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- [00:00]
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- [01:52]
Lauren Sherman
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 is jeweler Mark Bridge, CEO of At present, we're talking growing up in the biz, the value of diamonds, 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 Hope you had a great holiday. Whatever you celebrate. As I said, it is Friday, Boxing Day. I will not be shopping, I don't think, but I will be exercising. Love to exercise over the break. I'm taking a whole week off. I'm going to do it next week is exercise Today. Online Sheet is our super duper end of year mailbag. A listener asked if I would do one of these mailbag episodes for Fashion people and to be honest, I don't know. These take a lot of work and I want you to pay for them and pay for Puck. I don't know if you were aware, but I have a newsletter, a daily newsletter called Blind Sheet at Puck that you might have heard of that I'd love for you to pay for. But maybe one day we'll do a live call type thing. I'd be happy for people to like call in public radio style or public access style, that type of thing. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Mark which took place a few months ago, but it is even more relevant today. And if something big happened that I'm not mentioning, rest assured I will address it in line sheet ASAP and on the pod in January. Mark Bridge, welcome to Fashion People.
- [04:05]
Mark Bridge
Hello, Lauren. Thank you so much for having me.
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Lauren Sherman
What'd you have for breakfast this morning? Did you eat breakfast? It's still early on the west coast.
- [04:11]
Mark Bridge
It is. I am already on to my second.
- [04:14]
Caffeinated beverage as I see you are here as well.
- [04:17]
I had a toasted bagel with some.
- [04:19]
Lox and some English tea. This is one of my remaining Anglophile affectations.
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Lauren Sherman
Were you an Anglophile growing up as a teenager?
- [04:29]
Mark Bridge
I was an Anglophile as a child.
- [04:31]
My grandfather spent time in Britain after he was nicely asked to leave Germany and so then he was nicely asked to leave Britain at some point also before he came to the United States. But yes, our family on my mother's side has a number of. A number of remaining bits from the temporary old country.
- [04:53]
Lauren Sherman
What were the Anglophile things that you obsessed over? I was also a little bit of an Anglophile, but more in high school when I got into, you know, we're about the. I think we're exactly about the same age. I got very into like Brit pop, kind of like Blur Adjacent, Oasis Adjacent and then. But was really obsessed with British vogue in the 90s.
- [05:15]
Mark Bridge
Well, you're much cooler than I am. And so my Anglophile tendencies are things like 19th century, you know, kind of things like, you know, Fortnum and Mason tea. And I still like, I think I'M the only one left in the world who still gets a paper copy of the Financial Times every day. But that was like a remnant of the. I spent a couple years in school living in London.
- [05:36]
Lauren Sherman
Oh, nice.
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Mark Bridge
You know, so.
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So that, and.
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And shoes, they actually make very nice men's footwear.
- [05:41]
So it's true.
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Lauren Sherman
I think men's fashion there and tailoring, it kind of all goes back to England.
- [05:49]
Mark Bridge
No, I think that's right.
- [05:50]
I mean court culture and the aristocracy, for all the things that you could said about it was really good for decoration.
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Lauren Sherman
So you grew up, did you grow up in Seattle?
- [06:01]
Mark Bridge
I have been in Seattle other than.
- [06:03]
Going away for school and you know, whatever time I spend on the road now, I've been here my entire life. So I am a proud Seattleite. And it has changed quite a bit over the course of my life. This was a. It wasn't a provincial backwater when I was growing up, but it definitely is much more of a global place today than it was, you know, 30 or 40 years ago.
- [06:27]
Lauren Sherman
I haven't spent a ton of time there, but I have visited. I have a good friend who lives. Is there a neighborhood called St. Ann's or something of that effect? Or something with Ann? Yeah.
- [06:38]
Mark Bridge
Queen Anne.
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Lauren Sherman
Queen Anne, yes.
- [06:40]
Mark Bridge
Speaking. Speaking of Britain.
- [06:41]
Lauren Sherman
Speaking of the Queen.
- [06:42]
Mark Bridge
Yeah.
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Lauren Sherman
And so my friend from college lives there and then I've come out to meet with the Nordstrom people. I did a Sir Am Filson once, so I've spent a decent amount of time there in my adult life and really love it. I would say that. I think maybe when we met I mentioned this to you. It's probably my third favorite city in the U.S. if, you know, if you can't live in New York, if you can't live in la, to me, like the weather is ideal. That might seem crazy, but it's like really temperate. I like English weather, so it feels kind of similar, maybe a little Rainier, but just it's really beautiful there. And it felt like to me that people were really international and cosmopolitan and fashion was interesting there, maybe because of Nordstrom, but I. The food scene is amazing. I really love it.
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Mark Bridge
There's a surprising depth of retail here.
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You know, if you think about some of the most successful American retailers, you know, Amazon and Nordstrom, but like, you.
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Know, little ones, REI and Costco are based here.
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You know, some of the sort of world spanning things. I don't know for. For reasons that may or may not be interesting, but there is definitely a disproportionate share of very successful retailers that.
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Lauren Sherman
Come out of Seattle, including what was for a long time your family business. Tell me about what your family did when you were growing up, and it will explain to the listeners why you're here with me.
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Mark Bridge
So my background in jewelry and watches go back over five generations. My great great grandfather was a watchmaker who was originally from Poland, but then ended up in Altoona, Pennsylvania at the end of the 19th century. Talk about meccas of all sorts of things. I've never been to Altoona. I don't know if there's anything worth.
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Visiting in Altoona, but there definitely isn't.
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Lauren Sherman
But I'm pretty sure I've been there. It's not far from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Mark Bridge
So my great great grandfather was a.
- [08:54]
Watchmaker, and for reasons that are lost to history, but you can make up whatever story you want. He took to the end of the line in 1912. I suppose he was probably running from something and ended up in Seattle. And this was the, you know, kind of aftermath of the Klondike gold rush, which is originally what put Seattle on the map as the outfitting headquarters to the Klondike. Maybe that's some of the explanation for retailing. That's where Filson and Eddie Bauer and so many great retailers come from. You know, the old story about selling picks and shovels is better than going out and trying to find the gold yourself. But he started a little watch shop on. On First Avenue in downtown Seattle in 1912. And over the course of the the next 110 some odd years, my family built a jewelry business that over time became quite large, ultimately had 100 stores across the United States and Canada.
- [09:53]
And the family sold the business to.
