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Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Hello, and welcome to the Rest is Money with me, Robert Peston, and me, Steph McGovern. Well, you deserted me, didn't you? Earlier on this week. But you know I'm never short of brainy Steph. So I got another one in Steph Flanders. Obviously, you know she's no substitute for the incomparable Steph McGovern. What did you make of it?
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A
Yeah, no, it was really fascinating. I like your analysis. I also love hearing Steph's Flanders analysis of things and I always have done because, as you say, she's like super smart. And you guys talking about immigration, it was really interesting because today, you know, I broke my arm and, you know, this whole carry on and I'm still doing physiophoric because I can't quite lift my arm over my head yet. Anyway, I won't bore you with the details of the medical side of things, but what was really interesting was being in a hospital setting today because, you know, as we've talked about before, a lot of the immigration has been to fill jobs in the health and social care sector. And while I was there today, apropos of nothing, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't there. I wasn't asking anyone about it. But I heard the staff talking about it in this hospital and they were quite scared. I could hear them talking and they were saying, I genuinely don't know whether this is going to mean we're going to be able to get the people we need to do the job. So we're like, I don't know where they think they're going to get these people from who are going to do all these jobs. It's hard enough recruiting us. It is. And there was that, but there was also a couple of them who were saying, well, I'm worried I'm going to get sent back home. And so it really hit me that there's a serious communication problem here. And obviously we're not talking about people being sent home, but the fact that they are genuinely talking about that on that kind of shop floor level, these are people doing the jobs that we need them to do in hospitals is really, really quite unsettling, isn't it? And I think there's a serious, and I think Steph alluded to it, to it, that this delivery of these things is really problematic because in an attempt to try and win over the reform voters, you know, starm has come out with this really strong language about, you know, suggesting that immigration is the biggest issue, which, as you pointed out, then legitimizes what Nigel Farage and Reform are saying. So, a, why would you vote for the pay limitation? You're just going to vote for reform? It's not going to make you vote Labour, is it? If he says all this. But also he should be taking this argument on not siding with it and getting the language, right. Because this is real people in real jobs. Hearing the Prime Minister talk about them in a way which is frightening them in sectors that we need them to be motivated and empowered in not worrying about how they're going to fill jobs and what the people who are there, who have emigrated to our country are feeling. And it's also, I mean, you've said it, it's economically self defeating, isn't it? Because we actually need some level of immigration for the jobs that we have gaps in and the sectors we have gaps in, don't we?
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B
Well, that's certainly true that if we did, what reform is committed to, which is what they call net zero immigration, in other words, you would only allow people into the country equivalent to those leaving the country. Very large numbers of businesses would be in deep trouble, you know, very large numbers of public services would be in deep trouble. I was struck when going through the government's own analysis of what they're proposing about a sort of incoherence in their approach to social care. So on the Preston show this week, we showed that vacancies in social care are more than 100,000. We know that this is a sector crying out for resource, both financial resource and indeed people. But one of the things that I was staggered by actually is that the government got a headline that it wanted by saying it was going to abolish the special visa for people coming into the country to work in social care. Because it is true that over the last few years those people coming in have driven quite a lot of the increase in immigration numbers to hit that record 18 months ago of 930 odd thousand. There's an enormous number of people coming in. But by abolishing the social care visa, this is a very unfair question. But guess how many people. So in the round they say their package will reduce immigration by about 100,000. The stuff that they've worked out, the more detailed and developed policies by about 100,000 a year. Guess how many of that, guess what percentage or share of that is. Smaller numbers coming in for social care, is it?
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A
Not quite a lot of them, no.
