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Before we launched Glossier in 2014, we started as Into The Gloss. A beauty website and community devoted to sharing real information with real people, about really amazing products. It's where we realized that beauty shouldn't be built in a boardroom-it should be built by you. This ethos gave birth to our philosophy: Skin First. Makeup Second™. We prioritize skincare because we believe that healthy skin is the best foundation.

We believe in thoughtful design and cultivating conversations. It's at the core of everything we do-the starting point of all our makeup, skincare, bodycare, and fragrance products. At Glossier, beauty is about celebrating freedom of expression, individuality , and having fun. Our Skin First. Makeup Second™ approach ensures that every product supports your skin's health, allowing your makeup to enhance rather than mask your natural beauty.

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Shop The New Beauty Essentials Exclusively At Glossier.com. Good Routines Start Here. Get the Makeup And Skincare Products Inspired By Real People And Their Routines.

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47 Best New Retail Concept Stores in the World

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47 Best New Retail Concept Stores in the World

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Concept stores, this is where most brands have tried out their ideas on a smaller scale to see if they would be successful.
Chanel’s new flagship in Paris is essentially a test space for its newest digital initiatives.
Partnered with Farfetch to create personalised shopping experiences.
The two top floors of the store are dedicated to VIP customers only, with personal styling rooms and a restaurant exclusively for private meals.(Insider Trends, 2019)

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How has shopping changed before and after pandemic?

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How has shopping changed before and after pandemic?

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Trends show consumers are buying more comfort items. They are treating themselves to experiences they didn't get to enjoy last year.
Convenience will play a big part.
Consumers are prepared to pay more for items that they feel they deserve.

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Our daily habits have changed as a result of the pandemic, across all aspects of life: work, exercise and even fashion. As lockdown restrictions start to ease, it is easier to see just how drastic the effects of the pandemic have been on our choices.

Trend researchers have already noticed that the types of clothing people are shopping for have changed - comfortable fits reign supreme over slimmer silhouettes and loungewear is seemingly more popular than ever. However the ways in which people are shopping have evolved just as much.

Kristen Gall, retail expert and president of Rakuten Rewards, has described new consumer behaviors as "revenge shopping," which she defines as, "a phenomenon where people are spending money on items and experiences that they felt they were deprived of last year."

According to Gall's predictions, consumers will have an increased desire to spend more money on non-essential items.

"As a result of this, consumers will purchase luxury and non-essential items that they have been holding off on purchasing this past year," Gall told FashionUnited.

"This last year acted as a giant savings account for many people, which means that a large group of people with discretionary income who may not have spent on luxury goods before now actually have the means to treat themselves," Gall said. Luxury may be that outlet."

The pandemic affects shopping habits for years to come

Gall describes the future of shopping to reflect a repetition of history, similar to the 1920s following the flu of 1918.

"Revenge shopping will resemble what we saw during the Roaring Twenties, post-WW1 and the last pandemic - a surging economy that will drive consumers to shop for more of the finer things that many felt they were deprived of due to the pandemic," she explained.

This phenomenon will not be short-lived, though it won't be forever. Gall advises that consumers will be more comfortable paying higher prices as we emerge from the pandemic, though over time "price sensitivity will normalize and will more closely resemble pre-pandemic habits."

She said, "In the short term, people will be more comfortable paying higher prices for items. We'll see a splurge on goods and experiences that they wouldn't ever have spent on before as a "reward" for making it through the pandemic. The demand for things like travel might actually drive prices up in the short term as well."

Convenience is more important than ever

A consumer demand for added conveniences in shopping experiences has been on the rise for several years, and in a post-COVIS world, this demand will only get stronger.

"Convenience will only play a bigger role in the way consumers shop, and alternative shopping options we saw bloom during the pandemic will only become the norm," Gall said.

Retails have already been integrating omnichannel offerings to integrate digital and physical shopping, meeting the consumer where they please. Services like buy online, pick up in-store, curbside pick-up, digital checkout, virtual concierge, will come to be expected by consumers.

The pandemic alters style preferences for future trends

Consumers have two main preferences when it comes to what types of clothes they choose to spend their money on: elevated "going out" styles, and comfortable everyday clothing.

After spending so much time at home over the past year, consumers have come to realize the importance of comfort, and therefore prioritize this when making style choices. At the same time, people have grown bored with basic wardrobe items and crave the opportunity to dress up when they can.

Gall believes these preferences will make themselves known in the coming seasons.

"As a result of relaxed lockdown restrictions and the opportunities to travel and attend more events in person, consumers will purchase items that they can show off," she said. "The concept of the 'going-out' outfit will come back in a big way and we will see people shopping for items like dresses, heels, jewelry, and swimwear.

"Consumers have become accustomed to comfort yet stylish attire that is versatile and can be worn anywhere. While people will be ready to go back to traditional outerwear, comfort will still be a staple in wardrobes. Because of this, we'll see a fashion fusion that combines dressy with comfort, like dress pants with elastic waistbands."

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How shopping habits have evolved since the pandemic

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Our daily habits have changed as a result of the pandemic, across all aspects of life: work, exercise and even fashion. As lockdown restrictions start to ease, it is easier to see just how drastic the effects of the pandemic have been on our choices.

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Fashion is becoming more sustainable, digital, simplified and data-driven.

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Fashion has always been known to push the envelope. With new trends and ideas, fashion has an eye towards the future. The fashion industry will see huge amounts of innovation in coming years as new technology and changing customer trends and demands will transform the industry.

Here are four changes to expect in the future of fashion:
1 . Data-Driven
It used to be that consumers wore whatever designers created. Those days are over, and fashion brands now use data to understand customer preferences, monitor their shopping behavior and create products that meet their needs. The future of fashion is data-driven: by leveraging data on consumer trends, brands can create pieces consumers are most likely to purchase.

Many stores and brands, including Miu Miu and Stitch Fix, use data to predict the rise and fall of trends. Predictive analytics consider everything from climate to color preferences, social media trends and political movements. The benefits of using data in fashion are numerous: from only producing pieces consumers will actually wear to reducing waste and connecting the right consumers with pieces they will enjoy. Data also helps brands run more efficiently, giving them room to innovate and balance supply and demand.

Fashion forecasting has long been an artform, but with the growth of data analytics, it now becomes more of a science. That data extends to algorithms. Amazon is developing a machine learning program to automatically assess if an item is "stylish" or not. Google is testing user-driven AI fashion design that uses algorithms to create new pieces and styles. Data of all kinds will soon be sewn into every aspect of fashion.
2 . Sustainable
Fashion has long been one of the biggest contributors to waste and climate change, largely because of its unsustainable and non-eco-friendly production methods. But the tides are changing, and brands are moving towards more sustainable fabrics and manufacturing methods.

Fast fashion, which was popular for its ability to quickly and inexpensively reproduce runway looks, is in decline in favor of slow fashion-pieces that are more eco-friendly and designed to be longer lasting. Nearly 50% of fast fashion retailers have reported a recent decrease in customer purchases as consumers look for brands that take a stand for the environment.

Research shows that 88% of consumers want brands to help them be more environmentally friendly. Even with its strides, fashion has a long way to go. Fashion production releases 10% of the world's carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. A number of sustainable fashion brands are growing, and their innovative practices are becoming more commonplace among retailers. British design company Vin + Omi harvests its own crops to make clothing from horseradish plants and chestnuts. It also features clothing items made from recycled paint containers. Levi's recently unveiled a new collection of denim that uses 96% less water to create-a major win for clothing that notoriously requires a lot of water to produce.

Shopping for pre-owned items is also on the rise. The secondhand market is expected to hit $64 billion by 2024. Even as other forms of fashion shopping hit a Covid slump, online secondhand shopping continues to see strong growth. With more consumers looking to purchase previously worn items, fashion brands must create pieces with longevity and that can last beyond a single owner.
3 . Digital
The future of fashion is happening online, and brands will have to adjust how they create and sell clothing to make it work in a digital world.

With more shoppers taking advantage of online shopping, fashion retailers have to follow suit. Aside from changing Covid-19 restrictions, consumers increasingly prefer the convenience and speed of online shopping, even if it means not being able to try an item on in person. The most successful fashion brands of the future won't just make their clothing available online-they will also create an immersive digital shopping experience with things like virtual fit or sizing tools, virtual showrooms and virtual stylists. Fashion brands will also leverage technology like AR and VR to allow consumers to "try on" items digitally from the comfort of their own homes. Major retailers like Adidas, Macy's and Modcloth are adopting virtual dressing rooms and bringing the technology mainstream. Using AR to virtually try on items helps consumers stay more confident in their purchases and reduces return rates by 36%.

Even consumers who make purchases in person will still be influenced by digital efforts. A number of large fashion brands are moving to virtual fashion shows and are digitizing their designs into 3D prototypes on avatars that are easier to showcase, test and manufacture on demand. Designers can test out ideas virtually and float them with consumers before actually creating the physical pieces.
4 . Simplified
Fueled largely by Covid-19 changes, fashion is simplifying, both in its styles and in its delivery. Many fashion houses used to create eight collections a year. The result was a crowded fashion show schedule and items showing up in stores months before customers were ready to wear them, like swimsuits in February and winter wear in August. The new shift in fashion is to two collections a year: spring/summer and fall/winter. The simplified approach puts customers at the center by creating pieces when people will actually be shopping for them.

Simplifying fashion also saves money and the environment. Instead of moving through clothes so quickly and having to produce a new collection, marketing campaign and fashion show every six weeks, simplified collections reduce waste and the amount of clothing produced.

Fashion trends themselves will also become more simplified. With many people working from home and social distancing for the foreseeable future, fashion brands have toned down their styling in favor of comfortable loungewear and clothing that works for sleeping and living. Even after the pandemic, clothing will likely stay simple and comfortable.

The future of fashion will focus on customers and providing an innovative experience. The industry is continually evolving, but changes in the future will create a more sustainable, customer-centric and efficient industry.
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and the author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. Sign up for her weekly newsletter here
... Read More

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The Fashion Industry Is Ready For A Makeover: 4 Changes We'll See In The Future

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Fashion has always been known to push the envelope. With new trends and ideas, fashion has an eye towards the future. The fashion industry will see huge amounts of innovation in coming years as new technology and changing customer trends and demands will transform the industry.

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Comp Shop Task
This store felt like a museum, with clothes in glass boxes. It was very quiet and calming music was playing.
The visual displays were intriguing.

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Glossier: How this 33-year-old turned her beauty blog to a $1 billion brand

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Glossier: How this 33-year-old turned her beauty blog to a $1 billion brand

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"Glossier has raised over $190 million to date, according to PitchBook, which also said the $1.2 billion valuation is accurate according to its data. On Tuesday, Glossier announced it more than doubled its revenue in 2018 and surpassed $100 million, adding over 1 million new customers."(Berger, 2019)

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"The Boston store will be open Monday-Sunday from 11 a.m. through 7 p.m."(BostonGlobe.com, 2019)

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Glossier, the cult-favorite makeup brand whose products have graced the faces of Beyonce, Michelle Obama, and Tracee Ellis Ross, is opening a pop-up store in Boston's Seaport in August.

The store - which will operate from Aug. 7 through Oct. 4 at 85 Northern Ave. - is notable due to a key part of Glossier's brand: most consumers can only order products online.

The Boston store will be open Monday-Sunday from 11 a.m. through 7 p.m., a Glossier representative said. All Glossier products will be available to test and shop.

The Glossier brand differs from several other popular makeup lines in one key factor: Its original formulas are meant to achieve a more minimalistic "no makeup" look, focusing on highlighting the wearer's skin rather than caked-on pigment.

"Skin first, makeup second," the brand's Instagram page boasts in its description.

Some of the brand's products, including its signature lip gloss and eyebrow gel, have achieved cult status through word-of-mouth, and beauty influencers on YouTube have racked up millions of views reviewing the products, which are not widely available in stores.

The brand has also cheekily referenced its ads around Boston.

The brand, however, hasn't been without its criticism. Some knocked Glossier for its initial shade range, which skewed toward offering more options in lighter tones.

"I'm the color 'dark,' " Canadian influencer Samantha Ravndahl, who is white, said of the brand's foundation in a video review posted in April 2018. "So if that doesn't tell you something about Glossier's shade range, I don't know what will."

The brand has since expanded its color offerings to be more inclusive, and also renamed the tints from words like "light" and "dark" to a more neutral convention, with shades ranging from G1 to G12.

