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- [00:00]
Lauren Sherman
Are you tired of showing up to dinner parties with the same old uninspired bottle of wine? There has to be a better way to find unique wines that people will actually remember. That's why Psalmsation is a total game changer. Their expert team finds incredible wines from top independent producers, bottles you won't find at your local wine shop. These wines aren't mass produced. They're handcrafted with care, using pure ingredients and meticulous winemaking. And the best part? Sumpsation's team of sommeliers curates every selection so you know you're getting wines that are truly special. Whether you want a single bottle, a full wine club membership, or even a guided tasting experience, Sumpsation makes it all easy and enjoyable. Explore now@psalmsation.com FashionPeople Calling all sourdough Tamers.
- [00:51]
Claire Mazur
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- [01:57]
Lauren Sherman
Foreign hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show are Claire Mazer and Erica Cerulo, co founders of 831 stories. We're talking content, commerce and so much more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical and above all, fun. Along with me A subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world and much more. If you're interested listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to Puck News Fashion People to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday everyone. The news never stops over here. This past week online sheet Rachel Stratz revealed everything that's happening over a drunk elephant and sho Lots of drama. This brand is such a big part of pop culture and there is literally no one else who can break it down like Rachel. In other news, Mark Guiducci is the new global Editorial Director of Vanity Fair. I shared my thoughts on his appointment and also hopped on a call with Dylan Byers and Julia Alexander over at our sibling pod, the Grill Room to discuss. So you can. You should check that out. My baseline thoughts are that Mark was the best and really the only choice. But wait, there's more. I address the succession speculation over at Kering and I take a look at Maula, the Qatari royal family backed investment fund that bought Valentino and Balmain years ago with ambitions to rival the big strategic groups. How's that going? I answer that question. Also, Sarah Shapiro has a really great mailbag issue on Friday, so check that out. Laura Piana is involved and let's just get going with Claire and Erica. These are two of my closest friends. We have podcasted together many times before and they are experts on something a lot of people try to get right but rarely do, which is figuring out how to create digital content that gets people to buy physical stuff. So it was really fun to chat with them about their still pretty new business, but also everything else. I hope you enjoy it. Erica Cerulo Claire Mazur welcome to Fashion People.
- [04:51]
Erica Cerulo
Oh my gosh, what a privilege. What a privilege.
- [04:54]
Unknown
I've been looking forward to it all day.
- [04:57]
Lauren Sherman
What did you two have for breakfast?
- [04:59]
Unknown
Oh, great question.
- [05:00]
Erica Cerulo
I had my favorite skier, this Painterland sisters skier. It's so good I can't shut the fuck up about it. It's like basically halfway between Greek yogurt and creme fraiche flavor profile with some blueberries.
- [05:17]
Unknown
Well, as you will both know from listening to the well from one co hosting the podcast and two listening I've been eating spinach salads for breakfast and unfortunately for better or worse, I guess that's what I had today. But I had homemade chicken nuggets on top of it because I made them last night for dinner.
- [05:32]
Erica Cerulo
We're both just ourselves I guess is how this goes.
- [05:35]
Lauren Sherman
That sounds so good. Okay, a couple of comments. One is I did hear about both of these foods on the finale of your 10 year long podcast. A thing or two.
- [05:48]
Erica Cerulo
Imagine our podcast ending when we were bringing content that interesting and then we rolled it out on a second podcast.
- [05:55]
Lauren Sherman
I didn't leave you a voice memo about that because I left you a voice memo. Just an emotional voice memo saying how much I'm gonna miss you two. So Claire and Erica, you can look them up on clairanderica.com have had a podcast for 10 years and we should talk a little bit about how we know each other. But I wanna get into content and commerce because you two are the queens of content and commerce. But you had a podcast for about 10 years. Was it always called a thing or two?
- [06:24]
Erica Cerulo
It was called A Few things.
- [06:26]
Lauren Sherman
Few things originally.
- [06:27]
Unknown
A Few Things, yeah.
