NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club, award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney Hal Coopersmith, and in this episode, we are speaking all about Jeans, and how hard it is for women to shop for them. Joanna Hartzmark wanted to come up with a solution that was years in the making.
JoAnna Hartzmark: About 50 or so years ago, people realized that this wasn’t really working and they tried to do a massive nationwide study to understand the complexity of the size chart and how to make it more sophisticated. They ended up abandoning the study because there was so much complexity and just letting brands decide on their own. So that’s how we ended up in a place that brands just get to choose.
NY Launch Pod: Listen to the episode to find out how Joanna is crowdsourcing solutions to the problem (its more difficult than you might think), the algorithm behind it, and the ingenious pricing model that makes it easy to bring brands on board. But before we go to the episode, we have a sponsor RezCue, New York State’s premier residential rental compliance platform for landlords. Rental laws in New York City are difficult to manage even and, Rezcue helps follow the law. If you are a landlord who wants to keep up with inflation, you need Rezcue. For example, you may need to send a notice to a tenant by a certain date to increase the rent by more than five percent, that would be a good idea! Go to Rezcueme.com and enter in some simple information and Rezcue will take care of the rest. That’s Rezcueme.com, and with that let’s go to the interview.
NY Launch Pod: So what is wrong with jeans?
JoAnna Hartzmark: Well, jeans and clothes in general are just really difficult to fit properly. I think every woman or almost every woman wears jeans on a somewhat regular basis and pretty much all of those women hate shopping for jeans because it’s just so hard to find ones that fit you the way that you want. The problem is that you have to order 10 pairs or try on 10 pairs in a dresser room before you find one that’s going to actually make you feel good and that’s the problem we’re trying to solve.
NY Launch Pod: And how did you come up with this idea?
JoAnna Hartzmark: You know, I started with the broader issue of clothing sizing and fit because it’s not unique to jeans by any means. I really feel that the size shirt in and of itself just causes a huge amount of frustration for women. We’ve got this linear size chart, but women’s bodies aren’t linear. And so we’re trying to force them to conform to this straight line when their bodies are really infinitely complex. And so I really started to think about why that was, why were brands trying to force this conformity? What was making it simpler for them and what made it so difficult for women to find clothes that fit. So that’s sort of what started my tumble down this road to eventually starting to focus on jeans, helping women find ones that actually fit them.
NY Launch Pod: Good question. Why do brands make it so hard to find the right fit or did you learn?
JoAnna Hartzmark: I went all the way back and researched, how did we end up here? What’s the size charts origin? Why is it that is this linear line? It was actually fascinating because hundreds of years ago, clothing was custom made. You had a seamstress probably in your family or in your town who would make you custom clothes. It wasn’t until the first department stores came to Montgomery ward and Sears that there was any sort of mass market retail. And so at that point they wanted to start developing clothes that could be sent out and had no basis for how to determine sizing. So they actually looked to the military and said, how did the military create uniforms and uniforms for men at that time, were created based on a single measurement around the chest and then extrapolated from there and so that is how the original size chart was created and was created in a linear manner. About 50 or so years ago, people realized that this wasn’t really working and they tried to do a massive nationwide study to understand the complexity of the size chart and how to make it more sophisticated. They ended up abandoning the study because there was so much complexity and just letting brands decide on their own. So that’s how we ended up in a place that brands just get to choose and they sort of took that original basis of, okay, well, a straight line of numbers that rise and we’ll define what that baseline is. So that’s where I got to my sort of key insight, which is that the size number is not what’s relevant. Each brand chooses a baseline shape that they’re going to use and extrapolate a linear line from, but we never talk about that shape. We just say this brand runs bigger, runs small and women sort of learn as they shop that certain brands fall on them better or worse. But the truth is that’s because those brands are cut to suit their unique shape. And we just sort of are supposed to learn that as we go. And I don’t think that burden should be placed on women.
NY Launch Pod: And how are brands choosing their shapes?
JoAnna Hartzmark: So a lot of individual small brands, the actual designer herself uses her own body as the baseline, but fundamentally it’s oftentimes what’s called a fit model. So the fit model is the person who’s the first person to put on a garment after it comes back from the factory. And that’s where they make all the nips and tucks new sides, what the sample size will be. And then from there, every other size will be built based on that shape.
NY Launch Pod: You saw this idea, you had this idea, you identified it as a problem. What did you do next?
JoAnna Hartzmark: The first thing I did was to think about how can I address this problem? What is my skillset? Do I think that I can actually make a difference here because I wasn’t really planning on starting a business? I wasn’t planning on being an entrepreneur, I sort of tumbled into this and I said, well, do I think that I can really make a difference here? So my background is more technical and analytical, and I really felt that I might be able to build an algorithm or a technology that will help solve this problem. So that was the first thing I did was start to figure out how would I gather data in order to solve this problem technically? It turns out that it’s not that simple and you can’t necessarily be solved purely technically, but that was the first step into this journey that has become Revelle.