Others have taken issue with the brand's sheer coverage, saying that only those with clear, unbroken skin can confidently wear the products.

Glossier debuted in 2014. Since then, the company has launched 34 products, raised more than $186 million in venture capital funding, opened two permanent stores in New York and Los Angeles, and brought temporary retail to six cities, including Miami and Seattle, a representative said in an e-mail to the Globe.

This story was updated Aug. 6 to reflect the opening date and location of the store.

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Glossier is opening a pop-up makeup shop in Boston - The Boston Globe

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Glossier, the cult-favorite makeup brand whose products have graced the faces of Beyonce, Michelle Obama, and Tracee Ellis Ross, is opening a pop-up store in Boston's Seaport in August. The store - which will operate from Aug. 7 through Oct. 4 at 85 Northern Ave.

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For almost all of high school I rejected the idea of makeup, living in Florida, the idea of having makeup melt off my face the moment I stepped outside was not the move. I loved being able to walk out of the house with just SPF and my lip balm. Fast forward to seven months later and Glossier has revolutionized my life.

On one of those online retail therapy adventures that we all fall prey to, I happened to stumble upon Glossier's simplistic, pink and bubbly website. After seemingly endless internal deliberation, I decided to go with the Phase 2 Set, which includes their bestselling Boy Brow, Stretch Concealer, and my personal favorite, their Generation G lipstick.

Since then, in a matter of a few months, my make up collection went from zilch to over ten items. I fell in love with and literally religiously stalked all of Glossier's social media accounts, watched all related YouTube content, and dreamed about potentially being able to visit their showroom myself one day. So when I got the notification that Glossier would be opening a pop-up in Chicago, I literally left my second period class to book my tickets to Chicago early. Talk about brand loyalty!

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Please Come Back to Chicago, Glossier! - MODA

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This past fall I was entering a new chapter in my life: college. However, on the plane ride over, my giddy butterfly feelings were not about the start of a new chapter in my life or leaving home, but rather that I would now be near a physical Glossier establishment...in 3D and not online!

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"In just 10 short weeks, the pop-up store welcomed over 100,000 visitors and had the highest average daily sales of any of Glossier’s offline experiences. So, it makes sense that London will receive an all-new permanent store, alongside Seattle and Los Angeles."(Ibraheem, 2021)

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Breaking beauty news: Glossier is opening a permanent store in London. Yep, permanent.

Last year, the brand was forced to close doors on its temporary retail location (pictured above) in Covent Garden due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the brand was taken aback by its success.

Despite only opening in November 2019 (before its closure in March 2020), Glossier London became the brand's most successful pop-up of all time.

In just 10 short weeks, the pop-up store welcomed over 100,000 visitors and had the highest average daily sales of any of Glossier's offline experiences. So, it makes sense that London will receive an all-new permanent store, alongside Seattle and Los Angeles.

The announcement came from Glossier founder Emily Weiss in a blog post. Speaking about all of the hard work that went into creating Glossier experiences, she said: "And then, suddenly, our world flattened. We closed all our doors on March 13, 2020 to support public health, hoping the pandemic would run its course in a matter of weeks... and then months.

"Our team turned their attention to the digital spaces where we could still connect with our customers, and slowly faced the reality that Glossier retail, a communal experience that often drew lines down the block, wouldn't reopen until being together was safe again."

Now, as the world begins to open up, Glossier is making plans to welcome its customers once again. Keen to visit? Here's everything we know about Glossier's permanent store so far.

When will the new permanent Glossier store open?

While we haven't been given an exact date yet, Weiss announced that Glossier London will arrive in winter 2021.

In a statement, she said: "I'm excited to share that we'll be opening three all-new, permanent stores, starting in Seattle this August, followed by Los Angeles in the fall, and London in the winter.

"This is just the beginning: we have an exciting retail roadmap to bring Glossier to many more places, including our home base of New York City, in 2022."

Where will Glossier London be located?

We haven't been given an exact location yet but it will be a brand new location in London, meaning it may not be in Covent Garden, like the pop-up.

But rest assured, the new space sounds like it will take on a similar aesthetic.

"Our first three stores are the culmination of everything we've learned from our prior offline experiences, and like these experiences, they look at each city through Glossier-coloured glasses," says Weiss. "We're returning to places and communities we know and love: our new home in Los Angeles isn't far from our former location on Melrose Place.

"In Seattle, a city of forests and lakes, our store design plays with the juxtaposition of nature and technology.

"In London, we'll be following our most successful temporary store of all time with our first-ever permanent international flagship.

"Each of these stores is designed to inspire everyone to find joy and confidence in their personal beauty style, with a customer journey centred around self-discovery and belonging. People first, products second. "

What will be available at the Glossier London store?

Based off its temporary pop-up, we're assuming the all-new store will sell every one of Glossier's products, from its cult Boy Brow and Skin Tint to recently launched Ultralip and Cleanser Concentrate.

We're hoping GlossiWEAR, its clothing line, will be available to shop, too.

Watch this space for more details - and until then, start writing up your shopping list with our round up of the best Glossier products.

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PSA: Glossier announces it is opening a permanent store in London

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Beauty Posted by Hanna Ibraheem Published background Layer 1 Add this article to your list of favourites Breaking beauty news: Glossier is opening a permanent store in London. Yep, permanent. Last year, the brand was forced to close doors on its temporary retail location (pictured above) in Covent Garden due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Beauty brand Glossier has teamed up with landscape designer Studio Lily Kwong to create a pop-up shop in Seattle that is filled with plant-covered mounds and splashes of pink and purple.

Located in the city's Capitol Hill neighbourhood, the temporary space occupies a linear, ground-level space measuring 1,100 square feet (102 square metres).

The design was conceived by Glossier's in-house team in collaboration with landscape designer Lily Kwong, who runs an eponymous Brooklyn studio. The team drew inspiration from the area's natural topography, including Mount Rainier and a popular neighbourhood park.

"After talking to people in the area and doing some on-the-ground research, we were really inspired by everyone's love for nature and how it seemed to be a unifying theme within the community," said Kendall Latham, Glossier's senior environmental designer.

"With Glossier Seattle, we wanted to capture the mood of the surrounding landscape and represent the juxtaposition of nature and technology in the city."

Visitors step into a bright space filled with plant-covered mounds of varying sizes. Live moss, Mexican feather grass and flowering shrubs are among the array of species used to adorn the hills, which were constructed using wooden ribs and wire mesh. Many of the plants are indigenous to the region, and all of the vegetation was locally sourced.

"Studio Lily Kwong worked with horticulturists and plant experts to make sure we incorporated grow lights and implemented a maintenance plan to properly care for the plants," the studio said.

Glossier Flagship in New York includes soft-pink plasterwork and a Boy Brow Room

White display pedestals are positioned throughout the shop. Designed to be highly adaptable and scalable, the rectangular wooden blocks are topped with Corian surfaces. The company is able to reuse the stands in all of its pop-up stores owing to their flexibility.

Walls are painted a stark white, which contrasts with the verdant hills and raw pine flooring. The team incorporated large-format imagery that is rendered in tones of pink and purple, which draws upon Glossier's signature colour palette. The space also features wall-mounted mirrors lined with thin LED strips.

All of the company's beauty products, from makeup to lotions and serums, are available to test and purchase. Customers can also buy a limited-edition water bottle for $15 (£12), with a portion of the sales going to a local homeless shelter.

Also unique to the Seattle shop are reusable tote bags and "plantable" postcards, with wildflower seeds embedded in the paper.

"Glossier Seattle, like all of our offline spaces, is designed to be a pinnacle of engagement for the community we've cultivated online, and an immersive embodiment of Glossier in real life," the team said in a project description.

The Seattle shop, which is open through 7 July, comes on the heels of Glossier's pop-up shop in Miami, which featured a design influenced by the city's art deco architecture. Last year, Glossier hosted pop-up stores in San Francisco and Chicago.

Launched in 2014 as an online company, Glossier opened a showroom two years later in its New York headquarters designed by Rafael de Cardenas. Last fall, it unveiled a three-storey flagship store in Soho designed by Gachot Studios and PRO. It also has a bricks-and-mortar space in Los Angeles.

Photography is by Glossier.

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Glossier pop-up shop in Seattle features rolling hills covered in moss and flowers

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Glossier teamed up with Studio Lily Kwong to create a temporary store in Seattle filled with plant-covered mounds and splashes of pink and purple.

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Interactive version of presentation.

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Glossier In Bloom - Presentation (16:9) by Freya

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Best Glossier products which are worth the money.

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Best Glossier products which are worth the money.

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Glamour employees rated the best Glossier's products.

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All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

If there's one brand that's proved it's worth the hype, it's Glossier. Basically every new launch immediately lands on top of the best Glossier products charts. It's not hard to see why: Glossier is a master class in brand identity (see: its millennial pink packaging, "G" merch, and dreamy but realistic ads), it's perfected the art of the no-makeup makeup look, and it's got a fanbase so loyal that shoppers will patiently wait (often out the door of its showrooms) to get their hands on whatever just hit the shelves.

But just like with anything that seems too good to be true, those who aren't fully aboard the Glossier train often wonder whether its products are actually worth it. Does Boy Brow really transform your eyebrows in few single swipes? Is Cloud Paint seriously as good as its painfully cute tube would lead you to believe? Do the Body Hero products actually feel as divine as they look in the ads? If the Glossier reviews ahead have anything to say, the answer is a resounding yes.

We asked the Glamour team to swipe and slather its way through every single product on the brand's site to share the best Glossier products we absolutely can't live without. Believe it or not, the team's favorite picks came in all across the board (but yes, we did get at least five emphatic responses that just said " BOY BROW!!!"-all caps, lots of exclamations). Scroll on for our honest Glossier reviews to see what's absolutely worth spending your money on.

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We Tried Everything From Glossier-Here's What's Actually Worth Your Money

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All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. If there's one brand that's proved it's worth the hype, it's Glossier. Basically every new launch immediately lands on top of the best Glossier products charts.

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Shop The New Beauty Essentials Exclusively At Glossier.com. Good Routines Start Here. Get the Makeup And Skincare Products Inspired By Real People And Their Routines.

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Sephora Elements in the store.

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Perch - Retail Marketing Lift-And-Learn Digital Signage, Kiosks, and In-Store Analytics Software

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Sephora is a wonderful example on why it is so important to integrate differentiated digital experiences naturally in the shopper journey. By integrating with augmented reality partner, Modiface, Perch provides an experience that immediately engages the shopper as they approach the interactive display. Trying on lipsticks is onerous, and eye lashes, impossible. Sephora makes it easy and convenient to see how the products look directly on you, saving the annoyance and high cost of samples. Customers are immediately engaged, driving 10x engagement from regular displays. The sales lift and other KPIs are off the chart. The Sephora Virtual Artist won a 2017 Clio for Digital/Mobile in the Beauty category.

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Sephora - Perch - Retail Marketing Lift-And-Learn Digital Signage, Kiosks, and In-Store Analytics Software

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Sephora is a wonderful example on why it is so important to integrate differentiated digital experiences naturally in the shopper journey. By integrating with augmented reality partner, Modiface, Perch provides an experience that immediately engages the shopper as they approach the interactive display. Trying on lipsticks is onerous, and eye lashes, impossible.

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Sephora is reopening two landmark locations in New York City and transforming them into Beauty TIP (Teach, Inspire, Play) Workshop concepts. The experiential retail locations will offer beauty studios for one-on-one makeovers as well as unique technologies for beauty-obsessed shoppers, such as Sephora + Pantone Color IQ touch screens for foundation, lip and concealer shade matching.

Both Manhattan locations - 34th Street and Fifth Avenue - are equipped with brighter lighting, gifting stations and mobile POS stations. The 9,000-square-foot Fifth Avenue location will include digital tools for discovery, such as an Anastasia Brow Studio. The 11,300-square-foot 34th Street locations offers more than 13,300 products and a beauty workshop with more than 26 seats for educational workshops.

Additional features include:

A Sephora Virtual Artist technology on iPad stations;

A digital tool called the Moisture Meter, which measures moisture in the skin;

A skincare studio with a sink for mini facials and consultation, as well as a touchscreen display to access Sephora's Skincare IQ diagnostic, which helps clients find the right products for their skin types;

A new technology from Sephora's Innovation Lab called Tap and Try, which allows customers to virtually try on lip or lash products; and

A fragrance studio that features a sensory technology called InstaScent, so customers can find the perfect fragrance. The studio also provides complimentary engraving once a customer chooses his or her scent.

