Dress For Success Made Easy

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Anya Chang – Taelor.Style

Anya Cheng is the Founder and CEO of Taelor, a leading men’s clothing subscription service that provides personal styling and curated rentals, powered by expert stylists and AI. A Girls in Tech 40 Under 40 honoree, she previously led eCommerce and digital innovation teams at Meta, eBay, Target, and McDonald’s.
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Podcast Overview:

00:00 AI-Driven Men’s Clothing Service
05:49 AI-Driven Personalized Styling Service
06:59 AI-Enhanced Fashion Styling Data
11:25 Airport Attire: Casual Evolution
13:57 Pushing Fashion Boundaries
18:24 Fashion Sustainability and Concierge Expansion
21:29 Startup Success in Men’s Fashion Industry
24:17 “Rivalry: Northwestern vs. UChicago”
27:51 Early Struggles of a Startup Launch
31:37 Innovative, Sustainable Startup with Local Support
36:02 AI-Enhanced Fashion Styling Service
37:44 Eco-Friendly Clothing Rental Practices
43:04 Efficient Travel Clothing System
43:58 Emerging Taiwanese Textile Brands
47:11 Future Unicorn Exploring Potential Sale
50:25 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Rejection
54:28 “Appreciation for Package Logistics”

Podcast Transcription:

Anya Chang [00:00:00]:
Typical. AI doesn’t know the future. AI know the past. But then those 300 brand, they are designing the collection two years down the road. They are trendsetters for the work. We are like the executive assistant, they are concierge, they are butlers. So we really is helping them to get ready for their week. They are buying the MySpace, they are buying the time.

Anya Chang [00:00:18]:
They don’t want to look good actually, but they want to be successful. Our customers tend to start trying something new than before. A lot of guys when they signed up, we open their closet only blue. There’s nothing else, just blue. And they only have the same dress shirt, the same brand in the last 10 years. No one is going to interview us since we are so small. So I wait outside of a press room. When the reporter came out, I delivered my business card and said hey, this is our business which we haven’t started.

Anya Chang [00:00:44]:
At the time it was just idea. I follow up a few times. She said I’m really not interested in these stories. Please stop emailing me. Apple box come in. It does not come in with the name Apple outside because what they want to achieve is they want to prevent thief. They don’t want anyone steal those things.

James Kademan [00:01:00]:
Have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link funded drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie Calls on call Extraordinary Answering Service as well as the Bold Business book. And today we’re welcoming Slash preparing to learn from Anya Chang of Taelor Style. And Anya is going to tell us about the business of I’m going to dare say looking good but I guess you can tell me if that’s in the right realm here. So how’s it going today? Anya?

Anya Chang [00:01:35]:
Hello. Hello, this is Anya Chen from Silicon Valley, Founder and CEO of Taelor we are we use AI to pick clothes for men and after we pick the clothes we send you real clothes for you to wear for a couple weeks. Once you’re done you can buy the clothes or return the dirty clothes and get next shipments. No more shopping or laundry. Before starting the company two years ago I was mostly leading e commerce at big tech company most recently Meta where I helped build out Facebook Instagram shopping as a eBay’s head of product helped them to build out new business in the US new market in Latin America, Africa, Asia. Was a senior director for McDonald’s helped them to build a food delivery business when Ube just started and helped Target to launch his tech office here in Silicon Valley. I I’m excited to share more.

James Kademan [00:02:22]:
Yeah, that’s incredible. Tell me how did you end up going from the big players there to starting your own thing?

Anya Chang [00:02:29]:
You know the when I was working for those big tech company I felt a little bit imposter syndrome. I’m a woman in technology. I’m an immigrant from Taiwan. So sometimes I feel like and people thinking that I’m amazing boss and really want to feel confident and ready for the day. So I want to do great. I try some subscription boxes like Stitch Fix which you have to buy from every single shipment and I start using some rental company like I rent this from Armore Rent the Runway newly by Urban Outfitter which is a profitable unicorn. But all of those women’s rental company will mostly require women to pick clothes. So you have to browsing through thousands of garments.

Anya Chang [00:03:10]:
It was a hard moment for me that I realized most fashion companies are designed for people who are into fashion. Not for lazy people like me who just want to get ready for the day and be successful. So I research on who else think like me. Hey shopping. Hey laundry. Turn on this are those people they are single guy salespeople, podcast host, recruiter, pastor, professor who are not into fashion but need to look good because they are socially active and that’s why Taelor was born nice.

James Kademan [00:03:41]:
So when you when you started this was it geared specifically towards men or is it men and women?

Anya Chang [00:03:48]:
We only offer menswear but we do have 10% of our customer who are women who either signed up for their husbands or managers or for Hollywood studio or photo studio for the shows or they are husband wife to sign up for their husbands. Those wife used to be the person who have to do the shopping. They they hate doing those shopping too but their husband hate it even more. So now their wife actually signed up for the service for their husbands and sometimes even manage their accounts. Or we also have women who wear menswear and they are able to get those high quality menswear from 300 brand and they don’t have to go to the store. Sometimes they for women who wear menswear they feel when they go into menswear store so then now they have the customer service for them.

James Kademan [00:04:34]:
All right? Now if I’m understanding this correctly, you must have to warehouse a lot of clothing, is that right?

Anya Chang [00:04:40]:
That’s not true. Because keep in mind we are like a circular fashion. So most of our clothes are with customers or either on the way to the customer or back to our House. So we have a small warehouse. We do have 20,000 garments but then they are distributed to the customers all over the country. And so it’s like library, not every book in the library. And once you get into a library, those book it rent like borrows again the same thing. Your Uber, you get off the car, someone else get on the car.

Anya Chang [00:05:10]:
Share economy.

James Kademan [00:05:11]:
All right, tell me from an I guess help me understand how long have you been doing this on your own.

Anya Chang [00:05:17]:
Here we we launched about two years ago. So we now serve us nationwide and work with over 300 brands both in the US also and also globally.

