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Fokke de Jong

lines on the record: 92
first: 2023-05-01
most recent: 2023-05-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think most of it has to do because hard work and doing so much stuff all the time all over the place. And you always think as an entrepreneur, 10 years, I think that someday it's going to be less and less. But it never gets less because you also start doing more and more stuff again. And because the luck somebody always said, is with the hardworking because then you also increase the chances of getting lucky every now and then. If you sit on the couch and nothing happens, you're not going to get lucky. And also going against the grain a lot of times or following, you know, not the usual standard playbooks and not so much from an inheritance. We want to be different because you didn't have a choice. You had to be different or you had to be creative to. Get to an end goal. I think that's also the fun of it, right? At the end of the day”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think my son wants to be in, I think he's only choice is also being an entrepreneur because he's so stubborn. So I don't know if he wants to work in this business. And my daughter is very into design and so could be. But one or the two would want, that would be great. But I also have to say that I think the most fun of having a business is being able to build it yourself.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beginning where there were really babies and small, and you know, I didn't spend a lot of time with them. On the other hand, I very consciously spend a lot of one-on-one time on them when they got older. And I could do stuff with them and have experiences with them. I took them on traveling a lot with me. There are not a lot of kids that have been in so many countries, I think, before they were eight or nine.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I like to put my energy in there. And if you lose control or you have to really think about what it would mean if you change that, if you would still be able to put the same amount of energy in there. I'm not saying we're never going to do it or we're never going to IPO the business or maybe at some point I think it's good for the business or it's a safer, I'm almost 500 10 years but it's also you have to think about how we're going to bring the business into maybe a different stratosphere or whatever you call it But I want to be able to at least feel that I can attribute the same amount of energy to it every day.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, we get these coals all the time, of course. And it's always nice to talk to people and sort of to learn about how they look at your business, right? I mean, but from a personal side, I'm happy to say that I made my dough and I don't have to take money off the table. And on the business side, I had these conversations many times. And I have to always say that I ask myself. Because it sounds great, right? But it's important to understand why you like your business. I like to be in control, have the freedom. And running this business takes so much energy. It's 16 hours a day. There's always something going on.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the output of that technology would help us to create if you're shopping a certain item online, we could also immediately show you five different ways of wearing that item and actually be able to shop that look. And then we came out of the pandemic and we were doing all that kind of stuff. And then on top of that, a lot of people suddenly wanted to dress up and wear suits for all kinds of reasons. So we were selling a ton of suits. And on top of that, our whole elevated casual on how we invented that was also extremely successful.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made a polo or a crew neck or a shirt and then it's a jacket or, you know, the amount of options to go into this elevated sort of replacement of that moment, of that dress moment is suddenly endless. So we invented Look Builder where you could easily build your own looks.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we fought about is what does the new suit look like? People still want to have looks, right? And it's just going to get a lot harder for them because before it was a blue suit and a white shirt, and now it's suddenly trousers, chinos, white sneakers or slip-ons or whatever, five pairs of different styles of shoes. And then you can pair them with a...”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody's needing, you know, sure it suits whatever. By then, we've expanded our collection into way more stuff than just suits, right? We were in the more elevated casual part of stuff. But it's all. that you need if you go out, if you're social, if you're going on a nice date or a nice event.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did too much, and instead of gaining a lot of momentum and gaining scale, what happens is that your execution starts to suffer, your momentum starts to slow, and this big snowball that was rolling out of the mountain and accumulating a lot of that stops. And then you have to spend a few years of pushing it back in momentum again.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yo, it's a good strategy. No, definitely a good strategy. But what I said is, okay, when those rates were so low and money was abundant, you could, you know, suddenly from a constantly cash-trapped business, we raised a lot of debt and suddenly we had a lot of cash. I've never had, let's say, the 50 million just sitting on the bank account. And as an entrepreneur, you have endless IDs. You always think I can do this and I can do that and then I can do that. Naturally, that's always circumvented by not having enough money to do them all. So this change I opened for, okay, let's go full throttle. We open, we did a year when we opened, I think, 10 or 12 stores in the US when we only had 10 or 12. Then, you know, at the same point, we started, you know, figuring out and opening a women's line. And it was a few women's stores.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, you have to expand, but you also have to be careful of how to expand and what you do. Rates were extremely low, capital markets were flooded with cash. You could borrow a lot of money. Cheap to borrow money.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think at the time, you know, if I look at the business itself, we weren't actually too many countries where, you know, we opened our business in the US, but also we were in Germany, we're in Italy, we were in, you know, our business was inherently inefficient because we were in so many different places. But don't you have to go?”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, they always tell me I'm a folk, you cannot do that when you have 500 stores. I said, okay, well, you know, I'll figure that out when I have 500 stores, but I'm pretty sure that the only way to get there in our model is to make sure that we keep control of execution and excellence. Because otherwise I have to change my model, I think. I have to start, if I just put a product in a department store, why would somebody buy our product and not something else? The only way of doing that is then start spending huge amount of money on advertising.