this, you don't have to do it. You can literally just skip it. And it doesn't mean that it's going to be off. It means that we're going to do it. So don't even spend those 30 to 60 seconds trying to guess and sweat. Oh, am I placing the points right? Like we've got it.

    Blair Petroni 1:19:41

    That's a really, really good point, you guys. I am just ridiculous. And once I saw the fact that I could edit the points, I was like, zoomed in and it was like playing with it. So yeah, no, don't if you are not. Type A ridiculous like I am. Please do not be that person. I'm sure Andre's team would probably prefer that you were not that person like I am. Yeah, 100 100% Absolutely. That's funny. So okay, understandably, you said that this month has been absolutely crazy, and I would imagine that you're referring to the fact that you've had such a mass amount of orders that the runtime for production is probably a little bit longer right now than it normally is. But let's talk about a normal runtime, right? But to be fair, you guys had, I would imagine an amazing November because you were burning a damn good Black Friday sale, and you guys plastered it everywhere. I saw it everywhere, dude. But okay, how long does the process take? Like, from the second that I click the button to the second that I take my measurements and you guys receive them. Like in theory, what's the what's the time?

    Andre Ramirez 1:21:09

    Yeah, so in theory, you can do your part of the process immediately. You can place your order, and you'll get that email with next steps to download and take the measurements within the minute. And so if you go ahead and just say, I'm going to knock this out all right now, you can be done with the process in minutes. Our timeline starts from when we have your final set of measurements, right? Because if you haven't scanned yet, or if we did, if our team did, go ahead and ask for a double check on something. And guys, we do that because we care like, we don't want to just send it like, oh. We think this is right, just send it. No, we do it because we want you to receive a great pair of jeans and little parentheses there. Once you go ahead and do that takes anywhere between two and three weeks during normal runtime, normal operations. And we've even had in the last month, if the stars sort of aligned, right, even less than than two weeks, if it's gotten, if the sort of, your steps of the process were done before. And there was sort of a little gap into how everything was flowing, like, it's been as low as, like, you know, 11 days, which is, you know, a few days short of two weeks, on average, two to three weeks to the moment it ships. And yes, right now we're running probably an extra week. Call it three to four, because we were so lucky to do even better than we expected. And so we did, you know, we didn't want to say, No, you can't have you know, you're really excited. You've been waiting all year to hopefully see if we were running a Black Friday sale to make it maybe a little bit more accessible for you. But no, we're going to stop taking orders be we didn't want to do that. We realized so many people were waiting for that moment, and so instead, we are really grateful with for how November went, and it's ticked up our regular processing time, maybe by a week, three to four weeks total, but we hope to get that down very soon and build ahead for next year. Sort of anticipate if things do go even better than we expect for next year, how can we build the capacity and be ready for it and sort of have that flex capacity to make sure that we can maintain those production delivery times.

    Blair Petroni 1:23:24

    To me honest though, you guys, I mean, I know that Amazon has turned us into an immediate gratification society, and so has like curbside, and it's just getting worse and worse with the fact that, you know, we can like anything on demand on like a movie or something like that, but the fact that you could have custom made jeans to your house within 11 days, at worst, four weeks there, most of us have been waiting 40 years For this moment, like for four weeks at worst. Sounds like a pretty manageable thing, tbh. Do you know what I mean?

    Erin Cox 1:24:11

    I'm on board with that. I'm absolutely on board with that.

    Andre Ramirez 1:24:15

    Do you know I mean, like you framed it that way?

    Erin Cox 1:24:18

    I don't really need it between four and 8am on Wednesday morning. Yeah, I probably won't find it until at least 10, but, but quite honestly, to have something that's made for your body, if you have you ever tried making garments or sewing anything? My mom was at. My mom was a quilter. My grandmother's a quilter. So even just the process of sewing straight lines enough times to produce a blanket, takes an enormous quantity of time. But like, I remember seventh grade home economics class, and we got our little like sewing machine operator's license, and going through the process of cutting out the paper pattern and laying it on the fabric and marking it and cutting out the fabric, and then just the number of steps and. Amount of time it takes, and the number of places that you can make an error that could be catastrophic, right? Are significant. And so to Blair's point, you're getting a custom made pair of jeans. That probably is. You can't do it in four weeks. Let me just put it that way,

    Blair Petroni 1:25:18

    I couldn't do it in 40 years like, No, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that neems exists.

