The Glossy Podcast

Influencer Blair Eadie: 'Brands are trying to become more like people, and people are trying to become brands'

Back in 2010, Eadie was working in the merchandising department at Gap Inc. in San Francisco when she noticed the industry was no longer leaning to runways for inspiration -- instead, it was turning to the streets. That was when she decided to start her daily fashion blog, Atlantic Pacific . She soon realized what she had created could become a viable business, and she never looked back. Now with 1.1 million followers on Instagram and a soon-to-be-released line with Nordstrom's private label Hal...

Glossier COO Henry Davis: 'We're not a crowd-sourced brand'

Just five short years ago, Henry Davis was a venture investor in search of his next e-commerce project. At the time, Amazon was beginning its takeover, DTC brands were on the rise and overhauling the supply chain was the newest trend in retail. But Davis was focused on another forward-thinking idea . Then he met Emily Weiss, the creator of the successful beauty-focused platform Into The Gloss , who was ready to take her digital platform into the retail world. Davis and Weiss joined forces, and j...

Jewelry designer and CEO Kendra Scott: 'I wanted to start a brand that really meant something'

Kendra Scott started her jewelry brand with $500 in the middle of a recession, when the world and retail industry were places of great uncertainty. Scott said she managed to turn a seemingly impossible situation into a billion-dollar jewelry business by making sure her brand always remained true to itself. On this week's episode of the Glossy Podcast, Scott joined us to talk about how she built a brand with heart, why it's important to talk directly to the consumer and why a good retail experien...

PopSugar CRO Geoff Schiller: 'If you focus on making money, you wind up diluting the brand'

For PopSugar CRO Geoff Schiller, the company’s transition from publisher to lifestyle brand has been an exercise in restraint. Schiller joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss what PopSugar has learned about the fashion and beauty retail industries, how the company uses audience data to make decisions and why publishers and retailers need to work together today.

Vince creative director Caroline Belhumeur: 'You can't buy customer loyalty, you have to build it'

For the accessible luxury brand Vince, creative director Caroline Belhumeur’s background in retail was a boon that saved it from the brink. Glossy interviewed Belhumeur at Vince’s Mercer Street store in Manhattan at the beginning of September during a live recording for Glossy+ members. To be in the room during the next live recording of the Glossy Podcast, become a member at Glossy.co/subscribe, and use the code ‘podcast’ for 20 percent off an annual subscription.

Rebecca Minkoff: 'When people are inspired by a brand, they'll shop with you'

Rebecca Minkoff wants more designers to share their experiments and their outcomes, even when they’re negative. While the fashion industry tries to come to terms with its ongoing existential crisis, she believes transparency is something that would benefit the overall designer community. Minkoff joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss what's behind her brand's current customer approach, why she doesn’t sell her products on Amazon and what’s going to happen when the dust settles.

Frame founder Jens Grede: 'The era of a brand dictating a lifestyle is over'

Frame -- which started as a side project for founders Jens Grede and Erik Torstensson while working full time at the agency they started, Wednesday -- is on track to hit $120 million sales in its sixth year. Grede joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about why he doesn’t worry much about distribution strategies, what's behind his brand’s approach to being a lifestyle business and how it places limitations on itself in terms of growth.

For Days founder Kristy Caylor: 'Fashion is going to embrace the circular economy'

Kristy Caylor’s first fashion brand, Maiyet, is an ethical brand exclusively selling clothing made by self-sustaining artisans from different areas of the world. But, while running the business, she still felt like she wasn’t doing enough to help fashion’s sustainability problem. In May, Caylor launched For Days, a retail company selling T-shirts and other knitwear on a subscription basis. When customers are done with the shirts, they send them back to For Days in exchange for a fresh batch. The...

Megababe's Katie Sturino pokes holes in the modern influencer marketing industry

Katie Sturino is no stranger to wielding the attention of an Instagram audience. Her own blog, The 12ish Style, has 211,000 followers on the platform. And with her network of Instagram-famous dogs — Toast (who recently passed away), Muppet, Cheese and Pants — her total Instagram platform is nearing 1 million followers. She joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how she broke into blogging by posing style solutions for other plus-size women, what mistakes brands make when working with influencers a...

Margaux co-founder Alexa Buckley: 'The world is too noisy to be all things to all people'

Direct-to-consumer footwear brand Margaux, co-founded by Alexa Buckley and Sarah Pierson, wants to fix fit for women’s shoes. By designating three width options for every size and offering a made-to-order approach, the brand is going after customers who have struggled to find comfort in standard-sized footwear. Buckley joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how the DTC brand playbook is changing, what was behind her brand’s a-ha moment and what it means to be a modern heritage brand.

