Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons

Navigating Handbag AI Tech Authentication with Entrupy’s Vidyuth Srinivasan

• Emily Blumenthal • Season 1

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Ever wonder how a name can shape a person’s journey? Vidyuth Srinivasan, the dynamic CEO of Entrupy, joins us to share his experiences navigating life in the U.S. with a unique name. Vidyuth opens up about his adventurous path from India to New York City and how his role as the "black sheep" in his family fueled his entrepreneurial spirit. Together, we reflect on respecting cultural identities and the delicate balance between staying true to oneself and making communication more accessible in a new environment.

Vidyuth’s transition from journalism to entrepreneurship is nothing short of inspiring. He shares how a secure upbringing allowed him to explore creative ambitions, ultimately leading to founding a company focused on building trust through randomness and Entrupy. Alongside his co-founder, Vidyuth embarked on a mission to authenticate transactions and uncover the truth in exchanges where trust is often lacking. This episode highlights how embracing risk and independence can lead to groundbreaking innovations in fields as diverse as technology, fashion, and cultural significance.

The challenges of counterfeiting and the quest for authenticity in the fashion industry come alive as Vidyuth recounts his journey to develop an authentication technology. We explore the intricacies of distinguishing authentic products from counterfeits and the global effort to create a reliable database of authentic goods. Vidyuth offers a compelling look at how understanding fashion items' history and cultural significance can enhance efforts to combat counterfeiting. Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, listeners are invited to consider their role in fostering transparency and integrity in their personal lives and as consumers in a complex marketplace.

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Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to the Handbag Designer 101 podcast with your host, emily Blumenthal, handbag designer expert and handbag fairy godmother, where we cover everything about handbags, from making, marketing, designing and talking to handbag designers and industry experts about what it takes to make a successful handbag. Hi, welcome to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast vidyut.

Speaker 2:

Srinivasan.

Speaker 1:

Srinivasan. Okay, ceo of Entropy, I got that right. I am so sorry because, as we were chatting before, I take such pride in saying people's names correctly. I think it's so offensive if someone can't take the extra minute to learn it and say it the right way. So in advance, I am sorry. Respect to you and your parents, your dad, you know I'm sure they have no patience for this at this point. Srini Vasan done.

Speaker 2:

Srini Vasan. Yeah, that's right, my dad's name is Srini Vasan. So, yes, I think he might. Yeah, Well, it depends, right, depending on where you come from, it might be a family name. It doesn't matter what your dad's name is, and some people have like two first names or three first names, right, well, that's just greedy Like come on, pick a lane Right.

Speaker 1:

Well, look, at the end of the day, you are your own brand's best, best publicist, so you have to know how can you present yourself in a way that people will find you, remember you and what's the reason that they're remembering you. So pick a lead. Yeah, I mean, how do?

Speaker 1:

we let the called name will make, uh you memorable to begin with well, I think right now specifically, we're in a cultural time where I think a lot of people have had to apologize, especially coming to the, to the US or having immigrant parents that call me something else, and I think people should stand firm on who they are, what their name is, and if it's difficult, I think the person on the receiving end is worth putting the extra effort to say your name correctly. I don't think there's any excuses in my opinion. Try harder. That's your name, move on.

Speaker 2:

Why not? Sure, I mean, the other side works as well. Some people just want that conversation to be easily lubricated, in the sense of not wanting to spend too much time on the name, so they come up with something that sounds similar to what they are, and so they look at the middle ground. Right, and I get that too.

Speaker 2:

I moved here much later in my life, right, I had no plans. I had no idea in my life that I would be doing what I'm doing where I'm doing it, which is New York City. But I always had some idea in my head that, hey, I want to make a difference, I want to build something that has an impact, which is material, and by material I don't mean money, I really mean things that try to make lives better in some way. Yeah, and because of that. So I grew up, most of my life was spent in India, and then I moved to the US. I've never had a job here. This is basically the only thing I've ever done in the US. I used to visit here with different companies that I used to work for before, but I'd never been to New York ever, and I just picked up my bags and said, well, maybe, I don't know, it was just an instant choice.

Speaker 1:

What number child are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm the second and I'm definitely the black sheep.

