The Glossy Podcast

Mejuri is a direct-to-consumer brand for fine jewelry, which cuts out the middlemen retail partners and focuses on a new marketing message supported by a transparency strategy. Founder Noura Sakkijha joined the Glossy Podcast to discuss the problems riddling the traditional jewelry industry and how to sell jewels online.

Johannes Leonardo founding partner and creative director Ferdinando Verderi wants brands to think beyond their Instagram feeds. "Media consumption is something that brands have imposed on themselves," he said on this week's Glossy Podcast.

Anna Lecat, the founder of sustainable clothing line Les Lunes, is hoping her global brand can help take down the idea that Chinese-produced fashion is cheaply made and low-quality. The brand’s factory, which it opened in 2012, is located in Shanghai and makes all of Les Lunes' collections, from lingerie to evening gowns. Lecat joined us on the Glossy Podcast to discuss slow fashion, the complicated relationship between American companies and Chinese manufacturers, and the fact that a sustainable fashion brand can work on a 12-week production cycle.

For Hilary Swank, launching her line of high-performance luxury apparel was a crash course in starting and running a business. She learned every detail, down to the minutiae of how long you can hold someone’s credit card online before you have to reach out and ask for it again. Swank joined the Glossy Podcast to share more about those fabrics, where the idea for Mission Statement came from and what a typical day in the life looks like when balancing a brand and an acting career.

Liz Bacelar has been straddling the line of fashion and technology since 2011, when she launched Decoded Fashion, an event series that connects entrepreneurs with fashion brands and designers. Now, she has a new business, TheCurrent, a platform that matches brands with technology solutions. She joined us for the Glossy Podcast to discuss the evolution of the fashion-tech space, the conundrum facing fashion CMOs and what brands have that Amazon doesn’t.

Farfetch has big ambitions for its Store of the Future project, a new service rolling out later this year that isn’t a store itself -- rather, it’s an API for in-store technology that luxury brands can use to modernize their physical boutiques. It’s hard to pin down exactly what a Farfetch-enabled “store of the future” will look and feel like. On this week’s podcast, which was recorded live at the first Glossy Summit in Miami, Farfetch North America president Jeff Fowler did his best to explain.

M. Gemi is hoping to get as close to on-demand retail as possible. The two-year-old brand, known for handmade Italian shoes, promises high quality without the middleman markups and launches new styles of women’s and men’s shoes (the latter of which it launched in 2016) every Monday. Thanks to a closely monitored production network of workshops in Italy, M.Gemi is nimble enough to act on customer response that same day, deciding which styles to invest in further and which to scale back. Cheryl Kaplan, M. Gemi's President, joined us for an episode of the Glossy Podcast to discuss on-demand retail at scale, how to respond to customer reactions in real time and moving into brick-and-mortar.

When former fashion editor Libby Callaway relocated from New York City to Nashville, the industry there was still centered around star-spangled suits and dressing the Grand Ole Opry. Lots has changed since then. In a recent study, the NFA estimated the Nashville fashion industry to be worth $5.6 billion, putting it third behind New York and Los Angeles, as far as American fashion capitals go. On a recent trip back to New York, Callaway stopped in for the Glossy Podcast, where she discussed the need for organized support around Nashville’s fashion industry and the attitude shift around the market.

Just two months in at his new position as CEO of the agency Laird + Partners, Patrick Yee has a clear idea of where he sees the industry heading -- and his team's role in making that happen. Yee, who left his post as Refinery 29’s evp of marketing and strategy to go agency-side, joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about the importance of knowing your end consumer, the parallels between media and retail, and the challenges facing CMOs today.

Tibi founder Amy Smilovic has seen a lot in the 20 years since she launched her brand, from the explosion of Amazon and Zara to the decline of the department store. Smilovic runs the Tibi brand, which she considers to be in the “advanced contemporary” market, with her husband. The company is self-operated, as Smilovic has intentionally steered clear of the demands of a higher-power board that would accompany an acquisition. Smilovic joined us on the Glossy Podcast to discuss her first two decades in fashion, and what it’s going to take for her to last another 20 years.