Jeansland Podcast

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 more efficient, more technical...

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 factor...

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 s...

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’t start wit...

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 through the global...

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 cost of goods. It...

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 denim and garmen...

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...

This is our second two-part special, and this time I step back and listen.

Fresh Blood is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this episode, I sit down with Kaela Bonaquist from Lenzing and William Wood from Material Exchange to hear how the next generation sees denim, sourcing, fibers, and technology.

They are already inside the system. Upstream in fibers. In sourcing platforms. In the mechan...

Andrew sits down with Arne Koefoed, co-founder of WINK, to talk about how throwing parties slowly turned into a creative life.

Arne never planned on designing experiences. There was no event school, no formal path. It started with squats, punk parties, and rave culture, and with the realization that bringing people together could be just as creative as making an object. That first party set the tone for everything that followed.

Over...

Andrew reflects on a new report from the Transformers Foundation, Unlocking Equity in Innovation, and why so much meaningful innovation never makes it to market.

The supply chain spends years and real money developing better fibers, cleaner chemistry, and smarter processes, only to be told to prove everything in 18 months or less. Andrew shares a personal story about a breakthrough alternative to indigo that failed not because it di...

This is Part 2 of our two-part Jeansland special, Water: Above and Below.

In this episode, we continue the conversation with Rick Kellison and Brent Crossland, shifting from understanding the water problem to confronting what it will take to address it. The focus turns to the future of the TAWC (Texas Alliance for Water Conservation) project, why its work matters, and why keeping it funded is critical for farmers, brands, and the br...

Today’s conversation is about something the denim industry rarely wants to look at directly, and that’s water. Not recycled water in factories. Not marketing claims. But the groundwater that actually makes cotton possible in the first place.

This is the first episode of a two-part Jeansland special called Water: Above and Below. For this conversation, I’m joined by Rick Kellison and Brent Crossland to talk about the Ogallala Aquifer...

A conversation with a friend about international politics turns into a simple question. If so much of the world is disturbed by the direction the United States has been taking, why doesn’t everyone just band together and try going it without the U.S.?

That question leads Andrew to what he calls the Jeansland Nations, the countries where most of the world’s denim is produced. From there, the episode becomes a closer look at supply ch...

Andrew sits down with Piero Turk, a longtime friend from the old Italian denim days, when companies were small and you learned the business by doing everything yourself.

For those who don’t know Piero, he’s a freelance designer who started in 1983 and has worked with major jean brands across Japan, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New York, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, and the UK. He’s collaborated with Andrew at Kingpins, and his ideas are wide...

Happy New Year. 2026 is here and Andrew starts the year with a reset on where real power lives in the textile world.

He talks about the four major cotton traders: Louis Dreyfus, Cargill, Olam, and Ecom. Governments and sovereign wealth funds now control much of what the world consumes. Abu Dhabi owns 45% of Louis Dreyfus. Singapore and Saudi Arabia control Olam. Trading what we need is as powerful as trading oil, and most people in ...

This week, Andrew sits down with Shamin Vogel, editorial director and co-publisher of of WeAr Media Group—the people behind WeAr Global Magazine, one of the most widely read fashion trade publications in the world, and WeAr Denim, the biannual deep dive for the denim supply chain, backed by a monthly newsletter that actually gets read—to talk about where fashion really is right now, and why so much of it feels off.

They dig into the...