The Glossy Podcast

After working 20-plus years in investment banking sales and trading with a focus on retail companies, Louisa Schneider was inspired by her daughter to create the brand Rowan in 2018. Schneider realized that the ear-piercing category was focused primarily on fashion and convenience rather than the piercing procedure and healing process. 

Since then, the company has focused on a procedure-first approach, with nurses performing its piercings. It leveraged insights from its nurses and medical board to create single-use hand-pressurized devices for piercing that are more sanitary and precise than traditional piercing techniques. Rowan is the only piercing company that has its own medical board, which includes a plastic surgeon and a pediatrician.

Now, Schneider is growing the business while keeping practicality in mind. In January, Rowan launched earrings that can be worn while playing sports. And It launched its first standalone store in 2019 in New York. Creating an inclusive working culture for nurses and making stores a place where customers can celebrate special moments have remained priorities.

Rowan has raised more than $30 million to date from Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures and Beechwood Capital, and it's now focused on a country-wide mall expansion. It currently has 30 freestanding locations, with six more underway. Rowan expects to double the number of its locations within the next year. Schneider also plans to tackle global expansion over the next three years with hundreds of stores. The company briefly experimented with a “store-within-a-store” model at 300 Target locations in 2021, but it now focuses on its own locations, where it has greater control over the customer experience and culture. 

Schneider joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about the brand and its recent openings. In October, Rowan opened its doors in Preston Royal Village Mall in Dallas. It is the fourth ear-piercing brand to move into the Dallas market in the past three years, joining Wildlike, Maria Tash and, most recently, Studs. The Preston Royal store is the brand’s fifth Texas location, following stores in Southlake and Fort Worth.

On the Glossy Week in Review podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska break down some of the biggest fashion news of the week.

On this week’s episode, we discuss how Adidas has fared since its decision to cut ties with Kanye West, why TikTok launched a new authentication service for vintage handbags and to what extent the collapse of one of the largest lab-grown diamond manufacturers will impact the industry.

Century 21 was once known as the go-to New York City destination for bargain hunters looking to find a treasure amid racks of off-price clothes. But the pandemic had a negative impact on the company, which was overstretched with 13 stores, and it was forced to close down in 2020.

But according to Larry Mentzer, COO of the newly relaunched Century 21, plans for the store’s big comeback were already being laid out before it even closed.

“Once the decision was made, that we needed to permanently close the business, it was probably that same day or the next day that the conversation started about reopening the business and relaunching the brand,” Mentzer said on this week's episode of the Glossy Podcast. “We are fortunate that we have passionate owners that just have a love for New York City, a love for retail and a love for the Century 21 brand, which was not only a New York City institution, but a family institution.”

Mentzer and Judy Duzich, vp and general merchandising director of Century 21, joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about the store’s grand reopening in May of this year. Lots of changes were made, according to Duzich, including paring the retail fleet down from 13 stores to just one.

Digiday Media and WorkLife is proud to present season two of The Return, a podcast about what it’s like for Gen Z to enter the workforce for the first time in a post-pandemic world.

In season one, The Return followed an Atlanta-based advertising agency as the company returned to the office after a two-year pandemic hiatus. There were clear challenges among this population of workers who knew what a “normal” office used to look like. But what about a generation that is entering the workforce post-pandemic and has nothing to compare it to? That’s what we uncover across eight episodes in season two of The Return.

We see headlines repeatedly accusing this generation of being lazy, unmotivated, quiet quitters. But what's the real story behind this generation's attitude about work?

In season two of The Return, we speak with Gen Zers across the country to lift the lid on what motivates and inspires this young generation of workers, and how they’re not as work-shy as they’re often depicted. We also speak with seasoned workplace experts who can put the changing expectations of these young professionals into context.

We dive into why values are so important to Gen Zers, whether or not they are loyal to their employers, how they use TikTok for career advice, what it means to be a young professional who is a boss to older workers, and so much more.

Season two of The Return is hosted by Cloey Callahan, a Gen Zer and senior reporter at Digiday Media’s WorkLife, and produced by Digiday Media's audio producer Sara Patterson.

Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you get your podcasts – to hear the first episode on Wednesday, Oct. 18.

On the Glossy Week in Review podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska break down some of the biggest fashion news of the week.

This week, we discuss what's behind the slowdown in luxury demand across the industry, whether China can pick up the slack for luxury brands and why companies often suffer on their first day after an IPO.

Charles Harbison relaunched Harbison Studio in 2022, six years after putting the luxury fashion brand on pause. And it’s already clear that, this time around, he’s doing things differently.  

“I’m building a brand with more authenticity,” Harbison said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “I've tried to do it before in the way that everyone said I should do it. And it just was not for me.”

Harbison was thrust into helming a fashion brand in 2013, when he launched Harbison Studio after an unexpected chain of events while between jobs: To avoid holes in his portfolio, after working 7-8 years for brands including Michael Kors and Billy Reid, he created and photographed a small fashion collection. He showed those to two advisors, who showed them to Vogue editors, which led to placement in Vogue’s September issue and an order from Ikram, Chicago’s influential boutique. 

“In some ways, the cart was before the horse,” Harbison said. “I hate to say that because, in my perfect world, talent, craft and a love of fashion is the horse. But in our world now, with fashion, money's always the horse. And that is what I quickly learned over those two years of making clothes that I love, but not really building a business.”

Eventually, Harbison decided to step away from the brand, which had already gained fans including Michelle Obama and Beyoncé. But he’d always planned to return: “I moved to L.A. to regroup and center my wellness, but the thing that never left me was the fact that women love what I do. And there are so many people in the world who relate to it. [I knew that] one day, I’d come back and resume my conversation with them through clothes.” 

Shortly after New York Fashion Week, in early October, Harbison met with Glossy to share how his return to fashion is playing out. Along with hinting at a new Bergdorf Goodman partnership, he promoted an active friends and family funding round. He plans to use the funds to expand his team and the brand’s product categories — it’s recently inched into jewelry and handbags, and shoes are next. 

On the Glossy Week in Review podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and editor-in-chief Jill Manoff break down some of the biggest fashion news of the week.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Sephora’s decision to cancel the first day of its annual Sephoria event due to inclement weather and the reaction from its fans. We also talk about the wave of brands going public in the next year, including Birkenstock and Vuori, and the debut of Coach on Amazon.

Macy’s chief merchandising officer, Nata Dvir, is leading the company's private-brand evolution.

The department store is rethinking its portfolio of private label brands across all product categories, including men’s, women’s, kids and home. That includes adding, refreshing and editing brands through a new customer-centric strategy.

In August, Macy’s launched the private-label womenswear brand On 34th, which was informed by extensive research on its customer. The brand, which targets customers ages 30-50, centers on ready-to-wear items and accessories that were made to create thousands of outfit combinations. 

“It was informed by over 100,000 online surveys that we did,” said Dvir. “We collected a lot of intelligence around what our customers were looking for. We also did 35 days of digital community engagement, where we viewed customer videos about what they're looking for, what's missing from their wardrobe and what role we could play. And we did hundreds of hours of in-store fittings and shop-alongs, which provided the kind of insight that you can only get when you're talking to somebody one-on-one.”

The company has been rethinking its retailer-brand strategies as well. “The mix of private and market brands was something we spent a lot of time strategizing around, with a focus on the future portfolio of brands that is going to be relevant for our customers today and in the future,” said Dvir. “Private brands are an important part of our overall strategy because they allow us to have a tremendous amount of oversight over the brand, from a distribution and design perspective, as well as a quality and fit [perspective]. They also drive a lot of loyalty and repeat visits.”

Macy's plans to release four additional private-label brands through 2025, each focused on a unique purpose and rooted in customer research, Dvir said.

It’s a new era for fashion month, where designer collections are just one piece of the pie. As brands across price points and specialties aim to compete in the increasingly competitive retail landscape, more are taking advantage of the opportunity and approaching it strategically. They’re cutting through the noise with innovative marketing tactics, introducing new commerce plays and leveraging advanced digital capabilities to best showcase their products. In a dedicated podcast series running throughout Fashion Month Spring 2024, Glossy and influential leaders are breaking down the evolution of the experiential event, as driven by technology.

In this episode, we sit down with Maria Buccellati, co-owner and CEO of Faith Connexion, the 20-year-old fashion brand that hosted a Paris Fashion Week show on Wednesday. Prior to the runway show, the brand wiped its Instagram clean before posting a series of images promoting the event and the brand’s plan to make spring 2024 a “redefining season.” Buccellati explained that, moving forward, the brand is taking a collaborative, “Faith Tribe” approach to design and prioritizing “phyygital” products. She also provided details on Faith Connexion’s planned expansion within the U.S. market. 

It’s a new era for fashion month, where designer collections are just one piece of the pie. As brands across price points and specialties aim to compete in the increasingly competitive retail landscape, more are taking advantage of the opportunity and approaching it strategically. They’re cutting through the noise with innovative marketing tactics, introducing new commerce plays and leveraging advanced digital capabilities to best showcase their products. In a dedicated podcast series running throughout Fashion Month Spring 2024, Glossy and influential leaders are breaking down the evolution of the experiential event, as driven by technology.

In this episode, we sit down with Maria Buccellati, co-owner and CEO of Faith Connexion, the 20-year-old fashion brand that hosted a Paris Fashion Week show on Wednesday. Prior to the runway show, the brand wiped its Instagram clean before posting a series of images promoting the event and the brand’s plan to make spring 2024 a “redefining season.” Buccellati explained that, moving forward, the brand is taking a collaborative, “Faith Tribe” approach to design and prioritizing “phyygital” products. She also provided details on Faith Connexion’s planned expansion within the U.S. market.