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Build a Business Worth Buying brings you candid conversations with industry leaders, M&A experts, and successful founders. Learn advanced strategies to scale, optimize, and prepare your business for an acquisition—because building a business worth buying starts with smart decisions today.
Cydney Mar (00:00)
we don't want the design team to have a hissy fit and fight with the factory. And and all of a sudden,
they're not doing you favors and you're at the back of the line not the front of the line that is why it's really important to respect the factories going in to make sure that they have good tech packs that you're doing something that they can produce that you've already checked to make sure that they have the kind of machinery or capacity
Aaron Alpeter (00:58)
Today's guest is Cydney is known as one of the most sought after designers inside major fashion houses in North America and abroad. But she didn't always start out in fashion. In fact, she was a competitive ice skater and an early accident forced a career pivot. By age 21, she was running her own couture design business, generating about a half million dollars in revenue.
before shutting it down to step into larger apparel systems. From there, she went on to work inside major fashion brands where taste-making wasn't simply artistic, it was economics and creativity. This included a stint at QVC where she spent thousands of hours in front of the camera.
really helping to design these apparel brands and market them to a large audience. After a long career in apparel, she's moved into wellness and has her own wellness brand. In our conversation, we explore the mechanics behind taste.
and business discipline and really how product decisions ultimately translate into enterprise value. I really love this conversation. I think you guys are gonna enjoy it as well.
Aaron Alpeter (01:56)
Cydney, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Cydney Mar (01:59)
Yes, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really excited to dive into the conversation we're going to have. And it was a lot of fun for where we started, so much to talk about.
Aaron Alpeter (02:10)
Yeah. And for those
of you who, uh, who don't know Cydney and I are actually neighbors. So she lives not too far away from me in Montreal. And, um, yeah, we, uh, we got breakfast a couple of weeks ago and I just, I fell in love with her story, her expertise. And I'm just really looking forward to this. And I think Cydney, you know, really where I want to start is, is your experience in these fashion houses. And so can you just talk a little bit about how product decisions actually got made and, who holds the economic power? it more of a designer's choice, a merchandising choice?
of Finance Choice.
Cydney Mar (02:42)
Well, actually, it is kind of all of the above. ⁓ It depends on where you start in fashion, whether or not you begin as a designer or as you were mentioning, a merchandiser. I started off in design as a young, I'm going to say, ⁓ inspired young designer thinking, I'm going to go out and change the world with all of the different things that I designed. the first thing that one of my teachers said to me was, stop trying
to be so original because the Greeks already designed it and I realized sort of like that was sort of the super humbling moment and you realize that in the machinery of a factory that there is payroll, there's fabric to be bought, there's shipments, there's you know does the buyer love your product and so you know you a designer really needs to be or someone who's interested not just designers but people who are interested in getting into apparel need to have
a really good understanding that it's something that the people actually want.
Aaron Alpeter (03:48)
It sounds very obvious when you say that you get to make things that people actually want. But I think I hear what you're saying is that so many times, whether you're a founder or a designer, you're like, I'm the exception. I'm going to be doing something that's remarkable. You really developed this knack of understanding what was going to sell. What does that actually mean operationally? How did you do that?
Cydney Mar (04:07)
Well, first of all, as a young designer in the early 80s, actually ⁓ in my small studio, which my father helped me build in our family basement, I would go out there and work with all of the different buyers. So I was the one standing there with my rack of garments and showing them and you looking at their faces and seeing, know, do you like this one? This is why I designed it. This is how it's supposed to fit. These are the garments that work with it. And I was the one who needed to
⁓ Make sure that they loved it that it was going to work into their merchandise assortment because if you've already designed something that they already have Then they're already booked for that so you not only need to come up with something that they want but something that will ⁓ Support the rest of their assortment so I started off by learning You know the hard way and luckily enough for me They loved what I designed as a young woman and then as I went along I realized going into
to the different factories, know, working with some really brilliant ⁓ apparel makers, talking about, what were the commodities? What was the price point? What was the price of the fabric that we needed to buy? And what was I allowed to spend on that collection? And what were the expectations like? Where did it fit in to the ⁓ cost card as a line item? Because once you design it, then you have to go and
convince your bosses, hi guys, you know, this is what I'm thinking of. This is how much of your money I want to spend. This is how much I cost. And what do I expect? You know, like my face, I have to stand in front of them and say, I spent X amount of dollars, and my expectations are it's going to make this amount of money.
