The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Tina Bou-Saba didn't anticipate becoming a dedicated beauty investor, but the path become clearer once she started investing in indie brands. "A few years into investing as an individual, founders started telling me, 'Tina, you've been our best investor. Could you lead our next round?'" Bou-Saba said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Bou-Saba started her career in investment banking before transitioning to angel investing. As an angel investor, she was early to makeup brands like Kosas. "As a small individual investor, that was certainly not something that I could do, but it highlighted the opportunity for a specialist investor that could lead deals at the early stage and truly be a value-add," she said. In 2021, she co-founded Verity Venture Partners, a consumer-focused firm. The firm's focus is on female-founded beauty and wellness brands, and its portfolio brands include August, Dae and Noto. Bou-Saba said, "Independent beauty has been an incredible vehicle for female entrepreneurship. For me personally, that was something I was excited to get behind." Bou-Saba's said that, as an early-stage investor, she has to push herself and brands to think of what comes next and where consumers and the beauty industry are headed. "What I found, which gives me confidence, is that I have developed an informed perspective on the needs of [beauty and wellness] companies. I see the same questions coming up again and again," said Bou-Saba.

The Honey Pot is still only an 8-year-old indie brand, but co-founder, CEO and chief innovation officer Bea Dixon has seen her fair share of ups and downs. After a preservative system reformulation this year, the sexual wellness and feminine health brand has been involved in controversy since May. Customers took to social media to question the reformulated ingredient list, which now features the preservative phenoxyethanol and new emulsifiers. Rumors were even spreading that the company had been sold and was no longer Black-owned. In the latest Glossy beauty podcast, Dixon shares the pitfalls of going "viral." "We admitted to the fact that we could have communicated better," said Dixon. "You work so hard to do something, and when people feel like there's an opposite communication happening, you want so badly to prove that that's not the case. Sometimes it can almost be worse to do that because it looks like you're being reactive and like you're defending something. [I] try to find the fine line between not being defensive, but [rather] owning up, being vulnerable and being responsible.” However, Dixon states that the company's investors and retail partners have remained supportive throughout. "[They] understand the good preservative system, they understand things change, and they understand the complexity of social media," she said. Still, Dixon emphasized how important her customer's journey is, as the products came to life from a very personal experience. After suffering from bacterial vaginosis for eight months in 2014, Dixon woke up from a visionary dream from her grandmother with a list of ingredients to heal her condition. That led Dixon, who was then working as a buyer at Whole Foods, to found the brand as a plant-derived vaginal wellness brand. Glossy's Priya Rao spoke to Dixon about The Honey Pot’s founding story, growing list of retail partners and reformulation challenges that led to the recent social media backlash.

After becoming a mother in 2017, Sarah Paiji Yoo cut out all single-use plastics from her life for the sake of her family. In 2019, she took that practice a step further by creating Blueland, a brand offering sustainable home goods and hygiene products. Blueland sells hand soaps, home cleaners, dish soaps and laundry products, made with respective plant-based formulas. And all products come in a reusable bottle and are shipped in recyclable cardboard. Its newest product, body wash, released in May, further expands the brand into beauty. "Blueland tackles the bulkiest products people use in the personal care and beauty space," Yoo said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. In February 2022, Prelude Growth Partners, a female-founded growth equity firm, led Blueland’s fundraising round of $20 million. Blueland has raised a total of $35 million to date from investors including pop star Justin Timberlake; Nicolas Jammet, CEO of Sweetgreen; and Jennifer Fleiss, co-founder of Rent the Runway.

