Transcription
Good morning, and thank you for doing this. The opening, uh, answered question I usually start with, and that's your first job. But I wonder when you started in the family business if you had aspirations to continue to make it your life's work or not?
Um, thanks for thanks for having me today, Bill. Um, yes, I, uh, you know, like any any young person, you're trying to figure out what you're going to do in your life. And I think, uh, probably when I was my last University, in the fourth year, is probably the first time I panicked, because that's the first time I had a decision—I'm gonna have to start doing something. At the time, I, uh, I probably wasn't looking that far out; I was just looking at finishing University at the time. Uh, what I neglected to say is actually my favorite job to date, with all due respect to my father and and my my present job, was I was a garbage man in the city of Vancouver, really, when you're going to school.
Ah, yeah, for for a summer. And uh, I remember coming home and uh, saying to my father, "I'm not going to work for you this summer." And he said, uh, "What do you mean you're not going to work for me this time? What are you going to do?" "It's almost going to be a garbage man." He thought I was out of my mind. But uh, it ended up being a fabulous job. I had the best suntan I ever had; uh, I was absolutely—I mean, I got so fit lifting garbage cans all day.
Yeah, back in those days you actually had to lift the garbage.
Yeah, you did. And you're allowed to drive on the back of the truck, so sometimes you just hang on to the back of the truck at 40 miles an hour going down Granville Street. It was fabulous fun. And everybody likes a garbage man—you're wandering up and down, you're going up and down the lanes, and the kids are chasing the truck around, you're waving to people, and it's fabulous. It was a fabulous job. But it also connects you with people, and that's something that's terribly important in the retail business.
Yes, it is. It's really important in the retail business. And I think one of the things we've managed to do is is we've never called our head office, or head office has always become a support office. And I make sure that no one forgets that the purpose of us all being in our offices and what we're doing is to support our stores, because that's actually what we do—with frontline customer. Now e-commerce has changed that a little bit and our approach to that, but certainly, uh, that's what we what we focus on is the customer. I want to get to the uh, to the .com in a in a few minutes, but I'm I am curious as to what the secret of your success has been, because you've grown tremendously at a time when it's been really tough on retail, right? I mean, it's it's tough on retail—retail fashion. It's changed dramatically. We started the company in 1984, my father, my brother, myself, in 1984. And it's been a long time now, and we've seen the retail evolve in that time, and it's it's evolved from a branded operation. And what we've been successful with, what's enabled us to—one of the things it's able to be successful is the fact we're vertical, and we manufacture our own product, and we've been doing that for a long time now. And if we hadn't been doing that, it would have been very difficult to do what we're doing today. So there's been decisions we've made—some of them we're just lucky and made a decision with nothing really strategic in mind, and other times we've made strategic decisions to ensure—
Give me an example of a strategic decision that we've made over the years.
Um, we have various strategic decisions, whether it be building our infrastructure, so we're an SAP company, and and and so you know the customers don't see that, but what's SAP? SAP is uh, when you go to the airports, Bill, you see all the best all the best run companies run SAP, and everybody wonders what that means. And Ernie Else I think has SAP on his his cap when he plays golf and things like that. Everybody's wondering what is this SAP thing? It's uh, it's one of the largest software companies in the world. I believe it's out of Germany, and the majority of Fortune 500 companies run it. And we're a small company at the time when we went and said we wanted to run SAP, uh, to to to build the infrastructure. I think it's called an ERP system—enterprise-wide system—and then you build all your other different software on top of that. When we went and made a decision to do that, they thought we were crazy. We're a small company. And what we always tried to do is look five, ten years down the road. And I remember my CEO, Jennifer Wong, was worked for it with me for 25 years now, she came in and said, "This is not going to be a nice process; it's going to be really difficult. We're going to have to re-engineer every part of our business, and this is the bill it's going to cost us." And I looked at this thing and thought, "She's crazy." And she looked at me and said, "You're thinking I'm crazy right now?" I said, "Yeah." She goes, "The reason we're going to do this is I only want to do it once. We only want to do this once. If we pick SAP, we will be able to only do it once. They're the best; they're the biggest. And maybe somebody else after we're long gone might want to change that, but right now we want to do that." So the decision like that, building infrastructure like that, or stretch strategic decisions like opening in the U.S., and when to do it and how to do it and where to open these stores and things like that. And you know, sometimes we make the right decisions, sometimes we don't; we learn with our mistakes and carry on.
You talked you talked about manufacturing your own product—where do you do that?
Uh, initially we just started in Vancouver, but primarily we're focused in Asia, like you know Asia is really the economic engine now for the fashion business, and uh, we primarily do it out of China.
How closely do you watch the conditions that the people who are making your clothing work under? And obviously, I'm thinking of the Bangladesh story that's been so horrifically in the news this past week.