Speaker 1:

Wait, you're one of how many? Just two. I'm the second and I'm definitely the black sheep, Wait you're one of how many?

Speaker 2:

Just two. I'm the younger.

Speaker 1:

So is your older sibling an overachiever color in the lines, doctor lawyer like does?

Speaker 2:

everything. Yeah, doctor, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 1:

So that's, I align and identify with you as a second born black sheep. I always say I'm the middle child without a younger sibling. So you know, that's like, I think, when you have someone that you grew up with who is such an unapologetic, overachieving person that you have two options you either are a slacker or you do your best to overachieve, but your way is never going to be the same way they do it, and you'll always go, you know, the back way, around the corner, upside down, and then, by the way, I'll meet you at the front.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right, and no matter what you do, it always somehow ends up hurting your folks, which I feel very sorry for.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because they had a tough time with me because, you know, exactly, like you said, I had a lot of questions about things like religion. Hey, why am I asking questions? And saying, hey, random person, I completely respect religious people Absolutely and I understand where they come from, where I've grown up to understand where they come from. But yeah, I had a lot of these questions and we come from a very religious family, or a pious family at least, which meant we were very ritualistic, and it started there and then it expanded to ask questions about everything, but not in an annoying way, in a very challenging authority kind of way. And so, yeah, which is why I said it's possible that I've been building this, because I'm probably likely a very bad employee. So, you know, this is the one way in which I felt like, hey, this needs to happen and we need to be building this and that's it.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to back into this because we're you know, like I said, this is organically speaking. Like I said, this is organically speaking coming from someone that you said that your name. You know some people they want it lubricated. Another great word. How did you come up with the name of Entropy and what does it represent?

Speaker 2:

to you. Yeah, the name has some etymology to it. Wow, yeah, it does have some. Yeah, so the original thing that we started building Ashleish was our co-founder Burma co-founder and myself. What we started doing was talking about the herald randomness that's in the universe. You're right, everything has a level of randomness which only keeps increasing with time. If you counter randomness and, by the way, for the record, I'm not an engineer, but I could have been one, but I ended up, uh, I ended up becoming a journalist, by education, actually, and my co-founder was a phd.

Speaker 1:

he's a phd, so we used to have you. What one of you is the respectable child? The other one is like wow, he's just a writer, exactly. Yeah, you need one of you to be the grown-up if you're going to take this leap of fate between the two of you, because one of you needs to ask questions and the other one needs to say okay, we still have a path to follow. So it sounds like a good mix. Kind of yeah.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a good way to characterize it. I would also say one of us was intelligent and actually could do things, and the other one was just smart because he knew how to talk to the intelligent people. And I think we used to have a lot of these conversations and we realized that, hey, what if we? So the way we met was through a common friend of mine, and my background is like I said. I was a journalist. I worked in a bunch of different companies, did various different things in my life and I never really wanted a job in my entire life, not to say that I was privileged. My parents were completely middle class. They worked for the government, so I never really saw a lot of money, but that didn't stop me from hustling a bit, getting money if I needed to doing odd jobs. But I also had a creative bent where I wanted to make movies, I wanted to make music but you grew up in a home of security and no risk.

Speaker 1:

So that either puts you one way or another, because when you had both parents working for the government, then you know that. You know you can always do what you want, but to a point there's limitations, so you never need to worry. But if you want more, it's just you have to accept that's not going to be the case. So if you want it, you really couldn't take a jump.

Speaker 2:

Right, and if you wanted more? Sometimes the question was why should you want more? Why shouldn't you be content with what you have? Also in your formative years, a lot of those questions that are around. If you do something that's uncharted, you need to know exactly what you're doing, because the perception is that the cost of failure is too high. But when I was growing up, because I started being an independent thinker much early in my life, I didn't care about the failure, because there is in my wife and I talk about this quite a bit where it's like hey, you moved your somewhere in the back of your head. You thought or maybe you didn't care for it that you might have had a safety net. Right, and I would say there was a safety net, but that safety net was absolutely unattractive In the sense for the kind of people that we are, who are building this.