- [06:28]
Lauren Sherman
Yes. And then changed to A Thing or Two. And I was a guest many times. But it was a sort of mix of what they think is interesting in the culture and what's happening in their lives. And in the finale they talked about what they were eating and the Skyr yogurt came up, which felt very Erica to me. And I liked the conversation about whether or not it was savory or sweet. And Claire, the spinach salad thing, I have to say, I was like half listening, but. So you're basically eating breakfast at 10:00am Now.
- [06:58]
Unknown
Yeah, like between nine and ten, I would say.
- [07:01]
Erica Cerulo
And she's making like a country club salad that would have been served in like 1994.
- [07:07]
Unknown
There's always sliced apple in it. There's often blueberries if I have them. And today it was especially country club club because of the sliced and diced chicken fingers. Like a chicken finger as a topper. Exactly. But we call it in our house dinosaur time because of a famous TikTok about eating spinach every morning. And it's my spinach salad. Yeah.
- [07:27]
Lauren Sherman
Okay. I also, my whole thing is that, you know, I love breakfast food.
- [07:33]
Unknown
Yes.
- [07:33]
Lauren Sherman
But because of being more sedentary in.
- [07:38]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [07:38]
Lauren Sherman
La. Like sometimes I walk a thousand sun.
- [07:41]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. You're like the least sedentary person in la. And this is according to all of your LA friends.
- [07:47]
Lauren Sherman
I am. I am pretty. I do love to walk. But. But so, But I just, it's. I'm not as hungry. And I have noticed that if I eat two substantial meals a day that like, I feel really good, I really enjoy the food. I don't feel like I'm eating too much. I don't feel like I'm too eating too little, but essentially, because my ideal dinner time is 5:30, obviously.
- [08:12]
Unknown
Right, of course. Right, of course.
- [08:13]
Erica Cerulo
So are you eating like a brunch?
- [08:15]
Lauren Sherman
So essentially I'm eating at like 11.
- [08:18]
Erica Cerulo
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:18]
Lauren Sherman
And then eating at 5 or. You know, I also do go out a lot for work, and then I end up eating at 9:30 on those days. And those days I definitely don't want to eat in the morning. It's. It's complex. And in. I've just. So I've just adopted this thing where I eat it like the 10:30 or 11, and I usually have a avocado toast type situation.
- [08:39]
Erica Cerulo
Yeah, well, you could do a salad. You're at a salad hour, you know.
- [08:42]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:43]
Unknown
Yes.
- [08:43]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah.
- [08:43]
Erica Cerulo
I mean, if you. If you believe there is such a thing. No offense.
- [08:46]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [08:47]
Lauren Sherman
Yes. Anyway, I love how this sort of became an extension of a thing or two.
- [08:53]
Unknown
I was. I have so much more to say, and I'm just shutting my mouth because I'm told we're supposed to talk about content and commerce. Yeah, yeah.
- [09:00]
Lauren Sherman
So I wanted to have you all on because. So we've known each other for almost 15 years.
- [09:06]
Unknown
Probably 15. Yeah.
- [09:07]
Erica Cerulo
Yeah.
- [09:08]
Lauren Sherman
We met through our dear friend, who I haven't talked to in about five years, Elisa Gold Simon.
- [09:13]
Erica Cerulo
Yes.
- [09:14]
Unknown
We met because we were on a South by Southwest panel together.
- [09:16]
Lauren Sherman
Yes.
- [09:17]
Erica Cerulo
In like 2012. Is that right?
- [09:19]
Lauren Sherman
In 2012, 2011 and 2012. And I knew of you all because I had covered my Fashionista and Lucky magazine. I covered Of a Kind, this company you had. But also, Erica, you had worked at Lucky, and. And you two were the kind of people who everyone I knew said, oh, you should know them. And when we met, we were instantly friends. And I remember I had just turned 30 and thought, oh, I. I had this idea that I wasn't gonna make new friends in my 30s. And you all became my first, like, really good friends that I made in my 30s.
- [09:56]
Erica Cerulo
I love all of this, and I love that we're learning this right now.
