Anya Cheng has come a long way from her blue collar roots in Taiwan, coming to the United States to earn multiple degrees, and having led teams at eBay, Target, Facebook, and more. She is the founder of Taelor, a clothing rental subscription service, and she joins Paula today to talk about non-traditional holiday gifts.
One trend is people caring more about experiences than physical stuff. We've talked about this in a previous episode. A loved one will remember time spent with you much more than they will remember a gift card. Also, throughout COVID, we've learned we all have too much "stuff." It becomes clutter. People don't need more clutter; they need to get out.
Another trend is sustainability and the circular economy. This can refer to the products you buy, and also how they are packaged. More and more elements of the process can be sustainable. Anya tells us about a clothing line that was created with cinnamon, and a performance line of suits in London that was created from repurposed coffee grounds! Because of the nature of the grounds, the suits are odor resistant. (And no, they don't smell like coffee.)
Anya's had quite a journey, really living the American Dream. Paula asks her what advice she'd give her younger self. You'll hear what Anya means when says that life isn't a mountain, it's more like surfing. Also, be curious and invest in yourself.
Anya tells us about her clothing rental company, Taelor, and it's many applications. Some folks use the service when they go on vacation. They simply drop the prepaid shipping in their hotel lobby when they leave, and they don't come home with dirty laundry. Or, if you're living in Florida but visiting family in Michigan over Christmas, you could have warmer clothes sent directly to your in-laws.
You can check out Anya's website at https://taelor.style/
And for listeners of the podcast, be sure to use code PAYCHECK for 10% off!
Anya Interview
Paula: Welcome to Beyond the Paycheck. I'm Paula Christine. Stop living paycheck to paycheck and start living the life that you dream about by taking control of your money. I can provide you with the knowledge and the toolsm if you make the commitment to put them into practice. So, I know the holidays are here. Christmas is 20 some days away and it's hard to know what gifts to give people. And I know with the inflation gifts have gotten a lot more expensive. So I've asked Anya Cheng to join us today to talk about some alternatives to that traditional gift card or some type of physical good. So we're gonna talk about some different gift giving ideas, and then Anya's gonna take some time at the end to talk about her men's subscription service which is really, really interesting.
So welcome Anya.
Anya: Hi everyone.
Paula: Tell me a little bit about your background. I know when we were talking on the phone that you came from a blue collar family and worked really hard to get to where you are today. So tell me a little bit about that.
Anya: Yeah. I'm originally from Taiwan. My Dad is a factory worker. My mom is a housewife. My parents always say, you have to get to the best school because in Taiwan, the better school is the cheaper it is. Which is opposite from here in the US. And so I was kind of forced to be that way and my first job was as a reporter and back in Taiwan and 15 years ago, reporter is quite a good job.
So I never thought I would be leaving that job. But then one day someone came to Taiwan and they asked me, where do you work? And I was so proud. I said, I work for Apple, which is actually Apple Daily. It's a newspaper in Taiwan. And I thought everybody knew it. And I was so embarrassed. I was like, oh, my world is so small.
I thought everybody knew about Apple Daily, but people were actually thinking of the Apple company in Silicon Valley. Decided to get out of Taiwan and learn more about the world. And a lot of people asked me like, how would you calculate a return on investment? Because in Taiwan the living cost is pretty low, so getting a master degree in Northwestern University sounds like a crazy amount of money and you probably have to pay back a loan for 15 years.
And I told people I wasn't able to calculate the return because the return is in the future and you don't know in the future .I have no proof I would become product manager, leading the product team for Facebook, then eBay and Targets and I have no clue. So I told people I'd calculate what's the worst scenario.
And the worst will be I have to pay back the loan for 10 years. And I think that's okay, and I decide to give it a try. And starting from there, my career has been getting into my American dream and for the last 15 years, I worked my way up to be the woman leader and running e-commerce team for Facebook.
Paula: Congratulations. I mean, that's a huge success. You really, truly are living the American dream.
Anya: Yeah. A lot of people helped me and I happened to graduate in 2008, which was right after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, so very similar to the Covid last few years. There was no job anywhere and so then I emailed 2000 alumni and I went to New York and LA for two months, leaving on friends' couches and then visited strangers every day.
And then I bought a newspaper from the news stands and I was cold calling the numbers. They were advertising this number. So I called them, saying I want to work here. And eventually I didn't get any jobs. But then I used what I learned. I put together a business plan. I went to a small farmer's magazine company. I pitched them for the business plan.
Paula: So let's start talking about different gift giving ideas. Your ideas are fantastic and I'm gonna look at some of those for my kids, too, this year.
Anya: Yeah, here are a few trends. One is that people are caring more and more about experience than physical stuff. Nowadays people seem to have everything they need and we stayed home during covid and realized, oh my God, too much junk at home, and so much clutter.