You know, the Bangladesh story is a tragedy on many fronts. I it's obviously a tragedy to the people that were involved, in the families; um, it's a tragedy of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is something—75, there's some numbers floating around somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of their—I don't know if it's gross domestic product or what it is—is done with the clothing business. And so it's not a it's not a good thing for the country as well right now, and it's a tragedy on many fronts. We do not manufacture in Bangladesh. We we Aritzia, we have a code of conduct and our social and environmental policies that we we follow. We have a full-time person who is an auditor herself that runs this program for us in-house. She's out in the factories on a regular basis, flying—she's visited probably 90, 95 of our factories and does on on the important ones many times. Um, we also have a third-party company, Intertek, that is—you know, there's two or three large global companies that do this for for companies that don't have the wherewithal, and and in our case we do have the wherewithal, but we also back it up by having a a third-party company do it. And and we uh, so we focus on it quite a bit. It's an integrated part of our decision-making process and where we manufacture, when we manufacture, how we manufacture, and it's all part of the decision process.
It's interesting to hear you say that, because I was watching the news last night and I saw that some of the companies here were saying they were going to compensate the families of the victims in Bangladesh, and I thought, "How do you compensate a family for the loss of a a daughter or a son?" Just—I I don't know, it's it's a tragedy, and uh, I don't know how one does that.
Back to uh, to your company and your success—you talked about your dad—was he a mentor?
Yes. I mean, I, you know, you get asked the question quite often who your mentor is, and it was certainly my father. And I had to, you know, I was fortunate enough to work with him for many many years, even after University, and uh, he still works and still works at the store in Carousel.
And uh, how would you—do you pay him well?
Uh, no, no. We uh, we split the routine and uh, Carousel stores a few years ago, so uh, uh, I don't know what he gets paid, but I'm sure he's not missing any meals.
How did you—well, at what point did you decide you were going to be more than more than a store?
I I had a vision—sorry, go ahead.
We went to Burger King right now.
Um, two and a half minutes—somebody just get—
Yeah, yeah, just a slight technical difficulty, so we'll be back in a couple minutes. But uh, just a reminder too that uh, if you do have a question today, make sure you ask it, because we're very very lucky to have Brian here today. He very rarely gives interviews, so please step up to a microphone when we go to a break uh, in probably a few more minutes time, and uh, we'll be back very soon with the CEO series of Brian Hill from Aritzia. Are you enjoying it so far?
[Applause]
Gary Cohen. Um, and so I'm not as well dressed as you, never will be—my wife would tell me that—but I have a question, and and thinking of you being a family business, um, if I get this quote right, Henry Ford said that, "Coming together is beginning; keeping it together is progress; and working together is success." Do you and your family identify with those uh, those ideas—that is, coming together, keeping together, and working together?
Thank you for that question. Um, we worked together since I was a child, and and my brother, my father, my sister, we all worked in the business for a long time. I've never put it in those terms; um, it was always more organic, so to speak, and because it's a family, and because of that, there's sort of the the level of dialogue is what goes on in a family. I mean, it's not something, you know, sometimes it's very loving, and other times it's interesting. Um, so uh, we we had um, a great relationship, and working the business—we still discuss it, with you know, whether we were discussing it at the store, whether the dinner table, where we were out—it was it was always a matter of discussion, and and quite frankly, I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the mentorship from my uh, father, and certainly with my uh, camaraderie from my brother and my sister as well.
And what are those things at Aritzia—they're not they're not involved in Aritzia, they've—my my brother and uh, and father run Hills, and along with my brother and my sister, Nancy, run Blue Ruby, which is a a going concern as far as jewelry and and things in the city goes as well.
And uh, we were back with the Brian Hill, CEOs of Aritzia. We were talking very briefly during the break—this started as a family business, and your family is still involved in a in a broadly based business, but you're the CEO of Aritzia. What are your—what's your—well, you mentioned your dad's at the store in in Carousel. You also have a brother and a sister, right, who were involved in the in the family business, but not directly with the Ritz here?
Correct. Yes. And uh, so my sister runs Blue Ruby, which is a jewelry store in the Lower Mainland, and and very successful, and my brother runs Hills with my with my father, and also uh, Blue Ruby with my sister. So uh, we're all involved in the business—we're a retail family. And uh, so we have some interesting discussions, whether it be about Aritzia, Blue Ruby, or some other third party.
But Aritzia has had tremendous growth—I think it's 54 stores, something like that?
Yes, something like that.
Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, at what point did you decide that it was a good thing to grow? I thought you're going to ask me what point did I lose count.
