The Exchanges

Q Eventually, Jen's dad was able to join the family in New Jersey. Her mom opened up a dentist's office and her dad ran the business side. And Jen started to settle into her new life in America. Did you, as a kid, did you, like, were you immersed in Filipino culture, or?

A No, totally the opposite. Um, I think, I think there was, like, two different experiences of immigrant kids, and there are the ones who embrace it, and, um, there are the ones like me who are just immensely embarrassed of, of the experience, and I think it had a lot to do with, you know, the other kids at school, or, like, wanting to fit in, or, but, you know, I, I only spoke English. I would, like, get mad at my parents when they would cook Filipino food because it would make, like, my school jacket, um, like, smell like food. And I was just I don't know, I was like, I was a kid, and I was just so embarrassed of the whole thing, um, and you kind of don't come to terms with that until you're, like, in your early twenties.

AI assessment note: “No, totally the opposite.”

Q So, so what, what happened? What did you, I mean, were you just kind of waiting to, to figure it out?

A Yeah, I was waiting to figure it out. I always promised myself that I would only work on things that made me happy, especially after my dad passed away. It was like really important for me to, to spend my time doing things that I was really passionate about, and I knew that had kind of dried up for me in this opportunity. And so I left, I left All Saints, and I was still living in London, um, kind of for a finite amount of time, because My visa was going to expire. So I started interviewing for jobs. Um, I interviewed for, like, VP of marketing, like CMO jobs at companies of all different sizes, and during this, I, I was completely just on a tear around the world, um, splitting my time between interviewing and, like, going on vacation. Um, so I'm in Zurich airport, and My bag breaks, and it was this old bag that I'd had, um, like, since college, I guess.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I was waiting to figure it out. I always promised myself”

Q Did you, did you come up with the name already at that point?

A I feel like everyone's always looking for, like, some wild story about how I came up with it, but as I was doing my research, I was, like, trying to stay organized, and I made, like, a folder on my computer, and it was, like, TBD luggage brand, and one day, I, like, opened my computer, And I just typed in Away as a placeholder. Like, it just came to me. And I always had it in my head, like, there's no way we can use, like, Away as a brand name. It's, like, such a simple, like, four-letter word. It's, like, extremely common. And then, and Steph and I actually spent a lot of time, like, brainstorming new names, but we just never came up with anything as good. And she found, like, some trademark lawyers and asked them if we could trademark it, and they basically laughed in our face. And she was like, she, like, insisted that they looked into it, and then a week later they called us and they said, you have been given a gift from the marketing gods because this trademark is available in your category in a lot of different countries.

AI assessment note: “as I was doing my research... I just typed in Away as a placeholder.”

Q So I guess you, you sort of lasted at Warby Parker for, um, about two plus years, um, and you were recruited, or you, you, you got a job with, uh, All Saints, which is the, the, the fashion brand, um, based in the UK, to be their, their global head of innovation. You were like, 26, 27 years old. How did, how did that happen?

A So yeah, so when I joined Warby Parker, there were Maybe 15 people there. By the time I left, there were a couple hundred. So, it was still growing really quickly. Um, I still left, like, pretty early days, but my, my father passed away while I was working at Warby Parker, and it kind of, um, it, like, I kind of slowed down a little bit after that, and I started thinking a lot about what I wanted to be doing. And, um, coincidentally, like, this headhunter called me at the same time. I was kind of going through that, and moving to London, uh, seemed like one of the most exciting things I could do, and I was so drawn to the opportunity.

AI assessment note: “coincidentally, like, this headhunter called me at the same time.”

Q I just, I'm just wondering, like, did anybody say, hey, what are you guys doing, or, or did they not really know?

A Well, it's actually funny because when we were trying to choose our investors, a lot of the feedback that we got were like, oh, you're creating the Warby Parker for luggage. Great. We'll invest. And those are super easy conversations. The other feedback was like, you know, we would show them a picture of the luggage, like a rendering of the luggage, and they'd be like, I don't get it. It's just luggage. Like, what's different about it? We're like, well, here's all the great things about the product, but also, um, and then I would go on and on about this brand that we were building. And I would, like, ramble about the brand, and I was like, like, we make luggage, but we're a travel brand, and it's really going to connect with people, and that's the whole idea for Away, is that people didn't emotionally connect with Samsonite, or Tumi, or any of these other brands. And basically, the, the, the VCs that we ended up going with were the ones who got that brand was this tangible thing that we could make uniquely ours, and that's what would set us apart. So every time Um, and even now, like, every time we come up with, like, some crazy idea like this, they're like, okay, it must be for the brand. So no one questioned what we did.

