Rebecca Louie interviews Samuel Ku

Description

Okay, we can get started. Today is May 5, 2021. My name is Rebecca Louie and I'm going to be interviewing Samuel Ku. To just get started, would you mind telling me a little bit about yourself and your job?

Sure. So my current job here is at AG Adriano Goldschmied Inc. We are a designer manufacturer of high end clothing. Most of our clothing is denim or denim like apparel. The company also owns and operates multiple retail stores throughout the US, as well as an e-commerce Store. And a lot of our businesses through wholesale channels as well. Department stores like Nordstrom Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, etc., as well as many boutiques across the country, and we have an international presence as well. We've got distributors in Europe, a distributor in Japan, and Australia. My job here, I'm the president and creative director of AG. I oversee pretty much all divisions. I'm especially involved in product development, product design, marketing, a little bit involved with sales and distribution, and very involved in our e-commerce and retail business as well.

And how did you start working in this industry?

So the company is actually owned by my father. I went to university, I went to UC Irvine and I graduated with a degree in economics, and I had done a couple of internships in different industries that I ended up not being that interested in, especially after that experience, and I figured you know what, I'll give the family business a try. And at that time my father's business was based on what we call private label manufacturing. So that means brands and retailers would come to a private label manufacturer and say hey, I need to make this kind of clothing, could you make this kind of clothing for my brand. So my father owned a factory that manufactured for the likes of the Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch, Calvin Klein. J Crew, Lucky Brand, many many brands like that throughout the years. So he had been doing this type of business since the 1970s. His parents were also in the apparel industry as well. So after many years of doing what we call private label business. He wanted to launch a brand of his own and he was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Adriano Goldschmied. So Adriano was kind of a well known designer in our industry. So he co-founded brands like diesel and founded a lot of other brands throughout the years and also did a lot of collaborations and projects for many companies and other brands as well. And in 2001, they launched AG Adriano Goldschmied, also known as AG jeans in 2001 as I mentioned. And 2001 is also when I graduated university, and I came to work here. And in the beginning, worked in the research and development in the laundry area which means how genes are washed, so I spent a good deal of time there. I moved around into a couple of different divisions throughout the years and spent some time in the sample sewing room, and started building a base knowledge of how our products are made. And so a couple years after doing that, there was an opportunity in a brand that we licensed called Big Star. And so I started working there, and I was an assistant designer to the creative director or the design director that we had there at the time. After a couple years I had the opportunity to take that over. And then I had the opportunity to work on the AG brand, this is about 2005.I know this kind of a long story short, but to answer your question, I got involved because it was a family owned business and thought I'd give it a thought I'd give it a try.

That's awesome. You mentioned that the business has been in your family since, was it 200?

So the AG brand was launched in 2001 as a partnership between the manufacturing company owned by my father, and that in that individual Adriano Goldschmied, but prior to that my father has owned his own factory and clothing manufacturing factory since the early 80s so that's when he started his business. He immigrated to the US from South Korea in 1976 and worked for his parents clothing manufacturing factory for a couple of years, and at some point decided to strike off on his own and start his own factory. So that's how he got started, but the AG brand as I mentioned, was launched in 2001.

I'm so interested to learn more about your father's experience, would you mind telling me a little bit more about what it was like launching the business, and how it's changed since he started it.

Sure. So when he launched his business, as he tells the story, I think his parents gave him two sewing machines and loaned him 15,000 dollars. And so, he found a friend, a mutual acquaintance, that was introduced to him. And that guy became his first employee who is still with him now. And they found a factory, and started looking for customers, and somehow one by one started to grow their business. The way he tells the story is that he always strived for the highest quality as well as fast delivery first, and then if he were the best to do that, that he would always have a business, and he would always have customers getting in line to do business with him. So in the beginning it was smaller clients that he did business with, and as his reputation grew and time went on he was able to build this business, larger and larger, to the point where larger customers started knocking on his door like the Gap for example. It's hard for me to really say what that experience was exactly like. As I mentioned, my father immigrated in 1976 I believe. And so he grew up in Korea but I was born here. So, there is a little, not a cultural divide but a cultural difference where Asian parents will hold things close to the vest and not really tell their entire story. I don't know a lot of my friends whose parents are immigrants, Asian immigrants especially, who told their entire story and what they went through. I feel Asian culture, you suffer in silence. I've heard stories of course from my dad and I do know some stories, but it's hard for me to really express what he went through emotionally or psychologically at that time. But I know he worked a lot, he worked very very hard and he worked a lot.

