The Glossy Podcast

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 Podcast to share more about how Story operates, how new retailers are (or aren’t) reinventing the wheel, and how department stores are faring in the new landscape.

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.

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 discuss how designers are dealing with the new crushing pace of the industry, what changes are coming next year, and why see-now-buy-now isn’t the answer.

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.

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.

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 also become more entrepreneurial: In addition to her fashion line, she’s in charge of The Zoe Report as well as Box of Style, a subscription box of clothing and other lifestyle products chosen by her and her team. Zoe joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss the perks and downfalls of traditional retail, her take on see-now-buy-now, her plans to open Rachel Zoe stores and how she uses customer data to her advantage.

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, fulfillment and finance departments to pad out what Bonobos’s infrastructure had been supporting. More than a year into running her brand independently, Winter joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss the benefits of being bred by Bonobos, the lessons she’s learned so far and the opportunity that still remains for direct-to-consumer brands.

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.

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 network of wholesale partners that included Anthropologie, Nordstrom and Macy’s. Those mass retail partners sell its agendas and other everyday items like tumblers and notebooks to a wide audience. That pays the bills. Bando’s online store, then, is an opportunity for co-founder and creative director Jen Gotch to experiment with her more wild design side, even if the results don’t sell as much. Gotch joined the Glossy Podcast to share how she grew a side business selling hair accessories into Bando, which has expanded to bags, accessories, art supplies and clothing.

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 Amazon.