Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well, you know, Alextel, there's been
Speaker 1: lots of stories about what it means to dress for
Speaker 1: work today. And I know you're back at the office,
Speaker 1: but you were home for a while, and I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that you maybe wore kind of a cute top in
Speaker 1: jeans and shorts at some point. What I wouldn't never
Speaker 1: I saw pictures. I believe there may have been times
Speaker 1: where I had my feet in an ice bucket because
Speaker 1: it was so hot, jean shorts in a sht so
Speaker 1: that may have been my life for I want proof Twitter.
Speaker 1: Twitter world wants a proof of that. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: like people have talked about the Zoom shirt. I've had
Speaker 1: lots of yoga leggings and Jan David Weston were jeans today.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you he puts on a suit jacket
Speaker 1: to walk to the bathroom. All right, I want to picture.
Speaker 1: I want a picture of that as well. UM, okay,
Speaker 1: so listen, we have a great guest with us um
Speaker 1: a friend of our show. He knows what consumers are
Speaker 1: wearing and what they're buying. Nate Checkets is back with
Speaker 1: US co founder and CEO at Roanne. He joins us
Speaker 1: on the phone from Connecticut. Nate, how are you? I'm
Speaker 1: doing great? How are you? Carol doing okay? You know,
Speaker 1: UM twenty one or so or week twenty two of
Speaker 1: working from home, I'm trying. I've kind of lost count. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to move forward, but I want to go
Speaker 1: back first. Tell me what your world has been like, UM,
Speaker 1: Nate since March. Well, it's it's been a whirlwind. I
Speaker 1: mean I think, like like everyone, this is a roller
Speaker 1: coaster that feels like it's been um two years. Uh
Speaker 1: and and in some ways it you know, it feels short.
Speaker 1: In some ways it feels long. But you know, when
Speaker 1: when the pandemic initially started, it was a very scary
Speaker 1: time for not just people with help, but you know,
Speaker 1: for us as as retailer and as a as a
Speaker 1: young growing brand in the consumer space. UM caused us
Speaker 1: to look at just about everything. And certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've come a long way, and categorically I think
Speaker 1: we're insulated in a lot of ways. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been it's been quite the experience navigating this so so literally,
Speaker 1: like what are people gonna wear? I mean, I joked
Speaker 1: about David Weston. So he's an anchor here Bloomberg Television.
Speaker 1: He covers politics, I mean, and he would wear a
Speaker 1: suit every day. Uh, and he used to be ahead
Speaker 1: of ABC News. He's so he's just that way. Um,
Speaker 1: And I'll say that with a lot of love, Like
Speaker 1: he'd take his jacket off when he would get at
Speaker 1: his desk, and then he'd literally get up to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and he put his jacket on, Like
Speaker 1: he's that kind of guy. And he's wearing jeans to work.
Speaker 1: So like, what's my new uniform? Well, I I think
Speaker 1: there's no way, you know, let's let's say that we
Speaker 1: could snap our fingers and we were back at our
Speaker 1: everybody was back at an office tomorrow. There's no way
Speaker 1: that the last few months won't impact wardrobes in the future,
Speaker 1: work at tire, etcetera. You know, people are this is
Speaker 1: a this is a very long sustained level of comfort
Speaker 1: and kind of wearing whatever you feel like we're wearing.
Speaker 1: And so you're gonna see dress codes be relaxed across
Speaker 1: the board. Um, and people are gonna there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a continued push for comfortable work attire, and you know
Speaker 1: that's what Rome has always been about. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: not just making great stuff active for the gym, but
Speaker 1: making stuff that you can wear too and from work
Speaker 1: and and look great and so you know, performance fabrics
Speaker 1: and the work sweatpants, so to speak. But I do
Speaker 1: think that you're going to see some yeah, some relaxation
Speaker 1: of dress standards, even for a guy like David. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, if you we're going to actually mention it
Speaker 1: to David, I've got to say I would like this conversation. Well,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned I've been living in jeans and yoga
Speaker 1: gear and a few Rowan items as well, because they
Speaker 1: are incredibly comfortable. I want to also ask you, because
Speaker 1: I want to get into, um, maybe any of the
Speaker 1: pivots that you've done. But one thing that you have
Speaker 1: done is, and forgive me if I don't say it correctly,
Speaker 1: is it brands times better? You have brands for better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about this movement. Well, so
Speaker 1: you know, in the early stages, I was I was
Speaker 1: looking around and uh, it really started with the fact
Speaker 1: that I sat my three boys down in the room
Speaker 1: and I said, all right, we get to spend this
Speaker 1: amazing time together. It could be a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: it could be uh, you know, even as much as
Speaker 1: a month. And of course I was dead wrong on
Speaker 1: my long term estimates. But is there something that you guys?
Speaker 1: I want you to pick a skill that you want
Speaker 1: to learn, and we're going to go and learn it together.
Speaker 1: And ultimately we landed on skateboarding. I had never really
Speaker 1: learned how to skateboard. They wanted to learn how to skateboard. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I went and I looked, and I tried
Speaker 1: to find, you know, a skateboard brand that was part
Speaker 1: of this kind of new digitally native movement. UM. I
Speaker 1: did not want to go to Amazon and just buy
Speaker 1: something because you had heard that all of online transactions
Speaker 1: were shifting towards Amazon, Walmart and these big players of
Speaker 1: what I called lowest common denominator shopping platforms, and this
Speaker 1: new digital main street that had been built up because
Speaker 1: regular main street and retail main street really they been
Speaker 1: killed off, but the digital main street that had evolved
Speaker 1: with these amazing brands. Um, we're being challenged in a
Speaker 1: very real way. And so I wanted to go and
Speaker 1: find a skateboard brand, and I searched for like thirty
Speaker 1: four five minutes online and I couldn't find one and UM.
