The Glossy Podcast

People may not be getting dressed and going out like they used to, but for Bombas, sales are up.

The sock company is beating the target it set for itself back in January, before the pandemic kept people at home (where socks are a little more optional).

"Sales are up," Bombas co-founder and chief brand officer Randy Goldberg said on the Glossy Podcast. "There's that response to comfort and a response to community. And people are looking for these little moments for themselves."

Bombas was founded in 2013, starting with an Indiegogo campaign. For every pair sold, the company donates one to the homeless -- "but also people who are at risk and in need," Goldberg said, through a network of more than 3,500 "giving partners."

"Those are anything from a small shelter in a small town to big organizations like the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] and the Special Olympics. We're in all 50 states."

Bombas has also recently moved into different categories, including cotton T-shirts.

Goldberg talked about how Bombas aims to make the most comfortable socks around, how DTC strategies have changed in recent years and which of the brand's product categories isn't as hot as he thought it would be this year.

After a summer of virtual fashion showcases, Paris is going back to the real thing.

Among the labels on the (outdoor) catwalk schedule for the upcoming Paris Fashion Week is Ami, the company founded in 2011 -- but which only got into womenswear in 2018.

"I do this job, for nine years now, because of the show. The show is a magical moment. It's a rendezvous which is not replaceable," founder Alexandre Mattiussi said on the Glossy Podcast.

The coronavirus hasn't slowed Mattiussi's roll much in general. The company hasn't had to lay anyone off, just opened a new store in South Korea (making for about 10 stores in total) and had strong sales for its latest spring/summer collection.

"I don't want to scream it too loud, because I feel very grateful, but the business has been wonderful during this time," Mattiussi said.

As a result, the company has had the resources to take on certain responsibilities, like supporting struggling wholesalers by maintaining longstanding partnerships and making its production more sustainable.

"We all want [more sustainability]," Mattiussi said. "I just want to look at my face in the mirror every day when I wake up in a few years and say we've been part of it."

Maison de Mode CEO Hassan Pierre knows that if sustainable fashion doesn't look as good as everything else on the market, it's not going to make much of a positive impact on the environment.

"I always say that if a shirt saves a thousand lives, but it's ugly, no one's going to buy it," Pierre said on the Glossy Podcast. "So we need, as a retailer, to make people dream and to really make people want to buy things -- not just because they're good, but also because they want to wear them."

Maison de Mode launched in 2015 as a two-part business -- it's an online platform selling sustainable fashion from different labels (both off-the-rack and made-to-order) and a consulting firm, too. Maison de Mode makes a cut of every purchase on the marketplace side, and as a whole, the business grew 161% between March and April, Pierre said.

Like every online retailer, Maison de Mode keeps an eye on purchasing data. During the pandemic, consumers have turned to many of the categories you'd imagine -- "anything that is really beautiful and cozy and comfortable," Pierre said -- but also an unexpected one: fine jewelry.

"We would be out of touch if we were just selling ball gowns and high heels," Pierre said.

Ronny Kobo's self-named fashion line is nearly synonymous with "party dress," and there aren't many occasions for those these days.

"Luckily, we have not seen a lot of canceled styles and canceled orders," Kobo said on the Glossy Podcast. But the brand is still pivoting to selling online, including for the swimwear line it will be launching in the spring.

"Retail's going to change drastically in the next year. We're all going digital," Kobo said. "Even the local boutiques are going to need to figure out a way to communicate with their customer."

The pandemic has been hard on fashion brands -- but especially for Billy Reid, which hosts an annual arts festival in its hometown of Florence, Alabama that has become part of its identity.

"I can't tell you how many texts I get per week from friends, going, 'What's up with Shindig this year?' And you have to let them down easy," Reid said on the Glossy Podcast.

The menswear-first company is looking forward to doubling-down on the event next year, and Reid said he's just glad to see it surviving the economic downturn. Personnel cutbacks have leveled off, he said, and all of the company's 14 stores have opened, though traffic is down.

"We believe that, eventually, it will come back," Reid said. "We're bullish on it."

Womenswear makes up 20-25% of Billy Reid's sales and is only carried in its own stores.

The direct-to-consumer brands that have sprung up in the last decade have promised to deliver quality at a better price by cutting out the middlemen: retailers.

Italic wants to do the same, but is taking a different approach by working with multiple manufacturers that supply top brands. Its result is a lineup of quality products, without brand names or premium price tags.

The company launched in 2018 with a different membership than the model it recently adopted -- the annual cost is now $100, which can quickly pay for itself in savings, according to founder and CEO Jeremy Cai. The company sells products ranging from leather jackets to handbags to cookware. For each one, Italic's site specifies which companies its manufacturer supplies (like Hugo Boss, Armani and Longchamp, in the case of backpacks).