Um, I think I think there's a lot of different things. There's—in around 1997, we had we'd been operating in effectively in the Lower Mainland, we had a five or six stores, and at that point in time we were top sales per square foot in all our in categories in every shopping center we're in. And we thought we can compete nationally. And at the time we weren't thinking internationally, but we could compete nationally. And we thought, okay, so what do we need to do in order to become a national firm? And at the time I think we identified three or four things: one was we needed to be a vertical retailer; we needed to own our supply chain, which in hindsight was probably the most important thing we ever did. So we decided to start manufacturing our own product and get into our own design and everything else. Um, the second thing we identified was we needed—at the time we weren't computerized; we were probably a little bit behind the curve—so we needed to computerize the POS. The third thing, if we're going to go build a bunch of stores, we needed to add a template, both from an operational and an a static perspective, on what these stores would look like and how they would function. And if I finally, we needed to build the infrastructure, whether that be people infrastructure or systems infrastructure, to put in place to expand. So we spent a couple years doing that, and in 1999 opened up in in Toronto and in Calgary—managed to do that the same day or a week apart somehow, which wasn't planned, but it just would happen that way. And we started we started performing equally as well, and even more so—we actually our business is even stronger in Ontario and Toronto than it's in Vancouver now. So uh, we started getting more and more success, and at one point the same sort of thing came along is that we have some opportunities internationally, and that's when we started opening stores in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and places like that.
You see that in a pretty casual fashion—a number of the CEOs that I've talked to over the past year or two have talked about the the challenges of moving into the U.S. market and how it is a very different animal than than operating in Canada. Have you found that to be the case?
Uh, certainly some aspects are different, some aspects are the same. I I I do think—I mean, there's a history of retailers going to the U.S. and not being successful, but at the time a lot of this was happening was there was retailers that were successful in Canada, and but Canada wasn't an international retail landscape at the time. So when they were going down in the U.S., they didn't know what their getting into. Right now, if you walk up down the shopping center in Canada, whether it be Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary, and you walk up and down one of the Los Angeles or Chicago, you don't really know there's a big difference—it's gone, it's become truly an international business. So if you can compete with people here, you should technically be able to compete with them there. What we are challenged with, Aritzia, was our brand, and it wasn't just a brand with the consumer—what is the brand with our partners, the landlords, people like that—never heard of us. It was our brand with employees—all of a sudden attracting—I mean, here in Canada where we have a fairly good employment brand, and people want to come work with Aritzia—it's an exciting place to work when the fashion business—we're on the international scale, it's a great place to work and and but in the US they've never heard of us. So it's getting that brand, and we've been down in the US now for over five years, and the brand I would say we're probably only 25, 30 percent of the way where we need to get to with the brand perspective. So it's it's from that perspective it's been somewhat challenging. As far as sort of the systems and operations, it's fairly much the same thing. And then the key thing though is whether the consumer is the same consumer, and they will and and they will be attracted to the product you sell in the in the offering, the customer service. And we've been very lucky in that they've been very enthusiastic about our product in the United States.
How do you go about building a brand, especially from scratch in a place like San Francisco?
That's a good question. Um, one of the things, you know, the old analogy—location, location, location—and and we've certainly, you know, I've always joked with landlords that uh, and they I see always see them make little notes that when I tell them this, but I like to pay rent—we like to have great locations, and uh, they're costly, but you're guaranteed traffic if you have great locations. And so first and foremost, we make sure we have great locations, so we have lots of people there.
Is that what makes a great location—traffic?
Is as basic as that—yeah, essentially the right kind of traffic. I mean, it depends who you are. I mean, if you're Louis Vuitton or somebody, you have to be a lot more careful what kind of traffic you're getting, but where the market we're in, it's it's fairly straightforward. So um, you know, other challenges we've had in the U.S.—there's—we haven't quite figured out how to open stores in Florida, Californian places like that, in regards to weather. We we sell lots of outerwear, sweaters, coats, things like that that Canadians love, particularly Eastern Canadians love, and so we've been somewhat challenged and figuring out, okay, how are we going to replace those in the months of October, November, December, and what are we going to offer alternatively? So there is some other operational challenges we have, but from a brand perspective, I think there's just some PR—it's a big big market down there. And one of the things I learned too is it's a different market down there—there's different different cultures in different parts of the country, there's a different sort of mix from an urban and suburban perspective—some very affluent urban, suburban areas in the United States which aren't really—this isn't really the same landscape it is here in Canada—a little bit more difficult to figure out the location perspective. So there are some challenges, but things you can work through. But from a brand perspective, uh, we're just giving it time and trying to—it certainly has helped being in New York, and where the press, a lot of the press originates, it certainly helped, and we launched a website in in November, and that certainly is helping us as well.
Talk a little bit about that and how important online is becoming in the retail business.
