Hitmakers, Season 2

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andjelicaaa.substack.com

A product’s life doesn’t end at the point of sale.
In fashion, it may be just getting started.
There’s a strong connection between people who buy a lot on resale… and people who buy a lot of new clothing, too. They shop more. They turn over items faster. They return more. They discard perfectly good pieces. Which means resale isn’t replacing the primary market. It’s amplifying it.
That’s a new game.
Brands now aren’t just designing for this season. They’re designing for the afterlife of the product — for how it will circulate, hold value, signal status, and show up again in the market months or years later.
That has consequences for everything: design, merchandising, distribution, supply chain, even financial planning. Growth is no longer just about volume. It’s about durability, recognizability, inventory quality, and unit economics over time.
In this episode, we explore resale as the stock market for brands — and how the secondary market shapes value in the primary one.
Listen to our conversation here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.



Get full access to The Sociology of Business at andjelicaaa.substack.com/subscribe

Oscar Wilde said a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
He might as well have been talking about luxury today.
Because something is off. The industry spent years raising prices — and for a while, it worked. The higher price was the draw. But then consumers stopped buying it–literally and figuratively. The whole model crumbled like the house of cards.
What replaced it is more interesting. The most coveted things today aren’t the most expensive — they’re the most obscure. A run so limited that no one knows about it. An AI ad that pissed off almost everybody. Or, in the words of Matthew Blazy, “Craft as technology.”
When the currency changes, so does the trade.
In this episode, we’re asking: where is the value in an industry known for taste, craft, and story once it got addicted to growth at scale and high price?
Listen here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.



Get full access to The Sociology of Business at andjelicaaa.substack.com/subscribe

There are four basic tastes — sweet, salty, sour, bitter.
There’s actually a fifth one. It’s called umami. It’s the flavor that lingers. The one chefs chase because it stays with you after everything else fades.
A few years ago, cultural strategist Emily Segal borrowed that idea for her “Umami Theory of Value,” describing a certain kind of savory cultural work — the kind that feels familiar and surprising at the same time. Not just catchy… but sticky.
And right now, that kind of work is getting harder to find.
Our feeds are full of speed. Shock. Endless novelty. Everything hits fast and disappears faster.
So what does it take to make something linger?
In this episode, we’re talking about what we’re calling neo-umami — cultural work that turns attention into legibility. By unfolding. By deepening. By resisting the algorithm.
Listen to the Episode 10 of Hitmakers, Season 2, the show that tracks how culture moves margins, multiples, and market cap.



Get full access to The Sociology of Business at andjelicaaa.substack.com/subscribe

Dame Vivienne Westwood once said, “Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.”
In the 1980s, we had Air Jordans and Back to the Future.
In the 1990s, it was grunge, Pretty Woman, Britney Spears.
Iconic things have always been products of their moment.
When the media was mass, culture was mass. When distribution was centralized, symbols were shared.
That’s no longer true.
Today, influence is fragmented. Taste is fragmented. Communities are fragmented.
The geography of culture has collapsed—from mass movements to millions of micro-scenes.
So how does culture move now?
In this episode, we explore how algorithms reward both scale and specificity—and why pop culture is just a backdrop now.



Get full access to The Sociology of Business at andjelicaaa.substack.com/subscribe