A lot of people start saying, Hey, how about we bring you to a theater? Let's go out to a movie. Let's go to a show. Let's have yoga classes. In our case, a menswear rental subscription service. So how about having a stylist, who will style you and pick the best outfit for you and you can wear 8 clothes per month for a couple months?
And so one trend's definitely bring the experiences more. The other trend is that people care more about sustainability. So sustainability comes in many forms. It's not just our how sustainable the items were being designed. For example, in our clothes, we have clothes made by recycled coffee grounds, with clothes made by recycled plastic bottle.
Clothes made of cinnamon, and the founder stores some textiles in a warehouse. The previous tenant was a Chinese herb company. So then they're surprised to find out that, oh, cinnamon actually can reduce odor. And then from there they design the clothes with cinnamon. So more than that, but also maybe it's the model of the service or product. For example, are you buying secondhand items or are you buying something that is more like a rental service, that you don't have to own new stuff all the time?
Are you doing something circular? Does the packaging or the package,does it come with something recycled, re usable? Or higher duration of the usage. So it's not used one time. It can be used and you can replace a part modularly, if you gain weight, lose weight, you can have different clothes.
Paula: No, I was just gonna talk about that, that secondhand and the rental clothing. I mean, I shop at secondhand stores quite often, but the rental clothing. I was talking with Jon, my producer before you joined us about how you say you rent clothes for your vacation, and then when you were leaving for your vacation, you just put 'em in a box and then ship 'em back.
I mean, I think that's an amazing idea. And if you think about somebody looking for a job, maybe they need suits for their interviews, but they don't wear them pretty much any other time. So it'd be great to be able to rent stuff like that.
Anya: Yeah. So the idea for rental, you can explore different types of things. So before I start a company, I always, this really cool girl, wears the same thing every year, the GAP person. And I was afraid to try something out of my comfort zone. I'm lazy, I'm practical. For rentals, you wear eight clothes per month like your Netflix show. You watch this one for five minutes. If you don't like it, get on the next show.
Right? So it's not like it's a $5 discount or $10 discount, that's why you watch a show. It's because you truly like it. And in the rental model, the stylist will pick for you. You have over 200 brands that you can try with different styles. Preppy streetwear. Classic Americanos. Smart casual, business casual, all kinds of things you can try.
And then when you travel, especially during holidays where you have business meetings in the future, when you travel, you don't need to bring dirty clothes home because you have a prepaid envelope and it's a rental. So I usually just give it to a hotel lobby and I came home with empty hands. So no one likes to do laundry after you get home.
Paula: No, I just think that's such a fantastic idea, and you think a lot of times where you travel, sometimes you don't have the necessary clothes. Like somebody coming from the Southern part of Florida, coming to Michigan doesn't necessarily have a winter coat or the clothes that they would be using here, depending on the weather. I mean, it's just a fantastic idea. You can have a great wardrobe for a holiday.
Anya: We have a lot of customers, they actually ship their clothes directly to the in-laws. They just get to Michigan and wore them and went home. We started doing that. And also if you are like a dry, clean person, you take clothes to dry clean or you hate ironing, pretty much the rental subscription covers all of the dry cleanings, and so you don't even need to pay for the dry cleaner, and save more money.
Paula: Yeah, it's just fantastic. Just recap a little bit about some of the gift giving ideas that you talked about. I love the gift of an experience. Nobody's gonna remember that $25 or $30 gift card that you gave them, but they'll remember if you took 'em to the theater or to a baseball game or something.
They'll remember that experience and it's so much more important to build memories than it is to provide someone with a gift card. I go back to one thing that you said, how do they make clothes outta coffee grounds?
Anya: Yeah, that's a company called Tranzend. Very interesting that the guy lived in London before and he's a guy who biked to work every day.
In London they like to wear suits or look really formal. You realize every time he biked and he rents he rents a lot and it's just inconvenient. So he decided to design these performance suits that are actually a perfect outfit for workout, like biking, for example, and then are waterproof, rainproof, but it looks like a suit.
So when you get to the office, you don't have to change it again. And he also came from the textile family. So they have been inventing using a lot of natural material. And one of the materials they use is recycled coffee grounds. So it's a combination of recycled plastic bottles with recycled coffee grounds and they actually reduce odor because of the nature of the coffee.
And so you don't smell coffee, but really performance based and also have a lot of features. And then I love that you talked previously about the kind of the gift, keep on giving ideas. Like today, I will give you a gift. Tomorrow you're happy. But two weeks from today, you don't remember. The trend is to give something that people are constantly being reminded of.
For example, in our rental subscription, every few weeks you get a new box. So people get two boxes per month. So every time you get a box, you, oh wow, I got this one. Or every day you wear the clothes out. Someone says, "Nice shirt," and yeah, yeah, my girlfriend gave me this service. So the gift giving, keep giving ideas is something pretty trendy.