    Andre Ramirez 1:25:25

    It's amazing. It's amazing. I five years into this, am still amazed every time we go to the factory and you see the number of steps that it takes, the number of hands that touch your jeans, the number of, like you said, areas where something could go wrong. It is such an appreciation for what goes behind, making your jeans and then you sit back and say, How the hell do brands sell this for $35 at a profit? What does that mean for you know, sure, they're running things super efficiently and they've got their their processes down, but but also how the math doesn't math for so many hands and so many steps to be involved in this process, and for it to be that cheap, it is mind blowing. So one thing that we don't commit to doing it in 2026 but it would be very cool to do so, is we're envisioning, at one point doing this like give away the sweepstakes where we'll randomly select, there'll be a golden ticket, a Willy Wonka golden ticket. And eventually we want to bring, like, a few lucky customers, or a few lucky people to the factory to sort of see behind the scenes. Let's go spend two to three days in Mexico City, an amazing place, amazing food, amazing things to do. Go see the factory. Go see jeans being made. Maybe go see your jeans being made. Touch and see them and feel them, because you can't imagine it. You can't imagine the process behind it.

    Blair Petroni 1:26:49

    Can we come as the podcast? We'll pay our own way. Just come see it like I love how it's made. That was I worked in manufacturing as one of my one of my fortune five hundreds, and the How It's Made aspect, like I worked for Mitsubishi Caterpillar, and being like watching them create forklifts, the number of people that are like Blair you know a lot about forklifts. You know a lot about, like, big earth movers. And I'm like, they're very cool. Have you not seen these things?

    Erin Cox 1:27:29

    Our sons think they're fantastic.

    Blair Petroni 1:27:32

    Being in factories you guys is incredible, just like watching how things work and how they're created. And, yeah, do you guys have like, CNCS in there? Like, CNC machines.

    Andre Ramirez 1:27:46

    We don't have CNCS. We don't have okay, I was gonna

    Blair Petroni 1:27:49

    be like, is that what your Tesco thing is? Okay, nevermind. Just kidding. Ignore me. Production team, feel free to edit that out, because I'm an idiot, but that's fine. I'm just asking. Just asking.

    Erin Cox 1:28:01

    Okay, so I want to talk about these for a minute, because these are one of my most favorite pairs of jeans.

    Blair Petroni 1:28:09

    Andre's face is like, what are you holding up?

    Erin Cox 1:28:13

    So I think that every once in a while we find the needle in the haystack, right? Like you find the pair of jeans, and you're like, do I buy seven pairs of these so that I have them forever? What happens when they wear out? Because, you know, they won't be available again. But you guys have a solution for that too. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how I get to keep these forever?

    Blair Petroni 1:28:40

    The coolest thing ever. You guys listen up on this.

    Andre Ramirez 1:28:44

    Yeah, I love that. And bear with me. One second I'm putting my Do Not Disturb on, because one thing that is both fabulous and really annoying about Apple connectivity is you get calls, and it just interrupts your your screen here. So Do Not Disturb here, because you're an

