When Ann Mashburn launched her namesake women’s brand in 2010, she had some concerns about the concept panning out. Mashburn’s first store, which she opened in Atlanta alongside her husband Sid Mashburn’s namesake men’s store, has now been in business for seven years, and the company has since launched e-commerce and opened three more retail stores. Mashburn joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how she made the leap from editor to brand owner, how she grew her team from the ground up and how she...
Mar 28, 2018•31 min
Under Nancy Green, Athleta has leaned into being a brand associated with both women’s empowerment and sustainability, by carving out a list of related core values and updating its branding around those. On Tuesday, the company announced it was officially a certified B Corp brand, a stamp of officiation for purpose-driven brands that follow environmentally and ethically conscious practices. Green joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about how Athleta differentiates itself within the broader Gap corp...
Mar 21, 2018•33 min
Since Milly launched in the early 2000s, the rules luxury brands are supposed to follow have changed. Now that department store traffic is falling and boutiques are struggling to master e-commerce at scale, luxury brands that could once rely on wholesale networks for growth now have to allocate time, money and resources to building up direct retail channels, both in brand stores and online. To recapture stalled growth, Milly has started direct-to-consumer operations and brought sales and marketi...
Mar 14, 2018•32 min
Deborah Lippmann's nail polish and treatment brand is credited for being the first luxury line to sell products like base and top coats, cuticle oils, hand creams and polish remover alongside colored polishes. Today, Lippmann sells her polishes and treatments at Sephora, department stores and select luxury salons, as well as her own salons in Arizona and California. She also works with designers like Jason Wu and celebrities like Lady Gaga in backstage primping sessions. Lippmann joined us to di...
Mar 07, 2018•32 min
When Stitch Fix CEO Katrina Lake took her company public in 2017, her pitch was a little bit rusty. Stitch Fix’s IPO, which valued it at nearly $2 billion, was the biggest exit for an e-commerce company last year. Now, the company has to prove it can continue to recruit new customers -- on top of the more than 2 million who use Stitch Fix already, according to its S-1 -- if it wants to keep growing. For the first few years of business, Stitch Fix did little paid marketing, relying on word of mou...
Feb 28, 2018•30 min
Finery co-founders Brooklyn Decker and Whitney Casey, in an attempt to create the ultimate virtual closet, confronted the issue that caused all the versions that came before them to fail: They removed as much manual work as they could. For inspiration, Decker and Casey looked to similar life-simplifying apps for other industries, like Mint for finances and TripIt for travel itineraries (rather than the idealistic “Clueless” closet other virtual companies have claimed to build). From there, they ...
Feb 21, 2018•26 min
There are only a few aspects of the runway show that Rebecca Taylor misses: the way the clothes move down the catwalk, the post-show euphoria (before any critiques come in) and all the congratulations. But to her, all of that amounts to only 5 percent of a show production. This New York Fashion Week, Taylor has been showing her collections -- the entirety of which are meant to be sold commercially -- in one-on-one appointments with buyers in her showroom. There she can discuss every item in deta...
Feb 14, 2018•18 min
Ken Downing, the fashion director and svp at Neiman Marcus, will see just under 100 fashion shows this season. That's a light year. It used to be about 120 overall -- and at one point, it was that many shows in New York alone. Things are changing. As designers change the ways they show their collections -- be it on the runway, in private appointments at showrooms or at presentations -- the buyer's job is ultimately unchanged, according to Downing. On an episode of the Glossy Podcast's NYFW serie...
Feb 13, 2018•27 min
As other designers reconsider the role that runway plays in their businesses, Alice McCall is just getting started at New York Fashion Week. For her debut runway show, which took place Saturday morning, the Australia-based designer said she embraced the exact elements of the production that others find to be distracting. That included planning the music; choosing the hair and makeup, and coordinating accessories; overseeing model castings and even designing punchier products that make for a spla...
