How I Built This with Guy Raz - HIBT Lab! Universal Standard: Polina Veksler

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

In 2014, friends Polina Veksler and Alex Waldman went clothes shopping at a major department store. To Polina’s surprise, Alex’s options were quite limited, and tucked away in one of the store’s less-traveled upper levels: the ‘plus-size’ section. This unnerving realization that women could have such completely different shopping experiences at the same store drove Polina into research mode. She found that about 70% of women in the U.S. wear a size 14 or larger, but less than 20% of clothing is made in those sizes. Meanwhile, much of the double-digit-sized clothing available is fast fashion: not particularly well-fitting or built to last.Alex and Polina decided to create Universal Standard: a clothing brand where size was irrelevant – where any woman could shop and ask herself, “do I like this?” – not “does this come in my size?”This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy and Polina discuss the $100 billion opportunity to serve women of all sizes, as well as the challenges that come with building a size inclusive clothing brand.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca.ca. slash host. Hello and welcome to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. So if you've ever tried to shop for clothing and you are a typical consumer, you are unlikely to find a size that fits you. In fact, as you will hear in today's show, the average size of a woman in the United States is 18, size 18. And yet the majority of fashion brands only go up to size 12, maybe 14. Well, a few years ago, two friends in New York, Polina Vexler and Alex Waldman realized there might be a market opportunity there. They discovered that most fashion brands were leaving billions of dollars on the table by not serving the majority of consumers, people who fit into double-digit sizes. Yes, some brands had and have quote-unquote plus sizing, but Polina and Alex didn't want to segregate women into different sizing groups.

They wanted to build a brand for every shape and size with a high design sensibility. So in 2015, they founded Universal Standard. Now, neither Alex nor Polina had any experience as fashion designers, and neither had come from the apparel industry. But they both saw a way to serve an underserved consumer base. Polina, who is our guest today, came to the United States as a kid. Her family fled Russia at a time when anti-Jewish hostility made it an extremely unpleasant place to live. I was eight years old when we immigrated from Russia. And this was, I think, around 1990.

Tell me the circumstances of leaving Russia and coming to the U.S. We left when it was still the former Soviet Union, and my parents wanted a better life for myself and my brother. And the anti-Semitism at the time was quite high. And we were lucky enough to be able to leave and end up in Florida. Yeah, a lot of people may not remember this, but it was very difficult for Jews, a small minority in Russia, to keep their traditions up because officially religion was banned. that I remember when I was a kid, kids would have like their bar mitzvahs and they would honor a Russian Jewish kid who was not allowed to have one. Yeah, my parents didn't even tell me that I was Jewish until we left Russia because I remember even on a playground and I was really young. But little girls coming up to me and saying, are you Jewish?

And I didn't know what that meant. And I would say, no. And they would say, okay, then we can play. with you. So I did not even know what that meant until we were in the middle of our immigration process. Wow. All right. So you arrive as an eight-year-old, no English, to Florida. Yes. To a brand new country. Not just not just a brand new culture, but Florida from like the cold of Russia to palm trees in Florida. What do you remember about trying to become an American as a kid? Was that hard. I was old enough at eight years old to vividly remember certain scenes and certain

aspects of the immigration process, but I think I was too young to really appreciate the difficulty of it on my parents and what it all really meant. I remember first time we went to Publix, a grocery store, and not having to stand in line and shelves being filled. And I actually remember my mom starting to cry at that grocery store from the overwhelming experience of just being in a place that was so, so different. Yeah. Okay, so you grow up mainly in Florida? Exactly. And I know you went on to pursue accounting and finance in college. Was your idea to go into finance? I think I thought I was going to be a public accountant. I think. I thought that I would go work at a big four and have a very stable job with a very stable

paycheck. Yeah, right. I'm sure because you'd grown up with so much uncertainty that that probably sounded like the right decision. Yeah, it was the safe decision. Yeah. So after you graduate college, I think you soon end up in New York in investment banking, which I think would lead you to the like eventually the West Coast and then back to Russia for some time and then to Africa. Tell me a little bit about your career as an investment banker. Yeah, I was really excited to get that job as an investment banker, but then very quickly realized that I didn't love it. I didn't love the lifestyle. I didn't love the pressure, but I did get an amazing skill set. And so the first chance that I got, I was able to move to Seattle and work in strategy at Microsoft, which I really enjoyed and work with a lot of people that I still consider to be role models. And out of the blue, one day got a call from an investment bank in Russia.