Speaker 1: But what I did see in that process of looking
Speaker 1: at all of my peers in this digital main street
Speaker 1: is everybody across the board was doing what they could
Speaker 1: to contribute UM positively to to you know, to fight
Speaker 1: this pandemic. Whether it was encouraging employees and their team
Speaker 1: and their retail teams to to be safe um. You know,
Speaker 1: some were shifting their supply chains to make masks. Many
Speaker 1: were giving a percent of their sales to UM to
Speaker 1: nonprofits even as their sales were declining. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be great to stand in solidarity
Speaker 1: with a lot of these brands, and so I just
Speaker 1: started reaching out to friends in the space and we
Speaker 1: accumulated over a hundred fifty brands, digitally native brands, and
Speaker 1: everybody agreed to donate two plus percent of their sales
Speaker 1: or ten plus percent of their proceeds to a nonprofit
Speaker 1: fighting the pandemic and UM. Over the course of two months,
Speaker 1: we raised you know, three and a half million dollars
Speaker 1: um to to to fight and uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: contribute to PP and UM. It also gave consumers a
Speaker 1: choice because we said, you know, we're brands that stand
Speaker 1: for treating our employees better, stand for treating our supply
Speaker 1: chains well, and we will always try and do what's
Speaker 1: right first, you know, above and beyond simply trying to
Speaker 1: turn a profit. And uh and it was a great,
Speaker 1: great initiative and we had a great experience in building
Speaker 1: it well. And interested that you said that, because I
Speaker 1: wonder also how much are you thinking differently about all
Speaker 1: of that now? Like you have the relief effort, you've
Speaker 1: over a hundred forty brands who all helped raise that money.
Speaker 1: But as a company, are you also rethinking how you
Speaker 1: do stuff either sustainably or how you deal with workers,
Speaker 1: or any kind of work life balance that exists in
Speaker 1: any part of the world? Like does did COVID make
Speaker 1: you rethink any of those things? I think it's made us.
Speaker 1: I think it's made us, at the very least examine everything.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, in particular, I will say, you know,
Speaker 1: we have a very flexible PTO policy relative to most
Speaker 1: of corporate America in the fact that we don't have
Speaker 1: a formal um, you know, vacation days. If you join
Speaker 1: our company tomorrow, we don't say all right, it's your
Speaker 1: first year, you get ten vacation days. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it is unlimited p t O as we as we
Speaker 1: describe it, UM. And it's actually worked very well for us.
Speaker 1: But you know, part of the challenge that has come
Speaker 1: with that, and especially in this consistently connected environment, people
Speaker 1: are not taking enough time off where they're just you know,
Speaker 1: eliminating screens and walking away. And so we've had times
Speaker 1: where we are forcing screen breaks UM and UH. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's you know, there's been there's certainly been
Speaker 1: ways where we're thinking about what does collaboration looked like
Speaker 1: when we come back is it is it a five
Speaker 1: day work week in the office? Um? And there's you know, again,
Speaker 1: forever is a very long time. So when I hear
Speaker 1: people say that the you know, we're never ever going
Speaker 1: back to an office, well, forever is a very long time.
Speaker 1: But I do think the workplace will be changed for uh,
Speaker 1: for a considerably long time in the coming years. I
Speaker 1: did want to ask you that, Nate, because it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We had a CEO on last week who's who's a
Speaker 1: die hard New Yorker live there work their offices. UM
Speaker 1: has created like you has a great heart and you know,
Speaker 1: giving back to the community and basically said we're done,
Speaker 1: we're done with New York and we've been working so
Speaker 1: well and he's got a company that can work really
Speaker 1: well virtually, and and so on and so forth. But
Speaker 1: he said, we're done with New York, but you don't.
Speaker 1: And I think you make a really good point. I
Speaker 1: think right now it's easy for us all to say
Speaker 1: we're done. But but long forever is a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you know, the going back and looking
Speaker 1: at the Spanish flu and the you know, the Roaring
Speaker 1: twenties that followed it. You know, it's it's certainly easy
Speaker 1: to to think that this is you know that this
Speaker 1: is going to be forever impact. But there's there is,
Speaker 1: there is an impact, and we have to acknowledge that. Um.
Speaker 1: I will never be done with New York. Um. We
Speaker 1: love we love the city, and I think it's going
Speaker 1: to take I think New York is going to come
Speaker 1: back better and stronger, and um but you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to being in the office, at least as
Speaker 1: far as I can see, for the next two years,
Speaker 1: we will not have five day a week office days.
Speaker 1: I can I can envision a scenario where it goes
Speaker 1: down even to two office days a week and the
Speaker 1: rest because our team is so effective at all. We
Speaker 1: unfortunately had to end our interview there as we had
Speaker 1: to get to the White House for a briefing. Still,
Speaker 1: it was really great to catch up with rone CEO
Speaker 1: and co founder Nate Check Its joining us from Connecticut