Ten years ago, despite a lack of fashion experience, Janessa Leoné launched her L.A.-based namesake fashion brand best known for “cool girl” hats. In the years since, after admittedly leaning heavily on Google to learn the ins and outs of running a fashion business, she’s grown the brand sustainably and without outside investment. It’s earned celeb fans including Meghan Markle and Taylor Swift and, as of 2021, it has a store in Los Angeles.  “I started this [brand] quite blindly; I didn’t have a business plan or go out with this extraordinary intentionality,” Leoné said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “If I did, I might not have done it, because I didn't realize what was actually required.”  Leoné owed the brand’s success to its authenticity and slow, organic growth. Its birth at the start of the Instagram era, as well as its early fans in the fashion industry, worked to get it off the ground. More recently, Leoné has worked out some kinks in-house to ensure the brand’s growth trajectory.  “I used Covid to pause and assess and analyze what was working and what wasn’t working,” she said. “There were a lot of broken systems within the business, plus unsustainable ways that I was trying to show up in this business and that I was expecting other people to show up. And so we went through a metamorphosis… I hired a contract COO to help me problem-solve and look at the org chart, and say, 'What roles are we missing?' We now have extraordinary subject matter experts, and it feels like this massive machine that is growing.”

Matt Kaness has an extensive retail background with a heavy focus on e-commerce, having worked as the CEO of Modcloth and, for eight years, URBN’s chief strategy officer. Since late last year, he’s zeroed in on retail’s booming resale sector, as CEO of the new online marketplace GoodwillFinds.  “We’re a technology venture,” Kansas said on the latest Glossy Podcast, explaining GoodwillFinds’ business model. The company’s tech focus includes building out proprietary tools “for sellers to be able to list [products] quickly, for customer acquisition and retention, and for [partner] Goodwill [store owners], in support of their packing, shipping and outbound logistics.”  What drove Kaness’s interest in running GoodwillFinds was, in part, timing. “Coming out of Covid, the Gen-Z consumer has said that there's no stigma on secondhand,” he said. “That, coupled with a lot of advancements in technology, has allowed resale to scale profitably.”  GoodwillFinds, itself, has also impressively scaled. According to Kaness, the marketplace is currently attracting value-driven and trend-driven shoppers, with sustainability-driven shoppers being a target demographic. Since its launch, it's built up an email database of 250,000 subscribers, plus it's en route to offering 1 million products on its e-commerce site by the end of the year. It has 20 full-time employees, with 20-30 more set to come on board by the end of 2023.