38 - Angelic Vendette, Alo Yoga

Announcer: Influencers, inspiration, and Instagram, Instagram, Instagram. This is Earned by Tribe Dynamics, here's Conor Begley.

Conor Begley: Welcome to Earned, everybody. Thanks for joining today. Today, we're going to learn from one of the top influencer and digital marketing experts in the world, Angelic Vendette. Thanks for joining the show.

Angelic Vendette: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Conor. A real pleasure to be on.

Conor Begley: And you have quite the resume, by the way. I looked at, obviously right now, you're the VP and head of marketing at Alo, which is one of the top 10 brands we track. I mean, this is one of the killer brands when it comes to direct to consumer. I think they're one of the top five to 10 stores on Shopify by revenue. They're a top 10 brand that we track in apparel by EMV. You're beating brands like Lululemon, Reebok, Fabletics, these are big names. And then even before that you did Stitch Fix, then Sephora, Dolby. Your resume there is pretty impressive, including building and then selling your own agency. So, really excited to have you today, it's going to be a fun one.

Angelic Vendette: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.

Conor Begley: Tell me a little bit about your background. From early days and then into starting your own agency, what was that path? How did you get there and what made you decide," That's what I want to do?"

Angelic Vendette: I had started on the retail side in the luxury market in Canada, the luxury fashion market, with a retailer called Holt Renfrew. I was actually working at Holt Renfrew as a student within the retail space, but then had transitioned over into the head office space and started working on marketing campaigns there. I knew from the get- go that although I had studied accounting and later went on to do business strategy for my MBA, that marketing was really my sweet spot. I have always been very, very interested in tech innovation, new developments, new ways of reaching folks, and new communities. So I felt into really honing in different marketing skills across the digital landscape and integrated as well. So yeah, I started out with Holt Renfrew, skipped over from being a student in retail to graduating into the head office and really working through email campaigns, opening up what was scary and interesting at this time. Something called Facebook, opening that up for the brand. And so really started my foray into new channels and social and digital places for people to connect, as opposed to what was traditional catalog or in- store with retailers. So, that's where I started. I then joined a management consulting firm where we did digitization across multiple industries, so mostly the banking industry, the insurance industry. I'm Canadian and so the equivalent to Wall Street in Canada is Bay Street in Toronto and at a smaller level, of course. But I worked for a slew of banks on Bay Street in Canada, helping them really digitize their processes instead of coming into a bank to see a teller. I worked on programs and softwares and even change management within the org to help banks, insurance companies, and whatnot, get to places where instead of that bank teller check- in person, you can now down loaded on your phone. And it was really the foray and start of transitioning to a digital space for this very, very historical... Or sorry, not historical, archaic type of system, which was banking. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I knew that back from Holt Renfrew, my passion truly was in luxury, in fashion and lifestyle, even beauty. And we happened to have a client called Kerastase, which is part of the L'Oreal family, who was on with us. So I then came to a point in my career where it was a decision. Do I either take on Kerastase as a full- time client or do I stay and do banking? And there's a lot of money to be done within management consulting within those industries, but it obviously not being a passion. So knowing that this was hitting home on marketing, on luxury, on just the lifestyle that I enjoy marketing to folks too, I decided to take a leap. I decided to take a leap, take a chance, and start my own agency after the existing work that we had with Kerastase and really take them on holistically as a client. So that's when my agency days started. I had a business partner, she was ex- L'Oreal, came out and started our agency with me, so Ave Digital. We ended up having contracts for 27 of the 32 L'Oreal Canada brands at the time. We did everything from wireframing to PR events, to helping create email list campaigns, to everything from graphic design and whatnot. So it was very