- [09:59]
Lauren Sherman
I love this. Yes. And you all are very good friends. But again, this is not a thing or two. This is a podcast about the fashion industry. So the reason I wanted to have you on is because I write a lot about. And Sarah Shapiro, my colleague who covers retail, we write a lot about this idea of content and commerce and the two things sort of feeding off of each other. It works so much into so many of the worlds that we cover. The consumer brands world, the luxury world, where they've brought in more editorial and Everything's so much more direct to consumer. But I found that, like a lot of companies where their thesis is based on content and commerce, on content sort of fueling commerce, they don't work. But you all have sort of made a life out of making content fuel commerce in a real way. And so you have this new business called 831 Stories, which is in the romance novel space, but romance space, let's just not say novels. So we're gonna talk about 831 stories and how you're using content in commerce. But let's talk about of a kind really quick and what you all think of that idea of content and commerce and what you learned from the Avakain of experience, et cetera.
- [11:16]
Unknown
I mean, I think I was trying. You had mentioned in your notes to us about what was sort of the original idea. And it really stems back to the fact that Eric and I went to college together in Chicago and used to go shopping together on the north side when there was. At that time, there were a lot of really interesting indie boutiques. And I remember when we would shop there, always getting some nugget of a story behind something we were buying. I remember I got this jacket that I held on for way too long and bought in part because the store owner told me that the person who had designed the jacket had left Theory to start her own line. And it was 2004, and I loved Theory, and I was like, that's so cool and that's so chic. And, you know, there are more sort of like career and professional insights we had around of a kind. But the truth was, at that time, all of these. All of the. So much shopping was moving online. And it was very obvious to us that none of that experience of getting to learn something about this indie designer and that, like, emotional attachment you could form was happening online in the same way it was happening when you were going into these boutiques.
- [12:21]
Erica Cerulo
So the vision behind Of a Kind, we launched it in 2010. The idea was that we would sell pieces from emerging designers and tell their stories. And it was just as designers started to move online. Clara came from the arts world and was really interested in thinking about ways to support emerging artists. And for us, as people in our mid-20s, designers were the artists whose work that was accessible to us. And so, like, fashion was our entree into that. And I came from magazine editorial. I worked at Details and Lucky and was seeing the way that, you know, we were having trouble selling ad pages. But course, the things we were writing about were selling and why not just sort of integrate the editorial with the commerce piece of it so that they were feeling each other and we were making revenue off of selling the things, as opposed to hoping that someone bought a Gillette ad.
- [13:11]
Unknown
So we would commission these limited edition pieces because we wanted to sort of introduce the idea of these things being collectible and that you could take a sort of collector's mentality where you felt like you were sort of getting in on the ground floor of a young designer before they blew up. And we did, we worked with Claire Vivier, Deusen Dusen, Lizzie Fortunato, all of these people who went on to become much bigger, more sort of household names in the space. And a lot of the people who were following of a kind at the time bought stuff from them in their first year of business. And what we would do is we would tell the story of the item itself, but we would also tell the backstory of the designer to give a sense of who they were, what inspired them, who they were when they weren't making clothes or home goods or jewelry or whatever it was, because we knew that to get people excited about buying stuff from an unknown designer, you had to give them that emotional element. You had to have that storytelling piece.
- [13:59]
Lauren Sherman
So the question I have for you right now is there was a lot of work put into the storytelling.
- [14:07]
Erica Cerulo
Yes.
- [14:07]
Lauren Sherman
And you. The conversion was. Was good because you would sell out, you would do 100 items, you would sell out. But that was small scale for sure. Was the effort that you were putting in to the storytelling worth it? Like, I don't know if you all were able to measure it, but as you. Because you did this for about a decade, what did you learn as the business grew and you scaled further?