After 15 years in the beauty industry holding various positions, Alisa Metzger founded Innbeauty Project in 2019. This clean beauty brand, which is aimed at Gen-Z consumers through an accessible pricing strategy, sells its products in major retailers like Sephora and Credo, as well as on its direct-to-consumer site. "If you think about the average [skin-care] product price and even the average [skin-care] routine being $100 and up, and then you match that with the average U.S. salary being less than $45,000 a year, it became really evident that clean skin-care was not something that most Americans can afford," Metzger said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Metzger worked with Jen Shane, co-founder of Innbeauty, at Tula when they noticed, “The wellness movement had taken over [beauty],” Metzer said. The early pioneers of clean beauty were at the forefront of the industry because the ingredient messaging resonated with consumers within the wellness movement. However, Metzger and Shane said they noticed that clean products at an accessible price point seemed nonexistent. The two were passionate about democratizing clean beauty. Innbeauty's prices range from $15 for a single lip oil to $120 for a 6-piece kit, which is still more affordable than the prices of individual products from some competitors. “We wanted to create a brand that spoke to [Gen Z] that didn’t exist. This industry is driven by innovation, which comes in many forms, including creating something that doesn't exist for an audience that's starving to consume," Metzger said. Metzer spoke to Glossy about the clean beauty industry, Gen-Z skin-care marketing and Innbeauty's future goals for further innovation in the beauty space.

“We're in a makeup [and] a self-expression renaissance right now," "Euphoria" makeup artist Donni Davy said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. After three years in development, Half Magic, the beauty brand by Davy and A24, debuted this week to extreme fanfare. Davy sees the brand to be an expression of "dopamine makeup," where it encourages its users to experiment with their self-expression and identity through makeup. Half Magic is selling DTC to consumers and will stay that way in order to maintain Davy’s direct and close relationships with customers. Despite the bold colors and glitter rhinestone masterpieces seen in "Euphoria," Davy wants to showcase all types of looks with Half Magic. With a wide variety of beginner-friendly lip kits, rhinestone packs, eye paint and applicator tools, Half Magic reassures customers that the "magic" of a makeup look is within oneself.

Created for BIPOC in mission and purpose, Tristan Walker’s health and beauty brand, Walker & Company, has been instrumental in shifting the norms of the beauty industry since its conception in 2013. At W&C, Black women and people of color hold the majority of leadership positions. It's changed the diversity in beauty aisles of department stores like Walmart and Target by putting razor and hair-care collections for all different hair textures on the shelves. After almost a decade of simplifying beauty and grooming for BIPOC, hygiene and home goods corporation P&G acquired Walker & Company in 2018 for an estimated $20 million to $40 million. Walker & Company's business has often been led by technology. But Walker, founder and CEO, said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast that, moving forward, the business will be led by culture. Walker’s perspective on how closely culture affects business was instrumental in the creation of Bevel and Form, W&C’s grooming and beauty brands, respectively. And prioritizing the needs of BIPOC doesn't stop at W&C's products. W&C has partnered with various community outreach programs, like Urban Prep academies in Chicago, where it donated laptops for students forced to remote-learn during Covid. Plus, it provides free mental health resources on Headpsace for W&C customers.

NYC-based makeup artist Meredith Duxbury is a well-known digital content creator among the TikTok beauty community with over 14.8 million followers on the platform. Referred to as “the complexion queen of TikTok,” she is also the face of the Morphe Making You Blush collection, which launched in March 2022. Duxbury grew up following beauty creators like Jacqueline Hill before deciding she wanted to post her own beauty content on social media. “I started on TikTok. I would stack up some cardboard boxes and make a random tripod out of whatever I could find, and I started doing [before-and-after] transitions here and there," Duxbury said on the latest Glossy Podcast. "My videos took off when I started doing rap lip-syncing videos to Nicki Minaj’s 'I’m Legit' song. And I created a trend called #thefoundationchallenge where I would smear foundation all over my face. It would get hundreds of millions of views.” The TikTok star hit 1 million followers in December 2020, and one month later, she reached 7 million followers. “I created three videos a day during quarantine and learned so much about the [influencer] industry. But I’d say 2019 was when I [first] immersed myself in the beauty world,” said Duxbury. “[The TikTok algorithm] shows that, if you’re consistent, you can grow."

