The Glossy Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Saucony president Anne Cavassa on prepping for the new Roaring Twenties Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

The team behind 120-year-old Saucony is no stranger to the competition in the running shoe market. But within the last year, as former gym rats took up running and more brands entered the space, they’ve been stepping up their game.

"The running boom is real,” Anne Cavassa, president of Saucony, said on the latest Glossy Podcast. “So we're making sure that we're connecting and engaging with consumers where they're at -- whether that's around what shoes they need, what their training should look like, what their diet should look like. When it comes to [anything] around the running lifestyle, we've been working on it from a communication perspective and from an inspirational perspective.”

At the same time, the brand has continued to roll out innovative launches, including its “most eco-friendly shoe ever,” the Jazz Court RFG sneaker, in March.

According to Cavassa, being one of 12 brands under the Wolverine Worldwide umbrella enabled Saucony to be “nimble and agile,” which was required throughout last year. Access to its “back-of-house systems and resources” proved invaluable, as did learnings from fellow WW brands, including Keds and Sperry.

“We were able to [compare] what was working and what wasn’t, and … to communicate on how to [best] respond during the crisis,” she said.

Dr. Harvey Moscot and Zack Moscot on running a global, fifth-generation family business Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

More than 100-years-old, Moscot's Lower East Side store is decidedly a New York institution. And worldwide, the eyewear company has 15 retail locations. But that's not to suggest that physical retail is the company's sole focus.

"We started our transition [to go] fully into digital several years ago," Zack Moscot, a fifth-generation Moscot and the company's chief design officer, said on the latest Glossy Podcast. "So when the pandemic hit, we were able to pivot and really step on the gas when we needed to."

Along with the company's direct-to-consumer sales channels, it has wholesale distribution in Europe, retail partners in Asia and "selective distribution" through retailers in the U.S. "We partner with those that help tell our story, and understand who and what we are, and don't view us as just another eyewear brand," said Dr. Harvey Moscot, a fourth-generation Moscot (Zack's father) and the company's CEO.

The company's history is a key differentiator, said Zack Moscot. "Very few businesses, especially in America, make it to the fifth generation and keep it in the family," he said.

And the company is just as selective about where it sets up its own shops.

"We get offered opportunities in malls. We just never felt like we could really portray ourselves in a mall environment," said Dr. Harvey Moscot. "Where we have the opportunity to select a location that feels right for the brand, that reminds us of the Lower East Side in New York City -- which happened in London, which happened in Amsterdam -- those are the areas that we seek. It's those kind of creative epicenters."

Arezzo & Co.'s Alexandre Birman: 'The most adaptable' brands will survive Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

Arezzo & Co. CEO Alexandre Birman is prepared to handle a rough 2021.

“The first half of the year will be very challenging,” he said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “It's not going to be easy. And who is going to survive is not the strongest, but the most adaptable. So we have to be very prepared to adapt.”

The company managed just fine in 2020, emerging relatively unscathed though big changes were necessary. Those adjustments, including putting its 6,000 store employees to work as digital sales associates, set it up for a strong start to 2021. Though 80% of its stores are now closed due to pandemic-related restrictions -- they’re largely located in the company’s home base of Brazil, where the vaccine has been much less widely distributed -- it finished March with 70% of the revenue it earned in March of 2019.

“That's decent," said Birman. "It’s going to be a gradual rebound."

Brazil-based Arezzo & Co. owns six shoe brands and the distribution license for Vans in Brazil. In the fourth quarter of 2019, it expanded its focus to clothing by acquiring apparel group Reserva Group and 75% of online luxury resale platform Troc.

Birman discussed the company’s investment strategy, as well as its future plans for physical retail and expansion in the states.

‘The store of the future’: Chief product officer Jana Henning on Athleta’s rapid retail expansion Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

Athleta chief product officer Jana Henning described 2020 as both “a blockbuster year” and “a rollercoaster.” The company managed to do $1 billion in sales, even with amid pandemic-driven obstacles.

“I credit our success last year to listening to our teams and listening to our customer,” Henning said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “We really put them at the center of everything we do, and that's been good for business.”

Responding to that feedback meant quickly entering new product categories, including sleepwear and masks, and offering more sizes. As of January 2021, Athleta offers sizes 1X-3X in 70% of its styles. The company also leaned into styles that were selling, resulting in a record year for leggings.