- [14:34]
Erica Cerulo
A couple of things. One, because we were doing this kind of content marketing that really told the designer stories, we were able to leverage that when we were making deals with designers. So we were able to get higher markups. We were able to commission these limited edition pieces that would draw on a new audience. And because designers, you know, didn't have the capacity to be doing this on their own, this was like, we want just business, free Instagram. Like there, you know, there was no social that people were using to gather an audience. And it became a calling card for designers or a marker of their success to be featured on Of a Kind and to reach our audience, because finding an audience was really challenging. The other thing I think that became interesting was that we weren't looking at, like, what is the conversion on this story? There were people that really loved the content. And then there were people that really loved that there was content. And there were. There was a very high percentage of customers, followers, newsletters, subscribers, who maybe weren't reading the content around each piece, but they liked seeing the designer's picture in the newsletter when we would email about an edition release. They liked knowing what the deck was that this person was in Austin and they use and they're silversmiths or like, whatever the things were. And we found that our audience that we developed was a very sort of like, thoughtful, sophisticated, engaged audience as a result of having the content on the site, whether or not they were consuming all of it.
- [16:07]
Unknown
Well, I also think that content gave us the credibility to start a podcast and a newsletter that weren't directly storytelling about the makers whose pieces we were selling, but were arguably like some of the most successful content that came out of. Of a Kind became huge brand calling cards for us and I think were a discovery path for a lot of people to Of a Kind and to the products that we sold. And the podcast and the newsletter were just about discovery writ large.
- [16:31]
Erica Cerulo
So we started a newsletter in 2012.
- [16:35]
Unknown
Yeah, right.
- [16:36]
Erica Cerulo
It was originally called 10 Things and now is called A Thing or Two. This is all just like, for.
- [16:42]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah.
- [16:42]
Erica Cerulo
Anyway, now called A Thing or Two, where we listed our. My Favorite Discoveries of my five Favorite discoveries last week. Claire's five Favorite Discoveries of the Last week. It was essentially like we had a substack in 2012 in. In a way that was related to the things that we were selling, but was not necessarily driving the things that we were selling. And we would market that on Facebook to grow our newsletter audience, which we would then, you know, send newsletters about our product releases and convert people to customers that way.
- [17:14]
Lauren Sherman
Interesting.
- [17:16]
Unknown
But ultimately, like my other big Learning from that business had very little to do with content. And it was that I. By the time we shut it down, which by the time we shut it down, which was late 2019, and had less to do with the performance of our business and more with the fact that we had sold to Bed Bath and Beyond, who at that time had activist investors who were like, this tiny.
- [17:34]
Lauren Sherman
Business that you own and you should get rid of that.
- [17:37]
Unknown
We'll be exactly.
- [17:38]
Lauren Sherman
Made no sense.
- [17:39]
Erica Cerulo
I mean, they got rid of. They got rid of a handful of businesses. They're like, you need to focus. That was right.
- [17:45]
Lauren Sherman
Does it still exist?
- [17:46]
Unknown
No. Overstock.com bought the brand and the audience.
- [17:49]
Lauren Sherman
But. Oh, I loved Bed Bath.
- [17:51]
Unknown
But I mean, and this is a lesson from Bed Bath. This is A lesson from Of a kind. This is a lesson from Barney's I multi brand retail to me seemed an impossible uphill battle and especially online. And if it's hard with brick and mortar, when you go online, you introduce the competition of, of, you know, ad sale, of ad prices and SEO and all of that. And it just felt like I, I don't actually know how you grow a big business here and I'm so grateful for the people who are still doing it because I love multi brand business, love multi brand retail, but it's, it's really tough.
- [18:22]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, it really is. As, as you can read in line sheet pretty much every single day.
- [18:31]
Unknown
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- [19:36]
Lauren Sherman
So I think one thing that a lot of investors and also retailers and also just people marketers think is that like you mentioned this about, it was worth putting the work into the content because of the fact that it just raised awareness overall and it made people engaged with what you do. And a couple weeks before you all were on, I had the Foster sisters on who are Erin and Sarah Foster, who are investors in 831? And we talked a lot about this idea of a flywheel, which Claire and I have talked about offline because I was like, what does that actually mean? And how the Aaron and Sarah's business of having a clothing line and a TV show and a podcast and investing in things that they like, they all sort of feed off of each other. And it does feel like your newsletter and the stories you were telling on of a kind and the stuff you were selling that had a similar effect. And also we'll get into 831 soon. But I think the point I was trying to make was that I think that a lot of people who want to make money by telling stories in a meaningful way don't understand that it might not be a direct conversion.