and asked if I wanted to move over, and much to my parents' dissatisfaction, I took that opportunity, really wanting to learn Russian again, see what was like working in the emerging market, and just wanted that career path of working in a different country. All right. I think you would do that for a few years. before you would leave and come back to the U.S. I think you came back to New York without a job, right? Yeah, I was working abroad for about six years in Russia and in Africa,

and I felt like it was time to come back to the States. I moved back to New York simply because my background is in finance, and I thought that was a smart place to go to help find a job. But move back without a job, without a network, with maybe one friend in New York at the time, and wanted to kind of start this new chapter of my life in New York. All right. So you get to New York, and what was the plan? So I started reaching out to various people and tried to establish a network. I started going in a bunch of interviews. These are for like finance jobs?

For finance jobs. And then I actually, in one of my reachouts, someone said, that a woman by the name of Alex Waldman, who had also worked a majority of her career abroad, also just recently moved to New York, and she was working in marketing for a hedge fund. And she was someone that I was connected to, so I reached out to her and sent her my resume. Thinking that maybe you'd go work in marketing instead of the finance side? Thinking that maybe she would get it in the right hands at her hedge fund. I see. Okay. Got it. And Alex, we was a marketer at the hedge fund, and that's all you knew. Just somebody had a connection to her and you thought, okay, maybe she can help me get an interview there.

Yes, but we also then ended up going to grab a drink and very, very quickly became the best of friends. What were you guys talking about? What did you connect over? She's worked about seven years in Russia. She's also immigrated. She was actually born in the Ukraine and immigrated when she was young. So we had so many things in common and both had a very, very small network in New York. So we basically just gravitated towards each other and became pretty close friends. All right, so she becomes a friend, but you're meanwhile still looking for a job. But that didn't happen. I guess the two of you started to say, well, maybe we should start something. How did that conversation even begin? Yeah, so I was unemployed for probably a year and a half, maybe a little bit longer.

We were friends throughout this entire time. I was invited to go to a networking event, and I finally thought I needed to get a little but more serious about finding employment. I did not want to go to this event by myself. And Alex graciously said she was going to come with me. And by the way, this is around what, like 2014? Yes, exactly. And a couple days before the event, Alex said to me, I'm not going. And I said, why not? And she said, I just have nothing to wear. And I looked at her and said, look, you live a couple blocks away from Fifth Avenue, let's just go shopping. And she looked at me and said, do you know that there's not a single store on Fifth Avenue that I could walk into and buy

clothing for myself? And that didn't really register with me. I didn't really understand what exactly she was saying, nor was I really concerned about it. I was very focused on not going to this event by myself. And I said, look, I don't care where we go shopping. Let's just go. wherever you want, and you can come with me. So what she ended up doing was she said, let's go to Bloomingdale. And we walked by all these beautifully merchandise floors, and she took me to one of the top floors.

I think it was the furniture floor or something like that. It had couch cushions, pots and pans, maybe like some last year's bikinis. And there was a small little section where she said, okay, let's shop for me here. What was the section? It was, I guess it was that plus size section at the time. But I didn't realize how different her shopping experience has been her whole adult life compared to mine until that moment. Because her body shape was slightly different or maybe actually very similar to the majority.