- [09:55]
Berkshire Hathaway, to Warren Buffett. And I spent the first 35 years of my life in apprenticeship in that business to take that over from my father when he retired. And then he did, and I decided to go do something else. And that something else is at present, this business that I founded as a discovery platform connecting the most exciting emerging and independent jewelry designers with the most discerning customers, which was really the product of having spent a lot of time looking at this market and trying to understand, so where is this going? Where is the opportunity? And it was based on a lot of very strongly held opinions that I have about the way that jewelry is presented and marketed and sold in the United States, which we can get into if it's interesting.
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Lauren Sherman
Yeah, I'm so excited to discuss this with you because probably 10 years ago or so I did a story for business of fashion, on the opportunity in branded jewelry. Because I didn't realize that most jewelry in the world is unbranded. Because you think there are what, 10 big brands or really five giant brands. Tiffany, Cartier, Van Cleef, and then there's all this stuff. And maybe we can start with when. When your family business evolved out of just watchmaking and not just. But, you know, out of watchmaking and more into being a jeweler. What, in. In the. In the 1900s, what was a jewel? What was the, like, local jeweler's value in the community? And then how did it expand? Because the Benbridge was all over the country, right? At some. I don't. It wasn't. I didn't. In Pittsburgh, we. I. I don't think we had it. I don't remember it growing up. But can you kind of talk about how that evolved during that period? And then we can get into where it is now? Because it feels like there's many factors that have totally. I don't want to say disrupted the space, but changed the space.
- [12:07]
Mark Bridge
No, I think disrupted is the right.
- [12:08]
Word to understand kind of the history.
- [12:12]
Of jewelry retailing in the United States. You got to think to kind of the shape of distribution and why were people buying things. And for most of the 20th century, people were buying things for prescribed occasions. And our friends at De Beers created as much of a consumer imperative as there has ever been to buy a diamond as an engagement ring.
- [12:38]
And people didn't really know what that.
- [12:41]
Meant, and they didn't know who to trust. And so on every main street in every city in America, a local family set up a jewelry store. And they, for many years, not only picked the product, but described the product. There was no standardized way of describing this is what this diamond is. And so you said, all right, I want to get engaged, I want to get married. I want to celebrate a round number, birthday or anniversary. I go down and I see my friend Larry down at the store, you know, on the corner. And I know him from school. I know him from the club, you know, and it were those kinds of personal connections that was the organizing force of the industry.
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And it ended up becoming a very.
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Large business because the desire for jewelry is high and always has been. This is one of the innate kind of things about us as humans is we like adornment. We have a certain draw towards shiny things. Those shiny things have differed over time, whether they were rocks or metal or.
- [13:50]
Whatever the things were, you know, but there were tens of thousands of points.
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Of distribution, and that is where jewelry was sold. And so when you talk about the unbranded nature of the category, that is where it came from, you know, that.
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You did not have and really to a large extent still don't have those.
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Category killers in jewelry that you had in other spaces. And I think it was based on the nature of the product and the type of transaction. It was something that you spent a lot of money on, very infrequently and you didn't have a lot of knowledge or trust in the category. And and so everybody had their guy. And you know, for some people it.
- [14:34]
Was on 47th Street.
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For some people it was down on Main Street.
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But the traditional shape of the industry.
- [14:41]
Came from that and, you know, really thousands of points of purchase and distribution.
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Lauren Sherman
Why, why are so many jewelers Jewish? Is it the similar thing of retail and generally in the garment district? Or is there. Because when you think about 47th street, you think about jewelers, even today, most of the families that have owned these companies have been Jewish.
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Mark Bridge
I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that traditionally most fields were denied to Jews. And so you weren't going to become a priest, you weren't going to become a knight or join the army. And so I think Jewish history is replete with trading. You know, it's probably a lot of the same reason why there's a disproportionate Jewish influence in, you know, kind of the finance and the banking world, because those were the only things that were left over.
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But I think that there is something.
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To insular communities and that question of trust. And I actually did some work a really long time ago for a law professor at the University of Chicago named Lisa Bernstein.
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And she wrote this really interesting article.
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About diamond trade in New York City.
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And this idea that millions of dollars.
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Were exchanged on a handshake, you know, and you would say mazel and bruja. So you and I would negotiate over something. You'd hand me a parcel of diamonds for $10 million. This would never be reduced to writing. There was never a contract on this.
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And you had no concern that I.
- [16:14]
Was going to pay you because both of our reputations were on the line.
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And so you can actually do things.
- [16:21]
Really efficiently in those kind of trust based worlds, you know, where that kind of reputational value is at stakeholders. And I think those things work remarkably well in more homogenous communities where there's that sort of repeat behavior.
- [16:39]
But I mean, I think you still.
- [16:40]
Have that today and you have other groups. I mean, obviously the biggest center in the world now for diamond trading and diamond polishing is India. And so there are generations of Indian families who are also deeply involved in the business. But I think it's exclusion from too many other things and these sort of repeat networks of trust that lead that to happen.
- [17:05]
Lauren Sherman
As the business evolved into the 2000s, when you started working in it, what changed from the time when you all were the guy that everybody went to to Blue Nile in 2008 online. I remember covering Blue Nile. I think they went another.
- [17:25]
Mark Bridge
Another Seattle company. Yeah.
- [17:27]
Lauren Sherman
Oh, funny. I think they went public in the 2000s and I remember covering it briefly when I worked at Forbes writing market reports, that. That type of thing. But I remember everybody thought it was going to disrupt the jewelry business. I don't know if it actually did, but you could, you can tell me it.
- [17:46]
Mark Bridge
It didn't is sort of the TLDR on that one.
- [17:50]
But the, the sort of history of.
- [17:52]
Of Ben Bridge is a good microcosm across the second half of the 20th century because it started as one store in a area. And then as the malls grew across the country, that's where the expansion came from. And so as the developers were popping up, you know, super regional shopping centers and America went from shopping downtown to shopping in the mall, that's where. That's where Benbridge went. That's where, you know, most of the kind of shopping happened.
- [18:22]
And then, you know, starting in kind of the end of the 90s, the beginning of the 2000s, there were more of these sort of Internet plays. And you also saw increasingly the rise of branded watch.