AI assessment note: “they'd be like, I don't get it. It's just luggage.”

Q Wow. That year, I think in your first, the first year where you actually had the suitcases, you, you ended up selling 55,000 suitcases, which is amazing. How did, how did people find out about them?

A I mean, I think what we saw pretty quickly is that our timing was perfect. Like, we were in this time in social media where travel is a status symbol. Everyone wanted to post about not just their trips and, like, not just about the beach that they're on or, like, the mountain that they're skiing on, but, but how they got there, and people were taking photos at airports or, or even when they were packing, and Steph and I realized that, like, we had to be a part of this. And we had to be the bag in all of those photos that people were posting as they were packing, or as they were at the airport. So we basically found, I mean, in the beginning, in the beginning was a lot of press, and then it was a lot of, um, basically anyone we knew on social media that had a lot of followers, like, asking them to post about the bag during that kind of, like, pre-trip process. And we made it so that Anytime you would open Instagram, and, and someone was, like, getting ready for a trip, they would be posting a photo with their away suitcase.

AI assessment note: “in the beginning was a lot of press, and then it was a lot of”

Q What did she, what did she do at Warby Parker?

A She ran supply chain there. So, she was in charge of how the glasses were made, like, the factories that we got them from, like, how they got to the states to be shipped to customers, just, like, stuff that I actually technically went to school for, but really didn't know much about. But we kind of went through this, like, the crazy growth of Warby Parker together, and we stayed friends, and we, like, loosely kept in touch. We'd check in every few months. Um, so just as this, like, this little baby idea of, of making luggage that my friends would love was brewing in my head, I, I reached out to Steph, and, like, I sent her a Facebook message, and I said, hey, there's something I've been thinking about. Would love to catch up with you.

AI assessment note: “She ran supply chain there. So, she was in charge of how the glasses were made”

Q Um, was it, was that hard to get? I mean, was it hard to make the case? Because it sounds like it was pretty easy, I mean, pretty quickly after the, you had the idea.

A Yeah, so in March of, like, when this was barely an idea, like, we still didn't have a ton of direction in what we were doing. A friend of mine in San Francisco introduced me to Yuri Kim, who's a partner at Forerunner. And Forerunner is the, the VC firm that invested in Warby Parker and Everlane and Dollar Shave Club and Jet.com. And they just had, like, these amazing portfolio and these amazing wins, and we had heard about them, obviously, when we worked at Warby, but didn't really interact with them. And my friend was like, I'll introduce you to one of the partners. And me, like, I just had, like, the audacity to schedule a meeting with her, even though we, we literally had nothing. At this point, we still thought Away was a placeholder name. It was just, like, an idea to create this thing, and we were basically just, like, in the throes of doing research. But I was in San Francisco, and I met with Yuri, and I kind of, like, It was basically just like a meeting of me being excited about what we were doing. In my head, it wasn't, like, me pitching her, but because of that, like, because of that early meeting, and because of, like, her wanting to stay in touch, and being excited about the idea, and seeing how excited we were about the idea, like, we stayed in touch, which meant that when we actually went out to raise, um, our seed round in the summer, we already had, like, a Li…

AI assessment note: “we pitched a lot of VCs. It was like a crazy process.”

Q But didn't they want to see the suitcase, or did you, were you sending them like photos of it?

A We were sending them, like, like, three-D renderings, and we were mostly just, like, selling them on, on this idea that, that, like, before us, amazing, affordable luggage did not exist, and beyond that, that there was, like, this whole brand that was obsessed with travel the way that they were, and that we were creating it. So people were just excited about that, and when we found out the bags weren't going to be ready, we were like, okay, what are we going to launch? Like, we can't launch suitcases. So, So basically our options were like, don't launch or push it back, which wasn't on the table for us for whatever reason. Or we could launch with a pre-order, which I think is just like the most boring thing you can do when you're launching a brand. Like no one wants to put their credit card down for something that they like may or may not get. So we came up with this idea, and the idea was that we would come up with something before Christmas that people would want to buy. That would show them that we were like this amazing new travel brand that they'd never heard of.