Speaker 2:

It didn't matter, because we didn't want it to ever come to that point. It wasn't like playing a poker hand, where you know it's a big bet but you have maybe the second best hand and you're like, hey, should I take a shot at it? It wasn't a situation where you can afford to lose that money and you're making a strategic choice. So the premise of you can afford to lose money was never even there. It's completely a free-for-all, so you could potentially bet everything you ever have on it, or you could build yourself up to a position where you have nothing.

Speaker 1:

Therefore, you have nothing to really bet and you have nothing to lose therefore, you have nothing to really bet and you have nothing to lose, right, right, it's so. So the definition of entropy ties into that, in your opinion I am so sorry, all right, so.

Speaker 2:

So I'll give you the the quick three line, all right? So co-founder and I were talking. We realized we wanted to build something related to the randomness of the universe and tie that to how we can authenticate or add trust by looking at random things and the definition in physics in general for randomness. You can quantify randomness through entropy. That's T-R-O-P-Y, but we wanted to use entropy to determine the truth behind things, so the T-R-O became T-R-U. So the idea, the company's name, everything is associated with finding the truth behind objects, using randomness and building trust in transactions happening anywhere, because the mission for the company always was and will be in adding trust where we feel or where there's evidence that there's a trust deficit when people are transacting in things.

Speaker 1:

So. But you and your partner met through a friend-in-law in India. And then what was the journey? So he had a PhD or finished his PhD. He must have been some doing something.

Speaker 2:

Phd safe related he was actually still doing his PhD. Then he was in the middle of it and when we met, the idea was hey, where did you meet? Uh, this is funny. We met at a bar.

Speaker 1:

I was gonna. If it's not a bar, it's a little disappointing at this point.

Speaker 2:

But my first question to him was hey, you know, nice meeting blah blah. I still remember so well. Great to meet. You. Heard a lot blah, blah blah. Let's just sit and chat. What would you like to have? What do you do? Beer, whiskey, gin? Oh, I don't drink.

Speaker 1:

Oh, was that a little sus to you.

Speaker 2:

It was complete, sus, because I've always maintained that, you know, when people don't have any vices, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. So I was like okay, fine, yeah, that's fine, we'll get you some soda or something and let's order some food and start talking and turns out he doesn't eat any meat.

Speaker 1:

I was just going to say he must be vegan or something. We're going there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and at that point I used to smoke. So I picked up a cigarette Like how about that? Nope, nothing.

Speaker 1:

Oh, this is going to be a long dinner. But to be Indian and to be vegetarian is not, it's not unique.

Speaker 2:

It's not unique, but it was different, because if that was all, the case all of these things were true, then you might not be seen in a bar. That's true, Right? Why do you come to a bar? We could have gone somewhere else. We could have gone to a regular restaurant.

Speaker 1:

So A, this was not transitive.

Speaker 2:

A did not equal C, so there was something in between here, exactly, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out what that something in between was right, right, so we started talking about. It was a generic conversation about a bunch of things, what he's working on, and I think at that point he was trying to see if anything could be done, so it was very exploratory at that point.

Speaker 1:

Anything could be done in terms of what?

Speaker 2:

In terms of can this concept, this theoretical concept, actually be productized? And I don't even know why he wanted to talk to me.

Speaker 1:

What was the concept?

Speaker 2:

The concept was do physical objects in this universe actually have their own unique identity? It's a simple question, right? And if that is the case, is it worth looking at productizing it? And again, this is just a theoretical paper, right? This is a PhD paper. So from there we move to oh, maybe it does. Oh, if it does, should we build it? If we do build it, what problem is it potentially solving? If it is solving a problem, can it actually become a product or a service? And if it is a product or service, how big can it get? Where can we sell it? Who can we sell it to? So there were a huge, huge number of questions that we wanted to answer, right?

Speaker 1:

And this is very much before AI, before any of that.

Speaker 2:

Way before any of that, way before any of that. And my thing there, the thing that still, even today, that I'm so like my eyes light up every time I talk about it is the fact that one this is actually true there is evidence to say that every single thing that even we make, every single thing that exists on the planet, has something extremely unique about it that can only be itself. Right, it's like the difference between looking at and I will go back to this analogy later. It's like the difference between looking at and I will go back to this analogy later. It's like the difference between looking at someone's face versus their DNA, right? So, depending on the frame of reference, you can identify someone through that face, or if you don't, you can't see the person.