- [18:35]
And I think that's one of the interesting kind of natures of that traditional retail business was it was entirely unbranded or predominantly unbranded on the jewelry side. You know, we sold some David Yurman and, you know, kind of bits and pieces of those things, but primarily things that we were designing and sourcing. And then 100% branded on the watch side, like you cannot sell a private label watch. That was not something that consumers went for. And so the kind of growth and the global presence of those brands really changed the way in which go to market worked there, where all of a sudden the sort of cottage industry became very global and the brands became very concerned about, you know, you need to see the same things in Seattle and Los Angeles that you're seeing in Shanghai and Dubai and Mumbai, because now all of a sudden they have global images and, and people travel. And that was a change very much from the way in which business was done before. And so, you know, I think stores started to look more and more like department stores did over the time. You were seeing more shop in shops, you know, you were seeing more of this global consistency which probably made sense from a brand presence, but I think made it less interesting to do discovery which I think is the core of, you know, what multi brand retail does so uniquely well is, you know, let me introduce you to something new or even if this is something that, you know, let me curate it, let me put it together in a way that is different than what you've seen before.
- [20:06]
Lauren Sherman
Why were branded watches a thing and not branded jewelry as much? Is it because of the sort of myth making around the Swiss watch industry? Is it because of. I know our, our friends, you're very good friends at acquired my acquaintances, very kind acquaintances that acquired did a big four hour episode on Rolex which I assume you helped with, but may have even inspired.
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Mark Bridge
I don't know.
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Lauren Sherman
Yeah, so why is that? Why is that part of the business of hard luxury? So branded and jewelry remains mostly unbranded.
- [20:46]
Mark Bridge
It's an interesting question because they started in the same place and I don't.
- [20:50]
Know if you remember in that Rolex episode they talked about Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, when he first started the company made watches with the names of the retailers on the dial. And you only saw his name if you looked at the back or you looked at the movement. And then at some point I guess he realized I'm doing something that is distinct, I am creating something of unique value here and I should capture more of that.
- [21:17]
And so I think some of it.
- [21:19]
Is storytelling, I think some of it was more differentiated product. And I think that was actually one of the things that hamstrung the jewelry business over the last, I don't know, 50 or 75 years is there wasn't enough work in differentiating the product. It was really easy to sell a one carat diamond engagement ring set in a four prong setting. And so nobody did any heavy lifting in terms of adding design or building story. So you know, some of that was to the enormous success of De Beers and the diamond is Forever campaign. That people just came in and said.
- [21:57]
I want to hand you an enormous.
- [21:58]
Amount of money for something really simple. And so I think that that storytelling ability, that marketing capacity for the industry writ large atrophied because they didn't have to develop that. And the watch brands did do that.
- [22:14]
And then they suffered an existential crisis.
- [22:17]
In the late 70s and early 80s. And going back to the British piece, I Actually, once Upon a Time convinced the London School of Economics to let me write a dissertation on the history of watchmaking, with a particular focus on this period of the quartz crisis in the 70s and 80s and how the watch companies responded.
- [22:35]
And they responded by saying, this anachronistic.
- [22:39]
Technology, this mechanical way of timekeeping that we've been using for 400 years is actually superior to this thing that is much cheaper and much easier to produce.
- [22:49]
Oh, right.
- [22:49]
And far more accurate because it has this history and because it has this lineage. And the fact that it requires a guy sitting in the Jura mountains, you know, 14 months to make this by hand is actually something really interesting.
- [23:04]
That was a feat of jiu jitsu.
- [23:06]
That the jewelry side of the house never managed to figure out. Instead, they were racing down the path of, can we put this on a piece of paper? Can we commodify this? Can we create the four Cs you know, which then leads to Blue Nile saying, you actually don't even need to see these things. We can just tell you, you know, it's a. A 125 VS 2G and it's, you know, $8,600 and you should buy it for that reason.
- [23:30]
And the diamond dream was still so.
- [23:32]
Strong, they got away with it. But they missed that whole thing that the rest of the luxury business got.
- [23:37]
Which is we actually need to create.
- [23:39]
Demand for these things. We actually have to tell stories of why they are interesting. But. But I think there was just, you know, too much, you know, too much inertia momentum there.
- [23:50]
Yeah, yeah.
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Lauren Sherman
There's so much to unpack there, as we'd love to say. There are three threads that I would love to pull, but one, to start, it's interesting because soft luxury is going. I have a story coming out. This will run a couple weeks later, but a story about celebrity campaigns. And I was talking to this executive that works on them. But essentially the crisis that soft luxury is facing right now is like, who are we? And why? What is the point? Why would someone buy this stuff? Because it became really commodified and there's just this. Now everybody's kind of like, with secondhand and all of that, they are kind of like, why would I buy this ugly new bag when there are all these amazing bags on the realreal or whatever. But anyway, back to diamonds. So I find this fascinating, and if anyone. I don't honestly don't know if it's still available, but my friend Jenny Avins wrote a piece for quartz, quartz.com, which is. I don't know who owns it now. Someone. Someone not great, but it used to be this amazing publication that was owned by the same guy who owned the Atlantic for a long time. My husband worked there and our friend Jenny was the lifestyle editor and she wrote this amazing deep dive into how diamonds became forever and the marketing around it. Can you, as a person who works in the business, like I find the constructor on diamonds fascinating because diamonds are not like there are rare diamonds, but diamonds are not rare in the. Just generally rare. Can you kind of explain what De Beers was able to pull off and why you think even today, where people have the knowledge that like diamonds are available and there are lab grown diamonds and there are all these things that make them even more available, that it still can command a high price.
- [25:51]
Mark Bridge
Symbols are powerful and I don't know.
- [25:56]
I think about the kind of Econ 101 class that everybody takes their freshman year of college. The professor likes to ask, what's more valuable, a cup of diamonds or a cup of water?
- [26:08]
And the answer is it depends.
- [26:10]
It depends where you are. If you are, you know, in the middle of the desert and you are thirsty, the cup of water is far more valuable. But I think the value of anything is ultimately a cultural construct. And so to try to understand why did this particular thing become so valuable, you know, I think you would start with the actual nature of the product. And the nature of the product itself is actually very impressive. There was a story a couple days ago in the ft, I don't know if you saw this about lab grown diamonds and you know, how China has become sort of the dominant factor there. But it starts by talking about what do these things do that are unique from anything else? And they are remarkably hard, they are remarkably durable, they are chemically interesting.
- [26:58]
And so there's all sorts of intrinsic.
- [27:00]
Reasons why they're interesting.
- [27:02]
But ultimately the association with this is.