Aaron Alpeter (05:54)
Yeah, that's a lot of trust in a young designer. I you started out by making costumes for ice skating stuff, and then you got into more of the haute couture stuff. What is it about kind of doing it yourself? And I think the equivalent of hands on keyboard when you're really young to moving into these bigger design houses that helped you be able to have the confidence to communicate and understand that, hey, I'm going to spend $100,000, but you're going to make $500,000.
Cydney Mar (06:03)
Yes.
Well, I think it has a lot to do with discipline and ⁓ as a young figure skater, and it's fun because we're just talking about, the Olympics and all of the skating that's going on. I was an elite athlete, but that comes with it with its own bumps, you know, many times of falling down, having coaches ⁓ criticize you constructively. So you have to take the good with the bad. And I think it's really important to understand that, when you're being criticized, it's for your own good.
to improve, how to do a double axle, how to create a garment in the factory that is going to make the right amount of money, that is not going to cost so much that it's no longer profitable. So you need to know how the factories work and have a respect for what a fabric is going to do, what kind of lines that you have in the factory, like is it all ⁓ surging? Is it like what kind of machinery do you have to work with? Can you, is there an
engineer on the floor who can make three stitches into one so that it's less time. ⁓ So it's it's pretty fun to I'm going to say design into the capacities of the different factories because that if a factory is you know making garments like cupcakes you're welcome as a designer I was welcome to go on the factory floor to understand how things would work and then go back and figure it out together with the team.
to make sure that we could make something that was profitable and that we knew was going to sell well.
Aaron Alpeter (07:58)
you almost test into this criteria that everybody kind of inherently knows. And I guess there's a question of is this criteria written down somewhere? Like if I'm starting out, can I just can I just go borrow it?
Cydney Mar (08:09)
It's really literally written anywhere. mean, I have friends who are PhDs in the apparel business, but that is something, there's a lot of young designers that, as I've interviewed a lot of people in the apparel trade for whether or not they're coming on as assistant designers who say, oh, I just love researching ideas. And I'm thinking, how are you going to make us money? Do you know what I mean? It's like, no.
in the different factories I worked in in the different companies that I was either a partner in or whether or not they were my own it was like okay we have manpower we need to produce so many sketches their productivity if I'm handing it off to a young designer then they need to produce force for sketches in an hour otherwise they're not productive because they can't take all day long yes they can take time to figure out what they're doing but then they have to produce so
if you're doing t-shirts you know that the sample maker is working at, he or she can probably do, one an hour. If it's a jacket, you've got three or four pieces you can make in a day and that's it. So it has to be worth it.
Aaron Alpeter (09:19)
Is there such thing as like universal taste and it kind of feels like if you, you you mentioned how you were looking at something and just being able to know, yeah, this is going to sell, this is going to do well. I wonder, that, is that easy for people to pick up on once they've been in the industry for a little while? And if so, why, why don't all apparel items look exactly the same?
Cydney Mar (09:42)
Well, that has a lot to do with personal taste. when I was approaching things, the first thing I wanted to know was ⁓ how was the fabric? Like, did it feel soft on my skin? Was it something that someone wanted to reach for? we can have 20 pieces in our wardrobe, 200 pieces in our wardrobe. And like my old wardrobe that before I started to purge was 2000 pieces, but we still reach for the same 10 pieces. Why?
I think that it's sort of that feeling of what, you know, and it will surprise people when they go back and reflect on that. why am I, why did I reach for this piece? Why did you grab that, you know, shirt of yours? And is it one of your favorites? And how many times have you actually been wearing it type of thing?
Aaron Alpeter (10:30)
Yeah, I remember ⁓ when we were in North Carolina, we had a much bigger house and much bigger closet. I had things that, you know, I hadn't worn in years and we packed them up, moved down here. Now I've got a much smaller closet. And so I have to rotate, I have to purge. And so I think ⁓ there's something in there with scarcity that's important.
Cydney Mar (10:47)
Well, you what's interesting, you asked me about, the design work and what people reach for.
And I remember I was walking through Walmart one day with my partners and there was a category manager and it was my introduction to this category manager because they were changing the structure of how we worked with the buyers because I had actually been involved in redesigning the George line for Walmart when it first arrived in the Walmart headquarters.
