In late 2019, when Anna Harman and Lisa Bubbers launched ear piercing and pierced earring company Studs, providing IRL services was at the center of their business model. But then the pandemic hit. Today, e-commerce is every bit as important. "In 2022, we're focused on both [channels]," said Harman, on the latest Glossy Podcast. "We want to really continue to invest in and grow the retail footprint, as well as grow the e-commerce business. We'd like them to be highly complementary to one another. The business will be more successful over time if both are key channels for us." The company has raised more than $30 million to fuel that cross-channel growth.  As for expanding its store footprint, Studs has a good start: Harman and Bubbers opened six new stores in 2021, and they plan to own more than 20 stores by the end of 2022. "You have so many small college towns across the U.S. that have a really captive, large audience of a portion of our core demographic," said Harman. "And so we can have a really large store footprint through time. The opportunity for Studs is unbounded." Outside of sales channels, Harman and Bubbers are focusing their efforts on expanding their in-house team and overall brand awareness. And, at every step, they plan to write their own playbook. "Innovation and outside-the-box thinking and creation are what get us out of bed in the morning," Harman said. 

Amanda Parkes never thought she'd wind up in fashion. Then again, 2-year-old Pangaia, where she serves as chief innovation officer, isn't your typical fashion company.  "We are a materials science company," Parkes said on the latest Glossy Podcast. "We're all about the future of materials, and we really think that's an approach that can change the fashion industry from the inside out." However, many fashion fans best know Pangaia as the brand behind the rainbow-bright sweatsuits with lines of text that have been worn by Harry Styles and Kourtney Kardashian. Parkes started her career as a mechanical engineer and product designer, before eventually going back to school, at the M.I.T. Media Lab. There, she earned a hybrid computer science-materials science Ph.D. and the rare job title of fashion scientist. "I came into fashion through the back door," she said. "When I was in college, 20 years ago, there was no such thing as a fashion scientist." But, she said -- despite the lack of interplay between the two worlds -- fashion and science go hand-in-hand. "Fashion is an amazing platform to be able to show off science," she said, adding, "I was really shocked when I got more into the fashion industry to realize that big fashion companies don't have internal research. I was coming from tech, working with companies like Intel and Google. They are doing their internal R&D 5-10 years out to change and transform and make their industries what they want them to be. Fashion didn't have that as much inside of the big companies or at all. So I saw that as first of all massive opportunity for [Pangaia] to fill in the space." Parkes also discussed the power of the Gen-Z shopper, the state of greenwashing and the future of sustainability in fashion.