Speaker 2:

Or if you see 20 people that look exactly alike, that know, uh, I don't know what would you call that clown dodeca? Yeah, that's something like that. But if there were 20 people that looked exactly alike, you would probably have to go to that dna and look at. Okay, this is that 0.1 difference, right? So that was the idea. It's like everything is unique. Yes, they can be similar, like. Oh, so it's a mind-blown movement. And I said you know what? I'm just switching jobs now. I was moving in from a software company to a sports marketing group because that's like one of the most popular cricket players of all time and I had a choice now Like, ok, do I do that or does this interest me?

Speaker 1:

Do I want to explore this into saying, okay, can this construct of things having its own number, placement of some description, can it be marketable? Can it be sellable, and what's the why and who would buy it, and how can we commercialize something that is essentially nothing right now? So that is quite the I mean, and that is quite the conversation to have being like. So should I not take this day job where it's going to pay me a lot of money, or should I just take a leap of faith and jump into this, like you know, cosmic era of? Maybe I'll start a business with this guy that I just met, who doesn't drink or eat meat?

Speaker 2:

It's exactly that, and at that point, it wasn't even a technology, right, it was just a concept. It was literally a thought, and you know how it is you start somewhere and you end up somewhere completely different, but that wasn't on our mind. I think the amazing thing about how we're building this, or how we have built it, at least thus far, is that we've always hung on to the mission and hung on to the things that we have absolutely loved, which has been okay. Here's an idea, okay, great, nice idea, but it means nothing. Validate it right, get feedback on it. Go, take every single baby step there is to take.

Speaker 2:

Don't skip any step, because every step teaches you something, though we didn't even know at that point that we were following a lot of the well thought through schools of how do you build a company, how do you build a product in the early stages and how do you take it from nothing to something and then from something to something bigger, and then take it through different stages so we can monetizing. Yeah, yeah, I exactly so, and that wasn't it. On one hand, I was always thinking about it because I've never wanted to build anything for free, but on the other hand, it was. Is this even possible to actually build into a technology or a product? Because it's just a concept, right? Everything having a unique single print, so-.

Speaker 1:

Can I just pause for one second, just to make sure, cause I want to mention this and then we'll go back. So just to make sure, as a result of this, because this is your story is so fascinating and it's so many, so many bold choices, but can you just touch upon how entropy ties into handbags and what this would do and the value of what this represents, because that's how I found you and then we'll go back to the building of it, because I think that's important to bring this all full circle, because the journey of this is so important to see how you ended up there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, no, and that's what I was going to say. This also tells you how much of an outsider I am to this space, but what we ended up doing very quickly was we started something, we took it to. You know, this is where I come in, right, I hustled my way into setting up meetings with everybody who builds products of all kinds, from food to art, to wine to luxury products and got to meet a bunch of luxury brands as well. It's like hey, what do you think of this? And they're like this is an alien concept to them, right? They like making new things and selling. They're designers, creative people. We went in there with a technology that said did you want your thing and its, its identity to be protected forever, for its lifetime? And they're like oh yeah, hell, yes, I would want to, but, you know, come back when you have more data.

Speaker 1:

So this is interesting web 3 at this point in terms of yeah, this is like web 4.

Speaker 2:

You're speaking to web 1.0, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, like what yeah, it doesn't make sense trying to tell your parents how to how to make an instagram Like you could be there all day. Forget it. You know that kind of thing Exactly.

Speaker 2:

And so we went to the retail brands and then we realized that, and again, this was just a process of validation. Right, Take it to 50 people, see who is interested in what problem it solves.

Speaker 1:

So validation had you moved yet, or were you still in India?

Speaker 2:

I was doing both. I was traveling back and forth and coming in for meetings and heading back. Then we stumbled upon, so we had a list of all of these different kinds of industries and at one point I spoke to some of the brands and they liked it and, like I said, they said come back and get more data Interesting. So there is something here, but we don't know exactly how to get there. So, by chance, we spoke to a bunch of people who are resellers, who had their sort of side job as buying and selling expensive things, including handbags, watches and a few other things. They're like hey, what do you think of this? I'm like wait, you're telling me that I could identify this product. Okay, maybe, but what I really want to know is is this real or not? That's all I want to know. So it's a simple question that they ask and we're like oh man, okay, that is a question that is worth answering, right? It's a very simple question.

