#010 - [ EVERY SINGLE DAY ]
building something i feel good about building, something my team feels good about being part of, and something our customers can feel good about supporting.
this past week i made a pit stop back in my home province of shandong, china to see family. the main reason i went was to visit my grandma, she’s 94 now, and she pretty much raised me back when we were all living in canada. her mind isn’t as sharp as it once was, which is hard to witness in real time, but there’s one thing she’s still razor sharp at: mahjong. and the first thing i learned this week is that after 26 years of me thinking i’ve gotten better, she still finds ways to beat me. not in a humiliating way, but in the way that only someone who loves you can, where it feels like a lesson and a flex at the same time.
sitting there with her reminded me that progress doesn’t always look like speed, and that “getting somewhere” can also mean learning how to measure time differently. it also put me in the right headspace for the second thing i learned this week, which was still in shandong but in a completely different way: we’ve been planning to open the archive with some older requested pieces for a few weeks now, and the original plan was to release it before i left for china. we had QC done, creatives done, everything lined up, and then (as always) life happened, something shifted, and it got pushed back.
i decided to launch while i was in china anyway, and i don’t think people realize how hard a decision that can be when you’re used to having your hands on everything. it wasn’t just “click publish” from another timezone; it was me consciously choosing to let go of parts of the drop that i usually control down to the smallest detail, and trusting my team to execute the things i normally take care of because it makes me feel safe.
making that decision meant i had to give up a small piece of stubbornness, and it felt like a real step toward not being such a micromanaging leader, which is honestly one of my new year’s resolutions. because at the end of the day, the team is here because they’re damn good at their jobs, and sometimes i need to remind myself that my job isn’t to do everything… it’s to support them so they can do what they do best, and to build systems that make all of us better. and as expected, they did a great job on this drop, which was both a relief and also a reminder that letting go isn’t losing control, it’s practicing trust.
that brings me to the third and final thing i learned this week, and it’s the one that’s been sitting heavy with me. i’m in guangzhou for the next 10 days to visit our partners for parts of the upcoming clothing programs, and i’m going one layer deeper in learning what it actually takes to create a high-quality garment in china—not just in terms of construction or materials, but in terms of ethics and accountability.
i’ve been learning more about the reality of cotton supply chains, and specifically about the risks around forced labor tied to cotton from the xinjiang region, including the exploitation of uyghur people. what’s been messing with my head is realizing how complicated and messy it can get once you’re inside the ecosystem: you can ask for one thing, you can be told one thing, you can even be shown paperwork, and still learn that there are ways materials can be substituted, mislabeled, or “handled” in ways that don’t match the standards you believe you’re operating under. i’m not saying this to sound dramatic. i’m saying this because if you’re trying to build something you feel good about, you have to accept that “good intentions” don’t protect you… only systems do.
even though we’ve developed relationships with partners we trust, this week reinforced how important it is to tighten the 关系 (guanxi) the relationship, the closeness, the accountability that comes from showing up in person and making it clear how you do business. that means being physically present before production, asking harder questions, confirming materials as directly as possible, and aligning on standards that aren’t negotiable. because there’s a certain way i want to run this company… building something i feel good about building, something my team feels good about being part of, and something our customers can feel good about supporting.