- [21:09]
Unknown
Yes.
- [21:10]
Lauren Sherman
And you have to be okay with that. I think about the company Hodinkee a lot and the challenges that they've had. Where Hodinkee was this incredible site, they tried to make a really robust E commerce and it just didn't work for whatever reason. And I mean, I'm sure it worked to an extent, but they weren't able to figure it out. And I think one of the biggest issues was that they were betting that by writing these long stories about a watch, they were going to sell $50,000 watches. And it doesn't really work like that. If you are. Are we're advising a brand, which you all have done a lot of that, especially since Of a kind close. What should people be trying to get out of all this work they're putting into storytelling?
- [22:02]
Unknown
I think it's all world building. Like Sporty and rich is content and commerce. That's what content commerce looks like now. Right. She does all of that world building on her own Instagram and. And some of it through Sporty and rich too. But that's just another way of building a world and saying if you want to be a part of this world, here's how to like truly engage with it and here's how to sort of, you know, acquire the, the elements of it. And so when we were working, you know, in consulting capacity with brands, we were very much just saying like, what does your brand stand for and how can you communicate that, whether it's through a magazine, your Instagram or the hang tags that you put on your product.
- [22:38]
Erica Cerulo
I think EIMO does another. Does a really good job of that, of just like being a brand that is very commerce forward. But then this is about travel, this is about moving through the world. This is about Italy. And so you are getting all of these stories that again, like just feel additive and sort of experiential in that way where if I am traveling to like a ski slope and in the Alps, I'm going to go on that website and see what they've had to say about it.
- [23:03]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, the Issimo Byredo candle, there's no reason to buy it. And yet I'm, I'm Restocking anytime I can. It smells right, but. But I know about it because of the world that they.
- [23:13]
Erica Cerulo
That's a good reason.
- [23:15]
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
- [23:18]
Lauren Sherman
Right.
- [23:18]
Unknown
And I think what's hard, I. I love everything about Essence, but somebody made the comment to us the other day that it's like actually really hard to find the stories when you're shopping, and it's hard to find the shopping when you're telling stories. And I think, you know, I don't know that business well enough to know whether or not the. The content is working for them. I obviously care that they have it, and it makes me think differently about their brand than they have it.
- [23:40]
Lauren Sherman
But.
- [23:41]
Unknown
But I also think trying to think about. It's not just about publishing an article and putting it on your website. It's all the different places that you're have the opportunity to do storytelling.
- [23:51]
Lauren Sherman
That's.
- [23:51]
Unknown
That's the content piece of it. And, you know, that can be on the product page.
- [23:55]
Lauren Sherman
So let's talk about 831 and how you have sort of reverse engineered what you did to me. I don't know if you've all said that.
- [24:06]
Unknown
Yeah, we do.
- [24:06]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah.
- [24:07]
Erica Cerulo
No, I think that's how we think of it too. I think that's how we think of it too. I mean, basically, 831 story sort of flips the model of what we did at of a kind. So now the foundation of the business is publishing romance novellas that we are now releasing every other month or so. Next year, we'll be releasing them once a month and then building out the worlds from there in ways that include additional content, but then also include product. And so the product is sort of serving as the, like, bonus content in the case of this business.
- [24:42]
Unknown
I mean, the inspiration for 8 through 1 was first and foremost that we were just rapidly consuming romance novels ourselves. We were fascinated by what was happening on a cultural level, the way these romance novels seem to be giving permission to women to center their own desire, sexuality, joy, romance, et cetera, in their own lives. But then that those women were all behaving honestly like comic book fans. And that there was that same desire that comic book fans to have to have to stay immersed in the world of these stories and engage with these characters beyond just like the original sort of foundational text of them. And to us, what was really interesting was like, there's actually opportunity here to give romance readers that same experience where you get to just like, sort of continue on with the life of these characters and these stories. And so that, like Erica said is what is sort of the bonus part in this. In this, it's like, what are The.
