EP 242: Trump Majeure Surprise: Tariffs Trigger Retail Collaboration

Special Guest: Arick Wierson, Emmy-winning producer and TRR contributor 

The retail apocalypse isn't coming from Amazon or an economic recession—it's being manufactured in Washington through tariff policy that defies basic business logic. A comprehensive analysis of C-suite perspectives across small, medium, and large retailers reveals an industry caught between political conviction and economic reality, where even a "modest" 10 percent tariff can obliterate the profit margins that grocery and discount chains measure in single digits. Join guest Arick Wierson, Emmy-winning producer and TRR contributor and Shalley as they discuss how the emergence of "Trump majeure" as contractual language signals how deeply trade uncertainty has penetrated corporate planning, forcing executives to treat policy volatility like natural disasters. They analyze how the real crisis will emerge in Q4 when holiday inventory decisions made months earlier collide with tariff reality. Small and medium retailers lack the working capital to front-load inventory or the negotiating power to secure favorable financing terms, while their larger competitors deploy sophisticated hedging strategies. This creates a two-tiered market where scale determines survival, potentially accelerating retail consolidation beyond what digital disruption alone could achieve. The irony is profound: Policies designed to protect American jobs may ultimately destroy the very small businesses that form the backbone of local economies, while benefiting only those retailers with sufficient resources to navigate regulatory complexity.

For more strategic insights and compelling content, visit TheRobinReport.com, where you can read, watch, and listen to content from Robin Lewis and other retail industry experts, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Transcript

They need predictability. You need to see that runway in front of you so you can make investments, and so you can make, and you make plans. You make hiring decisions, you make decisions about your supply chain, you make decisions about pricing. All of that is contingent upon having some view into the future.

And right now they have very little view into the future because of this uncertainty surround surrounding the tariffs. Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelly Cohan from the Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest trends and. Developments in the retail industry. Join them as they discuss interesting topics and interview industry leaders keeping you in the loop with everything retail.

Welcome to Retail Unwrapped. Today I have Eric Rson with me, and uh, Eric, I love having you on the. Podcast, podcast because you always bring a wealth of information, uh, with you. You're so knowledgeable. You were former se senior advisor to New York City, uh, mayor Bloomberg. You also are an Emmy winning producer and a columnist for a number of publications on political topics among other topics.

But most recently, you wrote a great article in The Observer about how these retailers right now are dealing with the current, what I would call tariff swings. So, and I also have.

Thank you, Shelly. It's always a pleasure to be back here on your podcast. I'm sure that, uh, you said I, I bring a wealth of, uh, different, uh, insights and topics. I guess that's, that maybe better than, uh, bringing a a, a wealth. A wealth of a wealth of money. Well, I wouldn't mind money either, but our listeners wanna hear experience, so.

From a, a big variety of different types of companies. So I'd love to share with us how is our

tariffs.

Yeah, Shelly, you know, it's interesting because, uh, I, uh, couple weeks ago, well, actually about a month ago, uh, one, one of my editors, um, reached out to me at, at the Observer and she said, Hey, we we're really interested in, uh, seeing, taking the Pulse of America in terms of, you know, how they're thinking about these terrorists.

But what, what, what I think is under reported is how are CEOs of retailers. Thinking about this, you know, and, and I wanted to talk to not, you know, you hear a lot about, oh, Walmart's gonna have, you know, empty shelves or target's gonna have empty shelves, and that kind of thing. And that's obviously, uh, you know, when you think of retail, those are the first names you think of.

Um, but. As you know, Shelly, and I'm sure 99% of the people listening to this podcast also know the vast majority of retail in this country is comprised of small and medium sized retailers. And so I wanted to talk to them as well. And so what I did is I, uh, I got on the phone and I called up, you know, people that I knew and I got some references and you know, you know, you know how it works.

And I, you know, eventually I had a list of say, 20, 25 different, uh, CEOs. Uh, all different parts of the country from the deep south to New York City to LA to the Midwest and everywhere in between, in all kinds of different industries, from bridal gowns to nutritional supplements to you name it. And I said, Hey, how are you thinking about the tariffs?

And as you might expect, I got a wide range of different, uh, different reactions. You know, there were some companies. For example, one that's close to where I live in, in, in Minnesota, down in Fariba, Minnesota, there was a company, or there was a company called FairBot Mills, which uh, is a story company. Been around since 1865 and uh, it's, it used to be called FairBot Woolen Mills.

Because they made principles of woolen blankets and sort of high quality woolen products. Um, and I talked to them and just through sheer se serendipity, it wasn't like they had some master strategic plan and they were very open about this. They weren't trying to take credit for something that they had no part in, but they said, you know, we source 98, 90 9% of our, of our inputs, you know, the wool and.

90% of their workforce lives within a 15 mile radius of their plant in Fariba, Minnesota, which is just for reference for everyone. It's about an hour south of Minneapolis. Um, and so they're completely insulated. And so they're, they're actually reducing prices during this time of uncertainty, uh, because they feel that they've got the ability to do that.

'cause they're completely insulated. You know, they have some. Uh, you know, machinery and equipment that was imported years ago from, you know, Italian, um, you know, Italian technology companies and so forth. But, you know, the maintenance is pretty much local at this point. A few parts here and there, but they're largely insulated from the difference.

And you contrast that with a variety of other companies. I talked to a, a woman, uh, who's the CEO of a company called Rebel. Which basically, uh, sells, uh, well, they sell a variety of different things, but then one of the, the main things they do is they sell, uh, car seats for, for, you know, toddlers and infants and babies.

And she's, and she's saying, Hey, this, this comes from China, but this is mandated. By law, you have to have a, a child seat, you know, uh, in the United States, if you wanna drive around with your kids in the car, and frankly, there are no national manufacturers of that product, how could you possibly tax something?

You know, which essentially what a tariff is for something that is. Uh, absolutely mandated in every single state in the country by law. And so she's taking the exact opposite what she's extremely affected by this. Um, and, uh, she's actually taking the route of being, being a, being a, a heavy critic of the government and advocating, uh, that there should be exemptions for, you know, certain types of products that are actually mandated by law.

That's really interesting. And you're right, because becomes, you know, with all these added tariffs and people can't afford.

Horrible ramifications of that. Um, what, what else are you seeing broadly in terms of, you know, you've gave, you've given like two big extremes in the middle there, you have the fashion brands or fashion companies that aren't selling essential items and products. What, what are you seeing there? I think we're seeing a, again, it's a mixed bag, you know?

And, and it's an interesting mixed bag too, because it's partially, you know, part of it obviously is where are the, the goods they're selling, where are they coming from, how much are they, have they been affected by the tariffs? Obviously those that are, you know, selling goods that come from China have one perspective or largely come from China, they'll have a certain perspective.

Whereas those that are maybe dependent on goods that have been reprieve of the most onerous, like for example, from Europe, have a different perspective. Clearly politics plays a role. You know, I mean, certainly I didn't, you know, wasn't particularly interested. Uh, that's a, that's a lie. I was interested, but I didn't ask, uh, I want, you know, uh, what their politics were.

You know, who they voted for. You know, do they support Trump? Do, did they vote for Biden? Are they independent? I didn't get into that, but it was clear that in some cases. They were trying to con, you know, reconcile two things that, you know, were seemingly at odds in their, in, in, in between the space of their two ears, which was, I voted for this guy.

I feel he was the right guy to become president of the United States, and maybe I support, you know, what he's trying to do, broadly speaking, but specifically what he's doing with these tariffs is hurting me and my company and my employees financially. And it was really interesting to see those two ideas being, you know, colliding within the, you know, the space of, you know, a couple inches within someone's head.

Yeah, I, I think, I think the other thing is, you know, you're right about, you know, you have the big retailers in America and the big retailers, while they do support a significant part of our retail trade, but they also have the resources, both money and people, and, uh, it intell.

So.

Hurt by these, these tariff kind of, uh, implications. So smaller companies can't afford all aiff.

I mean, a couple of things that came up a lot in these, a lot of these conversations, they just simply didn't have the working capital necessary to be able to, you know, either front load on imports or, or finance, uh, imports that were gonna have a bigger price tag because of the, even, even if they had clients that were.

You know, had, were quite, uh, elastic in terms of their ability to pay. You know, even for companies that were in those situations, uh, they were just worried they didn't have the working capital to, or the cashflow to support, you know, that, that outlay upfront. Um, they were, they were lamented that a lot of the banks, their traditional bankers were not particularly amenable.

At least not yet. Uh, to, you know, giving the credit extensions or being more lenient in terms of, and a lot of that's as the result. If you're a small company, I mean, you only can be, you know, so leveraged so much. Right, right. Um, then I think another, another issue that came up a lot, which I thought was really interesting, Shelly, uh, is this idea of reshoring.

It's something we hear a lot from the administration. We wanna bring jobs back, we wanna bring good jobs back. We wanna bring the fab, the, the, the manufacturing plants back, et cetera. And I talked to several, uh, retailers that are. Somewhat vertically integrated in that some of their production or some of the fi, the finishing and finalization is done, um, you know, within the confines of their company, but albeit overseas.

And a lot of these companies were saying, you know, I get it. I get it, I get it, I get it. But guess what? I'm not Apple. I don't have that complex of a, of a, of a supply chain. But I mean, for me to reshore even 30% of my operations is a, is a 3, 4, 5 year process. And on top of that, I need the financing to do that.

Again, going back and going back to the banking. So I think, you know, by and large, if I had to, you know, paint some broad strokes, I think a lot of people were, were, you know. Again, taking, stripping politics out of it. They broadly, as I think, saw what the president's trying to do. Maybe they agree with it, maybe they don't, but they saw the, the value, but they didn't think it was being executed very, very effectively because they felt that like there were just so many things that weren't considered.

And just simply slapping the tariff and thinking the market's gonna respond, um, just, just like that they thought was just unreasonable. Well, the other thing that's interesting is you brought up Apple and of course I was at a conference recently where Scott Galloway was talking and he talked about the iPhone and moving production to the US and he said that the iPhone has, this is like a staggering number.

I didn't know this, but the iPhone has over 1900 parts in it, 1900. And his view is that there's no, there's no. That an iPhone could ever be produced in the US It's not even a consideration. It's so farfetched. And so when we talk about, you know, just bring it home and do all the manufacturing here, sometimes it's just not a realistic, you know, venture that's actually gonna happen or play out.

Well, I'm sure, I'm sure you've also seen all those funny AI videos of American workers, you know, trying to, you know, you know, solder things together and stuff in the plant. And it's true. I mean, the, the, the, the bottom line is the world economy has been integrated. I mean, it's been integrated ever since the post World War II era to a certain extent.

But over the last 30 or 40 years, we've been on this steady march of globalization where, you know. Certain countries have specialized in certain types of manufacturing. United States in, you know, has specialized in the delivery of services. Um, and you know, certain, you know, certain new technologies.

Usually, you know, technologies that are, uh, less physical and more digital. Um. And so, you know, to unwind that and think that we're gonna unwind that in the period of a couple months and that, you know, is, is, is actually kind of more fantasy than it's factual. Um, so, and I think that, you know, every time, if you notice, you know, the, what I find really interesting about this is, um, you know, the Trump administration has been.

Uh, very adamant about this idea that they're gonna keep these tariffs and, and, you know, and some, you know, he, I don't know many how many, well, during the course, I even wrote this in the article. I, you know, during the course of the three or four weeks that I was researching this and talking to people, you know, the White House policy or Trump's policy on tariffs changed, you know, three or four times, you know, in significant ways.

And so that, that lack of, you know, it's one thing to say to companies, Hey, we're an 85% tariff on you, percent tariff, or. That has its own fallout, but to not know that that's gonna stick or that you start making plans around that and then suddenly there's a big major reversal, literally sometimes 48, 72 hours later.

That in itself is very disruptive. And so a lot of people talked about the ability, the inability of them to see around the corner. 'cause what businesses need, and I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast, knows that Shelly is, they need predictability. You need to see that runway in front of you so you can make investments.

And so you can make, and you make plans, you make hiring decisions. You make decisions about your. Supply chain supply, you make decisions about pricing. All of that is contingent upon having some view into the future. And right now they have very little view into the, because of this uncertainty surround surrounding the tariffs.

One thing I. That I brought up in the article, which I thought was a really interesting concept. I, I love to be the one who took credit for it, but I, I certainly can't do that. But there was a term that came up, um, I saw it everywhere from Vogue to like really wonky in the weeds, you know, trade publications, was this idea of Trump majeure.

We all know about the term force majeure, which is a Yep. A French term that, you know, kind of made its way, maybe it's Latin originally, but it makes it way into lots of contract. Basically says, you know, you know, this is, the contract is gonna, you know. Structured within these given parameters except for what we'd like to call acts of God, you know, a hurricane, a pandemic, uh, something completely outta left field that may like throw the whole contract and make, you know, outta whack and make it mute.

And people are saying, you know, the tariffs. Although I would argue, you know, if there's one thing that Trump has consistent, been consistent about, it's very few things over the past, not, you know, and even before he entered public life in a big way in 2015, but, you know, dating back to, you know, his op-eds that he, you know, he would write, or the, you know, the ads he would take out in the New York Post, you know, in the eighties and nineties.