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B
It's in their own estimate it's around 10,000. Right. It's 10%. And the reason it's so low is because actually even before this latest reform, numbers coming into social care had fallen very significantly because the previous government said you couldn't bring your dependents in, you couldn't bring your partners or children in on the social care visa. And actually once that happened, quite a lot of people, you know, in the Rest of the world thought, well, I don't want to be, I don't want to be separated from my family, so why should I come, come to the uk? And so I have to say that one part of their package looks to me, I hate this expression, but you know, I'm going to use it anyway, looks performative. It doesn't look very fundamental. It looks like the government saying to the British people, look how tough we can be, that we're even keeping people out of the country that you value. Because of course, all the, all the opinion polls show that actually when you ask people about immigration, it is true that a majority of British people would like immigration to fall. But then you ask them, do, do you think we should have fewer people coming into social care? And actually the British people, you know, a majority of them, significant majority, say actually people coming in to do social care is a good thing. We don't want cuts there. But the government is abolishing the visa, but it's not actually going to lead to that much of a difference. And it comes against a backdrop, frankly of a big employment hole in a sector which all of us, particularly those of us with elderly people in our family, we realize or infirm people up, we realize how important social care is and how, what a parlor state it's in.
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A
And I hate it when people refer to jobs like this as law skilled. It's law paid, not law skilled. Because care is not something everyone is capable of. Not everyone has got the ability to be able to have the patience and the skills needed needed to make someone feel safe and comfortable and to feel, you know, confident in, in the treatment they're getting and to be getting, you know, all of that what people call soft skills, which really annoys me because there's nothing, nothing soft about it. Communication is one of the most important skills a person needs in life just to get by, not, not just in work, but in every sense. And it's so devalued. And that is, I think that is a big problem here. All those headlines that came out on Monday, all the breaking news alerts and everything, we're all referring to it as law skilled. You know, if you're someone who's starting out in your career, your ambition is not to work in a low skilled job, is it? The optics here are terrible. The language they use, it's like, it's a rewarding job, it's low paid, but it is a job that is what we need. And you can make an incredible difference to people's lives, which you Know, some AI tech genius who's classed as high skilled probably couldn't do because they've got different skills and those skills are not more valuable than the care skills.
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B
So in Japan, as you know, they have a particularly aging population and one of the things that they developed in Japan are care robots. So I just wondered what you thought about, what do you think about care robots? Because I was quite struck that when we had Rachel Wolff on the podcast, she was talking about how we become less dependent on immigration. She made the intelligent point that of course there are only really two ways to become less dependent on immigration. One is to improve the skills and the breadth and type of skills that your indigenous population has. But the other thing is to invest in technology that means you can have the same output with fewer people. Now, you might think social care is not an area where technology can help, but in Japan, they absolutely take the view that it does help. I just wondered, do you think British people, How would, how do you think British people would react to, you know, essentially robots looking after them?
- [11:41]
A
Right. I think if it was presented as that, as how would you feel about a robot looking after you? People would say no. If it was presented in a way where. How would you feel about getting the best care possible from a device that doesn't get tired, doesn't have to work a million shifts and look after 75 other people is solely focused on. You will deliver all your medicines exactly to you when you need them, will be on call 24 7. So if you wake up in the night and you need something, they will be there. It's how it's presented. If you talk about robots, you scare people because they suddenly. And of course you. It would be. I'm sure lots of people would prefer the human touch, but also there's lots of people who don't, who are very, very private, who don't like the idea of being changed in bed by a person. They might prefer it if it's a robot, but the word robot, I think is full of like, we think of a mechanical machine talking to us like this and is, you know, all like square and moves funny and everything else. We. But actually that's not necessarily what this machine would look like or behave like. So, for example, I was at, and I'll come to this a little bit later on, but I was talking to a retailer who's got a big massive operation in Latin America, it's called Magaloo. And the, the boss of this company was telling me that they've created, they had like a Virtual assistant, helping with the retail side of things. So just, you know, like someone on screen who was like a kind of, you know, a chat bot type thing. But this AI has become its own person in its own right in the sense of they have, they're now an influencer. So she's called Lou, this virtual assistant who's now become in every sense like a real person. So if Lou is using a product on Instagram, then that product sells out. So if a certain type of phone, they, they put her in different situations. She's contributed to chat shows in Brazil, she does these fancy holidays, she's been in music videos with famous pop stars there. And there's a, there's loads of who want to look like her, but she's not real. And actually, it's funny because for businesses then that gives you that control over your, your, your brand representative because you can literally stop them from having dodgy boyfriends, you can stop them from saying anything that might get them canceled. And, and so, you know, it's like you can personify, in a sense, give a human version of technology. Now there might be people listening to this going, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want that. I just want someone human who I, blah, blah, blah. And there will always be that. But I just think it's about how it's presented to people. And, you know, we talk about the positives, not the negatives of it.