Online is important; it's not becoming important; it's incredibly important. Um, it is still the wild west out there to some degree—companies are trying to—there's new things—companies are trying new things. I was just speaking to my marketing people, and there's a lot of push marketing goes out to websites, because there's not the same location—everybody who opens up a website has the same location now—ww, whatever their address is—and there's not great locations and bad locations—all the same location now. So our whole location strategy with the web has kind of gone out the window, so we we're having to approach that. But one of the things—just yesterday I was talking to—there's a company in the U.S., Nasty Gal, and they they send everything out—okay, I knew her—hopefully not—she's she's actually quite young.
[Music]
Um, but incredibly successful company—in two, three years she's doing over 100 million dollars in business—every private equity and banker in the world's chasing her right now. Um, and what's interesting is is there's all new things happening every day. So the retail business—there's new things come along once in a while—the internet business, it's brand new every day. So my team was telling me that we're going to change all our emails that we're pushing out to customers, and we're typically—they send them out between 4 AM and 8 AM, so that when you go to work and sit down or wake up in the morning, you can open up your computer and there it is. But there's so many people doing that now—what Nasty Gal is doing is they're sending those out at two in the afternoon, five at night, all these sort of unorthodox times. And my team recommended we start doing that now. And so there's there's new learning—some things happen all the time, but it's an important part of the business—it's probably 10 to 20 percent of the business, particularly in our market, the young women market—it's probably 10 to 20 percent of the sales.
Are you always going to need stores?
I mean, I believe so. We're always going to use stores with the location perspective. You know, some customers are e-commerce customers, some customers are store customers, some customers are a bit of both. And I think different people like shopping different ways now—whether new generations that changes dramatically, I don't know, but um, certainly the the whole idea of trying on clothes, and you cannot sell product on the Internet because women have to touch and feel it and try it on and things like that—that thought process is gone now—it is it's not the case anymore.
Much more with Brian Hill, after this. We're broadcasting live from the BD School of Business in downtown Vancouver. If you do have a question, please feel free to step up to the microphones—don't be shy. Uh, just a reminder too, if you've got any friends or family who couldn't make it here today, we are streaming live, so they can go to cknw.com to watch that, and you can also see all of our videos from the past CEO series events at ckw.com as well. Any questions so far? Microphones are open if you want to step up, so feel free—don't be shy.
Hi, I'm Leonice, and I'm an alumnus from Simon Fraser University. What would be one of your biggest mistakes that or Aritzia—it's one of your biggest learnings?
Yeah, I mean, we make mistakes every day, and and no more than myself. One of the things we do—we have that old carpentry analogy in our business though, which is, "Measure twice, cut once," and uh, I think we really believe in it, and we do a lot of research. I find sometimes when we actually bring on new employees, it drives them a little crazy because we do a lot of rigor before we actually go and and make decisions. Um, um, perhaps maybe not expanding soon enough nationally, I would guess as one. Um, we make a lot of little mistakes—I don't think we've made too too many really large mistakes—um, but there's lots of time left for us to do that too, so uh, we'll see what happens. But I can't really think of any particularly large mistakes up to this point in time we've made. We're a very cautious company. I mean, 54 stores—a lot of stores—but you look at our friends at Lululemon, they have three times—it's been four times as many stores, and they've been around a third as long. So um, you know, Nasty Girl's 100 million dollar business in three years, and it was a long time before we were so—um, we're a very cautious company that takes our time and make sure we're not so—
They're gonna—how many stores—
I think we have about 10 stores and 12 stores in BC. We have some different concepts too—we have a TNA concept and a Wilfred concept, and we actually have a few more of those in BC than we do elsewhere.
Uh, as a gentleman's uh, retailer—I I'm not sure what TNA stands for—
First question. Uh, second one is, have you ever contemplated seriously going into men's clothing?
Can I answer the second question? I've had a lot of people ask me what that is—TNA stands for The New Aritzia, obviously, doesn't it? Exactly. Uh, you know, my dream was always to be in men's clothing, and and my preference—and sometimes you're the victim of your own success—and uh, I I think initially when we got into the business uh, women's clothing, and women spend an enormous amount of money on clothing compared to men—that's not in Europe—it wasn't always the case, and now that's changed, obviously. As you know—what company are you from?
Ah, okay. 2010 Group isn't men's clothing, is it?
No, no. I thought you said you were—sorry, I apologize.
Yeah, no, I know, I know, I know, I know. Very, I'm very familiar with the 2010 group, um, so it is something I, I probably always wanted to do. It's something that I think is more, uh, be a lot more viable today or in the last five years than it ever was. But I'm not looking to work more; I'm probably looking to work less at this point in time in my career, so I don't know if they're spending more than they used to, but just come, you know, not factually, just anecdotally, when I see, I see the way men dressing now compared to 10, 15 years ago, it's considerable. I mean, it's been a lot more time on their appearance than they used to; that's for sure, my opinion. So just over a minute left on the break, okay. Then I will get to it, philanthropy and stuff, but after one more segment, sure. And then in the last one, you know, about the dinner for four people, you were alerted to that?