holistic in terms of agency help, we had a slew of contractors at any given moment. We had hourly and contract workers between 20 and 25 folks working for the agency on these various accounts. We were also very lucky because there's some Montreal- based companies that are also global that we caught the eye of. We got exclusive with ALDO Shoes, Call It Spring, we were also doing Nestle Canada. So our very small and humble agency grew from this small account to multiple accounts at a company, to multiple companies with a worldwide reach. And again, all in the sphere of fashion, beauty, lifestyle. Adidas, as well, is one of our clients, and that truly is where I learned most of... I was learning as I was doing. I was learning from our contractors that we were bringing in, there might have been an expert in influencer marketing at the time. And so we brought that expert in who was freelancing and we helped launch NYX Cosmetics in Canada through UGC and influencer content. I got really great accolades, learned as I was doing, but mostly also learned overarching strategy and how to look at marketing from an integrated manner, from a really 360 manner. A slew of clients absolutely loved our time in agency. We owned the agency for about four, four and a half years, and then there was a bid for acquisition by one of our biggest clients, you can guess who. Just all our eggs being in the same basket, which was fine. We were a very small and scrappy startup that, we did pride ourself on full service marketing agency. And from A to Z, we were able to touch on multiple things for accounts we had, so it became clear that we were going to be acquired and come internally as their content studio at the time in Montreal. My business partner decided to go internally, I decided to not. Actually, we celebrate these as wins and it's easy to see that these are wins with a few years in retrospect, but it was incredibly difficult for me, Conor. It was like my business or my baby was taken away from me at the time. When you have a 50- 50 partnership, tough decisions are made. So all of a sudden I found myself really thinking," What are the next steps? What is it that I want to do?" I did have NDAs in place specifically for the beauty industry in Canada and so not long after the press releases came out, Sephora came knocking. And Sephora in the US, so my NDAs in Canada were limited there. And so they asked me if I wanted to come to their head office in San Francisco, relocate and really run their social media and influencer marketing team. It was a great idea. It presented itself to me at the right time, I was available. I thought it would be great because I'm a huge fan of LVMH overall. And so Sephora being a great brand within the space that I had just spent less than five years, but the larger part of the four and a half years really honing and deep diving in on, it was just a great opportunity. I relocated to San Francisco, was at the helm of the social media and influencer marketing team, did a lot of really great things. Changed what was for traditionally social to a social commerce platform, worked with Instagram and Facebook and all of the alphas and betas at the time for direct shopping. Now that I'm saying it to you, it sounds like," Oh yeah, everyone can crosstalk." But back then, this was truly revolutionary. It was like, " Wait, you can shop directly off Instagram and not bounce back link in bio to their page?" So I worked on really cool, neat projects, brought a lot of great innovation to the retailer, and of course worked with a tremendous team to do that. I did that for about a year and a half. I was then promoted to be at the helm of campaigns and content, so integrated marketing for beauty. At Sephora, you have beauty, hair, skin, and so I was at the helm of everything beauty from an integrated manner. So what I had brought to the social and influencer team was truly bringing that to email, site, push notifications, in- store, display. So owning that holistically, I did that for belt just under another year and a half. And being Canadian, I have always been on visas and I'm okay to be open about that now because for anyone immigrating or for anyone not necessarily from the US, we do have to deal with visas and it's hard. You can't be a applying to jobs that you feel that you're qualified for, or you can't really outreach, but you're also limited into the timing. And so there was a big leadership change at Sephora. Calvin McDonald, the CEO, left for Lululemon. He's Canadian and went back to Canada. And so-

Conor Begley: I'm surprised they've never drawn you in. I'm surprised you've never been recruited to Lulu. Or maybe you have and you just haven't done it?

Angelic Vendette: Vancouver's great, but we really love California so there's some of that factoring in too. With leadership changes, I followed a leader over to Dolby because there's security in securing that visa situation and all immigrants will relate here, or all visa holders will relate. And worked on building up the very first consumer marketing team at Dolby Laboratories. Dolby is traditionally a B2B company and this was the very first arm of B2C. So launching things like Dolby SoHo and Experiential in New York, where we did things like launch of the Lion King or launch of a slew of different movies and activations that were in partnership with Dolby. And then also launched the very first consumer product, which was Dolby Dimension. So being at the helm of that was amazing. That again, was on a contract. We also did a slew of things that, I guess I always bring this to the work I do, but partnered with Michael Kors for the MICHAEL Michael Kors launch and Bella Hadid and brought that to Dolby SoHo. So there's a lot of interesting things in the work that we did there, but ultimately a tech company in the B2B space, I knew that was not my forever home. I was lucky enough to have another leader at Dolby, one of my peers, Bryna Corcoran, who went and left to go to Stitch Fix. And again, being limited by visas, you can never really apply but if someone's like," Hey, I have this interesting offer for you. Would you be interested?" You would go in that way, and so I entertained those conversations. I fell in love with Stitch Fix, fell in love with Katrina, the founder, and the vision and all that. So decided to join Stitch Fix and again, at the helm of what was more social influencer on earn- to- own paid channels. So content marketing in that realm and created things like an ambassador program. It was mind bog boggling in the sense that Stitch Fix has about 2000 stylists in the country, so in the US itself, and they hadn't tapped into them for influencer marketing, content marketing, anything outside of their day- to- day job. And so really came in and created that program.

Conor Begley: I would imagine that those people are super passionate about fashion too, right? That's why they took the job. And so they're probably... Yeah.

Angelic Vendette: Super passionate to your point, hyper- knowledgeable too. So if you're going to do lives or if you're going to do consultations, or anything like that, these are the right people to speak to. So just a great opportunity for content creation and for ambassadors of the brand, really. So I was really proud on launching that and having it still thriving today, obviously. But yeah, back to my origin story of being on a visa and following these opportunities that presented to themselves, I transparently got my green card just at the top of this year. So just as of January and well, end of December, beginning of January. And for the first time in a really long time, I want to say over a decade, I was finally able to say," Actually, this is where I want to work. This is the company I want to work for. This is the mandate, I want to join a purpose- led organization that has a very, very strong mission and also does good in the world." There's Alo Gives, which is a huge charitable component. And so I was able to for the first time, in a really long time in my career, own my destiny and apply out for a job that I wanted. Alo came to me, but this was something that I actively pursued. And I didn't have to worry about visas and I didn't have to worry about any of that, but it's just such an incredible brand. To your points on stats earlier, one of the hottest brands in the world, and we're still small and nimble. We're US- based primarily when you look at our retail footprint. Obviously we ship globally, but just such an incredible opportunity to come on a brand which is in hyper- growth mode. Very exciting for me to be at the helm of marketing for Alo Yoga.

Conor Begley: That's a really cool story. I'd be curious if you were to go back, let's say post agency, right? So you sell the agency, you're looking for your next thing. And you had the flexibility from a visa perspective or anywhere along the journey, so you had full flexibility, right? There's no rules. How would things have gone differently? What do you think you would've done differently? Or is it something you don't really think about too much?

Angelic Vendette: No, I don't think about it too much because I absolutely love everything that I've learned, all the folks that I've met, all the great opportunities. I came in at companies at times where social commerce didn't exist, or I came in at times where there was no B2C arm to a brand, or there was no... So I have no regrets at all. I do think that after the sale, if things would've been my way and if I would've decided, I probably would've still wanted to join LVMH. I've always been a huge fan of everything fashion, lifestyle, luxury, and LVMH has always been a dream company of mine. So yeah, I don't think I would've done anything differently at all.

Conor Begley: That's awesome. Well, it's good to hear that didn't restrict you because I think, we have a lot of people that are on visas. And especially during the inaudible last administration, they made it pretty tough on people to make it through that process. We've had people that had to move home for a while, had to move back and I tried to help them navigate that. It's a real deal and it's kind of unbelievable that you'd have somebody that's motivated, driven, committed to contributing to the economy in a meaningful way. And then you make it really hard for them to stick around once they're already here. That's so weird to me.

Angelic Vendette: It's scary, too. I'm sure you've dealt this with some of the employees on your side, but it's a scary time. And the last administration made it scary for us folks that were not sure, can we travel home? Some colleagues of mine or friends of mine were traveling back home and then couldn't come back into the country. It was just crosstalk

Conor Begley: Totally. I've heard that, yeah. I think that's still going on and I think we're still dealing with those effects, but it certainly seems like the winds have changed in terms of the approach there, hopefully. So talk to me about when you entered into Alo, you've been there a little bit of a time now, I think three or four months?