"Italic is actually a very easy math exercise to just do in your head: 'Hey, am I going to make my money back on $100, if I purchase one time?' And over 90% of the time, that is correct," Cai said on the Glossy Podcast.

Cost-consciousness might not be the first value someone identifies with, but Cai says it's an evergreen one. "There are millions of Costco shoppers, there are millions of people who really love Spotify instead of purchasing music outright," Cai said. "The shopping mindset of, ‘I want to buy things that’ll be a great deal; I want to be smart about my purchases,’ accelerated our desire to actually go to market" with the new membership pricing.

To forecast the next fashion trends, Soludos founder Nick Brown looked to past crises.

Before the 2008 crisis, "it was all about ornaments and stuff being very sexy and over-the-top," Brown said on the Glossy Podcast. "Then in 2010, it shifted toward minimalism and modernism."

Brown wagered that fashion will stay on the minimalist side. But either way, shoes are a tough category. "In some of these customer surveys, and certainly in my own life, I'm only buying what I need to, and I'm not going out that much," Brown said.

As a result, Soludos is focusing on fewer products and sustainable production.

Product delivery has also evolved. Soludos' sales have moved online; 70% of its sales now come through its own website, Brown said. "We've all seen the numbers that, in two months, there's been 10 years' worth of e-commerce penetration," he said.

In fashion, the small businesses have suffered more than the big ones since March.

But Commando founder Kerry O'Brien thinks that, for those boutiques that can survive a tortuous shutdown, the other side will be a lot brighter. "I think they're going to have a resurgence if they can make it through these times," she said. "Women are going to want to go to their local shop, and they're going to want to have a conversation with someone they know in a small setting."

Boutiques were where Commando, which started off in the underwear category, got its start. It's still carried in more than 1,000 boutiques, as well as at major department stores.

O'Brien launched the company in 2003, a few years after having quit her job at public relations giant Edelman the day after 9/11.

The company has since grown, playing a role in the surge in popularity of bike shorts, according to O'Brien. Bella Hadid wore a pair by Commando at Paris Fashion Week in 2017.

O'Brien thinks women shopping for clothes are now looking for two things: comfort and transparency about where the clothes came from. Commando manufactures its products in the United States and imports most fabrics from Europe.

With the pandemic keeping retail foot traffic down, she's been spending most of her time at the company's home base in Burlington, Vermont. For a recent photo shoot, O'Brien said, "We used a local model. We can't bring in a New York City model, because they would have to quarantine."

The ongoing demand for LaQuan Smith's signature sexy designs is both a blessing and a curse, as he put it on the Glossy Podcast.

"It was a very humbling experience, because I had to find alternative ways to still be able to produce these orders," Smith said. "Thankful they didn't get dropped, but also, damn, because I'm now in a compromised position: How do I get these done, how do I fulfill all these orders on time?"

Smith pulled it off by having his cutters work from home while "packing and shipping from my living room," he said. To him, the fact that his designs are in demand despite a pandemic gives him further confidence in his self-named brand, which he said faced significant doubts when it debuted in 2013.

But he said he's recently faced tokenism, whereby his achievements as a designer have been flattened by his grouping with other Black designers.

"You can't group me with [someone] who just started designing three months ago on Instagram. That's not fair," Smith said, referring to the lists of Black designers to support, that have recently surfaced across media channels. "They're putting all these Black designers in one box. To me, this is not the way you do that. If you want to really celebrate designers of color, you do it the right way."

After a pandemic-caused delay, influencer Arielle Charnas' clothing company Something Navy finally relaunched last week as a direct-to-consumer brand, after selling exclusively as a Nordstrom collaboration.

For her and interim CEO Matt Scanlan, it was worth the wait: Online, Something Navy grossed $1 million in just 30 minutes, according to Charnas and Scanlan.

"The velocity and speed of sales totally broke our back end," Scanlan said on the Glossy Podcast.

Charnas has a considerable Instagram following of 1.3 million to thank for the marketing push. In fact, Something Navy didn't spend a dollar on traditional marketing, Scanlan said.

But a massive following can also come with scrutiny. Back in March, Charnas drew criticism for the way she handled a Covid-19 diagnosis -- withdrawing to a house outside of NYC, rather than staying home.

"People wanted me to be more sensitive about what was going on in the world, and I should have been," Charnas said.

Scanlan and Charnas talked about the lessons learned, the future of influencer culture and the new KPIs for a clothing company.