No, I completely understand, my mom actually is an immigrant from Taiwan so I totally understand what you're talking about. In terms of your perspective about your father's work though, do you have any early memories at your father's factory or early memories of him working when you were younger?

My early memories are that he worked a lot. And so, it's a very typical immigrant story where an immigrant who decides to move to America and start a business, and ends up working a lot and sacrificing a lot. And with that sacrifice comes a lot of time and energy put in their business, to try to achieve what they can, to try to make ends meet, all those things that leads to that parent or both parents, if they're both involved in that business, not being around as much. So I didn't have a lot of early memories of him at the factory. A lot of my early memories are that he was not home so often because he had to work so much.

It sounds like he was definitely very invested in his business.

Yeah, certainly. It is a very important part of his life. The business and his company bring him a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction. This business and the company, the people here, bring him a lot of satisfaction, and it's almost like a hobby in some sense where he really actually enjoys the work.

Have you found working in this industry that you share that same attachment? That same feeling of attachment that your father had in the family business?

I would say it is very different, and the circumstances make it very different. Since my father started his business and he's worked a he's worked 40 plus years to try to build his business. I can obviously understand that he has such an emotional attachment to it and why it brings him that satisfaction, and there isn't anybody else that's associated with the business that can have the same feeling towards it. You mentioned your mom. Your mom had a baby and that was you. No one else can have the satisfaction or or understanding of what it was like to birth you and raise you, because only she did it. That sounds a little bit dramatic, but I know there's a lot of people whose businesses are their lives and their businesses are really their babies. I would say, to answer your question, I don't have the same type of emotional attachment. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't bring me satisfaction. M parts of this business, and many parts of what we do bring me satisfaction. I have a passion to build this business and to help this business, but I couldn't say that we had the same feeling towards it, because, again, he spent 40 years of blood, sweat and tears. And that's his baby, you know, so only one person can have that satisfaction. It's like a person that takes a vintage car that's found in a barn, and then spends 12 years rebuilding that car. There's nobody that appreciates that car, as much as that person who built it.

Definitely, that makes a lot of sense. Looking towards the future, where do you and your father see the business heading in five years 10 years 20 years?

Well since the pandemic, I would say it's a very common theme for a lot of brands like ours to be focusing on their own direct channels. So when I say direct channels I mean the ones where we actually sell and speak to our end consumer directly. So for example our retail stores that we operate, as well as our own ecommerce store. And you know as you probably know that in the past few years, there's been a huge push for a lot of these direct to consumer companies popping up, whether it be in fashion like Everlane or Reformation or a luggage travel company like Away. And similarly, I think, because the pandemic has caused a lot of retailers to suffer, like brick and mortar retailers, people are traveling less so places like New York, that used to have a ton of foot traffic and visitors tourists, most of these retailers have struggled, and the biggest opportunity for most brands and most retailers as well, was to build their online business. So, if you talk to most companies, you'll probably hear that their online businesses have done very well, and a lot of brick and mortar based businesses have struggled. But to answer the question of what the future looks like, the company is definitely continuing to make larger investments. We plan to continue to build our direct channels. It's also a wonderful way to build your business because you have a direct line of communication to that end consumer that's the buyer product. Whereas when you have a wholesale account it is not as a, not as a direct line of communication. Nordstrom is one of our customers, they're one of our favorite accounts to deal with and they're a fantastic retailer, however, the person on the sales floor is not only selling AG, they're trying to sell three dozen other brands. So for us to expect that sales associate, as good as he or she may be, but to expect he or she to be able to tell why, we should buy this product or that product or whatever it is, that message is difficult. Whereas, you know when you have a direct line communication, let's say a customer walks in AG store, the sales associate should be trained to be able to really talk about the company, not just talking about this one pair of jeans as one t shirt, but really talk about a company as a whole and the philosophy and what we stand for. So I would say the biggest thing in the upcoming years would be to continue to focus and continue to build upon our DTC channels. We don't want our wholesale to go away, we want that to continue to be a really important part of our business as well. But, to communicate who we truly are, I feel like direct channels are the best route.