James Kademan [00:05:27]:
All right, interesting. Okay, so tail end of the pandemic. Help me understand you have all these clothing pieces that people like. I don’t know what I’m buying as far as besides a T shirt or something like that. Help me understand who you have or maybe it’s you figuring out what pieces of clothing to actually offer people.

Anya Chang [00:05:49]:
Yeah. So we use technology like AI and also we have human stylists. So when customers sign up they will fill out a simple quiz. They the quiz will tell us about their a lot of information such as the high end weight which we don’t use a lot because most of a guy think they are taller and thinner and their high end weight tend to be wrong. So we also ask other questions like hey, can you go to your closet and pick your favorite outfit, tell me what brand, what size and also tell me what are the fit issues that you usually have. For example, oh, I usually sleeves too long, wear pants too tight and I wear Banana Republic T shirt size large. Then we usually have ideas that what the customers want. We also show them some pictures they can like dislike.

Anya Chang [00:06:36]:
They can scrolling through and upload some picture of themselves where the significant others were. The singers were actors, sport athlete who they love their outfits. And from there our AI will pick the perfect outfit based on the upcoming schedule.

James Kademan [00:06:51]:
Oh, that’s cool. That’s very cool. How do you train the AI I should say from the start.

Anya Chang [00:06:59]:
Yeah. So we do have our proprietary data because our customers every time when you just started. We have human stylists and human style that put a knowledge into the AI. And then we also acquired two companies, they have done human stylings for the last 10 years. They weren’t successful because it’s extremely hard to scale without AI but they do have low styling data. And also of course there’s a lot of styling data out there on the Internet on how to pair this with what we also have non biased customer feedback. You think of this when you go to when I was at Target where Facebook shopping or ebay, people buy something or not, it’s not because they like it. It’s actually mostly because of price.

Anya Chang [00:07:46]:
Anything you don’t need it. If it’s 90% off, you probably will buy it. You think someone else will need it, you will send someone as a gift. So pricing significantly polluted and influenced the customer favorite data. However, in our model, it’s more like why you decide what to watch on Netflix. You already pay a monthly fee. So when you watch your show is what you truly desire and you like, not because it’s on discount. So we do have this type of data because customer pay us a monthly fee and then they can wear say $100, they wear 10 clothes per month.

Anya Chang [00:08:19]:
So we have those unbiased data. We also got feedback from customers because it’s subscriptions like your Netflix, you tend to probably still hit like dislike to your show because you wanted to recommend some something that you will watch the same thing. You are going to get next shipment. So you’re going to provide feedback to help us to get the next shipment even better and tailored to your needs. And we got professional stylists. They have the know how we work with 300 brand. They know the future. Typical AI doesn’t know the future.

Anya Chang [00:08:51]:
AI know the past. Right. But then those 300 brand, they are designing the collection two years down the road. They are trendsetters for the world, so they know the future. So we combine all these data together and then put it on top of a large language model like OpenAI ChatGPT. We put it on top of them. So then we are always one step ahead. But as they grow, we also grow.

James Kademan [00:09:15]:
Interesting. So you mentioned you’re worldwide, is that right?

Anya Chang [00:09:18]:
We only serve customer nationwide in the US but we source brand worldwide so our customers can get the best brand in Italy, in Paris, in Singapore and Japan. That which are not available in the US before but only serve the US market.

James Kademan [00:09:35]:
All right, tell me about style of the like nation. The US is pretty big. So you got people on the east coast and west coast that I would say are more cutting edge fashionably than the middle of the country. So do you have to adapt at all like that or do you figure that the people that are getting a service like this are already on the cutting edge. So regardless of where they’re at, in.

Anya Chang [00:09:58]:
Fact our customer has in all different states. There’s no particular states, of course larger city has more customer because there are more people over there. But there’s a demographic. We are a customer as young as 60, as old as 85. We really don’t have a very diverse demographic. However, all of our customers have very specific lifestyle. They all socially active. They are either meeting with people for work or for dates.

Anya Chang [00:10:24]:
They are single guys, salespeople, pastor, recruiter, professor. They meet people so they need to dress up. It’s not like they are working from home and, or, and they never turn on their camera or it’s not like they are chef wear uniform most of the time. So they are people who does meet with other people and need to dress up. But they are also people who don’t read gq, they don’t know what they like, they have very little thing in their closet. They wear the same brand again again in last 10 years, they only know 5 brand like Lululemon, Nike, Uniqlo, Banana Republic. But so they want to expand their horizon. Actually they don’t like to wear the same thing in the last 10 years.

Anya Chang [00:11:03]:
But they also not so interested in spending time to figure out and learn about fashion. And that’s where we come in. We offer the service. So on the consumer side, what we really do is we are a service company. We are like the executive assistant. They are concierge, they are butlers. So we really is helping them to get ready for their way. They are buying the MySpace, they are buying the time.

James Kademan [00:11:25]:
Interesting. Tell me. So I was just joking with a buddy of mine because we were at the airport looking around the people at the airport, it seems like everybody, or not everybody, most people are just showing up at the airport in their pajamas. They got their little, I don’t even know, their little fluffy shoes on, they got their jogging pants on, they got their sweatshirt that’s probably about seven sizes too big. Looks like they just rolled out of bed. Where decades ago, going to the airport was almost a formal thing because it was a, it was a privilege to be able to go to the airport. Now people are just like whatever. So taking that from your experience, are there some people that just aren’t interested in dressing up regardless of where they’re going?

Anya Chang [00:12:10]:
Yeah, yeah, they are definitely those people. But most of our customers, they are ambitious, they, they have a dream, they are inspired, they want to success. They don’t want to look good actually, but they want to be successful. They want, when they go on the day, when they are single, when they go on a date, they feel they are ready. And when they are working, they still applying for the manager role. They’re getting promotions, salespeople they still eager to get deals. So for them trying anything to invest to make sure their day is perfect, their social life is successful, their also business is growing. This is one of the many investments.

