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You talked about the working with black brands and corporate, So for people that's not even in the fashion world. Why is it important for black brands to work with corporate and what's the disparities from black brands working with corporate as opposed to white brands.
Working with corporate.
So two thousand and nine I started to look for black designers to be a part of our second show. I couldn't really find any black designers, so naively, I said, let me go to the department stores where we shop. I'm going down the list of all the designers on the department store website. Realized that less than one percent of the designers that were on those websites were black. Then I went and said, well, how much are we
spending on apparel? In two thousand and nine, we were spending twenty two billion dollars a year on apparel product And I'm like, this is not matching up at all, Like, how do we represent less than one percent of the designers but at the same time we're spending all of this money on apparel. And at that point I was like, how do I start to get more designers of color into department stores? And that was hard because for the first ten years of HFRS, retailers really didn't retailers and
brands they weren't the ones really rocking with us. It was like brands like Verizon was sponsoring us, or at and T or Pandora Jewelry, or Prudential even was partnering with us.
It was really difficult for us to get retailers.
And so now I'm like, the more we can partner brands up with retailers. What it does is a w when the designer comes on board for a collaboration like the Abercrombie and Fitch one that I'm wearing, they can come in and they can just design. They get paid a rate that is fair for them. They can come in design, they don't have to worry about doing all the things. All the infrastructure is there for them, they
don't have to worry about the manufacturing of it. So it's a win for both the designer and also for the brand because they get to tell this designer story and they get to tap into our culture.
Like what designer is that the Abercrombie and Fish.
This is Nicole Benefield. So she was one of the designers that we showed. She was the first designer that came out of the show.
So so Nicole Benefield has her own she has own own fashion line.
So she works with Abercrombie.
Is it just Abercromme or is it Abercrombie slash Nicole Benefield.
It's it's I wish I had my jacket, look I feel like showing so on the label it has at HFR Abercrombie and Fitch and the Cold Benefit.
Also it's everybody, it's every partner on the label. And then that helps her explain how that helps her.
Yeah, so it exposes her to a whole different audience. Right, So now Nicole Benefield, so Abercrombie and Fitch is sending out marketing emails about Nicole Benefield to all of their their audience, right their email audience. People are also learning about their her story because they did a lot of storytelling and the marketing of it. So it opens her up and you know, she also gets paid for that.
This this feels like when we talked to Steve Stole what he was doing with corporate and hip hop, where it was he was merging the two. It feels like it's a similar story here where you're merging fashion with corporate in a sense, how do you find the emerging talent so that Nicole's is incredible?
Right, but I'm sure as.
Your brand grows, people want to be in front of you, so how do you decide and how do you identify the next emerging talent to say all right, this is worthy to be put with a brand.
Yeah.
So we have an online platform called designers Row, So any designer can go to our website, Herlmes, Fashion Road dot com and once they are in our database, they get invited to be a part of designers Raw.
So really it's very organic. I have a team.
My team is always scouting new talent. So Nicole Benefitl came to me through you know, someone who I knew who was like, hey, you should check out this designer.
I'm always looking for who is a designer that I.
Feel like has like a new perspective, like somebody who's bringing something new and interesting and has like a very clear aesthetic of what they have to contribute to this industry. And then what I also loved about her in particular was that she was she was. Her vision for where she was going was so clear when you looked at her aesthetic from like we show her collection last year too, twenty twenty two, So when you look at her collection from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three.
It looks like it's just an evolution.
It didn't like it wasn't like one person here and then a whole different kind of ballgame on this side. Her vision is really clear, her aesthetic. I think it's something that the industry needs. She is a just a dope human because we're also we only work with dope humans with good character, right, and so we knew when Abercrombie came to us and was like, hey, we want to do a collab with HFR, like we either Sometimes we'll give a brand like three or four options.
That's what we did with Nike and Lebron.
Actually we gave them three options and they were like, we can't choose, so we're gonna choose all three. With Abercrombie, we were like, here's the option, She's the one, and they were like, we trust you.
How is social media? You said you started in two thousand and nine with that vision. At this time Facebook is prominent, but Instagram isn't yet.
There's social media. Thank god, there was no social media.
How is that?
Ernest?
What's up?
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An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens.
Have been arrested.