And so initially when the AG business started. It was only a wholesale company, correct?

That's correct.

And it has since evolved, got it.

I believe the first store that he had opened was around 2005. Do you know Robertson Boulevard?

I don't.

It's a street in Los Angeles that was at the time a very up and coming retail and restaurant spot. There was a, and there still is a really popular retailer, at the time called Kitson that was on the street. There's a really well known restaurant called the Ivy, and it was really well known because a lot of celebrities would frequent it. And it was really coming up, and we had opened a store at the time, and we were one of the first if not the first mono branded store to open up. Most of them were multi-brand retailers that were on that street. And so that was the first time I went with a Consumer Direct store.

And as your company has continued to expand and grow over the years, I'm curious to know if anything has changed in terms of talks of sustainability in the production of the products. I know that's something that's begun to become a trend in the fashion industry. Could you speak to that at all?

For sure. That's actually a really interesting question, because it has shifted a lot. The way I see it, for eight to 10 years now, there was some talk about sustainability bubbling up. And a lot of suppliers, fabric suppliers and chemical suppliers, would be pushing products that were developed with a sustainability sense in mind, or some sort of eco-friendly element in mind. And this was definitely of interest to AG from the start. AG is a very sustainability focused company, and we've been doing a lot of things for decades to be as eco conscious as we can. As early as, I believe 1996, our factory had started to recycle the water that we use. And, in the past few years we made huge strides towards sustainability. The earliest thing I can remember that we've done from a sustainability standpoint was the fabric. We developed this product where some of the yarns come from recycled plastic bottles. Plastic water bottles and Gatorade or Seven Up bottles were recycled into clothing, fiber. I don't remember what the percentage is but I believe about 35% of the fibers in this fabric came from recycled plastic bottles. So we decided to make a little launch about it, tell a little story and we launched it. It got some decent press and we sold a little bit of it, but at that time I think there were a couple reasons why it didn't do that great. One, I think the general consumer was not ready for that kind of level of sustainability built into the clothing. They didn't really have a care or maybe they weren't willing to pay a little bit more for it, because obviously there was a built in cost to it too. It was definitely something that was on their mind in terms of food, because at that time I feel like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and organic produce and healthy food, healthy living, that was a really big thing at the time. But in terms of clothing, yes there were brands doing stuff, but I really feel like the general consumer did not care that much. Fast forward many years now, I would say in the last 18/24 months I've never heard so many people talk about sustainability and the importance of it. And finally we're seeing some big strides in terms of making the entire industry more sustainable. Unfortunately, the apparel industry is a big time polluter. And so there is a lot that we need to do to make it cleaner, and to be more sustainable. But it's interesting because now you're seeing a lot of retailers step up. We've gotten a couple of our retailers who sent us updates to their routing guide that calls for sustainability. And the routing guide is basically the terms in which you need to work with us, their rules and regulations, their requirements from us. For example, when they ship us a box, it's got to have a UPC code here and it's got to have the shipping label on the top here and then by the way, it's also got to be polybag. It's all those little rules and regulations that you have to abide by to work with them. And very recently, a couple of these retailers have put forth some amendments to their routing guide, which require 100%, recyclable packing material and 100% recyclable shipping materials, so your box has to be recyclable, and if your if your garments come to polybag, they have to be recyclable. And then, they've also started to take inventory on what all their vendors are doing from a sustainability standpoint. So they're asking all the questions: do you have certain certifications, what do you do from a sustenance sustainability standpoint with your fabric and your and your processes, this and that. I think what they're doing at the moment is just aggregating all this information so that they can then share it eventually on their site, broken down by brand. We haven't seen it yet but we have just filled out some sustainability information for retailers like Shopbop.com and Revolve Clothing. So you're seeing end consumers, buyers, and retailers caring more and more. And when you look at the collections that our suppliers and our vendors present to us every season, you're seeing way more sustainable options. As time goes on, they continue to get better and better, they continue to become a little bit more affordable, and very innovative as well.