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B
Look, I completely agree with you and we shouldn't forget, particularly since we have seen absolute scandals with humans in care homes being cruel and abusive to vulnerable people, that humans aren't always superior to machines. And you, you know, you would assume that you can program a robotic carer to be kind and gentle. Now, I think there's another aspect of labor shortage or people shortages that you wanted to mention in the context of this immigration debate.
- [15:02]
A
Yeah, because obviously, as I'm, you know, as a lot of, you know, I, I started in engineering and interestingly started in that sector because there were huge skills gaps there and grew up in Middlesbrough. Heavy industry lot, supply chain for manufacturing and everything was in, was in Middlesbrough. And so I saw the real potential there. There was a lot of money thrown at trying to get more people into it. There was lots of brilliant training schemes. I was sent on all these amazing trips. I went to, like Spain when I was a teenager because I was paid for by this engineering organization and I did all these brilliant and wonderful things and it made me see that actually that was a really tangible, brilliant career to have. So then went to work for a manufacturer. Now, that skills gap is still a massive problem in engineering. And if you actually look at the statistics in terms of the number of work visas for engineering professionals, that's actually gone up. So, you know, you were talking about the health and social care ones have been going down a bit because of those changes. The ones in engineering have gone up. And so there's a real concern in the engineering sector that we are not going to have enough people to carry out all of this increase in defence spending that we've talked about, that we want to get growth from the trade deals we're doing now, which will inevitably lead, hopefully, to more jobs in things like manufacturing. And there is not the training, the groundwork being done to fulfill this. So if you're just closing the tap off, but you're not bringing in it from another area, you're cutting yourself off from being able to fulfill this increase in demand for the manufacturing and stuff, because we are not training enough people.
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B
There is a sort of broader point here about, you know, the government's approach to its big reforms. In fairness to Keir Starmer, you know, at the press conference where he announced these immigration changes, I was there, you know, he was talking about the importance of increasing and improving the skills of British people so that British people can fill these vacancies, rather than businesses and other institutions relying on migrants to the uk. I mean, there are two things about it. One is, I've heard this from so many governments over so long, right? This is not new, this. We've got to improve the skills of British people. Every government says it and every government till now has failed. And I am going to be skeptical about whether this government will massively increase the skills of British people unless and until I start seeing measurable improvements and, you know, unless and until I see both companies training people up rather more effectively than they currently do, and unless and until I see, you know, educational institutions doing better in that respect. So what you see, okay, is the cuts to immigration, which inevitably do cause anxiety to employers, but they're not immediately matched by a coherent plan to replace migrants with skilled British people. And it's very, very similar to what we've seen when it comes to the welfare cuts to people with disabilities. What you see, and we know is going to happen is that people with disabilities are going to get less money from the state. The government says, but don't worry, because we will create conditions for these people to have paid satisfying employment, which is a great ambition. But we still haven't got a coherent properly worked out plan for that. And it doesn't surprise me that lots of voters do believe that this government is all about cuts, but not about improving the living standards of British people. Because in a sense the government consistently puts the austerity cuts cut before the investment in job creation and skills. Horse right. And what you would want to see I think from any government, but it's particularly odd that this is not coming from a so called left of center government is you would want to see the detailed plans to create jobs for those people with disabilities or to actually train young people who are currently not in work or education. You would want to see that before you see the cuts, whether it's to immigration, alter benefits.
