The Glossy Podcast

Running a fashion company is work enough, but Alice + Olivia CEO Stacey Bendet has also made 2020 a year of initiatives that serve -- and push -- the entire industry.

In May, the Glossy 50 honoree rolled out Creatively, a job platform and networking app for creatives. "This is our gift to the Covid world," Bendet said on the Glossy Podcast.

"It will always be free to creatives, because it's built for creatives," she said. But it will eventually be monetized by charging those posting jobs on the platform.

In June, Bendet also co-created #ShareTheMicNow, starting by handing over her Instagram account (which has, at last check, 1 million followers) to a less represented voice for a day.

"Like, 'I trust you, here's my password, here's my account, you speak your voice. Let us listen,'" Bendet said.

Kourtney Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Diane von Furstenberg participated, as did dozens of prominent women who replicated the initiative in the U.K. in October, tthe country's Black History month.

CR Fashion Book president Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld doesn't usually go the easy route. In the spring, as the pandemic threatened to make this a bye year for the company's fashion show, he pitched another event organizer threatened by the pandemic (amfAR, a non-profit supporting HIV/AIDS research and prevention) on collaborating on a fully digital show.

"We worked on it for about a month and a half. It was non-stop," Restoin Roitfeld said on the Glossy Podcast. "Everybody agreed to do a little runway very safely from their own house[s] or apartments, and to wear whatever they wanted to wear from their closet."

Another feat in the face of serious inconvenience: launching a magazine in China. "It's not an easy place to launch a publication, with the political difficulties or censorship that you have to also face," Restoin Roitfeld said.

Kendra Scott insists she isn't kidding when she says she's thankful for 2008's Great Recession.

"I honestly believe we would not be talking today if that recession hadn't happened, because it forced me to have to run my business differently," Scott said on the Glossy Podcast.

Scott quickly pivoted the jewelry business to sell directly to consumers, as opposed to via wholesale only. Today, the brand has more than 100 stores nationwide.

When the pandemic hit, she said, she felt like she'd been here before. "It was like my muscle memory came back."

Scott joined the podcast to talk about the importance of charitable giving ("Since 2010, we've given over $30 million to women's and children's charities," she said), the human need for physical places like stores and the company's Texas origins, which give it an edge.

Fashion is a notoriously damaging industry for the environment.

"It was clear to me that the industry was a solid 7-10 years behind a number of other major consumer industries like food and CPG -- in owning up to the problems, putting in place solutions and educating the consumer," Another Tomorrow CEO Vanessa Barboni Hallik said on the Glossy Podcast.

Another Tomorrow is a certified B corp, making it for-profit, but with a clear set of social responsibilities. Its industry peers in that regard include Patagonia and Allbirds.

Each of the company's garments include a QR code that can be scanned for "the customer to see the entire provenance journey," Barboni Hallik said, adding that most customers use the function.

7 For All Mankind is nearly synonymous with the top-shelf denim trend of the early 2000s. "Premium denim didn't exist [prior]; we really launched this category," company president Suzanne Silverstein said on the Glossy Podcast.

Twenty years after its founding, the company is now doing a bit more reacting to established trends. The pandemic has put a premium on comfort above all, so the jeans maker is fast-tracking a few articles that focus on just that -- via an "elastic waist, forgiving fit," Silverstein said.

One focus of 7 For All Mankind that has remained intact is sustainability. The denim industry has a notoriously wasteful reputation, which it's "probably earned," Silverstein conceded. Two-thousand gallons of water are typically required to create one pair of jeans.

But by 2023, 7 For All Mankind expects that 80% of its products will clear certain scores by the Higg FEM standard.

"The only thing that's really slowing us down, quite frankly, is our existing raw materials," Silverstein said. "All new materials we work with fit our criteria."

It took a pandemic for Daniella Kallmeyer to put more of her own voice in the self-named fashion brand she started in 2012.

"I'm being more vocal about my personal experience and my political views," Kallmeyer said on the Glossy Podcast. "I've given some really raw interviews over the past couple of months, and I certainly have had people reach out to me and tell me how much they appreciate that."