Yes, kind of.
Yeah, getting coached over here. How long you going to Europe for? How long you going to Europe for? Um, we're doing a river cruise for 16 days, starting in Amsterdam and winding up in Budapest. You've been over to Budapest and places like that? Have you been in Budapest before?
Once, and it was about 10 years ago.
Live from the BD School of Business, uh, Aritzia CEO Brian Hill. When I, when I say leadership, what comes to your mind? What, uh, what do you look for? What have you admired in, in leaders who may have inspired you?
It's a tough question. Um, I, I don't necessarily look at people themselves so much as I look at what they've done and what they've accomplished and how they've accomplished it. I think that leadership is interesting because there's so many different styles of leadership, and what makes one person a good leader and what makes another person a good leader is completely different. And you know, my advice to young people out there would be, you're your own person, and you have to figure out your own way to lead. What I admire is when leaders, what they accomplish and what they do, and whether that be motivating a team of people, whether that be creating something special for either their business or the world, or whatever it may be, that that's certainly something that I, I admire and look to.
How do you try to do that? I think how I try to do it specifically for Aritzia is look at other businesses that I think are leaders in the world in what we do, also look at other businesses that are leaders in the world on things that we don't necessarily do, and in other companies and how they go do things and try to learn from them as much as we possibly can. So I could, because I think there's some great ideas that can be applied to any business. And I've always said to people, you know, take a great organization like the Cactus Club in Vancouver and and BC, and I always wonder and joke that Richard Jaffrey, I'm not that familiar with, but we're friends, and and and and have suggested that him and I probably have more or less the same day. We sit down, we motivate people, we deal with real estate, we build stores, whether it be a restaurant or a clothing store; we probably have our legal and finance team walk into our office when we least expect it, and uh, so we probably, other than the fact he probably spends 10 percent of his time on food or 10 to 20 percent of his time on food, and I spend 10 to 20 percent of my time on fashion and clothing, the rest of our days are probably pretty much the same.
Well, I know one of the signatures of the Cactus Club is they have a tremendously well-trained staff. How do you go about hiring people for Aritzia? What do you look for? What qualities do you look for in somebody who's going to be on the on the front lines for you?
We've gone through an interesting process with that just recently, and and I remember walking into a store in Toronto and I saw one of our managers interviewing a staff member, and and she was asking her what magazines the stat to the to the person, and the person said InStyle and Glamour or something like that, and the my manager was writing down on the application form InStyle and Glamour. I looked at and thought, what difference does it make what magazines this young lady reads? So I tried to simplify the process, and it's like anything else, you have to get a simple process, and you complicate it, then you make it simple so people can use it. And so we, we broke, break down our, uh, certainly for the front-line staff into four different areas of business. One is style and fashion; are they interested in style and fashion? One is, you know, are they smart, and and I think that's important in any business. Three is, are they motivated? We think that's key; if it doesn't matter how great you are, if you're not motivated to achieve something or do something, you're not going to be successful, uh, and the last is personality. Do they have a personality, because they need to interact with people, not just with a consumer but with other people within the organization? So it's important they have a personality and they can communicate and things like that. So we've broken it out into those those four simple areas, and that's how we evaluate, uh, the people that we're bringing into organization as well as when they're in our organization. Typically, if they're successful, it's because they, they have all those attributes.
Are there any special things you do to retain good people?
One of my philosophies has always been, we're not running a democracy, and I remember sitting there 25 years ago in in our store in in Oak Ridge and looking across the mall at a store, Thrifty's actually the time, so I don't think they've been in business for 20 years, so I'm dating myself here, but there was two people in the store, one person I saw did 90 of the work, and one person did none of the work, and I watched these two people and I thought to myself at the time, if that one girl is making ten dollars an hour, the other girl should be making ninety dollars an hour, and I've always had that philosophy and organization. If people perform and people deliver and people work hard, they should be remunerated as such; they should be given the opportunities as such; they should be given education and such, and those are the people you invest in, and I think we've had that Philosophy from the very beginning, and we still have it today, that that we have to make sure that the people that are really moving the needle are getting the special attention, whether it be remuneration, opportunities, or whatever, and the people that aren't, which is fine too, because everybody's not going to be a leader in your organization, but those are the people you have, those are the other people, the ones you have to focus on much more.
With Brian Hill, right after this.
You have kids?