- [27:07]
The best way to say I love you and mean it, you know, was remarkably successful. This is why, you know, Ad Age said that a diamond is forever was the best campaign of the 20th century. Because it worked. You know, it took something that had very little interest and made it universal.
- [27:27]
You know, so the history of diamonds.
- [27:28]
Goes back a really long time. But as a, you know, something that people use, Indians in The, you know, 17th and 18th century, the Maharajas and the big fancy people, you know, had diamonds, but they were mined in very, very small quantities. And it really wasn't until De Beers and its sort of entities started finding them in southern Africa in The end of the 19th and the 20th century, they go, wait, we need to find a market for these and we need to, you know, create demand. And that association with love and endurance was, was remarkably powerful.
- [28:04]
And it works like they are objectively beautiful.
- [28:08]
And you ask people, you know, I have a podcast called the Materialist where I talk to people about the things in their lives that are of value. And you ask people, what do you have in your home that you would take out of a burning building? And like, people will always say their engagement ring.
- [28:25]
They're probably not thinking about using this.
- [28:28]
You know, for optical computing. You know, they're thinking about, all right, this is all of the memories of my life are imbued in this product, you know, and I think through some very savvy associations with Hollywood, you know, through Dancing Shadows and the London Philharmonic and just this drumbeat of repetition, they said the best way to show your love is with a diamond.
- [28:50]
And, oh, by the way, the more.
- [28:51]
You love somebody and the wealthier you are, you should show it with a bigger one. And that was an even better conceit, was, you know, the way to communicate your position was with the size of the stone. And there's this interesting interplay between. Traditionally, it's a woman who's wearing a diamond, but it is a man who's buying it. And there aren't too many other transactions where you are playing, you know, the heartstrings or the ego drivers in, in very much the same way. But so, you know, that plays along. That's happening.
- [29:27]
De Beers can support that as long.
- [29:29]
As they have a monopoly. And they basically have a cartel where they can, you know, spend money on promoting the idea of a diamond. And 85% of that value comes back to them up until about 2000. And then the market splinters. They find diamonds in Russia, they find diamonds in Canada, and all of a sudden, De Beers cannot afford anymore to tell that story. And then the world fundamentally changes. And then 15, 20 years on, you know, you start 3D printing diamonds in, you know, in big factories in China, and they are continuing to live off the fat of the land of that story that's been told over the course of 75 or 100 years. And. And now that value has just, you know, kind of completely bifurcated. And, you know, the cost of a lab grown diamond today is very, very low, which is either really, really interesting and exciting on one hand or really, really frightening on the other. And I don't know. I see both sides of it.
- [30:27]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. So you, your Family sold the business in what, like 2018 or so or.
- [30:33]
Mark Bridge
No, in 2000 it was.
- [30:35]
Lauren Sherman
Oh, you sold in 2000. You were still working there.
- [30:38]
Mark Bridge
Yeah, it was one of the unique things about.
- [30:40]
It's one of the unique attributes of Berkshire Hathaway under Warren Buffett was he bought great companies and left them alone. And so we continued to think about it as a family business for decades, where it actually was not. Yeah, my father continued to run it. My sister and I worked for him for a decade. My sister is running that business to this day. But yeah.
- [31:07]
Lauren Sherman
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- [32:38]
Mark Bridge
I think maybe. I think that, you know, starting the.
- [32:42]
Business was a product of a lot of time that I had spent looking at the market and trying to find where was the world going and where is their white space.
- [32:51]
And what I kept finding was there.
- [32:54]
In the retail stores is the sea of sameness. You walk into every retail store and you see the same things. You know, you see diamond stud earrings and you see Rolex submariners. And there is a structural reason for that, because inventory is expensive and it turns slowly. And so if you are a savvy retailer, you fill your stores with the things that you know are going to be broadly applicable. And everybody should have a pair of diamond stud earrings and a Rolex watch in the same way that everybody should have a great white T shirt and a pair of 501s.
- [33:27]
But then what?
- [33:29]
And the then what, like, didn't make any sense to have in 100 upper middle market retail stores to take things that are unique and plant it in, you know, the Glendale Galleria and hope that the right customer is going to be walking by and seeing that is a tough bet.
- [33:49]
And I thought that jewelry needed to.
- [33:52]
Expand how it was talking to the consumer. And the way to do that was by expanding the aperture of the product that they were seeing. And it seemed really hard to do that in that physical realm.
- [34:04]
And so the joy of the Internet.
- [34:07]
Is things don't have to be sitting in a particular place. And you can do that matching in a much more effective way. And so the nature of what we sell at present is different than the nature of what Benbridge is selling. And the way in which we're coming to market is different. You know, you can think about it as going from a gifted world, you know, where you are selling for occasions, to a world where you're buying something for yourself. And I think that's one of the things that the traditional jewelry business just missed is nobody is waiting for their partner to buy them a pair of shoes or a handbag. And yet there was still this sort of societal expectation that maybe someday you'd be worthy of somebody buying you a tennis bracelet or whatever it is. And like that. That just didn't make any sense. That was, you know, an anachronism from a long time ago.
- [35:02]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, it's interesting cause it's this thing of cultural mores changed. But the old way of doing things is still what the majority of people do, which is they get an engagement ring, they do all that stuff. But like there is this other big thing happening where even if they get engaged, it's much later. Sometimes they don't want a white diamond anymore. There's a lot of times I don't know. I know very few people who didn't choose their engagement ring themselves. So it's. It. All of that changed and it did feel like the market generally, the. The company I've covered the most closely over the years is Tiffany. And I've written about this and talked to their various CEOs about this. Like, what are you going to do? Especially when China, right now, China is very traditional in this way. At some point they're not going to be. And they move so much more quickly culturally than the west does. So there has just always felt like so much opportunity to me when you started to put together who your Roster. So explain how you have merchandised at present, because you have an amazing mix of jewelers, many of whom I know personally and have met over the years. But it's, it's definitely has a really strong point of view.
- [36:24]
Mark Bridge
It does.
- [36:25]
I mean, I think about what we do is kind of like the love child of Barney's and Etsy, you know, where we take a very strong kind of curatorial perspective on these are the things that we believe are good. And when people ask like, what is your selection criteria? I have to believe that this is something that makes me happy. This is something that is unique. This is somebody who has a unique point of view.
- [36:53]
And so that's kind of the Barney side of it. The Etsy side of it is most.
