The Glossy Podcast

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 belief that what we're here to do is deliver confidence and comfort -- that your comfortable clothes don't have to be these items that are just stay-at-home because they look sloppy and you don't feel comfortable going outside in them."In a stroke of luck, the company's fall 2020 collection -- planned as far back as last November -- conceptualized around "being the most comfortable at home," Pawling said.And because it's now seeing a much higher return on digital advertising, it's increased spending on that front. "We had suddenly way more eyeballs on us and traffic coming to us, which helps. And then on the other side, a lot of people that we were competing against from an ads perspective, digitally, had completely just turned their ad spend off when this happened. So we really were able to fast forward quite a bit of growth based on those things."As for retail, Pawling said that a previous plan to open a brick-and-mortar store in late 2020 is now completely off the table. The earliest the company will tackle physical retail is 2022, she said.Pawling is pretty used to tumult. She co-founded Richer Poorer in 2010 -- as a purveyor of midrange socks for men, exclusively -- before she and her co-founder Tim Morse sold it to Shoes.com in 2015. But their new owner's business model wasn't as sound as they had expected. "The whole thing just imploded," Pawling said. She and Morse had to convince two board members to buy the business out. Weeks later, Shoes.com filed for bankruptcy.Richer Poorer's ownership has since returned to Pawling and Morse, who have turned it into a clothing line that caters mostly to women. As for the socks? "They make up about 8% of the business at this point," Pawling said.

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 the right thing to do,” Alonso Rojas said. “It was a crazy idea, and I’ve shipping boxes like crazy. But at the end of the day, it worked.”

Jens Grede, co-founder of the denim brand Frame, discusses his confidence in reopening retail spaces post-pandemic while embracing a surge in e-commerce. He shares insights on shifting to direct-to-consumer sales earlier and emphasizes the need for fashion brands to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Grede also reflects on the importance of adapting to consumer behaviors, the evolution of digital advertising, and fostering authenticity in brand connections. His humorous anecdotes reveal a refreshing take on navigating the ever-changing fashion landscape.

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 podcast interview from her bathroom floor.

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 unique time."