    Blair Petroni 1:29:00

    important man. Andre

    Andre Ramirez 1:29:05

    Yes. You're referring to our clone, my jeans program, yes, and and we didn't start with that either. Again, goes back to the same theme of take a step and learn and see what the market asks for, and then take the next step. So there's a there's a few things here that we wanted to solve. Even when you do find that needle in a haystack, there's another problem that you're presented, which is either they can discontinue it or change the fit. So many people we've gotten said, I used to have these jeans always fit me perfectly that I reordered the same one, and now they're different. What happened? And that happens, the Fit changes, or they're discontinued. And so we had customers say, Hey, I love the idea. Or people, they weren't customers yet, I love the idea of custom made jeans, but I actually have a pair that I already love. I just can't get them anymore. Can you do anything? And that's when the light bulb moment went on, you know? What if we could? Clone your jeans using our fabric, you know, using our materials, but at least sort of the fit and the drape and that thing that you love about them. What if we could do that? And that was a whole new development, a whole new process to figure out, you know, from okay, how do we get your genes that to us at scale, what does it even look like cloning them without taking them apart? We don't have to go ahead and undo the seams to measure. You know, we actually return them to you in the exact condition that you sent them to us. To what does that mean for what we physically measure on the pant versus what the digital pattern has to be? And how do you incorporate shrinkage of the fabric so it ends up being the same thing. And that was all Danny. That was all her brain child, and her doing. She's done an amazing job bringing that program to life and and it's, it's really popular. I'd say it's about 20, 2015, 20% of our business is clone my jeans. And the other sort of 8085, are the custom made jeans. You'll send it to us. We'll measure it, we'll clone it, we'll make the new pair, and then we'll ship you both pairs back to you. And it's really cool. You hold them together, and it's like the perfect outline of each other. It's so cool to see those genes brought back to life.

    Blair Petroni 1:31:18

    What happens if they're like, if the for example, what if you've gained weight and the genes that you sent in were too small? Or what if you've lost weight and the genes that you've sent in are too big? How do you guys manage those two scenarios?

    Andre Ramirez 1:31:32

    Yeah, so if you want to make any changes to it, and it's not a direct clone, or even a direct clone, like clone it and just add an inch to it, because I want them to be a little bit longer. If it's anything that requires adapting, then we'll ask you to do the body scan as well, right? So that we can merge the hybrid of your genes, which are the silhouette and sort of the pattern and the overall shape of them, with your measurements, so that we can adapt that pattern and sort of resize them or remake them for you. That's not a problem. That's that's semi common.

    Blair Petroni 1:32:09

    I was born in the right century. I don't really enjoy the things that are currently happening right now, but the technology of when I was born. I was born at the right time, because this is so fire, like, it's so cool. It sounds like science fiction. I love it. It's so neat.

    Erin Cox 1:32:33

    That's awesome. I love that. And so like, and there's no trademark or copyright or any like weirdness that you guys have to consider. You're just able to like do, to do, here's your here's your clone. No denim was harmed in the producing of this new pair.

    Andre Ramirez 1:32:50

    No denim was harmed. You know, we're not, we're not claiming their brands or putting their brands labels. It's obviously a pair of jeans. We're just replicating the shape of it for you. And there are some, you know, there are some within the boundaries, some some limitations. It's still a pair of neems, right? So one of the things that you know, we don't do yet, and we haven't decided if we'll do in the future, is exactly cloning the wash. For example, there are literally 1000s of washes that you can put on a pair of Jean. You can alter the formula any which way. It's a continuous spectrum. You can add things, remove things, leave them longer, leave them less time. Use stone, not use stone. Treat it before, treat it after. And you can have millions of washes. And so we replicating a wash, and doing that for every single different pair would would be very difficult and introduce sort of a ton of variance. So right now, you choose between our washes that we offer, light, medium, dark, rinse, charcoal, black ecru, and you can sort of clone the silhouette of it with with one of our washes. And a lot of people are very happy, because they are classic washes. They're washes that you just can't go wrong with and they look beautifully. The other thing is, like, super custom design. So for example, there will be brands out there that in the back pockets will embroider it a certain way, and that's their signature mark. So we're not going to do that because we're not selling their, you know, we're not claiming to be them, right? So you're getting a clone of the silhouette. It's going to fit you the same way. You're gonna love them, but at the end of the day, it's, it's still a pair of names.

    Blair Petroni 1:34:25

    What is the which? Because you talked about customization, and Aaron and I were like, I wonder what the craziest customizations that they've ever been asked for are. Do you have, like, a pair of jeans or just, like, a thing that people have asked you for, whether you did them or you didn't that like, sticks out to you, or you were like, what right?

    Andre Ramirez 1:34:46

    Let me. Let me go back to the to the mental list. Here we've had and some are really heartwarming, some are really cool, like this one is, you never even think about it, but it's so cool that we could do it. We've had wheelchair. Users say, Hey, can you leave back pockets out? Because when you're sitting on a wheelchair all day, it actually gets really uncomfortable, and so jeans without back pockets for that functional reason, 100% we'll leave them off for you, like, if that's gonna make you more comfortable, all power to you. So that's really cool that we could do that for people and something you never even think about.

