Name: How Good American created the 'Quarantine Jeans'
Uploaded: 2020-10-14
Duration: 4 min 32 s
Description: CEO Emma Grede joins Fortune's Most Powerful Women NextGen.

 SPEAKER 1: You had two big, new product launches over the summer, two very different launches. There was swimwear at a time, unfortunately, not a lot of us are able to travel for vacation or go to the beach. And then there are the Always Fits jeans that move as our bodies change, our weight fluctuates. They've been called quarantine jeans, and they do seem very made for this moment. So can you talk about the development process for both of these and how the pandemic affected the launch, the timing, and then the reception of these two different products? EMMA GREDE: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. It's really great to be here and to be in such a great company. So I'm excited to talk about all of this. Of course, we never planned for a pandemic. None of us did. And I think, ultimately, what we've seen is that the pandemic has essentially just accelerated behavior. Everything that we knew was happening has just happened a lot quicker. And so the way I see is that we're living in 2025 now. And so if you weren't shopping online before, you certainly are now. And sadly, I didn't have a crystal ball. I certainly couldn't pull back on what were going to be two of our brand new category launch and then a fabric that we'd essentially been developing the last two years with Always Fits. And so like everyone, we really just had to pivot, think on our feet. And one of the greatest things about Good American is that since inception, we've really had this two-way street with our customers where we constantly speak to them. We have an incredible community that gives us a lot of information when it comes to what categories we should be working in and how we can really make things better. And so we went straight out to our community and said, what do you want from us? And I think with swim, that was pretty unique. Because again, it's been something we'd been working on for a long time. And when you're coming into the market with a product and a size range, as with everything at Good American, we're entirely inclusive. So everything goes from XXL to a 5X or 00 through to a plus-size 32. We're always about innovation in product. And when you're doing that, there's always a customer for it. And so when you look at swim, it was really filling a hole in the market, and so we changed nothing. Yes, of course, we understood that the habits of our customer has changed. But if you're really filling a pain point in doing something that's unique in the market, the idea is to be steadfast in your beliefs. And so I believed that there was still a customer that was there for that. And actually, of course, I was completely right because we had the single biggest day in the company's history at the launch of swim. With Always Fits, I'm glad people are calling them quarantine jeans, but that never came from us. I wish I'd come up with that nifty marketing and that I could take full credit for it. But that's ultimately what our customers began calling it because the whole genesis of Always Fits is about the fact that, as women, we do change sizes. And I think the pandemic has shown us all that. But just in a regular month, a woman's weight fluctuates, and it can fluctuate five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds. It really depends on your size. And we've done an enormous amount of research that really showed that women, on average, will change sizes 32 times in their lifetime, whereas for a man, it's something like 24, 25. So we knew that there was a real need for a garment that worked with a woman's body and the natural weight fluctuations and, of course, is enormously comfortable. And to Elizabeth's point, we already knew, in fashion, that we were seeing this huge casualization in fashion, and Always Fits came at the right time. Again, I'd love to take full credit and say that we planned it, but it really was about fabric innovation, and that's what we do constantly. And it just so happened to line up with a time that really worked for our customer. Everybody knows that the fashion and the apparel industry has been hit really, really hard. All industries have. But I think that having that two-way street that we've always had with our customers has really benefited us in this time more than others because we can directly communicate and say, well, what do you want? If it's not bosswear, for example, which was one of our biggest categories pre-pandemic, then it's sweats. And we've been very, very nimble and very quick to pivot what we have to do. And I think that's the great thing about being a direct-to-consumer company that really embraces the feedback from its community. We've just been able to pivot. We're as good at listening as we are at innovating, and we've really, really have to live and die by that in this period. 

How Good American created the 'Quarantine Jeans'

CEO Emma Grede joins Fortune's Most Powerful Women NextGen.