An Email That Knows It Is 97 Degrees in Atlanta with Aman Advani of Ministry of Supply

Recorded live at eTail Boston, August 10 through 12, 2026.

Aman Advani is the co-founder and CEO of Ministry of Supply, which he describes in one line. Take Lululemon or Nike technology and put it into Brooks Brothers or J. Crew silhouettes. The jacket he wore to the interview is a merino blend, stretchy, machine washable, and the only one he brought on the trip.

He started the company with two engineers he met in school. Fourteen years later, as he puts it, they are still ripping it.

It Starts With a Problem Statement

Every product at Ministry of Supply begins the same way, and the first one began with Advani’s own job.

“As a travelling consultant for years, sweat stains, stiff fabrics,” he says. You washed something and it came out unusable, or you dry cleaned it, “which was awful for the environment and for your wallet and time.”

The brief he set was about Monday morning rather than about fabric. “How can we make stuff that you genuinely on Monday morning look forward to being like, I can’t wait to wear that.” The method was to take the feel of a T-shirt and gym shorts and put it into real clothes.

The company is direct to consumer now. It went deep into retail first and shut all ten stores during COVID. Advani has not written that off. “We still love retail and we’ll be back one day.”

Three Tools in the Hub, Everything Else a Spoke

Advani describes the stack in a shape rather than a list.

The backbone on the sell side is Shopify and Klaviyo. On the supply side the company built its own tool, the Ministry Production System, which handles forecasting and PO placement. “The three of those talk really well together.”

Those three are the hub. One homemade, two bought. “Everything else we think of is a bit of a spoke coming off of that.”

The Email That Knew It Was 97 Degrees in Atlanta

Ministry of Supply recently added a tool called Ripple that sits on top of Klaviyo, and Advani says it changed how he thinks about email.

The shift is away from one-to-many. He is candid that email is personal for him. “I talk to five customers a day directly through my own inbox and I enjoy it. I would never trade it for anything.”

Then he describes the email that made the case, one he received himself. It told him it was 97 degrees in Atlanta, that he had left an Apollo polo in his cart, that the polo is thermoregulatory, and that it would arrive Tuesday, alongside his seven-day forecast showing it was about to get hotter.

“It was such a beautiful example of what email is meant to be,” he says. The question he takes from it is how email becomes conversational and tailored “instead of just like here’s our push message.”

Amplify the Message, Do Not Manipulate It

Asked whether companies belong in AI-assisted content creation, Advani reaches for a test rather than a yes or no.

“How can AI amplify your message, not manipulate it?” he says. “I think that’s a really fine line to dance.”

Ripple is the worked example. It generates no assets. The creative work came from his creative director and co-founder, and the tool has no control over it. “How do you put guardrails around protecting the secret sauce?”

What the AI is allowed to do is the part that makes the message land for one person instead of everyone. “The idea that I can send you an email with your seven day forecast in your city is absolutely AI powered, but wonderful. And wouldn’t you rather be getting your own seven day forecast instead of mine?”

First in Class, Then Best in Class

Underneath the guardrail is a split Advani uses to decide where automation goes.

Ministry of Supply makes good product and tells good stories, and that work can be supported and amplified by AI without being replaced by it. That is first in class, and it is the secret sauce.

Everything else is where the company wants to be best in class rather than first. “Let’s put as much AI in there as we can.”

The distinction is useful because it turns an argument about whether to use AI into a question about which half of the business you are pointing it at.

What Is Next Is Bags

After fourteen years of suits, pants and shirts, Ministry of Supply is moving into carry.

Advani seems to enjoy where that lands him. “The farthest thing from AI is how do you make incredibly durable bags.”

Watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen on the Talk Commerce podcast.

To learn more about our at-event interviews, go to talk-commerce.com/events.