Taking a stand on social issues is a big part of what companies are expected to do now, she said. And for those that don't? "You could become irrelevant."

Kallmeyer had projected "major growth" for the calendar year -- "January was our best month in business, to date," she said -- but then the pandemic hit. Since March, she has temporarily closed and reopened the company's newly opened physical store, and has launched a range of digital services for Kallmeyer customers.

As the CEO of digitally native menswear brand Bonobos, Micky Onvural has experienced both extreme challenges and lucky breaks in getting the brand through 2020. 

“We've always been predominantly e-commerce, so we didn't have the same catch-up game to play as other retailers did,” she said on the Glossy Podcast. “The biggest catch-up game we had to play was on the product side -- because we were ‘wear-to-work,’ but now we want to be ‘wear-everywhere.’”

To swiftly transition the product, among other untimely elements of the business, the Bonobos team kicked its operations into high gear. As Onvural sees it, that expedited pace is set to define the company’s new normal. 

“We’ve all gotten used to the fact that change is normal -- and that we have to be very fleet-of-foot, and we need to be half a step ahead, if possible, of what's going on with the customer, the competition and the industry,” she said. “[Five month ago] we were innovating fast, and we've just gotten used to that new pace of working.”

In addition to sharing how Bonobos plans to build on new learnings, products and initiatives, she discussed how the company is tackling the holiday season and why she believes, “There is always going to be a place for physical stores.” 

Todd Snyder is a master of collaborations. 

“I've always looked at brands I want to work with, and they're almost all originators in their space,” Snyder said on the Glossy Podcast. “They’re authentic and real, and American -- and the first of their version.”

Snyder launched his namesake brand in 2011, after stints as a lead designer at Ralph Lauren, Gap and J.Crew. The brand now averages 2-5 collaborations per year, which account for 50% of the business and vary in length: Its first, with Champion, is eight years running. Most recently, the brand linked with LL Bean on a fashion collection and a lodge in Kennebunkport, Maine on a room’s decor. 

“Part of our business plan is we look at: How do we expand our audience and also do things that are original, different?” he said. “I lean heavily into the design piece, just because I'm a designer by trade. It's not just, ‘Let's do some cool stuff, I want to slap my name on it.’ I really get into the weeds with the design team; that's the part I love.”

The 30-year fashion industry veteran also discussed how his brand transitioned from wholesale to DTC, where it’s filling white space and why print is still alive.

Joe's Jeans is heavily invested in working with influencers. It's a relationship that has to make sense to work, said Jennifer Hawkins, the brand's svp of marketing and innovation.

"It's not just plucking someone off a list and saying, 'Let's do a collaboration,'" Hawkins said on the Glossy Podcast. "It's finding people that you organically fit with from a product standpoint and working with them."

Hawkins talked about why she's bullish on Instagram Checkout, why Joe's needs a TikTok strategy and what separates a Nordstrom shopper from an Amazon one.

In Clearbanc president Michele Romanow's view, regular banks are pretty clueless.

"Banks don't understand digital business," she said on the Glossy Podcast. "They understand if you're a restaurant with a pizza oven, and that if your business goes out of business, they can sell the pizza oven, as it has residual value."

But they're less likely to accurately value inventory or to understand that a strong customer acquisition strategy -- if a DTC company has gotten there -- is a valuable asset in itself.

Founded in 2015, Clearbanc provides funding for widespread companies -- each of which are typically bringing in at least $10,000 in monthly revenue -- for a flat fee. To date, it's invested $1 billion in more than 3,000 brands, including Public Goods, Nectar and Haus.

By the numbers, these companies are more diverse than the ones venture capital typically underwrites.

A year and half into the company's existence, "we had funded eight-times more women than the venture capital industry average, which I'm super proud of," Romanow said. "We've funded founders in all 50 states in America. In comparison, 80% of VC dollars last year went into four states in America: California, New York, Texas and Massachusetts."

The company has invested heavily in DTC -- "right now is an incredible time for the DTC world," Romanow said -- but also on SaaS.