Speaker 2:

If someone's looking at something, they just want to know if it's real or not. When do they want to know that? Typically before, just before they're going to buy it, or just after they bought it to assuage their fears, right or right in the middle of the transaction, right, right, like, okay, cool, but for that to happen, we need to flip our technology on its head. We're looking at every item uniquely right. Every single handbag is unique. Instead, what if we took an entire class of handbags and saw and found out if that is different from how the counterfeits are made?

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. Yeah, I think it was fundamentally or semantically. It went from looking at differences between things to commonality between things, right, and then building two classes of this is different from this, but in this, in one class, there's a lot more similarity than differences. And what is it actually true? Is that? Is this? Again, this was another theoretical concept, right, so we had to validate it.

Speaker 2:

So we actually built a product, a very basic technology. We did it with Louis Vuitton handbags and wallets and a bunch of things. We're like, hey, they all have a certain standard. What if we collected data from different eras and saw if computers could understand these different eras, and saw if it actually if computers could understand these different eras and the commonalities and then create a new class of just hand-deferred products, fake products of all different types but similar, looking to this excuse me authentic class, and then see if they actually can detect? So we did a small project. It took about three, four months. It worked and we took the technology to one of the biggest resellers currently biggest resellers, and that point weren't that big and we had a 35, 40-minute conversation and at the end of it they were like, hey, why don't you build this for us. We're like wait, are you trying to acquire us? And they said yes. And we're like interesting, we don't even have a product. So from trying to identify a market to getting an offer to be acquired was kind of a big jump.

Speaker 1:

So, in terms of this, how were they tested side by side? Was it like a 360 laser? Was it someone scanning the codes? Was it someone checking the interior labels to make sure the numbers match up? Like so you're having this conversation because you know I've spoken to enough authenticators. I am not an authenticator. It's like I need to say I'm not a lawyer. You know, when you give advice, I'm also not an authenticator, so I can't give advice to that. But there are many things that determine what's real and what's not. So how were you able to work backwards in terms of that?

Speaker 2:

That's a good question. So we didn't work backwards at all, we just collected that data. We looked at it more from a data standpoint. We understood that there were a lot of signals, so to speak, which can indicate the authenticity of the lack thereof, but we looked at it purely from the perspective of hey, I know that these things are definitely fake, I know that these things are definitely authentic. So let's start there, right. We started with that level of we don't know much, but what we do know is that this data at scale might give us some information. So, and going back to your original question, we were looking at only images, because the idea that we had was we wanted to build something scalable and repeatable and something that everybody could use if they had to. But we realized that, in those days at least, the optics that were available on phones, et cetera, weren't that good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we said we need, if we're going to build something like this, if it ever comes down to it, we're going to have to use a deeper frame of reference, similar to looking at a photo of a face or looking at the DNA of somebody, Right? So we said our frame of reference needs to be deeper because the new information that we get, the quality of that data, is going to be consistent. So, again, everything was approached from a data standpoint. Right, Because data, in our view, was scalable. We could scale that knowledge and data and it would continually get better. Because in those days, the state of the art was a QR code or a hologram or some kind of a number. Right? You said, okay, anybody can copy that and once you've tracked it, that security is worthless. But you have to keep playing that spy versus spy game, Right? Compared to if you're doing AI or if you're doing it based on data, then you could always afford to stay 30 paces ahead.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Because you're getting new data. So, going back to that, we collected this data. It worked. We were almost acquihired. We said thanks, but no thanks Because again, we use that in validation. Okay, there is a market here. If we don't even have a product and they want to acquire us, there is a deep enough problem. So we got deeper. That's how we got into handbags and then the question was okay, all of this is fine, but where the hell are we going to get this data? We need to now map 100 years worth of handbag data. Who the hell even has that information Right?