of people, but that clothing sizes were not designed for for Alex? Yeah, she happened to wear double-digit sizing. I happened to wear single-digit sizing. And as a result, her access to style, fabric, fit was very, very different her entire adult life. Is that because most fashion brands only make a small, number of sizes? Yeah, for the longest time, fashion has been extremely exclusive. And fashion's exclusive by nature. And I learned this in the process. What was available to her in her sizes was the vast majority was fast fashion. Right. And not necessarily well-fitting. And not well-fitting,

not lasting, and not the type of styles with all the options that a straight-sized woman has that someone would choose if they had the choice. How did you uncover that just by looking at research data and coming to certain conclusions? Well, looking to see that about 70% of American women are size 14 and above. 70%. 70%. Can you believe that? And the average woman in the U.S. is a size 18 and that what was on offer was dismal in a comparison to what was on offer in single digit sizing. So just to get a sense, because I'm not super familiar with women sizing. If the average size, women size is 18 in the U.S., Do most brands and lines offer a size 18? I don't think so.

I think most brands go up to about a size 14. But if you look at high fashion brands, those brands probably and even lower than that. Wow. So they're basically designing for a minority of women. I mean, basically a small sector of the consumer base. Absolutely. And it also is very much binary. So there's brands that offer plus size fashion. There's brands that offer clothing that goes up to a size 14. And once you have those binary experiences, you always have the have and the have-nots. And what would have been awesome was for Alex and I to be able to shop together. in the same section, in the same store, and not have those completely different experiences. All right. So you start to realize that not just for Alex, but for millions of people,

close shopping is a painfully difficult experience. Absolutely. And I'd love to tell you that, like, on that eighth floor of Bloomingdale's or whatever floor we were on universal standard was born and we started the company but that would be a complete lie. I think what happened was we, Alex and I started talking and she started sharing all her experiences in terms of shopping, in terms of access, in terms of she was also a fashion journalist and how difficult it was for her to even attend these amazing fashion shows and not being able to participate, but just look. And those conversations led to myself starting to do some research. And basically what I uncovered was what I thought was a tremendous business opportunity.

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Polina Vexler, co-founder, and CEO of Universal Standard. I'm Guy Raz. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And I'm talking with Polina Vexler, co-founder and CEO of Universal Standard. So you discover that there is this huge gap. There is this potentially huge opportunity. I want to ask you about why you think there's this underserved consumer. base, my assumption would be that it would be too expensive to have all of these different sizes. And so they're just focusing on a very small selection of sizes. Is that right or is that wrong? I think that's right. I definitely think that one of the reasons this has been the norm in the fashion

industry is the fashion industry saying that it's too expensive. But I also think it's what has been considered beautiful and people's definition of beauty and representation. So how big is this market in terms of dollars? It's about a hundred billion dollar market and that's just in the U.S. Just in the U.S. A hundred billion dollar market opportunity to cater to all sizes. Wow. That's amazing. All right. So you start to research this and at what point do you who start to say, there's a business here and go to Alex and say, I think we should do this business? So it was an evolving process, but not being employed at the time definitely helped. And we, over the next six to eight months, decide that what we wanted to do was we wanted to

create a brand where size was completely irrelevant. where any woman, be that a size 2 or a size 32, could shop and ask herself, do I like this? Not does this come in my size? Yeah. I guess traditionally, you'd have quote unquote plus sizes. So you wouldn't do that. You would basically just have a line of clothing and you could just pick whatever you liked

knowing that it was going to be in your size. Exactly. It's about equal access for all women. and allowing all women to shop in the exact same way. All right. So 2015, you founded a company called Universal Standard. How did you convince Alex to quit her job and to leap into this with you? There wasn't a need for much convincing.

If anything, Alex was very, very keen to do this. She has wanted access to the. type of clothing her whole life. She is someone who has a very strong aesthetic and point of view. And she was our original designer of the garments themselves as she wanted to make clothing that she could wear. All right. So let's talk about how you actually got this out of the ground because I know the both of you had a little bit of money to just kind of get it started, maybe make a sample or two. From what I understand, one of the first things you did was you went to like luxury designers just to see what their designs looked like to kind of get a sense