And
so the category manager was walking by, we're looking at, the different things we had designed for the George collection. And she said, well, that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I said, oh, well, that's interesting because, and it was, of course, one of our pieces. Um, it was one of the four ways that we're working on. I said, because today we sold 10,000 pieces. So it's not personal. It, you know, you still need to bring a level of taste, but you need to design things that people actually want. And you
when you have the ability to have visibility into what selling in which city at what rate it's really fun to sort of like lean into the data of what people responding to and say ⁓ that was interesting and then you go and meet you make more of that and you realize when the trends are going down do you need to tweak it or you just need to change it
Aaron Alpeter (12:12)
What is the difference between something that a designer really likes and something that other people want to buy?
Cydney Mar (12:17)
Well,
yes, we want to love what we do. And I think that it's important to have that integrity. But I have always told, many of my team members that, if they want to go and put, funny tassels in weird places on garments, and that's the thing that's going to make them happy to do it at home. because when in the design studio, yes, we have a brand that we need to respect, but we also need to make things that are commercially viable and that the people will love.
buy more of
Aaron Alpeter (12:50)
That's great. a lot of times I'll talk to founders who are just brilliant. They've got great taste. They've got, you know, a good knack for design.
But sometimes they can kind of get in their own way and they can be at a bit of a detriment to the overall growth or prospects of the business. From having seen companies of all different shapes and sizes, are there any behaviors or traits that these founder designers will have that will either greatly hurt or help a business?
Cydney Mar (13:19)
Yes, I think that to a certain degree, we have to be unattached to it. It's and I'm going to use my skating as an example.
You know, you go out there, you do your very best and it is what it is and you get off the ice and you know, if you want to go out and do better next time or you can say that was great. ⁓ But I think that sometimes young founders are too attached. I'm not a big fan of patents. I actually work with a number of clients who are going to
because they are patentable either by utility or you know some aspect that makes it ⁓ really important to protect that but when you patent a product they can get so attached to it that
then they forget that also they need a consumer who is going to love that. So with the same way with the design. you want to have some, I'm going to say be a little bit like Buddha, take a step back and be detached because it's important that what you're creating really that that it really does resonate with
the consumers out there because otherwise you might as well just make one for yourself at home and wear it and enjoy it with, castles and weird places, but I think that, when, when you're asking me about it, is a founder really, um, getting in his or her way it's because sometimes it's, if I just made it a little bit better, the truth is, is if you want to develop a great apparel collection, you're going to have your core items. need at least 50 % of the
product
is going to be repeats because that is where the money is. The factories are getting better at it. They're going to be making more money. You can reduce your margins. You can improve it, but without getting in your own way. Still, make it, ship it, turn over your dollars. Stop trying to come up with something that's super original. You can do that in the background of what's next, but it's important to remember that you are a business that you
You have banking, have payroll, there's factories to pay, and the whole purpose of making wonderful product is also to make profits so that you can turn over your dollar and you can go back and present your business plans and your profit and loss and be really proud of it.
Aaron Alpeter (15:41)
Yeah, I don't know why this analogy came to my mind maybe because it's it's lunchtime, but it almost seems that know McDonald's has the McRib and all these other things that are kind of coming in and coming out.
And that's a good marketing story, and that's a good thing for people to be like, I gotta go back there. But at the end of the day, they sell a lot of hamburgers and french fries. And so there's almost like a similar parallel here where if you're always trying to sell your version of McRib, yeah, you might get people to come in and try that and be there, but you're not gonna build as nearly ⁓ healthy of a business than if you've got that everyday in and out that you're talking about.
Cydney Mar (16:13)
Yeah, ⁓ gap is a great example of that. I mean gap is maybe not going on the up and up these days maybe it's sort of flattened out but the whole gap premise was Let's get the core items and they built it like a little bit of a pyramid. Here's here's the core items And then the more fashionable were on top of it less More fashionable less then so they built it so they had like the cherry on top so they could rotate
inventory and I always think I've always respected that way of designing the collection. Starting with core fabrics, I love having control of fabrics to make sure that that establishes the look and feel of a brand. It also helps you control the quality to make sure that it's easier. can either buy more fabric and set it aside, dye it up as needed. So there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to apparel that
I think you can mitigate the risk if you make the right sort of decisions in terms of how you're going to build out the business. Like what are your core fabrics and then how you can start layering and testing and layering and testing the ones on top of it.
Aaron Alpeter (17:21)
And when
you say core, that core is like, is what the industry always wants, they want a cotton-poly blend, or is it, this is what core is going to be for our business?