- [25:34]
Erica Cerulo
Spider Man PJs of our world? You know, and what's that figure? Exactly. And so for us, it is like from, you know, in the second draft of the book saying, what are the products from this book that we could develop? And so, you know, we worked with Lizzie Fortunato for a necklace for our first book. Based on the description in the book, we worked with the designer Naomi Otsu on various products, including a T shirt that is the fan club T shirt of a band in the first book. And so really like thinking of how to draw product out of this in a way that feels fun and interesting for someone that is part of a burgeoning fandom.
- [26:11]
Lauren Sherman
And you also have a lot of great merch. Keychains, hats, T shirts. One of the teachers T shirts says, everyone reads romance novels, which I love. But you worked with a really fancy design firm, right?
- [26:26]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [26:27]
Lauren Sherman
And you, you, you're both very design oriented people and, and have a lot of taste. So it's important to you. But why, why kind of invest in making the merch good, making that all? Because that, I mean, I don't, I don't want to answer for you, but that could become a giant business in and of itself.
- [26:50]
Unknown
Yeah. And it's been a much bigger piece of our business than we anticipated in large part because our design team, which is C47, so it's led by Phil Chang, Naomi Atsu, Sunny Park, Hani Kang and Jiamin Lee, they are just remarkably good at what they do. The reason that we wanted to really invest in it and that we have invested in the way that we have is because romance is a genre that has always been dominated by these monolithic aesthetics and these visual identifiers that have done a lot of work both to help and hinder it.
- [27:20]
Lauren Sherman
Right.
- [27:20]
Unknown
So when a lot of people think about romance novels, they think of the bodice rippers with like a half naked man on the COVID They think of Fabio. And either that speaks to you because you love romance novels. And the minute you see Fabio, you're like, oh, that's a book that I'm going to like because you have a sense of what's inside or you're someone who's like, romance novels are not for me, that's not the type of reader I am. And therefore, you know, I'm not going to read it. So to us, the challenge was, how do you design romance novels and design covers and a brand that is not going to alienate the existing romance reader who is, you know, especially now, very loud and proud about it. But. But is also going to maybe pull in that reader who thinks that romance isn't for them, that maybe romance is like beneath them, or that their sense of it is that it's not good literature. And so that was sort of the first piece of it was making sure that the assignment. Yeah, yeah, the assignment. But when it comes to our merch and everything else, you know, we just, we, Erica always says, you know, that we have just always acted as if romance was the coolest thing there is and have never questioned whether or not it's cool, which I'll hit you on.
- [28:24]
Erica Cerulo
We're just working from the assumption that it's cool and not trying to hedge or convince people, just presenting it as cool. Yeah, that's it.
- [28:31]
Unknown
And design's a big piece of that, right?
- [28:35]
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- [29:08]
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- [29:41]
Lauren Sherman
I think one thing and you all are probably sick of talking about the idea of you never.
- [29:47]
Erica Cerulo
Unfortunately not.
- [29:48]
Lauren Sherman
Unfortunately not. I don't think it ever has come up on this podcast. So. So one thing that you all made me read this book, which is totally fine. Obviously love the movie.
- [30:01]
Unknown
It's not as much for you as it was for us.
- [30:04]
Lauren Sherman
I love the movie produced by my good friend Jordana Malik. The movie is great. Anyway, what I thought was interesting about the book was that she's like Wearing. And I remember Claire, you're like. Pitch to me was like, she's wearing the robe.
- [30:23]
Unknown
Yeah. Well, I don't know if she wears the robe. She wears Jason Wu.
- [30:27]
Lauren Sherman
She wears the row. I think there's like a row sweater or something. Which, to be honest, was not a big deal. I was like, I actually don't care what this woman's wearing.