"Sephora opened in the U.S. 19 years ago with our first store in Soho," said Calvin McDonald, President and CEO of Sephora Americas in a statement. "It's fitting that as we round out almost two decades, we return to New York City to celebrate our largest and most unique beauty experience. Our innovative Beauty TIP Workshop concept encourages and supports a thriving beauty community, one that's focused on inclusiveness, promotes self-expression, celebration and education through our unparalleled service experiences, designed to teach and inspire our New York-based clients to play and discover beauty."

Sephora also operates TIP stores in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Santa Clara, Calif., and Toronto.

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Sephora To Open Experiential Beauty Workshops In NYC - Retail TouchPoints

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Sephora is reopening two landmark locations in New York City and transforming them into Beauty TIP (Teach, Inspire, Play) Workshop concepts. The experiential retail locations will offer beauty studios for one-on-one makeovers as well as unique technologies for beauty-obsessed shoppers, such as Sephora + Pantone Color IQ touch screens for foundation, lip and concealer shade matching.

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They have a "narrow product range of about 40 SKUs primarily focused on skincare, with color cosmetics and fragrance rounding out the line"(Danziger, 2018).

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Glossier is a back-to-basics, digitally native beauty brand that has built a cult following, particularly among millennials. With a narrow product range of about 40 SKUs primarily focused on skincare, with color cosmetics and fragrance rounding out the line, Glossier celebrates its customers' natural beauty, not the artificial, painted-on kind. Its tagline is, "Beauty products inspired by real life."

The Glossier beauty company grew out of its millennial founder Emily Weiss's beauty blog called "Into the Gloss." Starting her career at Teen Vogue, then moving around other slots at Condé Nast, Weiss left in 2010 to launch her blog to share beauty tips and tricks with her online friends.

Weiss' early engagement with other beauty aficionados revealed where traditional beauty brands were letting her and her fans down. So she created solutions with the launch in 2014 of Glossier's initial collection of four products, including a cleanser, priming moisturizer, lip balm and a misting spray. The rest is history.

With some 1.5 million Instagram followers, Glossier has been named as a top beauty brand by Allure, Teen Vogue, Glamour, Nylon, Women's Wear Daily and Cosmopolitan. It also won WWD Beauty Inc. 2015 Digital Innovator of the Year award, was named to LinkedIn Top Startups of 2018 list, recognized by Fast Company as one of its Most Innovative Companies of 2017 and called out as one of Inc. 's Company of the Year 2017.

Financial services firm Cowen & Company's Oliver Chen, managing director of retail/luxury, sat down with Glossier's president and CFO, Henry Davis, to discuss the company's unique perspective on the beauty business. Davis was one of the first executives to join Weiss's Glossier team in 2014. Here's highlights of their discussion.

Describing Glossier as a "people-powered beauty ecosystem," Davis identified five keys to the company's success in the form of a mnemonic (a writer's dream).

Glossier's success is credited to these 5Cs: Consumers, Content, Conversations, Co-Creation, Community.
Customers first
Glossier is powered by a fierce and loyal dedication to its customers, their needs and wants. It all starts with its direct and intimate customer relationships.

"I recently presented to the executive team of a significant CPG company with beauty interests. They stopped me and said, 'What do you mean by customers?'" Davis quipped. Their question was based on the fact that the CPG customers are in reality retailers that buy goods to stock their shelves. "What separates Glossier from traditional beauty brands is we are not in any way confused about who our customer is," he added.

Davis goes on to explain that its customers, with its initial following sparked by millennials, now includes a much wider range of ages. But traditional demographics are not how it defines its target market. "The Glossier customer is a psychographic, someone who understands the role beauty plays in their life," Davis explained.

"The main thing Glossier stands for is the power of the individual to choose their own style," he continued.
Engaging content
It was content first, content always that made Glossier what it is today. "The best thing we can do is give people content," Davis said. "That is our main driver of growth."

Glossier continues to share content on the "Into the Gloss" blog, Facebook (just shy of 100,000 followers), Twitter (nearing 200,000), YouTube (130,000), Pinterest (1 million monthly visitors and 76,000 followers) and Instagram (1.5 million Glossier fans plus cross-pollination with nearly 700,000 "Into the Gloss" Instagram followers).

Glossier-produced content combines editorial how-to's with product-as-hero posts with answers to specific beauty issues. Ample user-generated-content validates and authenticates the company's products and posts. This content then generates conversations.
Conversations
True to its blog and social-media roots, Glossier makes the most of its two-way communication with its readers and followers. What people say to Glossier or, even better, about Glossier to others is more important than what Glossier says to them.

"What makes us special is the belief that the channel is the value proposition," Davis said, referring specifically to its communication channel, not only its Glossier.com e-commerce platform.

"Before we even make anything, we make it because we learned from our customers what they are missing, both from a brand and a product perspective, that will make their lives better," he explains.

It's through those customer conversations often stimulated by its originating content that enables co-creating new products.
Co-creating products
Unlike traditional beauty brands where products are developed first, after which the brands must figure out how to sell them, Glossier puts the specific consumer product need out front, thus simplifying the sales and marketing process. In this way, Glossier co-creates its product offerings.

"If we can engage customers further up the [sales] funnel and earlier in product development and brand strategy, we will be in a position to create what people actually want," Davis said.

Davis discussed the development of the Glossier Milky Jelly cleanser: its customers shared how washing their face involved two-steps and two different products, makeup remover then face wash. Glossier simplified the process and put both functions into one product, something that a traditional beauty brand would be loath to do, as it would take potential sales of two products away.

"We made this dual-use face wash that didn't exist in the market before," Davis reiterated. "We innovate and develop products to meet those needs directly because we understand what they are."
Community
Through its relentless focus on the customers, delivering content that connects and generates two-way conversations to facilitate co-created products, Glossier has built a true community among and between Glossier users.

"We are always focused on how we can use our customers to bring their other communities into our communities," Davis said. "We are making our customers into stakeholders. If we make them stakeholders they help us create better products, but they also become our sales channel."

To support and further build its community, Glossier has moved into physical retail with two permanent locations, including a newly-expanded Soho flagship in New York City and Los Angeles' Melrose Place, as well as various popup shops with one planted in Chicago through the holidays.

"We believe there is a lot of upside in retail, but we are in no hurry to go after it," Davis shared. "Everything we do including physical retail will always be to drive a conversation online."

"We have a lot of overhanging fruit online and we are really focused on building our digital focus to engage in deeper, richer ways to better capture the data so we can play back the feedback to people and create more products to meet more needs that are underserved," he continued, stressing that 37% of the company employees are "technologists."
What's next
Following a $52 million capital infusion in February, Davis concludes the interview hinting that its team of technologists will get to work on creating new "forums" for more conversations in more narrowly focused ways beyond the Instagram and YouTube channels. These social platforms are particularly suited to color cosmetics, but for other beauty categories, they "don't work so well," he said.

"Much as social media has been fantastic and a huge boon for the color cosmetics side of beauty, it will continue to be a huge opportunity [for us] in a different format," Davis explained. "That is why we are a technology company. We need to create those formats and build those forums for the conversations."

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Glossier CEO Weiss described this new initiative as the company's "Phase Two," with newly hired Keith Peiris tasked to build "a new kind of technology company." Peiris assumed the position of Glossier Head of Product after working with Oculus VR and leading the Instagram Direct team.
The Glossier difference
In a nutshell, Davis sums up the ways that Glossier diverges from traditional beauty brands. Being a digital-first company is but a small part of the difference.

"The main thing Glossier stands for is the power of the individual to choose their own style, to make connections with other people, to ask questions, to understand better the things that they may want. Glossier exists purely to serve what we hear from those people about what they want," Davis concludes.

... Read More

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5 Reasons That Glossier Is So Successful

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Glossier is a back-to-basics, digitally native beauty brand that has built a cult following, particularly among millennials. With a narrow product range of about 40 SKUs primarily focused on skincare, with color cosmetics and fragrance rounding out the line, Glossier celebrates its customers' natural beauty, not the artificial, painted-on kind.

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Differences between Gen Z and Millennials

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Differences between Gen Z and Millennials

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How the generations communicate.
How to identify the generations.

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How to identify a Millennial or Gen Z'er? Are Millennials and Gen Z similars? What is the difference between both generations? How do these generations communicate?
Generation Z was born in 1995 and 2012, while Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. In 2019 the oldest Millennials are turning 40, which means that they find themselves now entering into adult life, while Gen Z is now rising. This generation is just turning 26 this year, and most are still in their teens or younger.

In this blog, you will understand more about these generations and how you can identify with some similarities and differences. Are you a Millennial or Gen Z'er? Take a funny quiz to know to which generation you belong.

Now, Gen Z is getting into the working field. Let's learn more about Millennials and Gen Z!

Both generations have similarities but also differences. It is important to know the distinctions between both to prepare yourself to start working with Gen Z'ers. If you are a Millennial or a Gen X, you should probably find yourself recruiting Gen Z'ers.

If you are not sure which generation you or your employees belong to, I invite you to take a fun quiz. For those who are not familiarized with , they are a cool digital media company, which leverages data and innovation to reach hundreds of millions of people globally. They create articles, lists, quizzes, videos, and also, you can find life & style and trendy content.

BuzzFeed created a quiz that will tell you with absolute certainty if you are a Millennial or a Gen Z'er. Have fun taking the quiz!
Did you enjoy taking the quiz? Now you certainly know if you or your employees are a Millennial or a Gen Z'er!
Gen Z is more entrepreneurial. According to several kinds of research, Generation Z wants more independent work environments. Instead of being part of companies or big corporations, they want to create startups or businesses, which made them more entrepreneurial at an early age.

Millennials grew up with limited internet access. Millennials played on their PC's solitaire, Black Hole Pinball, or Minesweeper. Do you remember them? Gen Z grew up already in a technological world. What for Millennials was taken as amazing and inspiring inventions, are now taken as a given for Gen Z and this is why Gen Z has higher expectations.

Marcie Merriman, executive director of growth strategy at Ernst & Young, made a report of Gen Z, where she mentioned:

"When it doesn't get there that fast they think something's wrong"; "They expect businesses, brands, and retailers to be loyal to them. If they don't feel appreciated, they're going to move on. It's not about them being loyal to the business."

You can find more information on her "Rise of Gen Z: new challenge for retailers" report.

Both generations are multitasked. Millennials were able to focus more at school or any other task that they needed, while Gen Z struggles more on focusing. Why? simple because Gen Z has too many distractions going on. However, and because of all these distractions, they also can work on multiple tasks at once.

Companies are already employing Gen Z, but they are struggling with how to keep them in the workplace. As we mentioned before, Gen Z is looking for more independent work environments. They are fast learners and capable of learning something by themselves or through a more efficient, non-traditional route and talking about multitasks.

Going back to which generation can focus better than the other one, Millennials can focus better than Gen Z. This is because Gen Z lives in a world that needs constant updates. This generation processes information faster than others, because of all the apps that they use, but their attention might be significantly lower than Millennials.

To be a good leader for them, you have to understand the differences between both generations. Understanding their needs and interests will help you to work and guide them better.

General comparison of how the generations differ. Source: Glassdoor

Millennials were the first generation who had internet access. Therefore, they were considered the first global generation. But as more of the world comes online, Gen Z will become more global in their thinking, interactions, and relatability.

Gen Z has never been without the Internet and needs to know the "why" for everything. They want to be a part of something bigger. Both generations are addicted to their digital devices, of course, Millennials in a lower way. When we wonder why Gen Z is always on their phones, it's because they have never been without one.

So the way that both generations communicate themselves is through digital devices, wherever and whenever. Not to mention as well that both generations like to have face to face conversations. Millennials know more how to hear while surprisingly Gen Z preferred the method of communication in-person.

Having a Gen Z team in the workplace will always be joyful to work with. They will always be focused on making the world around them be better and inspiring. Also, there will always present some challenges, but if you, as a leader for them, have an open mind and understand their similarities, not their differences, you will have quite good results working with them.

Millennials will focus on having a job that allows them to make an impact in the lives of others and live a desired quality of life. They work best in teamwork and they like to create a "work family" atmosphere.

At blackbear, the pool of Solvers consists of all kinds of generations. This makes it possible to match challenges to Solvers that are best suited to achieve maximum results.

