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- bts: nancy rhodes
good mornin' merry makers 🧵✂️👗🔄♻️💸
in honor of earth week, today's behind the stores interview explores the often-overlooked but critical post-purchase phase of retail:
the world of alterations, repairs, & garment care.
aka what keeps our clothes in circulation longer & looking better.
meet nancy rhodes, founder of alternew, a company building the infrastructure to bring tailoring back into the modern retail experience.
with a background spanning luxury retail floors, shoe design, & even qvc presenting, nancy brings a unique perspective to the intersection of sustainability and profitability.
what fascinates me most about alternew's approach is how they're transforming something traditionally seen as a cost center (alterations * repairs) into a strategic advantage for brands.
all while keeping perfectly good clothing out of landfills.
here’s what we’re stitching into today’s newsie:
→ why returns & fit issues are costing fashion brands billions (& flooding landfills)
→ how post-purchase data reveals more valuable insights than pre-purchase behavior
→ why neiman marcus customers who use alterations are 73% more likely to return within a year
→ how brands can navigate rising costs by helping customers extend product life
→ why tailoring might be retail's most underleveraged loyalty strategy
today’s merry makery issue is brought to you by alternew,
who kept this issue sew very free for all readers 🧵💚
bts q&a: nancy rhodes
I’m Nancy Rhodes, founder of Alternew. We’re building the tech that brings tailoring and repairs back into the brand experience - modern, scalable, and built for today’s retail.
For brands with in-house services, we unlock profitability through data that drives personalization and predictive insights. For those without, we offer access to vetted local tailors, creating the outsourced infrastructure needed to deliver after-sales care.
Our goal is to build a circular solution that drives both profit and opportunity — not just one that looks good in a report. By bridging established craftsmanship with modern retail experiences, we help products live longer and keep customers coming back.
Think of us as the OpenTable for fashion care.
Brands retain customers, customers get a perfect fit, and tailors get access to new business with operational efficiencies.
Q2: your experience spans high-end retail, shoe design, and even qvc presenting. how have these diverse roles shaped your approach to building alternew?
I’ve seen the fashion industry from every angle — from luxury fitting rooms to Costco shelves. Working in both design and retail showed me how much brands leave on the table after the sale: lost loyalty, unnecessary returns, and missed chances to build real relationships.
Whether designing shoes for Beyoncé or managing sales at Neiman Marcus, I saw how disconnected the customer experience became post-purchase. That gap is what inspired Alternew; a way to turn circularity into ROI by connecting brands, customers, and craftsmanship.
After years contributing to the waste of mass production, I’m focused on proving that circularity can drive profit and deepen customer relationships — no tradeoffs required.
Q3: you describe alternew as "fashion's operating system for circular consumer services." what sparked this vision, and why start with alterations and repairs specifically?
The idea was long and winding - the first spark came during my master’s in sustainability, where I kept being told to build a “sustainable footwear brand,” but I’d push back: there’s no such thing without the infrastructure (and that puzzle still isn’t solved).
A fateful conversation with a classmate-turned-advisor about her side hustle as a college tailor inspired my thesis on democratizing care and repair. I launched my first business in the space, a mobile tailoring service, in March 2020, then pivoted during the pandemic to co-lead a NYC mask initiative, producing 40,000 for frontline workers in just three months.
Returning to the business, I realized mobile tailoring was a feature, not a scalable model, and teamed up with my cofounder to build a marketplace, which led us to tech for tailors and the platform we have today.
Each iteration, challenge, and failure helped shape the system we’re building today.
Q4: as we're chatting during earth week, i'm curious - what's one sustainability stat about the fashion industry that still shocks you?
It’s not just the stats that shock me, but the context behind them.
The real problem is that brands are spending billions just to get a customer to the register, up to $129 per person (Shopify, 2023), only to lose them after the sale. This is fueling a $200 billion spend on returns and churn (Forbes, 2024), which isn’t solving the problem, just treating the symptoms.
The reality is 70% of apparel returns are due to fit issues (McKinsey), so it’s no surprise fashion has one of the lowest retention rates of any sector — just 54% (Emarsys).
Returns and churn are killing margins and flooding landfills. It’s not just a logistics issue. It’s a financial and environmental crisis.
And at the end of the line, less than 1% of clothing is recycled into new garments, while over 73% ends up in landfills or incinerators (Ellen MacArthur Foundation).
Ugh.
Q5: many brands claim to be sustainable, but few tackle the post-purchase experience. why do you think the care and repair phase has been historically overlooked?
Care and repair often fall through the cracks because they don’t sit neatly within one department — they touch operations, customer experience, supply chain, and beyond.
For brands that have tried to manage it internally, it’s expensive, resource-heavy, and hard to scale. And even when these services do exist, they’re rarely supported by the data needed to drive real business value.
Tailoring is often viewed as too fragmented and unpredictable to fit into modern retail systems — but that’s exactly what makes it such a powerful unlock when done right.
Q6: alternew creates a data layer between tailors, brands, and consumers. what unexpected insights have brands discovered through this post-purchase data?
What happens after the sale can tell you more than what happens before it. Tailoring and repairs reveal patterns that help brands optimize fit, forecast inventory, and reduce churn.
For example, if a certain pant style is consistently shortened by multiple customers, that’s not just a fit issue — it’s a signal to reallocate inventory or revisit sizing strategy. Or being able to trace repeated zipper failures back to a single product run and share that directly with a manufacturer — allowing brands to act before it becomes a reputation risk.
As we gather more of this data, we’re helping brands move from anecdotal fit complaints to actionable product and supply chain decisions.
Tailoring is becoming more than a service.
It’s a source of truth.
We don’t see it as a tension. We see it as a timely shift. With tariffs disrupting the industry and supply chain uncertainty, longevity isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s becoming a strategic advantage.
Offering care and repair isn’t about telling customers to buy less; it’s about helping them get more value out of what they’ve already bought, especially as prices rise.
Imagine how powerful it is if a brand says: “We know times are tough and costs are going up. Here’s how we can help you care for what we’ve already sold you.” That kind of message builds trust, loyalty, and long-term profit without relying solely on new production.
Q8: having worked the floor at both neiman marcus and nordstrom, how do you see alternew transforming the in-store experience for associates and customers?
Neiman Marcus found that customers who use care and repair services are 73% more likely to return within the year, a stat that speaks for itself.
Nordstrom, the largest employer of tailors in the U.S., has long understood that tailoring isn’t just a service - it’s a strategy.
Alternew brings that same level of experience to brands with or without in-house tailoring by making it scalable, tech-enabled, and data-powered. With over 75,000 premium and luxury brands in the U.S., the opportunity to create a modernized, high-touch experience is massive.
Associates are no longer stuck saying, “Sorry, we don’t offer that.”
Instead, they can say, “We’ve got you.”
That changes the entire dynamic on the floor, from a lost sale to lasting relationship.
Q9: what upcoming feature or partnership are you most excited about that you can share with us?
We’re building a dashboard that gives brands access to real-time insights from tailoring and repair activity — think fit trends by SKU, repair frequency by product type, and service demand by region. It’s a tool designed to connect the dots between product performance, customer experience, and operational efficiency.
We’re also deepening our partnerships in resale and reverse logistics to create a seamless path from purchase to repair to resale.
We’re not replacing what already exists — we’re the missing layer that makes every circular strategy work smarter, last longer, and perform more profitably.
Q10: what’s one thing you wish more brands understood about tailoring & alterations?
Tailoring isn’t just for fixing problems, it’s for unlocking potential.
Customers who invest in fit are telling you they care enough to keep the product and that’s gold. With the right tools, tailoring becomes a revenue driver, a retention tool, and a brand loyalty builder. But it has to be easy, accessible, and built into the experience.
When brands get that right, everything changes.
retail rapid-fire round
fave retail store of all time?
Nordstrom - First job. Learned customer service > everything else. And the tire story (IYKYK).
retail center that gets it right?
Santa Monica Place. Food court with ocean views. Nailed it.
can’t live without retail tool?
A tailor 😂
retail metric you obsess over?
Care and repair metrics: post-purchase lever the smart few are pulling. It’s working.
your signature style of merrymaking?
If you build it (and send a Luma invite) they will come.
best retail advice you've ever received?
Know your product. But know your customer better.
what do you love about working in retail?
Every purchase tells a story. Retail brings it to life.
connect with nancy & alternew
nancy is the real deal, y'all.
she was recently named one of just three us finalists and grant recipients in the prestigious eBay x Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Circular Fashion Fund. that recognition puts alternew in elite company as one of the most promising circular fashion innovations in america.
hearing how nancy went from designing footwear for beyoncé to spearheading fashion's circular tech revolution makes me incredibly excited for what's next. if alternew's trajectory is any indication, the future of sustainable fashion is as much about smart data as it is about stitches.
🔗 link up with nancy & alternew here:
specifically, resale is rising, “second” is becoming first, & brands are finally getting smarter about waste.
nancy & alternew aren’t just following the trend, they’re tailoring it 😉
by bringing data & scale to the post-purchase phase, they’re proving that sustainability isn’t just stylish. it’s smart business.
i’m so here for this future with less landfills, more longevity, & better fits.
p.s. got an immediate (or future) tailoring need?
fill out this quick form for a chance at 20% off your next alteration — or just to support the future of fashion care. either way, nancy & team would love to hear from you🧵💚