Henning, who’s been with Gap Inc. since 2010, said Athleta was well positioned going into the pandemic due, in part, to its brand values.

“They really resonate with our customers and what's happening in the zeitgeist right now,” she said. “Athleta is a B Corp, we are committed to empowering women and girls to really reach their limitless potential, and we are committed to inclusivity by design -- really thinking about how we can invite as many different women and girls into the brand as possible.”

This year, the company plans to open 20-30 stores, and it’s projecting $2 billion in annual sales by 2023.

Stoney Clover Lane's Kendall Glazer on recreating an Instagram feed in stores Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

When sisters Kendall and Libby Glazer launched Stoney Clover Lane in 2009, Kendall was 17 and Libby was 15.

“The brand you know today is not the brand that started Stoney Clover Lane,” said Kendall Glazer on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “It started as beaded bracelets. It was a hobby. But we always kind of had this business mindset. We took something that so many other girls were doing and went through the motions of turning it into a business.”

Today, Stoney Clover Lane is known for customizable lifestyle accessories, from makeup pouches to duffel bags. It has around 100 employees and is getting set to launch its fifth and sixth stores. Despite travel being put on hold, negating hot sales moments for the brand like spring break, Stoney Clover Lane had a successful 2020, with 200% sales growth.

Glazer owed the strong sales, in part, to the brand’s strong community. “They've always been engaged,” said Glazer. “And in the last year, we did more to engage them, with crowdsourcing and just making ourselves more accessible.”

Glazer also discussed Stoney Clover Lane’s 2021 plans, including collaborations and its retail expansion.

‘Scarcity, exclusivity and storytelling’: Re/Done's Sean Barron on what millennial shoppers want Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

Re/Done co-founder Sean Barron never set out to launch a sustainable denim brand.

“We thought it was a project,” versus a company, he said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. His business partner, Jamie Mazur, “had this idea of taking Levi's apart and making jeans that fit girls,” Barron said. “It took nine months for us to make that work. Then we built a website.”

On the brand’s launch date in 2014, after Bella Hadid hyped the brand in an Instagram post, the first pairs of Re/Done denim sold out in 12 minutes at midnight and attracted a 1,200-person waitlist. “Vogue and every kind of media covered it,” said Barron. “It was like, ‘Oh, maybe we have something here.’”

Now, Re/Done is the biggest purchaser of vintage Levi's worldwide. To date, it’s upcycled 120,000 pairs of Levi's.

The company’s ongoing partnership with Levi’s is key to its success among millennial shoppers, said Barron.

“What resonates and [works] to build a community in the millennial space are [styles] with scarcity, exclusivity and storytelling. And those three [characteristics] actually live inside of one pair of Levi's,” said Barrron. “If you have a vintage pair, they're very exclusive. They're one of one. And they're scarce because there's not an infinite amount. And each jean really tells a story. Maybe a trucker bought it and then he gave it to his girlfriend, and she gave it to Goodwill. There are all these storytelling moments that, even if you don't know them, you know they exist.”

Barron also discussed Re/Done's growing direct-to-consumer business, its "big" physical retail plans and its three-part collaboration strategy.

‘We’ve implemented reverse morality clauses’: Influencer Patrick Janelle on how 2020 changed brand partnerships Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

Despite having 400,000-plus followers on Instagram, Patrick Janelle (@aguynamedpatrick) doesn’t call himself an influencer.

“I've never fully identified with the term, because it means a lot of things, and influence itself could mean a lot of things. And the way by which people influence others can come about in many different ways,” Janelle said on the Glossy Podcast. “So using the term strictly to define somebody who has a large social media following never felt totally apt to me.”

Instead, he’ll use “content creator” or “lifestyle Instagrammer.” The latter is fitting, considering Janelle’s wide range of partners, which include fashion brands, liquor brands and airline companies, to name a few. Recent posts marked "#ad" feature Club Monaco and Ferragamo.

In late 2014, Janelle started growing his Instagram following, which is now equally split between men and women, usually in the “upper millennial” age bracket. In January of 2020, he launched his own influencer agency, Untitled Secret, to provide other creatives with the type of “creative business opportunities” that his manager had given him, he said. Among talent he’s signed to date are fashion influencer Rocky Barnes (2.1 million Instagram followers) and "skinfluencer" Sean Garrette (79,000). In October, he was named chairman of the American Influencer Council, which is focused on sustaining the integrity and viability of the influencer marketing industry.