Curious about the power of our Solvers? Use the quick scan to discover the possibilities for your questions free of charge.

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Differences between Gen Z and Millennials - blackbear

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Reading time: 4 minutes How to identify a Millennial or Gen Z'er? Are Millennials and Gen Z similars? What is the difference between both generations? How do these generations communicate? Generation Z was born in 1995 and 2012, while Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996.

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"Glossier is a makeup and skincare brand targeted at a young, millennial audience that is appreciative of simple and minimal style."(Designrush.com, 2021)

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Glossier is a makeup and skincare brand targeted at a young, millennial audience that is appreciative of simple and minimal style. The makeup brand emphasizes the ease of using its products while still managing to get great results. Its products are meant to provide minimal coverage for a fresh and youthful look, and its packaging manages to convey that message.

Although each product is packaged differently, Glossier maintains its minimal aesthetic across its packaging. The result is a unique visual experience, since no two products look the same. The balms are packaged in tubes, while the cleanser is in a plastic bottle, and the toners are in translucent bottles. Apart from the 'G' Glossier logo and basic information about the product, Glossier has kept its packaging text-light. It's not chaotic and doesn't take away from the design experience, and yet manages to provide necessary information about the products.

The colors used on most of the packaging are light shades of cream and pink, which complement each other spectacularly. Other colors include pastels like peach, sky blue, and mauve, which support the brand identity of the makeup company as a fun, young, and engaging brand. The packaging itself is sleek and modern: plain white tubes and containers have been used along with splashes of color to make it youthful.

The names of the products are also engaging and fun: Balm Dotcom, Boy Brow, and Milky Jelly Cleanser are catchy names that are also easy to remember, adding a very appealing element to the packaging design. The products are finally packed in an attractive pink bubble-wrapped ziplock bag that can be further used by the consumer, adding an element of utility to the design.

The packaging of Glossier's products has been executed creatively and seamlessly, keeping in mind the brand's emotional appeal to its market as a fun, young, and minimal skincare option.

Glossier is a minimalist package design in the E-commerce & Retail and Fashion & Beauty industries.

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Glossier is a makeup and skincare brand targeted at a young, millennial audience that is appreciative of simple and minimal style. The makeup brand emphasizes the ease of using its products while still managing to get great results. Its products are meant to provide minimal coverage for a fresh and youthful look, and its packaging manages to convey that message.

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The boxes will be made out of seed paper so they are plant-able and turn into a flower.

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Plantable paper. Ever heard of it?

Paper is our lifeblood at Pixartprinting... you wouldn't believe how much of it we handle every day! We try to keep waste to a minimum, not so much for financial reasons, but more from an ethical viewpoint. For many years now we have incorporated recycled paper into our product range, and recommend it to all customers who are proud of their green credentials - and, indeed, everyone else too!

As it's a topic very close to our hearts, today we'd like to talk to you about a type of sustainable paper that piqued our interest some time ago: plantable paper.

Plantable paper: what is it and how is it obtained?

Eco-friendly, biodegradable and... plantable! Plantable paper is made from waste materials, with the addition of seeds that, when put in soil, will germinate and create seedlings. This means no trees are sacrificed to make it, it doesn't create any waste and, most importantly, it creates new life.

To make things clearer, let's imagine going into a workshop that specialises in producing this kind of paper, and observing the various stages of the process:

It all starts with waste paper, or the fibres obtained from previously used paper or card.

The waste paper is soaked in water for around 48 hours, then shredded to create a pulp.

The pulp is placed in containers full of water, and various types of seeds are added - such as poppy, daisy or lavender or even edible plants like carrots, basil or rocket.

The pulp is sieved and then pressed to remove the water and bind the fibres together, creating new paper.

(NB: This is just one approach; different workshops may decide to use different methods, to give the paper their own 'trademark' appearance).

What does plantable paper look like? We think it looks amazing: it has an irregular surface that is rough to the touch, a natural colour, and a texture embellished with seeds that are visible to the naked eye. Some varieties are even decorated with small coloured petals. But the most interesting thing is that each sheet is unique, as they stem from an artisan process.

Now let's visit the home of someone who has received, let's say, a card made of plantable paper, and who wants it to germinate. Let's take a closer look at how the planting works:

The paper must be left to soak in a bowl of water at least overnight, before being broken up into small pieces. Incidentally, the soaking isn't always required: some types of paper can be placed in the pot as they are.

The paper is placed in a pot, covered with a thin layer of soil and exposed to the light.

The earth must be kept damp for at least the first few days after sowing.

Once a certain amount of time has passed, the first green shoots will poke out.

A new life has begun!

How to use plantable paper. A few hints...

By adopting plantable paper, a business is saying that it cares about environmental issues. But what's the best way to use it? We're tempted to say... with common sense! Don't choose it simply to win favour with the public, because the risk of appearing hypocritical and losing trust is always just around the corner. Only choose it if your company truly believes in a green philosophy, and puts it into practice.

You can make anything with plantable paper: invitations, flyers, greetings cards, place markers, envelopes, notebooks, labels, the list goes on. Having said that, it's probably not a great idea to use it for business cards, unless you want to see your contact details turned into compost!

A few tips about printing: we recommend using an inkjet printer for plantable paper, or alternatively letterpress printing or screen printing. It is best to avoid putting too much pressure on the sheet, or exposing the seeds to high temperatures. And it is obviously preferable not to cover the entire surface of the paper with ink, as this could damage the seeds.

Where can I buy plantable paper?

Finally, given that it is not as easy to come by as traditional paper, here are a few places where you can purchase it:

Seed paper: Their seed paper is handmade using a process called Dutch Stacks, using waste cotton fibres from the textile industry. The paper comes in two different weights - 140 and 225 grams - and the seeds are selected for easy germination.

Botanical Paper Works . This is a very well stocked online shop featuring all kinds of products made of plantable paper. You'll also see a video tutorial on the site that explains how the planting stage works.

Simply type "seed paper " into the search bar and you'll be shown various products made of plantable paper, from white sheets to ready-made greetings cards.

Don't forget that as well as plantable paper there are lots of other types of recycled paper that offer an equally sustainable choice. If you'd like some advice on which type of recycled paper best suits your project, we'd be very happy to help !

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Paper is our lifeblood at Pixartprinting... you wouldn't believe how much of it we handle every day! We try to keep waste to a minimum, not so much for financial reasons, but more from an ethical viewpoint.

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Oh...hi there! Not a lot of people make it this far down the page, so this is special for both of us. Here, you'll learn a little bit more about our beauty product philosophy. Some background: Glossier was created by a group of beauty editors that have (literally) tried everything out there and know what works. We painstakingly develop the best formulas with real-life usage in mind, and put them in the chicest packaging that won't cost you half a paycheck. We've created our entire lineup to work together to make you look and feel your best-the only thing you need are your fingertips. So even if you're new to the idea of a beauty regimen, or you're just someone looking to make a few upgrades, we're here for that. Think of Glossier's beauty products as the skincare essentials you need, plus makeup you'll actually use. Thanks for joining us down here. Feel free to move about the site now.

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Beauty Products & Skincare Inspired by Real Life | Glossier

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We're creating the new beauty essentials: easy-to-use skincare and makeup that form the backbone to your routine. Shop exclusively at Glossier.com.

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A-Z of natural skincare ingredients and their uses

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A-Z of natural skincare ingredients and their uses

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Each year more and more people are turning towards natural ingredients for their skincare needs. Whether it's in home-made treatments, high street products or in a spa, unmodified and organic ingredients are now at the forefront of skincare and beauty research.

Harnessing the natural potency of plant-based ingredients, we are able to simplify our skincare routines and minimise the risk of reactions to harsh chemical substances. However, with many brands championing countless 'miracle' ingredients, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with what each one can do for your skin.

To help you work out which natural products are your skincare saviours, here is a simple A-Z list of some of the most popular natural ingredients and their skincare uses.
Click the ingredients below to find out more.
A - Aloe Vera

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A-Z of natural skincare ingredients | Titanic Spa

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Each year more and more people are turning towards natural ingredients for their skincare needs. Whether it's in home-made treatments, high street products or in a spa, unmodified and organic ingredients are now at the forefront of skincare and beauty research.

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Continuing my research on Glossier, I've found that there is a very distinct target customer for the marketing material that they release. This semester I have learned a lot about how to define your target market as well as the importance of creating a full persona for whom the product is going to be marketed. Glossier primarily aims to target females between the ages of 16-25 who have a lower budget but also appreciate high-quality products that support progressive ideals such as sustainability, social justice, and body positivity. This person is either a student or has recently entered the work industry and is someone who likes to feel like the best version of themself, but doesn't always have the time to put on a full face of makeup. Their target customer is also someone who is considered a trendsetter and is not afraid to express their personal style.

I think this persona shines through in many of their social media posts, but there is one in particular that I feel encompasses the Glossier brand.

Glossier features real people, like Enga, in their campaigns which reflect the authenticity of the brand. Often these posts are selfies or mirror pictures which gives a sense of relatability to the audience. What I find especially interesting about this post is that it touches on the current pandemic without actually saying anything. Glossier is showing its audience that masks can be made into a look by adding a pop of color to the eyes. Beyond beauty, the promotion of wearing a mask sends a positive reminder of everyone's civic duty to wear a mask when outside in order to contain the spread of Coronavirus. This relates back to the target customer who cares about current events and would be appreciative and accepting of this kind of marketing.

In terms of the product itself, the gel eye pencil is perfect for someone who is on the go but also enjoys a little extra pop of color in their daily makeup look. The caption does a great job of describing the features of the product in a concise and appealing manner.

As someone who is a fan of Glossier and their products, it was interesting to take a more analytical perspective on their advertisements and pinpoint their effectiveness. I'm looking forward to learning more about how to grow and maintain target customers!

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Continuing my research on Glossier, I've found that there is a very distinct target customer for the marketing material that they release.

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With 2.8 million Instagram followers, Glossier has built a large community of loyal supporters who serve as not only their primary customers but also their biggest salespeople.

Glossier's marketing is a digital-first word-of-mouth approach to skincare and beauty products. They've transformed into one of the most successful D2C beauty brands in the cosmetics industry today, with a$1.2 billion valuation.

This is how they did it.

They built a beauty-ful community

Glossier's rise to success as a D2C brand was anything but typical. In fact, you could even say it was somewhat accidental.

Back in 2010, the company's founder Emily Weiss was an editorial assistant working at Vogue and embracing the New York City grind. While working at the storied fashion publication, she began to notice a hierarchical trend within the beauty industry: beauty brands weren't looking for any customer input on products they produced; they simply told women to buy the brands' products because they were on trend.

But Weiss persisted. She rebelled against the idea that beauty companies were simply dictating what kind of makeup and skincare products women should be using. Her idea that the beauty industry should be framed within real conversations with real women led her to launch her blog,Into the Gloss, in 2010.

70% of their online sales and traffic come from peer-to-peer referrals.

Weiss' first order of business with Into the Gloss was promoting those real conversations. Her personal mantra for the blog was simple: people first and products second.

It was in that vein that Weiss came up with some innovative ideas for her blog. Into the Gloss began to feature a section called The Top Shelf. This column focused on women in the beauty industry who shared their personal beauty regimens and products they loved. It didn't promote particular products; it simply laid out what these women were using.

The next big innovation came when Weiss recognized the value of social media as a direct line of communication with people reading the blog. At the time, most beauty brands were purely focused on self-promotion. You would go to a beauty brand's social media page, and it would just show you a product photo and how much it was. Additional context was shaky at best.

In response, Into the Gloss did things a little differently: they became one of the first beauty blogs to utilize social media (especially Instagram) in an effort to engage followers and spark conversations with them. They wanted to know what beauty products their readers were using and why - so they asked. Into the Gloss opened the lines of social media communication to their fans and, over time, developed a strong understanding of what they wanted.

Before she knew it, Weiss had inadvertently compiled a mountain of market research on beauty products. Like every great entrepreneur, she also saw an opportunity. Weiss leveraged the reputation and research behind Into the Gloss and decided to launch her own beauty brand, Glossier, in 2014.

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They served the people with social media

Weiss knew exactly what made Into the Gloss so special as a beauty blog, and she brought that same concept to Glossier. Having successfully utilized social media platforms for her blog, she focused on doing the same with her beauty brand.

