Sourcing Journal Radio is thought leadership brought to life. Each podcast episode provides apparel industry executives with a platform from which to showcase their personalities and share their perspectives on a range of engaging topics, enabling listeners to consider new points of view and plot their next steps.
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February 4, 202639 min
Marine Layer’s Cofounders on Brick-and-Mortar Investments, Why Materials Matter and Running a B Corp Business
More than 15 years ago, two childhood friends decided to
make the switch from finance to fashion, and Marine Layer was born.
What began as a small operation with a single 450-square-foot
storefront today counts 55 locations, with more retail openings in the works.
On this episode of WWD Voices for Retail Rx, Michael Natenshon, cofounder and chief executive officer of Marine Layer, Adam Lynch, cofounder and chief operating officer of Marine Layer, chat with
Ian Fredericks, chief executive officer of Hilco Global Capital Solutions and
executive director of Hilco’s consumer and retail platform, about their company’s early stages, how they are approaching product
development and what is next for the brand.
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January 7, 202619 min
Disposable to Durable: Altering Apparel's Fast-Fashion Mindset
Over the last few decades, the industry has been reliant on ever-expanding production volumes to achieve continued sales growth. Although a few super-fast-fashion giants are often criticized for their overproduction contributions and low prices, the general mass manufacturing trend across the fashion landscape has collectively led to excess. For 8 billion people, the industry is creating upwards of 80 billion pieces per year.Suzanne Ellingham, director of trade show Source Fashion, made the case for tamping down on overproduction and adopting a “post-growth” strategy. This leaves margins and profit intact by right-sizing inventory, reducing discounting and waste.“What we should be looking at doing is producing how much we can actually sell,” Ellingham said. “[There’s] this constant need to be producing more and more and more. The reality is volume doesn't do anyone any favors, apart from continuing to drive the profits at the cost of people and planet.”Listen to the fireside chat, with Ellingham in conversation with Jasmin Malik Chua, climate and labor editor at Sourcing Journal, to learn more about why the current production and pricing models are so harmful to people and the planet and what post-growth actually means for operations and profitability.
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December 2, 202530 min
NRF on Shopping Shifts and That $1 Trillion Holiday Forecast
With news headlines shouting doom and gloom in every direction, is the National Retail Federation’s record-breaking $1 trillion holiday forecast wishful thinking? Or something more nuanced?
“The consumer is sentimentally weak, but fundamentally sound,” explained Mark Mathews, chief economist and executive director of research for the NRF in a special podcast episode for Retail Rx with Ian Fredericks, chief executive officer of Hilco Global Capital Solutions and executive director of Hilco’s Consumer and Retail platform. That’s important because the consumer is powering our economy more than ever before. Today, 68 percent of GDP is driven by consumer spending—the largest percentage in the past 15 years.
“While lower-income households are definitely struggling, what we have seen over the course of the year is that all households have protected their spending on loved ones,” said Mathews. “Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Back to School, Halloween… we've had at or near record levels of spend across all of those events.”
Essentially, it’s the nature of spending that has changed, and to safeguard that spending, many have pulled back in other areas like recreation or travel. Consumers have also shifted to more promotional spending that squeeze margins.
“The retailer is constrained because prices are rising, so while retailers will offer sales that are important to consumers, we may not see the breadth of sales that we’ve seen before,” Mathews said.
The NRF has been analyzing data and advising retailers for over a century. The November/December season represents roughly 20 percent of the year’s retail sales for many retailers.
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November 25, 202512 min
Moving Wood-Based Fibers Forward with Sustainability and Transparency
As the fashion and textile industry increasingly seeks out greener fiber options, India’s Birla Cellulose is rising to meet the demands of a more exacting market.The manufacturer, which specializes in the production of man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCF) such as viscose and modal, is expanding the production capacity for its Birla Excel lyocell, investing in the closed-loop fiber that is even more eco-friendly than its MMCF peers.Listen to the fireside chat between Vadiraj Kulkarni, business head of Birla Cellulose, and Sarah Jones, senior editor, strategic content at Sourcing Journal, to learn more about what sets lyocell apart in the fiber field and the business impact of responsibly sourcing inputs.
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November 24, 202526 min
Inside the SJ Sustainability Report: A New Way of Thinking
The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results,” so it’s encouraging to see that sustainability
advocates are reconsidering old ways and thinking outside the box. Hence the title of Sourcing Journal’s latest Sustainability Report, titled “A New Way of Thinking.”
