YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Preysman

lines on the record: 109
first: 2023-11-20
most recent: 2023-11-20
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

“It's hard to know. Somebody once said your goal is to do as many things as possible to get yourself in a place of luck happening to you. And so when you ask that question, it was so weird that we launched ties and bow ties. But at the same time, it was this unfettered attitude of just go try things so that luck could happen to us. So I think part of it is being quick and thoughtful and moving. And understanding the world around you to put yourself The pathway of luck as often as possible”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think back on the journey that you've been on, you did very well and still own a considerable amount of this company, and so it's made you wealthy and successful. How much of where you are now do you attribute to luck and how much of it do you think is to do with your skill and your intelligence and your work, hard work?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rang in a different way. But yeah, I struggled with it. But also, and this is, I'm sure you say this of many. Founders, but it's also true of anyone that works at any company for a period of time that you can never take away that period of someone's life. You know, you're still the founder or you're still the creative director of a company or you're still the you help build something. And so now it's just a part of my identity, it's not my identity.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still involved in it and watch that almost separation. I imagine one day it's like having kids and letting them go to college.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a time where Brian, who was on our board and Betsy had spent a lot of time with me saying, is this really what you want to do for the next five, 10 years? And I think that's an important question because you've probably spoken to so many, I mean, you have spoken to so many founders here. And some are lifers and some are not. For there was a moment in time where I imagined my life being a lifer. And the more I thought about it, I was like, wait, I don't. I'm not the best person to run. A fashion brand that's sustainable. So for us, continuing to double down on the environmental side of what we do. While building a growing and profitable business is really critical. And that's where I go back to I still am involved in the company quite closely. And it's a fun and self-reflective experience to be able to exit something.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You came out of COVID and you stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman. And I imagine that was a relief, a little bit of a relief too. That was probably the toughest two years of your career at Everlane.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely agree. I don't blame them at all. And listen, I think that's the opportunity is to be clear on expectations, but in a lot of ways also employees have made it clearer on what they expect both ways, that expectation is very, very valuable and very helpful”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely resonates. We were in a massively funded environment where profit didn't matter to an environment where all of a sudden profit did matter and top line sales are getting challenged for a lot of people, especially the first three to six months of COVID. So, people are making tough decisions, and it was the first time going from infinite opportunity to, wait a second, we have to make some tough decisions. And by the way, those tough decisions are about employees. And they go, well, I was already, might have been a little frustrated about this and that happened in the past. And now I'm just pissed.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've been thinking a lot about what happened with a lot of companies and still is happening to some extent. They started with this premise that you're part of a mission and the mission is transparency and openness, whatever it might be. It's making the world a better place. And employees believe that that was their role. And I wonder whether some of that tension, because you had employees who were really mad and lots of companies did. And I wonder whether some of that comes from that idea. Of a sudden, they're like, wait, my mission is to make money for the company? I don't know. Does any of that resonate with you?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for us, it was Everlane, to your point, was on a pedestal. We were far from perfect in a lot of areas where we went ahead of HR, but not a chief HR officer for a company with a few hundred people. And so the processes weren't there. And without processes, you create a place where things aren't always seemingly as equitable or fair. And that came to bear for a lot of other sort of companies of our time because we had all ushered in this, hey, we can build a company, do good, be transparent, and treat everyone well, our customers, our employees, our factories. And then COVID happens, and it's sort of like, how do you do right anywhere when everything goes wrong?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep. And also, it takes time to make decisions. And if you're informed about every decision every time, all you're going to do is induce anxiety.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you are completely right. And I had always said transparency is great. And then it also has downsides. I mean, I don't even, it's hard to trust the government, but at the same time, I don't want to know every decision that the government's making all of.