- [19:49]
A
It's so true. What I would really love to happen would be for them to. And this is basically what you're saying is like have a couple of years where you pump loads of money into reforming education so that it is much more about work and getting a job at the end of it. So yes, teach art, but also teach artists how to do have the business skills to be able to do their taxes and be able to sell their products and things like that. Teach maths but also make it so that they know as well, well about accounting stuff or you know, doing it but coding things and be, you know, and doing more practical applied projects. And then from that in a couple of, you know, construction having that in taught in mainstream under the age of 16 lessons rather than it being something you choose as a, you know, after you've done your GCSEs or whatever, it'd be so much better. And I know there are some places this, that do this because the UTCs, the University Technical colleges will be screaming at their, their headphones or whatever now going we do that. It's just not en masse and it's not enough and there's not enough to incentivise young people to do it either because you know, they're told the best route is academia, pre axiom and all that. If we just did that reform, I can guarantee in a few years you'd then have loads of people coming out of education establishments having the right kind of skills. We need.
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B
I said to the other staff philanders how shocked I was that the Prime Minister said in an answer to the question that I put to him at the press conference when he announced these changes, that it was perfectly clear given the very low growth that we've seen over the last few years, that there is, he said, no connection between migration and economic growth and I was actually shocked that he said that because the economics are just very, very straightforward, that if you bring people into a country and they take up employment and they spend money, the businesses that employ them are able to increase their profits. There is an argument about whether actually that massively increases living standards if these businesses are employing people on relatively low wages. And I would argue that too much of our migration has been focused on low wage employees. But the economics are absolutely straightforward, that immigration will generate incremental GDP and incremental national income. The more successful they are in getting down immigration numbers in the short term, the more there will, frankly, there just will be more of a drag on gdp and the more of it, you know, there will be less tax flowing into the Treasury's coffers. Now, as I say, there may be perfectly good reasons why you want fewer people coming into the country. That's fine. Okay? And you know, that's a very important debate to have. But we can't pretend that if numbers were to come down dramatically that that isn't going to be a drag on GDP in the round. And for example, on tax revenues.
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A
Yeah, I totally agree. You mentioned growth there. We should talk about that because we've had some figures out this week. But let's go to a quick break. As a chef, I know flavor doesn't begin in the kitchen. It begins on the land. And West Home's nature led Australian Wagyu is a story written in the landscape of northern Australia. Cooking is storytelling and West Home Wagyu carries a story of Northern Australia itself. Raw, powerful and deeply authentic. It's a testament to the passion and care raised in the rhythm of northern Australia. I'm chef Mae Lin from Ada Club in Los Angeles and I invite you to visit westhome.com Mae Lin to learn more and taste a story only Westhome Nature led Australian Wagyu can tell. That's W-E-S-T-H-O-L-M-E.com M E-I-L-I N Spring is
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- [24:59]
B
with me, Steph McGovern and with me, Robert Peston. Now, you've been meeting with some absolutely fascinating leaders from the retail industry. You mentioned it earlier in the first half, and I want to ask you a bit about that, get some more detail from you about their mood and their, and their plans. But before we get into that, I just thought it was worth reflecting a little bit on those growth figures, those GDP figures that you published earlier this month, which were a bit better than analysts were expecting. In the first quarter of this year, there was growth of 0.7%. That's 0.7 of a percent of a percentage point. Doesn't sound big, but it is significantly greater than the kind of bumping along the bottom we had for the second half of last year. And it's a little bit more than analysts were expecting. They were actually expecting 0.6%. So to be clear, this wasn't the great positive surprise, but there are sort of two or three issues that spring to mind about this. One is, is it sustainable? Because if we were going to get back to those kind of rates of growth every quarter, that would be a return to much faster growth. It would be growth of more than 2% a year, which is way more than the bank of England or the Office for Budget Responsibility have been forecasting. And it's way more than we've been experienced really since the financial crisis. Now, there are reasons, I'm afraid, to be skeptical that this is the great bounce back. One is because there's no actual rational reason for it that I can think of. But secondly, there are some other drags around the place. This is the quarter before national insurance goes up, before