When Pinterest launched in 2010, it was pegged as a supplemental platform for bloggers. Fast forward to over a decade later and it's now a regular go-to for beauty brands, beauty fans and far beyond with its buzzy ecosystem of content creators. At the helm of Pinterest's beauty division is Rachel Goodman, head of beauty partnerships, who has been with the company for seven years. During her tenure, she has witnessed the evolution of how Pinterest fits within people’s social media consumption. It has gone from being a special-occasion platform for people decorating apartments or getting married to becoming an “always-on” website for seeking inspiration and shopping. With this in mind, Pinterest has focused over the last two years on connecting the dots from providing inspiration for an idea to facilitating its realization through a purchase. “People aren't coming to Pinterest to broadcast their thoughts and opinions to a social network,” Goodman said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. “People come to Pinterest to look for ideas, to discover [ideas], to save them, and to go out and do them.” In the last 12 months alone, Pinterest has launched an inclusive beauty search for hair inspiration for Black, brown and Latinx people. It launched the Creator Fund in April 2021, which aims to recruit and amplify creators of color on the platform through a mix of education, tools, free advertising and income-generating opportunities. Pinterest also became more shoppable through a new program called Idea Pins and launched a daily live-streaming show called "Pinterest TV" in 2021. Goodman spoke further with Glossy about how Pinterest is working with creators differently, which beauty brands perform well on the platform and how Pinterest is helping brands adapt their tactics.

After a wide range of beauty collaborations under her belt from her 12 years as a beauty influencer, Desi Perkins finally took the plunge and became a beauty founder herself a year ago. Launched in April 2021, her skin-care brand, Dezi Skin, now has four products, with names such as “Claro Que C” and ingredients inspired by her Mexican heritage. With over 3 million YouTube subscribers and 4.3 million Instagram followers, Perkins is focused on Instagram for her brand’s marketing but is eyeing TikTok, too. “[Instagram] is targeting its platform toward brands and a shopping experience. For brands, this is still a really, really great platform. But I would also like to dip into TikTok with the brand, in a more casual sense. That's definitely in our forecast,” she said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Check out the entire podcast episode to learn about Perkins' development process for her brand and the way she uses audience feedback to develop products. She also shares her views on the beauty social media landscape and how it’s changed over the past decade.

Hair care has been a passion for Annie Young-Scrivner, CEO of Wella Company, since she was 13 years old when she started a side business cutting and perming hair. So when the executive was recruited from Godiva where she served as CEO for three years to join the 140-year-old hair-care and nail company, she jumped at the opportunity. Private equity firm KKR named Young-Scrivner as the CEO of Wella Company in Oct. 2020 following the announcement of its acquisition of 60% of the company from Coty. Wella distributes hair-care brands such as Wella Professionals, Clairol, Nioxin, GHD and nail polish brand OPI. In Dec. 2021, the company celebrated its first anniversary as an independent company. KKR and Wella Company have noted the ambitions to IPO in approximately four years. “We have a tremendous opportunity to be an incredible company. The first thing we're focused on is making sure we have the right [products] to meet the needs of the consumer,” said Young-Scrivner on the Glossy Beauty podcast. “The second thing is making sure we're growing in the right way. There's going to be lots of [exit] options for us.” When it comes to building a product and brand portfolio that stands the test of time, Wella is focusing on storytelling across all of its brands. This includes Wella Professional. Its Shinefinity long-lasting color glaze speaks to the health of hair, with the tagline “Shine you can feel." Wella has over 1,000 patented products and technologies it can use to position itself as a superior beauty company offering innovative products, Young-Scrivner said. OPI has also looked to unique opportunities to capture new customers and communities by partnering with Xbox in January. So far these efforts are paying off, as Wella’s professional sales channel has experienced a double-digit sales growth compared to the fiscal year 2019, and both its e-commerce and retail channels are growing substantially, said Young-Scrivner.