Anya Chang [00:12:48]:
And it’s probably cheaper than their dry clean because if you learn like dry clean, 10 items per month probably will take you $100 already. Right? So it’s cheaper than dry clean. A lot cheaper. Definitely than personal stylists. As you know in the past, only celebrity can afford personal stylist. And on the other hand, when they are after they try the clothes they wear for a couple weeks when they buy something is a lot cheaper because it’s secondhand. So it’s still like new, but only been worn for a few times and still like very a lot cheaper than retailer price because it’s secondhand. So it’s doing good for the world to save the environment as well.

Anya Chang [00:13:26]:
So yes, for sure. And we also have customer who are. We also have people who are not customers are people who are rich eq. They are very passionate for fashion. They love to exploring new fashion. They love shopping. We previously heard a customer, he no longer became our customer because he really liked to go to a secondhand website and going through thousands of garments. But again, those are not typical men’s and so most of our customers are not interested in spending time in those places.

James Kademan [00:13:52]:
Fair. What do you like to see people or what do you like to see guys wear?

Anya Chang [00:13:57]:
It doesn’t matter. I think what we really see is that our customer tend to start trying something new than before. A lot of guy when they signed up, they only we open their closet only blue. There’s nothing else, just blue. And they only have the same dress shirt, the same brand in the last 10 years. So we tend to push them a little bit out of comfort zone. It’s rental, right? Just like your Netflix show. If you go on to buy a dvd, you probably want to make sure this home alone you’ll watch five times in the last few two years.

Anya Chang [00:14:27]:
But if you are just watching a show, why not give you a try for Netflix. Try those three minutes. If you don’t like it, so be it. Right? But in the same thing for us too. Like it’s rental. So our stylist will say, hey, I really think you should try this purple or brown, which mocha is the most popular color of the year by the way. So if you do have something brown, you can say I am mocha and I have mocha which is brown. And so try something different.

Anya Chang [00:14:56]:
And most of guy they will Be surprised that they actually look great in those stuff. Or floral. They never tried new prints, and now they have chance to wear. And you don’t have to marry to a clothes. You only wear it for a week.

James Kademan [00:15:09]:
Huh. That’s pretty slick. I can tell you. I wear a pink suit every once in a while.

Anya Chang [00:15:14]:
Wow.

James Kademan [00:15:15]:
Man. I’ve made more connections with that freaking suit.

Anya Chang [00:15:20]:
It’s a conversation opener.

James Kademan [00:15:22]:
Oh, my gosh, people. I’m gonna dare say some of the most introverted people in the world in a certain networking room. So maybe not the most introverted ever, but very introverted people that just look lost. You just walk by them with the pink suit, and they’re like, oh, my gosh. They’re just like magnets, and it is crazy. I bought it for a trade show, and now when I’m going to a networking event, I wear it on purpose because you just. It’s conversation starter. It’s incredible.

Anya Chang [00:15:50]:
Yeah. Icebreaker. Yesterday, we just met with one of our investor, and he said, oh, he started using a service, and somehow we send him floral. And when he received it, he wasn’t very happy. He’s like, what floral? I never wear any floral. And then he wears it out. And everyone said, this looks so great. And he’s like, okay.

Anya Chang [00:16:11]:
And it becomes conversation starter. Wow. You make a difference. You actually looks different today. It’s just a conversation starter and feel confident and change a bit.

James Kademan [00:16:20]:
No, I get it. I was judging a DECA conference, and I’m in this room at this convention center, whatever, and there’s probably, I don’t know, 12, 15 judges, something like that. I’m in a blue suit, and I look around me, everybody else in a blue suit. I’m like, these kids are gonna walk in here that we’re judging. They’re gonna walk in here and think they came into some IRS office or something like this, because just a bunch of people in the same blue suit, which is. I’m like, ooh. I’m one of the minions here. I gotta change this.

James Kademan [00:16:51]:
So I get it. That’s cool. That’s very cool.

Anya Chang [00:16:53]:
Yeah. One time we have a customer. He actually is an interior designer. So he sent us a whole bunch of picture of his interior design. And he said, I want my office. Talk about my brand, my personal brand. So we have customers send us picture of their wife and what they are, what their wife is renting. Their wife also using rental service, which from our competitors.

Anya Chang [00:17:15]:
And they. And they say, I want to match this type of style. We have people send us the conference Say hey this is a conference I’m going to will be a speaker this is other people make the best choices we have people tell us that this is a client who I’m meeting next week and almost like psychology you think about what color will actually entice them and feel like gray and exciting them we have people go to meeting and they say hey I want to fit in I am a consultant but the first thing as a consultant to do is to listen so but in order to make them talk to me I want to fit in so I don’t want something like su and tie I want something looks like these tech company’s employee but of course we also have people who just out of college and say hey I’m going on job interview please dress me up and but does not make me like black suit looks like I’m actually really junior so we. We have this situation all the time and that’s where the magic coming that is cool.

James Kademan [00:18:12]:
I love it Tell me about the accessories because I’m seeing your earrings but I imagine you have socks and the belt and maybe suspenders or something like that do you get involved with those as well?

Anya Chang [00:18:24]:
Not yet, but we will be very soon so today we offer those clothes from all over the world and before we have those clothes actually a lot of fashion brand today 30% of the clothes go directly from factory to landfill it create 20% of polluted water 10% of carbon emission for the world Fashion is not the most polluted industry One of the most polluted industry in the world is not one off is the one so fashion and in like like building these like construction is actually the both the most polluted industry in the world so today we help them to find new outlets and monetize those on so inventory but we also provide data to feedback so then they can stop producing John Nohua’s better to produce and talk about accessory and shoes yes our customers now are say hey you actually style me. You know my schedule you know I’m going on meeting next week you know I’m going this conference how about shoes accessories belt stuff that I’m not renting but can I just buy here because you are my executive assistant you are my concierge so yes we are expanding that so if you are listening you are amazing brand or from all over the world we would love to partner with you as long as it’s high quality so we will happy to be the one stop shop for our busy man Nice.

James Kademan [00:19:49]:
Tell me about the company name how did you come up with it and what what challenges you come in with getting the domain.

