Resilient Retail

Emanuel Edwards took a big risk when he transitioned to managing his curated vintage brand The Goody Vault full-time in early 2021. Thanks to the fact that he’d already been building relationships via his one-on-one showroom experience for a couple years, he was ready to hit the ground running when the Vault moved from side hustle to main attraction. Emanuel’s success is rooted in his understanding that fundamentally, people buy from people. He crafts every in-store experience for maximum human connection, and that approach has built a community around the brand that’s hard to top.

Join Steph LaPosta each week for Real Life Retail. A weekly segment with honest, candid conversations with retailers. In this episode, Jenna Lam, from Early Bird & Worm and Nest & Hatch, joins us to chat about starting a private label, the challenges of not being able to plan, and the rollercoaster of owning a business.

Jennifer Fisher has styled for clients from Miley Cyrus to Rihanna, but her jewelry brand’s major break came in 2006, when Uma Thurman wore one of Jennifer’s custom necklaces on the cover of *Glamour* magazine.

Since then, Jennifer Fisher Jewelry has exploded. Her creations have appeared in *Vogue*, *Variety*, *People*, *Elle*, and more. She’s expanded into a culinary line and the brand has recently opened retail locations in New York and Beverly Hills. Jennifer’s spent the past fifteen years building a brand that can change with the times while remaining true to her initial creative spark, and the results have been astounding. This conversation digs into the ways that Jennifer has remained flexible, authentic, and open over the years.

Join Kristen and Halie LeSavage to cover the hottest industry news and trends of this week. Sadly it's the last episode with Halie around but we’re here to chat about Amazon Prime Day and back to school shopping, Etsy’s acquisition of Depop, the power of physical retail, and Bed Bath and Beyond’s new changes.

A pizzeria isn’t generally what comes to mind when we think of retail, but General Assembly Pizza (also known as GA Pizza) isn’t exactly playing by the rules. Since 2017, they’ve been rewriting the playbook for fast casual.

Founder and CEO Ali Khan Lalani has built the brand around truly seamless customer experiences. That means focusing on the connections between technology and the range of mediums customers use to interact with the brand- online, dine-in, and everywhere in-between. This episode is all about the ways that GA Pizza serves their ever-expanding customer base.

This week on Real Life Retail, Steph LaPosta is joined by Jeff St. Pierre, Retail Launch Engineer at Shopify, for an honest, candid conversation about what he’s learned in his own successes of working in retail, how to create a brand vision, and creating smart partnerships.

This episode of Resilient Retail is a little different. Brik + Clik has spent the last eight months testing out a range of much-hyped technologies in their California location. Co-founder Hemant Chavan is here to tell Kristen what worked, what didn’t, and what to expect from the next decade in retail.

So here’s the name of the game: Kris quizzes Hemant on a range of technologies, and he talks us through what’s here to stay. This episode is loaded with actionable insights from one of the most cutting-edge brands in the retail world today. Kristen and Hemant dig into NFC tags, micro-fulfillment, gamification, and much, much more.

This Friday, Kristen is joined with Kat Cole to cover the hottest industry news and trends of the week. This week we’re talking all things travel! As travel restrictions are lifting we’re seeing a trend in hospitality, immersive experiences, and the opportunities in the hospitality market.

Hill House Home has exploded over the past couple of years, especially in the wake of a truly viral product known as the “Nap Dress.” Through it all, founder and CEO Nell Diamond has balanced customer demand and her own personal vision to craft a brand that’s both responsive to its customers and true to its founding aesthetic.

So how did Hill House grow from a Yale University incubator into a brand with a truly fanatic fan base? It comes down to Nell’s deeply humanistic approach to business. This episode of Resilient Retail is all about the ways that brands and customers build a story together and the amazing results those connections yield.

Join Steph LaPosta each week for Real Life Retail. A weekly segment with honest, candid conversations with retailers. In this episode, Tim Guram, Founder of 100 Years of Love joins the show to talk about the passion behind 100 Years of Love, the thought process behind a rebrand, and why the approach of being open and honest is important.