Cydney Mar (17:31)
for your own brand.
Aaron Alpeter (17:33)
Okay, if we were building an athleisure business or something like that, what would be some examples of say, this would be a core fabric or a core style. And then this is where we maybe be, you know, one step above.
Cydney Mar (17:44)
Okay, so for instance, if you think about Lululemon, right? They started off and they developed a fabric that they then called Luon. They trademarked it. It was developed at a factory here in Montreal. And it was a high, they wanted to make it that it was really had great memory. And so it was about the percentage of elastane or spandex or lycra depending on, which generic category you've chosen.
what they did was they really leaned into, like what that fabric was and they made their perfect legging for yoga. So that was a great, I'm going to say springboard for them developing the rest of their products. And they've gone on, we all know the Lululemon story and we wish we were the perfect athleisure company like that. But then on top of that, they've been able to build in all of these engineered
fabrics that have little patterns in them. But that's not their core fabric, is it? mean, when you go in and your leggings or your jacket, your running jacket is worn out, you go back and you buy another one. mean,
from Lululemon has your wife already bought? Never mind.
Aaron Alpeter (18:54)
More than I'd like to admit.
Yeah, to that point I used to work at Lululemon and it was remarkable the percentage of their profit that came from the Align leggings. Just once you, you just, it was, you talk about core of the core, that was it, right? And so you did everything you did to keep that going. So, you know, when you're thinking about architecting a business, whether it's something that...
Cydney Mar (19:07)
Mm-hmm.
Aaron Alpeter (19:19)
you're just getting launched or you're thinking about how to scale it. How do you go about determining what your core is? Do you suggest that people just kind of start and see what resonates or do you think that they should kind of do what lululemon did and really focus on a unique fabric or material and say, this is our hero fabric. We're going to base everything off of that and go from there.
Cydney Mar (19:40)
I think you have to do both.
really like for instance,
I just started with a client and he's developing two types of new and interesting bags and it's like, oh well, you know what, what's going to make them different. So we're sort of like unpacking the things that he really believes in. And I'm making it as sort of the, the checklist of what we're looking for and how we want those bags to perform. And that is going to inform me of what kind of fabrics.
Like for instance, we're actually looking at a thermal fabric because of some of the specifications that he wants and I think that it's it's a combination of the item that we're making and the fabric That will it's kind of where the magic happens It's not just one or the other
I have another client that we're working with and it's important, that the fabric is cooling. So I call my fabric engineers and I'm saying, tell me what are the right fibers that I need to work with that are going to naturally do this. while I might have a lot of expertise, there's really fun to have all of these experts around the world who I can call upon and collaborate with and say, yeah, this is the right kind of
fiber, this is the right kind of knitting, these are the machines that we're going to be using and that's how we also place and look at the supply chain of where all the goods are going to come from and how can we tighten it up to make the supply chain management really efficient.
Aaron Alpeter (21:12)
Yeah, well,
it's also what struck me about the apparel industry is how much innovation is happening in this space. mean, people have had clothes since Adam and Eve and like we still have all of the stuff that's going through and it's it's changing so rapidly. how important is it for a brand to be kind of on the cutting edge and wants their versus, ⁓ you know, kind of sticking to a few tried and true basics that they don't have to necessarily think about fabric as a as a major differentiator for them.
Cydney Mar (21:22)
Ha
I find a lot of founders, ⁓ have an idea and they kind of need to start with what already is. Because it's very expensive to start thinking about
number one, patents, whether or not they're developing new fabrics. There are a lot of universities that are very innovative here in Canada and I'm sure every country has their own innovation departments where they're trying to encourage different businesses to create
Things that are beyond like last year. I met with these people who had a Korean technology where they were taking egg shells and they were making the little pellets for Plastic so that so then I got them connected with some of the military some of my friends who were who had Tulin die and had these wonderful machines because the more we could make it sustainable and and will break down so they were able
in sort of their plastic tooling to incorporate a
portion of egg-based pellets to make it more sustainable. you know, that was pretty interesting.
Aaron Alpeter (22:47)
Yeah, no, I I would not have thought about that. That's a great example.
You've been around a lot of fashion houses and apparel brands that have gotten very big very quickly. what breaks first when you're going through hyperscale, especially when you're dealing with something where taste and style is so important. It just feels like you could very easily pass this over to the finance team and end up with something that maybe it's profitable, but loses its soul a little bit.