    Blair Petroni 1:35:19

    Can I ask you a marketing question? Yeah, can I can you mark it? Did you guys go in and make sure that you actually made like a blog page about that so that you could optimize it for SEO for the ADA community?

    Andre Ramirez 1:35:35

    We haven't done that yet. We haven't done that yet. You should

    Blair Petroni 1:35:38

    get asked do that like in an hour, yeah? Yeah, because that shit would go viral for them.

    Andre Ramirez 1:35:44

    Okay, no, it's a great idea. What are other ones? A very common one. So this is not crazy, but it is common. Is like, hey, as women, when we buy jeans, as I understand it, as many people have told me, these pockets are just there for looks and design. I can't actually use these front pockets Correct. Can I actually have man pockets in my jeans? And it's like, well, you can have pockets. Let's just call them as deep as you want them. Let us know how if you actually want your pockets to be functional, and we can make that for you. So that's a pretty common request that people get. It's really funny, and then all sorts of other types of designs. Like, we don't do it anymore because we can't at scale, but we've done like sides. We actually had this one customer that wanted a Velcro side pocket for his wallet, right at the level of just above his knee, sort of lower to mid thigh on the side that he could slide his wallet in, and we literally custom designed it on our digital CAD system and made it for him. Now, when we have those types of requests, we unfortunately can't take them on, but when we did when we were smaller and had more time on our hands, we would do them.

    Blair Petroni 1:37:03

    That's so cool and so fun and so random. I love that, honestly, you got, you got my marketing wheels turning at that Ada opportunity. I love that. That's so fascinating. A dude, you need to run with that shit. And if you I'm serious, like, just create a whole ass page and optimize it for SEO all around that. I mean, sorry, I don't. I try not to give advice, but my marketing shit runs deep. But I guarantee you that there's a whole community that like needs that, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. That's amazing.

    Erin Cox 1:37:48

    That's an incredible opportunity to start. I'm thinking back to nursing school, where they, like, were so particular about how you made the beds and no seams and no wrinkles because of pressure ulcers. And so I'm sitting here, like sitting on that all day long. Has got to be really miserable, right? So, right, right. Take that away, and here we go. I love that.

    Blair Petroni 1:38:08

    Yeah, my brain is like, on that one amazing. Oh, man. I love this. Love it. So, okay, do you guys plan or do you have any plans on, like, expanding your product lines, your fabrication offerings, like, what's what's on the horizon?

    Andre Ramirez 1:38:29

    Yeah, yeah, absolutely, there's so much planned, which is exciting. I think we've just tapped to tapped the surface here. So there's a few things we want to expand into product. For sure, we want to stay focused on bottoms for a good chunk of time, just because we've, we've mastered that we were mastering, and we have mastered it. And there's a lot that you can do there. There's no need to really go into tops just quite yet. And we don't want to do something prematurely and not be great at it. So, yeah, you know, within bottoms, you can do Limited Edition denim designs. You can do corduroy during the fall. You can do geez, velvet. You can do custom colors that are seasonal colors. You can do different silhouettes. Obviously, you can do denim skirts like MIDI and Maxi, sort of denim skirts. We do have shorts. We have denim shorts. You can do chinos for men. So there's a lot in the bottoms world that we're going to be diving into as early as q1 of 2026 that we're super excited to expand into. Like I said, tops are tops are not in the picture for a while, but eventually, we do want to be your go to place, to have your core closet covered in a way that is going to fit you perfectly, where it's like, okay, I sort of need these core items. I know where to go. It's made for me. That's sort of our long term vision. We also are playing a lot with channels, you know, right? Now we've been e commerce only, and there's different channels to and growth opportunities that have been really exciting in some of the early metrics. So in October of this year, we did our first pop up. We did a pop up in Chicago. Or a lot of Chicago listeners will tell me that wasn't Chicago, that was Winnetka. So going back to internet trolls, a lot of common saying, That's not Chicago, but if you can drive there within 45 minutes, you know we were traveling from from Austin. So it was Chicago to us, and we studied in Chicago, and we still sort of called it Chicago. But anyway, we did our pop up there. And what was fascinating was how many people said, I've been we've been following you. I've been following you for quite a while. I just haven't been able to pull the trigger without seeing and feeling in person. You know, it's a very tactile experience. Do I want stretch or non stretch? What does that actually mean? Can I feel it, etc. Can I see what the washes look like in person, and that's not a that's not an insignificant amount of people that need that in person experience to feel comfortable. That's why you see retail after covid, you know, really came back in a strong way, and now it's a steady state of E commerce and sort of in person retail having a healthy balance to each other. So that pop up went really well we realized this opportunity, and was what was crazy and surprising to us. We had two questions in mind. We had said, Okay, out of the people that RSVP, how many people are actually going to show up? And then out of the people that show up, how many are actually going to buy? We put some wild guesses, but it was the first time we did it, so it was wild guesses. The thing that really surprised us was, out of the people that came, 98% bought. This wasn't a window shopping. This was, I am interested. I need this. I just need to get over the hump in person, and I'm going to buy. I think, out of all the people that came, like, two didn't buy, and a lot of people bought multiple pairs. So that was so surprising, because you don't see that in regular stores. You get a lot of window shoppers. You get a lot of of sort of people just walking in. And so that's something that we need to really expand over the next few years, whether it's just more pop ups or eventually actually having in person and in person presence. You know, we're toying around with the idea of deploying these digital kiosks in retailers, think of if every Nordstrom store, Nordstrom, if you're hearing this, this is an amazing thing that we need to work on. If you section, I