- [36:57]
Of the people that we work with are independent emerging designers, and their strength is not in go to market. And so, you know, what we do is help them find the customers who are going to appreciate their art. And so we think about it as trying to create markets and trying to create matches where those otherwise wouldn't exist.
- [37:22]
And, and, and it's also expanding the.
- [37:24]
The idea about what does great jewelry look like? And in the traditional business, there was this obsession with what is it made out of. And I like to joke we are not precious about being precious. If somebody wants to make something out of 18 karat gold, amazing. If they want to fill it with flawless diamonds, terrific.
- [37:44]
If you want to make something incredible out of blown glass, that to me.
- [37:47]
Is at least as exciting, you know. So we have a partner whose work that we showcase named Colin lynch, who is a RISD train studio glass artist. And he blows his glass in the.
- [38:00]
Brooklyn Navy Yard and he makes amazing.
- [38:03]
Glass pieces that are like 90 to $500 and they're really cool.
- [38:09]
And I was talking to him at one point and we were talking about.
- [38:12]
You know, the intrinsic nature of the material.
- [38:14]
And he says to me, mark, the thing that's so cool about this is.
- [38:17]
There is no intrinsic value to the material.
- [38:20]
The only value of the product is.
- [38:22]
That that I put into it.
- [38:24]
And like, that was sort of an unlock for me of like, wait, that's.
- [38:29]
Actually what we are showcasing here is the creativity and the artistry and the storytelling behind it, rather than saying, you know, this weighs so many ounces and it has so many carats of whatever.
- [38:41]
And I think that's one of the traps that the jewelry business fell into.
- [38:44]
Was this idea that we have to describe in these precious terms. You know, what something is. You know, when someone goes and buys a Birkin. They don't ask about the quality of the leather, they don't ask about the weight of the hardware. They go, I want a Birkin. I want it in, you know, whatever this color.
- [39:01]
And so jewelry, I think as a category, had this problem of selling something.
- [39:07]
That was uniquely precious in a very commoditized way. And the rest of the luxury world.
- [39:16]
Found that they could do just the opposite.
- [39:18]
You could take something that was base, you could put it up on a pedestal, you could shine a light on it, and you could, through all of your kind of myth making and storytelling, create something that was precious. You know, so what is the intrinsic value of a bottle of Chanel number five? You know, you have five cents worth of juice in there and $250 worth of storytelling and jewelry, which is unique, which materials are rare, that they're brought.
- [39:43]
Together with great creativity, somehow got in.
- [39:46]
The trap of only being able to sell something when it was 70% off. And you're like, you're missing this, guys. Like, we need to, you know, shine a light on where these things are coming from and why they're so interesting.
- [39:57]
Lauren Sherman
How long have you been doing it for now? Like three years? Or is it longer than that?
- [40:02]
Mark Bridge
It will be five years coming up next week. We launched August 1st of 2020.
- [40:08]
This was my second Covid baby. My wife and I had a daughter in February and we launched the business in, in, in August.
- [40:16]
Lauren Sherman
Oh, wow, that's amazing. So what have you learned in those five years? Because obviously you launch in the middle of COVID It's an interesting time because people were shopping online and, and, and your prices and it's, it's not a. People will spend 100 grand on a piece of jewelry online. I've also written stuff about that. But also your prices are generally approachable and feel like a lot of people can access what you're doing. What was it like and what were the things in these five years that you've learned about the consumer?
- [40:48]
Mark Bridge
When the pandemic hit at the beginning.
- [40:50]
Of that year, I looked at this and I said, oh my God, like the economy is cratering. And what is the first thing that goes? Discretionary spending.
- [40:59]
Like, do I, you know, am I.
- [41:02]
Jumping into a giant inferno here?
- [41:06]
And I looked at this and said.
- [41:07]
I don't know what I'm looking at in the near term, but I am building for the long term. And I still believe all the predicates are in place here. I still believe increasingly people are going to buy things for themselves. I still feel like there's this desire for this unique product and I still feel like people are going to find them online. So, you know, you just build more slowly and more deliberatively, deliberately.
- [41:32]
And I think that's been the biggest lesson is that consumer brands take a.
- [41:38]
Long time to build and it takes a long time to grow awareness and to earn love.
- [41:47]
And I don't know that there are.
- [41:48]
Too many shortcuts to that. I think that maybe if you have a AAA celebrity who's fronting your beauty brand, maybe you can go, you know, from zero to a billion dollars in five years.
- [42:02]
But absent that cheat code, I think.
- [42:05]
You just earn it slowly and you find interesting things, you find ways of connecting with customers.
- [42:10]
You know, you build a community of like minded people.
- [42:13]
And I think that's been one of the most fun parts of building the business is we have created, you know, this kind of community of creative people.
- [42:22]
On the artist side, side, on the influencer side, on the cultural side, you.
- [42:28]
Know, people who all sort of lean into this notion of celebrating where they are and doing it with this extraordinary product. And that's really kind of the core of at present, philosophically.
- [42:39]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, I think the taking time thing is really important and something that people are. It's easy to forget when you do see a beauty brand which has, you know, a easy entry point and a good margin and that can scale up and distribution is so simple right now in this era. I don't know if it will be forever but right now it's like Sephora Ulta, $25 for lipstick. You're good and you have Hailey Bieber fronting it but you're wearing a Thom Brown cashmere cardigan and shirt. That is very nice that we were talking about pre recording but the thing is like Tom Brown, he was doing.
- [43:23]
Mark Bridge
Like $5 million, you know, 10 or 15 years into running his business.
- [43:27]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, exactly. And so that it does, it does just take time and sometimes you get a bump and you get lucky but a lot of times that that doesn't last forever either. Are there, you mentioned a couple brands but is there anyone else that you've seen really develop and grow that you feel like is. I know you. You did a collaboration with Jaleel Johnson. That is the who is a creator, I guess you would call him. It's you know, not, not influencer but editor, writer, stylist, all those things and I think it's so beautiful, man about town. But is there any anyone who's whose business you've seen flourish that you're just really excited about.
- [44:17]
Mark Bridge
I like any business where someone is.
- [44:21]
Irrationally passionate about something weird. You know, we were talking about, about my friends who do the acquired podcast and I've been thinking a lot about them recently because I was in New York last week, they did a show.
- [44:32]
They sold out Radio City Music hall.
- [44:34]
There were 6,500 people. Listening to these two guys talk about.
- [44:38]
Business strategy, I heard it's so amazing. It's absolutely extraordinary. But one of the things that Ben often talks about is that great businesses are built by people who are a.
