Jeansland Podcast

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 supply chain.  

The conversation starts on the ground. Finished goods sitting at airports. Flights canceled. Routes closed. Costs rising across every input. Fuel, freight, energy, currency. Orders booked months ago at prices that no longer make sense.

From there, the picture widens. A system where suppliers absorb the shocks while demand weakens at the other end. Margins already thin, now squeezed further. A business model built for stability, operating in a world that no longer has it.

They get into what this means in practice. Delays stretching weeks. Input costs multiplying overnight. Financial strength becoming the only buffer. And the growing gap between what it costs to produce and what the market is willing to pay.

But underneath all of it is a larger shift. Not a cycle, but a transition. From one global order to another. And an industry still trying to operate as if nothing has changed.

There’s a bigger question running through the conversation: what happens to the supply chain when the old rules stop working, but the new ones haven’t been defined yet? In this episode, we begin to explore that question.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

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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 solution.

From there, the conversation follows the full arc. Stone wash to laser. From early processes to technology that now replaces manual work entirely. From 100 liters of water per garment down to something closer to 20 when the system is done right.

They get into what actually drives innovation. Not just machines, but proximity to production, tight feedback loops, and people who understand the process end to end. What “Made in Italy” means when it’s tied to engineering, not marketing. And why staying private changes how you make decisions.

There’s also a bigger question running underneath the entire conversation: will the industry ever allow a pair of jeans to be worth what it actually costs to make well? In this episode, we begin to explore that question.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Alice Tonello
Chief Brand & Strategy Officer at Tonello
Tonello, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube

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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 wasn’t ideal, but it was fair. And then, something shifted.

The same request came again, but this time with a very different tone. What followed was not a negotiation, but a test of leverage, where the outcome carried consequences far beyond a single order.  

The business itself didn’t change. The way people handled it did.

This is not about one company. It’s about how commitments are treated, how risk moves through the supply chain, and what happens when the meaning of an order starts to erode.

At a certain point, it becomes a simple question.

What is a contract worth?

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

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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 garment operations in the region.

The company’s model was unusual. Fabric, garment manufacturing, and washing were all brought together in one place. Over time, Crescent Bahuman also became the first authorized manufacturer of Levi’s 501 jeans outside the Americas.

We talk about how the company was built, from the original Greenwood joint venture to the difficult years that followed when the company had scale but no market. Rizwan explains what it took to convince customers that Pakistan could produce quality denim and garments, and why Levi’s played an important role in that development.

We also discuss why his father chose to build the operation outside a major city, creating a 600-acre campus that includes the factory, housing for thousands of employees, healthcare facilities, daycare, and education. It was an early attempt to build an industrial ecosystem rather than just a factory.

From there, the conversation turns to Pakistan’s cotton, ginning, traceability, tariffs, women in the workplace, and the shift from long-term relationships to vendor scorecards and transactional sourcing.

Rizwan’s view of the next ten years is direct. Pakistan has the raw materials, the industrial base, and the labor. The question is whether it can build a more connected, transparent, and specialized supply chain around them.

This is a conversation about industrial memory, national capacity, and what it takes to keep building when the rules keep changing.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Rizwan Shafi
Chief Executive Officer, Crescent Bahuman
Crescent Bahuman, LinkedIn, Instagram

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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 generations, and they have known each other since childhood. Their fathers worked together in denim mills in the United States.

We talk about what surprised them when they entered the industry. How denim can be massive in volume but small in practice. How relationships hold over decades, even across competing companies. We also talk about how young people are received at shows, and why many veterans want new people to enter the industry and stay.

We get into sustainability in plain terms. What their friends actually care about when they buy clothes. Why quality and longevity are easier for consumers to hold than technical claims. Lucas points to a structural gap: mills are expected to innovate, but brands do not always want to pay for the price of that innovation.

We also touch trade and geopolitics, the way duties and tariffs can change decisions overnight, and why being informed is now part of the job. We end on what success looks like to them: community, continuity, and the people behind the product.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Lucille Ix
Marketing & Sales Assistant, Advanced Denim
Advanced Denim, LinkedIn, Instagram

Luccas Van de Woestyne
Marketing Director Europe, Freedom Denim
Freedom Denim, LinkedIn

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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 relations from USC and experience at the World Bank, she chose to build a business inside denim rather than outside of it. HMS develops a patented, upcycled pumice alternative designed to reduce sludge, water use, and waste while maintaining the aesthetics brands expect.

But this conversation goes beyond product.

We talk about greenwashing. We talk about whether collaboration actually leads to change. We discuss transparency, ethics, regulation, and what responsibility designers and brands should carry. Beyza is candid about what surprised her in the industry and what she believes must change.

Fresh Blood is about listening to the people who are already shaping what comes next.

Have a listen.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Beyza Baykan
Founder & CEO of Baytech, HMS Hand Made Stone
HMS Hand Made Stone, Linked-In, HMS Instagram, Personal Instagram

Interested in being featured on The Jeansland Podcast as our next Fresh Blood guest?  Reach out!

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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 mechanics of supply chains. They are not nostalgic, and they are not sentimental about how things used to be.

They talk about traceability as a baseline expectation. Digital tools as normal. Automation as overdue. Sustainability not as a marketing layer, but as responsibility tied directly to cost, incentives, and decision-making.

We discuss fiber realities, cotton, polyester, Tencel, blends, and the tension between performance, price, and environmental claims. We get into transparency, government regulation, and whether parts of the industry are structurally misaligned with their own public promises.

And at the end, I ask them a simple question. If you ran this industry for a weekend, what would you change?

Part 1 sets the tone. This is less about criticism and more about expectation. If you enter this business today, what feels broken, what feels promising, and what simply feels overdue.

If the future of denim has a different voice, this is it.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Kaela Bonaquist
Business Development – East Coast & Canada, Lenzing Fibers Inc.
Lenzing Fibers Inc., Linked-In

William Wood
Product Development & Sales Manager

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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 time, that same instinct carried Arne from underground scenes to working with some of the biggest brands in the world. What’s striking is how little the spirit has changed. The scale is different, but the mindset is still about energy, emotion, and making people feel something real.

They talk about why the best events feel more like memories than productions, why fun is often misunderstood as something unserious, and how experience design is often less about control and more about trust. At its core, this is a conversation about creativity without a rulebook, about designing moments instead of things, and about how some of the most meaningful work begins by simply opening the door and seeing who shows up.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Arne Koefoed
Founder and Head of Ideas at WINK
Instagram, Linked-In

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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 didn’t work, but because the industry didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to risk change, and preferred the devil it knew.

Using examples like Tencel™, polyester, and stretch denim, Andrew reminds us that real innovation takes decades, not seasons. When brands push timelines and costs downstream, that isn’t innovation. It’s cost shifting.

The episode closes with reflections from Kingpins New York.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

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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 broader industry.

We talk about how farmers balance environmental responsibility with economic reality, why profitability is essential to sustainability, and why real progress happens when farmers teach farmers in the field, not on slides. The discussion also widens to water use beyond agriculture, including AI data centers, oil and gas, and the growing competition for finite water resources.

This episode is a direct call to action. For brands, retailers, and anyone serious about water, food, and fiber, the question becomes simple and uncomfortable. Will you help support the research, education, and knowledge sharing that agriculture will depend on in the decades ahead?

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, it’s worth beginning here. This episode then carries the conversation forward into the harder questions and what’s truly at stake.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Brent Crossland Linked-In
Rick Kellison Linked-In

Texas Alliance for Water Conservation TAWC

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