May 1, 2023 · 1h 18m · how-i-built-this
Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Suitsupply founder and CEO Fokke de Jong, exploring how he disrupted the global luxury menswear industry through vertical integration, bold retail improvisation, and direct-to-consumer value.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 34.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 1.5 Guy pushing back 2.2
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:17 Dismissing large corporate training
De Jong firmly rejects the premise that staying at Procter and Gamble would have aided his entrepreneurial career, arguing big corporations mostly teach internal politics rather than real execution.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:03:15 Challenging Suitsupply's scalability limitsRaz directly challenges de Jong's refusal to enter wholesale department stores, pressing that avoiding wholesale permanently caps the brand's global scale.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:30 Exposing traditional fashion markup inefficienciesDe Jong walks Raz through the math of textile ordering and wholesale margins, showing why identical luxury fabrics ended up costing four times as much in conventional luxury department stores.
Guy holds their own ▶ 1:00:59 Citing Michael Kors wholesale expansion modelRaz brings deep industry insight by citing fashion designer Michael Kors's multi-billion dollar wholesale strategy to question why Suitsupply remains exclusively direct-to-consumer.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selling Dorm Room Suits and Corporate Cold Calls | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Raz asks targeted clarifying questions about de Jong's early distribution model, prompting de Jong to detail how he expanded from college dorm sales to cold-calling corporate offices. | |
| Uncovering Industry Inefficiencies and Quitting P&G | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | De Jong educates Raz on the structural inefficiencies of traditional fashion retail markups, explaining how fabric overestimates allowed factories to sell surplus runs before D2C existed. | |
| The Limitations of Corporate Experience | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Raz tests the thesis that corporate training at P&G is valuable, but de Jong dismisses the premise, arguing corporate work is mostly internal politics rather than entrepreneurial learning. | |
| First Highway Store and the Blueprint Forgery | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Raz playfully calls out de Jong for an amateur mistake regarding zoning codes, leading to de Jong recounting how he forged municipal blueprints with a pencil to keep his highway store open. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser and Call to Follow | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Raz questions the logic of taking a modest 200,000 euro investment given Suitsupply's revenue, and de Jong clarifies how working capital and fabric pre-financing tie up cash. | |
| Retail Expansion and the Ogier Lawsuit | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz contextualizes regional European fashion retail dynamics, and de Jong details how turning competitor Ogier's legal threat into free publicity accelerated growth. | |
| Venturing into London and the Savile Row Stunt | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | De Jong shares the humorous failure of a theatrical PR stunt bolting a bed above London's Savile Row and hiring fake shoppers until organic word-of-mouth took root. | |
| Relocating Manufacturing to Wenzhou, China | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | De Jong reframes perceptions of Chinese manufacturing, vigorously defending Wenzhou's craftsmanship against Italian factory decline despite severe early logistics crises. | |
| Overcoming Industry Skepticism and the Heineken Effect | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Raz pushes on consumer skepticism toward lower price points, prompting de Jong to use the Heineken effect analogy to explain how non-conformist early adopters established brand credibility. | |
| Preparing for the US Market and Soho Loft Search | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz and de Jong discuss navigating the treacherous New York commercial real estate scene and securing a non-traditional Soho second-floor lease from a notorious landlord. | |
| Mid-Roll Sponsor Break and Episode Setup | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | De Jong describes capitalizing on the breakthrough Wall Street Journal blind test review by putting down a cash deposit to bypass permit hold-ups for the Soho launch. | |
| Tailor Training, Culture, and the Sun and Moon Paths | 4 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Raz probes staff retention challenges in retail, allowing de Jong to break down Suitsupply's unique operational philosophy dividing staff into Sun and Moon career tracks. | |
| Protecting Brand Integrity by Rejecting Wholesale | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Raz uses Michael Kors as a benchmark to challenge de Jong on wholesale scalability limits, but de Jong rejects wholesale, likening Suitsupply to an execution-intensive advisory firm. | |
| The Pitfalls of Cheap Debt and Overexpansion | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Raz questions the logic of scaling store counts under tight margins, and de Jong explains the danger of cheap debt distorting operational focus and execution quality. | |
| Surviving the Pandemic with Look Builder and Elevated Casual | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz asks whether Suitsupply considered pivoting into athleisure during pandemic lockdowns, but de Jong explains their deliberate pivot into digital look-building and elevated casual wear. | |
| Maintaining Full Ownership and 16-Hour Workdays | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Raz presses de Jong on why he continues to work 16-hour days and refuses private equity buyouts, leading de Jong to emphasize personal independence and operational control. | |
| Family Life, Personal Sacrifices, and Entrepreneurial Spirit | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz and de Jong close with reflective personal questions about parenting sacrifices, work ethic, and the interaction between relentless hard work and entrepreneurial luck. |
Statements from this episode (21)
De Jong sold early suits inside Dutch National Bank and Heineken
“No, we went all the way up to, you know, even I remember having events in the Dutch National Bank. And the Heineken.”