Cydney Mar (23:14)
Well, I think that as you're designing products and thinking about scaling, really need to pay attention to where you're putting your money as we're talking about. That everything needs to be a line item.
having the structure or looking to try to have at least 50 % of your products repeats is going to help you feed the rest of the machine of it affords you to be able to develop new products. I mean, for instance, when I was working with Cirque du Soleil, I was brought in as I'm going to say a contract designer to develop their first boutique collection. And they were like, well, it wasn't for the performers. It was really
for, you if you and I, if we went to see one of the shows and then as you walk through, there's all these different products that evoke, maybe what the show is about or, it's a great memento for you to take away. So I ended up designing the first boutique collection. And what was really fun about that is that talking about not having a boutique collection, especially when you think about how Cirque du Soleil is all about the elevated arts.
It's really about an experience that they want you to feel. mean, when I was working with the people from Cirque du Soleil and the headquarters are over here in Montreal, the founders, they came into the boardroom and it was really fun in the boardroom because ⁓ it was on the second floor and over one side of the boardroom was all windows to where the trapeze is. So as we're doing the presentation and talking about what this
collection could be. You would see, bodies, sort of tumbling and, it was so fun. But I think they wanted us to remember that that's what it was all about. But one of the things they said to me is it can't be, just a logo drop. You just can't take our logo and dump it onto t-shirts. That's not what we're looking for. We want a collection that will be the foundation of how we really want
people to feel and they said you have to remember our mantra it is invoke evoke provoke so we want you to go away with that and come back to us with what you think that means and how our consumer is going to be able to relate to what we were offering and i designed a whole bunch of different collections I just you know kind of had different samples and different boards and different groups and the one they went with was called
color therapy and it was really fun and I was very pleased because it ran for about two and a half years.
Aaron Alpeter (25:49)
That's amazing. what struck me about that story is that the founders were very clear about, these are the parameters that you need to play in. This isn't just, like you said, logo drop, let's move on. I'm curious about when you're working with fashion houses that are on the extreme end of creativity and extreme end of taste and those sorts of things, how do they balance
that authenticity around the artistic credibility that they have and sell through targets and just the dollars and cents of running a business.
Cydney Mar (26:21)
Well...
I think someone who is so ultra creative like that, I think that they're really niching down. they're, really speaking to who their customer is.
So as opposed to a very commercialized design, ⁓ house, mean, they're, they're, they're two very different markets. And I think that that's what's really important is one to identify who are you designing for? Like what is the appeal and is it a broad appeal? Like for instance, as you know,
I designed for QVC. I was invited to design for them and traveled all over the world. So that was that was very different because I needed to make the Cydney Mar fashions very ⁓ I'm going to say what I needed to design. What was the core of Cydney Mar for the world? It wasn't just in my neighborhood, wasn't just
Montreal or New York or what have you, it needed to have a broad appeal but still feel like a Cydney Mar fashion. So, it's very different, when you're thinking about how are you going to be perceived and where you want to show up. If you know that you have, if you're ultra, if you were John Galliano, I mean, yes, I mean, he was, talk about central Saint
Martins, know, one of, you know, one of the greats from Central Saint Martins, I think that he was so clear on who he was and how he wanted to show up that his theatrics in his design work then informed the rest of the diffusion lines which came below.
in a small way, how extraordinary Cirque du Soleil performers outfits were. That's not what I was designing, but it still needed to trickle down into, it still needed to look, smell, and feel like a Cirque du Soleil garment. So I think that it's the essence can still be maintained. And I think that that's what's fun is as, as a creative person, how I was
able to have something that was successful and in the same way I think every founder has to be really clear on what it is and it can be expressed in sort of extraordinary way or in a like Ralph Lauren why does that little symbol of polo mean so much to just the guys on the street you know
Aaron Alpeter (28:51)
if you think about being a creative type, can you talk about any of the compromises that you had to make when you were maybe designing for QVC versus something where you could be a little bit more risk taking or authentic to maybe what you want to do? I'm just curious, how do you bottle that up and say, okay, I'm willing to compromise on these principles, but not these principles to make sure that it stays a Cydney Mar fashion. But I know that I have to still play within a certain demographic or certain type of consumer.
