The Glossy Podcast

Womenswear brand Knix has already gone through the painful transition to DTC that other clothing companies are being forced into during the pandemic. "I feel for those brands," Knix CEO Joanna Griffiths said on the Glossy Podcast. "But I also know that it's possible." Griffiths founded the company in 2013 to make and market leakproof underwear. At the time, the business model was entirely about wholesale. "I did trunk shows at every Equinox location in the United States, I think," Griffiths said. But in the 2016, she decided to pull out of more than 700 retail locations across North America and shift to direct-to-consumer, out of a concern for size inclusivity. "A lot of the traditional retailers wouldn’t carry our size assortment," Griffiths has previously told Glossy. On the podcast, she described it as a "really scary decision" to "basically cut our revenue in more than half and start over," she said. That decision is panning out. This past May, sales were up 135% year-over-year, in part thanks to Knix's c

Protests continue around the country and world three weeks after George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. This new instance of police violence caught on video has boosted public support for Black Lives Matter while driving policy changes from governments, police departments and companies. Toms is used to building strategies around public good. "We're incredibly proud to have inspired many, many companies to be purpose-driven," Amy Smith, the company's chief giving officer, said on the Glossy Podcast. The original, core initiative behind the company -- to donate a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair purchased -- isn't exactly adjacent to the public challenges facing America today. But the shoe company is among dozens of beauty and fashion brands that have donated to Black Lives Matter, and it plans on contributing another $100,000 in the next three months. Beyond that, Toms is looking at its own practices. "We're taking the time now to do a full assessment of what our busine

Fashion designer Anna Sui thinks the industry is overdue for a reckoning, in terms of diversity. "This is the moment for black designers and companies to step up. The curtains are open. Go for it," Sui said on the Glossy Podcast. Though not equivalent to the black experience, Sui's childhood was filled with dreams to become a designer despite not seeing anyone who looked like her at the forefront of the biggest labels, she said. "I came from the suburbs of Detroit. At the time when I started designing, there really weren't other Chinese designers." Now Sui's main collection is sold in 50 Anna Sui boutiques across eight countries and over 300 retailers globally. "In China, I'm more known for my lipstick and my perfume than I am for my fashion," Sui said, noting the contrast to the U.S. market. And in the states, she said, a fashion shakeup is looming. "We've drifted into this minimal look before -- this almost uniform look. Business usually gets bad during that period. Then, all of a sudden, something more emb

In a three-week period shortly after the pandemic outbreak, Richer Poorer sold three times as many sweatpants than in all of 2019. That was a small part of an overall trend for the basics clothing brand: The first five months of 2020 have greatly boosted online sales, transforming it into an e-commerce business first and foremost. "We essentially had to kind of rebuild and restructure our team overnight to now go, 'OK, we're a DTC brand,'" the company's CEO Iva Pawling said on the Glossy Podcast. Richer Poorer had already been planning to gradually shift to a focus on e-commerce over wholesale. The plan was to grow direct sales to 40% of revenue in 2020 and reach parity next year on the way to a primarily DTC model. Now, Pawling estimates e-commerce is set to make up roughly 75% of the company's bottom line this year. Pawling said that a pivot in branding, already underway before the pandemic struck, has helped the company pitch its products as right for the moment. "We very much had rebranded under this beli

Brideside co-founder and CEO Nicole Staple predicts there will be a wedding boom as the threat of coronavirus subsides. "We are seeing pretty overwhelming data that suggests women are postponing -- not canceling -- weddings," Staple said on the Glossy Podcast. But she isn't sitting back and waiting for the upswing. Launched in 2012, the company went from selling bridesmaid dresses exclusively to offering wedding dresses, as well, both via e-commerce and showrooms -- that is, until the pandemic hit. Now it's working to bring the physical shopping experience online. "We decided on a Thursday to shut down our showrooms that weekend, and by Tuesday, we had a fully launched virtual appointment platform," Staple said. Brideside has done about 1,000 virtual appointments in a six-week period, according to Staple. She also talked about the need in the market for inclusive sizing, the outsized importance of Instagram and the fact that there may be more "groomzillas" than "bridezillas."