Speaker 2:

So in a way, looking back, it was doing the hard things first. Right, we embarked on a glorious global adventure on collecting data. We went all over the world posing as wholesale buyers for authentic product, for fake product. We stood in the line. You know some weird looking guy who doesn't look like he should belong here was actually standing in many of the retail stores handbag sections, asking questions about how things are made. What kind of leather is this? You know the stitching qualities and how do you? You know asking the essays, what goes into this and how do you know like what can you tell from these different ways of construction and different eras of and I've heard this in your previous podcast as well which is all true. I mean there are some, there are transition years when we would see data that comes from the authentic class, which looked really bad oh my God, how is this factory so bad? But then we saw a lot of it. We saw that to be consistent, right, and then we realized that, okay, so this is not, and this is why I was talking about.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people think about authentication as if you're looking at a checklist and looking at a bunch of one or two signals like, oh, if they have this grommet incorrectly stamped, it must be fake. That's not how it works at all, right, Because of these idiosyncrasies. So that kind of taught us to also be better authenticators. So we had to become authenticators ourselves.

Speaker 2:

I was authenticating for the longest time and I had no idea. I didn't even. The only exposure that I had to Hermès for the longest time was my dad, when he'd gone to France. Once he got me a nice little bottle of cologne and like, okay, this sounds interesting. And then, of course, in school you learn about history and the Greek gods, et cetera, but as a brand I had no exposure, Right. But when we got into this I was like, oh man. So it was a journey of discovery for myself, Right, myself, right, understanding how these things were made. And, honestly, I really have come to appreciate that I don't collect anything maybe perfumes that's my thing but I don't collect any of these types of products. But I do appreciate the artisanship, the work that goes into it, the thought that goes into it. The consistency that they have is not easy to do, especially at that scale right, it's so.

Speaker 1:

I mean I'm so digging this. I mean it sounds to me that you were more and you can correct me that you were more shopping for a business idea, less so what the business idea was, and this just kind of stuck, answered and checked all the boxes of your need to ask questions. You found someone that was on the same wavelength that you could bounce ideas off of, and that he maintained your interest. Because for people like you and me, it's hard to keep my interest. It's hard and it's also hard for people to want to stay along for the ride of being with you, considering who you are, because you got to be a lot of a person to be able to do all of this and, unapologetically, you just have to be you, because you have to be pushy, you have to be persistent, you have to be willing to keep showing up at the places where people said, no, you can't come in because you got to keep like you got to get to the bottom, like wait, I need to know.

Speaker 2:

Okay, explain this to me yes, I need to know that's it?

Speaker 1:

Why did they use the stitch? No but like. But what makes this stitch so interesting? But wait, why? And why did?

Speaker 2:

they have to move, like they had a great couple of factories in this particular country. Why did they have to move? It made no sense. I mean, everything was working great.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, it's so fascinating.

Speaker 1:

And, again, being someone who is somewhat of a handbag anthropologist, at this point, you know, and I, and to your point, I have this gigantic dossier of the history of the handbag and it's mine. I don't share it with anybody else, but I do a lot of guess, writing like editors ask me. You know, like I've got something coming out about the fanny pack and its history, but I feel like, in order to speak to authenticating, in order to speak to why brands did it, you have to go back to even why that silhouette exists and what it's trying to accomplish and what that user or end customer from either even an ethnographical standpoint tying into their lifestyle, why was this product created? And only then can you get into the authentication and seeing if someone was copying it. They're copying it for the product, not for the use, not for the day-to-day, not for the customer.

Speaker 1:

It's checking a box of someone who wanted that product to say that they could have that product, and only then, in my opinion, can your technology separate the difference or at least identify it, and I'm no tech person either, but that is just what I can surmise. So all these are bold choices. I mean, you started this. What in 2010? So it's been a minute 2013.

Speaker 2:

2013. And then we didn't raise any money the first few years. We were running off of a grant that we got from NYU to pursue this, and they were kind enough to even give us an office. And that's when I moved to New York saying, hey, I think this is the right place to build it. We originally registered the company Because my co-founder was doing his PhD at NYU. He was doing his own thing, but then we ended up having a bigger our own space.

Speaker 2:

That's when I started visiting back and forth and it was just a question of, hey, it just seems like I need to. We need to build this in New York, in the US, but specifically in New York, and it was a very easy, instinctive choice for me to do that. But, looking back, I don't know what I was thinking. Yeah, and the way we approached it and where we ended up and where we are going.

