Episode Details

This episode looks at what comes up during a sourcing trip to Seoul — specifically an unannounced visit to a brand's head office that turned into an unexpected meeting with the founder.

She started the brand fifteen years ago. Her co-founder left within six months, and she spent the next two and a half years making things alone. Fifteen years later, the brand is in twenty countries.

It touches on a pattern that keeps showing up among the makers encountered on overseas sourcing trips — in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan. Not talent, not luck, but stubbornness. The willingness to stay when the team shrinks, to keep working when nothing seems to be moving.

There's also a quiet observation about how hardship looks different from the inside. On social media, struggle tends to get shaped into a narrative in hindsight. But in the middle of it, there's no arc — just difficulty, and far more reasons to stop than to continue.

A small reflection on eighteen years of building quietly, and the idea that stubbornness, sustained over time, opens up a gap that almost nothing else can.