- [44:53]
Little bit irrational, continuing to bang their head against the wall for a really, really long period of time.
- [45:00]
And it is that commitment to something.
- [45:02]
Plus the sort of iterative learning from, you know, all right, like I did this for this period of time and this is what worked and this didn't.
- [45:10]
You know, and then, and then the.
- [45:11]
Compounding value of time.
- [45:13]
And so it's sort of strange to.
- [45:15]
Think about what they're doing as a consumer brand. But they have created an enormous amount of love in such a way that like, you know, the number of people that go to a Knicks game, you know, go on a Tuesday night to, you know, see people interview the president of a bank, which is just like.
- [45:29]
Something that, you know, and I think it gets to, you know, the nature.
- [45:33]
Of the way also in which consumer brands are funded. And I am a big believer that capital structure in a lot of ways dictates destiny. And if you need to grow really quickly to, you know, appease the people who have given you the money, you make different decisions than if I want to build something interesting for my friends and the people who are listening to me. And that's how you end up with four hour podcasts, you know, selling out, you know, the most famous arenas in the world, you know, and then when I look at a generation of consumer businesses that have gotten obliterated since they have gone public, they built the wrong business and I understand the incentives that led them to that, but I think that's just a really hard thing to do. I think about this a lot in parenting terms because my wife and I have a nine year old son and a five year old daughter and it's.
- [46:31]
A little bit like thinking that you.
- [46:33]
Are going to create a successful adult by ensuring that they're a child star, you know, and I'm going to get them, you know, on, on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel and then they're going to be well adjusted as an adult. You know, you might get a quick.
- [46:44]
Hit, but, but I don't Think that.
- [46:46]
Leaves you in good stead for the long run.
- [46:49]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, it's a, that's an interesting way to think about. Does feel like I, I see this again and again where you know, an IPO or an institutional raise and I, I always think, well, what is the end goal? And I think what ends up happening with a lot of founders in this era is the end goal ends up being, well, I just want to make sure I make enough that like my kids are going to also be able to invest and maybe for a few generations not have to worry about money. And that is not like if you're, if you're, if you want to build a brand that's going to last forever or whatever, you got to think about when you're dead and what that will be. And that's so strange. I think we live in such a short term quarterly reports and any, any brand that IPOs. I just think, oh man, like are you really ready for this? And sometimes it makes sense if you want to open a bunch of stores and that's part of your, your ambition for it. But a lot of times I say to people, don't raise until you have to, until you feel like it's gonna actually help increase the value of the business. But sometimes people raise because they wanna increase the value of the quality of their own lives. So it's a complicated, it's such a complicated thing. And I think most people do make the wrong decision if the goal is to have a long term brand.
- [48:19]
Mark Bridge
And that may not be the goal for everybody.
- [48:22]
But I don't know how to do anything other than sell jewelry. And so I am just trying to build a long term sustainable jewelry platform. Like I'm not looking to get on the COVID of Ink magazine. I'm not looking to exit so that I can go start a venture fund.
- [48:36]
Like this is what I fundamentally want to be doing.
- [48:38]
I have the great privilege of being able to choose my own adventure and this is the adventure and it's really fun and I feel a strident need to make it work because I want to keep doing it and because I think there's so many interesting avenues that we can take it in.
- [48:54]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, it sounds very fun. And you can tell that you really love your work, which is amazing. And it also comes back to this family run businesses. It's like in your blood in a way. You may or may not be surprised to hear that I am pro therapy. I've been using it as a tool since I was a kid and I return to it when I'M going through something in my life that needs an outside witness. I consider it preventative medicine. The problem these days is that so many therapists are not covered by insurance. The good news is that Rula is trying to solve for that. Their therapists, who are licensed professionals are covered by over 100 insurance plans and the average co pay is just $15 per person. I am also very into interviewing a bunch of therapists before I choose one. Rula also makes that easy because they know that if you find the right one, you'll stick with it. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by Insurance. Visit rula.comfashion to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's r u l a.com fashion. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.
- [50:18]
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- [51:22]
Lauren Sherman
So a couple questions about the future of the market and I do want to ask you one more watch question because please I've I am obsessed with the consumer behavior around watches but right now so I it's it's earnings season. By the time this runs earning season for luxury will be over. But the basic premise of the last and I think Richemont had last did theirs a couple of weeks ago. It'll be like over a month ago now. But Richemont owns Cartier and Van Cleef and Arpel and and I think a couple watch brands too.
- [51:55]
Mark Bridge
Lots of watch brands.
- [51:56]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, lots of watch brands. So and as we know, Rolex is still a private company, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But on hard luxury, generally on jewelry, that business has been incredibly resilient in the last few years, especially in the last year where soft luxury, so handbags, clothing, all that stuff have, has really struggled so much that like lvmh, brands like Dior, which is, you know, has been up on the up for the last 25 years, are seeing declines, deep declines in, in revenue because the handbags, things like that, it's just not there. It's a little bit of a crisis that I'm sure that they'll manage and get out of. But why do you think jewelry has been so stable in this market and also more stable? And do you think that that's just. Do you think this is going to be like the next 10 years? I have my own opinions as someone who covers it and a consumer, but as someone who like, lives and breathes it, why do you think it's been, it's resisted all this, you know, all these macro issues like no other.
- [53:07]
Mark Bridge
I want to get your opinion before I answer it myself, but I suppose that's not the nature of you answering, asking the questions. I think there's a couple of thoughts that come to mind. One is that you have saturation, I think in the other categories, I think that they have been so big and so successful for so long that there's just kind of fatigue. And I think that there has been a lack of excitement in certain areas. You know, there's obviously been supply challenges. You know, we've read this week about all the stuff going on with Loro Piana. And I think that, you know, happened with Dior. I think at some point also in the last year, these sort of questions.
- [53:46]
About supply chain and integrity and people.
- [53:49]
Starting to ask these very fundamental questions.
- [53:51]
Of like, what am I buying here?
- [53:54]
You know, I am buying into this dream, I am buying into this myth. Is it really doing what I think it is?
- [54:02]
And so, you know, I am obviously.
- [54:04]
Quite biased in that I believe that jewelry is a superior product. I believe that jewelry has a smaller share of wallet than it deserves based on the emotional import of, of what it does.
- [54:17]
And so I think in some ways.