Italian luxury suit factories skimmed excess fabric for unbranded secondary sales
“And he made this sort of deal where the factory in Italy was producing suits for some of the bigger brands, right? And they would tell these brands yeah, well, you give me this cloth to make you a product, and we need 3.1 meter to make this product. But in rea…”
Luxury retail markups and middlemen inflated suit prices by four times
“They made a product for a brand, and then this brand goes into a trade show, and these trade show, the customers, and there's agents bringing in these customers, or agents selling it to, you know, independent stores again, and if you then add it all up, becaus…”
De Jong estimates 60 percent of corporate effort goes to internal politics
“50, 60% of the effort in an organization like that goes to the political process, right? Positioning yourself well and all that kind of stuff. It's not just doing stuff, right?”
Suitsupply is now the largest customer of major Italian luxury fabric mills
“And now our business is by far the biggest customer of all these mills in Italy.”
De Jong forged municipal zoning blueprints to save first Suitsupply store
“And so then I thought, ok, I took a pen, I practiced as long as I could, To, you know, have almost the same handwriting as the unit where it was store written in, and I just penciled store in my unit. And then I went back to the municipality and said, but guys…”
Dutch luxury retailer Oger sued Suitsupply over a cheeky directional advertisement
“And then we had an ad that says, For a beautiful suit, you go to Auger, and then you'd take a left and a right. All right, basically just a route to go to our store. And it was sort of a little bit of a pun and we're joking. And it was a little tongue-in-cheek…”
London's Savile Row was strictly designated for traditional English tailors only
“I wanted to open a store on Savile Row, and funny thing with Savile Row was actually that, that store was designed, designated by the Crown of London, that could only have traditional English tailors there.”
Suitsupply hired actors to pose as customers for its initial London store
“So then I started hiring actors to be in the store, to sort of browse around, and sort of, we had some dynamic happening”
De Jong claims Suitsupply's Chinese factory surpassed Italian factories in quality
“This was, you know, something I'm like, I've never seen some, so much quality and so much detail before. It was probably one of the best factories I've ever seen. Better than ever, anything I've seen in Italy.”
Logistics and customs nightmares in China nearly bankrupted Suitsupply early on
“So everything was, you know, the quality was great, the craftsmanship was great, but everything else around it was a nightmare. I almost tanked the business with it.”
Ground-floor retail rents in Soho were $2 million annually around 2010
“That was sort of the ballpark, 1.52 million a year.”
Suitsupply secured its first Soho lease for $250,000 with a six-month break
“And this landlord was very happy to give me a year lease with a six-month break, and if I couldn't make it after six months, I could happily walk away. 250,000 dollars.”
WSJ blind test rated a $600 Suitsupply suit equal to $3,600 Armani
“There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal that did a blind test on suiting. And we got out of that contest with a headline that a 600 dollar suit supply suit was better or just as good as a 3600 dollar Armani.”
Suitsupply requires new retail hires to complete nine weeks of structured training
“We have a relentless high-end training program where we bring everybody to our one-week onboarding program. When you finish that, you're brought into a store, and you're paired with what we call a style expert, and you're getting, for two months, more and more…”
Suitsupply trains its retail style experts to become Instagram influencers
“You can become a style expert in, in, in training other people, but you can also become what we call a key opinion leader, where we train you in how to represent the brand on social media or on outside of the store, where you basically become sort of a I would…”
De Jong personally visits 80 percent of Suitsupply stores every six months
“I go to my stores.
Every six months.
I'm not saying all the stores, but probably 80% of them.
And, of course, we celebrate everybody's success, but everybody has to name two things that we can do better.”
Suitsupply raised cheap debt to sit on $50 million in liquid cash
“When those rates were so low, and money was abundant, you could, you know, suddenly from a constantly cash-strapped business, we raised a lot of debt, and suddenly we had a lot of cash. You know, I've never had, like, you know, let's say just a fifty million s…”
Simultaneously expanding US stores and launching womenswear damaged Suitsupply's growth momentum
“We did a year when we opened I think, We have 10 or 12 stores in the U.S. When we only had 10 or 12, then, you know, at the same point, we started, you know, figuring out and opening a women's line, and it was few women's stores, and we did too much. And inste…”
Suitsupply's sales dropped by approximately 40 percent in 2020
“Your sales fell initially about 40% in, in that year.”
De Jong argues elevated casual wear makes menswear coordination harder than suits
“People still want to have looks, right, and it's just going to get a lot harder for them, because before it was a blue suit and a white shirt, and now it's suddenly, you know, trousers, chinos slip-ons. White sneakers or slip-ons or whatever, five pairs of dif…”