Protests continue around the country and world three weeks after George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. This new instance of police violence caught on video has boosted public support for Black Lives Matter while driving policy changes from governments, police departments and companies. Toms is used to building strategies around public good. "We're incredibly proud to have inspired many, many companies to be purpose-driven," Amy Smith, the company's chief giving officer, said on the Glossy Podcast. The original, core initiative behind the company -- to donate a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair purchased -- isn't exactly adjacent to the public challenges facing America today. But the shoe company is among dozens of beauty and fashion brands that have donated to Black Lives Matter, and it plans on contributing another $100,000 in the next three months. Beyond that, Toms is looking at its own practices. "We're taking the time now to do a full assessment of what our business and employment practices are, so we can create a baseline and share with our customers, very transparently: 'What is a plan for change for Toms?'" Toms anticipates it will cross the 100 million pairs donated mark sometime this year, according to Smith, and since 2018 it has also funded grants for socially-inclined nonprofits. The company also now donates a third of its net profits. Last December, Toms agreed to a takeover from its creditors led by Jefferies Financial Group Inc., Nexus Capital Management LP and Brookfield Asset Management Inc., in exchange for restructuring its debt.

In a three-week period shortly after the pandemic outbreak, Richer Poorer sold three times as many sweatpants than in all of 2019. That was a small part of an overall trend for the basics clothing brand: The first five months of 2020 have greatly boosted online sales, transforming it into an e-commerce business first and foremost. "We essentially had to kind of rebuild and restructure our team overnight to now go, 'OK, we're a DTC brand,'" the company's CEO Iva Pawling said on the Glossy Podcast. Richer Poorer had already been planning to gradually shift to a focus on e-commerce over wholesale. The plan was to grow direct sales to 40% of revenue in 2020 and reach parity next year on the way to a primarily DTC model. Now, Pawling estimates e-commerce is set to make up roughly 75% of the company's bottom line this year. Pawling said that a pivot in branding, already underway before the pandemic struck, has helped the company pitch its products as right for the moment. "We very much had rebranded under this belief that what we're here to do is deliver confidence and comfort -- that your comfortable clothes don't have to be these items that are just stay-at-home because they look sloppy and you don't feel comfortable going outside in them." In a stroke of luck, the company's fall 2020 collection -- planned as far back as last November -- conceptualized around "being the most comfortable at home," Pawling said. And because it's now seeing a much higher return on digital advertising, it's increased spending on that front. "We had suddenly way more eyeballs on us and traffic coming to us, which helps. And then on the other side, a lot of people that we were competing against from an ads perspective, digitally, had completely just turned their ad spend off when this happened. So we really were able to fast forward quite a bit of growth based on those things." As for retail, Pawling said that a previous plan to open a brick-and-mortar store in late 2020 is now completely off the table. The earliest the company will tackle physical retail is 2022, she said. Pawling is pretty used to tumult. She co-founded Richer Poorer in 2010 -- as a purveyor of midrange socks for men, exclusively -- before she and her co-founder Tim Morse sold it to Shoes.com in 2015. But their new owner's business model wasn't as sound as they had expected. "The whole thing just imploded," Pawling said. She and Morse had to convince two board members to buy the business out. Weeks later, Shoes.com filed for bankruptcy. Richer Poorer's ownership has since returned to Pawling and Morse, who have turned it into a clothing line that caters mostly to women. As for the socks? "They make up about 8% of the business at this point," Pawling said.