Anya Chang [00:19:57]:
Yeah. So when we were getting a naming entry was hard because I came from marketing background. I helped to naming a lot of product people actually use on Facebook. So it was not easy. We could have amazing idea but turned out most of our amazing idea was already registered. So we decided to go with a name. Taelor T A E L O R and our website is Taelor style T A E L O R dot S T Y L E Because Taelor it sounds like Tailor the custom suit guy. Right.

Anya Chang [00:20:28]:
So it’s individual because every guy actually get different clothes from us. We have 20 to 30,000 garments. So every time you picks or our stylist pick for you is actually different. Right. Every outfit is different, every box is going out is different. Although it’s not custom made but it’s like library. We already pick the perfect book for you. Right.

Anya Chang [00:20:49]:
So it’s tailored but at the same time Taelor is just a regular person’s name like Anya or like gems. Right. So we also think they’re representing you. Like we don’t want you to dress up but feel uncomfortable because it’s not you. We still want you to feel like gems still gems. But gems looks even better today and surprise this thing they get different attentions from people and good attention from people. So turn out that we go with Taelor.

James Kademan [00:21:17]:
Nice. I love it. Has it been a challenge I guess just since this Taelor essentially spelled differently. Has it been a challenge to tell people the website and get them to understand.

Anya Chang [00:21:29]:
Most of our customer founders we do pretty good on Internet. So if you even go on chat GPT you search of men’s fashion trend 2025 you actually the answer is from us for three two three years old startup is not easy but we I did I’m very lucky I did came from the background of working at Facebook ebay on my colleagues and now working for Googles and Amazon’s and all those big tech company. So I got a lot of kind of personal connections on experience, best practice and what to do with those things. And we also because our mission is on sustainability helping help people to achieve their dreams. We are woman found minority found companies and so we tend to get a lot of attractions in media. We are number one on GQ, Bloomberg, ABC. We are we have five star review in in Google Map and over 100 reviews for a startup. So we we got a lot of nature attractions from audience so we have been able to do that very well.

Anya Chang [00:22:32]:
But at the same time we know that’s not enough. So we are actually partnering with seven dating sites including Coffee Me Bagel and we plan to partner with more matchmaker, dating site, fitness center and also companies. So if you are company and you are looking for sustainable gift that help your employee to do good which they close the deal and also feel confident and higher performing while also saving the environment, then we would love to partner with you.

James Kademan [00:22:59]:
That is genius. That’s an excellent segue because I was going to ask you how have you marketed it, the dating site? That’s a genius idea. How do you. How did you initially get the name out there and how are you continuing to now?

Anya Chang [00:23:11]:
Yeah, so I think the story back to when a few years ago I went to TechQuanch conference. So we think that hey, getting our name out the best way is getting some press. But no one is going to interview us since we are so small. So I wait outside of a press room. When a reporter came out, I deliver my business card and say hey, this is our business which we haven’t started. At the time it was just idea. So eventually I did talk to a person and she said okay, we can keep in touch. I follow a few times.

Anya Chang [00:23:43]:
She said I’m really not interested in these stories. I please stop emailing me. So I stopped and a month after she circled back she said hey, I’m still not interested in the story but somehow my colleague actually interest in your story which she doesn’t understand why but here you go, you guys can connect. So I talked to the reporter is a, is a in WWD which is in the fashion industry, a trade publications. So we have the amazing conversation. He really gets it. I think perfect, we are going to get on the news. It never happened.

Anya Chang [00:24:17]:
So three months went by, we went on startup competition. So we won the west coast championship and we were ready to compete globally then at that time the host of the competition is actually University of Chicago where I graduate from. But I also graduated from Northwestern University and I teach in Northwestern University. And as you guys know, Northwestern and University of Chicago, they are like rivalry schools, right? They compete a lot. So I think hey, this could be a story point. Northwestern faculty compete in University of Chicago global final. So I submit the story to a school publication. Of course it’s easy to get on school publication.

Anya Chang [00:25:00]:
They publish news and the ABC News actually pick up from the school publications and become ABC News. So I took this ABC News back to the WWD reporter, the trade magazine and say hey, you interviewed me three months ago, you still haven’t published it? See someone publish it? Do you Want to use it to convince your boss and the person did. So we got a news came out from there. Leo was a vendor in Canada, saw the news and contact us become our first supplier.

James Kademan [00:25:30]:
Wow, that’s incredible.

Anya Chang [00:25:33]:
So many times people want to kind of be pick up and being like a stone and cross the river. Throw away and cross the river. But you know most of the story in entrepreneurship is that you it’s like stone under the water. You flee one time, one, one at a time and again and again again and eventually you are going to pass a river but not just one time.

James Kademan [00:25:54]:
Fair. Totally fair. So does that mean that you’re relying on essentially publicity and word of mouth or have you done any paid advertising?

Anya Chang [00:26:04]:
Yeah, we mostly doing the SEO. We do have a little bit paid search ensure people can find us. Given that we are pretty small, we haven’t done a lot of other pay marketing. Given that we are startup and we want to make sure we spend money mostly in on the customer’s hands on. They get quality clothes, they get great customer service, they get good shipping times. So a lot of through our customers referral. But definitely over time we will do more marketing and specifically probably other partnership with fitness center, dating sign matchmaker and also sell to the corporate.

James Kademan [00:26:39]:
All right, tell me about your team, the team that you have today.

Anya Chang [00:26:44]:
Yeah, we have a pretty small team. We are around 10 people companies and but mostly we hire from my previous colleagues at Meta, ebay and now work for Google, Facebook, those companies. So we are able to get really high quality talent because my previous 15 years of experience we also I have four two books for online courses and I teach in Northwestern University. So from time to time we have alumni and students and reach out and say hey, I really love your course. I’d love to work with you to learn even more. We also hire people from fashion industry as given that I don’t have strong fashion background. So we hire people from Stitch Fix or people who found like gaps and Pumas and Victoria Secrets so that they know those fashion brand that have amazing trainings before. And we also have people who is an era of remote working.

Anya Chang [00:27:40]:
So we were able to hire people globally as well.

James Kademan [00:27:43]:
Nice. So on day one when you started was it you or did you have a team on day one?