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if it actually limits scalability. What it does do, it underpins sustainability. I think with doing that we can protect the brand, we can protect what actually drives us and what drives us as a brand. They always say, I go to my stores Six months. I'm not saying all the stores, but probably 80% of them. Of course, we celebrate everybody's success, but everybody has to name two things that we can do better.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So this is a very high touch service model that is almost intangible connected to the product itself. You know, if I try to separate the two of them, it's going to give me a little short-term success. But in the long term, I don't believe that I can separate the two from them and be a very successful brand over a longer period of time.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well you could do that and you probably get some money and it's very different for different products. I think Michael Kors is very successful in the accessory business and handbags. You know, if you look at that business, the thing from a service perspective that you have to do is make sure you have a nice product and you have somebody in the store that gets you the right hand back from the back of houses and sells it to you. The problem with our product is, and the problem with our business is it is, and I would say the Goldman Sachs of retail. It's so execution intensive to do it right. You go to our store because you have a dinner, a date, an important event, meeting, celebration, whatever. Something that is important for you. So this person that is going to help you, you got to have trust with. This person has to develop some kind of relationship with you. Then they have to do all the pinning right, the measurements right. Then we have to alter it, or even if it's a custom made suit, make it for you. And it has to come back on time, and then we have to fit it again.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Built around following the built around Instagram pages. We work with them to create content, we train them on how to do this. So we build these career paths that are very, one is more operational and one is more creative in creating attraction with customers and creating looks and style. And that leads into the one path leads you could say at the end in the COO and the other path leads into a brand director position as in the top of the pyramid almost. Your point, what does retention mean? Retention means that you have to figure out how you can create growth for these people. So they also have a feeling that it's worthwhile for them to stay with your business.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of a, I would say, a mini influencer, but with a very big difference that you're able to book an appointment with you on the spot, on your Instagram.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're very clear about always, you know, you want a moon career, you want a sun career. The moon path is the mantra of the moon path is so we can only have eyes for our customers. And these are all jobs that make sure that everything works, that stuff is organized and stuff is managed and the roster is there and the product is in the store so that the other part of the business can focus on only one thing is styling customers and getting people into the door and creating attraction. And there we have very specific career paths that are, I think, new or different than other retailers. You can become a style expert in training other people, but you can also become what we call a key opinion leader where we train you in how to represent the brand on social media or on outside of the store where you basically become”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have what we call the sun and the moon path in our business, where the sun and the moon are both very important and it makes sure that we have life on Earth. We would freeze to death at night or we wouldn't have the tides. There would not be a life on Earth.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the most important thing is first your selection of people. You know, you gotta like your job. If you ask somebody at the end. Why do you work at Apple? They're not going to say how great their benefit packages and what the remuneration. They say, you know, I like to work here because I like the technology. I like the product. I want to be a programmer at some point. They resonate with the product. That's the same in our business. You want to work with us if you like to dress and style people and make them go out of the door to look good. That's where you get your energy from. Then it's about having a path for people, a career path for them.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, both jobs need a lot of training. Of course you have in a city like New York, you have tailors. So we were able to find them and train them into how we want to do the work. We have a relentless high-end training program where we bring everybody to our one-week onboarding program. When you finish that, you're brought into a store and you're paired with what we call a style expert. And you're getting for two months more and more and more in knowing all the details about style and about measurements and everything about the business. We don't spend the money on advertising. We spend the money on training our people. And we also follow the progress very carefully. We believe our store teams, we always say, are our marketing teams.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's finding quality staff and training them is the hardest part there is. And in the beginning, we were bringing people from Europe and training them and the tailors, but also especially our style experts on the storefloor. These are two different jobs in our business, right? Somebody is selling it and pinning it and doing the measurements and somebody is doing the actual work of doing the alterations and doing the sewing if it's a ready-to-wear suit that needs to be altered.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You returned it. But it was essential for us to do it. talk about momentum and that store was packed from the first moment and we had the first floor and then it was too small and we got the second floor and the third floor and the fourth floor and I think now it's it's six floors.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But okay, at least I'm going to have my opening and I'm going to keep my momentum, which is way more important right now. At the end of the day, we had our opening. We had a lot of people come in. It was fantastic. And the guy actually gave me my money back after three months”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This guy was having the baddest reputation you could ever imagine. And he tells me, well, how are you going to put that in contract? I said, I'm not going to put it in contract. I'm going to trust you. I don't think everybody anybody would have said that to him in a long, long time. So, you know, I said, he said, well, okay, I'm thinking I'm never going to get this 150,000 back.