Reinventing David's Bridal with Kelly Cook

[00:00:01] Phillip: Brian, did you get the thing that's going around after Shoptalk?

[00:01:33] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:35] Phillip: I think everybody got it.

[00:01:36] Brian: You avoided it, but you were in and out.

[00:01:39] Phillip: I was. But I think some people were in and out, and they still got smacked with it.

[00:01:43] Brian: I don't know. So there was two things going around. I heard there was a norovirus going around as well. I'm glad I didn't get that. I'll take cold over norovirus any day of the week.

[00:01:54] Phillip: There is also thought leadership conjunctivitis that went around. {laughter} There's some really bad thought leadership that was floating around too. I saw someone's cringe LinkedIn post today. We're recording this as we're wrapping up Shoptalk week. So this should be playing on Friday. You should be hearing this. And in just a few minutes, we're getting Kelly Cook. Right?

[00:02:22] Brian: Let's go.

[00:02:23] Phillip: Yeah. So we sat down. Elizabeth Schmidt on our team got to sit down with Kelly talking about David's bridal and the future of the bridal industry. And we'll hear from them in just a little bit. I wasn't there for that. I heard it was awesome.

[00:02:39] Brian: Yeah. I was so excited that Elizabeth was there to do that interview.

[00:02:45] Kelly Cook: Yeah.

[00:02:46] Brian: Shoptalk was busy, man. And so having someone of the caliber of Elizabeth be able to do that interview was so cool for us and to not just have, you know, me and you go prattle on forever.

[00:03:02] Phillip: People have been doing listen to that for nine years.

[00:03:04] Brian: Yeah.

[00:03:05] Phillip: I was like, let her cook. Let her Kelly cook.

[00:03:08] Brian: Let her cook. I think cook, like, I'm cooked.

[00:03:15] Phillip: You are cooked. I can hear it.

[00:03:16] Brian: Oh, I'm cooked. It's funny. I feel like the let people cook has overtaken I'm cooked. Cooked used to be mostly bad, and now it's mostly good.

[00:03:28] Phillip: So that's a thing that went around. Shoptalk, post Shoptalk high, I think has been followed by post Shoptalk low. Lots of people got sick. Few people on our team got sick. I somehow survived it. But this has been Shoptalk week. I think people are talking about the post Shoptalk vibes. Big, big week. We've been, you know, dripping out the content all week long. Also, we got to collab with Tasteland. If you didn't catch our two-parter this last week, this has just been a wild amount of content over the past week.

[00:04:04] Brian: So cool.

[00:04:05] Phillip: So once again, want to extend our heartfelt thank you to Shoptalk for partnering with us, and we've got a lot more to come on that front. And if you haven't caught our Tasteland episode and the two-parter, catch it now. So there's a lot that you could have missed on the feed and the main feed here this last week. And also want to draw your attention to the fact that we still have an opportunity for you to catch up on everything you might have missed in Q1. We put out a recap of all of the content you may have missed in Future Commerce Plus. We are also recapping the word-of-mouth, which here is coming up our big refresh, our Word of Mouth Index, which we launched earlier this month with Fairing. That's our exclusive product that details all of the Word of Mouth changes, month over month in Fairing's exclusive dataset that serves over 5,000 Shopify brands, and that's coming here in just another few days. So if you want to be the first to be able to get that exclusive editorialization of that dataset, you can go get the dashboard with your Future Commerce Plus membership. That comes with the membership. It's no extra fee. Get the dashboard.

[00:05:19] Brian: Future Commerce Plus. Get it.

[00:05:19] Phillip: Get it. Yeah. You got FutureCommerce.com/Plus.

[00:05:21] Brian: Everyone's doing it.

[00:05:21] Phillip: Everybody. It was a huge month for growth.

[00:05:25] Brian: It was.

[00:05:26] Phillip: Post Shoptalk too. So lots lots happening. Some stuff that's kind of been in the news, just like off the top of my head. You know, there's lots of, well, you can't escape the tariff talk right now. That's for sure. But one thing that happened this Ghibli, Ghiblification of everything, Brian, did you watch Ruby's talk of the... So we'll link it in the show notes.

[00:05:58] Brian: It was interesting. I loved it. I thought it was so good. And Ruby makes a really good point that I had never considered before, which is...

[00:06:08] Phillip: Give context real quick for people who haven't seen it because we'll link it.

[00:06:11] Brian: Oh, yeah. Ruby Thelot, philosopher, artist, Future Commerce friend, and so much more. Ruby is like probably the true definition of a polymath.