Cydney Mar (29:21)
Well, I think that has a lot to do with fit and certainly in the apparel business a lot has to do with fit. How things feel and a respect for ⁓ the human shape, know, how their bodies are and how to enhance them and how to make them look as fabulous as possible and for them to feel confident in them because it's not about how, just dressing up a little dolly kind of thing and then they can't move because then they
would be really miserable and unhappy and someone would be shaking their fist at me, right? So I think that it's about designing for the customer and understanding what's going to make a beautiful fit, respecting using fabrics that will be a little bit more forgiving and
Having something that once you fold it up into those little packages that then go through the mail That it comes out and it and it looks good So I I tended to work in knit fabrics because when you pull it out of the package you still wanted to have the magic and
you
want it to feel nice and soft. used to test it on the inside of my arms or on my neck to see if it felt good because I my idea was that I wanted all of my garments to feel like a hug and there's something about the way things feel and and when a customer loves the way they feel in a garment they're going to wear it all the time.
Aaron Alpeter (30:51)
Yeah. Do you find it's easier or more difficult to design for a mass audience versus a niche clientele?
Cydney Mar (31:00)
⁓ I don't think so. I think it's really the same, the same process. I think that, if you know your customers, then when you have, pen to paper, because I'm still old fashioned. I still put pen to paper and get my little pattern pieces out and think about, how I'm going to create it or I get sample fabrics and I drape them on the mannequin. think, Hmm, yeah, that's, that's what I'm looking for. That's the look and feel.
Aaron Alpeter (31:26)
Okay,
so you mentioned like this idea of almost like when you see it, you recognize it, right? You just, it kind of clicks for you. A lot of apparel brands are purchased by private equity these days or they're bought up by a bunch of bigger companies. What is it that maybe these traditional financial buyers will get wrong or underestimate when they acquire a business like this?
Cydney Mar (31:48)
Well.
If I were looking to invest in an apparel company, if I were the person arriving on the doorstep with a bag of cash saying, this is going to be a good investment for my group,
I would look at all of their financial statements. would look at whether or not they have contracts, what their distribution is. Do they have consistent, like for instance, as a former vendor to Walmart, those vendor agreements were really important.
it kind of meant it was up to me to screw up not to have something to sell to Walmart if I had a vendor contract I could go in every week and say hey I got something that you're looking for you know and then to make it work for them so you know for myself I had QVC contracts Do you know you want to see that? What you're buying into do they have good relationships with the mills?
are they sitting on inventory? And what is that inventory? it fabric that they can turn into money? Or is it garments that they screwed up that they need to, not hang on to? I think that people get attached to their inventory, but it's my baby. No, no, just dump it. Like turn that, turn it into ⁓ liquid cash that you can work with. So I think you need the healthiness and you also need to see how experienced the team is.
What are they spending on the team? Are the salaries in line? Do they have incentives to make them perform? Or what's their churn rate in employees? I think those are the kinds of things that if you're buying a business, it's not just the fabric. It's who are they selling to and what is the team that is going to make it productive and continue turning that wheel over?
Aaron Alpeter (33:34)
Yeah.
Do you have any advice for financial buyers in terms of how to evaluate if the team is good or not?
Cydney Mar (33:42)
Ooh, scary, that's scary. ⁓
Wow. Well, I would first start, ⁓ not only with financial statements, which, I know investors is well versed on how to read it,
but I think that looking at, ⁓ cost cards, cause a cost card really is a micro, profit and loss. So you can, see right away where the money is, you can see. So.
I think that I would I might want to go and talk to some of the retailers. I might want to, go and see who's actually shipping out X, know, like is it really there? Is it turning over? Is it, you know, there are lot of different ways of seeing whether or not
If it's true of what, people are buying into. I think that, a lot of people really present well, but the, truth is really in, they sustainable? Is this something, is this a growing business? Have they already reached their peak? Do they know how to, how to grow the business? How do, do they know how to scale it? Or are they stuck into the, this is what I am. And, you know, this is who I am. And, know, I, I, I'm, I'm fabulous, you know, or.
Are they willing to ⁓ make some of some healthy changes?
Aaron Alpeter (34:57)
Yeah,
I think that there's an element of humility there that you have to have when you're selling a business, especially if you're going to stick around with it. You spent most of your career working and scaling other people's businesses, but now you're a founder. And you're a founder in a different industry completely. You've got a wellness brand. Was there anything that you learned being a founder that influenced, let's say, you know what?
If I could go back and do it again, I would either emphasize or de-emphasize these aspects of building a business now that you're responsible for payroll and all the other stuff there that goes with it.