Designer Alejandra Alonso Rojas is taking these uncommon times as permission to question the industry she operates in. “I think I’m going to come out of this as a rebel, because I’ve been really analyzing the business and what I want to do, and there are so many things I want to change in order to survive this and to make the business profitable,” Alonso Rojas said on the Glossy Podcast. The usual fashion industry calendar is one of them. “The calendar makes no sense at all," she said. "The new generations don’t shop six months before they can wear something. And the fact that, by the time you want to wear it, it's already 70-80% off — the impact on the brand was terrible.” Alonso Rojas is currently looking to her own items from seasons past -- via her first “archive sale” -- in order to boost sales for the luxury label. The profits are going toward supporting the company’s staff, and to paying rent for the company's combined office, studio and showroom space in Soho. “We had the inventory, and I think it was

Jens Grede's denim-first fashion line, Frame, was growing fast until the pandemic hit. The company has 10 stores and had planned to double that number in 2020. Instead, the company is looking to 2021. "I'm still very confident about our store strategy right now," Grede said on the Glossy Podcast. Whenever doors do open again, Grede said they'll have a lower customer capacity, masks for visitors and employees, and an emphasis on keeping things clean. "Safety for our employees and our customers is and has to be everyone's top priority right now. Long term? We don't know anything about the long term," Grede said. Still, he has faith in the brick-and-mortar model, even as Frame's e-commerce sales are up "close to 300%" over the last few months, thanks in part to a 25% off sale. "It's really replaced [the sales of] all of our physical stores, and a little bit more than that." Making up for the revenue from wholesale is a bridge too far, however. And if Grede could go back in time in anticipation of the pandemic, h

Sweatpants are a best-seller for Mack Weldon in normal times. But unsurprisingly, they're especially popular now, as many Americans have seen their commute to the office replaced by yet another day of getting comfortable at home. "A lot of people are wearing sweatpants, that's for sure," Brian Berger, Mack Weldon CEO and founder, said on the Glossy Podcast. The activewear brand's focus on e-commerce has also well-positioned it to weather the pandemic. The brand has only one brick-and-mortar store, at Hudson Yards, and no significant partnerships with department stores. Berger talked about leveraging e-commerce, establishing redundancy in supply lines and being the "cheerleader-in-chief" to his staff.

Fashion designer Nicole Miller knows her brand is best known for its dresses, and she sees the pandemic as one more reason to diversify her product line. "[We're] trying to become more of a lifestyle brand, giving our customer a broader range of things to choose from," Miller said on the Glossy Podcast. "I'm not just there for your party dress." Miller talked about how direct-to-consumer isn't a silver bullet for challenged businesses, how she doesn't think there will be any fashion shows in September ("or it'll all be online") and how she learned to put more of herself into the brand's social media presence.

For apparel sales, under the pandemic, different items are suffering different fates. Swimwear sales are at a halt, while lingerie and sleepwear are doing much better. Morgan Lane knows this first-hand, specializing in all three of these categories. "Fall orders, for the most part, were being received in February. And for stores that are getting their budgets canceled, because they can't be selling right now, the first thing they're going to cancel is fall. They know it's not in production yet," founder Morgan Curtis said on the Glossy Podcast. "There's going to be a big gap between probably June and October, where there isn't that much newness, at least in the retail world -- from everyone." Curtis talked about which parts of her global supply chain have seen the most slowdown, how to promote products online without leaving home and what a difference it makes to have well-timed product placement in a "Trolls" music video.

If much of the retail industry is feeling squeezed by the coronavirus pandemic, outdoor apparel may be especially hard hit. "It's been kind of a mix," Jeff Johnson, co-founder of outerwear brand The Arrivals, said on the Glossy Podcast. "Sales, even traffic, has been lower." Johnson still manages to find positives. The company's main sales season runs from August to January or February -- this year, that was before the pandemic was declared. And while the average order value has gone down, he said, order numbers are up. In other words, within a smaller group of online visitors, more people are making actual purchases. "For the last two weeks, we've seen a 2x spike in conversion," Johnson said. He talked about how the company is crowd-sourcing the apparel design process, how it's changing its communications and why he's thankful that The Arrivals didn't end up opening a flagship store just before the pandemic.

For Rebecca Minkoff, the coronavirus pandemic is a chance for her namesake business to accelerate pre-existing plans. That starts with reexamining the brand's dependence on its own brick-and-mortar stores versus wholesale. "We always had a plan to have the ratios be more equal, and I think this has forced that to happen," Minkoff said on the Glossy Podcast. "I see a strong desire to return to physical retail when this is all over." The tighter focus also extends to the brand's social media strategy. The content that's been proven to work on shut-in customers, she said, usually features Minkoff herself. "I'm not trying to sound egotistical, but that's what drives the revenue and the clicks and the sales," she said. "So we're saying, 'Enough with any other type of franchise or content pillars; we are going to do what works and what gets the customer excited.'" Minkoff talked about how she's helping to focus attention on smaller, women-owned businesses, what she thinks of TikTok and why she had to take the podca

Ramy Brook Sharp opened a brand flagship store in Manhattan last fall, before the coronavirus pandemic shut down just about every brick-and-mortar store in New York City -- though since, the company's focus has changed to the company's e-commerce site, of course. Direct-to-consumer was a priority even before the crisis. "That's definitely going to be the future of the company," Brook Sharp said on the Glossy Podcast. "We were going in that direction to begin with, but I think with everything happening, you realize how important that is." Until then, the contemporary fashion company has had to furlough all 45 of its employees. "The hope is that everybody comes back," said Brook Sharp, adding that the company is continuing to cover affected employees' health insurance. "We're not allowed to ask anybody to work; we can't expect people to work," she said, but she's found that "a majority" of her team is working despite that, unpaid. "Most of the people want to see the company succeed and understand that this is a

For Charles Gorra, whose company Rebag has bought and sold luxury handbags since 2014, the competition isn't Hermès or Louis Vuitton. "We like to say we don't compete against this or that company, but we compete against idleness," Gorra said on the Glossy Podcast. His estimate is that nine out of 10 "luxury owners" have never sold those items and that most of his customers (on the selling end) are doing so for the first time. It helps that Rebag buys such pieces upfront, in its nine physical locations in Los Angeles, New York State and Miami. Thirty stores is the "medium-term goal" for the company, said Gorra. Handbag sales, however, are mostly done online, with only 20-30% sold in store. "We're still largely a digital company," Gorra said. Accordingly, Gorra thinks Instagram Checkout -- which is still in beta -- could be "game-changing" for e-commerce in general. And last year Rebag launched Clair, or Comprehensive Luxury Appraisal Index for Resale, a freely-available tool for appraising bags at a distance.

Jewelry company Gorjana is growing, self-funded and profitable, but its founders insist that it was a slow and tricky road. "No home runs here," Gorjana Reidel said on the Glossy Podcast. She and her husband, Jason Griffin Reidel, first sold their jewelry in small boutiques before partnering with Nordstrom in 2014. "We were kind of the pioneers of the category that you see so many people getting into now, of gold, delicate, layering jewelry," Griffin Reidel said. Early on, Nordstrom partnered with the brand, launching it in 25 stores at a time (the Reidels got to pick which ones), and Gorjana Jewelry is now available across the chain's approximately 120 outlets. But despite its success with Nordstrom, in recent years Gorjana has made the shift to selling direct-to-consumer via its own stores and e-commerce site. Three years ago, 90% of Gorjana’s sales were coming through wholesale channels and only 10% from DTC. Today, 80% of sales are direct-to-consumer. Gorjana has nearly 200 employees and, by the end of Ma

For our final episode of Glossy Trend Watch: Influencer Edition, senior technology reporter Katie Richards sits down with Danielle Bernstein of We Wore What. Danielle is a fashion blogger turned clothing designer, brand founder, author and entrepreneur. When she got started as an influencer, payment schemes were a bit arbitrary. "There weren't any set fees for posting on a blog, taking photos for a brand," Bernstein said. "We sort of went off of what modeling agencies traditionally did for models." Since those uncertain days, Bernstein has developed longer-term collaborations with brands and launched a workflow tool for influencers, and she has a book in the works. Glossy Trend Watch: Influencer Edition features interviews with some of the most prominent fashion influencers on how they’ve used their success and social media followings to launch major brands. Our guests -- including Julia Engel and Moti Ankari -- made the leap from interacting with existing brands online to creating some of their own.

Amanda Uprichard's namesake fashion company has quickly reshaped its supply line to work in a world living with the coronavirus. "Now, we make maybe 90% of our stuff here because of the virus," Uprichard said about her New York operation. Previously, half of the line's manufacturing was based in China. "Anyone that's in manufacturing, you're just affected by the supply chain," she added. "But I do believe China will be completely normal in another month." For Uprichard, making things out of New York was a return to the brand's beginnings. Everything was made out of New York City, "until about a year and a half ago, when we started switching to China because the resources are drying up here," she said. Uprichard talked about the importance of influencers, the reality TV show "The Bachelor" and walking away from Amazon (and, just maybe, going back to it).

Over the next few weeks, we’re bringing you bonus episodes of the Glossy Podcast. Glossy Trend Watch: Influencer Edition features interviews with some of the most prominent fashion influencers on how they’ve used their success and social media followings to launch major brands. Our guests made the leap from interacting with existing brands online to creating some of their own. For our second episode, Glossy senior technology reporter Katie Richards sits down with Moti Ankari, a menswear blogger who co-founded footwear brand Ankari Floruss with fellow blogger Marcel Floruss. "I was actually one of the first wave of male influencers," Ankari said. "Nine years ago, there were like five of us out there." Tellingly, the word "influencer" didn't exist to describe someone making a living off of their social media connections -- the word got its own entry on Dictionary.com in 2016. Ankari talks about learning the ins and outs of designing footwear and how to leverage his social following to drive sales.

Rent the Runway, but for jewelry. That was the animating idea behind Switch, the company that buys and rents out jewelry for $29 a month. "Ultimately, jewelry is a very different product from apparel, for rental," Kadisha Cohn said on the Glossy Podcast. "It's a perfect product for rental. You don't really feel like it's ever been worn before. We sanitize it, we polish it, we kind of bring that shine and make it feel like it's new -- and oftentimes, it is new," Kadisha Cohn said. Switch also authenticates the jewelry in its collection, which includes thousands of styles. ("We have Chanel, Hermès, Dior, real diamonds and gold," Kadisha Cohn said, also listing Sophie Ratner, Mateo and Do Not Disturb.) Some of Switch's items are one of a kind, and none are valued under $100. Their average value is about $700, which is basically the cost of being a Switch member for two years. "In two years, to have an endless rotation of jewelry instead of just purchasing one piece -- that, probably, after two years you'd be sic

Over the next few weeks, we’re bringing you bonus episodes of the Glossy Podcast. Glossy Trend Watch: Influencer Edition features interviews with some of the most prominent fashion influencers on how they’ve used their success and social media followings to launch major brands. Our guests made the leap from interacting with existing brands online to creating some of their own. For our first episode, Glossy senior technology reporter Katie Richards sits down with Julia Engel, who leveraged her fashion and lifestyle blog Gal Meets Glam to build the Gal Meets Glam Collection, a fashion brand focused on timeless, classic pieces including dresses, coats and sweaters. On the first episode of our limited series, Engel talks about transitioning from blogger to brand founder, learning the ins and outs of the apparel industry and finding the right wholesale partners.