HIBT Lab! Universal Standard: Polina Veksler

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2014, friends Polina Veksler and Alex Waldman went clothes shopping at a major department store. To Polina’s surprise, Alex’s options were quite limited, and tucked away in one of the store’s less-traveled upper levels: the ‘plus-size’ section.

This unnerving realization that women could have such completely different shopping experiences at the same store drove Polina into research mode. She found that about 70% of women in the U.S. wear a size 14 or larger, but less than 20% of clothing is made in those sizes. Meanwhile, much of the double-digit-sized clothing available is fast fashion: not particularly well-fitting or built to last.

Alex and Polina decided to create Universal Standard: a clothing brand where size was irrelevant – where any woman could shop and ask herself, “do I like this?” – not “does this come in my size?”

This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy and Polina discuss the $100 billion opportunity to serve women of all sizes, as well as the challenges that come with building a size inclusive clothing brand.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:11.0	Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.
0:14.0	I'm Guy Roz.
0:15.0	So, if you've ever tried to shop for clothing and you are a typical consumer, you are unlikely
0:21.0	to find a size that fits you.
0:23.0	In fact, as you will hear in today's show, the average size of a woman in the United States
0:29.0	is 18, size 18, and yet the majority of fashion brands only go up to size 12, maybe 14.
0:39.0	Well, a few years ago, two friends in New York, Polina Vexler and Alex Waldman, realized there
0:45.0	might be a market opportunity there.
0:48.0	They discovered that most fashion brands were leaving billions of dollars on the table by not
0:54.0	serving the majority of consumers, people who fit into double-digit sizes.
0:59.0	Yes, some brands had and have, quote-unquote, plus sizing, but Polina and Alex didn't want to
1:05.5	segregate women into different sizing groups.
1:08.5	They wanted to build a brand for every shape and size, with a high design sensibility.
1:14.5	So, in 2015, they founded Universal Standard.
1:19.5	Now, neither Alex nor Polina had any experience as fashion designers, and neither had come
1:26.5	from the apparel industry, but they both saw a way to serve and underserved consumer base.
1:32.5	Polina, who is our guest today, came to the United States as a kid.
1:37.0	Her family, Flat Russia, at a time when anti-Jewish hostility made it an extremely unpleasant place to live.
1:45.0	I was eight years old when we immigrated from Russia.
1:50.0	And this was, I think, around 1990.
	...

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