09/01/2026
One important recommendation to retailersâfrom a brand owner who works with hundreds of store owners:
It doesnât matter what customers say they want. What matters is what they actually spend money on.
At the end of the day, we are all service providers. Our job is to understand and serve our customersânot simply project our own preferences, assumptions, or broad virtue-oriented ideas onto them.
For example, I see some retailers placing a strong focus on cotton fabrics. We absolutely love cotton, and if you know us, you know how much we work with it.
But the reality is that some pieces simply donât make sense in cotton. A structured jacket, a warm sweater, or a cold-weather cardigan may perform better and make more sense when produced with other materials.
Our focus is to create styles using fabrics that feel genuinely good, with responsible manufacturing, healthy margins for stores, and a wide enough range of styles to help retailers build the right assortment for their customers.
Take a look at the last slide.
This is Queen Street West in Toronto: Lululemon on the right, with its many values-driven brand messages; Garage on the left, with a more trend-oriented approach; and in the centre, where you see the long line of shoppers back and forth, is Brandy Melville.
The point isnât to judge anyoneâs valuesâor suggest that one business model is morally better than another.
The point is simply this: the customer ultimately decides.
We can hear all kinds of opinions about brands, products, fabrics, trends, and even where a company comes from. But what matters in business is paying attention to what is actually working in the market.
It is often wiser to follow the numbers than to project our assumptions onto customers.
Entrepreneurship is, ultimately, about understanding what works and responding to it.
And perhaps once we reach the very top, we earn the luxury of shaping the market around our own preferences. Until then, I believe the market is the one we should be listening to.