At this point, the Glossier team had grown and already had a built-in ecosystem of fans and followers. The best place to reach those fans and followers? Instagram. With more and more brands jumping on the Instagram bandwagon by this time, Weiss had already developed a cult following on the platform from her Into the Gloss days.

The content strategy Glossier put together for the Instagram account showed an impeccable understanding of its buyer personas. Primarily composed of millennials and Gen Zers, Glossier used a mix of people and products alongside funny memes and videos in their Instagram posts.

On all of Glossier's social media platforms, they consciously chose a wide array of content creators regardless of background. The diverse representation reinforces that there is no "right" kind of customer to best rep the brand. Everyone can wear Glossier products-like the Milky Jelly cleanser or the iconic Boy Brow-to be their most beautiful, authentic self.

There was product launch information, but also goofy selfies. The brand never strayed from what made its sister brand such a success: catering to their target demographic of millennial and Gen Z consumers.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Glossier (@glossier)

Keeping the brand consistent across social media was also a priority for Weiss and the team. Glossier's products developed a reputation for natural, dewy makeup looks and owned soft pink and nude tones. A quick glance at their Instagram feed shows how their content reflects those colors through filters and images.

Glossier's biggest supporters recognize the brand simply by its color palette. It's like Coca-Cola's white handwriting on a red background or the green Starbucks siren. They have put the effort into keeping their branding consistent across their Instagram account and effectively taken social media ownership of these tones within the beauty industry.

Glossier also made sure to always put its community above everything else. They continued to regularly engage with followers through the Instagram account. They still feature product users whenever they can, both in posts and in their Stories. This promotes a sense of community around Glossier and a feeling that anyone can be an influencer for the brand.

They turned fans into micro-influencers

Glossier has brilliantly utilized user-generated content (UGC) and turned many fans of the brand into micro-influencers who spread the word about its products online.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Glossier (@glossier)

Glossier generally reposts UGC through its Instagram account. It will share UGC that promotes new products that followers use in real life. The best UGC creators even get invited to become Instagram ambassadors for the brand. They get a unique promo code that gives them a percentage of a sale every time someone uses their specific code.

Glossier is also known for its "Top 5" Instagram Stories highlight. Each week, the brand finds five of the best UGC posts they've been tagged in, reposts them on their Instagram story, and files them under Highlights so people can go back to them later. This drives the sense of community, and anyone can partake using their Instagrammable Glossier content. It isn't limited to famous Glossier users, of which there are many.

This word-of-mouth marketing tactic has worked wonders for the Glossier brand. A whopping 70% of their online sales and traffic come from peer-to-peer referrals, and 8% of those are linked to their Instagram ambassador efforts. These influencer marketing efforts have paid off in a major way and serve as a primary e-commerce revenue stream for the brand.

The brand's ties to word-of-marketing go even deeper. According to Weiss, nearly 80% of Glossier's customers are referred by a friend. Glossier buyers are very loyal to the brand and sing its praises to friends and family looking for products to integrate into their beauty routines.
Glossier marketing: Get to know your audience and build a community around them
Glossier understands the beauty industry on an intimate level. A lot of that knowledge comes from taking a community-centric approach to their marketing strategy.

Everything they do results in feedback from their audience-product marketing, UGC for social media, and building relationships with brand ambassadors and micro-influencers all help to inform their approach. And, that feedback is crucial to their business model, letting them develop a brand identity that they know their customers crave.

Building a loyal customer base is much more than simply dropping hashtags on TikTok videos and calling it a day. The best thing you can do to manage your audience is to use a growth marketing tool.

Tools, like Extole, help you research strong candidates for influencer and brand ambassador programs. They also are designed to help you manage contracts, payouts, and special discounts to reward customers for loyalty. This not only helps you get new customers but also nurtures the ones you already have.

Schedule a demo to learn more.

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Glossier marketing: How the beauty brand used word-of-mouth to shake up the industry | Extole

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Glossier's marketing is a digital-first word-of-mouth approach to skin care and beauty products. They've transformed into one of the most successful D2C beauty brands in the cosmetics industry today.

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Cult 'Fast-Beauty' Brand Winky Lux Raises $6 Million In Series A To Fund Experience-First Retail Plans

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Cult 'Fast-Beauty' Brand Winky Lux Raises $6 Million In Series A To Fund Experience-First Retail Plans

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On February 1, 2018, Winky Lux, a cruelty-free and toxin-free beauty brand whose makeup shades are inspired by a vision board of chrysanthemums, golds and ice creams, wanted to bring a new product to market. Because neither of the cofounders hail from the traditional beauty industry (Natalie Mackey worked in fashion and Nathan Newman in consumer electronics), Winky Lux products follow an untraditional manufacturing cycle that's rapid enough to serve the instant and fickle nature of the Millennial beauty market.

"We should be making beauty products very fast," said Mackey. "The problem is if you work with traditional manufacturing their lead times are a year, it's absurd."

First they hired an intern tasked with monitoring Instagram, Buzzfeed, PopSugar and Refinery 29 to learn what young women were buzzing about in fashion, beauty, entertainment and even food.

"We were literally copying down headlines and looking for patterns around what was trending," said Mackey. The results showed green tea matcha was all the rage. They then turned to their supply-chain management technology built by Newman (a serial entrepreneur who founded eDimensional, a maker of wireless 3-D glasses). The proprietary platform manages relationships with manufacturers, and tracks every step of production, from the inventory of raw ingredients to creating the lipstick ejectors and finalizing the lab formula. Winky Lux then meets with customers and holds live Instagram stories to poll how the finished product should look.

Forty-five days later on March 15, 2018, Winky Lux unveiled its Matcha Lip Balm, a light jade balm infused with real green tea powder and vanilla to hydrate a winter-weary pout. To date they've sold 15,000 matcha balms, which pulled in $200,000 in sales after selling out several times.

Winky Lux has followed this "fast-beauty" model since launching in 2015 in New York City. Mackey and Newman, both in their 30s, started the company with $300,000 from friends, family and personal savings. Keeping production cycles within a strict 45-day span has armed Winky Lux with the speed to capitalize on trends like rainbow eyebrows (believe it or not, this has completely sold out at Asos and hundreds of retailers) and hologram face powder, yet priced affordably at $14-$34. Within 18 months the company generated $4 million in sales as a bootstrapped company. They first landed in Ulta, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's in 2017. But to fulfill these retail orders, they needed funding. This presented the cofounders with the ultimate challenge: pitch a makeup brand inspired by flowers, mermaids and unicorns to the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley.
"The dudes didn't get us"
According to data from PitchBook, only 2.2% of all venture capital dollars in the U.S. went to female founders in 2017. On the investor-side, just 11.3% of partners at VC firms in the U.S. were female. Mackey experienced the cold reality of this data during her first fundraise. She says one premier VC in the consumer goods category rejected Winky Lux because his girlfriend said it wasn't as sleek or refined as La Mer or Goop products. "Other investors kept referring to their wives or their wives' makeup artists instead of looking at our data and analyzing the multibillion-dollar industry," said Mackey.

After striking out with dozens of investors throughout 2017, they eventually landed their seed round of $2 million in August, led by Anu Duggal and Sutian Dong at Female Founders Fund. The deal included a who's who of established and rising women in VC including Susan Lyne and Nisha Dua at BBG; Elizabeth Galbut and Pocket Sun at SoGal Ventures; and Robin Li of GGV. After investing the first round in retail partnerships and e-commerce, Winky Lux closed 2017 with more than $10 million in annual revenue and expects to hit $17 million by end of year.

Today the company announced that a majority of their original investors signed up to back Winky Lux's next phase with a new round of $6 million in Series A funding. "Now that we have a major VC like GGV as our lead for Series A, lots of guys want to back us now," said Mackey. "The dudes didn't get us 'til we were a lot bigger."

About half the Series A will fund the opening of Winky Lux pop-up shops in NYC, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Savannah and Nashville this summer. The startup recognizes that the days of buying ads on Instagram simply won't cut it. As competition heats up and the cost of an Instagram ad rises, retailers must ask themselves "W hat's the next big thing?'" Mackey believes the new key to underpriced customer acquisitions is experiential retail.

"The five stores will be experience-first and commerce-second," said Mackey. "Our customer wants experiences with friends and have everything they do shareable on social media." This means interactive art installations similar to The Museum of Ice Cream in L.A. and the Dream Machine in Brooklyn. The decision to invest in temporary retail spots comes after hosting a pop-up shop in Roosevelt Field Mall in New York last October. They found that customers who bought from the physical store were three times more likely to purchase again than online customers.

"Being inside a store, taking selfies under our neon lights and flower walls helped them understand that our brand is a living magical land and joy factory," she said, "and that understanding drove loyalty."

The funding will also go into hiring content experts who can deliver a deluge of fresh assets and images for digital marketing. Part of Mackey's content strategy will give followers a #behindthescenes look at their 45-day production cycle because "at the end of the day, beauty products are little presents, and we want customers to see how much thought we put into each product, even though it's within a short amount of time."
Visit Beauty Money on Forbes, where founders of beauty startups share "skin deep" lessons about thriving in the beauty industry.
... Read More

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Cult 'Fast-Beauty' Brand Winky Lux Raises $6 Million In Series A To Fund Experience-First Retail Plans

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When Winky Lux first landed in Ulta, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's in 2017, they needed funding to fulfill these orders. This presented the cofounders with the ultimate challenge: pitch a makeup brand inspired by flowers, mermaids and unicorns to the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley.

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Annual Revenue and founded stats.

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Floor plan and transport details.

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Including available space.

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At Savills, our most valuable resource is our people. We are known for our positive, entrepreneurial culture, and for attracting some of the most innovative, dedicated and knowledgeable people in the business.

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Savills | 411-413 Oxford Street, West End, London, W1D 2DU | Property to rent

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At Savills, our most valuable resource is our people. We are known for our positive, entrepreneurial culture, and for attracting some of the most innovative, dedicated and knowledgeable people in the business.

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Available Space, Transport, property facts,

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411-413 Oxford St, London | Shop for rent | 2,528 sq ft

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Property: 411-413 Oxford St, Type: Retail unit or shop, Transaction type: For rent, Address: 411-413 Oxford St, London W1C 2PF, Size: 2,528 sq ft

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Artificial Intelligence for Beauty and Cosmetics – Current Applications

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Artificial Intelligence for Beauty and Cosmetics – Current Applications

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"Reuters referenced an Orbis Research figure estimating the global cosmetics market to be worth around $$805.61 billion by 2023."(Ayn de Jesus, 2020)

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"The filings show that the pharmacy multiple earned £167m in profit in 2019, compared with £317m in 2018 — a decrease of 47.3%."(The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2021)

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Boots saw its profits fall by almost 50% in 2019, owing to "lower revenue and gross margin", according to financial accounts filed to Companies House and published on 18 May 2020.

The filings show that the pharmacy multiple earned £167m in profit in 2019, compared with £317m in 2018 - a decrease of 47.3%.

The strategic report set out within the filing said the decline was the direct result of a fall in operating profit, which dropped by 49.4% from £391m in 2018 to £198m in 2019.

The document said this was a result of "higher administrative expenses primarily from £70m of restructuring costs together with lower revenue and gross margin".

In February 2019, Boots announced plans to cut up to 350 jobs from its head office as part of a restructuring drive to "reduce decision-making time" and "improve efficiency".

The accounts add that the company's overall revenue declined by 1.8% in 2019, from £6.79bn in 2018 to £6.67bn in 2019.

In particular, the multiple's revenue fell by 2.2%, mainly owing to "lower volume and lower revenue item growth and continuing UK government reimbursement pressure".

The multiple's falling profits in 2019 follow on from an initial decline in 2018 when the multiple saw its profits decrease by a fifth.

Boots subsequently announced plans to close 200 stores in the UK by 2021 - 28 of which had been closed as of 8 January 2020.

The company's declining profits come after McKesson - parent company of LloydsPharmacy - announced on 20 May 2020 that its operating profit for its European pharmacy sector increased by 10% on an adjusted basis over the course of the 12 months to May 2020, while its adjusted operating profit accrued over the past three months since February 2020 is more than double (239%) that which was accrued during the same three-month period in 2019.

The Pharmaceutical Journal has approached Boots for comment.