    Blair Petroni 1:42:36

    have an inn at Nordstrom, do you? Yeah,

    Andre Ramirez 1:42:40

    very cool. Well, what do wholesalers, what do retailers need? They need, obviously, to give customers an amazing experience with products that are going to make them happy and get them reason to come back, but hopefully in a way that they don't have to carry stock, because going back stock is expensive. You don't know what you're going to sell, you don't know what you're going to be left with, and you have to outlay that cash at some point, a digital kiosk experience where you can come in, browse, build your jeans on this kiosk. Next to the digital kiosk, there is a sample rack of the different washes and fabrics and silhouettes, so you can get an idea of, okay, this is what I'm building, and I'm seeing it here, right next to me. Do I want stretch or do I not non stretch? Do I want medium or do I want dark? Ah, okay, I like this. Let me finish my selection, and then just get scanned in store, and when you leave, they should get shipped to your house in that two to three week timeline. That's an opportunity. Having our own store down the line is an opportunity, really creating a place to come and have an experience not just shop is certainly on the roadmap. So we're really excited about both product opportunities and channel opportunities as well.

    Speaker 2 1:43:54

    That's amazing

    Blair Petroni 1:43:55

    question. Have you guys thought about doing a road show? You?

    Andre Ramirez 1:44:02

    We've had a lot of people recommend it. We haven't pulled the trigger on yet, but I'd love to hear more about it from you.

    Blair Petroni 1:44:10

    We'll talk about it once we wrap. So, okay, we'll talk once we wrap. Yeah, I think, I think that would I mean with, just with the what you said based off of your numbers that ordered. The question I would ask you as a marketer is, why the hell have you not started figuring it out and started planning out your roots based off of certain things on your website that I would talk to you about, I love it. I love it.

    Erin Cox 1:44:45

    Yeah, this is one of those moments where, like, in five years, we're gonna get to be like we talked to them like before they exploded.

    Blair Petroni 1:44:52

    I know what you're talking about. I'm a friend now. I'm investing

    Erin Cox 1:44:57

    friend and family. Yet Are we just friends?

    Blair Petroni 1:45:00

    Yeah, he's like, I don't know How good's your road show idea. Like That depends. You might be family soon. Oh my gosh. Well, Andre, this has been so incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today, this, is there any more questions, Aaron, that you have? Like, I feel like I have asked this man with almost like, what's your kid's name gonna be, and can I have your social security number? Like, within like that.

    Erin Cox 1:45:35

    Oh, man, no. I mean I yeah, I think that we covered most of the things that we had put on on our product outline. So, I mean, I feel, I mean, I'm sure we'll hang up and I'll be like, oh shit. I wish. I should, wish I had, should have asked, man, I'm gonna well, but I have his email, so I get to be like, hey, Andre,

    Blair Petroni 1:45:58

    anytime glide into Andre's DMS.

