The Four Worlds Podcast
The Four Worlds Podcast explores how a simple idea can grow into something that changes the world. Each episode takes you on a journey—from the spark of inspiration, through the creation process, innovation challenges, and to the path of real-world production.
From sketch to shelf and prototype to product, join us as we uncover the stories behind breakthrough inventions and innovations with the creators, engineers, designers, and visionaries who bring them to life.
The Four Worlds Podcast
Scaling Secondhand Sustainably with Bank & Vogue and Beyond Retro
Learn more about: Bank & Vogue
A single pair of jeans can live many lives, and sometimes its next one is a luxury handbag or a cult-favorite sneaker. In this episode, we sit down with Steven Bethell, co-founder of Bank & Vogue and Beyond Retro, to talk about how secondhand fashion has gone from thrift bins to high-profile collaborations with Converse, Coach, and Wrangler. đź‘–
Steven takes us behind the scenes of circular fashion at scale: moving millions of garments each week, partnering with charities and private collectors, and building remanufacturing pipelines that give old materials a new life. He explains why he refuses to use the word “waste,” how language can shift mindsets, and why circular design is about more than sustainability—it’s about culture, creativity, and style. 👟
Along the way, we explore how authentic, lived-in textiles can be transformed into something new, how brands are measuring impact through life cycle assessments, and why embracing the “consistently inconsistent” nature of secondhand is actually a strength.
🎧 If you’ve ever wondered how secondhand becomes first choice, this conversation is for you.
Welcome to the Four Worlds Podcast from Tomorrow's World Today. We're diving into the latest in tech, science, and sustainability, from nature's mysteries in the world of inspiration to the hands-on crafts of creation, the bold breakthroughs of innovation, and the scaled-up wonders of production. This is your ticket to the stories shaping tomorrow. Welcome to another episode of the Four Worlds Podcasts. Co-founder of Bank and Vogue, Stephen Bethel, joins us today to discuss the Beyond Retro brand's role in circular fashion and second-hand clothing. Steven, welcome to the show. We're looking forward to this one. Yeah, it's all right. Thank you very much for having me. Absolutely. We're excited. And I just wanted to start it off, kind of give you the platform to take us back into the day to 1992, the launch of Bank in Vogue, and then shortly after, I mean not so shortly, a decade later, introducing Beyond Retro. Just take me through your story and how that timeline kind of went.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we started in we're a Canadian company uh based out of Ottawa Capital, Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. It's kind of the place that fashion forgot, but let's not let's not let's not bring that up. But really, there's this interesting intersection, and we've always been in the space of the of the secondhand clothing space, and uh just in the recycling space, rather. And this idea of finding value where others don't find value, it really is something that's resonated for 25 years. It's this innovative and relevant solutions to the crisis of stuff. And you you know, you look at your closet, you look in that, you know, everybody has that drawer in their kitchen that is like the catch all drawer, the miscellaneous drawer. I have two of them. And that's a drawer that I'm like, I celebrate and love. It's the stuff in it's the stuff drawer. And you're like, oh, hey, there's that tool to remove the stub off a strawberry that no one, you know, you bought and then you forgot you had. But it's this, it's this idea of discovery and finding that has always been like an element of the business. So the business, uh, our bank and vogue, what we do is we work with charities and private collectors to find homes for products that couldn't sell in a domestic store or that were collected across the United States and Canada in charity bins. So when you when you do your spring clean out of all your clothes or your household goods, your shoes, your purses and belts, where we live in the ecosystem is finding relevant homes for that product. So like where where does that where does that go? When you donate something to a charity and they pulled out what they can to sell it, what happens to the balance of that product? And that's what Bank and Vogue is focused on. It's just a jambalaya of apparel and footwear and handbags. It's it's in that complete stuff realm. But I love stuff. Yeah, I love things that aren't the same. You know, you go into a high street store or you know, name your HM or your Zara, and you've got a whole rail of exactly the same thing. The joy about our world is we deal with everything that's unique. And that's that's a that's a place that I absolutely love.
SPEAKER_02:So would you consider your your love of stuff and just the the culture that you grew up in as part of the inspiration that that helped get Bank and Vogue off the ground and of course beyond retro?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it's and it's it's also so I I grew up in a in a family. Every weekend we would go to antique sales or or farm auctions. And you know, and they used to have these farm auctions where you'd, you know, there'd be a guy standing on a hay wagon and they'd pull up boxes out of this guy's farmhouse, and you'd buy random boxes of whatever, and then the the joy of discovery has never been lost. And so now those random boxes have moved from the one box coming out of the at the auction to you know, we're moving containers of material, so like tractor shadow loads, and on a on a weekly basis, it's Bank of Vogue is now moving four million garments a week of secondhand clothes. So there's like literally the scale of stuff that we have in North America is like it's just to me fascinating. Do you know do you know that Americans buy 450 million pairs of jeans a year? I don't doubt it at all. 450 million pairs of jeans.
SPEAKER_02:Like you think about that, it's like it's kind of one of those numbers that you can't even wrap your head around. 450 million pairs.
SPEAKER_00:And if the average garment lives in an American closet for two and a half years, wow. It's not only the volume of product, but it's the velocity of product. And what's really exciting is to find for Bank and Fogue, our job is to say, okay, you know, if the average life expectancy is two and a half years, how do we find another closet where that could live in? And in terms of like the best thing that we can do to lower our impact on the things that we consume, is can we consume something that's already been made? Can we just buy from a thrift store instead of going and buying at a high street store or on your, you know, your main flag tree store? Because we've all seen the statistics about how much water it takes, how much land it takes, how much chemicals it takes, how much fossil fuels it takes. But what if we could change the narrative that, you know, it's not only a better thing, it's actually what's interesting is that it's it actually has authenticity or character. You know, you you think about you know, buying that pair of jeans that somebody else has worn in for you. The absurdity of of modernity is we're buying jeans where people are sanding them and putting holes in them to make them look old.
SPEAKER_02:Really? The the the vintage trend has has gone to just not ridiculous measures, but measures that have just exceeded any sort of expectation I had when vintage started becoming uh a big thing. So is this something that not that bank and vogue and and your team kind of takes advantage of, but is this something that just kind of makes you stop and wonder what's like, wow, this this could be turned into something great where we can take some of this vintage clothes and actually do good with it?
SPEAKER_00:I think that it it isn't the the better way to answer that is that we have a we have a team of people that have loved the so Beyond Retro, which is our retail arm, is it's an accumulation of amazing people that are in love with that with authenticity. And it isn't necessarily that we're that we set out to go, oh, there's a trend, let's chase that vintage trend. We were just standing in the way when you know the rest of the there was a a greater acceptance of what we were doing made had authenti authenticity that spoke to a bigger audience, right? And so rather than us saying that that we were chasing a trend, I think the trend came to our door, you know. So in Beyond Retro, our first shop was in East London in Shoreditch in a at in an old dairy barn in East London. And you know, 20 years ago when we opened our first store, it would have been really hard for us to get a high like a main footfall location, just the landlords themselves wouldn't have said yes. But Beyond Retro now has a shop, for example, on the Queen's Road in Stockholm, uh Drotting. We have a shop on Argyle Street, which is right off Oxford in the UK. We have a shop in the this development called the Cold Drops in in King's Cross in London. And one of the best pieces of real estate in Europe. Google just opened its European headquarters there. Samsung is above us, like it's a really amazing space. But the reality is with that space, is that 20 years ago those landlords wouldn't have taken us on. So it's the interesting thing is we were we had built a business because we loved what we were doing. But all of a sudden, the landlords and the and all of the people that need to let you into that world said, hey, you know, why don't you put a shop? And and our location on on Argyll Street is owned by the Crown. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, and and what's really amazing about that is that the Crown specifically sought us out and said, Hey, what if the landscape of the offering that we have in our area includes secondhand? To go to your question, a little bit of a meandering answer is the irony is that it's not just about the trend coming to our door, but it's also about a community of people that get that secondhand has a legitimate place in the landscape of fashion.
SPEAKER_02:So how does that, you know, how does that make you feel just looking back, starting this up in 1992 and see and seeing where it is now? How does that kind of make you feel when you sit back and look look at it?
SPEAKER_00:I like the line from The Sopranos, which is the lowest form of conversation starts with remember when. I think I think what I'm more excited, the conversations that really excite me is to think about the where we're going with this. So Bank and Vogue is a company that re-homes and finds innovative and relevant solutions to the amount of apparel that the thrift operators don't. Beyond Retro was set up as this idea that we could own a piece of the landscape of fashion going forward through used, part of the landscape of retail going forward. But what we've also proven in the last few years is what if used could be an input to new manufacturing? What if when you make a Chuck Taylor shoe, instead of using new material, what if we could make a pair of chucks using an existing material? So our collab over the last four years with five years with Converse, making the renew chuck is a testament to the fact that we can change the way in which and we've and since then we've now pushed that boundary and we've had a we have an ongoing collaboration with Coach. So with Coach, we have made the components for the Soho bag from denim. So going back to the 450 million pairs of genes that Americans buy every year, if the gene isn't relevant to be reused, can we use elements of that gene to make components for a luxury handbag? And so our collab with Coach, and if you Google Soho, J Lo Denim bag, you'll see J Lo holding up that Soho bag that which was our collab with them. The high five moment there that is really exciting is that in I'm gonna be a little geeky here, so brace yourself. In the fashion world, they do this thing called a life cycle assessment, and and it's referred to as an LCA. And an LCA is a measure, a really scientific measure of how much carbon did it take to make something, how much water did it take, how much electricity did it take. And when you do those measurements, you can compare it to first life cycle material. And what's amazing is that Tapestry, the parent company of Coach, did an LCA on the components that we supplied for that coach handbag. And so this coach handbag made from denim from Bank and Vogue, it scored that it was an up to an 80% savings in carbon. Wow, it was up to a 98% savings in water. And I think, you know, in terms of like what gets us excited is can we change the narrative about how things are made? Can we make stuff from things that we already have? And can we do that at a scaled way? And what's exciting for us is that to do a to do the work with coach, it's can you do it in the luxury space? Right. Because the standard in which they operate is like shut the front door. And I feel like like you're not gonna show up in your flip-flops and your cutoff shorts to Wimbledon.
SPEAKER_02:I sure hope not.
SPEAKER_00:You've gotta you've gotta show up to a standard, and I think what's really exciting about this space is that there is the opportunity, and and if you think about it, we uh we as a society need to figure out how to use the existing resources we have because you can only dig so many holes in the ground, you're gonna run out of fields to grow food to feed us all if we're growing cotton. And you think about even that in of itself, you know, who's the third or fourth largest grower of cotton in the world? You caught me on this one. It's the US. Well, naturally, okay. And you think if we can use existing materials and swap out those cotton fields for fields to so that we can have food, you think ultimately as the societies grow and we have more and we have more need for more food, you know, there will be an there will be a need to be able to balance, it's not a hundred percent of one thing, it's not going to replace everything, but could it be a supplement to how things are made? So for us, and that's the third pillar of our business. So we have our wholesale business, we have our retail business, we have our remanufacturing business. And I'm giddy about the collabs that we are doing with Coach, with Converse, with Wrangler. So under the renew, sorry, the reware collection with Wrangler, that's a whole collection of denim jackets and pants, shirt, all made from existing material. And so those collabs with Wrangler, with Coach, with Converse are just a testament to that we can redefine the way things are made. And it and what's even better is that the product that we're making it from, going back to the boxes at auction houses, it has authenticity. And that's something that you can't fake authenticity. No, you can't. You know, it's like, you know, no matter what, you you know, you go into that, you know, you go into that high street store and they've tried to fake wear on a pair of jeans, you're like, really?
SPEAKER_02:How do you uh how do you expand these partnerships? You talked a little bit about Wrangler. I'm glad you mentioned Converse and Coach. How do you expand these collaborations in these partnerships, but while still staying true in in and staying authentic and staying true to your your vision and hand clothing?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's I think like certainly when you're when you're making material and products from onesies and to do it at scale, absolutely can be challenging and frustrating. And you're like, man, if I only had a hundred yards of the same color and in a roll. And yeah, I don't know. I I feel like the answer, the question that you've asked is exactly what the Greeks act asked of us, to thy own self be true, you know? Yeah, I'm like, I don't have any tattoos, but if I should get one, it'll be that'll feel like it'll be to thy own self be true. It's like I can't, you know, it just isn't in me to to switch gears.
SPEAKER_02:And so we and and certainly there's certainly a temptation to change that, but so what kind of what kind of you know innovative uh approaches are are you taking to kind of keeping this thing going and making sure that secondhand clothing. Talk to me a little bit about your scaling process and and and what you're doing to kind of challenge conventional supply chains.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I you know, I think I should go to the the next pillar of our business, which is okay, we want to resell a product, we want to put it in appropriate places, we want it to own a piece of the landscape fashion, but we also and then we and the remanufacturing and the element of it. The last piece is if we can't resell something, we can't repair it, we can't remanufacture it, what do we do with it? And so this year alone, we have supplied to uh mechanical recyclers. So these are guys that use machines to pull garments apart, and this year alone, we've supplied 26 million pounds of uh material for recycling that has been turned back into new fiber. And you think about 26 million pounds, that's a lot of weight, you know. A lot of weight. I love I love one of my one of one of my one of the one of the Beyond Retro guys put up a post once and said, if you took all the clothes and put them in a big pile, well, we'd be really mad because it'd be a big mess. I was like, you know, forget about how many swimming pools that is or how many elephants that is. It's like at the end of the day, it's I really like this symbol. You know, you ever see you ever see the ever see the fact that a little child before they can speak will be able to sign? Exactly and then and they can do this. It's like my favorite thing in the world. It's more. How do we how do we do more? And it's like this more element is like, yeah, this is part of my DNA, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that kind of leads to my next question. You kind of answered it there, just some of the attacking the infrastructure investments that could kind of help move more textile waste up the quote evolutionary ladder from you know anything from downcycling to recycling and even upcycling.
SPEAKER_00:No, I I take offense to the word waste. Like I think that in a in the natural environment, there is no such thing as waste. Sure. Right? Like leaves in Canada right now, we're headed into the season where leaves are beginning to fall off the trees, and they're gonna go to the ground and they're gonna feed the worms, they're gonna fill the microbes. The microbes are gonna migrate soil, they're gonna feed the trees again. You know, we need to reframe and reset our view of things in front of us. And honestly, it's like that's that's a a really exciting moment for me is if we can if we can go into the matrix. Imagine we go into the matrix together and we stop looking at the things on your desk or the microphone in front of you or the ear earbuds on your your head, and we can start looking at things as inputs to other things. If we can reframe this whole our view on the world, and you know, some people, some really smart people have said, why don't we get away from this thing called the linear economy? Why don't we get away from this concept of a linear economy and why don't we start gener looking at the world through a circular economy? And really that, like in layman terms, that conversation is is really how do we reframe and take the W word out of our language? We don't, you know, if we can if we can remove the W word, that word is the definition of failure in my mind.
SPEAKER_02:So are you your biggest advice maybe is just trying to find a purpose for everything instead of saying the W or waste?
SPEAKER_00:You know, I'm a Canadian, so I'm not gonna give you guys any advice, first of all. I'm not giving anybody any advice, but I but I'm just saying from my own perspective, what I'm really excited about is is seeing value where everybody doesn't. Sure. And and taking joy in in the patina that things have, the life that they've lived. And and you think about it, even some of the the craziest things, right? Like, how many times have you heard about the first Super Mario game that was ever invented and it's still in its original plastic cellophane wrap, and somebody wants to pay$200,000 for it. You know, it's like when that when all those Super Mario games came out, everyone's like, this is a Super Mario, it's worth it's worth I don't know,$49.99, whatever everybody paid for it. But now, because it was original in the box condition, in mint condition, you got somebody at the pawn shop in Vegas, and we're all watching TV going, this thing has value now. Yeah, and everybody asks Rick, and people hold their breath, and they go the expert comes in with his funny hat and says, Oh my god, this is worth this much. But it's a reality, crazy. And that moment is it was quite amazing to me.
SPEAKER_02:So taking to that point and kind of shifting towards the production side of things, you know, in your biggest remanufacturing facilities, how do you ensure consistent quality when you're processing this vast amount of vast volumes of just very textiles?
SPEAKER_00:Or what if it's consistently inconsistent? There you go. So there is there certainly is an art, right? One thing that has to happen is volume. So in the first shoe we did with Converse, we came up with a color palette that denim could be made out of. So denim comes in a myriad of ranges from dark to light, and then we started triaging them and creating our own. Did you know the uh the panton color scheme? Yeah, of course. So if everybody says, oh, panton yellow 104, you know exactly what yellow there is. So one of one of the things that we've done at Bank of Oak is we've created our own color scheme based on how we can sort and what we get. So it's part of what comes out. And so if if you look at that coach handbag with JLo, you'll see that there are three color tones in that bag. So we can make things in a bucket of ranges, and it won't be exactly the color, but there'll be a range that'll be a light, medium, and dark, let's say.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So the one path we can do is we can go on a path where we can make buckets of things that are pretty close. But then there's another path where we made a a shoe with Converse, which was a Hawaiian print shoe, but every shoe was different. That's part of what's really broken right now about moderity, is that we call it the McDonald's French fry problem. Like if you're in, if you go to Paris and order French fries, or you go to Pittsburgh and order french fries, you're gonna get the same French fry from McDonald's. Right there's an expectation when you walk in, you know what that fry is. But that's that's also that level set that that consumer, but if you can change the consumer's mindset that actually difference is really good, then maybe there's something there. But it is it is one of the challenges of the industrial revolution is that we expect every big lighter to look exactly the same because you know what a big lighter is, right? Or you know exactly what your McDonald's French prize will look like.
SPEAKER_02:It kind of all circles back to your point about being authentic and keeping that authenticity, being consistently inconsistent. I feel like that is one of these ways from the outside looking in to beyond retro to bank and vogue, just kind of a way that that keeps you authentic is being consistently inconsistent.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like uh, and that celebration of that. The thing I really love about people is they're all different. And somehow we need to recenter our north star. That the joy of difference is beautiful. We seem to be unfortunately headed to a world where the celebration of difference isn't celebrated, which is kind of sad.
SPEAKER_02:So moving forward, look, five years down the line, where does where do you see that north star for you and your company and your team moving towards and shifting to?
SPEAKER_00:I think the north star is still the North Star, is that we celebrate authenticity, we celebrate innovative uses for the things that we have, because we have a lot of things. And and we celebrate that that that it's not the only answer. Like there are new things, and there should be new things, you know, like it just it is what it is, right? You know, I'm you know, I'm amazed at some of the the new things that are out there and the new creations. Those those need to come. We need to keep creating a space for things that are already existing and preserving them.
SPEAKER_02:Right now, for anybody listening, how how can they stay connected with you and and learn more about the bank and vogue journey, the more about the beyond retro journey, your stores, the projects, all of the above. How can people learn and listen from you guys?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and also I think the other thing is how do I actually learn and listen? Yeah. And so it's not, yeah, it's not um, I think that so look, you know, I'm a I'm a big LinkedIn fan. There's a new thing that's pretty cool. You can follow us on Beyond Retro on Instagram, which is Beyond Retro on Instagram. And you know, one of the amazing tools that could be both good and bad is finding communities that you associate with. And I feel like those platforms are a great display of our passions and our teams and the work that we're sort of celebrating. And also, I feel as if we are trying, our job is actually to find in everywhere members of our tribe. You know, there was somebody really courageous at Converse who said, Hey, what these guys are doing, we understand authenticity. Stuart Babers is the creative director at coach. And I remember meeting him for the first time, and I said, you know, I'm from Beyond Retro, and we've a student, and he's like, I know who you are, shop at your store all the time. It's like being part of the tribe that understands and loves and respects our authenticity and our past and our the materials that are around us, I think is like, you know, it's it because it because it isn't a one-way journey. We're not just saying, hey, here's what we're doing. We are Hobbes Leviathan. We're we're part of a community of people that make up our thing.
SPEAKER_02:And again, to to that point, as we wrap things up, where where are you getting the the a majority of your secondhand closings? Is there a way for people to make direct donations, or is that something that you you don't do?
SPEAKER_00:No, not at all. And I encourage the thing that's amazing across Canada and the United States is there are amazing charities, there are amazing private collectors that are collecting clothes, and we buy from them. So, you know, whether it be your Salvation Army or your Goodwill or you know, whatever your local charity is or your private collector that's collecting the clothes, and we work with those because at the end of the day, you know, uh tonight it's Friday, and at three o'clock in the morning, somebody's gonna be handing out sandwiches and coffee to the homeless people. You know, somebody is gonna on Monday morning, somebody's gonna open up a job training center at a goodwill. You know, on Tuesday in Colorado, somebody's gonna have a thrift store that helps and employs children who have Down syndrome. There is so much good in so many communities across the US that is being done from used clothes. And and I I wouldn't want to intersect or get in the middle of that. I think that what you want to do is, and and a lot of it is even community level, you know, whether it be a homeless shelter or whether it be a you know a woman's shelter, is that used clothes can be a force for good. And we're after that stage, after they've done, they've extracted the good from it. And I I'm personally humbled by people who live that mission. I would I'm never giving advice, I would encourage anybody to to you know to find those people in your community and celebrate them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoyed hearing about your journey. I look forward to to following this journey and and appreciate everything that you have has have have said because you know it's it's if what if you take one thing out of this interview, it's definitely that you're passionate about what you do, and it kind of no pun intended, goes beyond you know second secondhand clothing. So I do appreciate your time, Stephen. Appreciate the time. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you all for listening. That's all the time we have. We will see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Four Worlds Podcast. Until next time, you can catch up on the latest innovations shaping our world at tomorrow'sworldtoday.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