It's, he's been a tariff guy, so. I think everyone should have saw this coming. I think people didn't take him seriously, which is a different, different issue. But the one thing he's been very clear on is that he thinks that tariffs are a way, uh, uh, sort of a free way of getting money. It's like you don't have to pay income tax you, you have, that's why he created this idea, you know, he hasn't really acted on it yet, but getting rid of the IRS and creating the ERS, the external revenue service.

Right. You know, basically collecting tariffs from people around the world. What I think is really interesting is that, um, you know, the, there's so many, uh, companies out there that are starting to look at these tariffs as sort of something akin to a pandemic or a hurricane or a tornado or a natural disaster, an earthquake, you know, a a a a forced majeure, and they're starting to call that shorthand Trump majeure.

I asked a few lawyers, have you ever actually seen that term in an actual contract? And they said, not yet. But, uh, it's shorthand for all the disruptive nature that these tariffs are causing. It's very difficult to, uh, I mean when you're percent. You plus whatever else. Um, it's very difficult. You can't just eat that cost and anyone in retailing knows that, you know, there's a gross margin and in that margin you gotta pay for other things like marketing and operations and all that.

So I, I don't, I, you know, just saying to eat the margin for a company isn't realistic, so it ha the prices have to rise. Right. Isn't it funny though, Shelly though, that like, you know, um, there's a lot of places in the world right now that are dealing with a, just a flat 10% tariff as we're in this sort of inter.

And everyone's like, oh. Thank, thank God it's 10, only 10%. Can you imagine, like, you know, if you're in the grocery sector, like 10% is make or break, right? I mean, you know, the margin on milk is like probably 2.5% in, in most, you know, in most, most grocery stores. I mean, so 10%, you know, we're like, oh, that's, that's okay.

We can live with that 10%. Okay, let's make sure, let's hope that Trump doesn't make it 50% disruptive. And people outside the sector maybe don't, you know, they think that, you know, retailers, you know, they, they think that every retailer is like, you know, LVMH or you know, something where they're charging absurd mar you know, margins.

But, you know, the fact of the matter is that retail runs largely speaking on very slim margins. And 10%, even 10% can be highly disrupted. Well, the thing that's a big challenge is that a lot of our discount sector in our warehouse run on margins. And so. Economic factor of those groups of people that are shopping in warehouse clubs and discount stores.

You know, they, they can't afford to pay more for goods. That's, you know, they're trying to get the lowest price. What I do like about what's happening specifically Costco is doing this, is they're kind of looking at it and saying, okay.

In terms from inflation. So we're gonna try to really take a bit of a loss on some food items, but then they're raising prices like on, because they're seeing that as discretionary. So they're trying to really hold still on those grocery items. Um, I know a lot of the big retailers are trying to hold down that pricing because of inflation on food.

And food is. You know, I interestingly, I also spoke to, uh, a number of people in retail services, which I thought was really interesting and, um. A lot of them, uh, you know, are, were were basically saying, you know, they were at, at, you know, to a certain extent, rejoicing in the fact that they largely haven't been affected.

I mean, sometimes those services entail the importation of certain goods and so on and so forth. But, um, they thought it was actually quite ironic that when you think about the trade, you know, the. The trade balance that, you know, the countries have that's looking at a very specific sector of the economy.

But it's completely, you know, ignoring, you know, which is the, the, the competitive advantage of the United States, which is our service economy. Um, and they're saying, God forbid that the, the Trump administration starts, starts to do this with the service industry. 'cause that could be highly disruptive. And I spoke actually to a doctor, the reason I was talking to this doctor is because he's a major plastic surgeon in Los Angeles.

The tummy tucks and the facelifts of a lot of, you know, celebrities, most of which he couldn't, you know, name, uh, you, I, I tried, I tried to get, tried to find out who his clients were, but I, I, I know by reputation that some of his, some of his very, very big names in Hollywood go to him and he was saying, you have no idea.

Uh, a silicone breast implant, you know, is very expensive and a lot of, you know, and, and it's not produced here in the United States. They all come from overseas. And so that's, you know, so basically I was. To, but again, this was a little bit outside the, the, the, the parameters of my original story. Maybe it's a, you know, fodder for, for a future story, but basically, you know, the, the Trump administration is making boob jobs more expensive.

Yeah. And well also there's the, you also have to take into consideration people that need implants for medical reasons, right? Sure, sure. And so that's a whole nother area. Again, not to get into a whole conversation about healthcare in the us. But that's another whole thing that could explode up if tariffs end up creeping out to those other ancillary areas.

Right. I know another interesting conversation I had, Shelly, is someone that you know, uh, fairly well, uh, as well, is Charlie Ku, who's the, uh, that's Charlie. How he doing? Has he been on your podcast? Oh yeah. Charlie's been on my podcast not recently. In fact, I call him,

he, uh, his is just. Gangbusters, you know, uh, its stock price is, I think it's the fastest growing stock price on Nasdaq this year of all. Wow. That's it. I'm so happy for him. But anyway, um, what I, what I thought was interesting about Charlie is that he, uh, was saying, you know, they're obviously in the financing.

He and his company and, you know, is sort of insulated either way. 'cause either, you know, if people start to struggle. More financially, they're gonna look for more alternative ways to pay. Uh, by the same token, if they're not struggling, they're gonna spend more in which they're gonna like, you know, u use his product as well.

So he feels like he's sort of hedged on both sides. But, you know, he considers sales will be sort of a bellwether, uh, for how the industry's going because he works with, you know, tens of thousands of different retailers across many different industries across the US and, and they have millions of customers too.

So he kind of see macroeconomic trends. He was saying, you know. By and large, he hasn't seen the, the despair that sometimes PA is painted in the media. Uh, that a lot of these companies are just, you know, just, you know, days away from going under because of these tariffs, uh, despite all the disruption and upheaval that's happened.

So he seemed to take a very positive outlook. He, he tended to think though that, uh, perhaps the company that are most gonna suffer are not actually the actuals, but like the Shopifys of the world. And these e you know, all e-commerce, uh, sort of platforms that really, you know, service a lot of companies that are highly dependent, particularly on imports from China.

Right? And oh, by the way, talk about thin margins, e-com businesses, they have the worst margins. Most of them. A lot of them don't make money. The other is, um, you know, when you think about this, I think a big part of why we haven't seen a lot of impact of the tariffs is because we won't see this until, uh, probably third or unfortunately fourth quarter.

So depending, and I don't have a ball. What's that? Just in time I.

I work around what's been happening in terms of tariffs and stuff, but when we get in a third and fourth quarter, depending on what transpires over the next, you know, four to six weeks, those, when, that's when goods are gonna be coming in for that third and fourth quarter, and I think that's when we're gonna see more of an impact of those tariffs on.

Yeah. You know, I think you're absolutely right. You know, the, the, we're we're talking about a problem that no one's actually seen. At least there, there's been some, you know, instances here and there, but for the most part, we haven't seen the empty shelves yet. And I think that, you know, it could be the perfect storm.

You know, if we, we, you know. Uncertainty from the, from this new tariff policy sort of really just kicks in, you know, in November, October, November, December, as we're heading into the, the holiday shopping season, that is when I think you're gonna see the real political fall if indeed that happens. Now there's still a lot of economists out there that say that, you know, there's opportunity for reversal if things.

Don't escalate. If they're, you know, we go back, maybe we don't go back to zero, but we stay within this, you know, margin of, you know, 10% across the board, that type of thing. We can probably avoid the worst of it. Um, but, you know, there's a lot of people that say that, you know, if you're looking up the supply chain, you look at Los Angeles port, you know, a third of the containers coming from, from China and from and from Taiwan, uh, are, are, you know, basically year on year.

It's a third of the containers.

So, you know, I, I think that that could be really calamitous and that's really gonna test the steal, I think of not so much Trump. 'cause I don't think he really, you know, my personal opinion is he probably doesn't care. It's a conviction. Like I said, that he's, he's held for years. But, you know, the people that have been supporting this in Congress and elsewhere that sort of provide the, the political sort of.

Heat shield for him. Uh, whether, whether that falls out when, you know, for example, you know, in deep red states, like in Arkansas or Kentucky or wherever, if they start to go to their, their local warm Walmart or Costco, whatever, and they see that there's products lacking on the stores or that the, the prices are really jacked up, I think that's gonna be the real test, um, of, of his ability to maintain this type of policy going forward.

I don't think it's sustainable, Shelly. I mean, I think, you know. Someone was saying, you know, we're into the Trump administration. If this was a football game, you know, a American football game we're lit literally five minutes into the first quarter. It kind of feels like we're ready for halftime. Right? It does.

It does, totally. But, but I mean, we're really, really in the very early days of this, of this administration still, and the question really is, um, you know, how long can he, can the will sustain this?

The market is, you know, the stock market specifically now is when he announces new tariffs, it's reacting less and less and less. And you see that, you know, maybe his ability to actually affect markets with these, you know, uh, by sending these truths out, these, you know, his, his tweets on his own platform, et cetera, talking about, you know, this or that is really sort of diminishing with time.

I think he's seen, he's having, you know, marginal diminishing returns on that. Yeah, I think that, uh, you're right Eric. When we look at what's gonna transpire it, you keep saying if, if, if, if, if, and that's what it's all about. It's the big, if we dunno what's gonna happen, we, we can't see around the corner, as you say.

And that makes it very challenging for retailers, do you have any like advice or is there anything you'd like. Retailers are brands, you know, going into third and fourth quarter. Like what should they be doing? What should they be thinking? I mean, it's tough for any of us to kind of predict out, even the analysts dunno what to, you know, say in terms of, you know, to help retailers and brands because they, no one knows.

I mean it, that's such a broad question because there's just so many different industries out there. But I mean, I think that, broadly speaking, um, I think people should be, take a real hard look at their cost structure and see if there are ways to, you know, reduce operating costs, um, and be able to, you know, sort of reallocate available dollars within the company to to inventory.

Um, I think this is a storm that needs to be weathered in the, in the, in the most sort of literal sense almost. Um, I think that, uh.

They may be thinking, well, they may come down more, but they also might go up a lot, left a lot, lot more, you know, a lot more as well. So I think you may want to, uh, take an approach where you're, you know, stocking up on inventory as long as you're not in a business that has perishables, of course. Um, I also think working with your bank, you know, working with your financing and, and your lenders to, to extend that credit, get, get, you know, get extensions working capital in.

Work with your suppliers, you know, you know, suppliers are also feeling the pinch and they're, and they're gonna be more apt to be, you know, do deals right now and give you sort of, you know, perhaps more lenient, you know, instead of, you know, 90 days, maybe they go to 180 days payable. You know, those types of things.

You know, I think it's really this, this, this is as much a, a, a, a marketers challenge as it is a CFO. Um, and, you know, uh, and CEO challenge. I think there's a going to be a couple big outcomes that are gonna happen in our industry. One is the key word of this whole year is diversification. A lot of retailers have been working on it for many years, diversified supply chain, diversified assortments so that when something happens, you can make, you know, better choices, right?

If you have a.

We're gonna, our industry become much better collaborators as a whole. So I'm talking about competitors working together to try and figure out, you know, the best way forward. So I think that's a positive outcome, is this greater collaboration. I think the third outcome that might be very positive is finally this reduction of stuff being made.

So.

I get them. Right. So maybe we'll finally see some of this overproduction slow down. I wonder, you know, to, in that vein, Shelly, whether this ultimately will affect how people also think about, you know, in the fashion sector, for example, fast fashion, you know, you know. Low quality, you know, goods that you wear 3, 4, 5 times, and then they go into, you know, into the landfill.

Unfortunately, sometimes in places, you know, far away from, you know, far, far, far outta sight. Um, and maybe this is also an opportunity for the consumer to think about, well, maybe I spend. The same amount of money on fewer items of higher quality, you know, of higher craftsmanship, that they're gonna last longer.

Pieces of clothing that I could even wear, you know, for, you know, years or decades or even maybe hand down to, you know, my children. That, that mentality, obviously I'm not, I don't think that we're there yet. That, that, that's a huge cultural shift. That's, again, all these things have been. Percolating and brewing for, for decades at this point.

Right. But I do think that, you know, if, if people right now weren't so addicted in the case of, you know, apparel to fast fashion, if they had clothes that they've been wearing for, you know, they wouldn't necessarily say, well, okay, the, the, the shell might be, you know, empty or, or, you know, skim at my, my favorite retailer, but I've got plenty of things that I can wear.

They're not addicted to constantly refilling their, their closets as if they were perishables. Well, Eric, always a pleasure having you on. I love talking shop with you. Uh, so thank you so much. Any closing thoughts? Well, I gotta tell you, you know, Shelly, I, I had a long day, had lots of ups and downs, but I knew at the end of the day there was a rainbow and it was Shelly's podcast.

So thank you so much for having me on. Aw, thank you so much. Thanks for being here and thanks for all your great writing. Keep it up. Thank you for listening to Retail Unwrapped. We'll be back in one week with another podcast. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast service. If you have questions, ideas for a podcast or anything else, please contact us via the robin reports.com.