When Anine Bing decided to turn her successful fashion blog and social media presence into a brand, Annika Meller was there. In the early days of the influencer's fashion brand, Meller helped Bing with everything from stuffing boxes to fulfilling orders, as they worked to build the company from the ground-up. In the years that followed, Anine Bing continued to grow its following and its business. The brand now has 10 stores, with four more on the way, and is experimenting with social and traditional marketing. The hope is that one day, the brand will be everywhere its customers are. On this week's episode of The Glossy Podcast, Hilary Milnes sits down with Annika Meller, COO and co-founder of Anine Bing, to discuss what it was like to build a brand on Instagram in 2012, why paid promotions can be dangerous and why investing in more traditional marketing channels like billboards and magazines makes sense.

When Joanna Griffiths launched her brand in 2013, she wanted to reinvent intimates. Knix, Griffiths’ brand of functional intimates, was built on the premise that women of all shapes and sizes deserve to be catered to. But while selling the brand through wholesale retailers, Griffiths found the industry didn’t quite share her vision. Stores refused to carry the brand’s extended size range, and Griffiths felt that buyers were more interested in filling a hole on their floor than representing the brand. On this week’s episode of The Glossy Podcast, Hilary Milnes sits down with Knix founder and CEO Joanna Griffiths, live at NRF 2019, to talk about how making the switch to direct-to-consumer empowered Knix to create more products on its own terms, how the change affected the brand’s marketing strategy and how the company is approaching physical retail.