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know some companies did it later. We did it pretty early on, and that started to set a pretty fast tone of how do you manage a community that was so tight-knit at that time? Through crisis”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, I would say thanks, Guy, for reminding me about this wonderful time in my life. I really appreciate it. And then I would say walking into 2020, we had this great plan. We're going to start investing in being a brand instead of just a price transparency retailer. And then we're in the midst of fundraising, by the way, because we needed money for inventory and for retail, which was working really well. And then COVID hits. And it is just to every retailer. I mean, it was a brick wall. We started to look at the, well, actually, we were in the midst of fundraising and we don't have enough cash, you know, never walk into a crisis low on cash. We need the cash. And so we start to have to cut costs.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started tracking our greenhouse gases. We started working with our factories on how do we reduce our emissions. We made a commitment to remove all virgin plastic from our supply chain. We're 95% of the way there. We've replaced some 0, 80% of our wool to be recycled. Same thing on Cashmere. So the amount of product we're using that's now recycled and the way we're doing everything to lead across all metrics. And I think doing a very good job of it now.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In some ways, I remember the first reaction around that being like frustrated and upset. And then the next reaction was, great, let's do something about it.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, one of the, I mentioned this earlier, which is when you are focused on doing the right thing, which I think is important and something that as a show we support and want businesses to do, but it also makes you target. And so in 2019, there was a rating company called Good On You, and they gave you two out of five rating for your... Know because they said that you weren't tracking greenhouse gases and that you weren't guaranteeing living wages or reducing water use. And there were people who are like, yeah, see that company. They're the do-gooders and now they've been exposed or something like that. And there were people who said that.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Break even break even and then losing a bit of money in 2019. Nothing. When you think about it, it was nothing extraordinary because it was the days of venture that says, oh, there's the business to be had here. And so a lot of people fund. And then, you know, People are willing to lose money and drive growth. And so we started to manage against that and started running paid ads. And the business continued to grow, but the profit didn't grow as fast because we were investing more in marketing to drive the business.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, we didn't think we would need stores, and this is one thing I would say we did do well, is we listened to the consumer and we had these pop-ups and showrooms. People are showing up and they were asking us to open up a store. And so we listened, and it worked tremendously well”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that's hard to say. I think whenever you grow 100%, you can't grow like that forever. But I mean, in the next year, we grew 50 to 70%. And the next year after that, we grew another, you know, 30 to 50 percent. So it was, wow, this is an incredible run. I mean, we had these opportunities where we launched everything from an entire collection of outerwear made from recycled materials, called it Renew. We launched stores in San Francisco, New York, LA.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up until that point, you mentioned 2017 you hit profitability of doing a hundred million dollars, and so at that point it was like, okay, let's just grow. And looking back on that time today, you would have made different decisions. You would have focused on increasing the bottom line rather than just focusing on the top line. As more competitors started to jump into direct-to-consumer or online, let's say retail. Did you start to see the business slow down?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I used to. I think now what I would say is it's whatever's right for you. I have a lot more admiration and respect than I used to for people for these luxury businesses that create incredible, beautiful product, tell beautiful stories and make their 30% profit. And that's totally fine. It was also this respect for others that perhaps changes as you grow up and face your own set of challenges and realize maybe there's a reason they do things the way they do. Because as long as they're doing, to your point, capitalism. But as long as they're content and it's working for them and they're not inflicting harm and other people are into it, power to you.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe we have some data to support that it creates resonance with the brand, but when it comes to the individual buying decision of do I buy this coat versus that coat, the answer is usually not so much, especially today. But they do want to participate with brands that do better for this world. And that is true.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that really opened up a whole new path of what is our impact on this world. And we're going to start moving towards sustainability or environmental consciousness.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in 2017, something happened, which is we've launched Denim. And by all measures, you should have launched Denim. We should have launched Denim in 2012. It took us a while, and part of that while was that denim just is hard to fit. And then we didn't know how we were going to do it differently. And what ended up being the difference was that we found this incredible factory called SciTex, run by a wonderful human Sanjeev, where they take the denim. And denim is a product that you actually die and then you undye to get that faded look as if you've been working through the denim over a period of time. And they take the dye stuff and detoxify it and turn it into actually bricks that you can use.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, that means you are going to be held to a different standard. And any slip up, you're in trouble. Like your factory's better be ethical. Your pricing better be ethical. Your environmental record better be, I mean, if you're going to put yourself out there, you also are going to make yourself vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy if you're not hitting those standards all the time.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that connected the dots for us let's not just live blog this, let's connect every product we make with every factory we work with and also the cost. And it was essentially like we're giving away our secret sauce because normally if you're another brand and you want to know where someone makes things, it's almost impossible. You can't find out where a luxury brand makes its products. But here we were for the industry and for the consumer saying this t-shirt or this bag was made exactly in this factory and it costs us exactly this much.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 2013, there were a couple of key events that happened for us. One is we had started to manufacture in China and we really wanted to understand are the factories were working with in China high quality. And myself and a few of us went to China and we basically live blogged the entire week talking about the factory, sharing the stories inside so people could see what was going on. Also on every label, we would name the city where things were made, not just the country. We wouldn't say imported. And then, of course, in 2013, there's the unfortunate collapse in Bangladesh of Rana Plaza. And people realized that perhaps some of the clothes they're wearing was made there.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I want to ask you about the other side of the brand because you're big, at your core, it was radical transparency around pricing. But that would evolve. That would grow to radical transparency about other things too, not just pricing. It grew into transparency around where the clothing is made, how it's made. This became much more important to consumers in the 2010s as people were learning about where their clothes were made, what the environmental costs were, et cetera. Tell me about how you came to this view about, let's hate, let's tell everybody everything about how we make our stuff and what the conditions are like in the factories.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey, why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we doing that? Just constant questions. It's managing the process versus managing the outcome and not letting someone as great as her do her job.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was just such a micromanager at the time that I think I drove her so nuts. She made it about a year and a half and she really created a new foundation of design. And we're good friends today, but it was definitely a tough period of over micromanaging.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The part that was just the total mess was there were certain areas like marketing and creative that honestly we were trying to reinvent and I didn't and it was hard to find the talent and I didn't know a great look like. So I didn't know what a great Head of design or great head of marketing look like. And so I'll tell the story we hired at one point in 2015, go from t-shirts to backpacks to let's literally go hire one of the greatest designers in the world. And we hired this one, Rebecca Bay, who came from a company called Cos and then was actually the creative director of GAAP for a year and a half. And we build an office for her in New York.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, and I was 27, 28. At the time, what we did really well, and I guess what I did well was we built a very entrepreneurial culture. Blair, who was a creative of the team, said one of our favorite lines was we have one founder and 60 CEOs. And there was this mentality that everybody contributed and everybody did every job, no matter how small. When we opened up many years later, our first store, people were at the store for four days in a row engineers, you know, helping set up a physical store and these were engineers who were really technical and mostly spent their time in a digital world.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you start this thing in 2011. By the end of 2013, you've got 13, $12 million in sales. So you're running not an insignificant business now with 25, 30, 40 employees. And you were still a young guy. How were you learning about how to be a leader? I mean, I have to assume that at times you did a badly.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely, and it was the right decision, but The decision I would have made now, and I think everybody's making even today, is that when we hit 100 and we were profitable, that it was the time to transition from growing what we call the top line, which is the revenue, to growing the bottom line. So when we did, you know, called three four million a profit, the focus should have been how do we build and discipline and get this to 10 million next year and then 20 million the year after, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera versus how do we grow the top line at the expense of the bottom line?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me about, I mean, before that time, I mean, I have to imagine, because this is a natural progression for certain types of companies, especially when they're doing well very early, is grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And I have to imagine that was your view, that let's just go crazy, let's grow this thing massively.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We definitely had the opportunities. And so we raised 25 million in total. And we were profitable. And that was the year 2017, which was a hugely pivotal year for Everlane. When we went from $53 million to $100 million in one year.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was almost all organic. It was people were talking about the brand, telling the story. Commerce is one of the oldest forms of communication. And it's a form of trade and it's such a backbone of culture. And particularly in America, people love to buy things and tell you what they bought. And so if you made things that were interesting and people wanted to talk about them, listen, we're not building iPhones, but talk about someone who did that well or Nike. You know, it's like people line up for days. And in that way, we were building things and had limited quantities and people were talk about it.