Anya Chang [00:27:51]:
Yeah, I started just me on the day one we have a few intern who were like my students or my readers who follow my book and social media and we use a lot of we call it minimum viable product to test hypothesis. For example we launch a landing page and there’s Nothing. No features on the landing page Besides the introduction of our service. There’s just a box where you can put your email get on the waitlist. So it was like two months before since Thanksgiving and right at Thanksgiving someone emailed me and say hey, I’m Michael and I am on the can you bump me up to your waitlist? I ignored it. I thought it was a scam because who want to use our service? We are nobody and we haven’t even launched your service yet. And at quiz around Christmas time the guy called me Somehow he had me on LinkedIn he found me and I accept and he saw my phone number and he called me, he said hey, I know your will list must be really popular. That’s why I have to wait for two.

Anya Chang [00:28:56]:
But I’m a real estate agent in San Diego. I really like the shorts on the dress shows on your website and can I get it? And every moment I realized wow, he’s a real customer. So we found them on the waitlist we went to department store, bought a whole bunch of stuff doing Christmas sale went into a post office, went in a long line everybody with a Christmas gift and we put into the post office box ship it to him. He became our first customer and from there we doing this and style over 100 customers. We learn from their feedback and we put together business plan based on their recommendations and use a business plan we pitch and raise $2 million to start.

James Kademan [00:29:37]:
Wow, that’s incredible.

Anya Chang [00:29:40]:
Yeah. We now are able to back by the investor of Spotify, Facebook, TikTok, hello Kitty and the founder of YouTube so we end actually getting the first VC like venture capital was that we talked to University of Chicago alumni and in that conversation I was supposed to ask him to refer us to his investor but I forgot in that conversation I was just trying to help him. I found the intrigue about his AI company so I introduced a whole bunch of customers to him. He’s doing security space so I introduced like bodyguard from my Facebook time where I bring Internet to the countries without Internet. So I connect him to our bodyguard. I used to live in Chicago so I connect him to the police stations, friends over there. And then so a month after he circled back and said hey Anya, thank you so much for those amazing referrals by the way, anything I can how what was the reason you reach out to me at the beginning? I said ah, I was trying to ask you for investor. So then he connect us to his investor in half an hour we got a million dollar Nice.

James Kademan [00:30:53]:
That is incredible ownership opportunities There when.

Anya Chang [00:30:57]:
You are not looking for so nice.

James Kademan [00:30:59]:
That’s perfect. It’s all who you know and who knows you I suppose right?

Anya Chang [00:31:03]:
Yeah yeah. And also good I think givers game if you are giving and the opportunity will come back fair.

James Kademan [00:31:11]:
Totally fair. Oh my gosh. Thousand times over. I want to shift gears to the logistics of how you make all this happen. So one people are getting the clothes that means that you have to ship them and I always joke that the world’s it’s a small world until you have to ship something and then all of a sudden it’s a very expensive world. So tell me what have been some of the things that you’ve gone through to figure out how to ship this efficiently and affordably.

Anya Chang [00:31:37]:
Yeah so we use Pulse Office so fairly reasonable in terms of the quality and shipping time and we also are we we do have a great relationship with local governments and given that we are like more innovations and we are we named by business journal as mostly innovative startup in the Bay Area. And we are also sustainability company and so we also giving back to the local community. We how like the local school getting internship program. We constantly being on the speakers or panel we’re hosting student tour to our office etc. So the local government has been pretty friendly for us and for the and that means that we are able to get some support and sorry, the question was shipping. Shipping I guess they afford the local government are very close to the post office as you know because they are like government system. So then the post office is quite friendly. For example we are able to allow us to pick the time of shipping and so then they come and pick it up twice a day based on our schedule or sometimes if the item were for example after we ship out but we realize the customer actually roll the wrong address then we are able to sometimes if it’s still local we are able to retrieve back the package which definitely not easy.

Anya Chang [00:33:04]:
So think supporting the community does allow us to also have the local connection and which getting a little bit more favorable treatments and helping getting these things too. But over time we are definitely also exploring other options and partner with others in laundry company shipping companies and so open minded.

James Kademan [00:33:27]:
Okay, tell me about the packaging because I imagine that packaging gets beat up going back and forth. Do you have to use new packaging each time or is it you kind of figure out like hey this box is good for another shipment or how does that work?

Anya Chang [00:33:39]:
Yeah actually we thought about this and tested out in the last two years and I think so when people think about your packaging you should think about what you really were trying to achieve using your packaging. For example, you see the Apple box coming. It does not come in with the name Apple outside. Right? Because what they want to achieve is they want to prevent thieves. They don’t want anyone still steal those things. And for our customer, they are actually busy men who are not very into. It’s not like gifting experience or what. So for them we actually asking would you like a fancy box or what? And turn out the answer was no one care.

Anya Chang [00:34:15]:
So what we do was we pick the the box we actually use back. No, no box. Why? Because what we found was number one, if they don’t have like the locker rooms, then they can potentially get put the bag and put into their mailbox. So it’s small enough. Because if summer like five items is pretty small. So if their mailboxes have a certain size, they actually be able to fit in. Which means it is less likely to be stolen. Or for example, if they get put on the porch, then if it rains, if it’s like paper box, it’s going to be soaked.

Anya Chang [00:34:54]:
But then if it’s plastic, it’s actually better. Of course it’s recycled. Using recycled material. And then sometimes for customer who support sustainability, we ask them it can be usable. You can use the same bag coming back. At one point, we try to implement for every customer. But customer also complain because they found sometimes when they open it was already wrapped off or after shipping for two days they feel that they arrive pretty dirty. Of course everyone’s definition of dirty is different.

Anya Chang [00:35:24]:
So sometimes people don’t want to use it again. But in general we try to use the sustainable environment items but also help customer feel easy and doing the job to be done to fulfill their needs.

James Kademan [00:35:36]:
That is interesting. I love that you talked about the presentation of the packaging is where like how you mentioned a lot of the cell phones the packaging is very elaborate and an argument could be made. It’s wasteful, but it’s almost an event to open up this new phone and all that kind of stuff where clothing, they’re just like I want the clothes, I want them fast. The packaging, whatever.