If you were here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day. Imprisoned and deported, you will never return but if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do what's right, leave now. Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will be protected.
Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
I guess the work that you're doing right, because I feel like everybody now has a look book on Instagram.
It definitely changes. Like I'm able to see designers. I'm able to literally go to a designer's Instagram page and walk into their world like quickly, and I can tell so much just by scrolling up.
So okay, so what is the problem. Why is there not a lot of black designers? What's the what's stopping black designers from becoming mainstream or penetrating that market? Less than you said, one percent of the money from black people go to black designers.
Yeah, when you think about the designers who.
Have made it, and exactly right, you said one percent.
Less than one percent, it's maybe three percent.
Now, the money that black people spend on clothes.
No less than one percent of the designer sold on major department stores website.
Okay, do you know how much percent black people spend on on apparels on like black designers.
So here's interesting. I don't know how much they spend on black designers, but Mackenzie released the study. So by the year twenty thirty, we're gonna spend Black people are gonna spend seventy billion.
Dollars a year on apparel. The other thing that was interesting.
About that study is that black black people are three times more likely to switch brands if it's a black founder or black creative brand. That just really happened, I think after twenty twenty. I feel like after twenty twenty, we all were like, if we're gonna make it, we.
Got to take care of ourselves.
And so with that though, well that's a huge I think opportunity for brands is a huge opportunity for an investor who wants to really invest in black brands as well, because consumers are now ready to shop the black brands.
But the challenge is we don't have the infrastructure. So imagine if we had like an LVMH, like a holding company, an LVMAGE or Caring or Tapestry or you know, an authentic groups type brand or something like that that was a holding company that provided all of the infrastructure for black designers. Like think about that right, and they provided all the operations, the manufacturing partnerships.
That that's what we've been missing.
Like if we had that, the opportunity for black brands and where they could go is really limitless. What we've been missing really is the funding, the infrastructure, the operational capacity, the manufacturing kind of you address those things like there's no limit to how far we can go, and it's kind of crazy that no one has really seen that as an opportunity.
Well, I think Kanye spoke about that. That's when he was I want to go back to that, but before let's go, let's talk about this. Then when Yay was like he didn't have the infrastructure pretty much paraphrasing, and that's when Sway that legendary conversation with him and Swet. That's what you're referring to because LVMH. Everybody hears about LVMH.
What exactly does LVMH What do they do? We know that they own all of these luxury brands, but you say the holding company provides infrastructure, So what exactly does LVMH do for all of these brands that their own have ownership in?
They provide the revenue for those brands that's a big piece of it, which then allows them to be able to do proper marketing, and it also allows them to tap into LVMH's infrastructure.
So what is that like?
Accounting, manufacturing support, operational support. Those are the things that a lot of times smaller brands are struggling with cash flow, you know, which is a problem for all small businesses.
You don't have to imagine if you could just go create.
And and and do the things that you actually love in a business without having to worry about all of the business operations of what it takes, because that's what takes small businesses out. It's the cash flow, it's the you know, the accounting piece.
Was Ya correct in his assessment, but I.
Feel like Yay also could have.
In a sense because even LVMH, they have a bunch of companies, but there's really like probably five or six that account for most of the revenue ablutely.
I mean, Louis of a Ton is like their number one, never.
One by far, yes, right, and then there's like forty other brands, but they don't generate as much, not even close, right, And so it can offset some things infrastructure. From what I'm hearing it sounds like, let's just use Harlem Fashion role as the holding company for black brands in the sense where tel Far can exist under there in the cole benefit, they could all exist under there and then we can grow together. I feel like what we've seen,
especially from our designers, is very individualistic, right. It's like, I mean, well, can use show a jump by itself, food by itself, but there's not one piece that holds it all together to say, let's build so we can have an LBMA type situation.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Like if you look at the fact that Tapestry just Balker pre holdings, right, that's going to make it one of the largest, you know, fashion conglomerates in the US if it hasn't already done that. So if we had that, even if we started with three brands, it would it would it would be building upon something that could be like a legacy like or huge legacy brand. I just see there's a lot of opportunity there because consumers are ready. Consumers are ready to shop black brands.
An illegal alien from Guatema charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.
Trump's leadership.
I'm Christy nom the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported, you will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do what's right.
Leave now.
Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.
Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.