GLD wants to be wherever its customers are, whether that’s TikTok, a Foot Locker or a department store in London.

For Chief Marketing Officer Vanessa Wallace, that’s the strategy behind the jewelry brand’s recent growth beyond direct-to-consumer.

“One of the things that we’re pretty proud of is that GLD started as a D2C brand,” Wallace told AfroTech.

The company began selling wholesale last year and is now in nearly 200 Lids locations. By the holidays, Wallace says, GLD will be in about 40 Foot Locker stores.

“Understanding who our consumer is, and as they’re getting their fits together, we can complete that fit,” she said. “[It’s about] being in their path where we need to.”

Wallace joined GLD after serving as CMO of Savage X Fenty and spending nearly two decades at Nike, including six years leading North America marketing for Jordan Brand. Before her corporate career, she played basketball at the University of Texas.

GLD’s growth is also global. The brand launched at Selfridges in the U.K. this summer and extended its NFL license from North America into the U.K. and Mexico.

“We know where our fans are, and we know people love the brand. They want to be able to rep their team,” Wallace said. “And so we’ve been able to expand that so we can get in the path of many more consumers across the globe.”

Chasing a feeling

Christian Johnston founded GLD in 2015 while playing college basketball at Duquesne University. Wallace credits his background with how naturally the brand moves between sports, music, fashion and streetwear.

“He wanted to look fly with his friends, and he wanted good quality jewelry,” she said. “He played basketball, so he was a sneakerhead and into streetwear.”

That connection still shapes GLD’s customers today.

“We have athletes who buy their first chain when they’re in high school, and then they graduate to when they’re on a professional field,” Wallace said. “We really want to be for those individuals who are really chasing that feeling and accomplishment.”

She says people from every corner of GLD’s audience buy jewelry for the same reason: “for that feeling of success, or that feeling of them celebrating a milestone, or them wanting to commemorate something that is significant in their life.”

Partnerships that start with fandom

That’s also how GLD approaches athlete and artist partnerships.

“It goes down to authenticity, right?” Wallace said. “We think about who naturally is into style, who naturally loves jewelry, and who, in some instances, has naturally been a part of our ecosystem.”

She pointed to Dallas Cowboys star Micah Parsons.

“He was playing high school football, and he bought his first GLD chain,” she said. “That relationship has grown, and him and Christian are really, really tight.”

This football season, GLD launched a collaboration with New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers.

“He is a style guy, but he also is a jewelry person, and so he loved the brand,” Wallace said. “He was able to sit down with Christian and design some really unique pieces.”

Another collaboration is on the way, she says. Each one follows the same process: “Christian and [the] collaborators sit down, talk through what they like, what they don’t like, pieces that they want to see, and then they make magic together.”

“Everyone talks about authenticity, but it is something that is very core to our brand,” she added.

The voice of the athlete

At Nike, Wallace learned a principle she still uses today.

“There was a saying around Nike: ‘Always listen to the voice of the athlete,’” she said. “If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

At GLD, those athletes are Gen Z shoppers, who she says “believe people more than brands” and are “more value-based.” That’s why creators and Johnston’s own story are so central to GLD’s marketing.

“We do this a lot with founder stories, and he’s telling you the why behind the design and what was his inspiration,” Wallace said. “It makes our brand more real to them, and it connects with them in a real, purposeful and meaningful way.”

Social commerce takes center stage

Wallace says Nike was just beginning to invest in paid and performance media when she left. Now, social commerce is shaping product decisions at GLD.

“I was in a meeting earlier this week, and we were talking about ‘27,” she said. “What products are we going to have on D2C? Which products are we going to introduce on TikTok Shop first, or [as] unique products to TikTok Shop?”

“That’s just a new channel of distribution right now,” she added.

Ahead of the holidays, GLD is also preparing its affiliate program, which Wallace describes as being “like our brand ambassadors in such a way that did not exist before.”

The brand uses a tiered creator strategy. Larger creators bring reach, but Wallace says smaller ones can matter just as much.

“We used to think you had to have 100,000 followers, and you need to be in front of them,” she said. “But it’s just as important to be with the next person who might have 500 followers or 1,000 followers, but their community trusts them.”

“It is social commerce that’s kind of driving the market at this point,” she said.

Staying true to its consumers

For Wallace, knowing who GLD serves is central to the brand’s success.

“As a Black woman, a person of color, I think about it in how we think through who we serve,” she said. “We know our demographic. It is Black and brown. Who is influencing culture usually looks like them: Black and brown creatives, musicians, athletes.”

“I hate to overuse this word, but we are just being authentic to who we are, and the people who brought us to the party and who have influenced us,” she said.

She pointed to the small golf collection GLD released this spring.

“It was styled the way we would style golf. Not country club by no stretch of the imagination, but with a little street and a little style,” she said. “Knowing that there’s more people of color playing golf than ever before, that’s just a small example of us making sure that we’re staying true to our consumers.”

What’s next

Wallace says GLD will keep investing in the channels already driving its growth while exploring new ones.

“I think it’s new niches,” she said. “If you think about streamers, they are now the new talent.”

Gaming is another focus. She pointed to the buzz around GTA as an example of a cultural moment the brand wants to be part of. GLD is also watching live selling, which she says “has become crazy.”

Women’s jewelry will remain part of the brand without becoming a separate line.

“While we won’t be a brand that will flip to just be her, we’ve always had women’s as a part of a dual-gender offering,” Wallace said. “You might buy it, I might buy it, we style it very differently.”

GLD is also looking at shopping in person.

“People want to shop, and so we’ve thought about what it feels like to have our own pop-up or brick-and-mortar stores,” she said, “so you really feel the DNA of GLD.”