Anya Chang [00:36:02]:
Still get is though they do get a paper and the paper that our stylists actually will talk about how to pair these items. So you still come in with like surprise factors like oh yeah, my stylist actually talked to me of course is half generated by AI. So stylists only need to do minor like minor customization. But it also allows customer feel like hey, I actually know how to wear this you remember that I have this conference coming in birthday party that I’m coming in where customer even get birthday gift from us because they we know their birthday when they sign up as most of our customers want to make sure their clothes is age book appropriate for them. So we also get those information. So I think the surprise factor coming in from other things versus the packaging also when they return because in our model they wear for a couple of weeks they back while they love but then return the rest. So if it’s a box then they have to go to a post office return or go on the apps to ask for picking up from the post office. But if it’s actually placed back they can actually dump into any post like box on the street, the blue box on the street.

Anya Chang [00:37:15]:
So it’s actually a little bit easier for some customers.

James Kademan [00:37:18]:
So you include the return shipping tag.

Anya Chang [00:37:21]:
That’s right.

James Kademan [00:37:21]:
I guess I’m just picturing the old days with Netflix back when DVDs.

Anya Chang [00:37:25]:
That’s right, that’s right.

James Kademan [00:37:26]:
You the red envelope.

Anya Chang [00:37:27]:
That’s right, that’s right. So it’s like that.

James Kademan [00:37:30]:
All right, very cool. And then do you tell me about the cleaning process Because I imagine you get all these clothes back and somebody’s got to open those up and divvy up like this one’s got a tear, this one needs to be cleaned. How do you keep track of all that?

Anya Chang [00:37:44]:
Yeah, everything come back need to will be clean. Even if the customer sometimes maybe they never wear the item for some reason they just happen to have opportunity where sometimes it’s just not not perfect for that week. So everything will be washed. We tend to use laundry versus dry clean. Dry clean is a little bit more harmful for the environments. So we try to not dry clean and with a lot of chemistries and so laundry and every item is being inspected and but usually they are pretty new because on average when the item gets sold it’s only been renting for three times. So just like your airport rental car most of the time when you rent those car they are still pretty new because the the rental car company tried to sell the car before it get too old. The same thing we roll the price so most customer will buy the clothes pretty fast.

Anya Chang [00:38:36]:
And from there we laundry in half days and you get to other customers right away. Just like your Ubers or your hotel you check out and now next person will sleep on the same bed.

James Kademan [00:38:49]:
Nice. The other next question I have for you is as far as organization goes, you’re keeping track. Did you say 20,000 or 30000 garments. That’s a lot.

Anya Chang [00:38:58]:
That’s right. That’s right.

James Kademan [00:38:59]:
So you got all those that are being shipped, they’re all over the country. Some are being shipped back, some are being shipped to, some are in cleaning, some are on the shelf waiting to go out. How do you keep track of all that?

Anya Chang [00:39:11]:
Yeah, so we have amazing system. I did came from background of building technology build Facebook, Instagram shopping and ebay’s new like the website for Latin America Africa. So building technology has always been company’s DNA given there was my background. So we every item coming, we actually have a special like unique, unique codes for the clothes. So every item, even though it looks the same, every item is different because this might be running three times while the same item the other one running four times for example. So every item is being tracked. So we know when to make sure we inspect to see if it’s too old. We also know that the item needs to be adjusted pricing so then the customer will buy it feel reasonably priced.

Anya Chang [00:40:02]:
We also know the quality of the item. So then we give the feedback back to the brand and manufacturer. So then they know sometimes for example they say hey, my T shirt can wear 90 times. And we say no, no, no. Actually your bottom can only last for 10 times even though your T shirt is there, but then the bottom is not. So we give those very specific feedback to the fashion brand. And that’s why in the past because they don’t have a lot of feedback in the past. So that’s why there’s a lot of inventory over production because people don’t buy but people don’t specifically go back and tell them say hey, because this area will get a little bit itchy or this area has a little bit more tear and wear.

Anya Chang [00:40:42]:
So I think with us to giving those information we are able to help those brands to do better and also improve our operations.

James Kademan [00:40:50]:
Nice. As far as turnover goes of your inventory, what percentage let’s just say annually is actually purchased just by your customers.

Anya Chang [00:41:01]:
Every item go out for like five items. I one or two items get sold and when item gets those only been renting for three times. So we are able to get pretty quick turnaround. Given that we are also growing startups. So most of item coming very news and brand brand new. So then we constantly given that we have new customer all the time. So we keep adding new inventory. And also because we are membership so we know our member first.

Anya Chang [00:41:27]:
So James signed out. Then we know okay, James like these because he want to wear for podcasts. So we will source for our customer versus the hour run. In E commerce you tend to get a clothes and waiting for the customer to buy. But no in our cases that we source for our members. So those items tend to be 90% utilizations rate when doing the on seasons close and then we try to do clearance sales before season is is gone. So then we don’t carry another year because half year for those clothes and also good for the customer they can buy something with some discounts that makes.

James Kademan [00:42:03]:
I didn’t even think about seasons. Oh my gosh, I’m in Wisconsin. I didn’t even think about seasons. Interesting. Tell me next about. Yeah, right. Tell me about the I guess use of iron or steamer or something like that. Because a lot of these clothes I guess in my experience the fancier ones, even though they say wrinkle free, they’re not exactly wrinkle free.

James Kademan [00:42:28]:
So sometimes you got to give them a little attention especially if you have to fly with it or something like that to knock the wrinkles out. And I had to learn how to do that. I didn’t. I don’t know how I lived my life for a few decades without knowing how to iron something but apparently I did. I guess T shirt and jeans will do that. So how do you work that out with people like me that are just Neanderthals when it comes to clothing to make sure that they’re showing up wrinkle free in these nice clothes.

Anya Chang [00:42:55]:
Yeah. So first of all, if people traveling what I do is really just update the address. So we ship to the hotel. They don’t even.