Paula: Yeah, I just love that. I know we talked about, you're gonna send me some links to some women's clothing, cuz I think that's huge cuz I am so lazy when it comes to shopping. It sounds like a perfect service for me. So one question I want you to answer is, because you are now living the American Dream, if you could go back to your 20 year old self, cuz I'm gonna make an assumption that you've made some mistakes along the way. What would you tell your 20 year old self? Hey, you should be doing this with your money?
Anya: When I was younger, I thought that life was more like climbing a mountain. You take one step up and then you work hard, get another step up and eventually get on the mountain. But I realized life is more like surfing.
You go up, you go down. So you go up and go down, and what you need to do is you try to prepare and when you go down, you prepare to stand up when the next wave comes. It's just up and down. It's just very normal. And then when I was using this analogy, my mom corrected me. My mom said, Hey, I heard you talk on a podcast about the mountain.
I think the mountain is really, you should talk about how it's important that you do need to go home safe. Because I'm always the kind of person who likes to work extremely hard and my mom's like No, you don't just go to the top. You need to make sure you're home safely too. So I think looking back on my career, one thing I did was that I was always investing in myself. When I was getting my first job after the magazine company that I pitched them for the idea, was Sears. And I realized I have to learn more about a business than just marketing. I have to work with a finance person. I have to work with buyers and operation people. So then I get my MBA during that time. And then when I was leading the engineering team at eBay and came from a non-engineering background, I went on some coding classes and learned how to code even though I've never coded since, but at least I now have an empathy for the engineers.
So I think one thing that I devised is that I constantly invest in myself. And that allows me to make more money for the next role because when you are making money, it's great, but then when you make money means you are burning something that you know very well. But if you are not learning new things, then it's hard for you to make even more money from there.
And I think the one mistake that I made on the other hand would be that I was a very "how" person. I was always about how, like how to do this, how to videos, how to books. I'm very eager to learn, but I really think of what and why. I was more like, I never thought I would become a startup founder.
So I'm actually really involved in the startup space and understand anything about entrepreneurship. I thought this is for rich people who have money to do. And I came from a blue collar family. After two degrees in the US. I was pretty much broke and constantly paying for my loans, so I never thought that I would have the chance.
But I wish I'm a little bit more open minded because sometimes you just go with your curiosity and you'll be surprised that maybe you are selling a chicken over rice and one day chicken was outta stock. So that you decide to sell beef and it turns out the beef noodle is more famous than the other one. More popular.
So you never know, just kind of have your curiosity lead you to your next things.
Paula: I agree with that 100%. I mean, that's how I got to be where I'm at, is just because I'm always investing in myself and I'm always learning more. And then through that, many opportunities have opened up the door for me. I try to tell my kids all the time, just think outside of the box.
Get the education and if you wanna learn about this, go and learn about it and see where that takes you. You just never know where life's gonna lead. Keeping focused and thinking and growing as a person will pretty much lead you anywhere that you desire or help you find what your passion is. Like you said, you never thought you'd end up where you are today. I totally never thought I would end up where I am today, either.
Anya: Yeah. Yeah. Looking back at how left my first job as a reporter in Taiwan, it was hard. Like you were 21 years old and you were the correspondent for the City Mayor and you made kind of good money there. But if I didn't leave there, I'd never have had a chance to work for Targets and work for eBay and even build eCommerce for Facebook. And that's something that I couldn't imagine. And of course, I make way much more than being a small reporter for a small newspaper in Taiwan. You don't know what you don't know. So open minded. And then you can definitely dream big.
Paula: Yup. Commit to lifelong learning. I've learned a lot from you today. I really appreciate you being our guest. So if anybody wants to reach out to you, how would they find you?
Anya: You can go on to Taelor.Style, and they can use a coupon code for PAYCHECK, all caps, and get 10% off for the gift card. Taelor dot style.
Paula: Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. Okay, we'll put all that in the show notes so that everybody will have access to it. We really appreciate that discount.
Anya: Yeah, I wish everyone a very happy holiday and hopefully this holiday gift. It's not just a gift, but also helps someone to save their space and give them more time and help them to achieve their dream.
Paula: Thank you. So if anybody would like to reach out to me, you can email me paula@paulachristine.com, or you can check out the website at paulachristine.com. So I too wish everybody a happy holidays and next week we are bringing back Lynn Habrowski, our financial planner, who's gonna talk about the family love letter.
So how you talk to your family about what your last wishes are, and it's the perfect time to be having those conversations because we're all gonna be getting together with our family members over the Christmas holiday. And it's always a good time to share with your family what your true intentions are.
So thanks everybody. Thanks for tuning in.