According to Janelle, 2020 spawned new opportunities for him and all influencers.

“There's no better place to be than in this space, when it comes to being able to activate the marketing dollars and opportunities that actually do exist,” he said. “While it's been very challenging and really difficult, the growth that we've seen as an industry has actually been quite significant.”

La DoubleJ founder JJ Martin: ‘It’s time to rethink the entire retail experience’ Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

J.J. Martin, founder and creative director of Milan-based fashion and home goods brand La DoubleJ, didn’t take the traditional path to launching her company. And now, six years in, she’s determined to run it her own way.

“I started this company selling vintage clothing and vintage jewelry online,” she said on the Glossy Podcast. Prior, she had spent 15 years as a journalist, writing for publications including Harper's Bazaar, the Wall Street Journal and Wallpaper Magazine. “At the time, Italy was really starting to feel the crunch from Asia and the competition there. A lot of [Italian] factories were closing, mills were closing, and it kind of became my pursuit to sort of cheerlead for Milan, cheerlead for Italians. So we started doing a lot of co-branding [with suppliers] -- for example, working with a 120-year-old silk factory [to make styles] and then calling [the factory] out on little hang tags.”

Since, the results have proven popular -- even during the pandemic. According to Martin, La DoubleJ saw record sales on its site in January, and in the last year, its e-commerce sales have grown “by leaps and bounds.”

La DoubleJ has yet to invest in its own physical stores, but it has linked with select wholesale partners. They don’t include “generic, bigger stores” with outdated approaches to marketing brands, Martin said.

“[Those retailers] are just like, ‘We’re going to have a cocktail party in our store to drive people to the sales floor. But, who wants to go into a store for a cocktail party? Nobody wants to do that; that is very 1999. It is time to rethink the entire retail experience.”

Martin discussed her own approach to marketing, which is more personal and, uniquely for a fashion brand, promotes mental health.

Sarah Flint and CEO Mary Beech: ‘2020 was the year we built the foundation to really scale’ Feb 24, 2021

Show notes

According to NPD, sales of high heels were down more than 70% in 2020. But Sarah Flint was an exception to the rule.

“Heels are pumps were still our top-selling category,” said Sarah Flint, founder and creative director of her namesake brand, on the latest Glossy Podcast. “There is not a real explanation for that, other than maybe women buy with their hearts more than their heads sometimes.”

Even so, the brand rounded out its products in 2020 with more pandemic-friendly categories, including silk scarves, stationary and house shoes. In March, it also grew its executive team, with the appointment of Mary Beech, formerly CMO of Kate Spade.

“As we scaled, while I was great with the big ideas and being scrappy, there were really a lot of processes that needed to be put into place -- not my strong suit,” Flint said, of the hire.

As for Beech, “I was looking for a brand that was responding to all the changes in consumer behavior that I was seeing," she said. "Honestly, I thought that meant leaving fashion. And then I met Sarah, who looks at where the hockey puck is going. She definitely is always questioning the status quo… I've been at some of the best lifestyle brands out there, and I saw that Sarah has what it takes to be the next great American lifestyle brand. So I thought, 'I have to be there, small or not.'"

Drest founder Lucy Yeomans: 'There's been a massive shift in how luxury brands speak to consumers' Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

Because Drest is centered on bringing together notoriously slow-to-evolve luxury fashion brands and innovative gaming technology, it would seem that founder and co-CEO Lucy Yeomans has her work cut out for her.

But with more than 20 years of experience working with luxury fashion brands, she knows how to speak their language.

“I thought it was going to be much, much tougher than it was [to get brands to sign on to the platform],” Yeomans said on the Glossy Podcast. Among clinchers was the high level of engagement among Drest users -- spending 17 minutes to create a look on the app is normal, she said. Drest’s elevated look and feel were also factors.

“[Brands] understood that the environment we created was completely luxurious and respected, that [it followed] all the codes of luxury, and that it was an amazing place to talk about their DNA in a very, very different way,” she said.

Formerly editor-in-chief of Porter magazine and British Harper's Bazaar, Yeomans has also had to get acclimated to the fast-paced gaming world since launching Drest in October 2019: “I'm used to being somewhere where you develop an app and you move on, and you come back to it maybe three years later,” she said. “In gaming, we are changing the product every two weeks.”

She also discussed Drest’s expansion to beauty and fine jewelry, and shopping’s omnichannel future.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected