Legacy is Becoming the Person Who Opened the Door

The fashion industry has a trust problem. Consumers are no longer sure what their clothes are made of, whether sustainability claims are real, or whether the brands they buy from are telling the truth. In this episode of the Business Legacy Podcast, Paul Dio sits down with Rachel Erickson, CEO and founder of Unmarked Street and The Business of Apparel, to talk about what it takes to bring kindness, transparency, and accurate information back into an industry that has been questioned for years. Rachel and her team spent more than a decade each inside major corporate fashion brands before building their own company. Unmarked Street is their done for you product development agency, handling fit, factory documentation, and contracts for smaller apparel brands. The Business of Apparel is their mentorship and coaching arm, created because so much of the information available to new founders online is simply wrong. The conversation covers where the mistrust began, from the rush toward sustainability without regulation to the greenwashing lawsuits that followed. Rachel then lays out the order of operations every new apparel founder should follow: target customer first, budget second, product creation third. She makes the case that creativity only survives when the margins are healthy, and she challenges consumers and brands alike to measure value by cost per wear rather than cost per garment. Rachel's deepest passion is fit, and she explains why it is the fastest path to a loyal customer base. She shares how her team solved a running short fit issue in two rounds after a brand had struggled through five or six prototypes, and how one client built her size charts by personally measuring her ideal customers. On legacy, Rachel wants to be remembered as the person who opened the door for apparel founders, and on a personal level, she is close to her goal of retiring her husband. ### Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and introduction to Rachel Erickson 00:45 Bringing trust back into the fashion industry 02:00 Unmarked Street and The Business of Apparel 03:00 Where the mistrust in fashion started 05:00 Greenwashing, plastic, and what our clothes are made of 06:00 Where new apparel founders should begin 07:00 Target customer first 08:00 Why budget comes before design 09:30 Balancing creativity, originality, and profitability 11:00 Cost per wear versus cost per garment 12:30 Selling to the parent, not the kid 13:30 Paul's progress over perfection hat 15:30 Rachel's passion for fit and pattern engineering 17:00 Solving a running short fit in two rounds 18:30 Why great fit builds loyal customers 20:00 The new Wild Rye collaboration 21:00 Inventory waste and bad fit 22:00 Why there is no standard sizing 23:30 Building size charts by measuring real customers 25:00 Gratitude for her husband and team 27:00 Professional and personal legacy 28:30 Where to connect with Rachel ### Episode Resources Explore how Rachel helps apparel founders build profitable, trustworthy brands with the right information, the right fit, and the right foundation from day one: https://thebusinessofapparel.com Leave a Review: If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review and rating on your preferred podcast platform. For more information: Visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com to access the show notes and additional resources on the episode.