- [30:37]
Unknown
It was important to me. But fine. Fine and fair.
- [30:40]
Lauren Sherman
The book is a great book, I think. I've personally, I really enjoyed your 8:3:1 debut in particular, and I'm a big fan. And I'm currently reading Set Piece, which I. Which I love.
- [30:55]
Unknown
Good.
- [30:55]
Lauren Sherman
And Lana Schwartz, right?
- [30:57]
Unknown
Yes.
- [30:57]
Erica Cerulo
Yes, exactly.
- [30:58]
Lauren Sherman
I saw her speak with our friend Amanda Dobbins, and she's awesome. And it's just like a fun. It's really fun. I've enjoyed all of them, though, because I am reading them all because they're novellas, so I can actually read them in one sitting.
- [31:11]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [31:12]
Lauren Sherman
But the point being that, like, there is something to be said about how you all are managing this and kind of breaking it out of what you think of that genre without forcing it on people.
- [31:29]
Erica Cerulo
Yeah.
- [31:29]
Lauren Sherman
Because this kind of stuff was happening in this genre. You're just sort of packaging it in a really clever way.
- [31:36]
Erica Cerulo
Thank you. I mean, I think one of the other things we really think about is really thinking about what the fans want. And when we launched merch, it's not like we launched merch that said 831 on it, because that's not what fans want. And I think this is a mistake people make in general when creating merch. You know, you see so many co tote bags with company logos on them, and you're like, that's like, who wants to carry that around? Like, yes, it does marketing for you, but only if people use it instead. We started with trope merch. And like we say, we always joke that tropes are the zodiac of the romance genre. So people know what books. People have their preferred tropes. They know that they're a second chance romance or enemies to lovers, force proximity. That. Exactly, exactly. And so we started selling these hats, and they really took off because people feel seen by them. And you're like, yeah, that is me. Like, I do care about this. And we started getting wholesale requests for these hats, which is something that we did not anticipate, is, you know, not built into our model in any way. And that lighting speaks to what you're saying that, like, this has a potential to be a huge piece of our business. Like really leaning into what people are talking about in this genre and making cool products around it.
- [32:46]
Unknown
Well, and it's doing work for us beyond what? Beyond just advertising our brand. Because, like Lauren, you brought up that the shirt that says everybody reads romance, which is very much an ode to the together shirt that says, you know, everybody watches women's sports. We have a similar uphill battle to women's sports. Right. Which is convincing people like, this is a mainstream thing that is, has appeal for everybody. Where, you know, romance for so long was stigmatized. Oh, it's not for me. I'm not that type of reader. I'm not that type of person. No, no, no, no, no. Everybody loves happy, sexy stories about love. Like, truly, it's only human. So it's this work that we're doing to say like enemies to lovers, everybody leads romance. Real men read romance. Like introducing these tropes into the common language and parlance like that, that actually does something for us as a brand.
- [33:31]
Erica Cerulo
Well, and that's like the same people who are telling us, like, I don't like romance. We'll go on and on about normal people and Sally Root and you're like, girl, like, it's all the same.
- [33:41]
Lauren Sherman
100%. Yeah, it's all the same. Yeah, yeah, it's all the same. So. Ooh, I just saw a big cabbage cactus plant blooming in my backyard.
- [33:53]
Unknown
Wow. How la of you.
- [33:55]
Lauren Sherman
So you mentioned you had outreach about wholesale and just, I mean, you all didn't do wholesale. You were a multi brand retailer yourself, so. And I know you did some drop ship. I'm sure you did some wholesale too. It was probably a mix. What do you feel is how, how nervous does it make you that some of this business is product? And like, how is the business so diversified? Because you're doing books, you're, you're doing, you're probably, I assume you'll do tv. You have all these different. Do you think, like for people who are in the product business, like, how important is it to have other revenue streams and how are you thinking about this now? Is that part of the business? Like, that's a scale up thing that can happen very quickly.