[00:06:22] Kelly Cook: Yeah.

[00:06:23] Brian: He had this talk called, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Slop, which is very clever. And which was really like interesting and curious to me because Ruby doesn't strike me as the kind of person that would love Slop. And I also don't really like Slop. But the point that he made, and you should go watch the whole thing because I think he does a really beautiful job of illustrating it, is that images unto themselves actually hold a certain level of power over people. And can really, in the power dynamics of the world, images have played a very, well, brutal role. You can use an image to manipulate and sort of maintain power or like gain power over somebody. But with slop, it actually sort of frees the image from that power.

[00:07:16] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:07:17] Brian: It diffuses the power and actually allows images to be owned by the people with all of this AI Slop, which takes away the power that they had anyway.

[00:07:32] Phillip: Interesting because that's what we've been saying about the power of a brand. Right? We've been saying for six or seven years that the power of the brand was held and was top down from the brand to the customer. And now the power of image generation moving and being diffused from the brand to the customer has diffused the power to the whole of the ecosystem to be equal held between the brand and the customer as well. So the image generation capability also diffuses the power to the whole of the ecosystem. I think it's a really interesting way to look at the same dynamic. It's a really important piece, and I think it's really timely. It also comes just the day after I wrote an essay about the Studio Ghibli meme that came on the heels of Shoptalk this week...

[00:08:20] Brian: Which was excellent.

[00:08:20] Phillip: Thank you very much. From the GPT 4.0 images release sort of took X by storm. And this is... We sort of had like a Chat GPT moment part duex. This was the second coming of AI use. I think we'll remember this moment. It's a big one. I think it's a really important thing in the in the terms of use of AI and excitement around AI and a use case for AI and practical novel uses of AI. So go check it out. We'll link it up here in the show notes. Without any further ado, we have I think this is our last piece of content from Shoptalk. This is Elizabeth Schmidt from Future Commerce sitting down speaking with CEO of David's Bridal, Kelly Cook, and they're talking about the future of the bridal industry and so much more. Let's go to them live recorded over at Shoptalk Spring in Las Vegas.

[00:09:23] Elizabeth: So hi. Thank you so much for joining us on the Future Commerce podcast.

[00:09:27] Kelly Cook: Thank you, Elizabeth. Wonderful to be here.

[00:09:29] Elizabeth: I'm Elizabeth Schmidt, and I'm here joined by Kelly Cook, the new CEO of David's Bridal.

[00:09:35] Kelly Cook: Yes. Yes. Fun industry.

[00:09:38] Elizabeth: So excited to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining. So I wanna just get right into it. You've stepped into a historic role as the first female CEO in David Bridle's seventy five year legacy. So stepping into this position, what legacy were you looking to preserve? And what do you feel needed rewriting?

[00:09:56] Kelly Cook: Awesome. Great question. Thank you, Elizabeth. It is a wonderful time in our company's history. We have actually dressed, over seventy five years, a hundred million women.

[00:10:08] Elizabeth: Oh my God.

[00:10:09] Kelly Cook: And that is something that we are super proud of, super excited about. And that privilege and that honor has enabled us to make this pivot that we're doing now. And the pivot we're making now, we call it aisle to algorithm. And it's about serving her in a new way, in an unprecedented way that is powered by AI, media, and the power of our people.

[00:10:36] Elizabeth: That's so exciting to hear. How incredible. A hundred million women.

[00:10:41] Kelly Cook: Yeah. In seventy five years. Isn't that wild?

[00:10:43] Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, that is a legacy.

[00:10:45] Kelly Cook: Yeah. It's brides, bridesmaids, moms, grandmas, flower girls, party goers, debutante balls, graduations. We have it all.

[00:10:56] Elizabeth: Yeah. That's fantastic. So with this aisle to algorithm strategic transformation, how does it reflect a vision of the future rather than, let's say, a reaction to the present?

[00:11:07] Kelly Cook: Oh, I love that question. I love it. What's exciting about it is that brides and consumers are evolving at an astronomical rate. Everything from how they're consuming goods, how they're seeking inspiration, how they, you know, make decisions on choices. And everything is underpinned in this way of serving brides. And we started with data, and we also started with a passion, not only a passion for data, but a passion for serving her. And the reason why passion for serving her is so important, is that if Henry Ford would have asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Right? So you have to have this passion for evolving for the future as well. And we started with data and we learned some pretty incredible things. One, the number one emotion brides have for eighteen months while they're planning a wedding is anxiety.

[00:12:09] Elizabeth: Oh, wow. I guess I get that.

[00:12:10] Kelly Cook: Mean, it's the most beautiful moment of their life. They're worried about their budget. They're absolutely stressed. Two, we found out that ninety percent of the brides are hitting the David's bridal funnel. I mean, most brands would be like, oh my gosh. That is like such a blessing. It absolutely was, but we didn't realize that at the time. Three, the number one word customers used to describe us was trust. They used the word trust. So we said, okay. Great. That's a great base. Right? What are the gaps in what we're serving her? And that's where we realized they want everything in one shop. They have so many purchases they're making. Two, they need financial support. So we now are gonna be launching Pearl Pay, which is financial. And three, they need everything that fits their vision, and that's where AI and tech came from. If you are getting married on a beach in Jamaica with your girlfriends, we should not show you barn content in the winter. And so it's content, it's ads, it's everything. So all of that is positioning us beautifully for the future in addition to us being well capitalized.

[00:13:27] Elizabeth: That's really smart. You're able to serve your customers the content that matters most to them for what they're looking for.

[00:13:33] Kelly Cook: Correct.

[00:13:33] Elizabeth: So it's responsive.

[00:13:34] Kelly Cook: It is. It absolutely is.

[00:13:36] Elizabeth: That's really smart. That's exciting. You know, David's Bridal has evolved so far beyond the rack. So how did you go from being this traditional retailer to becoming this full stack media tech commerce company? What mindset shifts really helped activate this evolution?

[00:13:56] Kelly Cook: So that's a great question. It's interesting. You know, unfortunately, the company's had some financial bumps over the last couple of years, And there's nothing like creating a burning platform than having to go to bankruptcy court. If you want an impetus for change, that will do it. {laughter} There's nothing better or worse. But I think coming out of... Look, we came out of restructuring with a well balanced financial portfolio. We came out with incredible owners from Scion Investment. Great company, great partners.

[00:14:32] Elizabeth: Great cash injection.

[00:14:34] Kelly Cook: Great. All of that. Yeah. Absolutely. Nice capital. And but what we did when we came out, we asked ourselves, look, we have to do things differently. We have the best of all worlds. We know she trusts us. We know we have 90% of our TAM coming to us. We're already dressing one out of three brides.

[00:14:59] Elizabeth: Incredible.

[00:15:00] Kelly Cook: She's already telling us, here's what more you can do for me. It's the best possible scenario. So when we combined that burning platform with new owners, with a better balanced portfolio, balance sheet, and combining all of the things she was telling us that she wanted, it was a matter of time of putting all the pieces together and reestablishing us for the future.

[00:15:22] Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Speaking of the future, let's talk about that because you just came out with a phenomenal collaboration with Wildfang.

[00:15:31] Kelly Cook: Wildfang. I love Wildfang so much. Elizabeth, I'm obsessed with them. I love them. Emma is like, Emma, if you're listening, I love you. She is amazing.

[00:15:41] Elizabeth: And this is allowing you to serve a whole new consumer.

[00:15:45] Kelly Cook: Yes.

[00:15:46] Elizabeth: A consumer that doesn't want the traditional dress.

[00:15:49] Kelly Cook: They don't.

[00:15:49] Elizabeth: They're looking for something smart. They're looking for something comfortable. They want suits. They want pants. They want something different. Let's talk about that.

[00:15:58] Kelly Cook: They do. So I love Wildfang. I loved everything about the brand and what they stood for. You know, it's founded by the LGBT community, but what I will tell you is that all women like things different, Elizabeth. It's not just that, it's everything. You know, I think the most... I love, love, love, love, underline love, the fact that women are expressing themselves these days with full confidence in who they are and what they like and their choices. I mean, Elizabeth, I'm a CEO and I wore a ball gown to the Shoptalk conference. I mean, like, it's women wearing suits to their wedding. It's women choosing to wear cowboy boots instead of a Christian Louboutin, even though that's good too. It is, you know, changing three times during the whole day because you want a variety of ways to express yourself. It's doing donut walls instead of a traditional wedding cake. It's doing cigar rolling. I love the expressive nature that women have these days, and Wildfang just underscores that.

[00:17:11] Elizabeth: That's so exciting. This partnership really signals a lot, I think, for the future of weddings. How are you thinking about inclusivity in your design, your messaging, and your media?

