How I Built This with Guy Raz - Primary: Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

The apparel industry - be it high fashion or everyday wear - is a crowded and noisy market to crack. Just think about the sheer number of athletic shoes or jeans available at both ends of the price spectrum! So conventional wisdom is: to stand out, branding is really important. But for Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard, the co-founders of the children's clothing line Primary, branding was the last thing they wanted on their designs. The two women bucked other industry conventions, too: they only sell basic building-block pieces, using bright colors, in styles that hardly change year after year. No glitter. No cartoons. No pithy sayings. And no gender differentiation: the clothes are categorized as either babies or kids. Despite early struggles, eight years after launching in 2015, Primary is now a profitable company with annual sales over $50 million.This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music by Ramtin ArabloueiEdited by Andrea Bruce, with research help from Chris Maccini.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] 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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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. I think for me what I most remember about that time was feeling really scared about the idea of leaving. But also I remember Christina like feeling pretty definitive that she was going to leave. Even though this you initially came to her with this idea, she was the one who was more like, let's go. Yes, totally.

And there was a lot to believe in. There was a idea to believe in. There was a partnership to believe in. And why not? We have every reason to believe this could be a huge success. But if it isn't, I know it's going to be an amazing experience. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz.

and on the show today, how a radically simple idea. Kids' clothes and basic colors and evergreen styles turned into an indie apparel company called Primary, now a multi-million dollar brand. In a crowded category, say in something like energy bars, it usually makes sense to try and stand out, to focus on branding. Same goes for apparel. It's why Valencia can sell a T-shirt for $500, dollars, even though the cost to make it might be 10. But the founders of Primary, a direct-to-consumer kids clothing brand, decided to do something totally counterintuitive. They built a company that is almost contemptuous of branding. Except for on an inside label, the word primary never appears on the clothing.

The styles are basic. T-shirts, jeans, hoodies, solid colors, timeless patterns, stuff that wouldn't look out of place in 1975 or 2025. And finally, the clothing isn't separated by gender. No pink for girls or blues for boys. You just pick baby or kids. When Christina Carbonell and Gail and Bernard launched the company in 2014, they knew they were entering a pretty tough space.

Brands like Carter's, Children's Place, Gap, Old Navy, they dominate the kids' apparel category. And it's worth around $50 billion a year just in the United States. Trying to make it as a small, independent brand facing those giants is really hard. And for many years, it was a struggle for primary. What Galen and Christina were trying to do was to make high-quality, long-lasting basics for kids that wouldn't break the bank. The two founders like to joke that because their professional, resumes are pretty similar, they are basically the same person. But while they both graduated

from Ivy League schools, Galen from Princeton and Christina from Penn, and they both went to Harvard Business School, their backgrounds are actually very different. Galen was an only child and a top high school golfer in Indiana. Her dad was a physician and her mom was a homemaker. Christina, on the other hand, was the first person in her family to attend college and raised in Maryland by single divorced mom. My mom, at the time my parents got divorced, kind of really had to start over. She had been, she was young and had been a hairdresser, and had to start over, became a secretary, and was working a lot. I was definitely very self-reliant and had learned from my mom that it was going to be really important that I did well in school and that that was going to be.

key to my independence. And one of the main lessons I probably learned from my mom, the thing she emphasized the most was be able to take care of yourself. And to be specific, never have to rely on a man, to be honest. Yeah. And I mean, you were, I mean, you must have been a very good student in high school. You went to Penn for college, but did you go into college with that mindset? Like, I'm going to go study economics, maybe get a job in finance, and make a lot of money. So I don't to ever rely on anyone else. I did. And also, even in deciding where to go to college, my mom had instilled me how important it would be, but she also couldn't really guide me on how to go about it or where to go. And so I remember buying a book of all the colleges, and I pretty much

skimmed the entire thing to choose what schools to even apply to. And was very fortunate to get into pen and it was a huge turning point for me in really creating my future. So when you graduated, you went to go work for craft right out of college in sort of branding marketing. And I guess, I mean, this was the beginning of a path for you, probably, where you thought, this is, I'm going to go work in corporate America and rise up the ranks. I could not have been more excited. I really felt like I had made it. And I remember, walking into the company store at Kraft Foods and being surrounded by macaroni and cheese and Maxwell House coffee and all of these brands and being able to buy all these things at a discount

too. Just feeling like I can't even believe I'm here. I have made it. And what did you do? I mean, tell me a little bit about your job at Kraft because you were there for like six, seven years. I was. I got to work on a lot of really cool brands at Kraft Foods from Maxwell House Coffee in the

beginning, which was fun. I remember going on my first advertising shoot in Montana, and it might have been the second time I had ever flown on a plane. And it was just so exciting. I also worked on brands like cereal brands, like fruity pebbles, which was super fun. And later, Kraft Salad dressing was a brand I worked on. I have this story of what success looks like at a big company when you're pretty junior there. And one of the projects that I worked on was I drove the initiative to put that lid on craft ranch dressing so that it's a slow pour rather than all coming out at once, which is especially helpful for kids who like to, of course, dump branch dressing onto everything. What, you mean like the squeezy? Yeah. Yeah, I did that.

You're the person behind the ranch dressing squeezy lid? I am. Wow. That's That should be the first thing on your LinkedIn bio. That should be the, like, that has changed the world in some ways. This is what innovation looks like at big companies, and I was quite proud. Yeah. All right. So you're working at Kraft. And I guess a few years in, Kraft actually sent you to get an MBA at Harvard Business School.

They did, which was enormously helpful at the time I was paying back quite a lot of loans from undergrad. And so Kraft Foods sponsoring my MBA at Harvard was huge for me. Yeah, I bet. And I read that after you got your degree, you went to work at Kraft for a few more years. And then I guess you took a short break when you had kids. But around like 2007, I guess you felt ready to get back into the workforce. But you didn't go back to Kraft, right? Definitely.

So I was ready to work again. And I came across a company that at the time was called. called 1-800 diapers. And I noticed that it was located about 10 minutes from where I lived in New Jersey. And did you remember how you found out about it? I saw a job listing for a role that was not what I do. It was a product buyer position. And Mark Lorry's name and email were on it.

And so I wrote to him cold. And he was unknown. We know who he was on our show a few years ago. He's an amazing entrepreneur. But he was just some dude who. at that point. Some dude with the diaper company. Yeah.

And so I wrote to him, Cold, and just asked him for a job. I had no idea what it would become. I had no idea who Mark and Vinny, the co-founders were. Pretty quickly, though, during the interview process, they shared their business plan with me. And this is my first exposure in my career to really entrepreneurship. Could not have known what an amazing example it really was and would be. But the business plan itself was, it was like a 30-page narrative. and I'd never seen anything like it.

It was so well thought out. It was insanely ambitious. I didn't even really know what to make of it, to be honest, but I thought it sounded cool. So I was just ready to give it a try. At that time, it was 1,800 diapers became, of course, diapers.com and then quidzy. And for people listening to this episode, you should check out that episode with Mark Lorry,

because it is kind of a master class. So you go and work for them. And what did you initially, what did you do? for diapers.com. I was their marketing director essentially, and I was part-time for about two weeks, and then it was clear that it was going to be full-time. And, you know, early memories, we were maybe five people at the time, so it was just a few of us in a small office. And it was because it, of course, became a huge company, but just five people. Yes. And I remember just saying, you know what, I'm going to go see if I can make a new print ad for parenting magazine. And that first

printad that I did actually featured my, at the time, two-year-old son standing at my front door with a box of diapers on the doorstep with the headline diapers and more delivered to your door. Nice. And that was the kind of thing I was doing for them in the very beginning. All right. So let's pause for a moment and move over to Galen because this is, this obviously will make sense when we get back to both of you. Gailen, it's funny because you and you and. Christina did not know each other, but you kind of had these weirdly parallel lives. Like, Christina went to Penn, you went to Princeton, and then you both went to HBS to study business. And you also worked at craft. I did. Like not at the same time as Christina after Christina had left. Right. And in the same office. I was in the Terrytown office too. It's like that movie sliding doors. Exactly. That's a terrible parallel. It's something.

It's not a bad movie. So you would get, I mean, you would go on to work for Kraft, as was mentioned. And then Cole Hahn, so very different kinds of products, food, apparel. And was your sort of, were you ever thinking, I'm going to start my own business one day? Or were you thinking I really want to just be a brand manager for big, different companies? It's funny, sort of both of those at different points. I think like Christina, when I got to craft, I was like, this is it. This is like the career that I want to have.

Free macaroni and cheese forever. Forever. I mean, the craft store was no joke. It was awesome. Craft singles, grilled cheese sandwiches forever. Totally. Well, also, I mean, you may remember this, but my forever was the brand that I got to work on, which was Crystal Light on the go. Oh, interesting. Yes.

So I grew up with Crystal Light, like in the pitcher, in the fridge, like every kid in the 80s probably. Yep. But then, like, the innovate, my sort of version of craft innovation was these on the go sticks that you would just pour into your 16.9 knots bottle. water. And it was so delicious. And so... And it must have been a huge product for craft. It was huge. It was really huge. It was a huge growth driver for, I mean, the whole category was powdered beverages. And so Crystalite sitting among like a lot of these heritage brands, Tang and Countrytime and, you know, sort of brands that weren't as relevant. Yeah. So being on Crystalite on the go is an amazing experience. All right. You were a craft for a couple of years.

And then to Cole Hahn, before you ended up landing at what became? came Quidsey, which was started as 1,800 diapers, and this is 2010. How did you end up there? Yeah, so it's funny. When I was at Colhan, I was working with a woman who told me about this sort of job posting that she had gotten from a recruiter for a merchandising role at a company called diapers.com. And at the time, I was pregnant with twins. It was maybe like spring of 2009. And she told me she wasn't going to pursue it. And I thought about it for a bit. And I was like, actually, you know, if you wouldn't mind sharing that job description with me, I'd love to talk to the recruiter about it. And so I did. And I ended up, you know, sort of going down to the office at that point was in Montclair. And so I went down.

And that's when I met Christina. All right. So, Christina, you'd been made head of marketing at Quidzee and we're moving into leading the retail side. And the company was growing. You guys were launching like about. of direct-to-consumer websites. I think there's like soap.com and wagg.com for pets. So at the time, what were you hiring Galen to do? I think Galen, as she said, was initially interviewing for a merchandising role, but ultimately we hired her to be the marketing director for diapers.com. And what I remember most, by the way, about Galen in that interview was that she was pregnant with twins and could hardly breathe.

Oh my God, I was nervous and also just had like two humans like pushing on all my things. So you started at when you started at Quincey, Galen, you probably took some time off pretty soon after because you had two kids. Yeah, well actually, so I think my last interview was like two weeks before I ended up having the kids. They were two months early. And I remember they had been born but were still in the NICU when Christina and Vinnie called me to give me the offer. And then I didn't start until after I had been home with them. So I started the beginning of January in 2010. So I had been home with the girls for like four months or so before that.

And that year, like seven or eight months down the road, Quidsey gets acquired by Amazon. So you become an Amazon employee. Yes. So just tell me a little bit about your relationship. You know, did you guys, I mean, were you working super closely? together every day. We were. It was sort of an all hands-on deck all the time. There was a ton of pressure to sort of continue the amazing momentum that we had already seen on diapers.com in terms of sales,

but also to get all of these other verticals launched. So there was a ton going on. And so we worked really closely together, and it was just, it was hard. It was really hard. We learned so much. But there is just a ton of pressure. And we all loved it. I think I, you know, I think we all just wanted to make sure that we hit the metrics that we had in place and our plans were really aggressive. You would basically work together for four years at Quincey. I know, Galen, you mentioned that at times you had, you thought about maybe starting your own thing. Christina, did you, was that in the back of your mind or not quite? I think Galen was thinking about it a little bit before I was. I knew that I would probably, after seven, you know, to eight years, that I was ready to make a move.

But I was less clear that it would be to start a business of my own. And Galen, even while you were at Quidzee, was that still, was that ideas percolating in your mind? I think not quite. I think I was just open to ideas that popped up and definitely always thinking about what I wish for for myself, you know, in sort of a shopping experience or stuff. for the kids or a service or things like that, I think just like, yeah, wouldn't it be great if there was, like, a travel service that could do la la la. Like those types of conversations happened a lot, but not in a sort of serious way, really, until we had the primary thought. And so then it became, you know, we sort of got to the point where we were both probably ready to leave regardless. And so we're either going to do this or we're going to sort of go our separate ways and get new jobs. And what are we going to do? All right, well, let's back up for a second, rewind the tape and tell me about that idea.

Both of you guys were moms. And children change you. I mean, this happened to me. Like I all of a sudden found myself dancing at mommy and me groups because you could. You know, it frees you up to do things that you wouldn't normally do. Like, you got to shake, shake your booty. And you're doing it with your kid. And it does change.

It changes a lot of things in your life and often leads to business ideas. So just kind of walk me through the conversations that would eventually lead to like, hey, this is something. What do you remember? Yeah. So I think what I remember most is that it was a pretty reasonable combination between the experience that we had had at diapers.com and just sort of personal experiences shopping for our own kids' clothes and sort of coming away with the what if there was a diapers.com type solution, which in our minds was like amazing customer service, really easy to shop for. all the great sort of right products that busy parents need that are also easy to replenish. But sort of applied to the clothing category where I think personally shopping for our own kids, we were frustrated and had a bunch of questions about like the market that existed.

So, you know, my kids are girls, but they never liked pink growing up. And I remember early on one year them wanting orange jackets for winter. And I had to buy them from the like in quotes boys section because the sort of girls coat offering was like pink, white, teal. And so and so that was just like a, huh, that doesn't make any sense. Like these coats are basically exactly the same. These kids are four. And then I think the other big one was around just simplicity. You know, Christine and I grew up with brands like The Gap and Beneton that sort of stood for these great, go-to styles that were sort of timeless and not over-embellished and not trendy, just great colors and great fabrics that all sort of like mixed and matched together. And we couldn't find that for our own kids and we missed it. Yeah, Christina, what do you remember? I mean, what was frustrating to you about? Because I mean, I'm thinking like when my kids were little, I just, you know, we'd just go to like Old Navy or whatever and, you know, buy a bunch of stuff

there. And like, you know, you buy cheap clothes for your kids because they're going to grow out of it. and then, you know, ideally you give it away. But I don't remember like a lot of pain points, just buying clothing for them. What was it, what was frustrating to you about that process? It was true for me, too, that I was doing the same thing. I was just shopping at sort of the go-to places at the time, the gaps in old navies of the world. But I remember Galen walking into one of these fun lunches with maybe a glass or two of wine. And she started to talk to me about it.

And it was less that I felt like there were these enormous pain. points and more that we started asking these why questions that then felt like the light bulb was going off. Like she said, like, why is it only certain colors for girls and boys? Why are we making, like, crazy expensive clothes that are dry clean only for babies? Why do you have to, you know, why can't you buy something that you really like? Because it changes every single season. All of these things maybe didn't start out as enormous pain points, but when we started talking about them, it just didn't seem to make sense. We had just accepted those things. I think the biggest problem for me is that at a high level, it felt hard and no fun.

And when you're shopping for kids, it just should be fun. And so that was the thing that I think always just felt like, oh, like, okay, every five seconds these kids need new clothes. And every time I go to do that, I don't know where to shop because I'm not really loyal to any brands in particular. There aren't any that I love and that I'm so excited to go, you know, check out. And then it's like a little bit of a slog because it's expensive. And so that to me was sort of like there has to be a better way. And one of the things that we sort of rallied around from the beginning was that when we wanted parents when they shopped at primary to feel like they won, which certainly wasn't a feeling that we had shopping at any sort of other clothing brands for our kids. Yeah, Christina, what did you, I mean, when Galen was telling you about this concept, where did you feel like, okay, we can really do this different?

Like, this is the problem with existing kids' clothing, and this is how we can solve it. Yeah, there were two parts of it for me. One was being able to picture this assortment and the brand that we could build, and I could picture it right away. And what I pictured was at a time when clothing in general and kids' clothing included had become so complicated, so proliferated with, you know, slogans and over-embellish. What I pictured, and we sometimes described it this way early on, was like the Lego of kids' clothing. I pictured these simple styles in these beautiful solid colors, the full rainbow of every color, and just how amazing that would be. So like basic t-shirts and short-sleeve polos and long-sleeve shirts and, you know, trousers, just hoodies, just very classic designs that were timeless. Absolutely. And what was interesting to us was that that was really exciting to us, but it was really boring to everyone else who was in this industry. This was the afterthought to them. The basics were boring. And remember that we had come from, you know, diapers.com. Nothing's more boring than diapers. Clothing was like itself was, you know, a huge step up in terms of excitement. And to us, there was just a lot of parallels.

So when you were like you were talking through this idea, right? At what point? Because this is like there's a difference between talking through an idea and then taking the leap, right, and saying let's pursue this. And there's a lot that has to happen. So how long do you think before before you got to the point where you're like, yeah, let's try it. Was it like six months a year, three months? I do think it was about six months from sort of like here's the concept. let's talk about it a little more. Let's talk about like whether we'd want to do it together. And I think we decided that maybe right before the holidays. And then we ended up leaving on Valentine's Day in 2014. And so I think for me what I most remember about that time was feeling really scared about the idea of leaving. But also I remember Christina like feeling pretty definitive that she was going to leave. Even though this, you initially came to her with this idea, she was the one who was more like, let's go. Yes, totally.

But so I remember feeling like there was this window that we both had where we had these amazing jobs, we had this experience, we had these incredible role models in Mark and Vinny. And we had this idea that we really were passionate about and felt like actually we were pretty well suited to try. It almost felt like not to be overdramatic, but like a little now or never on this idea. And also, I think we sort of gave ourselves a pep talk that if we tried this and it didn't work, we could probably go get other reasonable jobs. And so I feel like I like closed my eyes and we actually quit together. I remember. And I definitely was crying. Christina, you were ready to go.

You were itching to try something new. But your mom had raised you to never be dependent on anyone to, I mean, were you in a position where, you know, if this didn't work out, you'd be fine? I was by that point, and I was grateful for that. And I do think that I felt like I was, I had earned it. I had finally reached a point in my life where I could take risks like this. And why not? And there was a lot to believe in.

There was an idea to believe in. There was a partnership to believe in. We had done enough thinking to really believe that there was a business model behind this. And I remember thinking to myself, we have every reason to believe this could be a huge success. But if it isn't, I know it's going to be an amazing experience. When we come back in just a moment, how Galen and Christina's idea went from a business plan to a hugely successful launch, and how a few months later, it almost fell apart because of a critical mistake. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. My name is Nazar. I'm from Washington, D.C., and hands down, my favorite episode of How I Built This was with Tristan Walker of Walker and Company.

I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this episode, whether it be for a pick-me-up or a bit of inspiration, Tristan's words and his faith just always seem to do the trick for me. And I'm now on a similar path as a young black entrepreneur, one that was undoubtedly influenced by something Tristan had said that episode, which is that you should do the thing that you're uniquely positioned to do. If you want to share your favorite episode of how I built this, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name,

where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why? A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at hibt at ID.wondry.com and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now back to the show.

Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014 and Christina and Galen have just quit their jobs. They're determined to start a direct-to-com. consumer kids clothing brand. And the idea is to sell just the essentials in solid colors at an affordable price. And of course, the first order of business is to write up a business plan. I think we actually said to each other, like, let's just take a week to get our haircut, to maybe go to the dentist, to like catch up with the kids, and then we'll start. So we had a

one-week catch-up. And then we felt like we needed to just, immediately start working on the business plan. And so we found a space that we were really excited to work from. We work had just started around then, and we sort of looked at it, but it felt expensive. And so we actually both joined the Reebok Sports Club on the Upper West Side in New York and worked from there for like maybe six months or more. We met every morning, like, in workout clothes with sort of like the loose intent to maybe exercise that day. We very rarely did. But they had great Wi-Fi and they had a cafe with delicious food. And so that's where we pulled our business plant together from the Reebok Sports Club.

Just working out and then having coffee. Not working out. Not working out. Not working out. Okay. All right. Nothing. No judgment.

Not judging you. And the idea, Christina, from the beginning was to raise money, was to find investors and to see if you can start that way. It was. I think we knew that we would need. a significant amount of seed money in order to build a website and hire a small team. I think, Gailen, at the time that we launched,

were we six people? And so how much did you guys think you needed to raise? Our target was $750,000 to basically get us to the point where we were ready to launch. So our first inventory by obviously some product development along the way.

And then mostly otherwise, it was people who could help us build a website, could help us think through sort of the creative and what does the brand look like and also, you know, sort of start to get clothing designed and made. So let's start with just the fundraising because I want to break it down, how you really got off the ground. I have to imagine two Harvard MBAs deep experience in retail, in startups, in consumer and direct-to-consumer, this was like a no-brainer. Like you guys walk in and you could raise the money pretty easily. I wish that was true. Yeah.

I mean, I think we going into it, Guy, if we're being honest, probably thought kind of like you described. I mean, you knew Mark Lurie. He was probably going to introduce you to a bunch of people. I mean, your resume is alone. No-brainer, right? Yes. And he definitely did. He and Vinny were so helpful with introductions.

Yeah. But I think we, like, just grossly underestimated how hard. it would be. And also how, being honest, like how much we didn't love it, I think communicating our vision when it was so crystal clear to us, we could like see it perfectly, like communicating that to someone who, you know, had less experience in the apparel category, maybe didn't shop for their kids' clothes, was hard. Yeah. And I think also it just felt like salesy to us. Like we had this idea and we often would walk into a pitch knowing that we needed to be like, and this is the most amazing idea you've ever heard. And instead, authentic to us, we were sort of like, yeah, well, we have this, you know, we have an idea for a clothing brand that we think's going to be pretty great. So it just wasn't, it wasn't awesome out of the gate.

Were there, were there, I mean, in, you know, in some of these meetings, investors, were there any investors are like, look, you've got to put a logo on there. You know, you've got to have a big P or something that. And were you guys, if you heard that, were you just like, no, the whole point of this is to not have. a logo or to be sort of brand name focused. Yes, this is maybe one of our favorite stories. And it happened in the Reebok Sports Club in one of their tiny phone booths that we had to fight people for every day. But an investor definitely early investor call suggested exactly what you said, that like the clothing needed to be recognizable on the playground. How could it ever work if it wasn't?

But rather than suggesting a logo actually suggested. that we put huge expletive zippers on everything, like as an example. You just said expletive. They didn't want the zippers to have expletive. No, but like huge effing zipper. Big zippers, like the recommendation. The giant zipper on like the hoodie. Yes.

That was that was a recommendation. It's not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. I think I can see, like a big fat zipper, like a three-inch zipper. That's kind of cool. That was a suggestion. Well, that can be yours. That's a free idea for you guys.

I'm starting my new zipper of Carolina. Not today. Big zipper. Big zipper.com. But so, you know, but I understand the thinking behind it, right? I mean, somebody is saying, can it be replicated? Can you actually protect your brand or product? You can understand the skepticism from some people initially when they're like, wait, it's just a basic shirt.

Exactly. And that for us, it was like, yes, exactly. It's just a basic shirt and it's so hard to find. So I think that was part of it too, is that we kind of knew from shopping this category so much and from all of our friends who were doing the same that although it seems like it's everywhere and so easy to do, it just wasn't. And also I think as we learned and got into it by focusing on it, we could actually do it really well in a way that was sort of profitable and a solid business and the basis of an amazing customer relationship where, yes, a bunch of other companies. could and do sell a basic white t-shirt sort of in the corner of their store. But it's an afterthought. And so the experience around it and sort of the benefit of it is just very different for those brands. And here the other question is, I mean, the kids market is it's an interesting market because, of course, unlike adult apparel, kids have to, you know, they grow out of stuff. They've got to buy a bunch of stuff.

But I also wonder whether it's a more fickle market in some ways that like kids like one toy and then it's hot for a month and then that's it. They like nobody's talking about it anymore. You know, fidget spinners. Who's doing fidget spinners, right? Is there that kind of ephemeral quality to kids' clothing? I think I would say that one end of the spectrum, sure, there's a lot of fun in shopping for trendy fashion. driven clothing and trying new things all the time. But at the other end of the spectrum, you do want some go-to, some things you can count on. And one thing that we've really learned

even more so over time about kids is that comfort really matters. And so when they find a legging that feels just right, you know, or a sweatshirt that is super comfortable, they want to be able to get it again. And at all of our competitors, everything was changing, even those basics every single season so that the next time around it was made from a slightly different fabric or it had a different fit or now it had a ruffle on it. And so for those go-toes, they just didn't exist in the same way everywhere else. And there is definitely a need for those for kids and for parents so that you're not reinventing the wheel every time. Do you just want a shirt without Bart Simpson on it?

Exactly. Please. Please. Or mommy's little slugger. That was our other favorite. Yeah. Or, I mean, admittedly, I bought one of my kids were little. I bought them like punk band shirts just because I thought was funny. Sure. You know, with the Ramones. Do as much as you can before they can speak. Yeah. Yeah, I just throw that on them.

So, all right, so you have this, this, you've got the pitch. And you also wanted in your pitch to offer the clothing for under 25 bucks. That was the idea. Everything was under 25 bucks? That was the idea. Yes. My God. These investors must have been like, wait.

So you want to, no brand and under 25 bucks. And you want my money? In hindsight, it does sound funny. It's a tough proposition to get behind. But yeah, we wanted the clothing to just be clearly accessible. I think we wanted to make incredibly high quality fabric, durable, soft, all those things. But we wanted people to be able to buy these as sort of like easy, no-brainer go-toes. Not the cheapest in the market, but also not expensive.

Got it. Okay. So the idea was you wanted to raise $750. I think you actually raised more than $2 million. We did. Yeah. We did manage to find people who weren't skeptical. We did.

We found some people. We followed all the breadcrumbs. I think, you know, we've said we had probably more than 50 meetings, ended up with two sort of lead venture investors, as well as like a bunch of friends and family who, you know, were sort of excited about the idea and wanted to be supportive. So, yeah, we raised $2.5 million in that seed round. All right. So you get the $2.5 million.

This is June of 2014, I think. And with that money, presumably, you want to create a number of different piece of apparel. And you've got to manufacture and you've got to design them. So with that money, what did you initially do? I mean, I'm assuming the first thing you did was hire a couple people. Yeah, we did. And I think we started, well, there were sort of two pieces of it. One were the sort of things that we had had direct experience with before,

which was sort of like the building up. the website and creative, what do we want the brand to look like and the photography and things like that. And then the hardest work, I think, for us was just figuring out how to make great quality clothing, which we hadn't had any direct experience making clothing and just completely underestimated how hard that was to do when you had never done it before. And so that was the thing we spent the most time on was trying to figure out, like, who to partner with, what factories would make these clothes, how do we figure out what fabric to buy, that led us to just ask for help from anyone we could who had any connection to the apparel industry at all.

Were either of you guys prepared to design the clothing? Did you feel confident that maybe you guys could sketch out some designs? Well, sketching, no. But I think we felt like we had a really strong point of view in terms of what we wanted the clothing to look like. And we could reasonably represent it with, you know, combinations of things that we could, shop in the market. We also had a really clear sense of what we wanted the color palette to be, which was another big differentiator. And just clear like primary color, yellow, greens, blues, reds. Yes, all the colors. So when we launched, I think we had 35 styles in total and most of

them came in over 20 colors. And so. 35 styles. So like what, T-shirts? Give me a sense of it. Yeah. So for kids, it was T-shirts, P.Js, leggings, pants, sweatshirts, joggers. And then for baby, too, we had baby suits and zip footy, PJs, and things like that. So that was sort of the crux of the assortment. We had a little cardigan sweater. Yes, pretty basic assortment. And then I have to assume that during that time, you're trying to figure out, trying to locate a factory or factories that can make this stuff for you at reasonable costs. So how did you tell me about the process of trying to find those places? So as Gailin said, we were way underestimated what it would take to figure out how to connect with factories and get the clothing made. And in the beginning, we tried to do it ourselves. We tried to get leads on specific factories and actually call someone there. And we also learned that those are often well-kept secrets.

People don't want to always share that information either. In the end, we got a good reference to an agent. And I think what we concluded was that we were going to need one, an agent who would be the intermediary between us. and factories that they knew well and could connect us with. In China. China and India. All right. So primary.com, you launch March 31st of 2015.

Did 31 styles for babies, girls and boys, everything under 25 bucks, which sounds like a great deal. So how did you, how did it do? I mean, obviously there are millions and millions of websites out there. You launch and people have to discover it. So how to do initially? First of all, the first thing we did from a marketing perspective is we armed everyone we knew, friends, family, and investors with a personalized promotion code that gave anyone that used it free shipping for a year, which was kind of a crazy offer. And that was a really effective way to just leverage everyone we knew to get the word out on day one. What do you remember about the launch, Gailen?

I think two things. There's one before and one after. The immediate before the launch, Christina and I went to the warehouse to see, like, the sort of first delivery of, you know, finished product that we were about to go live with. And, you know, we were opening boxes and pulling out product and looking at everything. And I mean, part of it was just so overwhelming that, like, we'd been thinking about this for so long. And now we were actually here and here was our primary clothing.

So really proud. on one hand. On the other hand, there were definitely a lot of products that we opened up and sort of looked at and were like, this doesn't look great. And so I maybe was crying a little bit also. And one thing in particular, I mean, zip footies for us have become like a pretty core product. But like we opened, there were a few colorways of that zip footie and the feet had somehow been cut as like triangles. I'm not kidding. It was it looked like little. little dinosaur feet on these zip footies. And we were like, oh, God, like, we can't sell these. What is happening? And so, yeah, so there were a bunch of styles that just weren't, weren't right. And so

that I remember very clearly. And then, like, the actual launch itself, I just think, like, felt so exciting. My kids were staying with my mom and sent me the cutest video, like, go get a mom. That was awesome. And, you know, our little team, there were six of us when we were. we launched and we'd all been in the office late that night. It was just sort of like, ugh, we did it. And so it was just a huge, like, proudest moment. I think I read you sold out all your inventory in that first, you know, in a couple weeks. We did. We sold through things more quickly than we thought. I think also we just had an enormous miscommunication, I think part of having never done this before ourselves, on

the lead times to get back in stock on things. Yeah. And so in our minds, we thought that when we placed a sort of reorder, that we would be able to get back into product within eight weeks. And so we were very careful. We ordered, you know, enough inventory to start to last us at least that long, plus some cushion and safety stock formulas and all the analytics. But the reality was that to place a rebuy, like, we weren't going to get product for, like,

three to four months. And so things got really scary because not only did we sell through it faster than we thought, but also to get back in stock on product was going to be like two to three months longer than we thought it was going to be. And so then all of a sudden we have huge momentum from the launch. We're so excited. Everything's sort of like working to start. And then we have no inventory for like a couple months. And that was not good. So you basically sell it out, which is great. But then you've got nothing for months. Right, nothing to sell and not a lot of cash runaway. And we just somehow totally missed, like, maybe the most critical detail of all, like, the first two years, which was how long the lead times are to get product.

And so, yeah, I don't even, like, know how to explain it because we just totally missed it. We definitely missed it on getting in front of those lead times. And we, I think, also assumed it would be reliable. And the reality is it just isn't always reliable. Things are late sometimes. So the result of it really was that our intended year one just didn't quite materialize because we just didn't have the inventory for it. You had this amazing launch.

Yes. But then it was like flat. Then we just had to almost go on pause. And so our plans for year one kind of got pushed into year two. By the time we got to year two, we figured those things out. We were able to get the inventory that we needed. And then we could have a more meaningful, launch, essentially. It was kind of a take two on the launch in some ways.

And that year raising that money, I guess you guys took a hit when one of your investors, something happened with an investor who had committed and then I guess pulled out what happened. Yeah, even sort of with all of these headwinds, little inventory happening, we knew we needed to raise our Series A. We did a bunch of pitches again, just like we had in the seed round, ended up connecting with an investor who was really interested. We were really excited about, had a term sheet that we had signed and were just sort of waiting for the signature back. When we got an email that was something to the effect of, you know, hey, guys, do you have a minute to jump on the phone? Which just is never a good thing.

Never good. And so we jumped on the phone. And, yeah, the message was, you know, I'm so sorry, but I have another company in my portfolio that is sort of pivoting into the same space, and I can't make this investment now. And so more tears. That was like one of, I mean, there were a lot of moments in that first year where we were like, oh, well, like, this is over. And so that was really hard. Yeah.

But I think to the credit of our existing investors from our previous. round, they were able to sort of bridge us into the spring so that we could sort of go back out and raise a proper series A. I think you ended up doing about a million dollars in year one. Not bad at all. Pretty good, but probably lower than what you were hoping. That's exactly right. And it was a big learning a year for us.

As far as figuring out the marketing, we definitely had some misstarts there too. We tried some ads on Facebook that basically flopped out of the gate. Well, they said Brilliant Basics under $25. Brilliant basics under $25. Here's the ad. Exactly. It was, and it was straightforward, and it was the premise. But in the context of Facebook, it just didn't break through.

And then at the same time, what was really interesting was from year one, we were getting a lot of great feedback from the customers who had shopped us. And we were noticing that the things that they were saying back to us about what they loved about our clothing were better. than our ads. They would say things like, no crappy princesses, I'm down. So our next ad went out,

focused on our core babysuit product and said something like not all babysuits need to say little slugger. And it was a night and day difference.

This ad resonated with parents. Resinated, yes. Because it said, not all baby clothing needs to say a little slugger. Okay, I get it. But here's a question, right? There is obviously

a huge market. for that stuff. I mean, you can go into, you know, old Navy or any, any store, I'm just picking that one. And a lot of baby clothes say, Daddy's Princess or, you know, I'm the boss or whatever. I'm just, you know, something like that, you know. So there is a risk to putting out an ad like that, right, because you're appealing just to a specific type of parent who doesn't like those. Like, I don't like them. Is that a big enough market? So there were two interesting things about it. The first point is that when we put that ad out of, there, that's exactly what people started talking about. Some people liked Little Slugger, and some people didn't. And they started talking about it, and these ads were getting a ton of engagement. And so it broke through, and it was, you know, driving discussion. And the other thing I think we would say is that brands are not built by playing it straight down the middle. And so we felt strongly about leaning into our point of view. And our point of view doesn't have to be for

everyone. And we're not against, you know, other brands doing other things. But we started to be pretty clear about the fact that we were no logos, no slogans, no sequence. It was a clear position, a clear point of view. And the brand really started to be formed. And when you, I mean, one of the things that I'm curious about in terms of inventory is unlike a lot of apparel brands, you could probably overestimate, I mean, or order more inventory than you. you needed because it wasn't like your styles were changing. These were evergreen styles, right? Yes, and that was a huge benefit for us, both in terms of sort of learning about demand from early on and not having to get it exactly right because we knew whatever we weren't going to sell

in that season, we could just keep on the site because it wasn't going out of fashion. And also kind of resulted in a really great customer experience because we could lean into inventory confidently. It just meant that we were in stock. at a really high rate. And so, you know, we wanted to make sure that for these busy families, we always had the black leggings or the T-shirts that they needed. And we were able to do that because of this point. So sort of year two, which is 2016, you're starting to focus more on how to market it, right? And I think one of the things that you, one of the major changes or a major change you made, I guess, in 2016 is you basically stopped having boys and girls sections. You just

went to the website and it was just ages. That's right. And in retrospected, I don't know why we didn't start that way. I think we probably did just think that we had to follow conventional wisdom there and how else will people know how to shop. But we had otherwise offered, you know, this assortment that was for everyone. We just offered it across boys and girls' sections. And what was interesting was that our customers sort of called us out. We got notes from customers saying, why even have boys and girls sections?

And we were like, yeah, why? And so we pretty quickly did away with those and started marketing just to baby and kids and have ever since. Yeah, Gail, I'm curious to get your take on that. I mean, you know, we're living at a time where everything is unfortunately politicized. But, I mean, was there any concern that by eliminating the boys and girls categories? Because most websites, you know, have men's, women's children, you know. I'm curious, were you worried at all about any kind of bad? backlash around that? So we actually weren't. I think like Christina said, it just, you know, the second we heard it, it made so much sense. It was just sort of one step further from, you know, wanting my girls to be able to buy orange jackets at the beginning. We did get some questions, though, around the functionality, which is, you know, yes, every store has boys and girls section. So aren't you worried that your conversion's going to fall off or customers might not be able to find what they're looking for? And I think we just felt like,

like maybe that could be true, but also we weren't worried about it because we felt like it wouldn't be that hard for people to find clothing because our categories were very straightforward and our site experience was good. I think the other thing too that I would just add on, you know, sort of showing kind of every kid in every style is just that we've learned from customers to how meaningful it is for their own kids to sort of see themselves in our clothing. and so boys can feel comfortable buying anything they want and same for girls. And so it just gave us a lot of conviction to keep going. When we come back in just a moment, how Christina and Gailen credit their close relationship,

they've called it their superpower, as one of the keys to their success as co-CEOs. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So by 2018, three years after launch, Primary is growing fast. They're up to a few dozen employees and around 30 million in revenue. But how to keep growing is always in the back of Christina and Galen's minds, all while trying to stay true to their brand and its style. One of the questions I have is like, you didn't really have to spend a lot on, I'm assuming, new designs, are am I wrong?

because so much of your designs are intentionally there to last forever. You're not like, or like at a certain point, did you guys have a conversation where you're like, hey, you know, we should have like a fall line or a winter line. Like we should have, you know, maybe do these more sort of seasonal lines or something like that or collections. So many conversations. Yeah. Yeah, we did. And I think it was once we started seeing this sort of little. loyalty and repeat customer base that was continuing to come back at a pretty predictable rate,

that we started to feel more comfortable and confident, leaning into kind of extensions on the core of what we had launched with. It was some new categories that we felt were sort of big and that we had kind of earned a right to play in, like outerwear and swim. But also, you know, we had customers, too, who loved us for the simplicity of our solid, colorful. basics, but we're also like, I don't know, maybe you guys think you could throw in a stripe or, you know, rainbows can be colors too. And so then, you know, we sort of thought about it and, and stripes felt to us sort of almost as timeless and classic as solids in some instances. And so we started with stripes. You know, our rainbow stripe t-shirt was maybe one of the best-selling items we had ever sold. And so- It's amazing. It's like a shirt I wore as a kid. Right. I know. Isn't it so fun? version of that, yeah.

Yes, it's so happy. But these extensions into sort of classic stripes and, you know, a star print or something like that felt reasonable. And so those were the things that we started to introduce more seasonally, but like 10% layers on to the core of the business, which was much more year-round. I mean, I'm curious about this idea of Evergreen, really, because, I mean, what we think of as basics today, I think really we're thinking of like 80s clothing that really kind of blew up in the 80s, but how do you actually make something that is ever going to mean, are you,

are the things that you guys make identical to basics from the 80s or or are there updates that make them look like they're of our time now? I think it's a combination and I think it depends on the style. So when we started, you know, sort of our concept of evergreen was that if we were going to launch something, we needed to believe that we could sell it for at least five years. And so for us, I think it wasn't, it had to be evergreen forever and ever. But like five-year horizon, so it wasn't, you know, super trendy. But at the same time, we're, you know, shopping the market all the time and making sure that there isn't anything we're offering that is, you know, suddenly outdated that we just need to take another look at. To me, the concept of evergreen clothing is actually kind of genius because fashion changes so much.

Even things like when I was a teenager, it was all baggy clothes. A lot of baggy. And then I went skinny. And then I'm looking at my nephews and they're baggy again. And my son's a baggy. Like he doesn't wear skinny. And I'm still wearing skinny jeans like a weirdo. Like I'm a middle-aged man.

And I'm like, what happened? I'm like looking around. I'm like, I didn't get the memo. So, I mean, how do you adapt to those kinds of things? Yeah, I think I would say that we just. continue to remind ourselves how enormous this market is and how many other people are doing those things. And so it takes the pressure off a little bit. Like a lot of people don't want the sort of like newest latest trend and are just looking for the things that we were looking for when we

started the company, which is solid, reliable, great quality, beautiful colored, you know, sort of gender neutral clothes that they can count on and come back to. year after year as their kids grow, because so many competitors aren't focused on that at all, we feel like there's just an enormous market still left for us, even if we don't do a lot of the trend. So it helps to take the temptation away a little bit. Tell me about your relationship as co-founders. I mean, Christina, you hired Galen, and I think both of you guys are co-CEOs, if I'm not mistaken, is that right? We are.

So how do you divide and conquer? I mean, how do you just sort of focus on areas that each of you are separately more interested in? So we have one main way that we divide and conquer that has evolved over time. And that is that Galin focuses more on everything to do with the clothing itself, from design and sourcing to merchandising and planning. And I focus more on the marketing and creative side. Beyond that, I do think we probably just, in different situations, play to our strengths or things we feel strongly about. And so we work together on all important decisions, but in lots of areas of the company, from operations to our customer care team to our financial planning.

And we just both get involved and sort of divide and conquer as we go. Yeah, it was funny for the beginning because I think what we did see in the market was even co-founders that. were much more complimentary in terms of their backgrounds than Christine and I, who as we've said, are basically the same person on paper. But I think we have worked together now for so long. So starting in 2010, so, you know, coming up on 14 years together, we know each other really well and we trust each other so much and I think just respect each other. It makes it easier to work together because of those things. And so even in the divide and conquer, it's so helpful to know each other so well because we can use judgment on things where I know when I hear something

whether I can just go ahead and make the decision and Christine is probably going to be fine with it and we have gotten really efficient at knowing when to just like make a decision and go on our own versus bring it to the other person in an instance where we don't totally agree. We're both very happy to sort of let the other person, whoever feels strongly, be the decider. How do you, I mean, I think just this year, 23, when you were talking, will hit profitability, which is awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. But that's still stressful. And stress can test any relationship.

How have you guys withstood the stress of, you know, the ups and downs of the business? I mean, have there been times where you've had arguments or there's been tension between you? I think the first point we would make is that in those times of stress, it helps to not be alone, to not feel alone. And so having each other usually alleviates a lot of that stress and we can work through it together. But do we have times of stress and tension? Sure. I think the rule between us that's been really important is that we never let that go on and fester. So if we start to feel like some sense of tension or someone's getting annoyed, maybe we're just stressed that day. We'd make a point to talk about it. right away. Yeah, I agree. It actually, as an only child, like Christina has said that she feels like she sort of taught me how to have a sister where you can have arguments and disagreements, and it doesn't mean that things are totally broken or not going to work. It's just like part of how relationships are. And so I've definitely evolved. There's so many things that you guys have done that have been counterintuitive, right? Like eliminating the boys.

and girls section or, you know, trying to, he built a company around primary basic clothing with primary colors, evergreen clothing. And those two things have worked. There's a third thing you did. You instituted a four-day work week. You're like France. You're like Sweden. I mean, I love that. I think it's awesome. I want to work one day a week, actually. You do a one-day work week and six days of just, you know, hiking and hanging out with your kids, hanging out with my wife. But tell me why you did that because it, I can hear a lot of leaders hearing this and thinking, okay, how does that work? So what was the, tell me the idea behind it. So the original idea actually was from a podcast. And, uh, that you heard somebody talking

about that we heard. So it was young me moon, who's a professor at Harvard Business School. She was talking about the four day work week and how she, herself was sort of disappointed that it hadn't become more of a thing in the U.S. And her sort of premise was that as a culture and a society, like the hallmark of advancement is more free time for people. But she hadn't seen that happening and just couldn't understand why. Yeah. And so then COVID happened. And so I had this four-day work weekend in the back of my mind. And in those moments, it felt sort of even more relevant. And so we just started with a little bit of an experiment that was just like we gave everyone Friday off.

Like maybe just starting as one Friday off, like a surprise, sort of like everyone takes a day off tomorrow. And everyone was so appreciative. I think we all felt so much better coming back to work on Monday morning that we then sort of instituted that for like a month. And then we did it for the whole summer. And then, you know, we felt like we weren't really missing a beat workwise. It's also, it's always hard to know what the pro forma would have been. Like, but could you have grown faster? Could you have done more things working five days a week? The honest answer is who knows. But I think we just ourselves felt the personal benefit so much. The team was so appreciative and loved it so much that we decided to sort of keep it permanent. And the way we do it and describe it is, is not that no one's ever working on Friday. It's more meant to be sort of a catch-up day where we don't have meetings. And so it's just an extra day for people to recharge in sort of whatever way that means for them. I love this idea of a four-day work week.

I think it's awesome, right? But on the other hand, I can see the argument that the four-day work week just limits productivity. That actually – and I don't know. I don't have the date on this. Maybe I'm totally wrong. Is, you know, are you seeing changes in productivity? I think we would argue that it has benefited productivity as well as employee loyalty, which both have very tangible benefits for the company.

And so again, to be clear, when we went from five days to four days, it wasn't like we were strictly saying, you will now work 32 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week. The idea was to offer people very meaningful flexibility by, having no meeting Fridays and allowing them to recharge and take care of personal things on that day and otherwise get their work done. And what we're finding is that people are getting their work done. They're meeting ambitious goals.

We are having a great year this year, for example, growing and will be profitable. And we're doing that with a very productive team that is also very loyal. Most of our team has been here over four years. So in a sense, I mean, it is like another way to, to retain. We know this. Like when you lose an employee, it's a pain. It's expensive. Because it's expensive. You've got to retrain somebody new. It takes six to nine months to get them up to speed. Employee turnover is not ideal for companies. This is a way to keep people, to incentivize people to stay, I guess. Definitely. And you know, you often send surveys out to your team about various things. And it can be

hard to get them to do them. You have to remind them. When we sent out the survey about the four-day work week, I have never seen anyone respond faster. We got responses from the entire team within about eight minutes. And I think that they were maybe terrified that we were considering doing away with it and just wanted to make sure we knew how much they loved it. And yeah, in all of our actual surveys about employee satisfaction, I think the two things that our team cites the most are our mission and the four-day work week. I saw a story recently about how Columbia, I think it's Columbia Sportswear,

they're shifting their manufacturing out of Asia to Central America because of COVID sort of that experience taught them that like this is, you know, you can't really bridge the Pacific as much as they thought they could. And it's interesting. They're opening all of these factories. And Mexico apparently is really benefiting from this. A lot of factories opening in Mexico, in Guatemala, Central America, in Peru. Is there a world where you would look to this landmass here, North, South America, to bring more of your manufacturing there? Just to just in. case there was a disruption? I think potentially. We have looked at it a little bit so far and sort of where we've netted out, at least to date, is that because those regions just have sort of less access to cotton, it is a little bit harder on both the development front, but also the sort of transport of the fabric, which you would need to potentially import into those countries before you make it. And so it adds a little bit of complexity. With that said, though, we're still curious about it. It's hard not to be when, you know, the lead times of getting something from Guatemala

are three days on the water versus three weeks. And so it's definitely sort of on the radar. But for now, I think we're sort of firmly in, in Vietnam and India with still a little bit of production in China. Tell me a little bit about the end game here. I mean, you know, when you go to investors, obviously, you know, they give you. giving that kind of a timeline and they want a return eventually. And usually that means selling or going public. What are you thinking, Galen? I mean, you know, you know that's the trajectory. So it has to be in the back of your mind. What's going to happen or where it's going to go? It's definitely in the back of our minds. I think I would say from the beginning, even though we did

raise venture capital money and we sort of understood what came. with that. Yeah, I think you've raised about $60 million over the course of the eight years, right? Yes, exactly. We started this brand because we wanted to be the next gap and not because, you know, we thought that there could be like a quick exit or, you know, some sort of like quick cash and then we're on to the next idea. And so we've always had probably a longer term mindset than maybe a lot of our investors.

But I think the other thing is that like the investors that we have, you know, we have. have, they believe in us and they believe in our vision. And they actually, hugely to their credit, haven't been antsy for an exit because I think we all see the possibility here. And now that we've hit profitability, you know, sort of feel even more so that we're really on to something. I think at the same time, we feel excited about getting to where we think we can go faster. which doesn't necessarily have to mean raising more money, but the idea of having a partner at some point in the future who maybe has some deeper pockets than we do

and who also has had experience in additional distribution channels or physical retail or international or, you know, sort of other growth areas that Christina and I and our team haven't had direct experience with would be great. And so those are things I think that. we will be exploring over the next couple years just in terms of sort of next steps. So tell me about where you see this brand in. I mean, you mentioned Gap. You know, Gap started in the late 60s and, you know, it was a different time. And Gap is Gap. I mean, it has problems,

but it's obviously an iconic American brand. You're now in year eight. So take me to year 15. Where do you see primary? What do you want it to be? I think when we look at the big players out there that have been around for a really long time. We think we can be a half billion to billion dollar brand, just like they are. I think the question is how to get there, the fact that depending on how you approach it, it could take a really long time or it could happen a little faster. Right now, in our quest to get to profitability, which is happening this year, the truth is we're probably in a mode that we sometimes refer to as steady eddy. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

Right, which is, I mean, especially in this market and even otherwise, right? You want to be able to, you want to be in control of your own destiny and that's the way to do it. We build something we believe in so much. The last thing we want to do is blow it up for no reason. We don't need to add undue risk to this business. And at the same time, we don't want it to take 30 years. And so it's honestly something we're still navigating. And whether we end up having an opportunity to do that with a partner or with further investment could very well be part of it. when you think about the journey you guys took and how you met and, you know, and where you are today and you've got, you know, a pretty awesome brand that you've built and a company that's growing, how much of this place you're at now do you attribute to, to luck and how much do you think has to do with just the hard work you put in and, you know, your decisions and skills. Definitely a combination. I think examples for us of what has felt really lucky are, I mean, first of all, just meeting the right partner. A lot of people would like an amazing partner, but they're like, how do I find one? And, you know, sometimes when you want to find one, you can't just go find one. And I think those moments that hit you that make you, that are just the spark of an idea, I mean, those are just lucky moments. The fact that Gailon's girls couldn't find the orange jackets, as annoying as that was at the time was. the spark, you know, of an idea that I don't know if we would have come to otherwise.

And at the same time, I think we would certainly say in e-commerce in particular, if anyone thinks it's glamorous, it just isn't. And to be successful in e-commerce, I mean, it is just a lot of grinding it out, a lot of like blocking and tackling. How many more cliches can I use? It just is. And so I think that there's no way. way that an enormous amount of hard work isn't necessary to be successful in this industry. I think we've just learned, too, how important timing is to whether something can work or not. And so I think probably on balance, I lean a little more luck as the answer. And I think, too, so many founders and companies have, like, worked so hard and had a good idea.

and been really smart about it, but it just didn't quite work. And so I think, yeah, there's a little bit of, like, we've been lucky on the timing and some of the decisions that we happen to get right, because I think the difference between, like, a company that makes it and a company doesn't often comes down to something, like, really small. So feel very lucky to be where we are. That's Gailen, Bernard, and Christina Carbonell. They're the co-founders and co-CEOs.

of primary. By the way, of all the different colors they sell, they say one of the most consistently top selling for both babies and kids is black. Apparently, it's pretty hard to find black in children's clothing. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtine Arablewe. It was edited by Andrea Bruce with research help from Chris Messini. Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Josh Newell. Our production staff also includes Neva Grant, J.C. Howard, Kerry Thompson, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Sam Paulson, Carla Estevez, Catherine Seifer, and Malia Agadello. I'm Guy Raz,

and you've been listening to How I Built This.