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shit, of course. I know Foda had everything done. This guy. Well, I said, don't worry about it. All the permits are getting done. Our architect is working on it. According to him, self-certified job, some phrasing I heard along the line. And it's going to be done. And I said, well, if you can have a way because it's not something that you can do, figure it out with my lawyer. Here's his number. Call this lawyer. He says, well, I'm going to go on a holiday today, so it's not going to happen. I'm like, okay, we need to find a solution. So I called his landlord Beck. I say, okay, I'm going to give you $150,000 as a deposit for me to open tomorrow and for you to allow me to do that. And if I close out the permits in two months, finally you give me the money back. And otherwise, you know, it's yours.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We found probably some kind of contractor, but it was probably the equivalent of the sopranos that wanted to do it without permit. So I opened this store. It's almost done. I mean, this is a dream. We're doing an opening. We have all kinds of press coming, you know, I think six, seven hundred people on the guest list, some really important people for the industry that we were able to get on the back of the Wall Street Journal article. This was the moment, right? And so two days or before opening, I get a call from this landlord and say, her gonna open tomorrow. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all done. I mean, big opening. Yeah, you still, I don't have your permit closed out, so that's not going to happen.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was phenomenal, right? And at that moment, you know, our website blew up and I'm like, okay, we got to capture this momentum. We can't wait until we have all the permits done because it's going to take two months to get a permit even and design some for all this store. We got to open this store now if we want to keep this going. So we did a quick design, had furniture made and shipped in a plane. All the lighting has to be done and walls had to be placed in. You know, something had to be done to that store because it was a mess”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then what happens was our actually one of these moments that you do a lot of hard work and sometimes you get lucky. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal that did a blind test on soothing. And we got out of that contest with a headline that a $600 suit supply suit was better or just as good as a $3,600 Armani. Was the review they wrote after they ordered some stuff online? We were not even open yet. We were just shipping already stuffed online to the US of Brooklyn.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And later, I found out why this was a handwritten piece of paper and why this guy gave me this deal because he apparently was the landlord from hell and there was no legit broker that actually wanted to work with this guy anymore in the whole state of New York.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10 year lease. Yeah, five years and put guarantees behind it and all that kind of stuff. So we're doing okay, but it was not like we were not able to do that. And so at some point I see this little handwritten piece of paper in a window on a second floor says Fourise and go up there's this sort of furniture store on the second floor and it's a little messy and I call this number and the guy, landlord of that building $250,000 and this landlord was very happy to give me a year lease with a six month break and if I couldn't make it after six months I could happily walk away $250,000. So, okay, it was not a shitty space. It was actually a nice spot, beautiful high ceilings, you know, something that could on the corner of Mercer and Brooms. It was actually a typical Soho loft space of 4,000 square feet.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most expensive, most competitive. I could say, well, you know, I'm just trying to get my feet wet here. And I didn't even know if we were actually going to be successful in the US, right? I just wanted to get started, right? So to get a little bit of experience, you know, see how many of all these warnings that people were giving me were actually true. Remember at some point we were walking through Soho and finding locations and at some point I was looking up because I forgot about being on the ground floor too expensive. It was customers millions in rent a year. I was never going to be able to millions.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was the biggest market. Everybody wants to be in the US because it's such a buying power. Of course, it's also an aspirational thing, right? You want to make it there and not just be a European brand. But it was also, you know, everybody was saying it's the hardest market to go into, the US, consumer market. It is so competitive. There's a lot of red tape down there. I think the amount of warnings that I got for going into the US was almost endless. But I was going there every now and then and looking around and I thought what we're doing is not really here. And I think at that moment also I felt that the market in the US was ripe for it, just getting it done seemed so hard, right? Yeah. And so expensive, I mean New York was, you know, London was expensive, but going into New York was a completely different bowl game.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The same as in Italy. You know, you could people that feel, say, hey, this feels like good fabric. And they fit it on and say, hey, this actually really feels good. So they think at the end of the day in London, the customer gave us the credibility.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first customers that you're getting are customers that are a little curious, right? They might not be The conformity driven people that are snobby and that they're just shopping on Sabel Row, I'm not going to get a customer maybe that wants to have that moment this big brand name and say, okay, about the, I don't know, the $5,000 Zenya suit or whatever, but you get the customers in the beginning, hey, you know, this is interesting. These guys are doing something new that helped us in London a lot because on one hand, you had these stores that had all these craftsmanship and you also had a lot of customers that actually knew a good product.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It started as in London, alike other stores we opened, it was more of a drip drip effect, right? There were a few people that came in that were surprised about the actual product and the actual quality that we're bringing for the price point. I call it the Heineken effect. And we have a beer brand here in Holland, Heineken. And for us here, that is sort of a great beer.