But despite industry progress, the headwinds have never been greater. So where are we in the quest for a more sustainable fashion industry? In other words, is sustainability sustainable?
In this episode, Jasmin Malik Chua, SJ’s climate and labor editor, and Alex
Harrell, SJ’s sustainability and innovation reporter, sit down with Lauren
Parker, director of Fairchild Studio, to dive into the report and see if the
industry is doing all it can to prevent a “sustainability retreat.”
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November 13, 202539 min
AWS on Future-Proofing the Holiday Season with Agentic AI
The holiday season is make or break time for retailers, as the last two months of the year can account for more than 20 percent of annual sales for many businesses. But this season is expected to be like none other, as 2025 marks the first year with agentic AI rewriting the retail playbook, from marketing to customer support.
In this podcast for Retail Rx, David Dorf, global head of retail solutions at Amazon Web Services (AWS) chats with Ian Fredericks, chief executive officer of Hilco Global Capital Solutions and executive director of Hilco Global’s retail and consumer platform. They explore the many ways agentic AI is being used to help retailers seize this next chapter, and whether retailers should have a chief AI officer.
“When we talk about agentic AI, it's really based on the word agency, so we’re giving the [large learning model] autonomous ability to go out and act on our behalf,” said Dorf, explaining that there’s a “litmus test” he uses to see if it’s really an agent. One, can it reason? Two, does it have access to tools – like a weather site – that can help it make a decision? And three, is it autonomous?
Answer engines with AI summaries are another growth area. “Around 75 percent of people have said that they have used an answer engine to start their shopping journey before,” said Dorf. “We’re going to see more of that. Walmart said has about 20 percent of their referral traffic is coming from these answer engines; people asking it a generic question and ending up at the Walmart site. So this pretty impactful.”
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October 30, 202512 min
Inside SJ Denim's Fall Issue: A Decade of Denim
SJ Denim turned 10 this year, and after a decade reporting on the business of denim, one thing is clear: trends might be constantly looking to the past, but innovations and sustainability attitudes are all about the future.
In this episode, Sourcing Journal executive editor and denim expert Angela Velasquez chats with Lauren Parker, director of Fairchild Studio, about the latest issue of SJ Denim and the industry at large. With the Kingpins denim show in Amsterdam fresh in her mind, Velasquez also offered forward-looking trend and business insights on the future of denim.
https://sourcingjournal.com/report/
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October 15, 202520 min
Mitigating Retail Cybersecurity Risk
With the rapid growth in e-commerce, retailers increasingly collect and store customer data to deliver personalized shopping experiences. Yet without proper safeguards in place, unsecured data can introduce significant risk.
It’s not just consumer personal data that’s increasingly at risk, but corporate information as well. “The retail industry is one of the most IP-intensive industries in the world, and it needs to protect its trade secrets as well as intellectual property,” said Alexander Niejelow, executive director, Hilco Global Cyber Advisors, in a fireside chat for Retail Rx with Lauren Parker, director of Fairchild Studio.
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September 23, 202515 min
Material Innovation and Verification in Circular Fashion
Any brand can claim sustainable materials, but words mean nothing without third-party testing and certifications. In fact, unverified sustainability claims—even if they are valid—can often lead to suspicions of greenwashing.
Here, Min Zhu, senior director, technical services and operations, US & Canada Softlines, of global testing and certification company SGS, and Haley Gershon, marketing manager of SGS Beta (formerly Beta Analytic), a
leading Carbon-14 testing lab for biobased materials that SGS acquired in
November 2024, discuss why biobased materials need verification.
Watch the fireside chat to learn:
The current status of circular fashion and its key progresses
The journey of SGS and Beta’s combination and synergy
SGS solutions to material sustainability and circularity
How SGS collaborates with fashion brands to test and verify
biobased materials
SGS’ IMPACT NOW sustainability initiatives
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September 16, 202525 min
Inside SJ's Logistics Report: The Technology Issue
When it comes to logistics and technology, machines and humans continue their symbiotic dance to get goods loaded, shipped, railed, trucked, stored, sorted, picked, packed and delivered with ever-greater efficiencies.
And what they’re achieving, is nothing short of amazing, although not without its challenges.
In this episode, Lauren Parker, director of SJ and Fairchild Studios,
dives into SJ's "Logistics Report: The Technology Issue" with two Sourcing Journal editors, logistics editor Glenn Taylor and business editor Meghan Hall, business editor. They discuss what's now, what's next, and what it all means for your business.
Download the report at: www.sourcingjournal.com/report
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