Starting out on Etsy and made by hand in the kitchen of co-founders Alex Kummerow and Julia Wills, skin-care brand Herbivore is now a rainbow-colored powerhouse with $15 million in Series A funding and distribution at Sephora. The brand’s Instagram-friendly aesthetic, emphasis on plant-based ingredients and glass-heavy packaging have attracted a loyal following. It has recently been rolling out a range of new products focused on active ingredients, including its latest vitamin C launch, as well as its bakuchiol Moon Fruit Serum, which launched this week. For this Glossy Beauty Podcast, Kummerow joined us from his home base in Hawaii to talk about Herbivore's founding story, growth and next steps. He shared details on how Herbivore went from a homemade brand to being stocked in top national retailers, how it's approached sustainability, and where he predicts beauty is headed.

After 26-years in business, Greek beauty brand Korres has a rich history to tell. Korres began as a homeopathic herbal remedy brand within a Greek pharmacy that was founded by George Korres in 1992. In 1996, the beauty brand was born, and it has since built up a portfolio of skin care, body care and fragrance products. They include staple Greek ingredients like olive oil, Greek yogurt, white pine and Assyrtiko, a white grape variety from the Greek island of Santorini. After first selling through Henri Bendel department store in 2000, Korres relaunched in the U.S. market in 2018 with a digital-first approach. This shortly followed Morgan Stanley’s investment of over $56 million into Korres in Nov. 2017, allowing the brand to push further into international markets. More recently, in Jan. 2021, the 26-year-old brand entered Ulta Beauty stores through the retailer’s Conscious Beauty program, following its Ulta.com launch in Dec. 2020. Korres is also sold at Sephora, HSN and Dermstore, With Ulta Beauty, the Korres team hopes to reach Gen-Z customers, which is a big focus for the beauty brand. Additionally, Korres plans to set up livestream shopping on its DTC e-commerce site in April. The goal is to better control its brand story and introduce people to its history as a Greek apothecary-pharmacy brand, while focusing on ingredient harvesting within Greece, in-house formulations and productions. “My vision is not to sit here and tell a story. My vision is to bring people in,” said Lena Korres, Korres co-founder and gm of North America, on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. “That’s why livestream shopping and being able to show things and introduce people [to Korres] and [let them] ask questions [is important]. That’s where I see our brand heading toward and making a difference.” In 2020, Korres earned $30 million in U.S. sales and $97 million globally. Korres expected to earn $120 million in 2021 global sales, she said, in a Glossy Jan. 2021 story.

After meeting while working at Glossier, Rebecca Zhou and Annie Kreighbaum went their own ways in the DTC world. But in 2019, they decided to get back into beauty. Nearly a year ago, they launched their body-care startup, Soft Services, which offers products addressing skin issues such as body acne and keratosis pilaris in chic packages you’d want to display on your counter instead of hiding it in your medicine cabinet. Investors have taken notice: The brand has already raised $3 million in seed funding. The idea was inspired by Kreighbaum’s beauty editorial years at Into the Gloss, where she learned that articles about common skin issues were incredibly popular, yet products offering solutions to them were hard to come by. Rather than joining the bandwagon of Gen Z-focused brands, Soft Services calls its approach “elastic branding,” when it comes to its target demographics -- and it’s not leaving out millennials. On the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Zhou and Kreighbaum discuss the need to remember millennial consumers, their approach to fundraising and the reason they don’t take a “purist” approach to DTC.

When Milk Makeup launched in February 2016, it brought a refreshing yet irreverent take on the beauty world and promoted that being bold and different was to be celebrated. Born out of the NYC-based Milk Studios, Milk Makeup made a name for itself through daring and playful products like Kush Mascara and creating blotting papers that doubled as rolling papers for marijuana joints. Today, Milk Makeup is sold in 20 countries and is a Sephora U.S.-exclusive brand. It was acquired by a special-purpose acquisition vehicle from Waldencast in Nov. 2021 alongside Obagi skin care in a three-way transaction for $1.2 billion. “Milk Makeup started with the objective of broadening and challenging the definition of beauty. The founders talk about it not as a business but as a movement rooted in the core values of inclusion, diversity, creativity, self-expression,” Tim Coolican, CEO of Milk Makeup, said on this week’s Glossy beauty podcast. Milk Makeup was founded by Milk Studios co-founder Mazdack Rassi, fashion editor and entertainment reporter Zanna Roberts Rassi, creative director Georgie Greville and product developer Dianna Ruth. As the Milk Makeup team looks toward the future of its business post-acquisition, they are focusing business efforts towards merch and product collaborations, international expansion and what it means to be a “cool” brand.

