Not checking the Gustin community as much

Not sure if this was mentioned above, but the Gustin guys would probably rather have the busy traffic on their site. BUT, the bright side for them is that there are not people bitching and complaining on their forum all day about their sizing problems. There is the old saying though, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer...

Bottom line, a forum like this one is more organized, meaningful, and diverse than what they have over there. True that we are not here to bash Gustin, we're just here to branch out and talk about different topics and brands in addition to them.

I don't think Gustin is losing sales because of the migration. Most buyers probably never frequent the forum anyway. Their Instagram likes are stable, and that's a decent barometer of interest.

There's still a lot of bitching in there, just different people doing it, and it happens at a slower rate since there's less traffic. I don't think it's having any real impact to the business, since they still seem to be backing every offering. I like talking here because the stuff they're offering doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it's good to see how it stacks up against other offerings in the same price arena, but we have to respect their wishes and not talk other brands in their forum. They're offering stuff in a different style niche than Taylor Stitch and Flint and Tinder, for example, so I never really saw those discussions as a threat. Lawless really struck a nerve, though -- whether it was lack of restraint on the part of community members, or something deeper, I don't know if anyone is terribly worried. 

What has happened is they've spawned a whole new community that really didn't seem to exist (at least I never found one that operated in the same denim strata prior to the Gustin community page) where a bunch of people who care a little too much about denim and a little too little about fashion can discuss modern workwear. So thanks to Winterland for the initiative, and sorry if it wasn't Winterland who actually built this. Hopefully the Gustin design crew sees fit to visit us and see what we're interested in from time to time, as I think we all identified pretty strongly with at least some of what Gustin is doing. I know I'm never going to look at a pair of Levi's the same way again after the different things they've brought to us as customers.