Jeansland Podcast

Beau Lawrence built his career by following the work, then building a life around it.

In Episode 75, Andrew sits down with Beau Lawrence, founder of Ace Rivington, to talk about denim, entrepreneurship, retail, Santa Barbara, and what it takes to build a business that can actually support the life you want.

The conversation starts in Nashville, moves through Los Angeles, design school, Guess, The Territory Ahead, Union, and back agai...

Pakistan’s cotton crop is recovering. But that is only part of the story.

In Episode 74, Andrew sits down again with Imran Asghar, Head of Asia Pacific at FibreTrace, to discuss cotton, traceability, sustainability, and the growing pressure to prove where products actually come from. FibreTrace uses physical tracers and real-time scanning to help verify fiber movement through the supply chain.

The discussion begins in Pakistan,...

FRESH BLOOD is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this Jeansland series, Andrew steps back to listen to the next generation already working inside denim’s supply chain, upstream in fibers, sourcing platforms, laundries, and raw materials.

In Part 7 of the series, Andrew sits down with Landon Williams, denim designer, artist, and founder of Nolia James.

Landon grew up in Mississippi, su...

In Episode 72’s Andrew’s Take, Andrew reflects on the sale of Everlane, one of the most visible transparency-focused brands of the last fifteen years.

For years, Everlane tried to bring sourcing, factories, pricing, and production into the consumer conversation. Whether you agreed with everything the company did or not, it stood apart from most apparel brands by making transparency part of its identity.

Th...

Some people enter denim through fashion. Lucia Rosin came to it through patternmaking, textiles, and the discipline of building a garment from the inside out.

In Episode 71, Andrew sits down with Lucia Rosin, founder of MEIDEA, to talk about craft, sustainability, education, and the long path from technical knowledge to industry perspective.

The conversation begins in Veneto, where Lucia grew up in a farming family ou...

Before we continue with the next episodes in the FRESH BLOOD series, we’re revisiting a conversation that helped define what the series is really about: listening to the next generation already working inside the industry.

Andrew speaks with Lucille Ix and Lucas Van de Woestyne, two young professionals who grew up around fabric manufacturing and are now working inside it themselves. It is a useful reminder that denim is a huge...

Paul Cowell taught Andrew a great deal of what he knows about indigo.

In Episode 69, Andrew sits down with Paul Cowell, whose career has moved through ICI, BASF, DyStar, BluConnection, and Archroma. His work sits at the intersection of chemistry, denim processing, mills, brands, and the commercial reality of making innovation work at scale.

The conversation begins with chemistry. How synthetic dye development shaped modern textiles. ...

In Episode 68’s Andrew’s Take, he looks at the rise of secondhand clothing. Not as a side story in fashion, but as one of the fastest-growing parts of the global apparel business.

Secondhand clothing is now growing dramatically faster than traditional apparel retail. In some cases, three or four times faster. And younger consumers are beginning to ask the question the industry never really wanted them to ask: why buy new...

FRESH BLOOD continues with Part 6, featuring Justin Bastarache, Founder of Whelk and Pipo Canada.

Justin started with a sustainable headwear brand, then found the larger problem: almost nobody was making caps in Eastern Canada anymore. So he began building the factory himself.

Andrew and Justin talk about what it takes to make locally in a category dominated by imports. Labor, pricing, training, minimums, lead times, and why “M...

Growth in denim follows a pattern.

In Episode 66’s Andrew’s Take, he looks at what has actually driven expansion in the jeans business over time, and why it’s stalled.

Every real boom came from a shift in the product itself. New machinery, new yarns, new fits, new finishes. Changes that made people stop wearing what they had and buy something new.

That hasn’t happened in a while.  

The industry has become m...

FRESH BLOOD is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this Jeansland series, Andrew steps back to listen to the next generation already working inside denim’s supply chain, upstream in fibers, sourcing platforms, laundries, and raw materials.

In Part 5 of the series, Andrew sits down with Saifullah Minhas, Director of Sales and Marketing at Delta Garments, a third-generation family-owned ...

The war doesn't show up where you think it does.

In Episode 64's Andrew's Take, he looks at the war in Iran, not politically, but through the lens of the jeans industry. Orders were booked months ago. Prices were locked when oil was lower, freight was cheaper, and currencies were more stable.

None of that is true anymore.

Factories across Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam are absorbing the difference. They didn't start the war. Their ...

FRESH BLOOD is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this Jeansland series, Andrew steps back to listen to the next generation already working inside denim’s supply chain, upstream in fibers, sourcing platforms, laundries, and raw materials.

In Part 4 of the series, Andrew sits down with Hayato Nishi, a second-generation industry professional whose path into denim and textiles didn&rsquo...

Before the garments even leave the warehouse, the damage is already done.

In Episode 62, Andrew sits down again with Umer Farooq Qureshi as the industry finds itself caught in the middle of a war it didn’t start. One year after their last conversation, the same pressures are back, only now they’re accelerating. The U.S. is actively engaged in a growing conflict with Iran, and the ripple effects are moving directly throug...

Before there was a denim finishing industry, there was nothing.

This week, Andrew sits down with Alice Tonello, Chief Brand & Strategy Officer at Tonello, a second-generation company that helped build that industry from scratch. In 1981, her uncle Osvaldo, a maintenance technician in a dye house, saw brands trying to figure out how to wash jeans and built the first machine to do it. No roadmap. No precedent. Just a need and a so...

In this short, I go back to a moment in the early 90s, sitting across from a senior executive at Calvin Klein who asked me to cancel a fabric order we had already made. I couldn’t. He understood, the goods shipped, and the order was honored as agreed.  

Years later, I faced similar situations. Orders were canceled, but there was still a sense of responsibility. 

In each case, the customer stepped up and paid for the c...

Some businesses are built through planning. Others are built through history, disruption, and decisions made under pressure.

In Episode 59, I speak with Rizwan Shafi of Crescent Bahuman, one of the defining names in Pakistan’s denim industry. His family’s story begins in the years after Partition, moves through cotton trading and textile expansion, and eventually leads to one of the first fully vertically integrated deni...

This is the third installment of our Fresh Blood series. I wanted to hear directly from two young professionals who grew up around textiles and are now working in fabric manufacturing.

My guests are Lucille Ix, 22, based in New York and working across China and Vietnam, and Lucas Van de Woestyne, 27, based in Ghent, Belgium and working for a denim mill in China with a focus on Europe. Their families have been in the business for gen...

This is Part Two of our FRESH BLOOD series, where I sit down with the next generation of denim leaders and ask what they see that we may not.

FRESH BLOOD is about perspective. It is about how young professionals view sustainability, transparency, collaboration, and the future of this industry.

In this episode, I speak with Beyza Baykan, founder of HMS Hand Made Stone. At 26, with a background in mathematics and international relation...