This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well, you know, Alextel, there's been lots of stories about what it means to dress for work today. And I know you're back at the office, but you were home for a while, and I'm guessing that you maybe wore kind of a cute top in jeans and shorts at some point. What I wouldn't never
I saw pictures. I believe there may have been times where I had my feet in an ice bucket because it was so hot, jean shorts in a sht so that may have been my life for I want proof Twitter. Twitter world wants a proof of that. Um. And there's like people have talked about the Zoom shirt. I've had lots of yoga leggings and Jan David Weston were jeans today. Let me tell you he puts on a suit jacket to walk to the bathroom. All right, I want to picture.
I want a picture of that as well. UM, okay, so listen, we have a great guest with us um a friend of our show. He knows what consumers are wearing and what they're buying. Nate Checkets is back with US co founder and CEO at Roanne. He joins us on the phone from Connecticut. Nate, how are you? I'm doing great? How are you? Carol doing okay? You know, UM twenty one or so or week twenty two of working from home, I'm trying. I've kind of lost count. Um. I want to move forward, but I want to go
back first. Tell me what your world has been like, UM, Nate since March. Well, it's it's been a whirlwind. I mean I think, like like everyone, this is a roller coaster that feels like it's been um two years. Uh and and in some ways it you know, it feels short. In some ways it feels long. But you know, when when the pandemic initially started, it was a very scary time for not just people with help, but you know, for us as as retailer and as a as a
young growing brand in the consumer space. UM caused us to look at just about everything. And certainly, you know, we've we've come a long way, and categorically I think we're insulated in a lot of ways. But yeah, it's been it's been quite the experience navigating this so so literally, like what are people gonna wear? I mean, I joked about David Weston. So he's an anchor here Bloomberg Television. He covers politics, I mean, and he would wear a suit every day. Uh, and he used to be ahead
of ABC News. He's so he's just that way. Um, And I'll say that with a lot of love, Like he'd take his jacket off when he would get at his desk, and then he'd literally get up to go to the bathroom and he put his jacket on, Like he's that kind of guy. And he's wearing jeans to work. So like, what's my new uniform? Well, I I think there's no way, you know, let's let's say that we could snap our fingers and we were back at our
everybody was back at an office tomorrow. There's no way that the last few months won't impact wardrobes in the future, work at tire, etcetera. You know, people are this is a this is a very long sustained level of comfort and kind of wearing whatever you feel like we're wearing. And so you're gonna see dress codes be relaxed across the board. Um, and people are gonna there's gonna be a continued push for comfortable work attire, and you know
that's what Rome has always been about. Um, you know, not just making great stuff active for the gym, but making stuff that you can wear too and from work and and look great and so you know, performance fabrics and the work sweatpants, so to speak. But I do think that you're going to see some yeah, some relaxation of dress standards, even for a guy like David. I'm gonna say, if you we're going to actually mention it
to David, I've got to say I would like this conversation. Well, and I mentioned I've been living in jeans and yoga gear and a few Rowan items as well, because they are incredibly comfortable. I want to also ask you, because I want to get into, um, maybe any of the pivots that you've done. But one thing that you have done is, and forgive me if I don't say it correctly, is it brands times better? You have brands for better. Yeah,
tell us a little bit about this movement. Well, so you know, in the early stages, I was I was looking around and uh, it really started with the fact that I sat my three boys down in the room and I said, all right, we get to spend this amazing time together. It could be a couple of weeks, it could be uh, you know, even as much as a month. And of course I was dead wrong on my long term estimates. But is there something that you guys?
I want you to pick a skill that you want to learn, and we're going to go and learn it together. And ultimately we landed on skateboarding. I had never really learned how to skateboard. They wanted to learn how to skateboard. Um. And so I went and I looked, and I tried to find, you know, a skateboard brand that was part
of this kind of new digitally native movement. UM. I did not want to go to Amazon and just buy something because you had heard that all of online transactions were shifting towards Amazon, Walmart and these big players of what I called lowest common denominator shopping platforms, and this new digital main street that had been built up because regular main street and retail main street really they been killed off, but the digital main street that had evolved
with these amazing brands. Um, we're being challenged in a very real way. And so I wanted to go and find a skateboard brand, and I searched for like thirty four five minutes online and I couldn't find one and UM. But what I did see in that process of looking at all of my peers in this digital main street is everybody across the board was doing what they could to contribute UM positively to to you know, to fight this pandemic. Whether it was encouraging employees and their team
and their retail teams to to be safe um. You know, some were shifting their supply chains to make masks. Many were giving a percent of their sales to UM to
nonprofits even as their sales were declining. And I thought, you know, it would be great to stand in solidarity with a lot of these brands, and so I just started reaching out to friends in the space and we accumulated over a hundred fifty brands, digitally native brands, and everybody agreed to donate two plus percent of their sales or ten plus percent of their proceeds to a nonprofit
fighting the pandemic and UM. Over the course of two months, we raised you know, three and a half million dollars um to to to fight and uh, you know, to contribute to PP and UM. It also gave consumers a choice because we said, you know, we're brands that stand for treating our employees better, stand for treating our supply chains well, and we will always try and do what's right first, you know, above and beyond simply trying to
turn a profit. And uh and it was a great, great initiative and we had a great experience in building it well. And interested that you said that, because I wonder also how much are you thinking differently about all of that now? Like you have the relief effort, you've over a hundred forty brands who all helped raise that money. But as a company, are you also rethinking how you do stuff either sustainably or how you deal with workers, or any kind of work life balance that exists in
any part of the world? Like does did COVID make you rethink any of those things? I think it's made us. I think it's made us, at the very least examine everything. Um and you know, in particular, I will say, you know, we have a very flexible PTO policy relative to most of corporate America in the fact that we don't have a formal um, you know, vacation days. If you join our company tomorrow, we don't say all right, it's your
first year, you get ten vacation days. It's you know, it is unlimited p t O as we as we describe it, UM. And it's actually worked very well for us. But you know, part of the challenge that has come with that, and especially in this consistently connected environment, people are not taking enough time off where they're just you know, eliminating screens and walking away. And so we've had times
where we are forcing screen breaks UM and UH. And you know, there's you know, there's been there's certainly been ways where we're thinking about what does collaboration looked like when we come back is it is it a five day work week in the office? Um? And there's you know, again, forever is a very long time. So when I hear people say that the you know, we're never ever going back to an office, well, forever is a very long time. But I do think the workplace will be changed for uh,
for a considerably long time in the coming years. I did want to ask you that, Nate, because it's interesting. We had a CEO on last week who's who's a die hard New Yorker live there work their offices. UM has created like you has a great heart and you know, giving back to the community and basically said we're done, we're done with New York and we've been working so well and he's got a company that can work really
well virtually, and and so on and so forth. But he said, we're done with New York, but you don't. And I think you make a really good point. I think right now it's easy for us all to say we're done. But but long forever is a long time. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, the going back and looking at the Spanish flu and the you know, the Roaring twenties that followed it. You know, it's it's certainly easy to to think that this is you know that this is going to be forever impact. But there's there is,
there is an impact, and we have to acknowledge that. Um. I will never be done with New York. Um. We love we love the city, and I think it's going to take I think New York is going to come back better and stronger, and um but you know, when it comes to being in the office, at least as far as I can see, for the next two years, we will not have five day a week office days. I can I can envision a scenario where it goes down even to two office days a week and the
rest because our team is so effective at all. We unfortunately had to end our interview there as we had to get to the White House for a briefing. Still, it was really great to catch up with rone CEO and co founder Nate Check Its joining us from Connecticut