- [34:52]
Unknown
I mean, it doesn't make me nervous, it makes me laugh because we swore up and down we would never get back into retail. And not only are we back into retail, but our direct, our like DTC business is so much bigger than we ever imagined it would be. And that goes for books too, which is like unheard of. Right? It's just like people buy books On Amazon. They don't buy them anywhere else.
- [35:09]
Erica Cerulo
And they're local. Indie, perhaps.
- [35:10]
Unknown
We had to literally 10x our inventory of our own books when we launched Preorder because we just. People were pre ordering them from our site in numbers that we never imagined. So to answer your question, this is where the flywheel comes in, right? Like, the retail is only working if it's working on a book level. If it's working on adaptation level, and the adaptations are only working if it's working on a brand and a storytelling level. And if the fandom is generated at the book level, it's truly. And that's why we start with the books. Right. Because the books are where romance readers get more engaged, most engaged. That's where they get most enthusiastic. It's also what they fell in love with. Yeah.
- [35:48]
Erica Cerulo
Like, it's what, what's exciting about this is that people are reading books. They are like, on TikTok, shouting about books like, that's so cool.
- [35:57]
Unknown
Yeah. And. And so. And you know, and the design, of course, runs through all of this. And of course, there are people who will buy our merch and probably never read our book. There's someone who left a Goodreads review who said, I bought the Mischief Fan Club tea from big fan. And so then I felt like I had to read the book because I liked the tea and I had the T shirt. And then it turned out I really liked the book. I mean, that's like reverse flywheel in, in our case, but amazing.
- [36:22]
Erica Cerulo
Imagine.
- [36:24]
Unknown
But the idea is truly that, like, if we can excite existing romance readers, if we can create new romance readers, then they will feel loyal to this brand and that they will follow along on all of these different components of the business. But I don't think that just producing really cool trope hats that say enemies to lovers is a sustainable business, no matter how popular they get, no matter how cool they are, no matter who wears them, because somebody else can rip them off. Right. It's. It has to be the whole thing.
- [36:54]
Erica Cerulo
I think the other thing is that now that we've been in some version of this space for the last 15 years, I think we've seen the way that, like, things ebb and flow and the protection that having diversified revenue streams can offer a business to, like, turn something up and turn something else down when ad sales are dropping or when, you know, people are just, like, buying less because of seasonality or tariffs or whatever the thing is. And so being able to, like, fire on different cylinders is important to us.
- [37:33]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. I I think you all think very holistically in your life. And. And the most interesting thing for me, I met you all probably two or three years into. Of a kind.
- [37:47]
Erica Cerulo
Yeah.
- [37:48]
Lauren Sherman
And I saw you build that business and close that business and build other businesses and help other businesses. And the thing that is amazing to me about what you're doing now and why I think it's a good case, like, it will be a Harvard Business School case study someday, and why I wanted to have you all on about it specifically because I do think you all understand how to. You understand that the, you know, you go on LinkedIn and half the bio say storyteller. And I always want to make fun of people because I'm like, oh, are you a storyteller? But it is actually really important to be able to tell stories.
- [38:30]
Unknown
It is.
- [38:30]
Lauren Sherman
And you all understand the sort of. You just have a very practical and pragmatic way of looking at all of this that I think is really exciting and can be applied across a lot of different kinds of businesses.
- [38:48]
Erica Cerulo
Yes.
- [38:49]
Unknown
Thank you.
- [38:50]
Lauren Sherman
And congrats. Also, I. I just want to say that it's so funny when my friends come on this. We're so efficient.
- [38:56]
Unknown
We're so efficient. We just get straight to the point.
- [38:58]
Lauren Sherman
You think that we'd go off the rails.
- [39:00]
Unknown
We did a little bit in the beginning. Yeah.
- [39:03]
Lauren Sherman
It was worth it. Thank you both so much for being here.
- [39:07]
Unknown
Thanks, Lauren. An absolute honor.
- [39:11]
Lauren Sherman
Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. This show was produced and edited by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to our executive producers, Puck co founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy, and director of editorial operations, Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Jenna Weiss Berman, and Bob Tabador.