Yeah. We only have two breaks left, so if you do have any questions, don't forget to pop up to the microphones, introduce yourself, and ask a question of Brian. As I mentioned, he very rarely does interviews, so this may be your only chance to pick his business brain, so please don't be shy. I'm going to the Cactus Club for lunch right after this.
The new one?
Yeah, I haven't been there yet.
Spectacular?
Have you been there? I've heard it's absolutely spectacular, and it's a, if you're lucky enough to be on the windows, it's a little too cool still, but those windows are all the motors, right?
To, no, it's, and it's always full. I've heard that. I've heard the business is just incredible.
It really is. So I went to, when Umberto's was closing a few weeks ago. Yeah, I went to an event one night there, and Richard was there, and I was sitting there talking to Richard, and Umberto sat down, and Umberto recognized me but didn't recognize Richard and started giving this sort of somewhat sermon on the restaurant business to me, which I found fascinating because I mean, he really is a top of his game. [Music]
That's in, so I get myself a 4x4 quad cap and a 20-foot RV that sleeps up to six people. Come on down to Maple Ridge Chrysler, or closer than you think. You want to look better than your best friends? Tired of looking older because of those fine lines and wrinkles? Well, now's the time to take the Feels Like a Facelift 90-day challenge. It's clinically shown to reduce deep surface wrinkles by 68% over a two-month period. Here's what Gloria has to say: "Every time I use it, I notice the difference. My skin is so moist; I just wouldn't be without it." Now, Jake, that Feels Like a Facelift 90-day challenge, it's time to lift away those fine lines and wrinkles. Feels Like a Facelift is available at Mark's Pharmacy, Delta Cares.
Hi, my name is Erica. About who involved are you in the process of making the decision of the trends they're going to be selling?
Um, I'm probably not as involved as I used to be in, in the trends in, in the Styling and things like that. Um, I certainly, uh, it's one of my favorite parts of the business; I actually, that'll blowing my own horn, I actually think I'm actually quite good at it, but over the years, you know, I'm in my 50s now, it becomes, you know, you're not quite as tuned into the trends and certainly to our customer. The business has become bigger, and the other areas of the business demand more of my time, but I make a point of, you know, I'm the final approval process. There's not a single item I, I that I haven't touched or seen that goes that sold at Aritzia that we produce. We still do things that other brands produce; it's a very, very small part of our business, single digits, but I sit in all the design meetings, the presentation meetings, the line reviews, things like that. I'm in all of them typically, and I enjoy that.
Yeah, yeah. One minute. It's that aspect of that's what keeps, quite frankly, me inspired coming to work every day is a fashion portion of the business, the creative side of the business, whether it be the fashion or the marketing or the store design, things like that. I, you know, going into a finance meeting, with all due respect to my finance team, walking to a finance meeting or a legal meeting isn't nearly as interesting as wandering into a fashion meeting, you know, a year, but I don't know how to keep the students of applying of the consumers because it's so dynamic, like fashion stuff. I've only got 10 seconds left; I'll just say it's one of the biggest challenges we have every day.
Look at Brian Hill, the CEO of Aritzia, and before I get to the to the personal stuff that I want to touch on, that young woman here was just asking how hands-on are you when it comes to the the actual product, deciding what goes into your stores? I mean, we have a team of 30 or 40 designers in the in the company; some are fashion designers, some are textile designers, some are graphic designers. I think there's probably about 40, even some are technical designers, and we also have pattern makers and everything else. Our product floor probably has about 150 people on it, and there's presentations and approval processes throughout, as you could imagine, and we have four seasons a year, and I'm usually, you know, 90% of the time I'm in those meetings, the main, main checkpoints along the way. And uh, do your hands on, completely hands-on to the point where they sometimes wonder what's this 50-year-old guy telling me how to design my line, but I try not to do that, but there's sort of some big more strategic decisions that I do, and and I usually get some pretty good feedback, and I think I'm still helpful at that level.
Now talk a little bit about how you balance business and family and in your life. Are you good at managing your life?