of what they were making, which was not available in many sizes at all. So yeah, what we actually did was we went back to Bloomingdale's and we started looking at clothing that we like, fabrics that we liked. And because we didn't even know where clothing was made at the time. And what we realized was every time we touched a piece of. of cotton that we like, it happened to be from Peru. So we decided that, look, the best cottons must come from Peru. So we are going to manufacture our knits in Peru. All right. So you have a sense of what you want to make. What's the next step? Did you decide to

design an entire line or were you just going to design like dresses or jeans or tops or what was the first thing that you were going to focus on? So we picked a capsule wardrobe, a kind of of Lego pieces that would fit together. We did eight pieces that could be part of someone's closet that would kind of click in together and make different outfits. And it was pieces that Alex has always wanted to have in her wardrobe. So that was the start. How did you identify a manufacturer that was willing to work with you? That was very difficult. As you can imagine, calling various factories in Peru or emailing them and saying that you are a new brand, wanting to do all these sizes, having no experience, and wanting to work with them. No one was banging down our door

to work with us. But one way or another, we actually made it down to Peru. All right, so Peru has this reputation for making very high quality cotton and then manufacturing clothing. But you were asking for a manufacturer to make you a line, your first line, and what's the smallest size? Our smallest size currently is a double zero, and then we go all the way up to a size 40. Wow. All right. So you're asking a manufacturer to do this, and I would assume that you had a lot of resistance from some of these manufacturers because I think that you have to have different loon sizes to make different clothing sizes, right? Yes, there's a lot of infrastructure constraints that we ran into, both in Peru and in China.

When we went to China to make sweaters, there were certain factories that said their looms were not big enough to make the type of sweaters we wanted to make. Fabric widths, when we found the perfect fabric we loved in Italy, the width of that fabric was just not wide enough for some of the garden. that we wanted to make. And then there's also the lack of expertise in terms of mannequins and pattern makers and different grading rules. So there's a lot of challenges that we encountered with all the original factories that we went to. All right. So you finally get a factory in Peru to agree to work with you. And this was financed initially entirely by the money that the two of you put into the business? Yes, we each put in a little bit of money and it was enough to finance our first collection. All right. And how long did it take to make those those garments? It took us about

probably six to eight months all in to manufacture the original eight pieces and we not only ended up working with Peru, but we also worked with some of the factories in New York and then also in China as well. All right. So you come back with garments and roughly how many pieces in each design or in each garment? Yeah. So we said go bigger, go home. We really wanted to see if we could make this into a true business. So we actually, our first collection was about 3,000. in pieces. Wow. All right. So that's a big swing for the fences. And, I mean, you wanted to make a line of clothing that was well-designed, high fashion for everybody and not sort of, you know, out of reach. It wasn't going to be that she wasn't going to be fast fashion cheap, but it wasn't also, it wasn't

going to be like Saks Fifth Avenue expensive. Yeah. We wanted to make elevated essentials. We wanted to make clothing that someone could put on a pair of jeans, a plain white shirt, maybe a jacket, go to the store, buy their milk, buy their bananas, and feel comfortable and feel like they felt good about what they were wearing and were part of the world of fashion. All right. Let me ask you about some of the challenges as you begin to think about pricing, for example. Let's say you're making a garment, a double zero size pair of jeans, and then you've got a size, you know, 30, right? Yeah.

The size 30 requires more material. So presumably it's more expensive to make, but both the size double zero and size 30 are the same price? Absolutely. It was extremely important for us to look at blended costs and blended pricing and charge. charge the same for each garment. And we were able to do that by kind of resetting the size curve. So for majority of fashion, the sample size or even looking at a size medium would be a size eight. And what we said was, look, the average woman in America is a size 18. So that should be our medium. And we would then manufacture clothing up and down.

from that and then making that size 18 are medium, we were able to blend our costs from the very beginning. Wow. All right. So you basically have 3,000 garments. This is 2015. Both of you are in New York. And how do you sell it? Where did you go to even find people to buy them? So in order to be able to have a democratic, competitive price point to the consumer, we wanted to go direct to consumer. So we were going to try and distribute everything by just building our own website and getting traffic to that website. Which is hard to do, really hard, especially without a big marketing budget. Yeah, I actually took classes on how to set up a website.