There’s no doubt that beauty brands are lining up for the chance to sign Scarlett Johansson as a brand ambassador. But now, the award-winning actress is all about The Outset, her new skin-care brand. “For a long time, I was a brand ambassador for different luxury beauty brands and beauty brands. And right around I'd say my late 20s, I was just done representing someone else's beauty, ideal or beauty standard, and felt like I was confident enough to do something that really was true to me,” she said on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Five years in the making, The Outset was unveiled March 1 with six products. Johansson teamed up with fashion and beauty executive Kate Foster Lengyel to found the brand, which is available via DTC sales now and will launch with Sephora on April 26. Lengyel oversees the day-to-day business operations of the brand, “and then I look after Kate,” said Johansson. The marketing strategy is focused on Instagram and TikTok, but through the brand’s accounts, specifically — Johansson famously steers clear of having a personal Instagram account. “My ego is far too fragile for me to have my own social media,” she said. While she said “never say never,” when it comes to starting her own account, she added, “I cannot imagine it happening anytime soon.” On the podcast, the business partners went into more detail on the brand’s founding, including how it was inspired by Johansson's straightforward approach to skin care, as well as consumer research.

For Julian Addo, founder and CEO of textured hair-care brand Adwoa Beauty, her business is deeply intertwined with her own life story. Addo was born in Monrovia, Liberia to a Ghanaian father and Liberian mother and moved to the U.S. in 1982. She worked in a beauty salon as a stylist and then as a salon owner. After a period in banking, while still doubling as a salon owner, Addo began to see how the DTC space was disrupting not only business models, but also branding itself. Inspired by the likes of Glossier and Warby Parker, Addo saw a stark lack of such branding innovation in the natural and textured hair sector. She said she woke up one day in March 2016 determined to develop Adwoa Beauty, which shares Addo’s traditional Ghanian name meaning “female born on a Monday.” “I knew that I had to pull from my life and my experiences and my vision super heavily so that I could enjoy the brand, because it came from a passionate place,” Addo shared on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Adwoa Beauty has been a Sephora-exclusive brand since Nov. 2019 and has 11 products. It plans to expand to an additional 158 doors in the first half of 2022, to a total of 448 U.S. Sephora doors. Adwoa Beauty is also in 48 Sephora Canada doors and will expand to all 98 locations. Approximately 65% of Adwoa Beauty sales are from Sephora, and Adwoa grew its Sephora sales 200% year-over-year between 2021 and 2020. “For me, it’s about being smart on where we go and how we move. We want to grow but not grow too fast, because there are a lot of pain points that come with just spreading yourself too thin,” said Addo. “I never really saw Adwoa Beauty as a type of brand that was in 100,000 doors. I want this brand to provide its audience with an experience they hadn’t had before.”

With over 20 years of experience in her dermatology practice, Dr. Rose Ingleton is known as the “dermatologist to the stars.” Reported to be the dermatologist of Iman, Chrissy Teigan and Adriana Lima, Ingleton took the leap and branched out with her own skin-care brand in 2019. Now stocked at eight retailers including Sephora and Net-a-Porter, Rose Ingleton MD Skincare was developed to address the most common skin issues that Ingleton sees among her patients. Dr. Ingleton, who still practices dermatology, sat down with the Glossy Beauty Podcast from her Manhattan practice to discuss all things skin care. While she won’t confirm which celebrities see her — “Unless you see them coming in and out of my office, you’ll never know who comes here,” she said — she shared details on her approach to skin care, the growth of her brand and her belief that luxury skin care is shifting toward experts.