James Kademan [00:43:02]:
Oh nice. Okay.

Anya Chang [00:43:04]:
So usually there’s not a lot of travel issue because they ship there and after they are done they put into return envelope and give it to hotel lobby. They go home without doing laundry. So when they are home like in the days they already get the new clothes they are ready to wear. But we do it’s good things that we do work with over 300 brands and we know about the quality right away given that customer give us feedback. So if it’s something that is more wrinkling that the manufacturing brand knows and then we stop sourcing those things. So we tend to be quickly know about what are the best performing clothes and also allow those brands from all over the world that are high quality and really really good be able to find a home here. So for example have a brand called Fine. FY is actually by one of the most biggest conglomerate back in Taiwan.

Anya Chang [00:43:58]:
And as people may know like Taiwan is actually those the a lot of company actually produce like Lululemon. And Nike is one of the most popular most successful textile like the area in the world. So they actually launched their own brand. Obviously no one heard about them in the US but they are high quality. And so then you get a chance for them to enter a new market for customer get a chance to try thing because they actually some of them are actually Lululemon’s manufacturer anyway. So we were able to bridge the two. So for customer who hate doing ironing. Actually we iron it before you go out.

Anya Chang [00:44:35]:
Right now it’s still a little bit manual. Given that we are pretty small. But we also know plenty of like machines then so when we are bigger we will acquire more machine. Or we might partner with laundry company dry clean companies or women’s rental companies since they are really good in operation. They already serve 30,000 customers each. And so we might actually partner with Rent the Runway Armors or newly buy Urban Outfitter.

James Kademan [00:45:02]:
Nice. Does the once the item is shipped in the bag does it end up being wrinkly or do the items end up being wrinkly or they they travel?

Anya Chang [00:45:12]:
Well, it depends. Most of time you still good pretty good condition that conviction because you got irony before. Like when you buy just like you sometimes people buy new clothes from Amazon or something, right? Most people don’t iron again before wearing the clothes. The same thing. Right. So because you go out you should be the same condition as the new clothes. Of course you do have a little bit situation happens sometimes if people live really far in east coast and and after they ship to this location. Sometimes it got redirects etc, but it really depends.

Anya Chang [00:45:47]:
And. But we tend to not sourc stuff that is too easy to be wrinkling because we know the shipping is needed. But it really depends on the customer. But we teach them a simple trick. All you need to do is hang up and put in while you are showering. And even if you don’t do the ironing, you should be fine.

James Kademan [00:46:07]:
The steam will take care of it.

Anya Chang [00:46:09]:
Exactly. Yes.

James Kademan [00:46:10]:
You know, it’s so funny you say that because my kid asked me because I was doing that same thing and he asked me why does steam what magic is the steam doing to make your clothes less wrinkly? And I’m like I don’t know. I gotta look online because I don’t know what’s happening. But it works. But I really don’t know it works. I don’t know if you happen to know why that is.

Anya Chang [00:46:33]:
I don’t. But for woman’s and we know that we do when we style our hair. We do get weight but before we style. So I guess it’s the same thing.

James Kademan [00:46:41]:
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Anya Chang [00:46:43]:
So my hairstylist told me that if you want the hair looks good, you have to dry all the way, not dry halfway because then whatever the style of halfway is going to stay with you after it’s dry. So if you want to style, make sure you dry the hair all the way.

James Kademan [00:46:59]:
All right. When you don’t have much hair, it’s not that big of a deal.

Anya Chang [00:47:02]:
So you should be easy to achieve it.

James Kademan [00:47:04]:
Yeah, right. Tell me Anya, from a growth point of view, where do you see the business in three to five years?

Anya Chang [00:47:11]:
Yeah, we see our we potentially being we are a unicorn. In five years public company will be sold to company where that does have operation expertise like Amazon Ubers or company does have inventories resources such as brands who are fashion brand do have inventory because then they can operate the business cheaper than we do. We also potentially so can sell our business into technology to technology company like, like ebay or other like the platform companies and also potentially be able to get into research company because we actually research for a lot of brands. So think of that. When they send clothes to us, we send the feedback back. Very specific feedback like you need to change your second button because it’s what. Right. So we become a research data company over time.

Anya Chang [00:48:06]:
So we have been talking to those big, those companies active and learning about the experience and feedback. And so we are back by top vc. So so far we are on track to be a unicorn in five years.

James Kademan [00:48:18]:
Nice. That’s incredible.

Anya Chang [00:48:19]:
Thank you. But lots of work to do. So anyone who want to partner with us and we would love to work together to accelerate.

James Kademan [00:48:27]:
Nice. Super cool. Tell me. Oh my gosh, I forgot the what I was going to ask you here. Oh, so you started a few years ago. Tell me what have been some of the things that you learned that you didn’t necessarily anticipate from starting this business?

Anya Chang [00:48:41]:
I think so. I won’t say not anticipate but I would say still new and for me still learning. Being a startup founder is hard and what does it mean is yes, it’s a lot of time and work but I used to be work colleague for big companies. Anyway I work for Facebook which is known for are very very bad work life felons. So I’m pretty used to it. I travel over 150 days a year in before. So always sleep in the hotel and on airplanes in airport. So I’m pretty used to it.

Anya Chang [00:49:19]:
But mentally is different when you are working for big companies and everyone want to please you, right? They want to work with you. I mean Facebook or they want to work for you like being hired as a tenth hell a of. So almost everywhere you go people are very nice to you and want to talk to you. But in fact they always want to talk to someone from Facebook. Not Anya, right? But after you became a startup founder, no one care about Taelor who care about who knows Taelor style Taelor AI never heard of it Startup. Oh, let me give you some lessons. Because everyone want to give startup founder some lesson, right? So it’s very, very different. And you get rejected all day long.

Anya Chang [00:49:58]:
Your intern say oh you know, I just got another intern opportunity at Google. Bye. Right. You got your vendor say you didn’t buy enough. So we decided to raise your price where we cut the now you have to change your payment terms, right? You talk to investor of course like 5 out of 10 say no to you or more. Right. So again and the customer too. Like you convince a customer and we’re customer service and people were saying no that I don’t want to continue for whatever reason.