And I took classes on how to run an ad on Facebook and what Google Analytics was and how to send an email because at that time, I barely knew how to turn on my computer, of course, exaggerating a little bit, but definitely did not have the expertise in consumer or building websites. Wow. You really were building the plane as you were like leaping off the cliff. Yes, we were lucky enough to work with Shopify that made it pretty easy. Yeah. So you use Shopify as a platform to build the website, but still, that's not enough. You were taking classes trying to figure out how to use social media and other tools to get the word out, but still really hard. Tell me your first event, like your first sales event. Where did that happen? So what we were able to do was get some press. And I think that's what helped the most.

We were lucky enough to get an article published by Refinery 29. How did you guys do that? Did you just cold pitch them? We reached out. We were reaching out to a lot of different publications. And I think through like a connection of a connection of a connection, got connected to a writer at Refinery 29 who did an amazing article on us at launch. And we actually ended up selling out of that first collection.

Online. Online. Just to your website. Online on our website within a very short period of time. Wow. That article alone generated all that interest. It was the article. It got picked up by other publications as well.

we started getting some more press. But I think also it was the consumer themselves searching us out because of the lack of availability in the market. And also we quickly realize our thought process of this actually being lacking was confirmed by how quickly the adoption rate was. So you sell out that first line. So you've proved the concept, and you know now that this is a viable business. But now to make it really work, this is a capital-intensive industry. We've done a lot of fashion on how I built this. I know it takes a lot of cash to make this work.

So I have to assume you started looking for backers, investors. Yeah, we definitely started looking for funding. And then it took us quite a bit of time. We didn't know we were going to sell out. We didn't know if this is going to be successful. So we didn't have our second collection plan or what we were going to do next. And probably just to just sorry to interrupt, but even though you sold out all those garments, you probably didn't make a whole lot of money from that because it was the first kind of test.

Oh, I don't think we made any money from it as our costs to produce it and then investing in PR and social and the website. and also we had to shoot the collection. I think, if anything, we probably lost some money. Yeah. All right. So you have to look for investors at this point. This is what, 20, this is like end of 2015, early 2016? This is probably mid-2016.

Okay. And so where did you go? Where did you? I mean, and how did they respond to your pitch? I would have thought, amazing. Wow, you've proved this model out. There's a huge market opportunity. to make, you know, all these sizes, I'm in.

Was that the response? That was definitely not the response. Okay. I wish. The response was that this is going to be really difficult. And look, they're not wrong because inclusive fashion has traditionally been very difficult, but that it was going to be very costly. The inventory was going to be impossible to me.

manage, consumers are not going to understand something different and it would require a lot of education. Wouldn't it be easier if you are going to do this? Just do a plus size brand. We're going to take another quick break. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab.

I'm Guy Raz and my guest is Polina Vexler from the size inclusive clothing brand Universal Standard. Okay, so you did raise some money. We've raised what, mainly from friends and family and some angels for the seed round? Yes, exactly. Okay. Now you've got a little bit of money to work with. What was the first hire that you and Alex made?

The first hire that we made was a technical designer. So someone who had the expertise on fit. All right. So you found a designer because now you've got to design a huge line. So where did you go to next? Did you just simply expand the line or did you double down on what you'd already designed? So we did a little bit of both. So the technical designer helped us perfect our fit in our patterns and really allowed us to start fitting on all different sizes,

not using the traditional grading rules that have always been used in the industry. and Alex was still the main designer at the time in terms of the styles themselves. And we just continued down the same path in terms of making clothing that she always wanted to have in her wardrobe. And also because we had this lull in product, we were able to really use that time to think about the business and brand. that we wanted to be and what was most important for us as we continued building the business. One interesting thing I read was that you started to do these pop-ups at, I think, Nordstrom's, and that really, like, worked out. Yes, so what we did was we decided to do some of them guerrilla marketing and grassroots

marketing by doing a tour around the country and doing pop-ups at B. both Nordstrom locations, but also our own pop-ups also in 13 different cities. And we literally... And the pop-ups, you would just rents a space somewhere? We would just rent any space, the cheapest space that we could find in a decent location. And we would spend about one or two days in each location. So we would, in the morning, unload our truck, and in the evening, load back up the truck and drive. How did you get the word out? How did people find out about those pop-ups?