AI assessment note: “We were sending them, like, like, three-D renderings”

Q So this is like, uh, uh, 2006, uh, 2007. You're in your early twenties, uh, living in L.A., Uh, you're working for Neutrogena, and, and that was your plan at that point?

A Yeah, so I was working at Neutrogena, and one woman that I really admired, and that I, I had never spoken to her personally, but I just remember recalling, like, every time she sent an email, like, everyone would open it, and everyone would, would read her analyst's reports all the time, and every time she spoke, like, people would, people would listen, and she ran marketing, and I was talking to kind of my mentor about her, and I was like, okay, how do I get a job? In marketing. So this woman's like, oh, well, to work in marketing here, you need to get an MBA. And me being me, I didn't think to myself, oh, I should finish and get my, my undergrad degree so I can go get an MBA. I was like, there must be some way around that. And there wasn't. But now, like, this, this, it had opened up this whole new world to me of Of being able to work in marketing, which to me at the time meant that you could control how, how people found out about your products, and how you could take everything that people were saying about it, and maybe change the products, and I just thought it was so cool, and I knew I really wanted to do it, and that if I couldn't do it there, I would find somewhere else that would let me do it, so I quit.

AI assessment note: “I knew I really wanted to do it, and that if I couldn't do it there”

Q and, and Steph came to this with a lot of experience, an experience that really kind of set you up to succeed in, in this venture. Like, this was, like, you You sort of took the time to kind of learn the ropes, and I mean, it's, in some ways, it's not surprising that it succeeded so quickly. Um, I don't know, I mean, does it, does it surprise you?

A I think that, um, just things have been moving so quickly that, like, I don't think we stop enough to, like, to think about what happened and what we've done. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're so different and basically, like, any strength that Steph has is, like, my weakness and, and vice versa. So that meant, like, from the beginning, we had all bases covered. Um, so I feel like even if this wasn't a runaway success, we would have done things like Twice as quickly or, or twice as good as, as anyone else. Um, because we really like from the beginning operated as like one brain, but I mean, I don't know. I think it's like, I never set out to do this. I never set out to, to run a company with, with hundreds of people. And I think what's asked of you when, when you have a couple dozen employees and maybe like a couple million in revenue is so different than Than what is being asked for us now.

AI assessment note: “things have been moving so quickly that, like, I don't think we stop enough”

Q So as the, the design process began, what, like, how did that work? Like, what did you, what did you want the bag to look like?

A Yeah, so basically, you know, Steph and I had this list, and then I knew what I wanted it to look like. And, um, you know, we were basically up, like, 20 hours a day because, um, our industrial designers were in San Francisco. We had factories that we were talking to in China. Um, basically the second one of them wrote us an email, like, we would make sure to write back or pass it on so there would be no delays. Because also in all of this, And I, to this day, I don't know where it came from, but, you know, this was, like, January, this was, like, February of 2015, and we had it in our heads that we wanted to launch by Christmas. So in less than a year, we wanted to have, like, product out into the world, and luckily, like, we really didn't have anything else to do, so we just, like, immersed ourselves fully in this, and we're just obsessed with every single detail.

AI assessment note: “our industrial designers were in San Francisco. We had factories that we were talking to”

Q And how, and where, like, what do they, do they come in like a giant shipping container to like a warehouse in New York?

A Yeah, so, um, so it's actually great because, uh, so this, like, the holidays happened, we sold the books, like, our minds were blown, we were like, look at the appetite for, for this brand, like, all the stuff we told VCs is real. Um, and we, we actually weren't sure if it would be, so that felt great, but then we were like, okay, we actually have to, to get the luggage over here. Um, so right after Christmas, we flew to our factory, and we actually spent days, like, In the factory, on the production line, doing, like, quality control, checking every suitcase. Like, Steph and I were, like, we're standing there with all the factory workers. Like, we inspected every bag off of the line. Um, they got packaged in their boxes.

AI assessment note: “we actually have to, to get the luggage over here. Um, so right after Christmas”