[00:18:25] Kelly Cook: Absolutely. So it underpins everything we do. We serve brides no matter what. And I can remember when we launched our diamond program, our loyalty program, which by the way, all the market trades out there told us we were crazy because they said, what if somebody gonna get married twelve times and come, you know, back to David's? And I'm like, it's not about that. It's about crowd sourcing all the points that she would get from our wedding. Like, the flower girl, the bride gets the points. Mom of the bride, the bride gets the points. Right? But I remember the sixth person that won the honeymoon was a man who was getting married to his love of his life, another man. They both wore bridal gowns.

[00:19:09] Elizabeth: Amazing.

[00:19:10] Kelly Cook: And all 12 of the bridesmaids wore...

[00:19:14] Elizabeth: I got chills.

[00:19:14] Kelly Cook: It was awesome. It was so amazing. It was so amazing. And I loved again, it goes back to expression and self expression. We serve anyone who's in love wanting to get married. And it doesn't matter. We are gonna go out. If we don't have it, we're gonna go get it. If we didn't have suits the right way, we found Wildfang. Right? And so it's all about serving everybody in love no matter who the partner is. We stand for magical moments no matter what. That's our ethos as a company.

[00:19:45] Elizabeth: And that's why you're most trusted.

[00:19:47] Kelly Cook: Maybe that's right. Yeah. Maybe you're right, Elizabeth. Maybe you're right.

[00:19:52] Elizabeth: Honestly. Because you do it all, and you do it for your customer.

[00:19:57] Kelly Cook: That's right.

[00:19:57] Elizabeth: And they get that.

[00:19:58] Kelly Cook: That's right.

[00:19:59] Elizabeth: And they will be loyal to that.

[00:20:00] Kelly Cook: Yeah.

[00:20:01] Elizabeth: That's incredible.

[00:20:02] Kelly Cook: That's right.

[00:20:02] Elizabeth: So you're really leading through transformation in a space that's built on tradition.

[00:20:07] Kelly Cook: Yes.

[00:20:07] Elizabeth: What have been the personal challenges and opportunities of shaping this next chapter for the brand?

[00:20:12] Kelly Cook: That's such a great question. And there's definitely challenges. You know, one of the things you have to tell employees is like, look, if cauliflower can become pizza, anything can happen. You know what I mean?

[00:20:23] Elizabeth: {laughter} I love that.

[00:20:24] Kelly Cook: {laughter} You know what I'm saying? And we do learn lessons. We learn hard lessons, kinda like a snack a dent. You know, I call it a snack a... When you accidentally eat a whole bag of snacks. Right?

[00:20:34] Elizabeth: Guilty.

[00:20:34] Kelly Cook: Yeah. Guilty. Me too. Me too. We've learned some lessons. One was financial. I mean, led us to where we were increasing minimum wage payments, the horrible sort of logistics challenges that were coming out overseas a few years ago that was causing shipping costs to quintuple. That was tough, you know? Inspiring employees to stay with us and stay at it through those financial troubles. Two, I personally have learned a valuable journey and just leading the vision but not outrunning it, if you know what I mean, Elizabeth. We have to carry the organization with us and we can't go too fast. We can't go too slow, and I've learned that painfully over the years. As a leader I know I have a lot of strengths, but I know what my weaknesses are. Patience is one of them, and I have to work really hard at that. So, being able to throttle back when necessary. I think the other challenge that we've learned the hard way, and I think this is probably something that is shared by a lot of companies, because there's so much data out there now with reporting, companies tend to get really data hungry, and what I've found is that you tend to go down an analysis paralysis path, which means you want more and more data before you make a decision. And one of the pivots we're making now at David's is you don't need a hundred percent of the day to make a decision. You don't need 90% of the day to make a decision.

[00:22:15] Elizabeth: You don't.

[00:22:16] Kelly Cook: Harvard Business Review did this great research study that said you need 65 and you usually don't make a different decision if you get more than 65. And that's hard. People get really like, they get safe in the data. The challenge is less data and more critical thinking about what the data says. And that's something we have to work on every day as a company.

[00:24:56] Elizabeth: Yeah. I can see how it can be paralyzing at times because you wanna be so certain instead of just being like, well, it's lending itself to this answer, and we should just make a decision.

[00:25:08] Kelly Cook: Well said.

[00:25:09] Elizabeth: And you don't need large subsets to have actionable data.

[00:25:12] Kelly Cook: Absolutely right.

[00:25:13] Elizabeth: And it's ultimately gonna prevent you from moving forward.

[00:25:16] Kelly Cook: You use the white word, Elizabeth. It does paralyze you. I was getting personally decks that were a hundred pages long, and I'm thinking... And I got those on a weekly basis.

[00:25:25] Elizabeth: That's not sustainable.

[00:25:27] Kelly Cook: No. It's not. And I think even though it's difficult, it is empowering the folks in the company to, like, oh, wait. I have insight and an action, and I can actually affect change. It's great.

[00:25:41] Elizabeth: I love that. I also wanted to point out the fact that just you being a CEO and acknowledging weaknesses

[00:25:49] Kelly Cook: Oh, yeah.

[00:25:50] Elizabeth: Is so important. That isn't often done. So I just wanna commend you for doing that because that is real leadership.

[00:25:59] Kelly Cook: Well, thank you.

[00:26:00] Elizabeth: And wonderful to witness.

[00:26:02] Kelly Cook: Well, I appreciate. That's very kind of you to say. We have something at David's called Living in the Ones. We read every review. And Living in the Ones came from Bob Walker, the President and COO. He's great. We read every review, Elizabeth, every single morning. And that means we call it coffee with customers. Every review. And when we have a one, which we don't get that often, we meet about it, we understand it, we cause it, and we put an action plan together. And it really helps us stay sort of humble about how we can grow and get better because we don't always get it right.

[00:26:39] Elizabeth: I don't think enough brands are spending time in those reviews. In fact, there's even been suppression. Some brands are suppressing.

[00:26:48] Kelly Cook: You know, I've heard that.

[00:26:49] Elizabeth: Those reviews.

[00:26:50] Kelly Cook: You know what? You know how smart you are? So our partner that we partner with on all our reviews actually told us that their model was suppressing everything three or less. And Bob and... I remember the meeting. Bob and I were on the call and we're like, "No. No. No. No. Want everything. We want every single review." And they're like, "Are you sure?" I'm like, "Yes. We want everything." So they do. I was kinda surprised. I didn't even know people did that, to be honest.

[00:27:20] Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, I don't think they should, and I think that there's even some FTC regulatory concerns there.

[00:27:26] Kelly Cook: Could be.

[00:27:27] Elizabeth: But it is commendable. It's absolutely commendable. You're creating action plans, and that's something that will continue to perpetuate that trust with your customers. You're gonna continue to drive brand loyalty, and you're gonna continue to grow because you're doing it the right way.

[00:27:40] Kelly Cook: Thank you. I appreciate. That's so kind of you.

[00:27:45] Elizabeth: One of the things at Future Commerce that we love talking about and reporting on is the lore behind brands. Every brand carries a mythology, stories that are passed down, stories that are rewritten or sometimes even forgotten. As the new steward of David's Bridal, how do you think about legacy not just as performance, but as this living narrative?

[00:28:06] Kelly Cook: Oh, wow. I love this. This is so deep. I love it.

[00:28:12] Elizabeth: That's how we roll.

[00:28:13] Kelly Cook: I love it. I'm not picking up what you're putting down, sister. I'm smelling what you're cooking. I love that. I think if I think about lore, I think about it in a few different ways. And I'm gonna be really kind of funky for a second.

[00:28:30] Elizabeth: Please.

[00:28:30] Kelly Cook: And I feel like that's our vibe together, you and I.

[00:28:33] Elizabeth: Absolutely.

[00:28:34] Kelly Cook: There's sort of this lore about the intimacy of a bridal appointment is really, really special. Our stylists are trained for four weeks on nothing but that appointment. And you think about it, most women hate their bodies or hate something on their bodies they don't like. One. Two, the the pictures last forever. They know their grandkids are gonna see them. Three, how's the dress gonna fit and all of that? And we have this sort of funny thing where we say, you know, there's only one other appointment in a woman's life that's more intimate than that one. {laughter}

[00:29:14] Elizabeth: I know what you're saying there.

[00:29:16] Kelly Cook: I don't even have to say it. Right? And so thankfully, and that's from one end of the spectrum. We are the total other end of the spectrum. But that's how intimate it is. I mean, we're actually putting you in gowns and moving things around to fit things in. So we kinda think that that's kind of a fun thing. But the other thing too is and I'll use an example from my own life. I have five children. I had triplets, by the way, which is a litter.

[00:29:45] Elizabeth: Oh my God.

[00:29:46] Kelly Cook: Yeah. More than two, it's a litter. But my son Dalton got married to his bride, Chris. And my son Dalton is, you know, six two, two fifty, big old boy, size fifteen foot. And Chris, his wife, is six foot tall, beautiful voluptuous woman, probably size eighteen or so. And when I took her to buy her bridal gown, she said, "Oh my God. This is the first time I've ever seen my waist."

[00:30:16] Elizabeth: Oh my God.

[00:30:18] Kelly Cook: I've never forgotten that, Elizabeth. It reminded me how beautiful and special these moments are. And you cannot go into a store and hear a bride ring the bell and not ball your head off. I have to carry fake eyelashes with me because they fall off every time I cry. I don't even know the women, and I'm like, "Oh my God. I love you. I'm so happy." It's beautiful moments.

[00:30:44] Elizabeth: That's so encouraging to hear just the thought and attention to detail that goes into curating these incredibly intimate moments with your customers. I love that. That's really special.

[00:30:56] Kelly Cook: Thank you.

[00:30:57] Elizabeth: And it makes sense. It goes along with everything that the brand stands for and how you show up in the world. So let's zoom out for a second.

[00:31:04] Kelly Cook: Okay.

[00:31:05] Elizabeth: And look ahead five years. What do you think will actually change about how people get married? And what myths are we still carrying? Where's the real opportunity for redefinition?

[00:31:18] Kelly Cook: I think AR is gonna come to life in weddings. That's what I think. I think there's gonna be a fusion between augmented reality and reality. I don't know what that looks like, but I see headsets on guests. I see original content on those headsets. It's a fusion of AR and real life content from brides. Maybe it's original content of the groom and the bride or the bride and the bride or the groom and groom starting out babies and growing up together and they find... I don't know, but I see tech becoming a bigger part of the actual experience. It's already digital. QR codes and that kind of thing. But I see AI and AR coming together in the experience and it becoming visual and experiential from an AR and AI perform perspective.

[00:32:15] Elizabeth: That's insane.

[00:32:15] Kelly Cook: And I think that's super super like, sphere like, the Las Vegas sphere meets weddings. I just think there's something super cool about that. That would be fun.

[00:32:24] Elizabeth: It reminds me of what we recently saw at Paris Fashion Week on the runway with projection mapping on the clothing.

[00:32:34] Kelly Cook: Yes, I saw that. Same thing, Elizabeth. Exactly. How fun would that be? I'm just glad they didn't have when I got married. I was a hot mess. I don't want any visual record of that. {laughter} That was too long ago anyway.

[00:32:47] Elizabeth: Well, sounds like a fun time. Is there anything else that you wanna share? Shout out to your team or...

[00:32:54] Kelly Cook: Oh my gosh.

[00:32:56] Elizabeth: Final words.

[00:32:58] Kelly Cook: I am becoming CEO at a company with 6,000 first round draft picks.

[00:33:06] Elizabeth: Wow.

[00:33:07] Kelly Cook: That's what it feels like. That's what it feels like. I was in our stores last night. I went to the Vegas store, the Henderson store. They literally are first round draft pick. They are obsessed with serving her. It feels like... I mean, we call ourselves dream makers. I really feel like I'm in a dream. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty cool. I feel so blessed.

[00:33:28] Elizabeth: What a privilege that is.

[00:33:30] Kelly Cook: Oh, it's amazing. It's awesome.

[00:33:32] Elizabeth: That's wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:33:34] Kelly Cook: Thank you, Elizabeth. Any time.

[00:33:35] Elizabeth: This has been a pleasure, a wonderful conversation. I love hearing more about the brand. I love this outfit that you're wearing.

[00:33:41] Kelly Cook: This is one of our dresses. It's got the flower detail. It's hand painted and sewn.

[00:33:46] Elizabeth: It's incredible. I'm no longer married, but when I did get married, I was in a red wedding dress. It was custom.

[00:33:56] Kelly Cook: So that's what color, black, red, and blue. I'm obsessed with it. Of course, my kids told me I look like the bride from Beetlejuice, and I'm like, I don't care.

[00:34:06] Elizabeth: Not with this fierce jacket.

[00:34:09] Kelly Cook: That's true. She wasn't in a jacket. But I love that. I'd love to see pictures. Red... That is oh my God.

[00:34:16] Elizabeth: Awesome. Absolutely. It reminds me of my wedding dress. I love it. Well, thanks so much listening to Future Commerce. If this conversation sparked something for you, like, subscribe, and follow wherever you get your podcasts. It helps more people join the conversation. And if you wanna bring Future Commerce into your world, visit our print shop at shop.futurecommerce.com, where commerce meets culture in beautifully crafted journals, zines, and much more. Remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.

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