We partnered with some of the local universities, local fashion schools. We did partner with Nordstrom as well. We reached out to local influencers. And then also by that time, we did have a very small customer base and just asked them to spread the word. And actually, it was a very funny story of how Nordstrom reached out to us at that. At that time, both Alex and I had a number of jobs at the company. Mine was Picker, hers was Packer, mine was customer service agent, and I was taking customer service call at the time.

And it was a buyer from Nordstrom, and I answered the phone, and I didn't use my name as customer service. I used a random name called Lucy. They said, hi, this is Lucy. how can I help you? And the Nordstrom buyer said, hi, I'm a Nordstrom buyer. Can I speak with Polina? And I said, can you hold on one second? And I got Polina on the phone. Wow. I love it. And it was literally the two of you running this business. But that's a thing. Like a lot of people, you know, they don't behind the smoke and mirrors, they don't know that's just two

people, right? And but that can be a huge advantage because, you know, you can appear to be as big as you need to be in order to, you know, to get taken seriously. Yeah, there was a lot of fake until you make it at that time. And thus, the various personalities that we concocted in order to seem to be not just the two of us. Yeah, yeah, I love that story. It takes both humility and intelligence to think that way. So, all right, tell me where the business is now. I mean, you are still a small but growing fashion brand in this world of many, many choices.

But you're differentiated. I think you're profitable. Yes, we recently reached profitability. When we started this business, we were very, very focused on building a profitable business. and we were steadfast in that approach. And that means growing slower. And that means growing a bit slower. So we were still growing at about 60% year over years since we started.

But we were never one of those startups that focused a lot on customer acquisition. Where we focused most of our efforts was on building loyalty with the customer base. You want repeat customers. We want a lot of repeat customers, absolutely. Yeah. And those customers are going to tell other customers, which is also a hugely valuable marketing tool. Absolutely.

And we also believe really, really strongly in our product. So in the early days, and we still do this sometimes, is the way that we really got new customers is by giving out free product. So our main way for probably two, two and a half years of acquiring customers was giving out free t-shirts. Do they say universal standard on them? They don't. They're just a plain t-shirt that costs on their website, $50. And we were giving them a way to customers for free to give them the ability to try a product that was really focused on fabric, quality,

fit and then we were able to get those customers to experience it. And then they would come to the website and try something else. Tell me a little bit about competition. Are you seeing more and more companies try to do this? Or are you still pretty much one of the fewer only ones doing this? Inclusivity in this space has definitely increased. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I think that there's still a long way to go, the majority of what's still on offer for double-digit sizing is still fast fashion. We have seen a lot of brands entering the space and expanding their size range. And I think that compared to still what's on offer in the more traditional straight sizing, it's like pawn compared to an ocean.

Let's talk about the economics of this for a second because I know we've touched on this idea of why other brands and companies haven't done this. I know that in in 2021, Old Navy tried to do this. They basically start to offer all of its clothing in size from double zero to 30. And it was a big deal, right? because this was a major clothing manufacturer, but it actually didn't work out well for them at all. Their sales went down about 20%. Now, some of that may have been the pandemic and another other factors. But as far as you understand, what weren't wrong for Old Navy? What did they do wrong? I'm not sure what they did wrong, but I do believe that in five years or 10 years from now, these brands that are venturing in,

to inclusivity and trying this, they will get it right. Because fashion is only moving in this direction. And inclusivity is the future of fashion. So those brands who I think do it early, try it, try it again, I think will be the ones who are going to be positioned to win in the longer term. All right. So tell me a little bit about COVID and how that, I mean, That was probably, you know, could have just collapsed the whole business. I'm sure there was a time where you were very concerned.