Um, Andrea may be listening. Yeah, Andrea is my wife. Um, you know, I think it's always a challenge, and it's probably the biggest challenge, and and as you get certain levels of success, I mean, you know, I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and uh, I could be out doing things that I like to do at the same time, a period of time, and I could be doing things with my family that too. So there's certainly, it is a challenge, and I think everybody is a challenge, really, the CEO or or you're somebody working on the floor of our store; it doesn't really matter; there's challenges. I remember sitting across from my friend and certainly a friend of yours, Joe Siegel, and I was sitting across the table from a lunch, and I have lunch with Joe probably once every six months; I'm fortunate enough to do so, and he looked at me and he said, I'm gonna put a little swear in here because it just was such it was, and he said, he said, "Brian, what's your most valuable asset?" And I looked at him and I was wondering if this is a trick question, and I said, "Well, it's it's my my family, I guess." And he goes, looks across the table at me and he goes, "That's not it." I looked at him; I said, "My business." He goes, "No, Brian, what's your most valuable asset?" And I, and I said, uh, "What is it?" He goes, "Just cut the BS." Here's a here's a guy 85 years old telling me to cut the BS, and I looked at him and he goes, he said to me, "It's your time. It's your time," and he said, he looked at me and said, "Brian, your runway," and he held his hands about four feet apart and said, "is this long," mine is this long, and he held him about an inch apart from each other, and he said, "I would trade all my money for your runway," and they leaned across the table at me and said, "and I got a lot of money." [Laughter] So I thought he was going to say health, and in a sense he was saying the same thing, same thing, and and that is all our most valuable. I mean, we're only on the planet for a certain amount of time, so it is is a huge challenge I have, and and you just have to make sure as your demands increase, you waste less and less time. I mean, I don't sit around watching a lot of TV, and sometimes I love to sit down and watch a movie, which I do. I watch the odd hockey game, which I do. Typically, though, I'm multitasking; if I'm watching a hockey game, I'm returning emails or something. I still use a Blackberry, believe it or not, and uh, and so I just have to make sure I'm using my time wisely and well, and uh, and make sure that you're, you know, you get up pretty early in the morning.
And how early do you get up?
Between uh, five and six, usually.
And how do you start your day?
I usually start my day with some exercise, and whether I go swimming or cycling or whatever it may be, I usually start my day with some exercise and then make sure I eat well first thing in the morning and then carry on and get after it.
And what time do you generally get home?
Uh, yes, you mentioned my wife's listening; she probably wouldn't dispute this, but I typically get home at uh, anywhere between sort of six and eight pm every night.
And you have two kids?
Two kids, yeah. And they're ten and eight. And boy, girl, girl, boy.
And how do you spend time with them?
I spend time with them sometimes in the morning, so I'll go exercise and come home; I make sure I spend time with them on the weekends, and we take some holidays together, and uh, I think we managed to, you know, I think there's a quality versus quantity, so that's one thing I did learn early on. I'd come home, and I, I wasn't really in the game; I'd be sort of zapped from work, and I learned that that's not that doesn't cut it; you have to actually bring it, bring your A-game to that too. So uh, I managed to do that as well.
It sounds like you have pretty good balance.
Yeah, I think I have a pretty good balance, but it's it's a work in progress and constantly having to focus on it because it does get out of kilter, like anything else, like a car, anything you need to tune it up once in a while, so to make sure I'm doing that.
Doc, you will say Brian Hill from Aritzia when we come back. My Vanity Fair question: dinner for four people, living or dead, who would they be and why? You're with Bill, good on the Chorus Radio Network. [Applause] Ladies and gentlemen, final chance for questions now, so if you've been shy, this is your last chance, come up and ask a question.
Hi Brian, um, statistically, I think family businesses fail in the third generation more often than not. I'm a second-generation business owner, and I wonder how you think about that and how you look at your kids, and where do you see them in the Legacy?
I actually am third generation, so my my grandfather started the business of my father and my uncle used to run it, and uh, and so I actually am through a generation, as they're my brother and sister, and we're all fairly successful at what we've done so far. Um, you know, I think you just have to instill hard work in in your in your kids, and and I think that's important, whether it be whatever; I mean, people have to work for things, and nothing comes free, so I think it's important that you do that. Um, you know, I've struggled with that over the years, so because a business becomes so big at some point in time, you really wonder if it's advantageous to your children, and I think Aritzia has probably gotten to that point; it is not an easy job I have, and I managed to get a lot of coaching for a long time and managed to build it and learn a lot along the way. I think it's a little bit more difficult though now if somebody had to come in and and learn the business, and so I think there's challenges there, so I think it really depends on the circumstances of the people that are coming in. I think it depends on the circumstances, the size of the business, and it can be a challenge, and I I don't know if a lot of that has to do with a third generation, just with the numbers and the odds of coming here and you know a little less and less, and fourth generations probably fail even more than a third; I don't know, but uh, I I think it is instilling the right values and just making the right decisions; it's not for everybody as well.
And so would you want your kids to follow it?
