Now on Bloomberg Radio, we take stock of small business. Small businesses want more streamlining and less red. Take small business and then accept the no, but maybe kill them. There's so many people that have ideas and it has to be more than that. It has to be making it real. Bloomberg taking stock small Business in focus on Bloomberg Radio. Listen up, all you potential male fashion easts. You know, maybe you don't want to wear the same uniform as everyone else, but you don't want to look
like you're trying so hard you push fashion. The fashion envelope right off the table will enter Flag an Anthem, subtle, smart, well made style for the kind of guy who values hard work but also knows how to unwind and have a good time. And I think, as even I've just met him, that sounds very much like the co founder and CEO of Flag of Anthem, Brad Gartman, who's joining us now in our New York studio. Welcome, Thank you.
So First of all, what is Flag and Anthem? You have a long career in fashion, will get to that, But what exactly is Flagg and Anthem? Um? We just I started this brand last last summer with my partner Zadmohi. He and I've been together for several years and we
just saw a massive void that we believe in the marketplace. UM. We believe that on a on a ball, on a broad scale, there's a lot of teen retailers out there in the marketplace, and then there's a lot of more conventional UH brands that have been around for a long time,
a very a lot of very traditional brands. And we feel for a twenty five thirty five year old guy who's just the average guy who's entering into the workforce, UM, he wants a digestible price point, he wants high quality, he wants a fit that he can UH, that he can understand. We just don't feel like there's been anything introduced in a very long time, UM that's gonna really cater to the everyday guy in this country and really
internationally over the long term. Brad speaks, he speak to the issue of price points because I mean a fifty dollar hoodie for example, or a fifty dollar shirt, things like that, there must be a less a lot of competition out there for that shopper. What distinct wishes the quality of the product and also the delivery, the experience in the brand. That's a good question because there are
there is a tremendous amount of competition out there. We feel that there's a lot of commodity type product out there that you can go get at any price point in the marketplace, but we also feel that there's a
lot of UM. When you want to go get a really high quality product with a with our taste level and a lot of design detail, everything has some limitation to it, whether it's so what we're looking to do is provide that hundred and fifty dollars shirt that you would get from some premium brand with a very comparable or better quality UM, but we're going to provide it for fifty on a shirt forty nine, which you know it's it's always limited by fit, it's limited by being overdesigned.
There's always some limitation from our advantage point in terms of what you see in the more premium brands out there. So we want something that can really get out there into the marketplace and in a very broad way and something that America will understand. So, um, you like Bruce Springsteen from New Jersey, how did you get from New Jersey see down by the Shore to Macy's and where you are now again. You have a kind of a
long and substantial career in the fashion industry. Sure, as I mentioned, my partner and I are in this together where UM. You know, we're tied at the Hippie's actually in in Tokyo and traveling overseas and I'll be leading UH this weekend. But we started as business majors in college and we had, you know, a very financial driven background, but we wanted to do something more tangible, so we started out in training program, got a very solid foundation
of buying UM. We started Lord and Taylor Believe it or Not UM, which was a tremendous foundation to our
to our careers and buying UM. In product development, we did spend most of our careers at Macy's UM, where we really had just an amazing experience and got the entire life cycle foundation of everything with all of the sourcing, all of the overseas production, building brands that we were able to build from scratch into a hundred million dollar plus entities UM and really build some really things that
we're very proud of over time. You also have the photographer and artistic director Nigel Barker, who is a participant as a judge and a photographer on America's Next Top Model and is the host of the reality show The Face. How key is that to the success of a brand spend and market spend and market well. Nigel's involvement has been just a real fortune for us because we've always had a UH focus on product and being able to sell product. Nigel really elevates just the entire cache of
our brand his involvement. What he's been able to provide is a multitude of things. First is just his taste level and creative element in our design input, UM, he's his just his photography UH abilities, and having his involvement in a lot of our creative assets and our campaigns as we go forward is I can't think of anybody better that we would ever want to UM have as our advocate. UM. A couple of other things that that Nigel will be doing UH is in the marketplace, really
being our advocate and a brand ambassador. So he's been just a real real UM. It's been very fortunate to have him out in the media where you know, wearing our product, having his network of advocates because they all share a tremendous taste level and very UM very aligned with where we want to go as a brand. So final question, what's what's your what's your dream, what's your vision? Where can we see flag an anthem now? And where
is it gonna take you? Where you gonna take the company? Sure, we just have we have very broad, very big aspirations for the brand. So we've been very fortunate to get a lot of big retailers really out of the gate, which isn't your conventional startup brand. Uh. So we've got
a diversified approach of retailers. We've got subscription based UM retailers, we've got online retailers, we've got brick and mortar retailers both specialty, and we're in like the Ron Robinson's the War Cash Cash a retailers of the world UM into the Stitch Fix which is more of a subscription model Buckle Dillard. So we've gotten a nice broad base to start out UM. But where we want to go is
we we have much bigger plans. We we foresee this can extend into other categories, accessories, more dress, women's, other categories of business. We all feel can really elevate and take this brand to another level. We've got to leave it there, but I want to thank you very much. Brad Gartman is the co founder and the chief executive of Flag and Anthem. This is Bloomberg.