Feb 12, 2018•20 min
Celine Semaan, the CEO and designer at the sustainable fashion and accessories brand Slow Factory, realizes that running her own fashion brand is, in and of itself, an unsustainable exercise. During New York Fashion Week, Semaan hosted an event about sustainability, technology and human rights in the fashion industry because, as she put it, she wants to do her part to mobilize the industry to taking steps, no matter how small, toward becoming more sustainable. She also planned to watch out for m...
Feb 11, 2018•22 min
Vicky Yang, a talent and digital strategy manager at the talent agency The Society Management, has picked up a few new tricks over the last several years. While managing modeling jobs and schedules for the company's roster of talent, Yang now also deals with the daily schedules, PR and brand contracts for the group of influencers (called "creatives" internally) she now represents. Yang joined the special NYFW edition of the Glossy Podcast to discuss how her role has changed in the digital age, h...
Feb 09, 2018•24 min
Designer Audra Noyes has put in hours working at luxury fashion houses Lanvin and Ralph Lauren. But she's always had her sights set on putting on a fashion show of her own. And her brand, Audra, held a spot on the official NYFW runway calendar for nine seasons. But this year, she’s taken business behind closed doors, deciding not to host a show but to instead host private appointments with editors, buyers and influencers. Noyes joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss her departure from the runway, ...
Feb 08, 2018•22 min
Taking his company public was a longtime goal for Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn. But a week before he was about to sign a private equity deal to raise more capital for the menswear brand, he got a call from a friend: Preston Bottomy, the vp of fashion group business development at Jet.com and Walmart.com. Now, in addition to being acting CEO of his brand, Dunn is the svp of digital consumer brands at Walmart. Dunn joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss life since the acquisition, his new position, and how...
Jan 31, 2018•40 min
Three years ago, designer Mara Hoffman went through what one could call an existential crisis. After running her eponymous label for 15 years when she hit a wall. Feeling like all her brand was doing was adding more “stuff” to the world -- and causing harm to the environment -- she knew she had to completely overhaul her business, or walk away from it all together. Hoffman said the process to make her company fully sustainable is still ongoing, but the challenge has been an exciting one. She joi...
Jan 24, 2018•38 min
At The Fashion Institute of Technology, staff and students are focused on fixing the industry. That’s a big ask. As Michael Ferraro, the executive director of the Infor Design and Technology Lab at FIT, puts it, “industry problems” and how they can be solved were at the center of a recent collaboration that brought together students, faculty, IBM executives, Infor employees and representatives from Tommy Hilfiger that centered around artificial intelligence and where it fits into the design proc...
Jan 17, 2018•27 min
Glossy senior reporter Hilary Milnes discuss Rent the Runway's in-store strategy, data and unlimited subscriptions with Hampton Catlin, senior director of engineering at Rent the Runway.
Jan 16, 2018•24 min
Chriselle Lim launched her blogger and influencer career on YouTube in 2010, creating videos centered on makeup tutorials and style advice. Since then, her face has been closely tied to her brand as she's built her Instagram following ( @ChriselleLim now has 1 million followers) and her lifestyle blog, The Chriselle Factor. As her brand has matured, though, Lim has come to realize that her business can’t always be centered around her likeness. In October, Lim launched Cinc Studios, a production ...
Jan 10, 2018•27 min
Katie Finnegan is shaping the future of Walmart’s relationship with technology. As the principal of Store No. 8, an incubator that’s owned by Walmart but operates as an individual LLC, Finnegan is playing the long game. Her company acquires businesses that are at the forefront of the next generation of retail technology, mastering capabilities like personalization, virtual reality and robotics in the supply chain. Finnegan said it’s realistic that the technologies won’t be viable for another fiv...
Jan 03, 2018•32 min
This year on the Glossy Podcast, we discussed the forces of change, driven by digital technology, that designers, brand founders, and the agencies who work with them were forced to adjust to. We explored topics including how Instagram is changing the way people interact with brands online, the rise (and fall) of see-now-buy-now and designer burnout, what the digitally native brand market looks like now that the space is matured, and the elephant in the retail room: Amazon. Here's our end of year...
Dec 27, 2017•22 min
Rachel Shechtman is the founder of the concept store Story in Chelsea, a neighborhood in New York City. Story changes its inventory and physical layout every few weeks, and each new remodel is based around a theme. The merchandise carried by Story is usually sourced from small businesses who get facetime with both potential customers or other retailers that are looking for new merchandise. According to Shechtman, 15 percent of foot traffic is from B2B companies. Shechtman joined the Glossy Podca...
Dec 20, 2017•33 min
Scott Tannen, the founder and CEO of Boll & Branch, has experience on both the brand side and the investor side of the DTC startup world.
Dec 13, 2017•31 min
Designer Dan Liu, who owns both his namesake label as well as the fashion brand Tatsuaki, needs fellow designers to pick up the pace. Designers used to have months to design new collections, and that window has been dwindled down to about two weeks. It’s not just designers who are in jeopardy, either — department stores, according to Liu, are at risk of going extinct thanks to the institutions navigating digital advancements in the industry like dinosaurs. Liu joined the Glossy Podcast to discus...
Dec 06, 2017•36 min
Luke Grana, the founder of the apparel startup Grana, joins the Glossy Podcast to discuss the state of digitally native retail, why he decided to launch his business in Hong Kong, and what defines a modern, successful brand.
Nov 29, 2017•31 min
Nadine McCarthy Kahane, founder of online jewelry marketplace Stone and Strand, joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss her company's experiments offline, its influencer partnerships and how it has tried to compete with Amazon.
Nov 15, 2017•31 min
Rachel Zoe launched her brand in 2011, as direct-to-consumer businesses were booming online. But even though she already had a following from her time spent working as a celebrity stylist and sending out her then-newsletter, The Zoe Report (now a media company), Zoe targeted traditional retailers first. Zoe didn’t launch her own e-commerce site for the brand until 2016, in fact, but since finally coming around to selling direct online, she and her brand have been much more experimental. She’s al...
Nov 08, 2017•31 min
AYR, the direct-to-consumer brand for women’s apparel, has an origin story that sets it apart from the sea of other digitally native brands selling women’s clothing without the middleman. For its first two years in business, it was incubated by the more mature direct-to-consumer brand Bonobos. When Bonobos decided it needed to focus on its core business in 2016, AYR spun off into an independent brand, raising two rounds of funding and hiring a full team of employees in the business development, ...
Nov 01, 2017•30 min
Brooke Taylor Corcia, the founder of online fashion and lifestyle store The Dreslyn, wanted to launch her own company to get a more accurate representation of West Coast fashion into the e-commerce lexicon. Three years after launching The Dreslyn as an online destination for access to the chic side of West Coast style, Corcia spoke to Glossy about the art of restraint in building an online store, the key to building two-sided brand relationships and the importance of data.
Oct 25, 2017•34 min
Bando, the e-commerce site selling kitschy office supplies and accessories designed for the Instagram generation, has struck a balance between mass and niche. The brand’s strong, mostly pink aesthetic, cult-like customer following and best-selling items — like agendas that say things like “I Am Very Busy” — have become its biggest signifiers, and the brand has grown to around 50 employees after a near-shutter in 2012. Instead of closing, it sold to licensing company Lifeguard Press, and grew a n...
Oct 18, 2017•31 min
When Elaine Kwon realized just how much fashion and luxury brands don’t understand retail’s new digital world order, she started her own e-commerce management firm, Kwontified, to help them figure it out. Kwon had been working at Amazon, helping luxury fashion brands find success on the platform once they'd signed on. She joined us on the Glossy Podcast this week to talk about focusing on shipping and return structures, online customer service, and -- of course -- whether or not to work with Ama...
Oct 11, 2017•30 min
James LaForce started his career hand-delivering printouts of press releases that highlighted the biggest news and best gossip from parties the night before. He would drop them off at the home of the society reporter at Women’s Wear Daily and return to his office by foot. Things have changed. LaForce joined us on the Glossy Podcast to discuss that mindset, the separation of social media and e-commerce, and the one industry that can’t tell a good story on Instagram.
Oct 05, 2017•31 min