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they were phenomenal. I mean, there still are. I mean, the pride of being part of that business and making this product. And, you know, if the head pattern designer wanted to explain something to the team or the whole factory floor, it was silent. They were all sitting around him and listening in all. I find it extremely impressive to see. I mean, everybody that discounts Chinese production, you know, it's, I don't think, know what they're talking about in a lot of cases.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dutch guy 19 years old, but he was. A handy, smart guy, you know, great pusher. And I just needed to have, I didn't need also somebody that was crazy enough to stay there, right? They didn't have a family or was tied into Europe. So I just needed a smart guy to sort of oversee.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yeah, yeah, I went on the plane five, six hours and then started to push and get things done and be there. And then I got somebody internally that was just out of university and working for us in the store. And I appeared to say a guy just come with me. Why didn't you stay here and just, you know, the only thing you have to do is make sure that these fabrics that are actually going into production and that we're and call me if there's anything going wrong. You know, this guy stayed there and stayed there, and slowly he actually helped us build up our whole production office in China. He learned Chinese in half a year.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All kinds of shit. They made all kinds of suits. And Jenny was, you know, the stars. seemed to align perfectly. So I thought, you know, guys, we're going to move to China, everything for the next season to China. Boom. But then, of course, we didn't figure out all the logistic parts and the fabric got stuck at customs for a month. Then, you know, this factory we weren't used in working for international clients yet. So they made it in the wrong model because there was stuff going wrong in translation. Then they had to send it out and it was stuck in customs again. There was so much stuff that needed to iron out from a logistic perspective. So everything was, you know, the quality was great. The craftsmanship was great, but everything else around it, it was a nightmare. I almost thanked the business with it.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We found the best factory in the world now our product can be so much better. And by the way, we can probably also make a little bit more margin on it. That was not the main driver, but... You know, still it was going to be more efficient. And we have enough production capacity there. The guys want to work with us because we're actually solving a problem for them because they needed some extra help. You know, food for the line. For the production”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I went into that factory with him and he gave me a tour. I was amazed. This was, you know, something I'm like, I've never seen so much quality and so much detail before. It was probably one of the best factories I've ever seen, better than anything I've seen in Italy. These were two brothers that founded this from a very young age. And they had just one thing in mind. They were completely fanatic about it. They wanted to make the best suit in the world. And you looked at all the Italians, looked at all the brands, and they were, you know, they're pattern making, their quality, their level was fantastic. And Zenya figured that out. That's why they bought a joint venture in that. So I fought I struck oil, right? I came back from that trip. I'm like, guys.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shanghai, you take a taxi six hours, you come into this village where there's hardly any street lighting. And there's one international hotel in the town. I still remember the Victoria Hotel. And I check in there. And in the morning, I'm sitting at the breakfast, there's only one European person there, and it's an Italian guy. And I'm thinking, okay, this Italian guy is probably part of the Zenya group. Otherwise, why would there be any Italian here? And so I introduced myself. And this was Tosco. And Tosco were complaining about, yeah, I'm just being put here with Xenya because we bought this factory and now I have to produce because also part of our agreement in this joint venture is that we supply in certain amount of production capacity.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sud brands, and they were expanding into China, and they bought a joint venture into a Chinese garment manufacturer, a suit manufacturer, in a town called Wenzhou. And I was like, oh, that's interesting if they were also doing that, then there must be a certain level of high-end quality there. So I'm calling this factory. I got the number and nobody picks up the phone or nobody speaks English in that factory, of course. And I'm thinking, okay, it's Christmas at that moment. And I'm like, okay, I have nothing to do because everything's closed here in Europe anyway. You know what? I'll just take the plane and go to China and go to knock on the door of this factory. How much time is it going to cost me? A few days. And this is the time in China where it's not like now everything is fancy and nice airports. You land in.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened is, you know, at the time in Europe is that manufacturing got more and more and more scarce. People with the skill set were getting older, leaving factories, young people didn't want to work in these factories anymore. And the skill set of making something really nice was slowly disappearing. The amount of people that were able to do it were getting smaller and smaller. And the amount of product that we were needing was getting bigger and bigger So, you know, we had to find a solution. And I was reading the annual report of Zenya at the time, which is...”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so people passed by and said, okay, you know, what's going on here was a little theater. The store got busier and busier and busier. And it was doing a few million and five, six, seven, eight. It was a gradual process. So we slowly built a reputation.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a 2009, it started to happen. People realized that, you know, this was a really good product for an interesting price. And what we also did, I think back then, we put our tailor in the front of the store. So it was actually, you know, there were people working and suing and doing stuff.”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Four people like a pathetic. I think it was not going to hit the main news. So then I started hiring actors to be in the store to sort of browse around. And we had some dynamic happening because it was really...”
2023-05-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT