Voices of Tomorrow is a recurring feature highlighting PoC who are reshaping the retail industry.
Logistics is an integral albeit slightly overlooked part of retail that pretty much determines how efficiently a brand functions. As a longtime retail entrepreneur, Ricky Choi understands that.
After spending years working for brands, including as CEO at apparel and accessories brand Nice Laundry, he now heads up the logistics brand Outerspace that works with retailers such as Hill House, Thesis, and of course Nice Laundry.
Choi, who is both a co-founder and CEO at the tech-forward, e-commerce-focused company, founded Outerspace to address some of the pain points he experienced working with retailers. And you know what they say: If you want something done well, you’ve got to do it yourself. And that’s more or less what Choi did.
Speaking with Retail Brew, the industry veteran discussed his journey from brands to logistics, challenges facing people of color in retail, and why it’s important to set high standards for yourself in the industry.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
On his journey to Outerspace
As a brand founder at Nice Laundry, someone who is probably pretty naive and ignorant to what warehousing and logistics is, we worked with a lot of third-party warehouses, and we would ask a lot of questions to them that they probably rolled their eyes. “Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t we have someone there on site during these hours to check out?” It was always no, no, no. So finally, we said, “Let’s bring it in-house. Let’s do it ourselves. Let’s build it exactly the way that we want to.” About a year into that, we started getting calls from other brands: “Hey, how are you able to promise this sort of turnaround to the customer?” Or, “I placed an order from your site the other day, and the customer service person seemed like they were walking around at the warehouse. Who are you working with?” Because those are all the things that we’ve always wanted. Finally, after getting calls for months and months, we said, “Let’s take on a few brands, see if we can unlock the same synergies for their businesses that we did for ours,” and were very successful, and decided to spin that out into what is now Outerspace.
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On the biggest challenges for PoC
When you’re a minority in the industry and you’re in the room and you’re having the big discussion, there is just, subtly, a little bit of a higher bar that you have to clear because people aren’t necessarily used to seeing PoC or a minority, and there’s kind of some trust that you have to build…The way that you can build the most trust is by just having very high goals, building a very legitimate, merit-based company that speaks for itself. So the fact that you are a PoC or a minority becomes a little bit of a secondary factor.
On his advice for younger PoC
There’s a lot of advice out there specifically targeted toward PoC that would say something along the lines of “Build communities. Reach out to those who look like you or who may have a similar cultural background. Look inward and build a groundswell, and slowly but surely build something off of that.” I think that’s phenomenal advice. So I’m not going to echo that, but I will say something that is probably approaching it from a little bit of a different angle, which is, as a PoC, I think the world around you is going to tell you to do it a certain way, kind of slow and steady. I think the opposite. I think if you are a PoC, hold yourself to the highest standard, constantly try to do things on the biggest stage or at the biggest level, or work with the biggest partners. To a certain extent, it is unexpected. If you hold yourself to this incredibly high standard time and time again, I think you end up at a very interesting place.