- [54:19]
It'S a little bit of ketchup. I think that the jewelry business often reflects the rest of the fashion world or the business world, but with a 5 to 10 year lag. And so all of the lessons that I think the rest of the world learned a decade ago, jewelry is finally starting to impart in some of the collection making and the storytelling and who they're partnering with.
- [54:43]
And so some of it I think.
- [54:44]
Is a natural catch up. So I believe the product is better and I believe that the businesses are increasingly being better run and they're earning the share of wallet that they deserve. You know, I got for my wife gave me a Cartier tank watch for my 40th birthday. And you know, as much as I love my Thom Browne sweater, I get far more joy out of the watch than I do out of the sweater. I'm going to continue to buy both of those things, but there is, you know, just a tremendous amount of satisfaction in owning things. You know, in the hard category, I guess, I guess we would call it.
- [55:21]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, I, I think that that's a big part of it. And I also got a watch for my, a Cartier watch for my 40th birthday and is, is just. I actually I forgot to, I was going to put it on. It's still early and I need to go on my, my girl walk or whatever it's called. But yeah, I mean I feel so good about it. I, I have very little fine jewelry, but what I have, I am just so. I never get sick of it. And I think there's something about the per. It feels so permanent. It can't disintegrate. And so that is part of it. But I also think that there isn't as much. It's this confluence of what you were talking about where people are buying stuff for themselves. I think people's closets are just too full and bags are big. If you have 50 bags, that takes up a lot of room. A necklace, you know, $100,000 necklace doesn't take up that much room. And then the other part of it is this idea of like I have everything what is actually special. And despite the fact that we know that this diamonds aren't as rare as De Beers may have marketed them to be. And 20 years after they stopped kind of using that way of thinking about it, I laugh because there's a lot of natural diamonds advertising around Los Angeles. And I'm always like, that's. I don't know if that's the right angle either for the marketing, but, but there's, it still just imparts more value and, and that part of it. And also there is so much opportunity in terms of the branding. There was at. Speaking of Dior at, at Jonathan Anderson's first show, he did a lot of necklaces that with, with their jewelry designer that were. It was like a ladybug and a daisy. And, you know, I have no idea how much I know that it'll be fine. I have no idea if it'll be, you know, $2,000 for one of these dainty things or 50,000 if it's 2,000, I will probably buy one. They. That was the thing. And it was a menswear show, but whatever. Like, that gender is construct. That was the thing that I thought, if they get that right, that's their future. And so I think you're totally right. I am curious for your take, and this is a little bit off topic, but it is one of the threads I wanted to pull from earlier. The watch market. So you mentioned that when automated watches came up in the 70s and 80s and you have your Casio calculator watch, the watch business was really good at kind of shifting the narrative and saying, hey, yeah, but it's not as accurate as what we make in Switzerland, and it never will be.
- [58:20]
Mark Bridge
And they didn't say it's not as accurate. They said it's not as desirable. They said it basically said, it's not as good. All right.
- [58:26]
This traditional basis of comparison has changed. We used to think about, you know, value based on accuracy.
- [58:33]
And they go, yeah, whatever.
- [58:34]
Accuracy becomes table stakes. What you care about now is, let me show you how beautifully finished this is. Let me show me how many complications it has. They change the nature of competition, which is really the brilliance.
- [58:46]
Lauren Sherman
So let's talk about the Apple watch and the iPhone generally, because, A, the watch market is not as strong as fine jewelry right now, but my husband covered Apple forever. When the iPhone came out. We were very early into our relationship, and he bought one for me because he was like, I don't want to.
- [59:09]
Mark Bridge
Nothing says I love you like an early iPhone.
- [59:11]
Lauren Sherman
Exactly. And he was like, I'm gonna be on this all the time, and I just don't want you to be annoyed. And I was definitely like, a flip phone person who. I never had a BlackBerry. I, you know, I was. I was flip phone and it didn't care at all. And so he was like, you got it. We gotta get this for you. A, for when you go to fashion shows. And B, because it's gonna be annoying otherwise. Same thing with. He's always gets the. He even bought, like, one of the AI things that Apple did and then returned it just to try it. Like, he gets everything from Apple first. It's really important to him, all that stuff. So when the Apple watch came out, we got them. And I had never worn a watch. I Had tried over the years to sort of growing up like Fossil watches were really big in the 90s. I would try Fossil watch or whatever or Casio as you know, for fun and I just never got in the habit of wearing one. And then the iPhone even made that more unnecessary. But the Apple watch, I became super addicted to it because I loved tracking my steps. I loved the fact that I didn't have to look at my phone a lot. If there was a call, I could just see, oh, the call. I, I need to take this. Or I can ignore it. I could look at text. It just felt like in a way it was actually better for me from a screen time perspective. And I became totally addicted to it. Didn't care that it didn't look cool, didn't care that like I thought they could do a lot more on the design side. I thought it was a nice looking watch but then they didn't evolve it fast enough. But they did a great job of looping in the fashion industry in the beginning and that has a lot to do with this woman Anita, who worked with them on a lot of these projects. But then I would say during the pandemic and look, I'm getting older, et cetera. During the pandemic I started to feel a little self conscious about it and I got an Hermes Apple watch because I thought I want at least a nice band. I need the, I'm addicted to the Apple watch, but I want it to be beautiful and to feel comfortable. And then for my 40th, I wanted a watch which a lot of people I think of our generation. It's interesting. I know I have a lot of friends who, who that was their 40th birthday gift. And I would say now I wear my Apple watch maybe once or twice a week if I'm doing a workout that I need it for to track, like if I'm doing speed work running or something or I just am like annoyed that I'm not getting credit on the steps for some boutique fitness class. I'll wear the watch. But generally I wear my Cartier watch every single day now and on the weekends, everything. And it feels so. I can't believe I used to walk around and go to meeting I went to. I remember I went to a, a wedding in New York City and I had the worst tan line. I'm wearing this gorgeous Loewe dress with these huge sleeves and it was so elegant and I have this Apple watch tamline in all the photos and I'm just, I like thank God I didn't wear the watch to the wedding, but it's.
- [62:36]
Mark Bridge
You basically wore the watch.