NY Launch Pod: How are you getting the data? Do you have to buy every single pair of jeans?
JoAnna Hartzmark: I mean, there are million different ways to get the data and I have a really disgusting amount of data that I’ve collected over the years. So do I go to stores and try on every single pair? I did that as much as possible, but I’m only one body. So I needed to crowdsource survey, find tens of thousands of women with unique body shapes in order to figure out what is the complexity of women’s bodies, how did they feel about fit? That’s really when the next key insight came though, which is when I really thought about the fact that it is subjective. It’s not just based on your body shape. It’s based on how you feel about your body, how you want your body to look and how you want to present yourself to the world. No matter how much data I collected, I couldn’t create a purely technical solution to this problem because it had a huge exogenous, emotional component that I wasn’t taking into account yet. You have to let women tell you what fit means to them. You can’t dictate to them what’s supposed to feel or look right on their body.
NY Launch Pod: And how are you getting that information from your female customers?
JoAnna Hartzmark: Well, so that’s how we sort of pivoted into the solution that is Revelle today. So rather than just having a pure algorithm that might tell you what brands work for you, or what size to buy, we’ve created an interactive experience where our users are partnering with us so that they have a say and have more control over their shopping experience. So conceptually Revelle is an online store that you enter into and it’s full of jeans only that will fit you the way that you want. But the way that we figure that out is first with our algorithm and then with you, the user. And so you interact with your store. You tell us more about your body, how you feel about your body, what you like and what you hate and the algorithm will refine itself uniquely to you based on your preferences and then what we know about the brands and their fit and their sizing. And so no two members of Revelle have the same online store because as soon as they start interacting with it, it begins to refine just for them.
NY Launch Pod: This all sounds wonderful. How much does it cost?
JoAnna Hartzmark: It costs $0.
NY Launch Pod: $0. That’s crazy. How are you making money?
JoAnna Hartzmark: I felt really passionately that this was not something that women should be bearing the brunt of financially. This is a problem that wasn’t created for them and that they have to navigate. So becoming a Revelle member is totally free and you just have to give us the information for our algorithm to work for you and then you can log in at any time and your store is there. We make money because if you do decide to buy something from your Revelle store, we get a commission from the brands themselves. And they’re the people who, as I said, have created this problem and so they’re the ones that should be bearing this burden in my opinion.
NY Launch Pod: So the brands are giving you money, which is really nice. How are you able to get buy-ins from the brands? We understand that they created the problem, but they may want their existing customers brand loyal or what was kind of the obstacles to getting brands to buy in.
JoAnna Hartzmark: So currently we have what I would call more of a path of relationship with brands. Brands love more leads and so they’re happy to sell product through another store and to get commission. We are currently starting to work with some brands that are passionate about what we’re doing to have closer partnerships. And I waited because I wanted to make sure that I could show them that women shopping through Revelle are less likely to return their garment more likely to love it, and more likely to go back to that brand once they realize that it fits them. And so there’s a little bit of push and pull. You need to convince the brand that it’s okay to sometimes not recommend their product because it’s not going to fit someone, but that’s all right, because this person isn’t going to return it and they’re going to enjoy that garment more. And so I wanted to wait until we had grown sufficiently to be able to one make that case, but also make it clear that the leverage does not come from the brands. We are not here to advocate for certain brands because they pay us more, that’s not how Revelle works. We are completely agnostic and based on the fit for the user, that user need comes first, no matter what brands we’re partnering with and offer a job offer. And I didn’t want to start with attempting to get brands buy in and then seeming as though they were the ones really pulling the strings behind the scenes, because they’re not.
NY Launch Pod: How many brands are you working with now?
JoAnna Hartzmark: Currently we’re with about 500 different brands. So any woman could see, you know, thousands of products depending on her or her style and her preferences there. We certainly don’t cover every single brand in the world, but we felt it was really important to have enough volume that women get options. Because part of the problem is that women find one brand that fits them and they never really explore other opportunities. It’s the idea to help them feel comfortable, exploring those other brands, trying new products that they wouldn’t otherwise, maybe new styles, knowing that we can give them enough of a variety to really make that still fun.
NY Launch Pod: And are all these brands providing an affiliate or, compensation for your recommendations?
JoAnna Hartzmark: Yes. All brands provide some sort of compensation. It varies not just by brand, but within brands with a different timing, different products and things like that. So it’s incredibly variable and something that we don’t use to change the algorithm in anyway, that commission structure is irrelevant to where we show you what products are going to fit you the best.
NY Launch Pod: You seem like a very data driven company. You’re making these claims about return rates being less through Revelle than through direct shopping. What is the comparison?
JoAnna Hartzmark: So I don’t necessarily talk about the specific stats at this point, but in general, people return between 40 and 60%, of online clothing purchases. So it’s a huge amount and that is an onus on women and an onus on brand. And so we are looking at less than half of that from Revelle.
NY Launch Pod: The data and meta statistics are wonderful. What is your ultimate goal for Revelle?
JoAnna Hartzmark: When I decided to start this company, which was not, as I said, the plan, I did not plan to become an entrepreneur, I decided that I had to make some philosophical decisions about the type of founder that I was going to be. And one of those was that I was not going to get so fixated on a specific end goal that I couldn’t see the opportunities for innovation around me every step of the way. So I do not have a single vision for what Revelle would be, I’d say I generally am working with three or four different options. What I want is for Revelle to add value into women’s lives every day, and to help them find clothes that make them feel beautiful when they get dressed in the morning. And so that might be expanding to include every single type of product and category that exists, so that it’s a one stop shop so that women can go there when they want an evening gown or intimates or jeans. It might actually be creating an experience where when you’re shopping out in the world, you could scan a tag and we could tell you that garment is, or is not going to fit, this is the size that we think you should buy based on, what we know. It could be more of a social interaction where women are sharing their experiences, about their frustrations in the dressing room and, these recommendations are to help alleviate those frustrations. So any of those things are possible and would achieve my goal of adding real value. Again, when I started this company, I really wanted to focus on what it would be like to build a tech proven company that was addressing a problem for women built by women. Truly trying to address the problem rather than just capitalizing on their wallets. And so to me, that mission is the thing that drives me and I don’t know if that means the company will exit, I’ll try to build it forever or anything like that, I really just wanted to build this company for women.
NY Launch Pod: And you said you didn’t set out to be a founder. How come you decided to start this company?
JoAnna Hartzmark: You know, I started my career in finance and a big bank. So it’s really a 180 from where I began. When I went to business school, I really felt that I wanted to pivot out of finance and to be more consumer focused. And I ended up in a large luxury retail firm. And that’s when I really started to understand the difficulty of moving a big shift, if you will, and how hard it was to really make a difference for consumers. So at that point, I did make the jump to a pretty established startup in the e-commerce space. So similar intersection of tech in fashion, and that’s when I really started to get the bug about how great it was to make a change and see it in the market the next day. But I still, at that point, didn’t feel like I wanted the responsibility or quite frankly, that beginning part where you’re alone with your idea, trying to figure it out, that that didn’t really appeal to me. But as I continued to grow and sort of get up in the ranks of this other startup, I realized that more so than any technology I was building, or things that I was learning the values of the founders, trickled down into every aspect of what we were building. And, you know, the founders at that time were very fixated on a particular end, right? They’re sort of what drove that philosophical decision for me that I didn’t want to do that. And so the truth is that learning of understanding that if you work at a small company, you must be a reflection of founder’s values or you’re going to always be butting heads with them is what made me realize that I wanted to see what it would be like to build something myself based on my values, which was to truly try to make a difference in people’s day to day lives, rather than just make money or grow at a certain rate.
NY Launch Pod: And it sounds like you could have started Revelle anywhere in the world, how come you decided to start it in New York? And what’s the benefit of starting it in New York?
JoAnna Hartzmark: You know, the, the reason is purely selfish. I love it here. I moved around a lot as a kid, I’ve lived a lot of different places, including abroad. And that really made me realize that places have personalities just like people do and that there aren’t better or worse ones, but you’ve got to find the one that feels like home to you and New York is the only place that I’ve ever lived that feels like home. And so I plan on being here forever, as much as you can say forever at any point. And it really just makes me happy to be here. So that was the reason that even though people might have said, why wouldn’t she go to Silicon Valley or, you know, even Austin nowadays, I really just love my life here. And if I was going to take on something as difficult as starting a company, which is not a small burden to take on as an individual, I wanted to make sure I was in some place that from a mental health standpoint still made me happy to go outside and go for that walk every day.
NY Launch Pod: Well, that is a wonderful note to end things on JoAnna Hartzmark, thank you the New York launch pod and sharing your time with us. How do people find out more about you and Revelle?
JoAnna Hartzmark: So follow me on Instagram, I’m JoAnna Hartzmark. I’m always posting about life at Revelle and my DMS are always open. We’re Revellnation@instagram and Revellnation.com on the site. Please sign up, as I said, it’s totally free stepping onto and we are a small company growing with our community. So we really love to hear feedback on what you’re loving and what you’re not liking because every day we’re making changes to make the experience better for our users.
NY Launch Pod: And if you want to learn more about the New York launch pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod and visit nylaunchpod.com or transcripts of every episode, including this one. And if you’re a super fan of the podcast, JoAnna, are you a super fan of the New York launch pod?
JoAnna Hartzmark: Of course I am.
NY Launch Pod: If you’re a super fan like JoAnna, please leave a review on apple podcast. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