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Boots sees profits almost halve in 2019 - The Pharmaceutical Journal

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Boots saw its profits fall by almost 50% in 2019, owing to "lower revenue and gross margin", according to financial accounts filed to Companies House and published on 18 May 2020. The filings show that the pharmacy multiple earned £167m in profit in 2019, compared with £317m in 2018 - a decrease of 47.3%.

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Facts about when it was founded.

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Superfluid 2021: Information, Photos, Reviews | Thingtesting

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We co-create our skincare products together with our community. We strive to select effective and 100% vegan formulas. - Read more on Thingtesting

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Fondée en France par Dominique Mandonnaud, en 1969, Sephora a rapidement acquis une réputation d'expert de la beauté.

En créant un modèle inspiré du self-service, il a développé une offre sophistiquée mettant en avant le meilleur de la beauté, tout en la rendant accessible à tous.

Son modèle de distribution avant-gardiste a révolutionné l'expérience shopping, faisant de Sephora la destination beauté par excellence. Avec un assortiment inégalé de plus de 250 marques et 16000 produits, il permet à sa clientèle d'avoir accès aussi bien aux marques de luxe qu'aux marques de niche dans des magasins où elle est libre de les toucher, sentir et tester.

L'enseigne se montre résolument tournée vers l'innovation avec la marque Sephora Collection, qui démocratise les nouvelles tendances beauté avec une gamme de produits toujours plus à la pointe.

Ses équipes d'experts conseil, véritables professionnelles de la beauté, assurent, par leur énergie et leur enthousiasme, un service d'exception pour mieux vous satisfaire et vous placer au cœur de la beauté : leçons de maquillage, conseils en soins, choix d'un parfum, elles vous aideront à vivre pleinement votre expérience beauté !

Aujourd'hui, Sephora appartient au groupe Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy ( LVMH), le plus grand groupe de luxe au monde et est présent dans 34 pays, répartis entre l'Europe, le Moyen-Orient, l'Amérique et l'Asie.
Et depuis 1999, pour que chacun puisse accéder à l'univers Sephora quel que soit l'heure ou le lieu, Sephora est aussi disponible en ligne avec un portail de 17 sites de vente en ligne accessibles en 10 langues différentes.

Enfin, Sephora encourage les choix audacieux dans la beauté comme dans la vie. Les engagements de l'enseigne, réunis sous le programme " Sephora Stands ", contribuent à développer les prises d'initiatives qui sont à la fois socialement et environnementalement responsables. A travers ce programme, SEPHORA et ses collaborateurs partagent, ensemble, un engagement commun visant à augmenter leur impact social positif.

Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur l'univers de Sephora, ses valeurs, et la vie de l'entreprise rendez-vous sur notre site carrière.

Pour trouver le magasin Sephora le plus proche de chez vous, ses coordonnées, ses horaires d'ouverture et les services qu'il propose, accédez à notre rubrique Magasins.

Si vous avez des questions ou suggestions vous pouvez également nous contacter. C'est en nous basant sur vos remarques que nous travaillons jour après jour à l'amélioration de votre expérience chez Sephora !

Nos emballages peuvent faire l'objet de consignes de tri : www.consignesdetri.fr.

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"With 250 brands and over 78,000 products, it provides a vast selection of on-trend products and innovative concepts"(LVMH, 2021)

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Always at the forefront of latest trends, Sephora's unique shopping experience offers beauty clients across the world an unparalleled choice among premium brand perfumes and cosmetics.

Creation date: 1969
Chairman and CEO: Chris de Lapuente
Head office: 41, rue Ybry, 92576 Neuilly-Sur-Seine Cedex
Website: www.sephora.com

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Sephora's stores offer passionate beauty fans across the world a privileged freedom to touch and test products since 1969.

The House provides a superior selection of quality products and always keeps pace with the latest trends.

The house is built upon the exceptional talents of its beauty professionals who create a perfect environment for adventurous clients who want to experiment and learn.

With the innovative range of products in the Sephora Collection, its distinctive stores and bold commitment to new ideas, the House is always able to surprise and delight its clients.

At every touch point with its clients, in store and online, Sephora provides an unconventional approach which has made it the most loved beauty community in the world.

"The Maison is untiring in its pursuit of everything that is new and exciting for the customer. The team's enthusiasm and passion for beauty inspires the maison's clients and is a hallmark of the brand to delight customers better than anyone else"

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Sephora, cosmetics, fragrances - Selective Retailing - LVMH

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Always at the forefront of latest trends, Sephora's unique shopping experience offers beauty clients across the world an unparalleled choice among premium brand perfumes and cosmetics. Creation date: 1969 Chairman and CEO: Chris de Lapuente Head office: 41, rue Ybry, 92576 Neuilly-Sur-Seine Cedex Website: www.sephora.com > Sephora's stores offer passionate beauty fans across the world a privileged freedom to touch and test products since 1969.

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"We have 2,336* stores, 550* Boots Opticians practices, and 533* Boots Hearingcare locations"(Boots-uk.com, 2020)

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Timeline

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Boots is now a household name with stores all over the world and a number of hugely successful own-brand ranges. It’s risen from humble beginnings to become the well-known and loved company it is today. This timeline charts the development of the business from its first days as a herbalist store i…

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We are the UK's leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer

Boots is part of the Retail Pharmacy International Division of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise.

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Boots is part of the Retail Pharmacy International Division of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise.

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Championing everyone's right to feel good.

Boots is the UK's leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. With over 2,300* stores ranging from local community pharmacies to large destination health and beauty stores, our purpose is to help our customers look and feel better than they ever thought possible. Boots UK is part of the Retail Pharmacy International Division of Walgreens Boots Alliance, which is a global leader in pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing retail.

Our mission is:

To be the first choice for pharmacy, health and beauty - caring for people, customers and communities everywhere

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Boots is the UK's leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. With over 2,300* stores ranging from local community pharmacies to large destination health and beauty stores, our purpose is to help our customers look and feel better than they ever thought possible.

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How Glossier Turned Into a $400 Million Business in Four Years

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How Glossier Turned Into a $400 Million Business in Four Years

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Long before she was CEO of a burgeoning style empire, Emily Weiss began her day like many entrepreneurs-working hard on her side hustle before heading off to her day job. Except for Weiss, her day job didn't mean an invisible role in a thankless office or brewing coffee at her local Starbucks. Weiss was an editorial assistant at Vogue, and her passion project-a style blog called Into The Gloss -would eventually launch a company that would, in Weiss' words, "democratize beauty."

That company was Glossier.

Glossier (pronounced to rhyme with "dossier") isn't your average beauty company. Weiss built Glossier around a simple question: What if beauty brands actually listened to women? In less than four years, Weiss was able to grow a blog into a $400M business by simply asking women what they wanted instead of telling them what they wanted.

Since founding Glossier in 2014, Weiss' company has attracted the kind of cult millennial following that larger, wealthier brands envy. But how did she do it? What is it about Glossier's approach to feminine beauty products that resonates so strongly with her audience? And, perhaps most importantly, how does Glossier differentiate itself in such a savagely competitive industry?

Let's look at:

How Into The Gloss used content as a low-cost way to build a vast audience of loyal fans they could later sell products to

How Glossier achieved impressive growth quickly by positioning itself as an accessible lifestyle brand, rather than focusing solely on promoting products

How Glossier uses community, content, and branding to create and maintain a culture of inclusivity and attainability in an industry renowned for its exclusivity

We'll explore how Glossier took on some of the wealthiest legacy brands in one of the most competitive industries in consumer packaged goods-and beat them at their own game.

2010-2013: The Origins of Style: Into the Gloss and the Genesis of Glossier

In just eight years, Glossier has become one of the premier beauty brands in the U.S. However, what's most interesting about Weiss' approach is that she never intentionally set out to create a product-focused beauty brand. Before launching Glossier, Weiss made a name for herself in the beauty industry with her blog, Into The Gloss.

Weiss' central idea was to reframe the conversation about beauty. Dissatisfied with the current landscape of the consumer beauty industry, Weiss wanted to give women a voice and a platform to talk about beauty. Prior to the launch of Into The Gloss, beauty brands and websites typically favored a top-down approach. Beauty brands created cosmetic products, then spent millions of dollars on traditional TV, print, and ambient advertising campaigns to promote their products to women.

Effectively, beauty brands were telling women what was on-trend, fashionable, and desirable.
"I wanted to start this new conversation around product that was more through the lens of personal style, rather than beauty be coming from a product- or launch-driven perspective." - Emily Weiss
Tired of being told what beauty was by major brands, Weiss wanted to tell the stories of the women who bought these products. She wanted to know what real women were buying and why. She wanted to know who they were, what beauty meant to them, and how cosmetics fit into their personal style and daily routines.

Weiss wanted women to tell their own stories, rather than having their stories dictated to them by fashion and beauty brands. She set out to build a community around trust and authenticity. Her platform would give women an opportunity to discuss beauty products in a genuine, low-cost way by circumventing the tastemakers and influencers who served as de facto gatekeepers of the fashion and beauty industries.

Weiss did two things brilliantly early on that laid the foundation for much of her brand's later success:

1. Recognize the potential of content and social media to build community

2. Focus on accessibility and attainability rather than exclusivity

First, Weiss saw that many major beauty and fashion brands had not yet begun to leverage social media as a communication tool. At that time, the beauty brands that had been early adopters of social media were using it purely self-promotionally. They used social media in the same way they used TV. Rather than engaging prospective fans and customers in conversation, these brands saw Facebook and Twitter as little more than platforms through which they could broadcast their content.

Secondly, Weiss used Into The Gloss to show its readers how they could look and feel glamorous without spending a fortune. The focus of this content was the women Weiss featured and their stories. The products were secondary.

By finding a then-underserved editorial niche in a rapidly growing vertical‚ beauty blogging, Weiss had also discovered an idea for a potential business.

2010: The Into The Gloss blog launches. Initially, Weiss publishes three times per week. Weiss writes, publishes, and publicizes all the site's content singlehandedly between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. before going to work at Vogue.

2010: Weiss spends $700 of her own money to fund initial costs. Beyond this investment, the site's costs are covered entirely by advertising (sidebar ads) and sponsored content.

2012: Less than two years after launching, Into The Gloss attracts 200,000 uniques and 4.5M pageviews per month. The site's stylish, minimalist design aesthetic and its celebrity beauty secret articles are extremely popular with readers. Much of the site's growth in traffic during this period is attributed to an increase in the site's publication frequency from three times per week to three times per day.

2012: Elle's senior fashion news editor, Nick Axelrod, leaves to join Weiss to help run Into the Gloss.

During this period, Weiss continued to build the Into The Gloss brand. By focusing on the women who used beauty products rather than the products themselves, Weiss' blog appealed to women who wanted to learn more about beauty products that would fit into their lifestyles and daily routines. As a result, the blog's traffic continued to grow. Weiss had developed a keen eye for fashion storytelling during her time in editorial roles at Vogue and W, and she used this knowledge to develop the customer-focused content that would ultimately define her brand.

Launching a brand-new beauty blog might be an uphill struggle in 2018, but back in 2010, far fewer people were blogging about beauty. Between 2010 and 2013-the most crucial years of Into The Gloss' growth-beauty blogging was becoming increasingly popular. Weiss rode that wave with a new perspective that took the industry by surprise. Prestigious industry events like runway shows, product launches, and even New York Fashion Week were being overrun by beauty bloggers seeking to get even closer to their subjects-a phenomenon Weiss described as a "roving backstage circus" in a New York Times profile.

Another defining feature of Into The Gloss that quickly drew a stark contrast between Weiss' blog and competing sites was Weiss' inclusion of celebrity profiles. Weiss leveraged the connections she had made as an intern at Vogue (and before Vogue, Ralph Lauren and W magazine) to secure interviews with celebrities such as comedian Aziz Ansari, model Emily Ratajkowski, actress Danielle Brooks, and rapper Angel Haze-all within the first year of the blog going live.
"The connections I made in my jobs and internships definitely helped me to get better access to people, or at least to have some credibility to be able to say, 'Let me interview you.'" - Emily Weiss
By 2013, Into The Gloss had begun to more closely resemble a real fashion magazine rather than an upstart beauty blog. Albeit inadvertently, Weiss had been gathering market research data and building a growing audience of loyal fans for almost three years. But it wasn't just Weiss' content her readers were responding to. Her customer-focused approach to beauty resonated strongly with women who felt their voices had been ignored by beauty's legacy brands. Positioning her brand in this way was the smartest move Weiss had made thus far.

The genius of Weiss' initial approach was that it leveraged peer-to-peer recommendations from readers to build trust in the brand and harnessed the power of social media as a research tool. Weiss didn't use content to promote her brand-content was the brand.

In 2013, Weiss and her team began to meet with venture capitalists in an attempt to secure funding to help Into The Gloss grow. With traffic of 2M uniques per month and more than 120,000 followers on social media, Weiss knew she was onto something big. The success of Into The Gloss had shown Weiss the power of smaller, agile brands in the beauty industry to connect with customers in an immediate, authentic way. Weiss wanted to apply this to selling products. To do this, Into The Gloss secured $2M in venture capital funding, led by Forerunner and Lerer Hippeau Ventures, plus individual investments from a handful of angels.

All Weiss needed now was to leverage the momentum her blog had built in just three short years to propel her venture to the next stage of growth.

It was time for Glossier to be born.

2014-2016: From Fifth Avenue to Sand Hill Road: Glossier Goes Shopping

Although Weiss had raised $2M in venture funding and finally had enough cash to take her operation to the next level, she didn't want to derail her growing company by rushing into product development.

Most startups fail because they waste time and money developing products that people don't need. Rather than rushing headlong into product development, Glossier took a more cautious approach. Weiss and her team continued to build the Into The Gloss brand in anticipation of Glossier's launch, building both the reach and audience of the blog. In addition, Weiss would also begin nurturing new channels for her brand such as Instagram. Weiss' company would later leverage its considerable reach to sell a small number of high-quality products more cheaply than its competitors.

By this point, Weiss realized what she had on her hands was becoming more than just a blog. In her quest to learn more about what women really wanted from their beauty products, Weiss began to speculate about what an Into The Gloss product line might look like. Weiss partnered with a chemist in California to begin developing the first of Glossier's products. The very first product Glossier developed was a moisturizer that wouldn't aggravate acne. After this, Weiss and her team began working on what would become the company's first four products.
"I always thought that Into the Gloss was and is the beginning of something bigger. The product line [Glossier] came about when I asked myself: 'How can we create really essential products when there is so much out there in the world?'" - Emily Weiss
One of the smartest moves that Glossier made during this period was to use its already strong content to overcome a glaring shortcoming that legacy beauty brands had failed to solve. Buying and using cosmetics is a deeply personal, intimate experience. Part of that experience is discussing your personal beauty needs with a knowledgeable expert at retail outlets such as Sephora. For traditional retailers, that model simply didn't translate to the internet. This was a huge opportunity for Glossier. The company had already built an audience and established trust via its content, and could use that to distribute its products.

Glossier was able to connect with its customers on a personal level in a low-cost way to build its brand. Even with a growing editorial staff, it was still cheaper to produce quality content and distribute that content via social than it would have been for the growing company to take out traditional ads -the favored approach of Glossier's legacy competitors. This was the brilliance of Glossier's approach to community. The brand had built a trusted relationship with its customers-and it did so very inexpensively.

2014: Into The Gloss raises $8.4M as part of its Series A round with Thrive Capital.

Into The Gloss ' seed and Series A rounds were significant - not least because Weiss didn't have a company or a clearly defined product idea when she began taking VC meetings. Only Kirsten Green, founder and managing director of Forerunner, offered to fund Weiss' idea. Only 7% of founders who received venture capital funding between 2009 and 2015 were women. Green later joined Glossier's board.

2014: Glossier launches as a sister brand to Into the Gloss.

When Glossier was finally unveiled to the world, many of the most important puzzle pieces had already been put into place. There was no need to establish the brand - Into The Gloss had done that. By cleverly positioning Glossier as an off-shoot sister brand of Into The Gloss, Weiss and her team could focus on building the brand as an extension of the work they had already been doing, rather than starting from scratch. Even more importantly, this positioning ensured that Glossier had a large, engaged audience of fans to which it could market its new products.

2014: Glossier launches its first set of products: a four-piece collection of skin lotions and balms priced at $80. Individually, the four products cost between $12 and $26.

2015: The company begins making its Milky Jelly Cleanser - one of its most popular products - after asking the Into The Gloss community what they wanted in a " dream face wash."
"Development started on Into The Gloss. Comments on the open thread helped decide what the product would be, and we were able to bring the customers on the journey with us." - Ali Weiss, Director of Marketing, Glossier
2015-2016: The company's inventory management is poor. The company sells almost a year's worth of product in three months due to overwhelming demand. Weiss publishes an apology post on Into The Gloss to explain the product shortage. Shortly after, Glossier hires a director of supply chain management.

By this point, Glossier was well established. The Glossier e-commerce site was attracting roughly 1.5M uniques per month, and after successful launch events, the company's small range of products was selling well. Now Glossier had to figure out how to scale.

Fortunately for the growing company, it had two key advantages it could leverage to scale its operations:

The vast amount of research data Weiss and her team had amassed through Into The Gloss, which the company could use to develop new products and improve existing ones.

The company's direct-to-consumer business model. Not having to rely on advertising meant that Glossier's customer acquisition costs were lower. The company also didn't need to give retailers a cut. This meant Glossier could continue to sell high-quality products directly to its vast community of fans at lower prices.

Glossier's community and the depth of data they had about it gave Weiss and her team a huge competitive advantage. They had the kind of market research that larger, legacy beauty brands would do almost anything to get their hands on.

Eric Liaw, general partner at IVP, the firm that led Glossier's $24M Series B round, described Into The Gloss as "a market research goldmine." Consumer retail expert Richie Siegel had similar sentiments about the value of Weiss' brand. "You could argue that she was gathering data for four years," Siegel said.

Another unconventional aspect of Glossier is its approach to pricing. Traditionally, the beauty sector has used price to denote value. The more expensive a beauty product is, the greater the perceived quality. However, this approach stood decidedly at odds with Glossier's mission. Weiss wanted everything about Glossier to be attainable and relatable. High prices did not align with this goal. By making quality products and selling them at a reasonable price point, Weiss was making a statement about her brand and making sure her products were affordable to more prospective customers. This is the democratization Weiss envisioned when she launched Into The Gloss in 2010.

Glossier needed capital not only to build its products, but to build out its executive team. Weiss had a strong grasp on the creative elements of the business, but she needed help and guidance for the business to grow. Weiss and her investors made a smart move by hiring a roster of executive talent with strong business acumen to complement Weiss' bold, creative vision.

The influx of capital and leadership talent allowed Glossier to grow quickly, but the real engine of growth was Glossier's continued focus on its brand attributes and philosophy. By this point, Glossier was a product company - but it didn't act or think like a product company. Glossier had built a loyal fanbase, and now it needed to expand. Glossier had a well-defined brand identity, a cult following in the United States, and it was almost ready to transition from a niche online beauty product company to a global retail presence.

2016-Present: Ready for Retail, Glossier Goes Global

By 2016, Glossier had begun to position itself as much of a lifestyle brand as a product company. The biggest shift for Glossier during this period, however, was the company's move into physical retail.

Glossier started out with a pure e-commerce business model. It acquired customers cheaply through its content and social, and sold this audience products at affordable price points by cutting out middlemen retailers. Although it might seem counterintuitive for an e-commerce company to branch out into brick-and-mortar retail locations, it made perfect sense for Glossier.

By opening its own stores, Glossier retained control over its brand and could own the entire Glossier retail experience end-to-end. Glossier could also broaden its footprint beyond its core audience of Millennial women to older demographics without having to split the profits with retailers or rely on traditional department stores as a pillar of growth.
"I hope that we transcend being a product company. I think product is maybe 50% of what we do. There's a whole other 50% that we offer people who are in the world of Glossier, and that's seeing the world through Glossier-colored glasses. It's an outlook. It's a certain perspective, not just product - there's far too many 'just products' in the world." - Emily Weiss
Weiss had first hinted about Glossier's forthcoming move to retail in a blog post onInto The Gloss in November. The post featured a single image-a white, industrial-looking space under renovation. Weiss teased her audience by promising more details on Glossier's imminent move into retail, but Weiss' die-hard fans wouldn't have to wait long.

2016: Glossier opens its first retail space, a showroom on the sixth floor of the company's Manhattan headquarters.

Even Glossier's approach to retail defies conventional wisdom. The brand's flagship space in Manhattan quickly became far more than a space to showcase and sell Glossier's growing range of products. Rather than a purely transactional space, Weiss and her team intentionally created the company's flagship store as a welcoming space where women could hang out and learn more about beauty in a general way-the same element of the traditional beauty experience that legacy brands failed to translate to online commerce. This aligns with the brand's mission and values perfectly, and creates a seamless transition between the brand's online presence and its real-world location.
"We would rather people come and actually stay than people come buy something and leave. We had girls who were masking on a roof deck for 45 minutes just hanging out with their friends while their phones charged at a station inside. And for us, that's success. That's really fun. Someone's coming to hang out with friends or get to know other people or give us some feedback about the products she already owns." - Emily Weiss
2016: Glossier launches its Super Serums product. Each of the four serums contains a different combination of vitamins, which were developed following an informal reader poll on supplements in an Into The Gloss blog post.

2017: The company announces plans to expand to retail/overseas operations. Markets targeted initially include Canada, the United Kingdom, and France.

2017: Glossier introduces international shipping for the first time, offering delivery to customers in Canada and the U.K.

2017: Glossier launches pop-up stores in overseas markets the company plans to target. Pop-up stores in Toronto, Canada, and Paris, France, are both launched in September. The French pop-up store is established at Colette Paris, known in fashion circles as " the trendiest store in the world," shortly before the iconic retailer closed permanently.

2018: The company raises $52 million in Series C funding. The funds are used primarily to finance Glossier's overseas retail expansion and further product development.

Glossier's move into traditional brick-and-mortar retail was practically inevitable. However, Glossier aimed to reinvent the beauty retail experience. Glossier was successful online because it had built its brand around its personal, authentic connection with its customers. It applied this same principle to its retail locations. Rather than opening stores with the sole intention of selling product, Glossier was also creating spaces for its community to hang out. By 2017, Glossier's flagship retail space was generating more sales revenue per square foot of space than the average Apple Store, and boasting a 65% conversion rate.

These days, Glossier resembles many traditional beauty brands. It has a strong e-commerce platform, a loyal community of highly engaged fans, and now physical retail locations. What sets Glossier apart is its business model. The beauty industry's legacy players had built their brands on the backs of their product lines. Unlike Glossier, however, they didn't have a clearly defined brand identity online - or a legion of social media-savvy brand evangelists. Glossier approached beauty retail from the opposite direction. It defined and built its brand online first, then branched out into physical retail as an extension of that brand.

Even after further investments of venture capital funding in 2016 and 2018, Glossier remained cautious in its approach to product development. The company could have easily ramped up development and production of new product lines dramatically to appease investors. Instead, Glossier never strayed from its tried-and-trusted approach of canvassing for opinions via social before incorporating that feedback into its formal R&D process. This also ensured Glossier could continue to focus on producing high-quality products at accessible price points to drive sales and foster continued growth.

Glossier even manages to make its product research process an opportunity to engage with its community. When the company began to develop its Milky Jelly Cleanser in 2015, Glossier invited its audience to tell the company what they wanted in a cleanser. The community responded to the post with hundreds of comments.

After updating the community in a follow-up post nine months later, some readers asked why Glossier had chosen to package its new cleanser in a jar rather than a pump-bottle. Glossier used this opportunity to tell readers more about the product development process, and explained that the resulting cleanser was too viscous for a pump. This explained the rationale behind a key product decision, let community members know that their feedback had been taken into genuine consideration, and maintained the transparency and inclusion that Glossier's loyal fans had come to expect from the brand.

Weiss' growing company aligns with what many Millennial women want from a beauty and cosmetics brand. However, for all its innovation, Glossier is most definitely a product of its time. Like other direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands such as Casper, Dollar Shave Club, and Warby Parker, Glossier tapped into a highly effective business model by using the internet to connect directly with its consumers. This allowed Glossier to eschew advertising costs, own the entirety of the customer relationship, and deliver higher-quality products for lower prices.

In today's D2C paradigm, it's no longer about control over supply-it's about control over demand.

Glossier has made some very smart moves, but the company's smartest move was to adopt a flywheel approach to its social strategy. For Glossier, Instagram is simultaneously a social promotion channel, an online product R&D lab, the nexus of the Glossier community, and a source of user-generated content that delivers significant returns after the initial investment of time/resources. This clever use of social, combined with Glossier's mission to empower women rather than just marketing to women, has resonated strongly with Glossier's audience.

