CHAPTER ONE
HAMPTON
“THAT SHIRT YOU’RE WEARING RIGHT now. Where was it made?”
Gloria turns and sort of hisses, “It’s not the same thing when you’re talking bespoke, Sal. You can’t offshore bespoke clothing, even if you want to.”
“This isn’t about my shirt,” I say.
“I want to know,” Sal persists. “Where was it made?”
“Beau Chic on 5th Street.”
“Not the tailor. I meant, where was the cloth loomed?”
“Egypt,” says a guy in glasses. I don’t even know who he is. Gloria brought him along. He’s an accountant or something, meant to challenge my battery of bookkeepers. Everyone in this room except the bean counters has a stake in Expendable Chic. I don’t blame them for wanting to sway my decisions, and I’m not offended that they seem to think my accountants are doing voodoo with the numbers to make my point. But I’m not cooking the books. This is still my company, and my board of directors is informal. We bounce ideas around, but ultimately what I say goes.
Gloria turns her irritation on the maybe-accountant. She says nothing, and he shuts up anyway.
“Egyptian cotton,” Sal says. “But it was loomed in …”
Guesses chime through the room as if we’re all playing Jeopardy.
“India.”
“The Philippines.”
“Vietnam!”
“Can you all stop discussing my shirt?”
Gloria fixes her eyes on me. “I think Sal’s point is that you’re not exactly walking your talk, Hampton. If you don’t wear American-made clothing, then why should this company produce it?”
I’m about to start ticking off points like I’ve done with two separate topics in this room already.
First of all, I’m not Expendable Chic’s target market — 21-year-old party girls who want new, cheap, disposable fashions every night before they go out on the town are. I don’t wear our clothes any more than the Walton family buys their home furnishings at Wal-Mart. Second, half my wardrobe is tailored here in town and the other half in Florence, but it’d be ridiculous to apply “made in America” to the first half or “made inexpensively overseas to save a buck” to the second. And third, fuck you all; this isn’t about what Expendable Chic “should do” in the least. And that’s what you all seem too dense to understand.
I’ve suggested a move based on momentum and vibe, not dollars and cents. They aren’t visionary enough to see it my way.
Mateo says, “Lower your hand, Hampton.”
Dammit. I forgot he was here. He’s like a ninja. While Gloria and Sal are loud, Mateo gets almost Zen at these meetings, until he vanishes into the background. He’s one of my advisors under protest, here only because once upon a time I begged. He hates when I count points off on his very pricey dime. He knows that it’s my way of saying I’ve stopped hearing objections because I can list five different ways everyone except me is stupid.
Mateo doesn’t say more.
“Look,” I say, meeting everyone’s eyes but Mateo’s, “Expendable Chic’s growth curve is ridiculous. In case any of you didn’t get the memo, we’re opening a new store somewhere in the world every three days. And—”
“All the more reason not to rock the boat. Because Chic is doing so well.”
“Right,” says the idiot who suggested my shirt was made in Egypt just because it’s Egyptian cotton. “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I consider responding. Instead I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, hopefully conveying the depth of his diminished understanding.
“Let’s try this again,” I say, straightening.
“Let’s not,” Gloria says, gathering her things. “Why continue to pretend you’re asking for our consensus? You’ll do what you want regardless of what we say, Hampton. You always do.”
I can’t believe she’s forcing me to steal my victory.
“Don’t tell me that none of you see my point,” I say, barely keeping my eyes from rolling.
“Your pitch to voluntarily decrease profit margins, you mean?”
“There’s more to considering an American factory than profit margins, Gloria.”
“Your pitch to buy hearts and minds, then?”
I take a second longer than usual to respond. Gloria’s words remind me of Nicole, a girlfriend from college. Way before my first real company, Nicole used to accuse me of trying to buy her. I’d pour hours into managing my portfolio, and that meant less time for her. She wanted attention, but I had more money than time. Our dates were scarce but always lavish. Ironically, my argument was similar: quality, not quantity. Of course, Nicole saw right through my bullshit. In retrospect, it’s clear that I wasn’t going for quality. I was buying her off.
I open my tablet, set it on its stand, and play a familiar video.
“We’ve seen this before,” says Nicholas, the man on Sal’s right.
The video plays anyway. It’s a crowdfunding pitch, three minutes long, for jeans that cost $200 each. The campaign ended months ago, and the total pledged is 27 times the amount required for funding. It’s everyday folks who bought those expensive jeans, not fashionistas insisting on the best. They didn’t even buy because they wanted the jeans. On a deep-down level, they bought for an ideal, in support of a promise.
I stop the video. “Built to last. Made in America, by real folks like you and me, guaranteed to last a decade without a rip. Don’t you see? It’s not about the jeans. It’s about pride. It’s about looking back to a day when the world was better.”
“Hampton, for fuck’s sake.” Sal’s face is half frustrated and half sympathetic, as if he believes I’m hopelessly feeble and has no chance of making me understand. “Expendable Chic is the opposite of that. And not accidentally. It’s EC’s point of pride. We make clothes that are by their very definition — by the fucking name of the company — expendable. Disposable. How the hell can we adopt a ‘built to last’ campaign? That would be turning against everything this company stands for. It’d alienate all the people who shop at our stores because they know what to expect. We don’t make clothes that you marry. We only make clothes that you date.”
“Clothes you fuck once and never call again,” Nicholas clarifies.
I have new points to tick off, but Mateo answers for me.
“I think Hampton is saying that while Expendable Chic is spreading like wildfire, it has a shitty public image. This company sells a lot of merchandise, but it’s so mass-market that everyone hates it, too. It’s an example of Western arrogance and excess; the clothes fill landfills so teenagers can look fashionable while the third world walks all day for water.”
“The same is true of McDonald’s,” Gloria says.
“McDonald’s doesn’t choke landfills with its stuff.”
“Wal-Mart, then.”
“It’s not about quality. I’ve known Hampton a long time. We’ve always had a little informal mastermind going on.” Mateo points at me. “And this guy right here? I can promise he doesn’t give a shit about making better clothes. Nor does he care about made in the USA or fair trade or anything like that. When Hampton suggests opening the next Expendable Chic factory in the US, he’s not trying to make this company eco-loving or built on an ancient ethic. He just wants to make it look that way.”
I feel I should respond because Mateo has just said some pretty unflattering things about my company and me. But I don’t because at least he understands and the others are listening to him. And it’s true. Our factories are in places that let us pay pennies. The clothes are good enough for the buyers. If not for how the public sees us, I’d be happy to leave things as they are. But a bad image on social media can kill you these days, and Expendable Chic is taking its share of accusations.
“The only problem—” Mateo continues, turning to meet my eye. “—is that the money doesn’t work. At all. Your clothes are too cheap to make much per unit, so you have to sell a ton. If you open your next factory in America, your margins are dust. A smart move in theory, but it won’t work in reality.”
“We should at least look into it,” I insist.
“I’ve looked.”
“Not everywhere.”
“It doesn’t work, Hampton. You make billions, but your finances aren’t even close to being able to support an American plant.”
I watch Mateo closely. I could convince him if I wanted to, but what’s the point? He’s always asking me to go climbing; we can discuss it more then. His is the only opinion I care about, and I don’t want to debate in front of these other idiots. I’m already sick of the board’s ignorance, and as Gloria said, I’ll do whatever I want regardless. I didn’t want to win this way, but I will. I already have a building in mind. I’ll get it, and then show them I am right.
Gloria pokes me even as I’m preparing to let it go. “Hampton Brooks,” she laughs, “arguing for quality and values.”
“Knock it off, Gloria. This is business. We already established that my shirt isn’t cheap.”
“Sure, it’s expensive,” she says. “But is it quality?”
I could try to answer, but I’m not exactly Ashton Moran. I don’t know clothes; I just know I look good, and that’s all that matters. People who yammer on about “quality” are pretentious assholes, honestly. I answer Gloria as simply as I can.
“What’s the difference?”