Cydney Mar (35:32)
Well, yes, absolutely.
First of all, I wanted to make sure that I treated that business, my Cydney Mar Wellness, as a client. ⁓
basically looked at, know, like, what were my margins? how could I make it profitable? ⁓ product development in terms of, the licensing and the costs and how could I scale it up? How could I keep my inventory low enough and lean into, really good in instead of having fabrics? I have access to ⁓ bioactive ingredients? that was really important to me, making sure that we had ⁓
And the reason that I stayed in that space is because I felt more expert in it. My manufacturer is also very expert in
homeopathy but I'm not you know I I've taken some homeopathics but I'm I'm not that expert in it so I wanted to kind of stay in my own lane and I think that you know when you're developing your own products you should stay in your own lane I think it's important to lean in to your expertise and as a you know former figure skater I was always looking at what are what are the supplements I can take to give me optimal health what are the things that I can make sure that I
a higher percentage of oxygen, in my blood and there were a lot of sort of boots on the ground, things that I brought to the table in developing that. also realized that, that for that collection, my Cydney Mar wellness, I was less interested because I've already done hundreds of millions of dollars of business in fashion.
So I felt that it gave me the ability to have more of a boutique line. Yes, I have the ability to scale what I want in the right markets. But I think that I wanted to make sure that I always had control of the fact that the ingredients are ⁓ bioactive. didn't want, know, like for instance, I've had clients who have come back to me and said, ⁓ I've tried that ingredient, you know, it's like
someone saying, I had a polyester garment before or whatever, you know, it's like, well, why is your softer? Why does yours work? You know, I said, because it's bioactive. So that is something that I, as a founder of this brand, wasn't willing to give up. So I think that it's important to set your, you know, your, your missions, your values, who you think the customer is and why you're there to serve them and then go and fulfill that.
Aaron Alpeter (38:17)
Yeah, that makes a
lot of sense. Shifting back to apparel, apparel is known to be very capital intensive. It takes a lot of cash in order to have the right portfolio. And if you don't sell within season, you end up having markdowns. It can just be a very, very cash intensive business. Are there any structural decisions beyond just focusing on the resale that determine if a brand is going to become cash generative or kind of just
something that requires more more funding to keep lights on.
Cydney Mar (38:49)
if I were investing in an apparel brand right now,
I wouldn't want to be at the beginning because that is where they're figuring themselves out in the first place and establishing that they have a market. they, have to have their proof of concept. is our people buying it? Are people rebuying it? you need that sort of like, I'm going to say strength.
But you also want to make sure that it's, we talked about Gap earlier. know, Gap is kind of like, it's not doing fabulously well, because I think maybe they forgot to innovate. So they still needs to be not too young and not too old. It needs to be in the, you know, still where there's excitement, for instance, I've been looking into a lot of different men's brands and I was the designer for Edwin Jeans for many.
many years for North America. One of the gentlemen I worked for, ⁓ had the master license for North America. so going back and looking at different menswear brands, mean, if I were to say, who do I admire in menswear? Like if I wanted to invest, if I said, wow, what's a menswear line? I would look at, ⁓ say, Vuori. I mean, he really got it right. I mean, go back and
I look at his story and I said, yeah, you know, he got his fabric, right? He got his marketing people right in the right place. Like he invested in, and he has a fabulous designer. So they have their fabric that they really put the work in the beginning. They became profitable fast and they stayed in their own lane. It's really astonishing. And that is, I think that Vuori is probably an example of the kind of business I would invest in.
Aaron Alpeter (40:34)
Yeah, that makes a lot
of sense. We did a deep dive on Vuori I think it was the first episode on the other podcast, Ecommerce on Tap. Fantastic story and found it there. ⁓ To take that idea and take it step further, if you're evaluating a company and you were thinking about buying an apparel business, how do you separate if it is worth buying or it's just culturally hot right now?
Cydney Mar (41:01)
⁓ It's all it's all about the numbers. It's really all about the numbers and
I think that
not one should not get swept away with, it's, you know, it's a hotline right now. It's really it's it has to be factual. And, you know, one of the things we didn't talk about is these companies also need really secure, really great relationships with the factories, because we want to make sure that the factories, you know, we don't want the design team to have a hissy fit and fight with the factory. And and all of a sudden,
they're not doing you favors and you're at the back of the line not the front of the line that is why it's really important to respect the factories going in to make sure that they have good tech packs that you're doing something that they can produce that you've already checked to make sure that they have the kind of machinery or capacity you know like i remember it sounds funny but i remember ⁓ you know a number of years ago when it was the pandemic ⁓ i did a big contract for the government and I needed to produce 50,000
face masks a week and I needed to make sure that my factories were lined up and that we had wasn't just one factory but it was A B and C so that you know there could be a nice rollover so I also think that that knowing that they have the fabric sourcing sorted they have a good team inside that they have great factories is is really it's
it's a recipe for success.
Aaron Alpeter (42:32)
Yeah, I'm so
glad you brought the factory piece. I I've said for a long time that there's two types of relationships you have. You can either be the client that they have to work with because you're, you better be so big or so profitable, or you're the client that they want to work with because of all things you mentioned and just doing what you said you do, it goes a very long way in this industry.
Cydney Mar (42:54)
Yeah, it does. I think that mutual respect with the factories, asking them to do to work with you, but also making it as easy as possible because they don't make money talking to you. They make money on the lines, you know, so you need to give it to them in a way that they're making cupcakes, and then they want to make more of it and they want to make more of it and they want to make more of it. And that's really, you know, that way they have they have their own security and being able to set up the lines you
can't be bumped easily and if you have your fabric you have your design team you have your factories and you have where you're selling you know that that's all of those pieces need to be really secure and that's really where the growth comes from.
Aaron Alpeter (43:36)
Yeah, one of the criticisms I've heard people
make about the fashion or the apparel industry is that it's inherently very fragile just because it's trend driven and you can kind of fall out of favor in really a couple years if you miss them a certain season. Do you agree with that or do you think it's much more durable than people are making it up for?
Cydney Mar (43:55)
Well, it-
I think it depends on which companies, know, like for instance, if there is, someone who wants to go to Alibaba and just grab the hot trend and put it on Amazon and maybe they're in Amazon, know, so they, those are the people who are just going to get in and get out based on, you know, what's new and exciting. But if it's a, if it's a brand who has established a look and they have core items, then they're going to, be able to touch it with, the
fashion trends, and today people are looking more for even if it is delivering fairly quickly, they're looking for slow growth, they're looking for building wardrobes, they're looking for, ⁓ you know, if you say the fast fashion word today, which you know, I have to say I've definitely participated in I feel like I'm one of the people who was responsible for bringing all of the shawls and all the leggings in early 2000s. I mean, it's my fault, you know,
And, and, and yeah, my fault for participating in ⁓ fast fashion, but we made a lot of money. turned dollars over every month. But, but, ⁓ the fact is, is that people are looking for, classics that have,
the underpinnings of sort of classical fashion with something that makes it feel new and fresh. Because, you know, if I had, if I were teaching a masterclass with young designers today, I would actually get them to do, ⁓ say, white t-shirts or black skirts. An experiment. Yeah. Because it's like, how do you make a white t-shirt for Walmart, for Holt Renfrew, for, Selfridges in London? How do you make one for Rihanna?
Aaron Alpeter (45:22)
Really?
Cydney Mar (45:33)
Like all of those, they're just white t-shirts. How are gonna make them look different? Do you know what I mean?
Aaron Alpeter (45:38)
Yeah, that is a
great thought experiment. That's fantastic. Well, Cydney, I can't believe where the time has gone. This has been fantastic. And thank you so much for being on the podcast. We have one question that we always like to end with. And that is, what is the best example of a moat you've seen in their business build?
Cydney Mar (45:55)
Well...
going to talk about Cirque du Soleil.
I think that they really have established, a brand identity that is just, it's so solid, like everybody knows what to expect, even if it's new. And I think that they've protected themselves by being so unique and individual and ⁓ experiential that everybody wants to lean into every time there's a show it's sold out every
time, you know, so they've, they've built ⁓ a look and feel for their brand that is going to go on forever. they're circus, but they're not a circus. I mean, how how great is
that and people know what to expect without knowing exactly what they're going to see. It's astonishing.
Aaron Alpeter (46:44)
Yeah, no, think you're absolutely right. had no idea they were based here in Montreal. I'll have to go catch the show.
Cydney Mar (46:50)
yeah absolutely gee whiz well if I can get an appointment for ⁓ over there I'll find out who the new buyers are I'll drag you over so we can sit in in the boardroom and watch the trapeze
Aaron Alpeter (47:04)
Find me up, that sounds amazing. That's so good.