#334 - The Fabric of a Brand: Hedley & Bennett’s Founder on Community, Finance, and Growth

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The pricing will scale with your business, and with more than 1300 integrations and add ons, you can tune it to your exact needs. Visit HubSpot.com sales to start selling with sales hub what is up DTC pod? Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Ellen Marie Bennett, who is the co founder or the founder and chief brand officer of Headley and Bennett. We're really excited for this convo because we are talking everything. Cooking chefs, cooking products, product development for an amazing chef and brand that she has seen, spun, spun out and built over the last twelve years. So, Ellen, I'm going to let you take it away. Why don't you tell us a little bit and let's start with your personal background and maybe the inspiration and what led to the founding of Hedley and Bennett.

Yeah, definitely. I am born and raised in LA, but I am half Mexican, half English. So I grew up with this, like, really amazing sort of contrarian worldview from my very, very, like, you know, running around the streets of Mexico, playing soccer, barefoot life. And then I had my great danes and tea at four and Shepherd's pie for dinner life in my english grandparents house. So the inspiration for my company's name, Hedley and Bennett, is actually from these two very opposing cultures that are so amazing and so an informative part of my life and journey. So I grew up in LA, then I moved to Mexico City when I was 18. And I lived there for four years. Went to culinary school.

Always loved food. Always, always, always. And I knew I wanted to do something in food, but I didn't know exactly what it was. I just knew it had to be food related. And so I was just sort of like chasing this spaghetti noodle through life. Like, okay, Mexico. I love Mexico. I love food.

Go to school in Mexico. Like, how do you, where do I go? And I just kind of like, kept following my nose and went to school there. After four years, moved back home, moved in with my mom, which was kind of intense after living by yourself for four years in Mexico City and, like, growing a whole life. And I got a job at the best restaurant in the city called Providence, which is two Michelin star restaurant. And that's actually where I began my company, Headley and Bennett. So it's been twelve years. And I'm very proud of those twelve years because I think we are so used to seeing these air quotes, overnight successes and also kind of overnight failures too. And I've always played the long game.

And so here I am standing strong. Twelve years in with Hedley and Bennett, which is very much a chef company that started as an apron brand just for cooks in professional restaurants. And now it's morphed into a lot more than that. It's like a culinary brand that makes knives and cutting boards and aprons for not just professional chefs at a professionally level quality, but for home cooks too. Like, we outfit hundreds of thousands of home cooks with our products and it's the same exact product. We're not like, dumbing it down for, for the home cook. We're just making legit shit that is essential, beautifully made, and like, the most major chef, you know, probably wears Headley and minute.

Yeah, and speaking of home cooks, I guess I'm one of those home cooks because, like, I've got the apron, I cook in it. I feel like a real badass cooking in it, so I love it. And the quality is out of control. So that's definitely awesome, but I kind of want to get back into that story. So you had gone to culinary school. What was, like, the impetus to even, like, start the apron brand in the first place? Like, were you like, looking to be a chef? And then you're like, oh, it'd be cool if I make aprons. You're like, how did it even come about when you were first launching the brand?

Yeah, so I was already cooking professionally. I mean, I was working I was making, I think, like eleven or $12 an hour, you know, being a line cook at this really elite restaurant here in Los Angeles. Like, the average meal, you know, is like $1,000 a person kind of a place. And I looked around the kitchen and I was like, we look like shit and we feel like shit, yet we are making the most beautiful, iconic food in this city. We need to change this. And I'm also a runner. And when I first started running, you know, I got a really great outfit at Nike, and it, like, made me believe I was more of a runner than I actually was. And it was very mental.

And I thought, shit, if I could do that for the culinary space, this could be amazing. And I could actually change that industry. And it's an industry there. You work really hard. Like, it's very glorified, but I think everyone's gotten a peak of it because of the bear. Like, you're talking about a business that's 13 hours, days, very grueling, very intense. And so I just thought, let's upgrade that. And that's where the idea began.

And it was really word of mouth, just me in the kitchen saying, hey, I'm gonna start an apron company. And one of my chefs was like, oh, I have a girl. She's gonna make us aprons. And I was like, wait, are you kidding me? Like someone else is out there thinking the same thing as me. And I basically convinced the guy to give me the order. And right there, standing in the middle of his kitchen, I was like, what's she charging you? What's her turnaround? I'll do it faster and better. And he gave me an order for 40 aprons. And that's literally how our company started.

I had no business plan. I had not gone to Stanford business school. I did not have a deck built for it, let alone a plan. I just was like, I'm going to do this. And I later wrote a book called Dream first, details later. So I think it's just kind of in my DNA to just go for it and then figure out everything later. And that was twelve years ago, so it's been quite the journey.

Yeah. And I think for, for all sorts of brand founders, the most important thing is just getting started. And sometimes, and I know I find this true for me, but sometimes it's like if you knew everything and all the obstacles that you would run to run into, maybe you wouldn't even start it in the first place. But, like, kind of that naivety and that, like, excitement and that, like, just get started allows you to create something, and then it just starts to snowball from there. So I'd love if you could characterize, like you said. You guys are twelve years in. You guys are, um, you know, over eight figures, or you guys are eight figures in revenue. You guys are really crushing it.

You guys are working with the top chefs. You have an amazing product line of all sorts of products, not just aprons now, but why don't you characterize what the first couple of years looked like, whether it from the financing side or how you started to, like, morph this brand into what it is today?

Yeah, totally. I took a very old school approach, which, ironically, I feel like the industry is finally kind of coming back full circle to that old school approach, which is, like, a little bit more slow and steady wins the race, versus just, like, grow at all costs. It doesn't matter. Top line is the only thing that matters. Those words didn't even exist to me. All I knew was that I couldn't spend more than I made. That was, like, my through line when I was a tiny, tiny, tiny business owner. I was like, don't spend more than you make a, and reinvest every penny back into the business.

And so I was just super ruthlessly frugal, and I literally did that with every order. I started with one chef at the farmer's market, or, well, my chef. And then I started setting up at the farmers market. I would go to events, like the big food events, and find famous chefs and introduce myself, and I'd say, I work at Providence. I have this apron line. Can I show it to you? And before they knew it, I had already, like, strapped an apron onto their body, and they were like, whoa, this is actually way better. And our fabric is beautiful and super durable. And so, you know, I could, like, talk a strong game, but I also had a product that was backing it up.

And all of these chefs were becoming my focus group. Live. Like, they would be like, oh, I like your apron. But you know what? What if you put a pocket that's a little bit lower? Oh, I love this, but I don't love this detail. How about we make it brass hardware? And I would just be taking copious amount of notes, mentally being like, okay, that's a great idea. I love that. And then I'd go back to them and say, hey, that idea you had about the brass straps, like, oh, the brass hardware, like, we put it in, and it totally works. And it really made people feel kind of like they were putting little bricks on the floor.

Of our building, of our brand. And they became very attached to heavily and men because of that, because I cared what they thought, and they were helping me build it. So it was a lot of, like, grassroots, scrappy marketing and running around like that for the first couple of years. And honestly, for, like, if I really do the math, probably, like, the first four or five years, it was just me building a deep, tremendous community with, like, loyalty and listening and trying and failing and perfecting the apron. And every time I did an order, because our whole entire company was made to order at that time. So it's like, Blaine, you want aprons for your new cafe called Intelligentsia? I got you. What's your logo? What's your color? I got. I'm going to make it look amazing for you.

How many do you need? You need 50? No problem. I need a 50% deposit. Okay, awesome. I deliver the aprons. You give me the other 50%. What does Ellen do? She takes that money, reinvest it into the business. And so it's just like brick, but I was like a little brick layer. I was like, here's another $50 of product.

Okay, good. I got that. And another one. And another one. And you know, what it did is it taught me how to be really, really good at managing our finances. It taught me how to be profitable when we were tiny. And so when we got more money as we grew, it wasn't just like, oh, I got a couple million dollars. Let me just, like, throw that at a billboard.

Campaign, oh, shit, we ran out of money. We need to raise money because we're running out of money. It was like, oh, my God, we have a million dollars. We have all the money in the universe. Like, what are we going to do with it? And we were so thoughtful and strategic about it, because we knew what it felt like to not have money. And it was a very, very nasty feeling to be like, oh, shit, I can't make payroll. You know? So when you have that sort of gun to your head, at some point on your journey, you respect your dollar bills so much more, and it makes you much more business owner. So the beginning was like, kind of like me getting four mbas in those first few years while building a brand.

I think that's such a good point in terms of, you know, being diligent with your finances and scaling things up at the. In the. In a way that was healthy for the business. I actually hear it all the time. And sometimes, you know, when you're actually growing a brand, you're actually working at the right pace for that organic sort of growth to like match up with your finances. I hear it all the time in, you know, it's a related space but slightly different. This happens in CPG where brands will like, basically, like you said, raise a bunch of money, push out like develop a lot of products, sell it out, have all these retail distributors and then all of a sudden they start to hear, oh, wait a minute, like, no one's actually like buying this product even though maybe they have like an endorsement from a celebrity or something like that. They've spent so much they've invested in inventory, then the inventory is going to go bad.

So building businesses sustainably and that's again, not to say that growth capital is not good, but knowing how to deploy it and being efficient and growing the right way I think just sets you on track for a really good, steady pace of growth.

My next question, just because you have the money doesn't mean you need to spend the money. Like, what a beautiful thing to be sitting on a little like chest of cash for a bad rainy day. Like, you just never know what's going to go south. And yeah, one thing that I learned early on was just like, okay, I can't actually just like hope for growth and spend for growth. I need to. The, the way we did it was essentially when we were like at absolute breaking capacity. Then we would add a team member or then we would expand the factory. Whereas the times I saw us get a little bit ahead of our skis where we were like, oh, we got a new three pl, let's just get 5000 extra square feet because we're going to need that during holiday.

And then you don't need it. And then guess what you did? You just spent six months worth of your dollars paying for material and space you didn't need. So it's like things like that bit us in the ass later when we got a little too, like, okay, you have a little more cash and we've had to rein it back in to keep to that original philosophy.

Well, and I think even if you're built, if you're building at that pace, one of the, one of the cool things is you're always going to have an opportunity to spend money. There's like, as a business owner, there's always opportunities that come across, but sometimes not all those opportunities are created equally. Right? And if you have that cash and you can be, you can make the right decision. An opportunity may come along where you're like, that is the opportunity that I want to go in on. And then you'll have the capital to make it. Whereas if you're just spending because you have it, you know, that opportunity may come along. You may be. Might be like, oh, crap, I totally blew that budget before.

Now I can't do it.

I saw a lot of that in our early years. I mean, that was 2012, to call it 2017. Those were the heydays of Warby Parker and all these huge brands raising a ton of money and kind of throwing money everywhere. And we were like, the weirdos that hadn't raised money and that were, like, slow and steady. Just put your blinders on. And now you look around, and it's like. It's a gory situation out there where brands don't have the money they need to actually, like, do this properly. And I just am grateful that we stuck to our guns on this profitability train and just kept doing it right and built a really real community.

It's not like a community that's, like, a fake.

Ooh.

It's. You can't buy love. Like, you gotta, like, make it right. You gotta show up. You gotta respect the people wearing your product and treat them like humans. And that's just something I've always been very passionate about, like, showing up in person, in real life, looking somebody in the wide of the eye, and being like, hi. You wear my product. You're a badass.

Thank you. What do you think? How can I make it better? What else are you doing? Oh, my God. You have a pop up. Let me come by and celebrate the pop up where you're wearing my product that builds beautiful friendships that also morph into community.

Well, 100%. And this is something I really want to double click on, which is, you know, community and brand and the way you guys have really built that out. I'd love to talk about how, as you built the brand, you said in the early days, you were really focused on selling direct to these chefs, getting these orders. At what point did you start to say, hey, we've, like, you know, we've made a great. We have a big impact in the culinary scene, but now we can actually start selling to consumers. How far along in your business was that, and what were the first moves to start selling to other sort of retail consumers?

Yeah, I mean, oof. It was a scrappy situation for several years. We sold just b. Two B. So that's business to business. Right. We threw up like a yemenite, very basic website. I don't even think it was on Shopify.

It was like some other old school, I think it might have been squarespace back in the day of squarespace. And I was like, whoa, this is not pretty. But there it was. And it just kind of did its thing in the background. We didn't really do a lot to it, and we just kept focusing on restaurant land. And around the time we were, I think we must have been already in, like, four or 5000 restaurants. So we were like the designers of chefs restaurants. Like, we were outfitting everybody from Nancy Silverton to David Chang, the whole mumofuku chains, Kimpton hotels, four Seasons, you name it.

You saw our ampersand logo on those chefs. And so that whole world was like a gigantic free marketing campaign. And so all those people that were these famous chefs started going onto tv shows. They started going on to Top Chef, they started going on to food network shows, and food networks started that more and more like legit chef shows, right? And we became the apron of all those shows in a very organic way. In fact, Top Chef had so many chefs turning down top chefs own aprons that Top Chef reached out to us and was like, hey, can we just, like, make a heavily invented Top Chef apron? Because we can't keep telling all these chefs to not wear your product like we want to do. We want to just, like, team up. Can we just team up? And we were like, yep, let's do it. And so we became the official Headley and bennett Top Chef apron.

So it was things like that. Like, it really paid off in the long game to just continue to show up in IRL. And so when that happened, I was like, we need to become more accessible to the everyday person who's watching Top Chef and Food Network. It's at home cooking. And where we really, really doubled down was in, like, 2019, 2020. When Covid hit, that was the true sort of, like, marker of the shift. We had been around 50% direct to consumer by then, and we became 80% direct to consumer through Covid. So it was like, radical growth, and it was sustainable because we weren't, like, buying ads against it.

It was just happening. Those people were at home. They were cooking. And our restaurant industry, our consumer, didn't actually go down. It just the d two c side grew so much more than that side, and b, two b. To this day, though, I told you this a little bit offline, but it continues to be such an important part of our foundational DNA as a brand, because it's how we product develop. It's our athlete. Like, these people work 13 hours days in our product.

The quality we have to sustain to make sure that they love our product is immense. So when you buy an apron by Headley and Bennett for your house, that thing is going to last you as long as your le Creuset Dutch oven. Like, you're going to have that literally for life. And that makes people incredibly loyal at home because they're used to getting hustled by Shitty mark or great marketing with shitty product. And we are the opposite. We're, like, all quality. And now we're just beginning to get onto the, like, the d two C train of marketing land.

We are really excited to announce that DTC pod is officially part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals. And we're really excited about being part of the network because we're going to be able to keep growing the show, bringing you guys amazing guests, and obviously helping you guys learn from the best founders, marketers, and builders of the most successful consumer brands. So, anyway, keep listening to DTC pod and more shows like us on the HubSpot podcast network@HubSpot.com. podcastnetwork. Yeah. And I love that from a brand marketing point of view and a community point of view and a product development point of view. It's like, how do you create a product for the people who are at the absolute pinnacle of their craft or their niche or whatever it is that they're doing? And you guys, I mean, that's just how you started.

That wasn't even, like, part of, like, this crazy master plan. That was just like, what your business was. But. But I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about now, how you continue to fuel that side of the business, how you think about it, you know, from a brand perspective, being that, like, that's a big part of your role. Like, how do you guys think about continuing to accelerate, you know, your partnerships and being able to enable the top, top chefs in the world?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's a dance, for sure, because when you have a company that's doing more revenue, it's like, where's the numbers? How are we driving more dollars? Like, what's happening? Where's the science to track every move? And you want to see it. Everyone wants to see it on the p and l. And what I'm talking about is in between the lines. It's the special sauce, it's the magic. It's the sparkle that makes you go, oh, I love that brand. But you love that brand because you saw it on your favorite barbecue guy. While you were watching masterclass. You love that brand because they showed up in four different festivals that you went to, and you saw all your favorite chefs rocking it organically at those festivals.

You saw it at a Yeti event. You saw it at this thing, that kind of conglomerate sort of, like, glues together this concept of, I love that brand, right? And that takes work, and you can't really track other than, like, okay, I attended 16 events this year or something like that, right? But. So I'm constantly having to figure out, like, how do I. How do I explain that this is really important? I just. I know it in my heart, because when I go to an event and someone gives me a giant hug, but he happens to be one of the most famous chefs in the country. But it's because if he texts me at two in the morning and says, hey, I'm an event tomorrow and I need three aprons, I make it happen for him. I don't say, oh, sorry, we don't do that anymore because we're a big company. I'm like, you got it, chef.

No problem. That'll be on your doorstep by the time you get up. And that is hospitality. And that comes from my, like, roots of cooking. And I think it's just like, don't get over your. Don't get on your high horse. You know, you gotta, like, keep showing up where your people are. I think it's really what it comes down to.

So we keep showing up where our people are. We keep going to events. We sponsor a bajillion different foundations that are super cool and really helpful for our community. But also, our chefs are there, so we get to see them. We get to say hi. We do a ton of product development with our chef community. So I will bring our knives and our aprons and our cutting boards, and our entire product team does the same thing. And they'll have, like, meetings in professional kitchens and drop product off and leave it there and then pick it up and be like, okay, what happened? How did this work? How did that work? It's not just like, us on, you know, Photoshop figuring out or, like, whatever.

All that. All the apps that my team uses to develop products. I don't even know what they're all called, but there's a million of them. And it's a lot of industrial design, but it doesn't start there. It starts in kitchens.

Yeah. And this is something that I want to get into. But first, I want to talk about, you know, continuing to work with the chefs and how that's actually changed. Call it. In the last, like, you know, 510 years, you mentioned, like, top Chef. You mentioned some of these cooking shows, and over the last. Call it, you know, 510 years, a lot more stuff has come online. So you've got creators.

You've got so many chef creators. You've got, you know, instagrammers who are, like, wannabe chefs. So, like, with the evolution and with the. I'd call it the more, like, maybe democratization of, like, you know, food based, chef based, kitchen based content. Like, how do you play around in that area? Do you guys do product seating? Is there influencer collaborations that you do, or is it strictly, you know, behind the scenes, organically on the relationships that you've already built?

Yeah, so all of the above, we, on TikTok, we have about 800,000 followers that really grew significantly through Covid. We, like, worked with a bunch of line cooks that used to have jobs. They were unemployed, and I was like, you make amazing stuff. Let's work together and let's make content. And so it really, like, grew pretty exponentially through that wave and that era of, like, TikTok. Everybody's eyeballs was on TikTok. Everyone's eyeballs were on TikTok. So we were there, too.

So that is how we grew TikTok. And then we have done a very, very, very steady product seating for creators that are cooking, and they're home cooks and they're professional cooks. On top of that, like I said earlier, we have this sort of organic base of professional chefs that wear our product and have always worn our product in restaurants. And they, in turn, all became very digital through Covid. So it was like, restaurant world double down on digital. So did we. And then on top of that, we started seeding to the home cooks and home creators, and then we also started doing a lot of collaborations with creators. So one thing we haven't talked about is, like, one of Hedley and Bennett's big kind of.

I think using the word strategy is a stretch, because, truthfully, it was not a strategy. It was like, these people are amazing. I want to team up with them. What can we make together? That became collaborations. Right. But it was, it was never, like, some, like, plot to do strategy of collaborations. It just became an organic piece of our business and now is very much part of our DNA. But we started with just chefs developing aprons.

Right? Like a single chef would be. Alton Brown, for example, was one of our early chefs, and he said, hey, I want to make a sha. I want to make an apron. I want japanese denim. I wanted to have a certain pocket, and then it grew from there. It was like, okay, not just Alton Brown. Now it's vans. Now it's crocs.

Now it's grateful dead, love shack, fancy Disney, Star Wars, Madewell, the Beatles. Like, the list goes on and on and on. But it started with a single chef. And now we do all these other collabs. And we used to kind of, we almost, like, only did big collabs because we got to this level where we're like, well, what's bigger than Disney? Like, where do we go from here? And we realized that all these incredible chefs out there on Instagram and creators have these pockets of community that are really awesome. So we started to lean into that. So we've done, I don't know if you've seen her on Instagram with her names, like Olivia. Olivia tead.