    Erin Cox 1:46:03

    But no, I'm, I'm really excited about this for, I mean, like I said for myself, because I like some jeans, but I'm really excited about about it for our listeners and for followers and for your followers, and I'm really looking forward to getting to put together the, you know, the guide of how you shop based on your body structure, and looking at the washes by season, so that we can really just tailor like tailor and serve. So, so well. So what an incredible opportunity just just to connect and learn more about you guys and look ahead to the future. Love it.

    Blair Petroni 1:46:45

    Andre tell the people where they can find you from a social perspective. Where can they follow you guys?

    Andre Ramirez 1:46:51

    Yeah, so we are on Instagram under at neems jeans, N, E, E, M, s, j, e, a, n, s, fun fact on neems really quickly. What does that mean? I think that's one question we haven't talked about. The word denim in itself, comes from two words in French, de Nimes, which is from Nemes. There's a town in France called neems, n, i, M, E, S, which is where actually denim is thought to the fabric itself was thought to have been born from, which is why it's called denim. If you go ahead and spell n, I M, E, S, in America, you people will call you names, and that's not a very sexy sounding word. So we replaced the I M, yes with a double E, and we're neems Where denim was born. So neems jeans. You can find us on Instagram there. Our website is named genes.com Simple as that, but stick around for whatever Aaron and Blair recommend for how to get to our website, because we do have special things for listeners.

    Erin Cox 1:47:54

    So in our show notes, we will get the link to their website with Blair's code for your shopping and discounting pleasure, and we will for the video for our YouTube listeners. We will see if we can get that on the screen for you so you can go shop to your heart's content, right?

    Blair Petroni 1:48:11

    I should also probably actually, well, we need to say it verbally, guys, because there's going to be people that are just listening on the podcast Andre do we know what my code is? Is it just like May of 25 or something? Do we know what it is?

    Andre Ramirez 1:48:24

    I'm going to have to dig it up again.

    Blair Petroni 1:48:29

    I'm so sorry. Just me not knowing anything about what you and Aaron

    Erin Cox 1:48:32

    talked about. It's fine. We can find it. Y'all

    Blair Petroni 1:48:35

    take your time, by the way, like it's not, it's not that big of a deal, though. They'll edit all this out. It'll make it sound seamless.

    Andre Ramirez 1:48:54

    Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and drop it into the chat in here,

    Blair Petroni 1:49:02

    fire, you're the best. I appreciate you.

    Andre Ramirez 1:49:08

    And you guys, let me know too, if we want to try to shorten it to just Maeve and

    Blair Petroni 1:49:17

    then Jesus, yes, yeah, can we because what is the, what is the the stipulations around it, like it's, is it first pair, you get 20% off 20 what is it?

    Andre Ramirez 1:49:33

    Sorry, yeah, exactly. You're gonna get 20% off your order, which is awesome, because it's, if you get two pairs, it's 20% off the order. It's not just 20% off. Just 20% off one pair. You'll definitely want to use that code. We can play around with it to make it simpler. We'll also have it tied to a URL, so if you click the URL, it automatically sort of caches it and has it ready to apply. But for. The listeners, as you said, which is something important. Let's figure out what's the best way to shorten it and then say it verbally.

    Blair Petroni 1:50:07

    Is Maeve 20. Okay. Can we just do M, a, e, v, e, 22, zero.

    Andre Ramirez 1:50:13

    Let me look into it. I'm gonna have to get back to you on that, because on the discount side, that's 100% possible. Yeah. I just want to make sure that we can go ahead and use that, okay? And editors pause here for a second. I want to make sure that we can use that on the affiliate and commission side as well, that we can feed it or if it requires something different. So if that's what we want, Mave 20, let me just circle back.

    Erin Cox 1:50:38

    Okay, so, and then if we need to record a voiceover with the code we can we can probably do that quickly.

    Blair Petroni 1:50:45

    Okay, I'm gonna make the producers figure out how we're supposed to do

    Erin Cox 1:50:50

    that. I think they're on I think they're on top of it. I'll let

    Blair Petroni 1:50:54

    them figure out what that's supposed to be, because ideally it would be me talking right now about like, Hey guys, you're gonna get 20, but I'll figure that out.