Margaux co-founder Alexa Buckley: 'The world is too noisy to be all things to all people'

Direct-to-consumer footwear brand Margaux, co-founded by Alexa Buckley and Sarah Pierson, wants to fix fit for women’s shoes. By designating three width options for every size – narrow, medium or wide – and offering a made-to-order approach, the brand is going after customers who have struggled to find comfort in standard-sized footwear. Buckley joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how the DTC brand playbook is changing, what was behind her brand’s a-ha moment and what it means to be a modern he...

11 Honore CEO Patrick Herning: 'Sizeism is alive and well in fashion'

11 Honoré founder and CEO Patrick Herning’s biggest priority for the next year: customer acquisition. 11 Honoré is an online multibrand retailer for plus-size designer fashion, which Herning and his business partner Kathryn Retzer founded in 2017 to deliver a luxury e-commerce experience to women sizes 10 to 22. Herning joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss appealing to this customer, giving brands a helping hand and what really holds the industry back from selling plus-size fashion.

Good American CEO Emma Grede: 'I want to see the plus-size conversation stop'

To hit its next growth stride, denim and apparel brand Good American has to look beyond the passionate followers of famous co-founder Khloé Kardashian. Grede joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss why mainstream sizing is outdated, why she didn’t want to sell only online and how online brands can thrive in a wholesale setting.

Designer Clare Vivier: 'I've never been intimidated to sell direct-to-consumer'

Clare Vivier’s designer handbag brand, Clare V., was direct-to-consumer before anyone was using the term “direct-to-consumer.” Over the past 10 years, Clare V. has expanded its line of handbags and accessories to include apparel. She joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss evolving as a designer-founder over the past 10 years, marketing in a department store versus Instagram, and keeping up with the pace of the industry.

Aurate cofounder Bouchra Ezzahraoui: 'We want to be in control at all times'

Direct-to-consumer jewelry brand Aurate isn’t online-only, it’s channel agnostic. The brand, launched in 2014 as an e-commerce site, now has four brick-and-mortar stores and plans to open more on the West Coast this year. While online is still the main channel, for Aurate, the important thing is that no matter where it sells, it stays in control of the transaction. Bouchra Ezzahraoui, cofounder of Aurate, joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss bootstrapping her business, reacting quickly to custom...

Tradesy founder Tracy DiNunzio: 'Our mission to make resale as efficient as retail, at scale'

Bluemercury founder Marla Beck: 'What's influencing beauty categories is the Instagram effect'

Bluemercury founder Marla Beck built an anti–department store beauty and skin-care shopping experience 20 years ago. Now, Bluemercury has joined Macy’s to offer its democratizing shopping and spa services to department store customers. Beck joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how beauty has evolved in the Instagram era, who wins when customers are in charge and how product innovation is changing the industry.

Madewell's secret sauce

J.Crew Group-owned Madewell is often pegged as the namesake brand’s younger, hipper sister (although president Libby Wadle refutes the notion that Madewell is millennial-geared). As J.Crew scrambles to revitalize stalled sales growth, Madewell’s story couldn’t be more different. Wadle joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how a brand in the J.Crew umbrella stays nimble, what the brand identity is, and how customer feedback and data feeds into that process.

The RealReal's Rati Levesque: 'We drive traffic back into luxury stores'

The Real Real, an online marketplace for authentic luxury consignment, is growing and retail stores are their big next step. But over the years, they have also been pitted as a competition to luxury brands and had a difficult relationship with them. Rati Levesque, chief merchant, says she's seeing the dynamic shift as they're starting to drive traffic back into luxury stores. Levesque explores their relationship with brands, similarity to departmental stores and more on this podcast.

Alice + Olivia's evp of brand marketing Aliza Licht: 'Amazon doesn't need a brand story'

During her time running the DKNY PR Girl Twitter account, Aliza Licht was only asked to delete one tweet. Licht worked on the PR and communications team at DKNY when the company began putting together initial Facebook and Twitter strategies. Social media marketing strategies have only become more complex since then, but the brand-as-relatable-friend voice has held strong. After leaving DKNY, Licht wrote a book titled “Leave Your Mark,” and she currently serves as the evp of brand marketing at Al...

Caraa co-founder Aaron Luo: 'Retail brands should not raise VC funding'

With Caraa, Aaron Luo is looking to prove aesthetic isn't everything. Luo joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss why his brand didn’t raise any VC funding, how he chooses brand partnerships and why he decided to test selling products on Amazon.

Eileen Fisher on 34 years in sustainable fashion: 'It's about constantly learning'

When Eileen Fisher started her namesake brand in 1984, it wasn’t the plan from the outset that the label would eventually become synonymous with sustainability in the fashion industry. Her goal was simply to do a better job of making clothing that would outlast everything else in her customers’ closets. The Eileen Fisher approach to sustainability has since evolved to focus on reducing waste through a circular recycling program, a line of “remade” Eileen Fisher items designed from damaged or sta...

Kirsten Kjaer Weis on the natural-beauty movement: ‘It’s a bit of a jungle right now’

After working as a makeup artist for 25 years, Kirsten Kjaer Weis was tired of rejecting and moving on from different luxury beauty products because the synthetics in them, she believed, caused allergic reactions. She founded her brand, Kjaer Weis, in 2010 on the premise that an all natural beauty brand could also perform like a luxury beauty brand. Kjaer Weis joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss the evolution of the green beauty industry, balancing organic and luxury, and the definition of natu...

American Fashion Network CEO Jackie Wilson: 'Amazon's model scares me to death'

Jackie Wilson isn’t known to customers as one of America’s prominent fashion designers, but retailers know her. Her company, the American Fashion Network, is responsible for designing private-label fashion lines for retailers like Kohl’s, Amazon and American Eagle. And she's often the one pushing behind the scenes, convincing retailers to double down on lingerie-style tops, cutouts and fabric trends. Wilson joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss how Zara changed the private-label business, and how...

Porter editor-in-chief Lucy Yeomans: 'Content and commerce coming together just makes sense'

Net-a-Porter recently relaunched its editorial content to reflect a new approach: Porter, Net-a-Porter’s print magazine, combined with The Edit, Net-a-Porter’s online blog, for a more cohesive content strategy. In total, Net-a-Porter’s editorial team employs 70 people across print and digital. Whereas before, they were working in siloed teams, Net-a-Porter’s global content director and Porter editor-in-chief Lucy Yeomans said there’s now more collaboration across channels, including around new e...

Tamara Mellon: 'The future of retail is the end of wholesale'

After Tamara Mellon left Jimmy Choo, the luxury footwear brand she founded in 1996 while in her 20s, she had to figure out again how to establish her positioning in the industry, this time under her own name. It wasn’t a smooth transition. After the first incarnation of the Tamara Mellon brand went bankrupt, she started over following the direct-to-consumer model that customers today are much more familiar with than they were at the start of the decade. Mellon joined the Glossy Podcast to discus...

Why founder Jessica Lee didn't raise any VC funding for Modern Citizen

Jessica Lee was on the M&A team at Gap Inc., scouting for potential young brands appealing to a more modern customer that the corporation could snap up, when she decided to set off on her own and found a new mid-priced women’s fashion brand. Modern Citizen, launched online in 2016, with a trendier take on direct-to-consumer fashion than comparable brands like Everlane, more affordable prices than Reformation and a focus on building a community from scratch. Lee joined the Glossy Podcast to d...

Adam Pritzker wants to build a retail alliance

Adam Pritzker, of the Hyatt Hotels family, built Assembled Brands off of the idea that fashion could benefit from the same open-source approach to resources, data and education as the technology industry. Assembled Brands, now six years in, is a holding company for brands including The Line, Khaite, Pop and Suki and more, with the goal of supporting inventory planning, financial modeling, distribution and infrastructure organization for a new retail industry. Pritzker joined the Glossy Podcast t...

Resonance co-founder Lawrence Lenihan: 'It's the end of the billion-dollar brand'

Lawrence Lenihan is the co-founder and co-CEO of Resonance, a venture operating and holding company for small fashion brands that he started with business partner Joseph Ferrara in 2015. His opinion on fashion feels romanticized, but he hopes to ground it in a viable business model that could change the format through which emerging designers get brands off the ground, and make them profitable. Lenihan joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about how to bring the Zara model down to businesses on the ...

Nordstrom's vp of creative projects Olivia Kim: 'Earning trust is how you gain wallet share'

Olivia Kim joined Nordstrom and moved from New York to Seattle in 2013 as the director of creative projects. Now vp of creative projects, she’s in charge of Nordstrom’s pop-up shops, brand collaborations and exclusives with digitally native brands. Essentially, her role boils down to recruiting new customers to Nordstrom by making it more of a destination for fashion inspiration and brands that can’t be easily found elsewhere. On the Glossy Podcast, Kim discussed how she formed her position and,...