As the CEO of digitally native menswear brand Bonobos, Micky Onvural has experienced both extreme challenges and lucky breaks in getting the brand through 2020. “We've always been predominantly e-commerce, so we didn't have the same catch-up game to play as other retailers did,” she said on the Glossy Podcast. “The biggest catch-up game we had to play was on the product side -- because we were ‘wear-to-work,’ but now we want to be ‘wear-everywhere.’” To swiftly transition the product, among othe...
Oct 21, 2020•36 min
Todd Snyder is a master of collaborations. “I've always looked at brands I want to work with, and they're almost all originators in their space,” Snyder said on the Glossy Podcast. “They’re authentic and real, and American -- and the first of their version.” Snyder launched his namesake brand in 2011, after stints as a lead designer at Ralph Lauren, Gap and J.Crew. The brand now averages 2-5 collaborations per year, which account for 50% of the business and vary in length: Its first, with Champi...
Oct 14, 2020•41 min
Joe's Jeans is heavily invested in working with influencers. It's a relationship that has to make sense to work, said Jennifer Hawkins, the brand's svp of marketing and innovation. "It's not just plucking someone off a list and saying, 'Let's do a collaboration,'" Hawkins said on the Glossy Podcast. "It's finding people that you organically fit with from a product standpoint and working with them." Hawkins talked about why she's bullish on Instagram Checkout, why Joe's needs a TikTok strategy an...
Oct 07, 2020•41 min
In Clearbanc president Michele Romanow's view, regular banks are pretty clueless. "Banks don't understand digital business," she said on the Glossy Podcast. "They understand if you're a restaurant with a pizza oven, and that if your business goes out of business, they can sell the pizza oven, as it has residual value." But they're less likely to accurately value inventory or to understand that a strong customer acquisition strategy -- if a DTC company has gotten there -- is a valuable asset in i...
Sep 30, 2020•42 min
People may not be getting dressed and going out like they used to, but for Bombas, sales are up. The sock company is beating the target it set for itself back in January, before the pandemic kept people at home (where socks are a little more optional). "Sales are up," Bombas co-founder and chief brand officer Randy Goldberg said on the Glossy Podcast. "There's that response to comfort and a response to community. And people are looking for these little moments for themselves." Bombas was founded...
Sep 23, 2020•35 min
After a summer of virtual fashion showcases , Paris is going back to the real thing. Among the labels on the (outdoor) catwalk schedule for the upcoming Paris Fashion Week is Ami, the company founded in 2011 -- but which only got into womenswear in 2018. "I do this job, for nine years now, because of the show. The show is a magical moment. It's a rendezvous which is not replaceable," founder Alexandre Mattiussi said on the Glossy Podcast. The coronavirus hasn't slowed Mattiussi's roll much in ge...
Sep 16, 2020•40 min
Maison de Mode CEO Hassan Pierre knows that if sustainable fashion doesn't look as good as everything else on the market, it's not going to make much of a positive impact on the environment. "I always say that if a shirt saves a thousand lives, but it's ugly, no one's going to buy it," Pierre said on the Glossy Podcast. "So we need, as a retailer, to make people dream and to really make people want to buy things -- not just because they're good, but also because they want to wear them." Maison d...
Sep 09, 2020•39 min
Ronny Kobo's self-named fashion line is nearly synonymous with "party dress," and there aren't many occasions for those these days. "Luckily, we have not seen a lot of canceled styles and canceled orders," Kobo said on the Glossy Podcast. But the brand is still pivoting to selling online, including for the swimwear line it will be launching in the spring. "Retail's going to change drastically in the next year. We're all going digital," Kobo said. "Even the local boutiques are going to need to fi...
Sep 02, 2020•42 min
The pandemic has been hard on fashion brands -- but especially for Billy Reid, which hosts an annual arts festival in its hometown of Florence, Alabama that has become part of its identity. "I can't tell you how many texts I get per week from friends, going, 'What's up with Shindig this year?' And you have to let them down easy," Reid said on the Glossy Podcast. The menswear-first company is looking forward to doubling-down on the event next year, and Reid said he's just glad to see it surviving...
Aug 26, 2020•43 min
The direct-to-consumer brands that have sprung up in the last decade have promised to deliver quality at a better price by cutting out the middlemen: retailers. Italic wants to do the same, but is taking a different approach by working with multiple manufacturers that supply top brands. Its result is a lineup of quality products, without brand names or premium price tags. The company launched in 2018 with a different membership than the model it recently adopted -- the annual cost is now $100, w...
Aug 19, 2020•48 min
To forecast the next fashion trends, Soludos founder Nick Brown looked to past crises. Before the 2008 crisis, "it was all about ornaments and stuff being very sexy and over-the-top," Brown said on the Glossy Podcast. "Then in 2010, it shifted toward minimalism and modernism." Brown wagered that fashion will stay on the minimalist side. But either way, shoes are a tough category. "In some of these customer surveys, and certainly in my own life, I'm only buying what I need to, and I'm not going o...
Aug 12, 2020•35 min
In fashion, the small businesses have suffered more than the big ones since March. But Commando founder Kerry O'Brien thinks that, for those boutiques that can survive a tortuous shutdown, the other side will be a lot brighter. "I think they're going to have a resurgence if they can make it through these times," she said. "Women are going to want to go to their local shop, and they're going to want to have a conversation with someone they know in a small setting." Boutiques were where Commando, ...
Aug 05, 2020•37 min
The ongoing demand for LaQuan Smith's signature sexy designs is both a blessing and a curse, as he put it on the Glossy Podcast. "It was a very humbling experience, because I had to find alternative ways to still be able to produce these orders," Smith said. "Thankful they didn't get dropped, but also, damn, because I'm now in a compromised position: How do I get these done, how do I fulfill all these orders on time?" Smith pulled it off by having his cutters work from home while "packing and sh...
Jul 29, 2020•44 min
After a pandemic-caused delay, influencer Arielle Charnas' clothing company Something Navy finally relaunched last week as a direct-to-consumer brand, after selling exclusively as a Nordstrom collaboration. For her and interim CEO Matt Scanlan, it was worth the wait: Online, Something Navy grossed $1 million in just 30 minutes, according to Charnas and Scanlan. "The velocity and speed of sales totally broke our back end," Scanlan said on the Glossy Podcast. Charnas has a considerable Instagram f...
Jul 22, 2020•49 min
Putting on a digital fashion show isn't especially revolutionary. But Anifa Mvuemba, the founder of Hanifa, gave her Instagram Live show a novel twist: there weren't any models, whether digital or real. "This will be a great way to get everyone's attention," Mvuemba recalled thinking, on the Glossy Podcast. Her virtual runway was stalked by Hanifa dresses, moving of their own accord as if draped over moving ghosts. It was a painstaking endeavor of animation and design, but it paid off. Tens of t...
Jul 15, 2020•33 min
Speaking for her corner of the fashion industry -- luxury denim -- Warp+Weft founder Sarah Ahmed said that discussions around racial issues should only be beginning. "If everyone was always receptive to this -- to racial equality -- we wouldn't be having these problems," Ahmed said on the Glossy Podcast. "We all need to take a look: maybe the joke that we make, the model choice that we made -- why did we make that?" she said. Warp+Weft is progressive on other fronts. Its manufacturing process co...
Jul 08, 2020•56 min
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Trina Turk's self-named fashion label made 15% of its sales through e-commerce. But with Neiman Marcus' filing for bankruptcy in May and an ongoing lack of foot traffic at mall stores, Turk ideally wants that percentage raised to 50% or more. "If they weren't shopping online prior to this whole thing, they are jumping online now," Turk said about shoppers on the Glossy Podcast. "I don't think we're alone in really examining how we can pivot our business to be muc...
Jul 01, 2020•40 min
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...
Jun 24, 2020•38 min
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 offic...
Jun 17, 2020•39 min
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 des...
Jun 10, 2020•40 min
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...
Jun 03, 2020•32 min
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 h...
May 27, 2020•37 min
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 ...
May 20, 2020•40 min
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...
May 13, 2020•47 min
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 stor...
May 06, 2020•34 min
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 Sep...
Apr 29, 2020•32 min
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,...
Apr 22, 2020•40 min
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 s...
Apr 15, 2020•32 min
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 strat...
Apr 08, 2020•29 min
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 hap...
Apr 01, 2020•37 min