    Andre Ramirez 1:51:03

    Why don't you do this? Why don't you say Mave 20, and you also say Maeve with these numbers, so that you have both filmed. Then if we can get Maeve 20, we'll do Maeve 20. I know I can definitely remove that the second word and just have Maeve. But why don't you do both that way we have it ready,

    Blair Petroni 1:51:21

    including Mave Melange, or just Maeve 43 9575,

    Andre Ramirez 1:51:26

    just the Maeve 43 9575, because I know that's for sure, we can do that and then one that's made 20. Okay, perfect, amazing.

    Blair Petroni 1:51:35

    All right, you guys. So Andre has been so kind to offer us a discount for you guys, and it's not just a discount off your first pair of jeans, which is, I believe, what's on the website right now, it's actually going to be a discount off of your entire first order. So let's say that if you decide to purchase multiple jeans on your first order, it's going to be 20% off the entire order. I don't know about you, pretty sure Aaron's about to go buy 43 pairs of jeans. So if you want to go ahead, yeah, highly likely. So if you want to go ahead and take advantage of this offer, once you check out at neems jeans.com you're going to fill in M, a e v e twenty.com that's Maeve twenty.com M, a e v e, twenty.com and then let me go ahead and do it one more time with the other one is

    Erin Cox 1:52:39

    it neems jeans.com/ jeans.com/no,

    Andre Ramirez 1:52:44

    actually, you'll just, there's no.com you'll use Mave 20 as so if you're going to click the URL, we're going to provide you the Laurel, and they can click it. If you just want to talk about the code, then it's Mave 20 at checkout. Use the code Mave 20 at checkout, but they

    Blair Petroni 1:53:01

    have to go to neem jeans.com to do that. Nemesheans.com Yep, yeah, that's why I said that.

    Erin Cox 1:53:07

    Aaron great, but you said Mave twenty.com as the code?

    Blair Petroni 1:53:12

    Did I Yes? Yeah. What an idiot. Yeah, Aaron's on it take 412 All right, guys, if you're gonna go ahead and take advantage of this offer today, and you're going to want to take 20% off of your entire order at memes, jeans.com, here's what you're going to do. You're going to type in Maeve 20. That's M, a, e, v, e, 20 at checkout. And that's not just on your first pair of jeans, like it's technically on the the memes website. It's going to be off of your entire order. So get as many pairs at the first checkout as you want to grab. That's Maeve 20 at checkout. Okay, let's do the other one. How was that? Did I fuck it up? Nope, okay, great. Okay, let's do the the really long. 4395 75 okay, cool.

    Erin Cox 1:54:19

    Alrighty. You guys code and they can cut it together.

    Blair Petroni 1:54:26

    I don't know. That's an Anthony question. That's an anti question. Okay, if you are looking for 20% off of your incredibly custom memes jeans, here's what you're going to do. You're going to use code Mave, 439575, at checkout at neems genes.com, that is m, A, E, V, e9, Fucking Jesus. Four. 395, 75 at checkout when you're working on your jeans with Nemes jeans.com and guys, this is completely different from the offer that neems has on their website right now, because initially you're just going to receive 20% off of your first pair of jeans with them, but with my code, it's off of your entire order. So put as many pairs as you want to within that first order. Make it happen. Y'all. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Andre you have been incredible. We are so grateful for you and all of your knowledge and to you and Danny for creating this company. Bless you.

    Andre Ramirez 1:55:48

    It's been a lot of fun. First podcast, actually. So a lot of fun. Really good meeting you guys in person or in virtual person. Thank you for having us. Had a blast. And yeah, you guys are friends now, maybe family?

    Blair Petroni 1:56:02

    Yes, yes. Maybe dude, I'll take a maybe family. It's fine once, once you see what we put together, we'll be family. Don't worry about it. But, uh, guys stick, stick around. You're gonna hear a lot more about names. And go check out the website immediately, and we'll talk to you soon. Pretty people, bye, bye, bye. Guys, no, yeah.

Blair Petroni