the national minimum wage goes up. So it's the quarter before employers have these costs heaped on them. It is also the quarter in which our exporters would have been, and there's some evidence of this in the statistics, would have been shipping as much as they could to America to avoid Trump's tariffs. So there will have been a bit of a, it doesn't account for all of it, but there will have been a bit of a positive boost from an increase in trade to avoid the tariffs. And of course, once the tariffs came in, that would have gone into Significant reverse. And, of course, it is just all before the great shock to global confidence of Trump's Liberation Day. So I think the rational thing to say is, thank you very much. It's great that the economy turns out to be in better shape than people feared, but things may get a bit worse. Again, I think it is important to say that, you know, the evidence of the first quarter is we're not in meltdown, and there's a very gloomy people out there who thought we were, and we're obviously not, but I think things will slow down again. There is one other point, though, I just. That I think is worth just making. Let's just say I think it's very, very unlikely. But let's just say that we are lucky enough to be in a period where growth will be in that sort of 0.7 kind of territory. Yeah. Per quarter, if that were the case. It's inevitable that, given the bank of England's view of the capacity in the economy, which underpins its view about whether any level of demand is going to boost inflation or not, there's no question that if that is where growth and demand are going to settle, that the bank of England would keep interest rates higher for longer, and market interest rates would be higher for longer. And that, I'm afraid, would mean, quite apart from anybody with a mortgage being a little bit upset, also means that poor old Rachel Reeves would still have a problem because, you know, on the one hand, very low growth is bad for her because it means tax revenues are lower than they would otherwise have been. That makes it harder for her to hit her fiscal targets. But equally, given how much the government has borrowed, interest rates being higher for longer is very bad for the government because it means they have to pay out more money in interest to their lenders. So she's sort of down both ways. She's sort of in a vice where very low growth is bad for her, but really good growth could be bad for her as well. And it's. That's that leave that leaves me feeling depressed, because we've got ourselves into this really terrible position where the pretty much the best thing for the treasury in the short term is mediocrity is a mediocre performance, which is absolutely not what we want. And it's probably the best way of explaining why her fiscal rules are so
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A
utterly nuts, which is deeply depressing.
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B
Robert, now you're going to cheer me up, because you met some of the world's most important leaders of a very important sector. Give us more of an insight into the way the world of retail is changing.
- [30:17]
A
Yeah, so this was World Retail Congress and basically it's people from retailers across like I think there were like somewhere 47 different countries there and we're talking executive level people. So from, you know, from the UK we had people like the CEO of Greggs, of Tesco's, of Morrisons, of JD Sports, Curry's Ocado, you know, every retailer you can think of, basically former CEOs as well, like Sir Terry Leahy who you know, you and I have both interviewed in the past. Then the international people like Care for and Walgreens, Inditex that owns Zara H M and all of them, Alibaba Sheehan, people from places like that, luxury group owners like, you know, these billionaire luxury Middle Eastern men like Patrick Shalhoub and Mark Pooch who owns Pooch Group and they own lots of amazing, you know, luxury brands and things anyway, and then you, the ones you wouldn't necessarily think are retailers like Jaguar, Land Rover, there were people from there and Disney and things as well because obviously they sell stuff too.
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B
Why was Jaguar there?
- [31:19]
A
So they were there from the kind of car showroom perspective and about how they actually sell the kind of business to consumer side of it. They were quite nervous about what I was going to ask them actually, understandably. But no. So I think some of the take homes for me were everyone stressed about tariffs? That's the big thing. Everyone's like what are you doing? What are you doing? Some of them are talking about absorbing it, others are saying we're going to cut our portfolio to try and account for this, you know, so some of the luxury groups cut in the number of brands they have and things like that. And so there was a lot of concern around that. Definitely there were some, as we said before, some of the top American CEOs who weren't there because they were worried about talking about it and falling out of favor with Trump on it. So there was, there was definitely that nervousness.
- [32:07]
B
So you say that some retailers in America are going to reduce the number of brands that they market and sell. I mean is that basically because the impact of these tariffs means that there will be quite a lot of their brands that simply aren't profitable anymore because you know they would have, they'd have to absorb the tariff and at that point there's no profit left.
