THE LEAD ASSEMBLY 2018
The Lead Assembly was held on June 21st at Cadillac House in New York City. The half day event featured more than 160 attendees from fashion & retail, digital native vertical brands, emerging technology start-ups, venture capital firms, fortune 1000 technology companies and organizations such as CFDA, WWD, Reuters Wall Street Journal and others.
KEYNOTE & PRESENTATIONS
An eye-opening keynote from Macy’s Marc Mastronardi (EVP Business Development, Innovation) kicked off the day’s programming, providing an insider look at the company’s strategy for innovation. More from WWD here.
Four rapid growth tech companies took the stage to give the audience a look at specific challenges and opportunities for fashion & retail in mobile commerce (Attentive), payments (Sezzle), cross-channel retail marketing (Bluecore) and people based marketing (BounceX).
Zenni Optical’s Chief Product Officer Bai Gan shared their unique story– how a $200 Million per year digital native brand built its business without any outside investment.
PANEL & DISCUSSIONS
The question at hand- What is next for Digital Native Vertical Brands? In a panel led by Cassie Rosenthal (SVP, Rosenthal & Rosenthal), Aaron Sanandres (Co-Founder & CEO, UNTUCKit), Daniella Yacobovsky (Co-Founder, BAUBLEBAR), and Mariah Chase (CEO, ELOQUII) shared their thoughts on brick and mortar retail, wholesale partnerships, geographical focus and next steps for growth.
Roundtables hosted by industry experts from companies including Store No. 8 / Walmart, Glossier, NBCUniversal, Facebook, Google, CFDA, eBay Fashion, IBM Watson Commerce, Cadillac, and others offering focused groups of executives the opportunity to discuss dynamic topics.
To close, Cosabella’s CEO & Creative Director, Guido Campello offered insight into how he continues to transform his family’s generational business, providing a blueprint to evolution for brands large and small.