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was very expensive And then fast forwarding a bit to November 1st, 2012, we had launched backpacks. We were building a merchandising strategy. We launched button downs, silk shirts, and a cashmere. And so we built all this hype and we stayed up till 2 a.m. on November 1st, 2012, our one year anniversary. And at 2 a.m., we launched the products on the site. All of a sudden sales spike, and we did it at two in the morning, an entire day's worth of sales in 20 minutes. And we thought that the site was broken and something had glitched. And then we verified every order by hand. And indeed, people had stayed up till two in the morning. Waiting for our Oxfords and, you know, silk and cashmere to launch. And that was one of the moments that we said, whoa, we might have something here”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was nice. It was a good run. And then we went out to raise. I think we raised two and a half million dollars at that point just because the business was working and we were in the early days of the D2C boom. And that allowed us to take the business to the next stage and allowed us to buy backpacks. I mean, one of the biggest costs for us at the time was inventory, just buying new product. Because we didn't have great, what you call terms with factories. It took a while to get us to a place where we could actually have a relationship with factories and pay them 60 days after delivery. A lot of times we were paying upfront.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was in March 2012, I believe, when we raised our next amount of money. We had been doing about $100 to $200,000 a month, but selling out every month.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And your business model enabled this kind of quick pivoting. You could basically identify something that was hot, make it quickly, make a limited number, sell them out, then move on to the next thing.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think exactly to what you said, there was the moment of Herschel, there was a trend happening. And we've had a connection to a factory.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess. As you're kind of looking for the next product, you land on backpacks next, which is interesting. We did Herschel supply company on the show not too long ago. It's a fascinating story about backpacks and why they went into that. It was around this time, really, you go into backpacks thinking, okay, this could be our next thing. And just out of curiosity, why backpacks?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have an interesting distinction there because what started as honesty became transparency. And that was the evolution. Because it to us felt dishonest. And then I think there was a point where we realized actually they're not dishonest. They're just doing what they're doing. But the vehicle that we can have that's different is transparency. And that's how that transparency graphic got born. And that's how we started to tell people, here's what we're making next. Do you want to vote on it? Tell us what you think of this product. Give us feedback. Everything was out in the open.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spiritually, yes, written down no. But, you know, there was an external line, the luxury essentials under $100, your luxury goods sell for eight times what it cost to make. There was a spirit of let's build a brand that's honest with the consumer.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, did you just out of curiosity? Did you have no judgment if you didn't, because there are plenty of great companies who didn't do this, but do you feel like you had baked mission, the mission into the company from the beginning, or would that come later?”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business model was clear, which was direct to consumer. But are we a fashion brand? Are we a basics brand? Are we a platform for products that's just a retailer? We didn't go into it with that idea, we went into it with how do we sell directly to the consumer, high quality product, and tell a story around it.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what's amazing to me is that clearly already a year in, you did not, like whatever lane became known for and what it became known as was not what you were at the time. You didn't bake this into the beginning of like, we are going to be in apparel brand that does basics. Like that was that transparent pricing was part of it. But that was not, it was almost like to overuse this metaphor, you were flying a plane and building it, and you were also selling things had passengers in the plane.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he left in December of 2011. Sure, you've had many of these conversations. The co founder journey is a challenging one because in some ways you're getting married to somebody, but then you're spending all this time in building a business with them. At the end of the day, for Jesse, what he wanted was to build a technology business. And what we moved away from was being a technology business. And we moved into building a brand. And that wasn't the journey he wanted to be on. And I commend him a lot for making that decision because I don't think a lot of people would be able to do that. This was even before we launched. He said, hey, I'm going to bow out. I'm going to help you launch. And then you need to find another tech person. And I remember that being so stressful and was fortunately able to find somebody, an individual named Non Yu, who was both an engineer and incredibly well versed in fashion and style that became our head of engineering and was at the company for six, seven years building.”
2023-11-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Everlane: Michael Preysman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT