You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. The Next Guest, Our next guest maker of the types of clothes we've all been living in over the past year, and to be told active where a flee's You're ware it has really become a staple in many of our closets, not just in the past year, but really over the past few years. Joe Coula knows all about that. He's founder and CEO at Viori, and he joins us on the
phone from California. Joe, how are you. I'm doing great, Carol, thank you so much for having me. Well, it's nice to have you here. Tell us about the past year for you and what it's like. Take us back to March of and what was kind of going on in your world. Well, it's been a roller coaster. I will never forget. March thirteenth, We've gathered our leadership team together and we decided we needed to close our stores. We
had five retail stores at the time. Um we were getting calls from a lot of our wholesale partners saying hold shipments, don't send us any any more inventory. And by the way, we don't think we can pay our bills. And so it was a rough time. You know. We made some tough decisions. You know, at the time, we decided to keep all of our we had over fifty retail employees. We decided to keep them fully employed with
the company and reinvest in training. UM. But I was so proud with how our team came together in that time and we got really creative and we thought about how can we make this business better during this momentary pause. And what we found out was that there was a big gravitation towards comfortable clothing and we we were very fortunate to benefit from that. UM. So it was it was a bit of a roller coaster at the beginning, a lot of worry, a lot of doubt about what
was going to happen. And then we we learned quickly that our customer was coming to us. They trusted us for delivering really comfortable clothes during a pretty tough and traumatic time. I'm guilty for those comfortable clothes. Working from home for I don't know eight months. For me, are so a lot of yoga ware and the like. UM. Tell me about some of the metrics. I had read somewhere that you guys nearly tripled your revenue last year. Is that right? Or give some idea of the metrics
you saw. Yeah, we did. We We came in in the year to UM with a plan to double the business, and before we were really close to writing it to zero, as were a lot of folks, you know, in that early March timeframe, but we learned that there was again that big gravitation towards our our category, and we ended up tripling our business, with a large majority of that being direct to consumer. And so hats off to our team, Hats off to our supply chain for being able to
react so quickly to meet the demand. What was your supply chain like, because that's something that we've had a lot of conversations about over the past year, where we know when it came to certainly some of those essentials, UM, it was difficult. But what was your supply chain like during the pandemic. Well, we're fortunate to have great partners,
so I'll first say that, but it was challenged, you know. UM. You know, one day we called our factory partners and we said, look, guys, we need to hold UM all new production until we get a better picture of what was going to happen. And literally two weeks later we called them and after them, the triple the volume of production. And so you know, we were working with everybody from our textile mills all the way through to our cut and sow factories to manage capacity and kind of an
ever changing environment. You know, one minute we thought we were on one trajectory, and then the next minute we would get more data, putting more demand and pressure on supply chain. But we were able to rise to the occasion. And I think part of that was because we had adopted nimble UM supply chain models that UM we're where we where we partner with some of our vendors to manage inventory and to meet that that kind of fluctuation
in demand. Hey listen, good about forty five seconds and I've got to do a little bit of news and we'll come back. But how I just want to just quickly get your thoughts and we continue with this. But this idea that you guys, you know, you you launched as a men's brand, then you focused on women. You know, you launch our first women's collection. How productive fruitful was that pivot? Ultimately for you guys during the pandemic, it just turned out to be. It turned out to be
fantas like women today represents almost half of our business. Wow, that's a quick ramp up, very quick ramp up. You know, we're famous for soft fabrics, and women kept wearing our men's clothing and asking us to do something meaningful for them, and it was only natural that we enter the women's market. So Joe, a friend of mine, when I saw that we were having you onto, like, really cool guest. I
hear their joggers are the best. Tell me what's going on with jogger sales because this has been a big momentum play for you guys. Jogger has been an incredible product across all channels and distribution. But yeah, we've become famous for the jogger, and I think it's a combination of great fit and comfort. Comfort being king this past year, Um, we have a famous fabric called the dream Knit, our
dream knit textile. It's a technical fabric. It's brushed very uniquely to give it this incredibly soft hand and once you put them on, you have a hard time taking them off. So where do you go with all of this? And I think about I've been doing yoga for twenty years and yoga clothes have gone from you know, ty tyed yoga pants too. They actually look pretty nice with the jacket, And it's pretty amazing how like this stuff has evolved and has infiltrated kind of our regular wardrobe.
How do you continue to see the evolution of your brand and the type of offerings that you put out there. Yeah, that's a great question, you know. I really feel that part of the reason Vieory has been successful as we've intentionally tried to blur the lines between fitness clothing and everyday life clothing. And I really feel that the term
at leisure is just going to evolve into clothing. I think some of the best sportswear everyday clothing, whether you're wearing it around the house, or you're traveling, or you're going to the office. I think a lot of that product is being made and conceived today by activewear brand. And I think that a lot of our offering, you know, is extending beyond product you're just going to take to the gym, but it's product that you know you're traveling,
you'll wear to the office. It's it's closed, you'll you'll go hike and be active outdoors in and it's just transitioning into you know, clothing. It's the it's the new definition of clothing because it's more comfortable, it moves with your body and it just functions better. How are you
and you guys write about sustainability on your website. That's a big deal and we have been increasingly, certainly on our program here, looking at the fashion industry and the use of water and you know what it does to our environment. You guys are focusing on recycled and also organic materials. You're committed to sustainability in terms of your materials by two. It's a big part of your ethos.
Does it cost more? Tell me about getting there, because we are increasingly seeing more and more companies doing it. Is it hard to do it? Is it costlier? Tell me about that. Yeah, it costs money, so it requires investment. Um, but we believe that's it's a great r o I. But but that's not the reason for doing it. We did it because the natural world was what inspired the brand and we want to make sure we're doing everything
we can to protect it. And so if you you mentioned recycled and organic materials by two were on path to meet that UM that goal, but we also invested in a lot of different green initiatives to offset of our carbon footprint for the past two years. UM and yeah, those those that requires dollars to do that. We're also investing in going plastic neutral, so UM we calculate all the plastic that we put into the environment and we take equal if not more plastic out of the ocean.
So all of these require effort and require energy. It required dollars, but we believe it's the right thing to do. And you know, building a brand in alignment with a value system is really important to us, and I think it's really important to our customers as well. And where do you mostly manufacture there? We work with a supply chain that's that's global at this point, Asia, Cambodia, Vietnam,
Sri Lanka, So we're we're diversified globally well. And it's interesting and I do wonder too about UM that's certainly part of the E s G kind of framework that we are increasingly looking at when it comes to companies and certainly investments. UM, are you gearing towards places where workers are treated more equitably and and get a fair wage. We have a whole sourcing team UM that spends a lot of time on our code of conduct UM and and being very clear with the value system that we
expect our factories to operate within. And it's exciting because the more brands that are taking this next step in terms of E s G, the more the supply chain is being responsive, because the best factories in the world want to work with the best brand. If the best brands are caring about this stuff, then they are as well.
And so the more more energy, the more we vote with our dollars, the more the factories pay attention UM and so we're not only demanding it, but we're also seeing some of the best factories coming to us with really cool new programs UM and that's really aspiring to see. Yeah, definitely interesting to hear and it is inspiring. Hey, one thing I want to ask you, after a year of many of us being kind of casual, I'm still wearing. Also some genes at work I do change for what
I have to be on air. But U, there is a thing we talked about revenge buying where everybody can't wait to spend money, but there is also something like sweatpant fatigue that you guys are noticing. How is that shifting maybe some of the things that you want to put up in terms of product offerings in the next few months, especially the world reopens. Yeah, it's a great point. I mean we are already seeing our product UM focus evolved. UM sweatpants are still growing for us as a category,
but it's contribution to the overall businesses shrinking. So we're seeing people move into athletic shorts, you know, our technical sports where for traveling products that you can wear on the golf course or to the office. They're trending really strong right now, and we don't see that slowing down. But I don't think in general the movement towards healthy active living is going anywhere. And I believe that the clothing that we make UM is very much a lined
and supports that lifestyle. And so while the products that we buy might evolve a little bit out of say kind of sweat pants for lying on the couch, UM into other forms of active where I think in general, people are still looking for comfort, versatility, UM and performance. Yeah, I think you're right. I think people are whittling down to and and really want kind of a wardrobe that just makes sense with kind of who they are and and their work. All right, So what's next? Just got
about forty five seconds. Are you guys going to stay private? Do you want to go public? There's a lot of money out there their SPACs. Is that part of the timetable at all in the next year or so? Just quickly? You know, we're paying attention, we're getting we're getting educated on the public market. But you know, we have not made any kind of UM statement, intor or initiative to move in that direction at this point. We're so focused on growing the business. The business is going to double
again this year. We're getting to a pretty sizable scale. We have four hundred and fifty employees UM and so we have our work cut out with for us building kind of a seck end engine that can support the front. And we're very excited about what we're doing with our product pipeline. We're going to be expanding nationally with our ory retail stores UM and continue to invest in sustainability.
So we have our work cut out for us. Yeah, it sounds like, hey, listen, do come back, because I'd love to hear how things progress throughout one great to check in with Joekla. He is the founder and CEO at Vory, joining us on the phone from California.