Angelic Vendette: Yep.

Conor Begley: So you've now gotten acquainted, you know the business. So when you came in, what was different about them in terms of their approach? Because again, just looking from a purely numerical basis, they are punching way above their weight in the data that we track. They're one of the best performing direct to consumer brands in the world. And I think a lot of the brands that you have been at have been, I mean, Stitch Fix is obviously a very forward- leaning brand. They've been very cool brands, but I wouldn't say that they're the new up- and- comer. So what was different when you walked in? What surprised you when you came in the door, about the way that they approached things?

Angelic Vendette: To be fully transparent with you, it's a highly entrepreneurial spirit and highly entrepreneurial company. It's founder led, we're privately owned by two of our co- founders, Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge. And the way that we operate within functional teams as well, is highly inter entrepreneurial. We own our businesses and so we're able to track the data or track what we're doing, watch it in real- time, make real- time pivots. And it doesn't have to go up and down an escalation path of approvals or disapprovals, and so that was the culture that fit me. Obviously, yes, being at the helm of the marketing team, I'm able to help pivot that and help... Not pivot it, sorry, but I'm able to have impact and have that seat at the table. But honestly, all of my direct reports under me are empowered to do the same and below them, and so on and so forth. So it is highly entrepreneurial and we don't take, even if it's 48 hours or if it's two weeks, it doesn't take approval processes to pivot. I was mentioning earlier, just before we started recording, Alo House was a huge, huge social moment, influencer moment, UGC moment for us that I'm sure you were able to see spike up in data. And that was the week of June 21st, so between the 22nd of June and the 25th of June. And that came together in five weeks from ideation through until execution through to having the event, there's only five weeks time there. And knowing that I'm able to have that much impact in such little time, but my team is able to be empowered to have that much impact and turnaround, that's what's truly different. It's forward- facing, highly innovative, but also really on the pulse of the trend. So it's not like," What are others in our space doing?" It's," What are we doing and what is truly Alo?" And it's easier for us to do that because we are purpose driven, bringing yoga and mindful movement to the world. What does that mean for us and how do we go about in our marketing activations that way?

Conor Begley: That makes sense. In terms of team structure, how is that structured? What are the big groups within Alo? Because I'd be curious just for other marketers out there, they're going to have entirely different setups, right? What are the big units that you guys focus on?

Angelic Vendette: I can walk you through the units that the marketing team focuses on. Within my marketing team, I have five, I guess functional pillars. So you would have traditional PR, then I have influencer, then I have social, then I have integrated marketing, and lastly I have community. Everything that's community experience and not necessarily community management on social, that would be in social. Experience and community, so those five pillars are truly what drive us. Everything is integrated and we're at an exciting time because we, not a long time ago, acquired our app platform which is now Alo Moves. And Alo Moves, it's a whole other function that I'm currently working on integrating as well. But yeah, also work within those same pillars for Alo Moves in addition to Alo Yoga. So it comes holistically to the client's perspective as just Alo overarchingly.

Conor Begley: That makes sense. It's funny to think about you listed those departments and I think that everything but maybe community are digital. It's all very digital- focused.

Angelic Vendette: That's true.

Conor Begley: No, that makes a ton of sense. And then just from a budgeting perspective, how do you think about if you were to take your budget and lay it out, what are the big... How are you splitting those up? How much of it is in each group and dedicated to each marketing activity? If you feel comfortable disclosing it, you don't have to if you don't want to.

Angelic Vendette: Without giving you the specifics, we are actually small and nimble. Folks come to us and they're like," How do you have," I don't know," Kendall Jenner work with you and why is she always wearing Alo?" Or," How are some of these celebrities like Hailey Bieber or Maluma, how are they all wearing Alo?" And the truth of the matter is that a lot of it is organic. They love Alo as much as we love Alo. And so if someone were to look at their budget and not necessarily at Alo and say," How do I get there too?" I would say it's not about the money that you spend within influencers or celebrities, or within PR, wherever that budget is allocated for that tier of talent or that tier of influence. It's actually about having that purpose and mission. And ensuring that your community knows that purpose and mission, and so on and so forth. So without answering you directly, it's evenly distributed, but don't be fooled. A lot of our relationships are organic because there's just so much love. Kendall has been, she said this numerous times," I've discovered Alo. I'm part of the Alo fam." And we're like," Yeah, of course, you are." And we really prize ourself on that relationship and those multiple relationships, that's just one example of them. We're not throwing dollars at whoever comes our way. It's people that are part of the community who are really big on mental health advocacy, or mindful movement meditation, yoga that come to us. And we build that relationship holistically as opposed to one- and- done deals.

Conor Begley: Totally. That's really consistent with what we see work across brands. So you start to hear these themes and I think the people just really underestimate that organic component. When we look at a brand like Fashion Nova, which is one of the largest investors in influencer marketing globally, just wild the scale. They've got about, call it 1500 to 2000 influencers that they're going to pay on an annualized basis, but there're going to be about 12, 000 influencers that are going to talk about them. Meaning they're only paying less than 20% of all the people that talk about them and they're one of the biggest investors in the world in the space, if not the biggest. People really underestimate that. Because you do have a group of people that are ambassadors to the brand that you interact with, there's some financial relationship there. How do you think about that interaction between... Or, well first, how do you decide who to work with? And then once you do, how do you think about that interaction between organic and paid? How does that work together?

Angelic Vendette: We're really big on community and ensuring that we create events for community members, we host something like 90 events a month, Conor, and that's and that's worldwide. You might be in Israel or in Mexico, or in France or whatnot, that's a ton of events. We truly believe in all of us have the power of influence. You don't have to have 12 million followers, 32 million followers, 2 million followers. You don't have to have followers to be influential or to be considered valuable for a community. We have folks that, like you and me during the pandemic, were maybe on Alo Moves and were like," How do I continue my practice when I can't go to studios?" Or you have folks that are aspiring to be yoga teachers or are yoga teachers. And so looking at those relationships and understanding the value in each and every one of them is truly our approach. So yes, we do have a large influencer marketing team, or I guess you could say partner marketing team at Alo, because again, it's not about someone's following, it's about yeah they're influence, but also are they aligned in their mission with us? They might want to host an event on our behalf or they might want to join us at a retreat to do X. Or they might want to bring this to their clients, whether they're at the dog pound or whether it's Harley Pasternak treating his celebrity clients in Hollywood. How do we partner with those folks to ensure that they're wearing the most performance- based clothing to do their workouts? Or how do they have the most advanced equipment to do their practice? So we partner with a variety of folks that are influential in their own regards, whether that's fitness, fashion, health, wellness, you name it. The relationships are not only, to your question, based on like, how do you pay who? And then what does that look like and how do you identify? It's how do you partner in a way that's beneficial for them as well?

Conor Begley: Totally.

Angelic Vendette: It could be allowing them to have our equipment in their studios or stores, or allowing them to create yoga retreats with their knowledge and background and equipment. So it takes on a slew of different meanings and ways of showing up in the world than your traditional pay- to- play transactional, I'm going to give you a fictitious example." Here's a$ 500 check posted on your feed that one time and never bring it back up." You and I know as marketers within the space, that doesn't really work. You can go with it if you're looking for volume and it can have spikes in sales. It can help for that but if you're looking for long term relationship building or longevity, it's not your one- and- done, it's relationship building and it can take multiple years. And I would say anyone listening to this, if you do want to win in the long term, it's take that long term approach as well. It's okay if it takes three years to build out that relationship, but then it'll be so much more valuable.

Conor Begley: People have the hardest time with that. They're like," But Connor, but I want it to happen now. I want it to impact this quarter's sales." And I'm like," I'm sorry, that's just not how we've seen it work. I'd love to tell you a strategy or a time we've seen it work, and it just doesn't." And I think the other thing to add to that too is not only, let's say that you run that initiative and you see that initial spike. Well, the thing that you underestimate is, what are the effects on everybody else? So you have this huge community of people that are avid supporters of you and you went out and paid this celebrity a bunch of money to talk about you who's never loved the brand before. Well, how does that affect everybody else? Everybody else goes," Well, that doesn't feel right. We know they don't like Alo, why are they partnering with them?" And so it actually has an impact on everybody else negatively that probably offsets whatever you gained from that one small boost. And frankly, most of the time, you don't see a boost in sales. The vast majority of the time you do it and it doesn't even work, so it's like a double negative. So I want to-

Angelic Vendette: And then there's the days... Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead.

Conor Begley: No, you go. You go, you go.

Angelic Vendette: I keep saying this in some conversations, but done are the days of the skinny tees or done are the days of a celebrity endorsement that's like," Oh yeah, let me look into this." Consumers, you and I, when we're on social or wherever we are, we're wiser. And we know," Okay, this is a paid partnership. She's not going to show this again," or," He's not going to show this again." So done are the days of that.

Conor Begley: Absolutely. I want to dig into that 90 events a month, though. That was just a little thing you dropped in there that is... I mean, because I think 90 days a month is different... I'm trying to think. I actually don't have a good enough understanding of your retail presence, but for Lululemon, it makes sense to have a ton of events because they have all these physical stores and whatever.

Angelic Vendette: For sure.

Conor Begley: So how do you pull that off? What does that actually look like? What are those events?

Angelic Vendette: So to your point and for those tuning in and listening, yeah, it's true. We're not in all of the malls, we're not mass, we're not all of those things. We definitely, our retail presence is very, very concentrated in LA, New York. Opening up a few other stores in the US this year, but it's not like casting our net wide. It's casting our net specifically to markets of influence and to markets where some of our like- minded consumers are. Back to events, we host community- based events. We have something called Club Alo, so if you look it up, it's also on our website. But even if you look up at the UGC content coming out of Club Alo or the hashtag itself, that's where we host our up to 90 events a month. And on average, it is close to 90 events and it's community- hosted in partnership with us. It's all around the world. So back to what I was saying earlier, in a day you might have an event in Israel, you might have one on Zoom that we're hosting. You might have one in person that we're hosting. You might have another community event or retreat that's in Bali and then next in Turkey, next in Canada, next in... It's throughout the world. We have a part of our community team that I was mentioning earlier that really is responsible for hosting those and ensuring that they are on brand. But that we're also enabling our hosts, if it's not directly hosted by us, to truly be a representation. So it's someone that is in the ALO family. They might be a yoga teacher, they might be hosting their retreat or running part of their own business and doing a retreat, let's say in Bali, but it's part of Alo. So you'll see Alo equipment, there'll be an Alo Yoga teacher who's hosting it. We'll lean in with activations, we'll lean in with support, we'll lean in with materials. And so that's truly how we get scale, but it's again, back to building that community. We partner with our community members so that they are branded events and that they are coming from us. It takes a lot of time and dedication to run these 90 events a month and we truly believe in them and that's just where we're at now. Imagine in two or three years, it's going to continue to scale.

Conor Begley: That's super cool. And I think what's interesting about activities like that is that's not an activity that's particularly easy to measure from a return on investment perspective. How do you measure the value there? Okay, you sell a few pieces of clothing, right? That's not why you're doing it. How do you balance that as a marketer in a world in which so many things are measurable, that those are the things that tend to get emphasis? But the reality is that often, the things that you can't measure are the ones that are the most important. How do you balance those two types of activities and the transparency that we have today, as well as the lack of transparency?

Angelic Vendette: It's interesting because it is a debate. There's sometimes two types of marketers, marketers that only believe in growth data or that only believe in pay- to- play, and they forget about building a brand. As you're building a brand, you go back to word of mouth, you go back to," Oh, what are you wearing today?"" Oh my gosh, I'm wearing Alo." Or," Hey, you're wearing Alo too. How did you get that color drop? It was so hard to get."" At a studio," or whatever. Word of mouth in brand building is so, so crucial and a lot of new D2C brands these days, the ones that pop up and fizzle out or whatnot, they tend to forget that. They invest everything in hyper- growth, it's all about acquisition and retargeting. And they forget about building a brand. I would say to those types of marketers that don't believe in both, I'm a data first marketer and I don't hide that. But as you're building a brand, there's ways to track what that looks like. It might be uptick in UGC, it might be you're creating a brand health study, brand lift study. You're looking at things like, what are inbound requests from some of these celebrities? Is media picking us up organically? In our case, most of it, all of it is organic. And if you don't invest in a brand, if you don't invest in those relationships, and you don't invest in these community events or larger events like Alo House, you don't invest in building a community of, let's say we have clean and green skin care and body care. And it goes beyond just apparel or yoga equipment that we have. We truly are a full holistic lifestyle brand. If we don't invest in some of those beauty associates or beauty experts, you're never going to grow and scale. No one's going to recommend you organically. So the way that we break it out is we track both sides, but we also understand the value in that brand lift and investing in brand. And it's not always going to show return right away, but for sure, I guarantee Conor, if you start building a brand health or brand lift study, over that course of the year, you will see that upward traction. Becoming a household name doesn't happen by growth or acquisition, it happens by investing in the brand. And so it's longer term, it's back to our account conversation of influencer. Is it pay- to- play or do I invest in the two or three year relationship? It's the same thing with a consumer. I don't always want something back from my client. You don't have to convert right away, but come get informed, come learn. Come take one of our zoom classes where we walk you through, I don't know, holistic eating. Or it might be a takeover with inaudible who's walking us through our doshas, or whatever it is. Let us give back to you too, and then you can understand if Alo is the brand for you.

Conor Begley: I love that. And again, not every direct to consumer marketer thinks that way. You have a little bit of LVMH in you there, how do we build a hundred year brand, right?

Angelic Vendette: Yeah.

Conor Begley: But let's do a fun end of show question, I've taken up enough of your time. So what is the one thing that you miss most and the one thing that you miss least about living in Canada?

Angelic Vendette: Oh my gosh. You know what? The one thing I miss most is obviously, the people. My friends and family are still there and that's the obvious answer and I think for everyone, they would say that. But if you were to ask me the one thing that I do miss most outside of that and outside of like that very, very emotional component, I definitely miss the seasons living in California. And this is not like a US- Canada thing, it's more like I live in California now and so there are less seasons. But then to counter that, I don't miss the snow. I love the snow over the holidays, I love going skiing, I love winter activities, but I like going to them. So going back home and doing that hopefully now post- pandemic, we'll be able to actually go back to Canada this holiday season that's upcoming. I haven't been in two years and that's been hard from a people standpoint. I incredibly so miss family, friends, but then also... I guess I'm all over the place with this, but French Canadian crosstalk is we speak French and that there's French music, French artists, French language films. And there is such a strong culture there too, that I do miss sometimes. It's all over the place. I miss it, but I love California and this is our forever home, so we're not leaving. I love the surf in the morning. You caught me earlier when I had just come out of the water, my hair was up and I was like," Wait, let me go put my hair down and put a blazer on." I would not switch anything in the world for jumping out, going for a surf, coming back to work in the morning. There's something magical about that.

Conor Begley: That's pretty tough to beat. My in- laws were originally from Michigan and they as well, do not miss the snow. They love inaudible skiing, they love getting out in the snow, but living in the snow and not having a choice is pretty tough. That surf in the morning, that's so funny. I didn't realize you've been surfing that's very classic California for you there. Well, I want to thank you so much for joining. I know I learned a lot today, I think others learned a lot. And good luck in your journey as the new head of marketing at Alo Yoga, and excited to see where you take the brand.

Angelic Vendette: Yeah, thank you so much for today, Connor. I so appreciate it.

Conor Begley: All right.

Angelic Vendette: I'll chat with you soon.

Conor Begley: Bye, Angelic.

Angelic Vendette: Bye.

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