That's so interesting and exciting to hear that the fashion industry has really taken up this environmental fight. I'm also curious to know about, you know, I think another thing that has really entered the conversation recently has been ethics when it comes to paying workers and sourcing production. Could you tell me a little bit about how AG works with that?

Yeah, so not only is sustainability important but also from a work environment standpoint and from an overall company ethics standpoint, that is a very important topic to us. The beauty of our company is that almost all the jeans are manufactured within the factories that we own. We used to operate two factories, one is located in South Gate, California. However, the pandemic, and many other reasons have caused us to have to basically shut down the manufacturing that we do here. And that was many, many years in the making, we have been producing products that the factory has been producing here, like I said, from the early 80s. So we're talking about many many decades, and 10s of millions of jeans made. And sadly, we saw that shrink and now finally disappear partly due to the pandemic but more due to the difficulty of running manufacturing in California. However, we have a plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, which is basically the mirror image of the plant here. And that factory has been in existence for, I'm going to say a little over 25 years now. So, again, that factory is owned by us, we don't, we don't need to do audits or anything like that to make sure everyone's taken care of, we have very high standards for all the employees there. We do our best to take care of them and it's a very small town that our factory is in and so, you know, we've had many employees that have been there forever. We have many employees that have many family members in generations there too, it's of the highest importance that these employees are taken care of. And I know that you know there are plenty of horror stories out there of certain factories in different parts of the world using child labor and things like that. And that's something that we're very aware of too and we do our best to vet all of our suppliers. Most of our major denim mills we've had people from our corporate office visit them, whether it be in Italy or Japan or Vietnam. We make sure that we have eyes on these factories because we want to make sure that they are upheld to that same level of standard, and that they look after and take care of their employees as well and look after their safety and well being.

And are these measures that you take, whether that is producing things from your own factories or visiting the manufacturing sites, is that something that most apparel companies take the time to do?

That's a good question. It's hard for me to speculate exactly but the way I see it is, I think there are some bigger companies who have very stringent guidelines for their corporate responsibility. And there are certain companies that have extremely high levels like, Patagonia, for example. They have a reputation for having a very high level of requirements from factories that they work with. And then there are other ones or other big companies that may not be as stringent and may be more about the price that they pay. So it really differs from factory to factory. And then when you work with small brands. If they're smaller they have lesser budgets, it might be harder for them to be able to vet exactly where all the stuff is coming from. They may be working with the factory 1000s and 1000s of miles away that they got introduced to but haven't had the chance to actually check out. So it really runs the gamut.

Yeah, yeah it sounds like it. Thank you so much for this interview. I think it is. It's so incredible to hear the story about how this business that your father started has been able to grow into such a large company and I'm so glad to hear that it's really taking an active role in promoting sustainability and ethics in its workforce. Before we conclude, is there anything else you'd like to add.

I guess just to touch upon the sustainability aspect. That's something that we're very passionate about, as I mentioned, that's something that we're not doing because it's the trendy thing to do or that we're worried that now we have to be involved in, this is something that we've been doing for decades now, as I mentioned. And one of the things that we're really proud of is all the measures that we do, but in addition, like I mentioned, the water recycling water filtration. We had our water filtration system in Mexico retrofitted in 2019. And we found huge savings in water, we are able to recycle about 90% of our water that we use there. And so actually every month we calculate how much water we recycled and saved. And since our retrofitting and 2019, we estimate about 29 million gallons of water has been saved. And we count on our site, and it's something that we are proud of. There's so many countless things that we do from a sustainability standpoint, but definitely that's pretty high up down on the list.

Like I said, that is, it really is amazing to hear, and I'm so glad that AG is taking such an active role in this.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you so much for our interview today. It was wonderful, getting to know you.

Likewise. Best of luck with your project here.

Thank you.

Have a good one.

Participants

• Samuel Ku
  
• Rebecca Louie
  
• Katherine Yungmee Kim
  

Interview By

• Katherine Yungmee Kim