- [32:33]
A
Yeah, exactly that. And, and I think particularly the kind of luxury end, there are now so many different luxury brands and it's definite market that's concerned about what's going to happen next. So what was really interesting was how they are going to try and survive is you've got a lot of them who are doing collaborations now with that, that lower price bracket. So for example, you're getting Louver, you know, it's quite a posh Spanish brand who are now doing like collaborations with on, which is the, the trainer, you know, the running the, the leisure athleisure company. And the woman from on was really interested in all this about, about these kind of brands working with the luxury now to create these kind of price points now. Because also Gen Z have got a bit more money that we're saying, so they've got more disposable income, but they need to have a product which is at a point where that they can afford and want to spend this disposable income on and then that will hopefully buy them loyalty to these luxury brands that will see them through for, you know, for forevermore. So you've got that. But then this whole thing about this like retail and the media joining together now. So for example, the guy who owns Barneys in America, he's a real estate guy, he's called Richard Baker. He's the executive chairman of Sachs Global. He owns like Neymar, Marcus Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdoff Goodman. He's got like a real estate portfolio worth something like $7 billion. He was saying now they're going to try and make it much more immersive for these brands. So with Barney's, for example, you're going to have the Barney shop, but then above it you're going to have a Barney's hotel and they're going to make a show about Barneys. So it's like trying to. What you mean a show? Like a kind of, you know, he was trying to describe it to me as like some type of. Not because I said a documentary about Barneys and he went, no, no, no, like this kind of what, a live show? Like lifestyle show? No, like not about the actual Barneys. It's more, it's more fictional. But around the concept of Barneys.
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B
Well, I was having this vision of a Gregg's show, you know, we developed the Perfect Vegan Sausage Roll.
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A
Oh, by the way, I was with the Greg CEO for a while. She is amazing. Roisin Curry she's called. She's a Glasgow girl, you know, working class, worked her way through the ranks. A lot of these brilliant women in retail worked at Asda together, really interested in their stories and actually that was one of the things that stood out to me. The most were how many amazing female leaders there were. So like the former CEO of H M who did it for a long time, Helena Helmundson, the lady from on that I mentioned. Brit, you've got got the Greg CEO you've got. And my favorite find of the conference was the former CEO and president of Walmart Global. You know the one of the biggest retailers in the world is from Middlesbrough. It's a woman, she's from Middlesbrough, she's called Judith McKenna and honestly I just want, I want to bring her back to Middlesbrough and take her into every school to tell them how she rose to the top. And you know, she's a, a force of nature. She's a on. She's kind of retired now but she's you know, doing that typical retiree thing where she's on the board of loads of companies like Unilever. But coming back to the vegan sausage roll, it came about, they thought it was a fad but then they realized when. And what they do when they want to trial things is they'll bring them out in 10 shops but not market it or tell anyone. They'll just see if people buy it and if they buy it, it sticks. If they don't, it just disappears and they never mention it. They brought out their vegan sausage roll roll. Thought it would be just a flash in the pan. Realized loads of flexitarians were also, you know, one day would buy a meat sausage roll and then the next day buy a vegan sausage roll. So they kept it and that was the birth of the vegan sausage roll and why we still have it now.
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B
Do you think as an industry retail is less sexist than most other industries?
- [36:25]
A
Totally. And you know why? I think it's because a lot of people in retail will come in through lots of different entry points. So you'll get people who come from the shop floor and work their way up and you'll get the people who, you know, who do they do the degree level graduate trainee schemes. You get quite a few come from like management consultancy and then come into the business like the CEO of Charlotte Tilbury who I was talking about because obviously Charlotte Tilbury was there but also her CEO Dimetra Pinsent was a in management consultant and had never worked in retail but really aligned with Charlotte's values and so she brought her in as the CEO, the global CEO. And I think, I think it's that diversity of, of how they, you know, people get to the top. That is what has meant. There's way more room for women I felt so inspired when I left, you know, even with. I know I bang on about slime and Utopia, but I had so many great conversations around that. And it felt like there was loads of support for each other rather than that competitive environment you often get. Like, don't get me wrong, they'll. I'm sure there's still plenty of people that others don't like in the industry and sector as well. But there was also a lot of warmth and support and that kind of collaboration. And, you know, one woman was saying to me she's been pulled back in to help at ASDA because of the troubles there. And it was, you know, Stuart Rose who brought her in. And, you know, you just feel like there's this community of people who are in different jobs in different parts of the retail industry who actually have got each other's backs.
- [37:54]
B
Did you get a sense that there was a consensus across the retail industry of how AI is going to be deployed and how it's changing things, or is everybody doing very different things with AI?
- [38:09]
A
Right, yeah. So AI was the second biggest thing everyone was talking about. So Trump being the first, AI the second. And a lot of the, the like discussions and things were around how different companies were using it and different retailers, like in the back room operations as well as like the kind of customer end of it, like, how's a shop going to change for, for customers? And an example given to me of this kind of interconnectivity of someone's life. So if someone's looking at a recipe online, this retailer will then law from them looking online will suggest the products they need for that recipe and then at the same time tell them about the things that they've run out of because it was three months ago. And they'll work out the kind of how often based on their previous purchases, they will buy like, let's say, I don't know, a loaf of bread or whatever. So they'll be able to say, by the way, do you know you're probably running on these things? And so there was, there was that kind of user first stuff, but then there was also a lot of the stuff around the distribution and logistics side of things in terms of like Shein were there and obviously we've talked a lot about Shein, haven't we? You know, the, this is the company, the Chinese company who do this really fast fashion stuff. So they were talking about how fashion Companies have about 30% waste. 30% of their, their product they make is, is waste product in the end. And they were saying all of the stuff they produce is in real time. So they've got AI monitoring what the trend is. They will then get designers to make this like straight away and they'll put 100, I think it's 100 to 200 products out as they're bought. They get made at the same time as they're bought. So it's like real time manufacturing of, of these products. Now obviously there's a lot, there's, there's also a lot of negativity around Shein in terms of their practices around the manufacturing stuff, of course, which they were very much not talking about. And we're focusing on the positivity around what they do. But yeah, again, that's that sense of, of following trends and doing things much faster than they would have done in the past and without the waste because they essentially are making to order, even though it's a mass market product, they're getting the order in and then it's being made in real time and being, being sent out. It was all those examples really. There were definitely some where they were a bit more like, oh, I can't see it feels like a big investment. I don't know how we're going to do that. But a lot of people were saying you need to embrace it rather than then fight against it. But it kept coming back to the same point of it being for the customer though. So like it's got to be for the customer.
- [40:44]
B
Was there any discussion broadly of ethics? I mean, obviously the charge against Shane, which it denies, is that it uses manufacturers who themselves employ slave labor, which is why, particularly in America, there's been so much negative comment about Shayan as I, I mean, obviously Shane's big problem at the moment is the tariffs massively increased the cost of the stuff they're selling into America. But more broadly, was there much discussion about, you know, the ethics of how you, you know, get your products, who, who your suppliers are, your suppliers, practices and all of that?
- [41:20]
A
Yeah, so obviously they were asked about that and so they, I mean, and obviously they'd been well briefed that they were going to ask for you, but asked about that. So you, you, you know, they gave a very like, good answer on it. So they, they were making that point about they have less waste from, from what they produce. And also they were talking a lot about this concept they have called she Next, which is where they will find new designers and then they, they pay them commission for the stuff that they create for Shein. So when they get this trend, come in for a product. They'll, they'll have this kind of collaboration of these she next designers who they then give commission to if they get them to design it and then they put it out there and if it sells, they get commission on what to source. And then they were talking about this polyester recycling program they've got now which they've put a 50 billion dollar investment to, to improve the end of life of their products. Because obviously lots of people buy these really cheaply and you know, sometimes the bag that the clothes are coming in costs more than the clothes themselves and that's, there's a lot of questions about how they can justify that and also what that means for sustainability. But I mean they weren't like massively challenged. They wouldn't have turned up if, I don't think if they would have been given a really rough time. It wasn't me interviewing them.
- [42:33]
B
No, no, no. I just, I just, I just wondered in general if it was a talking point around the conference.
- [42:38]
A
Right, well, let's wrap things up there. That's it from the rest is money. Bye bye.
- [42:41]
B
Yeah, bye bye.