Like many other companies, we were definitely impacted by COVID as it relates to office and brick and mortar closures and delays in product. But being a direct-to-consumer brand and still being relatively small at the number of people in the company, we were able to pretty quickly pivot in terms of what we were offering. So we focused a little bit more on that leisure, on lounge. And we were fortunate to have a very strong e-commerce presence. So while we did definitely see an impact, the majority of that impact was in March 2020. Okay. Let me ask about one of the biggest challenges.

challenges with being in the fashion industry, and you know this, the environmental challenges. This is something like 10% of global carbon dioxide output comes from fashion, much of that from fast fashion, we know, but like the dyes and the waste is massive. I mean, so much of what we see on the racks in clothing stores just gets destroyed and then throw away. And somebody that dies end up in rivers and streams. How do you avoid some of the worst? environmental effects of manufacturing clothing? Yeah, I think the main thing that we do is we make quality garments, garments that last wash after wash after wash.

So you can wear a T-shirt 50 times and not just two or three times before it's relegated to that sleeping drawer. And one of the other programs that we have that is part of our sustainability efforts is our fit liberty program. So what we do is we allow our customers to buy for the size that they are today. And then if their size happens to go up or down, we allow them to exchange for a new garment for free. And what we end up doing with the garments that we get back because they're well-made clothing and they have a second life and a third life is we work with organizations like first step and dress for success. And so it kind of creates the circular economy of the clothing and at the same

time builds loyalty with our customer base as they know they can buy for the woman that they see in the mirror and not have to worry about what might happen if their size. changes. One of the things that I love about what you guys are doing is your website and just how you're positioning it and marketing it. And I mean, the models are everybody looks like somebody might pass on the street, right? Exactly. And it's awesome. It's like there are very slim models and there are bigger models and there are models with different hairstyles and different features. And it's really completely different. You notice it when you look at it. It doesn't look like, a typical website with these like impossibly slim models?

Yeah, representation is really, really important. And allowing the customer to see themselves is really, really important. What we're doing is we're helping change that traditional definition of beauty that most of us have grown up with by what we see on billboards or televisions or in magazines. And by helping change that definition, hopefully it allows the world to be a much more inclusive place. Wow. You very consciously decided not to use the term plus size from the very beginning. There's going to be no plus size. Can you explain why you made that decision, why that was so important? It was really, really important to us because we didn't want to

separate women into two different groups. Traditionally, it has been separated for so long, and we thought it would be really, really important to provide that equal access to everyone and give everyone the same exact experience. And even though using the term plus size might have been beneficial in terms of SEO value and search, we wanted to revolutionize the shopping experience, and we wanted to see if we could create something and show other brands that it could be done in this way and not have to alienate one part of the population or another. All right, so sort of looking ahead now, your whole strategy has been growing slowly, and methodically and to become sustainable and profitable, you know, sort of where do you see

this brand in the future? I mean, do you see it on the racks at Bloomingdale's? Do you see it as a direct-to-consumer brand? You know, you have faced skepticism from some investors who said, you know, fashion's just too challenging because, you know, it can be hot one year and then, you know, nobody wants it the next year. But of course, there are plenty of brands that have survived and thrive for forever. How do you see this brand five, ten years from now? Yes, so I love Universal Standard as a brand, but we never set out to be the sole source of size inclusive clothing. We wanted to change the way that fashion has looked at women and women have looked back on fashion. And so since inception, we've tried to lead by example and work with other brands to consistently keep moving this conversation forward.

So in the future, we hope to continue to partner with other brands. We hope to continue to show and lead from the front that inclusivity could be done in a way that not only supports the customer, but is also profitable for. the brand. That's Polina Vexler, co-founder and CEO of the size-inclusive clothing brand, Universal Standard. Pauline Vexler, thanks so much. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at How I Built This, and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, I'm at guy.ros. If you want to contact the team, our email address is H-I-B-T at ID.Wondry.com.

This episode was produced by Sam Paulson and edited by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Rompeteen Arablui. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Josh Lash, Carla Estevez, Catherine Seifer, and Carrie Thompson. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.