Thirteen years ago, Brett Heyman launched Edie Parker. Focused on acrylic clutch handbags, which soon became customizable, the brand married Heyman’s lifelong love of collecting vintage with her experience in luxury accessories PR, working for brands including Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci. She got the company off the ground by securing retail partners including Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman and leveraging her stylist contacts to get the bags in the hands of celebrities. “My background was so helpful [in starting the company],” she said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “I always tell [budding] founders that it's really great to work in the industry that you want to break into, [in order] to meet people and to [make] some contacts and have a leg up. … I knew a lot of people. Plus, I knew what was missing. And I knew how to promote it and who to get to promote it.” In 2016, Heyman expanded Edie Parker’s product assortment to the home decor category. And three years later, she launched the cannabis-adjacent spinoff brand Flower by Edie Parker. Its products include lighters, grinders and rolling papers, all in Edie Parker’s signature colorful, retro aesthetic. Oh, and there’s also a handbag with a retractable lighter that’s taken TikTok by storm and changed the business. With its growth fueled by the Burn Bag's sales, just four years in, Flower by Edie Parker now makes up 50% of the company’s total sales.  On the podcast, Heyman discusses how she’s catering to Flower’s “much more engaged,” “much more excited” shoppers, plus how she’s holding true to her brand’s DNA while building a business in a federally illegal industry.

Aaron Luo launched the DTC bag brand Caraa in 2015 alongside CFDA Award-winning designer Carmen Chen Wu. Now, eight years into the brand’s life, Luo has another brand under his belt — Mercado — and a new perspective on how DTC brands can grow and be successful in the modern retail landscape. “Back in the day, there were these people who came from a business background and came into DTC thinking, ‘Hey, there’s a waste of space here. We think we can do things better and cheaper and acquire customers quickly,’” Luo said. “I don’t want to say they never paid attention to the product, because many did. But marketing was much more important to them.” But that era of DTC brands being able to grow by forcing customer acquisition and dumping money into Meta is over, he said.