I haven't really thought about it; my kids are still quite young, so I haven't really thought about it, um, but I do think about it from time to time, and I do really wonder how someone could come in and run the business later. And the thing about the fashion business, what's so difficult when you get a company the size of Aritzia or whether it be J.Crew or whatever, there's a balance you need to have both a business side and the creative side, and it's it's hard; you know, a lot of people don't have that side of things, and so it can be very difficult finding people. I mean, there's there's companies out there that have had CEOs for years and years and years, been looking for the right CEO for two, three, four years; it's, you know, and Mickey Drexler was successful at the Gap, and now he's successful at J.Crew, and the Gap's been struggling since he left; he struggled a little bit before he left too, but I've been struggling since he left, so there's not that, you know, the guy at Abercrombie, I admire a lot; I Mickey's seventy years old and closing in on 70. I think Mike Jeffries at Abercrombie is in his mid-70s; the guy from Zara is very old as well. Um, you know, it's funny, these fashion businesses, they're they're typical; they're run by, you know, a lot of people, older people, and it's it's because they do have that business and and creative side of them to them, and it can be very difficult finding people with that exposure nowadays.
So hi, um, you're touching up on Zara, and you're talking about creativity as a fashion and the business side, um, talking about Zara, they have a new line or they have a new, it's like walking to a new store every two weeks, and I want you to, I just want your opinion on that and what you think about, um, trends and how you implement or how Aritzia ended up. I need you to be quick.
Oh, sorry, I don't think I can answer that question quickly. Why don't we address it in the next break? How about that?
Hmm, six left. Final few minutes with Brian Hill, CEO of Aritzia. You can sit down with any four people, living or dead, to have dinner; who would they be and why?
The first would probably be, I mentioned earlier, I think it was at the break, but the CEO of Zara. They are unquestionably the best retail company, fashion company in the world. I don't think there's a close second; H&M is pretty darn good, but I think they're distancing themselves right now. Um, how they managed to do what they do is beyond me. I'll tell you a little quick story; I was in Madrid about 12 years ago, and I was walking down the street; I was at a trade show, and this massive truck or lorry or whatever they call them comes rushing by me, and I was on the street, and the sidewalk was under construction; I was on the street, so the thing missed me about two feet, and it scared me, and it pulled up about two blocks later; I was curious what was happening; I pulled up, and there was a Zara store, and out the back opens in about 15 gentlemen in white one-piece suits get out and walk into the store, run into the store, and take every single piece of merchandise out of the store; this thing was ten thousand feet and took it all out into one truck, and then took this whole other truck and completely flipped the store, and I looked at this thing; I almost started crying; I thought, "I got to compete with these guys; this is crazy," and uh, and then I remember I was at a trade show, another trade show in Iran; there's some people I knew from Israel at the time who were running up, and Zara had been there for quite a while, and the guy looked at me and said, I was telling him the story, and he goes, "Brian, there's life after Zara," and there is life after Zara, and it's a big market, and there's a lot of people, but they are just so good at what they do; it's just shocking to me.
Who else? Uh, probably Miuccia Prada. She's taken a family business, small handbag and shoe leather business, and turned it into a global concern. She manages to really set trends, even though, and and still focus on the creative side of things incredibly well from season to season, and manage, sometimes, you know, they're not as relevant as others, but incredibly well. Um, it's a fellow's name from uh, I could probably say Steve Jobs as well. Um, uh, well, the one thing I always remember when I read his book was the whole idea of of him caring about what was inside and how something looked and his aesthetic on things, and I think the aesthetic, uh, uh, in his care for the aesthetic and the thought process around building the back of the cabinet and something we've always tried to do at Aritzia's, structure things and set things up properly, and it costs us a lot more money, takes a lot more time, but in the long run, I think you're building something to last, but he really changed all our lives, didn't he? He did; he really did, even though I'm on a Blackberry still, he has changed a lot of other people's lives. Um, and the last one would probably be my wife, but if she was out of town, probably Kate Moss. There is uh, no woman who's in my opinion who is being in the in the fashion business as long as she has; she'd be modeling since we almost opened Aritzia; it's crazy, and you see her, and she still looks so young, but she is that aside on how beautiful she is; she is uh, her fashion sense is second to none in my opinion, globally, and she just always looks good, has different looks and everything else, and you need...
A woman at the table mentioned your wife and I didn't want to finish the day without talking a little bit. We've only got about a minute left, but she's very active in the community and in charity work.
Yes, my wife uh, actually started the Run for the Cure in Canada, in Toronto, in her basement. Since she's moved to Vancouver, and what she sometimes calls a prison sentence, she started a new charity. Coming down and visiting me on the Lower East Side, where our offices are, she saw a lot of difficulty, and so she started an organization called Cause We Care. It's causewaycare.org, and uh, she's been very successful with that. It's a charity that looks after uh, single mothers and enables them to get a better lot in life. I think they're doing a Mother's Day drive or something right now, and you can check that out as well.
And finally, you wanted to acknowledge a—I have a dear friend who's listening today. It's his birthday, Craig Anderson, and he's an important person in my life, and I just thought I'd call it out to him and say hello to him.
Brian, thank you for doing this. Thank you very much for having me.