She blew up. She has, like, 4 million followers and has only been on Instagram, I think, for like, a year. So we did a collab with her and that, like, exploded and sold out essentially the same day. We did another one with this gal named Cassie young money, who's amazing and such a fun chef. And each one of those just, like, blew up in its own way. And we treated it very much like little bit of a streetwear drop model, right? We had a limited amount. We, she announced it. We announced it, and then it was gone.

And it was gone for, like, three months. And then it came back for a limited time. So everybody was, like, freaking out. There were, like, thousands of people on waitlist, and then it was like, okay, it's back. And then everybody bought it and it was sold out. So that's been something where, you know, the value and effort is much. It's like a very high value with low effort, but it taps into these beautiful communities. So we've been doing a ton of that, too now.

So Disney and creators and I think.

One of the really cool things about what you've talked about is you guys have prioritized so much value in, like, the network that you're building. And that's from, like, the early days of the business and then throughout, through your brand values, through the way you think about product development, you can always create new products, you can create collaboration. But, like, for you guys, it seems like the one thing that you really nailed from the jump of the brand was going after the people who have the, who are, like, the top of what they do and have the credibility and the authority within the space. And then from there, it just makes your life in terms of scaling the brand easier, because now you've got the network, you've got the community, you've got those people behind you in your corner, and you can continue to product develop and iterate. So now I'd love to talk about, um, you know, your product iteration cycle. One thing that we were talking about is, like, my personal belief is, like, the best way is to dog food your own product. Because if you as a founder are finding value in something, uh, there's, there's a good chance other people are. Whereas a lot of people will just, like, parse through customer feedback and, like, not actually have a real lens through their self as the, you know, consumer, like, the person who would use that product.

But having that gives you, like, a level up of perspective even when you're evaluating customer feedback, right? Because you can be like, oh, that's good feedback, or that's okay feedback. Thank you. But, like, that's not quite relevant here. So I'd love, I'd love if you could just walk us through how you guys think of product EV and how you yourself, like, get in the kitchen and make, make stuff happen for all the new things that you guys continue to create.

Totally. So, on a personal level, you know, I don't cook professionally anymore, but I still, I mean, I was telling you offline, I went to an event yesterday for the 25th anniversary of a two Michelin star restaurant here in LA, who was one of my first customers. And so, you know, in, in that setting, I was able to go into the kitchen yesterday and see 40 of the best chefs in the city all in one swoop. And I got to talk to them and hear, like, what are you doing? What are you up to? What's going on? And I'm just like, I'm just like a squirrel. I'm like, gathering information all day long, but in a way that's, like, very organic and natural. And I'm like, I'm having fun at this party, but I'm also hearing, oh, my God, you got this cool new knife. What's the knife? Where did you get it? Oh, you went to Japan. What was your favorite place? Oh, my God, that restaurant.

Amazing. They're doing cool stuff. And so I'm just, like, learning what's relevant and culturally happening in my industry at, like, grassroots level, even twelve years in. And when you balance that with surveys that your really scientifically oriented team is doing, I think it makes for a beautiful blend of art and science. Like, you've got boots on the ground founder with her antennas out, and then you've got the data team literally combing through our NP's scores at our office, going like, okay, what's the return rate? What are people saying? Oh, this is coming up a lot. Why is that happening to our knives? Okay, let's fix that. Let's talk to product about that. And so I feel like the product team gets very artsy and, like, is boots on the ground.

And then our, you know, marketing team is very science oriented, and so they're just tracking all the data, and then we're shoving art and feelings at them. And in the middle, it makes, like, a beautiful blend. And there's definitely tension, right? Because they might be like, whatever. That feedback is insignificant. And I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. Like, Dave Chang said that this knife is nothing. The sharpness on the tip is not as good. So we need to fix that, right? And so, like, those little moments happen in real life that then become super significant internally.

So it's a little bit of a blend of both. But I think it's really important. No matter how big your company gets, you need somebody, whether it's the founder or product developers, to be boots on the ground where the product is being used. I think Patagonia does a really good job of that. They have these, like, people they pay to go up onto the mountaintop and use their camping gear, and then they make little videos about it and it's fun and it's cool, but it actually helps them develop the best product. So, you know, listen to Patagonia and listen to Headley and met.

I love that. I love that. And, you know, Ellen, as we kind of wrap up here, I'd love to know what you guys are thinking about now. Like we said, you guys are twelve years in. You have lots of different product lines. You've nailed the apron, you've got the collapse going. You've introduced knives and different sort of things. So, you know, as we think about the next couple of years of the business, like, what gets you really excited? What are some of the initiatives that you guys want to push and that you're, you know, doubling down on?

Yeah, um, I think as a brand, we're at this place where, you know, we very much have focused on b, two b, and now d to c. It's like two channels, really. Our next venture is headed into omnichannel. It's like, how do we show up in stores? What does that look like? You know, we just launched into the container store, which was a really fun adventure. Getting in there and, like, being next to products that we love and respect. And it's like, how do we show up? What do we look like? Or going into Nordstrom was another one. And so we're being very, like, selective and thoughtful about it. And I think that's something that it keeps coming up in our conversation.

We have so many opportunities and we could say yes to everything, but we're, like, picking and choosing which path to take with the long game in mind. And so I think we're kind of in this, like, next phase. We're no longer babies, we're no longer adolescents. We're kind of like young adults, and what are we going to do? But I think about Hedley and Bennett as a legacy brand. Like, I want to be like Birkenstocks. I want to be like vans. I want to be a brand that's cool today and cool in 75 years. I have zero interest in being a flash in the pan.

It's really sexy to be on the COVID of a magazine. But guess what? That does nothing for you the next day. So what are you going to do to keep your legacy intact in 50 years? Like, that's how you got to think about your product, your brand, everything. So every day right now, the products we're working on are things you're not going to see for a couple of years. And we can't even talk about the things we're making. But it's culinary brand related. Anything that's, like, essential for the kitchen. That is not a tchotchke.

That's like, where, where we're headed.

Well, and what's really important there is, like, what you just said is, like, thinking about the long term vision of the brand. And if this brand is going to be around 75 years from now, uh, what do we have to do? And I think a really simple way to think about that would be, like, how do you allocate spend? Right? Like, if you're allocating, spend into, you know, working and activating a partnership with a, like, a top chef who has all of this, like, brand equity already created. You're building trust and you're building trust into your brand, which you'll be able to use to sell. Or you could use that same amount of money to, like, run a meta campaign and get, you know, five random new customers, like, all over the US with, like, that just doesn't, you know, sure, it's great, uh, in the moment, but, like, if we're thinking about, you know, what's going to have more impact to the trajectory of the brand 75 years from now. Like, it's kind of a no brainer. So I do love that. And I think that's a great spot to end is just like, thinking about. Not thinking about, like, right now, but like, thinking about how do I position my company to, a, build it sustainably, but b, invest in the things that are going to, you know, really be here in the long term if it's going to be a winner.

So, Ellen, just want to thank you so much for coming on the pod. We learned a lot today. For anyone who's tuning in, why don't you shout out your socials for yourself and the brand? Where can we find you?

Yeah, definitely. I'm ellenmariebennett on Instagram and Headley and Bennett as well. We're on TikTok and Instagram. And then obviously go to our website, headleyandbennett.com. check out our aprons, our knives, our collaborations. It's like the best freaking present. You can get them embroidered and literally, people will be obsessed and they will never not wear their apron anymore. They'll be like, oh, my God, my dad is wearing that apron you got him three years ago.

That I literally still get texts like that. It's the best thing ever. So get your gifts from heavy.

Met it and it's. It's the real deal. I've got the apron in my kitchen. And like you said, like, you are not over exaggerating. When you're, like, when you put this on, you actually feel like a badass. So I'm all about that as well. Thanks so much, Ellen.

Thanks, Blaine.

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