Speaker 2:

A lot of it comes down to what do we want to do with this? Where should this go and what should this be? Those are four questions that we ask ourselves all the time, outside of the business side of it or the numbers, or the accuracy in the product and the answer, thankfully at the very high level. All of us on the board now, and co-founders ourselves, have a very simple answer to it, which is, hey, this needs to exist to help society at large and now that it exists, it needs to be the biggest, best version of itself. But the bigness of it is not necessarily about want to build something big, right, the benefit that people have out of it is, and people get out of it is really what we're after, because it's an emotional need and I come from traditionally a much lower trust society right, a lot of people are for themselves and I'm always, never, I've never liked that I theoretically with parents that work for the government, if that's the case I know, and my dad was just, he was so by the book.

Speaker 2:

He was like he never. And you know, in a world where a lot of these things could have been going your way, you know you could have secret handshakes, that's right, he was. He just had one job all his life and he was always extremely above board and kept talking about integrity. So in some ways, so imagine hearing that while being the black sheep right and while, yeah, and growing up, you do all the uh, unsavory things, not criminal things, but unsavory things. So in a way it's almost like a path to redemption for myself.

Speaker 2:

But it also is understanding the value of goodness to society. And we try to do that and I think the more we do it, the more the world benefits from. Not just, I mean and we're only one small part, right, we're not really the most important thing on this planet, absolutely not, probably one of the least. But on the other hand, if we're able to help somebody have that peace of mind and ensure that that peace of mind continues, right, not just for that transaction, for that moment of interaction, and that is really important as a motivator for us, which means we want that peace of mind to be scaled up to be accessible to everybody. And yeah, that's our pursuit.

Speaker 1:

I got to say and I've spoken to, I've discussed this with a few people, actually on a few episodes that are coming but one way or another and this was told to me by a therapist years ago or someone I know who's a therapist who said one way or another, we follow the path of our parents. Whether we want to or not, we end up doing what they're doing in some shape or form because it's so ingrained in us. Even as a black sheep, you still end up following some sort of moral compass code that you saw even as so far as that you fought so hard to get away from it. It's like when you get older, there's comfort knowing that this is the right way, because that's how you saw it and you respect it and you're going to make sure what you do still follows that same, that same code.

Speaker 2:

In that regard, that's a great point. Yes, I think it is inevitable. Even if we would like, I would fight it all the time. I was ready to disagree with you the moment you said that. But yes, you are 100% right. We don't fall bullshitting Our first cultural value as a company and we're about almost 140 something people now globally and the first thing we talk about is talk straight.

Speaker 1:

I think to what you said about. On a macrocosmic level, entropy may not have value because essentially you're protecting people's stuff, right. But on a microcosmic level, the whole essence of people buying things and what I teach you know, people trying to understand as an entrepreneur and building a product and recognizing people's budgets are separated into needs and wants and a lot of time they get commingled. But if someone is spending their hard-earned money, even if it's a dollar or a rupee or whatever, that should then be protected, that they're getting what they bought.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. Just let them get what they paid for. That's all right. It's very simple and sure it sounds simple, but there's a lot of work that goes behind it. But then again, nobody needs to know about that. It's not that important. It's important to us, right, but that doesn't make it important to the whole world, right, correct? Just give them what they think they're buying and make sure you're protecting people, because there is goodness in that, there is a positivity to society.

Speaker 2:

And look, I also get the other side of it. You know, on one hand you can say, oh, counterfeiting is bad, and there are a lot of bad things about counterfeiting. In fact, we're doing a project now where we are running every single or huge, I think over a thousand different fake products through x-ray machines, understanding what they're made of, and the results are not looking good, not good at all. So the one thing if anyone is listening who thinks reps a cool thing, trust me, I was 18. I also thought they were cool.

Speaker 2:

I bought a lot of the whole thing, right, and I bought a lot of them to you. I grew up buying them. My mom used to buy them for me in school because you you had one spare school issued shoes, and then you'd go buy the one off the pavement and wear that four days out of five. Right, that's just how we grew up. But what you don't realize is that you think that there's no victim in this entire process and screw the man for asking you to pay that much. What you also need to understand is if you think that, then you are the victim.

Speaker 1:

Correct, correct, correct. And I have to say I think that comes with age, comes that kind of knowledge of recognizing. And just to end, cap what you were saying when I got into handbags and accidentally became an accidental designer, blah, blah, blah it was one of the first times I recognized and this was before the days of everything being PU or faux leather or vegan leather, whatever the hell they want to rebrand it. It's just not real. It's chemically made.

Speaker 2:

At the end Exactly, it's artificial.

Speaker 1:

It is. However, that's when I learned about pig leather and how that's what the factories in China were using. Before cow, before lamb, it was skimed, which they cut a layer out, but it was all pig leather. And I thought and some people were saying it's still leather Again, before people at the wherewithal to say that it wasn't even leather at all and I thought, oh my God, you know, because the touch, the feel, the weight, the smell, the whole thing, the way the chemicals are taken on, I mean I Garmento Offspring, I learned about lab dips and all that and things coming back and you know, the top of line sample from production didn't match Like I get all that but an understanding that if I'm going to spend that money and I'm going to wear that product out, if this is what is going to represent me as my personal brand, I definitely did not want it to be pig leather and I could assume with full confidence nobody else would either.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think that there's also an issue there, right, like you knew it. But then there was probably and correct me if I'm wrong there was probably a sense of doubt as to okay, I know it, I care about it, but am I sure that everybody else cares about it?

Speaker 1:

Smoke buys mirrors, so it's all relative. That's the line that you know fake it till you make it. So a lot of people are using it to help build their own personal brand up. I don't think we you and I can ever dictate why people buy things and what their reasoning is. Is it because they want to look better, they want to keep up with the Joneses, they want to prove that they are one of those people who can afford or get the illusion? There will always be people who are happy buying knockoffs or dupes, and then there's the people who just don't know any better, and I think your job has to cover at least one of them, because those who buy dupes are buying it knowing full well, and those who aren't, they should be protected one way or another.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. So there's one side, which is you know, one of the analogies that I frequently use is, you know, this idea of us always operating on the edge of criminality? Right, our job is to actually prevent a crime from occurring, right, yeah? And the analogy I use is you know, does Batman ever come and say that, oh yeah, crime's done in Gotham? All of you go back right, that's not how it works. Crime's always going to happen, whether we like it or not, and so our job is really to be the gatekeepers where we can, where it makes, where people allow us to be.

Speaker 1:

So it all comes down to what consumers want and what people want. And, yeah, we cannot control what other people do. What we can control is what information they need and what they can get on demand. I want to absolutely have you back in the future to talk about the state of the market, because I feel like getting into what entropy does, your backstory the whole thing, because I think it would be interesting to have another conversation to speak about what you do and what you're dealing with and what you're trying to develop as a result of what the current trends are of counterfeits, because I think that's a great learning lesson. That's a whole other full-on conversation. But how can people find you, follow you, learn more about entropy, the whole thing?

Speaker 2:

Firstly, thanks Emily for this, and I know there's so much more to talk about. I'd love to be back on and share something which is hopefully more useful than the silly story that I just shared. You can follow us, you can find us on wwwentropy, you can look up entropy on all the socials, especially Insta and TikTok, where our game is fairly decent, yeah, and you can also, more importantly, if you're buying for secondhand resale goods and if you're going into a store yourself, look for the verified by entropy label. It's sort of like the Visa MasterCard supported thing. You'll find it on the doors. Or ask the resellers, if you're buying them online, how they authenticate and, if possible, ask them for an entropy certificate. Because if you do, if and when that item turned out to be inauthentic or we couldn't call it authentic, you are fully financially covered by us. We don't take a cut of any transaction, but we're saying that if we get it wrong, you get your money back. We'll take possession of that fake if it is a fake.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's the nugget I want to hold on to. Thank you, viju, so much for being part of this, thanks.

Speaker 2:

Emily. Thank you, vidyu, so much for being part of this Thanks.

Speaker 1:

Emily, thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review, and follow us on every single platform at Handbag Designer. Thanks so much. See you next time.

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Emily Blumenthal

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