By focusing on the experience of Glossier as a brand and maintaining its strong sense of community, Weiss' company has emerged as a truly customer-focused brand that is changing how women perceive, talk about, and use beauty products.
However, the next eighteen months to two years will be critical for Glossier. The company was able to grow rapidly because it hit on a cost-efficient business model. The challenge for Glossier will be to maintain that cost efficiency as it builds out its retail operations and expands overseas.

Where Glossier Can Go From Here

Glossier's cult-like following and meteoric growth would be the envy of any beauty brand, and the company is well-positioned to continue its ambitious growth plans - but where can Glossier go from here?

1. Expansion of Glossier products into the haircare vertical: The global haircare industry is estimated to be worth approximately $87B in 2018, which means it's almost inevitable that Glossier will eventually diversify its product lines to incorporate haircare products. Given the company's recent lateral move into fragrances, this seems a very strong possibility.

2. More personalized products: Although Glossier has little direct competition, more companies are moving into the space (such as The Ordinary brand of cosmetics produced by Deciem's Abnormal Beauty Company brand). Greater personalization of Glossier's products is one direction Glossier could take. Curology is an excellent example of this model, and is currently one of the only companies specifically developing products for the nascent individualized skincare market.

3. Subscription model: Although Weiss resisted calls for her company to introduce a subscription model early on in its growth, this remains a possibility for Glossier, particularly if the company wants to increase the price of its products in the future. Balancing cost vs. quality would be a challenge in this scenario, as Glossier's brand values of affordability and inclusivity would have to be maintained to avoid angering loyal fans of the brand while simultaneously offering greater value incentives to prospective subscribers.

4. Expansion overseas: Korean beauty products are considered among the very best produced anywhere in the world, and many Western retailers carry a variety of Korean skin care and cosmetic products. As competition within the beauty vertical intensifies, Glossier could broaden its international reach and continue to produce high-quality products by entering into partnerships with overseas firms in competitive, influential markets like Korea.

Entering a competitive market like the beauty vertical might seem like a losing battle. It's really hard to challenge established, legacy incumbents right out of the gate. It's much easier if you take your time, do your research into what these brands struggle with - then do it better. Glossier went up against some of the biggest beauty brands in the world. It beat them by smartly targeting their weaknesses - a lesson every entrepreneur can apply to their own business.

What Can We Learn From Glossier?

Regardless of your vertical, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from Glossier - especially when it comes to telling your story and building your brand.

Identify opportunities to hit your competition where it hurts

Glossier scored early wins by publishing great content and leveraging smart positioning, but the company didn't shy away from taking on enormous legacy players in an intensely competitive space.
So how do you identify these opportunities?

Find low-cost ways to challenge incumbent businesses that rely on paid acquisition. Legacy media is expensive, slow, and lacks any meaningful targeting parameters. Think of ways you can make your product sell itself. How can you leverage content, social media, and word-of-mouth to spread awareness of your product?

Think about how your competitors actually sell their product. Are they self-serve, or do they rely on reps? If so, this is a golden opportunity to go directly to your competitors' customers and make them your customers by dealing with them directly.

Look for ways to cultivate a stronger sense of community around your brand/products. Weiss' Into The Gloss relied heavily on community engagement, for everything from content ideas to product research. How can you create a stronger, more inclusive community around your brand? How can you invite your audience to become active participants instead of passive observers?

Make your story (and your customers' stories) human

Weiss launched Into The Gloss because she felt nobody else in the beauty industry was giving women a voice. This dissatisfaction with legacy beauty brands ultimately shaped Glossier's entire brand identity. What made Into The Gloss ' content so compelling was that it told stories that nobody else was telling about real women. Weiss' content was irresistible because it had a fresh, original angle and gave women a voice.

Take a look at the content you're publishing, then ask yourself some questions:

Whose story is your content telling - your brand's story, or your customers' stories?

What brand attributes does your content promote? How would someone unfamiliar with your brand feel after reading some of your content? Is your content more helpful, or more promotional?

Is your content relatable? How can you make your customers' stories relevant to your prospective customers' problems?

What does your content ask of your audience? Are you asking for your readers' time and attention, or just their money? Are you asking your audience to trust you, or showing them why they should trust you?

Can you find ways to repeat these stories to build your brand in the mind of your audience? Could you base a social campaign around a customer story? Could you translate your brand's content to a real-life meet-up or event?

Make your brand medium-agnostic

Although Glossier's approach to growth via content was quite typical (i.e., launch a blog, grow traffic, gain a following, launch product), the brand has always focused on targeting its prospective customers where they are, not where Glossier wants them to be.

Think about your social media presence, then ask yourself some questions:

Where are your most active, motivated prospects spending their time online - and does this align with your social strategy? Put another way, are you asking your prospects to consume your content on specific platforms, or are you publishing content in the places your prospects prefer to get their content?

Are you really listening to your customers, or just speaking at them? Is the dialogue around your brand an interactive, two-way conversation, or a corporate broadcast?

Think about how your brand communicates with your customers. Are you proactively reaching out to your most engaged prospects and asking them how they feel about your brand, or are you just reactively responding to your potential customers' problems or questions?

All That Glitters

Glossier is one of the best examples of the importance of establishing a strong, cohesive brand from the outset of any business. Weiss didn't necessarily set out to launch a product company. She soon realized, however, that her personal philosophy about what beauty could be was a perspective that millions of women shared-and wanted from a beauty brand. By smartly building a community around her ideas and not just a product line, Glossier has bridged one of the most fundamental gaps in an industry worth billions of dollars that's also notoriously hostile to newcomers.

Weiss and the rise of Glossier just go to show that, with a little planning and some savvy, it's definitely possible to challenge entrenched legacy players and beat them at their own game by strategically targeting their weaknesses.

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How Glossier Turned Into a $400 Million Business in Four Years

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Long before she was CEO of a burgeoning style empire, Emily Weiss began her day like many entrepreneurs-working hard on her side hustle before heading off to her day job. Except for Weiss, her day job didn't mean an invisible role in a thankless office or brewing coffee at her local Starbucks.

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Glossier, an online makeup and skincare brand born from "Into the Gloss," an online beauty blog by founder Emily Weiss, labels itself as a "people-powered beauty ecosystem." To develop products, they actively connect with everyday people to create an inventory that today's customer actually wants.

For example, Glossier's first product, the Milk Jelly Cleanser, was formed by asking their first followers what they wanted in a face wash. Today, women want to get ready in under 10 minutes, but still look put together. To help women achieve this goal, Glossier's products revolve around a "no makeup" makeup look, where skincare is the top priority.

Glossier knows that the opinions of real people matter, not just in product development, but also in marketing those products.

According to Inge Lammertink , " 80% (!) of millennials say that they trust a stranger's review on the Internet as much as a loved one's opinion." No longer just relying on recommendations from friends and family, shoppers are just as likely to crowdsource beauty product recommendations from trusted online influencers.

Then, once a shopper has found a product she wants to buy, the online check-out experience makes for a seamless transition. There's no need for a trip to the mall or the drugstore, as you can stock up on makeup with just a few clicks. Consumers have gotten used to doing everything online, and digital native brands like Glossier are able to deliver the experience that matches their lifestyle.

Glossier's Authentic Instagram Aesthetic

In order for brands to remain relevant with digital natives like millennials and Gen Z-ers, they need to produce consistent, high quality content for their digital platforms.

Glossier's social media content strategy positions the brand as authentic and down-to-earth. By not using overly salesy language, it's as if Glossier isn't a brand, but is just another friend's Instagram account.

Although Glossier's content marketing team constantly analyzes which hashtags work, which products people are drawn to the most, and every individual post's performance, the brand's feed doesn't feel overly calculated. Instead, it feels consciously authentic, which really resonates with the brand's audience. Before Glossier even launched their website, they had already garnered over 13,000 Instagram followers and had posted over 120 photos that showcased who they are and what they're all about.

Glossier has also nailed down a distinct look for their content marketing efforts. Glossier's pink is easily recognizable across the world, playing into an aesthetic that appeals to a social media obsessed generation.

Since Glossier's products are so "Instagrammable," customers are likely to post pictures of the products just because they want to. When Glossier opened their second physical location in LA, they purposely made the entire store fit Instagram's aesthetic, so that customers couldn't help but to share pics from their shopping experience on Instagram and tag the brand. User-generated content (UGC) allows Glossier to benefit from free advertising, no longer just selling customers, but selling customers.

How Glossier Uses Influencer Marketing to Build a Cult Following

"At Glossier, something we've always stayed very true to, since pre-launch, day one, is that every single person is an influencer." - Emily Weiss , Founder and CEO

Much like Glossier's invisible makeup mission, their advertising follows the same model. Rather than exclusively utilize influencers with millions of followers, Glossier identified 500 superfans who could be brand ambassadors. These customers who regularly buy Glossier products promote them on their own accounts in authentic, real ways.

Micro-influencers often have a level of authenticity and relatability that can be hard to maintain as one's following grows exponentially. Although they don't have the same reach as larger influencers, these micro-influencers tend to be more trusted by their audiences.

Whether an influencer has 50 or 50K followers, their values and opinions are trusted within their social bubbles and communities. So when Glossier gets an endorsement from a brand ambassador's social media posts, that's the most powerful (and cheapest) advertising around.

Glossier's Spin on Experiential Marketing Brings New Life to Brick-and-Mortar

With roots in a beauty blog, Glossier started as an exclusively online brand. Today, the brand is still heavily focused on digital avenues, but has experimented with physical, real-world experiences in smart ways.

Glossier has flagship stores in only two major cities (New York City and Los Angeles), but has also launched limited-time pop ups around the world and sells products through retailers like Bloomingdale's, Sephora, and Ulta Beauty.

These offline and in-store experiences are meant to further engage Glossier's already existing digital community. Since people who visit the brick-and-mortar stores and pop-ups tend to already be familiar with the brand, the physical spaces can be about more than just showcasing products. Instead, these spaces are designed to enhance the shopping experience, encouraging shoppers to create personal social media content and bond with friends over the latest and greatest in skincare.

In 2018, Glossier partnered with (the now closed) Rhea's Cafe in San Francisco for a month-long event where customers ordered from a limited menu and got to try and buy hundreds of Glossier products. The company did a complete restaurant takeover with vanities on the wall and makeup brushes resting in delicate coffee cups.

For a Boston pop-up in the Seaport neighborhood, Glossier rented out all nine of the freestanding micro shops in the retail village, assigning each boutique to a different line of product, including an entire room dedicated to perfecting your brows.

For a Seattle pop-up, Glossier teamed up with landscape designer Lily Kwong to create an in-store experience with rolling hills and moss-covered mounds...and it was all real! The store was designed to reflect the juxtaposition of nature and city life in the community. Glossier's experiential marketing strategy focuses on making each pop-up unique to the environment it inhabits to reflect the lives of the people living in that area.

The Proof is in the Milk Jelly Cleanser...

A strong digital presence is more important than ever for beauty brands, especially for connecting with millennial and Gen Z audiences. Glossier has found the perfect formula for generating trust from their consumers by having an approachable tone and garnering extensive earned media (and thus free advertising) from their devoted fans. Add these together with a strong social media presence and experiential events, and you've got a kick***, unstoppable brand.

Younger audiences seek authenticity and memorable experiences, which is why we do what we do at CBC: integrated marketing campaigns that combine top-notch experiential marketing programs with a strong digital and social strategy for the brands we work with.
Does your marketing strategy need a makeover? CBC can help you design and implement smart, integrated campaigns. Let's start the convo .

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Glossier's Digital Marketing Strategies are Disrupting the Beauty Industry

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Glossier, an online makeup and skincare brand born from "Into the Gloss," an online beauty blog by founder Emily Weiss, labels itself as a "people-powered beauty ecosystem." To develop products, they actively connect with everyday people to create an inventory that today's customer actually wants.

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Data That Proves the Continued Importance of Employee Learning

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Data That Proves the Continued Importance of Employee Learning

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"68% of employees say training and development is the company’s most important policy"(Stevenson, 2020)

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"These companies also enjoy a 24% higher profit margin than those who spend less on training."(Gutierrez, 2021)

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"An associate-customer interaction increases the likelihood of a purchase by 43% according to a recent Mindtree study"(Sheehan, 2018)