3 questions 3 answers, here.

I’ve been on the road a lot lately. Lots of talks, in dressing rooms privately and publicly to large groups. A few questions have stood out in my head. I will share them here, ok?

Q: “What are your biggest regrets?”

A: “My knee jerk is to say I have none, that everything happens for a reason, and that as long as you learn and grow then it’s part of the process. And that’s true. But I do have two regrets:

1) I wish I’d stayed put a bit longer when my second child was born. I remember I had to fly to Asia a lot right after he was born, I would cry on the plane. But I still went on all the trips. Now I don’t remember what was so important that I had to be there so often, but I do remember that I missed out on some precious time I’ll never get back.

2) I was really mean to a girl in 8th grade. Now that I’ve had kids, if someone did to my kid what I did to this girl, I’d be livid. Shaking. Sad. I wish I could take back that time, get a do-over.

Other than these two, I’m good.

Q: “What are you most proud of that you’ve done at Tibi?”

A: “A customer mentioned that they believed if they were traveling someplace afar and ran in to trouble, that they could send out an alert on our instagram page and some other Tibi customer in that country or city would reach out and help them. And while that sounds crazy, it’s also very true. I know it for a fact because it’s happened and people have written to me to describe the circumstances. I’ve always cringed when brands talk about “community” because I don’t really believe there’s a community of red lipstick wearers, or people who love straw bags from even someone as fabulous as JW Anderson or the likes of. And I also think communities of people who hate the same things are short lived or ill-advised, because it’s a little soul sucking after a while to try and out rant each other. But somehow, over the last four plus years, I think we’ve built the literal definition of community. And I try and figure out how that happened. Maybe it’s being clear about our mindset? Because we are an independent brand we have the luxury of doing the work ourselves. That means there are no layers between us and the people who wear the clothes. So “authenticity” is hardly a buzz word on a strategic plan, it just simply is. It’s a bit of an “if you know you know” sort of thing, but when you are around people who share your principles but not necessarily your same opinions, the conversations are good. And meaningful. And it’s where great connections happen. I wish I’d figured this out earlier - maybe that’s a third regret I should have mentioned?

Q: “Will Tibi stay an independent brand? I don’t want it to become a huge brand, I like it that I don’t see myself coming and going.”

A: We are independent by design. Elaine, our President and Frank, our CEO and I decided in 2020 that everything we do would be guided by three principles:

1. We will only work with people who share our mindset. This means you can come from the best designer brand, have the chicest boutique, or have the most industry knowledge, but if you’re an asshole, if you don’t work well with others, we don’t want you near us. We’re not impressed.

2. We will only create items that we love. That means everything will have a point of view, but most importantly our point of view. Life’s too short to make things we don’t believe in. And if I’m going to be responsible for explaining what I do, I’m not going to wax on about something that’s just meh. If it doesn’t have meaning to us, it’s not in the collection.

3. We will have agency. That means we control our destiny. Our screw-ups are ours to fix. Our wins are ours to enjoy.

Literally every decision we make is measured against all three principles - never just one. And considering the above, you can imagine why we could never take on a big investor? By definition, that would fracture all three. Why would we need to grow to $150mm plus in sales? Do you realize the amount of average basic-ass boring pieces we’d need to create to hit that milestone? The amount of over production and waste that that would entail? I do, and we want no part of it.

So, there you go. A glimpse in to some of our talks over the last few weeks. I’ll share more - when I have a longer train ride and the time. My stop is coming up and I am the one writing this…..