Anya Chang [00:50:25]:
So you hear about no and rejection all the time. And you will start making you doubt that am I doing the right things? Am I good? Am I qualified? Am I a successful person? Right. So I think at the beginning, for example we went on startup competition and I practiced a competition with 42 formal judges. I found them on the Internet, I asked for appointments, my pitch was perfect. But when I went on the competition, the judge asked me a question. I stunned because in my head I wasn’t trying to answer the question. I was trying to find. Oh, this question the practice judge 37 asked me and I wrote down the answer in Appendix 22 because I didn’t believe that I could answer.

Anya Chang [00:51:15]:
I was trying to find answer from someone else. I didn’t believe that I am qualified to answer the question. In fact, when I go home, I totally know the answer of the question. But I didn’t believe when I was in the competition and of course we lost it. We were about supposed to get the. We are about to get the global championship but we lost it. $100,000 gone. But it was a great lesson because I learned that I am actually better than myself.

Anya Chang [00:51:43]:
I need to trust myself in order for other people to trust me. And I think that has been very hard, challenging and I try to learn and remind myself myself every single day.

James Kademan [00:51:53]:
That is so, so, so true. That is cool. I love that. I mean That’s a lot. That’s a lot. It’s challenging. I feel like there’s some people that believe that once you start your business you just get a yacht and a private jet. It’s just a light switch like that.

James Kademan [00:52:07]:
But that is not the case turns out. So that is cool. What have been some things that just happen to go your way that you didn’t necessarily expect.

Anya Chang [00:52:19]:
I think my work becomes different in terms of, you know, when I was working for big companies I don’t see much in my community because everything seems so natural and perfect. But when I became a startup founder, after I became startup founder we start having to say okay hey, looking for packers for the warehouse house. There’s not enough blue collar worker which is a big problem in the Bay Area. There’s not. There’s easier to find engineer than someone to packings. So like and I we really start seeing like oh today post office late. Oh wait, what should we do? Oh wow, it’s raining. So now we are warehouse now have leaking.

Anya Chang [00:53:03]:
We need to inform the landlord. So I start seeing stuff that I didn’t see before. Not gonna but I start seeing stuff for example now I see people in my community that I see people who do the grass. I see people who send the delivery of Amazon guy coming in. I see the light bulb being changed which is those things. I never saw it before because I It’s just so nature to be part of life. In fact our convenience of life is contributed by hundreds of people every day. But you don’t appreciate it, you don’t see it until you became a startup founder because you know for the customer to get a perfect package, there’s the engineer behind building this technology.

Anya Chang [00:53:46]:
There is someone washing your clothes. Someone pull the tags on, someone style you. Someone build the AI someone hand hide. Someone iron your clothes, someone pack the packaging, someone ship the packaging. Someone check. Someone send you an email through. There is someone write copywriter behind for writing those content. And it takes lots of people to get a perfect moment for you.

Anya Chang [00:54:09]:
So I start being more appreciating for my life and have empathy for those things. And I used to be angry customers like why I got his package back. Now I oh wow. They probably have that. I have more empathy for the life and more appreciation for life. I think that’s something very different from before I was a founder.

James Kademan [00:54:28]:
I love it. Oh my gosh, Anya, that is super awesome. To understand how many stars have to align for something simple as clothing to be shipped in the mail. It seems like whatever throw a Package together, what’s the big deal? But it’s amazing how many things have to happen and how many people are involved in systems and programs and all that jazz. That’s amazing. I love that. I used to joke that everyone should have a minimum wage job for 10 hours a week.

Anya Chang [00:54:56]:
Week.

James Kademan [00:54:57]:
Just so you understand, I mean, it doesn’t matter what the job is, but just so you understand, some of these, some of these jobs, that kind of keeps you grounded to help you understand, like somebody’s behind that thing, whatever it is.

Anya Chang [00:55:12]:
I remember when I was working for McDonald’s as a senior director, I built a technology. They require everyone to work in the store. And remember the day when I was working in the store, I was flipping my burgers and doing my fries and I feel exhausted and I feel like finally my day is over. And I look at the clock, it’s only 10 o’ clock in the morning. What is it, 6pm already?

James Kademan [00:55:48]:
A little more time. Keep them going.

Anya Chang [00:55:50]:
I know. I said what? The time is going by so slow.

James Kademan [00:55:56]:
Somebody check the battery in that clock. Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. So, Anya, where can people find you?

Anya Chang [00:56:03]:
Yeah, you can find me on Anya@taelor.ai. That’s T A E L O R A I. Or check out our website. Taelor style. T A E L O R S T Y L E. You can use. Use a code podcast 25 p o d c a s t podcast 25. You get 25% of first months.

Anya Chang [00:56:25]:
Check out the gift as well. And Father’s Day is around the corners. Why not give something? Give, keep on giving. The best gift is time to save your loved ones time and save the environments. Taylor our style.

James Kademan [00:56:37]:
Nice. I love it. And where. Tell me about the Taelor AI.

Anya Chang [00:56:42]:
Yeah, just the company email. It goes with Taelor AI because it’s powered by AI, so a little bit easier for internal usage.

James Kademan [00:56:51]:
Nice. Very cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Anya, for being on the show.

Anya Chang [00:56:56]:
Thank you so much, James. And wish everyone a very successful adventure.

James Kademan [00:57:02]:
True, true story. It’s all in good fun. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and reception services for service businesses across the country on the web https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur and all of us available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor. Give it a big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those men that probably need a little bit of fashion help, which, I mean, what is that, like 98 of them? 99, whatever. A lot.

James Kademan [00:57:47]:
Myself included. We’d like to thank your wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Anya Chang of Taelor Style. Anya, can you tell us that website one more time?

Anya Chang [00:57:55]:
It’s Taelor Style T A e l o r dot s t y l e https://Taelor.style podcast25 for 25 off first month.

James Kademan [00:58:03]:
I love it. Thank you so much for that. It past episodes can be found morning, noon and night with podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.