- [62:37]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, I basically wore the watch. And I'll never. These gorgeous photos. And then there's my. My white Apple watch giant line. The point being that I. This is a very long way to say I feel like the Apple watch pushed a lot more people into being interested. And obviously this is the same time Hodinkee, and I'm sure, you know, Ben, like Hodinkee rose up and there was interest on that end too. But I think it pushed me. I don't know if I had not bought that Apple watch, if I would have wanted a Cartier watch at some point. But when you look at. And I think Apple could have done a lot more in terms of innovating on design of the Apple watch to get people like me to stick with it. But the point being, like, when you look at the watch market, it's sort of in a crisis too. What do you think of all this? Do you think that it will also sort of bounce back, or do you think that it's a permanent sort of management of this and that it's never going to be what it was like? What do you think is going on there?
- [63:45]
Mark Bridge
I think that the Swiss watch market.
- [63:48]
Has become very niche. And I think that if you look at the units sold over time, I mean, 10 years, but if you look back, I mean, even going back to, you know, 1946, the number of units made by Swiss watchmakers has gone down by an enormous amount. And they have balanced that in the last 20 years by continually increasing the average price of each piece. You know, so a Rolex, you know, used to cost $5,000, and the average Rolex today is 15,000.
- [64:23]
All right?
- [64:23]
There is a smaller market for $15,000 watches than there are for $5,000 watches, you know, and there's enormous demand for Rolex. But the thing is, you know, all the way down the line that way.
- [64:36]
So I think the question for the.
- [64:38]
High end is, do they want to be a niche purveyor? And is that an area where there is enough scale for the whole thing to work? Maybe in a world where Ferrari is the most valuable car maker, selling 12,000 cars a year, maybe that makes sense.
- [64:58]
But I think you need to have.
- [65:00]
Some units in order for things to work.
- [65:05]
So that's thought one, thought two is.
- [65:08]
I agree on the Apple watch, and my journey has been very similar to yours. I bought the first one, wore it for three days, and I'm like, this doesn't do anything, but that was because that was just such an underpowered product. And like, I wear it now when I do my workout and I wear it some of the time when I sleep because I don't know, for some reason I want that data, but I, like, never wear it during the day.
- [65:28]
I think the interesting question with the.
- [65:30]
Tech companies in the fashion realm is.
- [65:34]
Do people all want the same thing? And I think about this with cars also. Like, basically the theory behind why Tesla.
- [65:43]
Was the most valuable car company in the world was people assumed that the Tesla was going to work like the iPhone. Everybody was going to want the same thing. And I think the Apple watch is the same question. And I don't know that those are the right analogies. I think, you know, okay, maybe I, you know, you and I have different cases on our phones, but we effectively have the same iPhone. But like, who cares?
- [66:09]
Yeah, I don't think it actually works.
- [66:12]
The same way when you're talking about items of self identification or uniqueness. And I think people feel very strongly about their cars that way. I think watches feel the same way.
- [66:25]
So I don't know. I'm always skeptical of everybody is going.
- [66:28]
To have the same thing. I think that is the exception that proves the rule that most people generally want things that feel a little bit more unique.
- [66:38]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah, the software is why we want the iPhone, not the hardware. Whereas the Apple watch, sure, the software is interesting, but the hardware is so obvious that it can't be uniform. And so, yeah, it's a fascinating thing. And I've always wondered why they didn't sort of just embed it more in a more traditional looking watch. But I guess the issue is those companies don't want to engage with them on that level. So it's.
- [67:13]
Mark Bridge
And I don't know how successful that they have been, but some of the.
- [67:16]
Swiss watch makers have created smart watches. You know, Tag Heuer has a connected watch.
- [67:21]
I don't know why you.
- [67:23]
That seems to me to be neither fish nor foul. I understand why you buy a mechanical Swiss watch and I understand why you buy a smartwatch from Apple. I don't. It's a little bit like the, you know, the Virtu phones. I don't know if those are still around.
- [67:35]
Lauren Sherman
Oh my God. Virtu, right?
- [67:37]
Mark Bridge
Like, okay, everybody's spending a lot of money on phones.
- [67:40]
People want things that are distinct.
- [67:42]
We're Gonna sell a $15,000 carbon fiber and D and phone. Everybody's like, but the phone sucks.
- [67:47]
Lauren Sherman
Like, okay, very short anecdote. When I lived in London after college, for two years, I worked for this concierge company who did the white label concierge for the Virtue Phone. They did it for, like, Amex Black. They did it for Virtu. And then they had a branded. A branded concierge service. But it. Yeah, it's very. That's very funny.
- [68:09]
Mark Bridge
I understand how you come to that.
- [68:11]
Conclusion, and I think it's the wrong one.
- [68:14]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. Mark, what else? What's. What's next for you all at. At present? What are you excited about for the next, you know, year?
- [68:23]
Mark Bridge
We are continuing.
- [68:24]
We have a number of fun partnerships that we're going to roll out for New York Fashion Week.
- [68:28]
So we're excited on that.
- [68:31]
Yeah.
- [68:31]
You know, and just continuing to grow.
- [68:35]
You know, the people that we're working with. I get so much joy out of seeing, you know, new jewelry. And like, that is the highlight of, you know, what it is that we do is just finding new things. And so I know, I saw this week for the first time, pieces of needlepoint and crocheted jewelry. They're the coolest thing I've ever seen.
- [68:54]
Lauren Sherman
Amazing.
- [68:55]
Mark Bridge
I'm like, this is cool. This is something. I have seen millions of pieces of.
- [68:59]
Jewelry and it never occurred to me to do, you know, high end jewelry with needlepoint made in Brazil. Okay, cool.
- [69:06]
Lauren Sherman
Incredible.
- [69:07]
Mark Bridge
So just finding ways to continue to.
- [69:10]
Share those, you know, and finding fellow travelers. You know, we are in the growth stage of our business and, you know, finding friends who appreciate what it is that we are doing and, you know, just going forth and shouting from the mountaintop that this is something fun and come play with us.
- [69:29]
Lauren Sherman
Well, I love a discovery platform and that's what you. So congrats and look forward to seeing you in New York during Fashion Week. I'm sure we'll run into each other.
- [69:39]
Mark Bridge
We would love to have you at.
- [69:40]
All of our fun things and such a joy always to talk with you, Lauren.
- [69:44]
Lauren Sherman
Thank you. I'll be there. Thanks for being here. It was so fun. 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.
- [70:15]
Mark Bridge
Limu Emu and Doug.
- [70:18]
Liberty Mutual Announcer
Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds of. With Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [70:33]
Mark Bridge
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [70:35]
Liberty Mutual Announcer
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [70:37]
Mark Bridge
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.