When Mina Chae, CEO of Farmacy, first joined the farm-to-face skin-care brand five years ago as director of marketing and consumer engagement, the team was small -- so much so that she had to help box up influencer mailers and even drive to the warehouse to pack shipments during Black Friday shopping. Farmacy was founded in 2016 and was acquired by P&G for an undisclosed sum at the end of 2021. The acquisition coincided with the appointment of Chae as CEO of Farmacy. Chae stepped into the CEO role in January after previously holding the role of vp of marketing and consumer engagement. Now as CEO, her plans are to increase brand awareness, including through more advertising and marketing with out-of-home advertising and the Farmacy’s first-ever pop-up in April. “When I first started, I was responding to all of the DMs in the [Instagram] comments myself. I would stay up all night reading all of the reviews, and I still stay up all night reading all of the reviews,” Chae said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. “That puts me in a unique perspective, because I am connected to the consumer. My goal as CEO is to continue that [relationship].” Chae spoke to Glossy further about her transition to the CEO role, her plans to boost brand awareness and the brand's focus on sustainability moving forward.

When Tisha Thompson was choosing her major in college, she listened to her parents’ advice to go with a “safe” career path and choose accounting. But her passion was always makeup. “My parents were really firm on, ‘We don't want you to be a starving artist,’” she said on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. Fast-forward to today, past several career moves that meant leaving her comfort zone, and she has a brand -- LYS Beauty, launched in February 2021 -- that's stocked at Sephora. Thompson became inspired to found LYS Beauty while spearheading the development of 100 foundation shades when she worked at PÜR Cosmetics. When her brand entered Sephora in the fall of last year, it became the first Black-owned cosmetics brand in the retailer’s “Clean at Sephora” category. LYS Beauty is bringing inclusivity to the clean beauty space with both product range and price point. Its foundation is its No. 1 seller, followed by its distinct triangle-shaped cream blush.

While COO at The Clorox Company and, prior, vp and gm of Burt’s Bees, Nick Vlahos knew the better-for-you categorywas a key driver of consumer-packaged goods' future. The Honest Co. was first launched in 2012 by actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba, and Vlahos has been at the helm as CEO since March 2017. Since his appointment, Vlahos has committed the brand to reinvest 2% of its revenue into research and development. He overhauled the beauty category in 2018 to have fewer products, new formulations and packaging, simpler names, and lower price points. He also moved the company from a DTC e-commerce strategy to an omnichannel one. Today, The Honest Co. products are sold online and in 32,000 retail locations, including Walgreens, Amazon and Nordstrom, and Boots in the U.K. Vlahos cites international expansion as a significant opportunity for the business in 2022, especially through its partnership with German retailer Douglas. “As we look to the future, we're going to continue to partner with the right retailers, both domestically and internationally, to be able to drive our accessibility strategy through an omnichannel lens,” Vlahos said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. The Honest Co. went public via an IPO in May 2021 at $16 a share. Currently, shares are trading below $7. In the conversation, Vlahos explains recent updates to The Honest Co.'s beauty portfolio, questions over the company’s fallen stock price and the strategy for international expansion.

When Freck Beauty's founder, who goes by Remi, first launched her brand on Kickstarter, her idea was a novel one: a makeup product that could recreate the look of freckles. Not everyone understood the idea, at first -- Jimmy Kimmel even made fun of the brand on his show. But Remi is having the last laugh. Freck Beauty launched at Sephora in February of 2021, after receiving VC investment in 2020 and widening its range of skin-care and makeup products. The brand’s freckle pen, called “Freck OG,” is a TikTok beauty darling. Its fans include a wide range of "it" girls, influencers and celebrities, including Emily Ratajokwski, Doja Cat and Lady Gaga. On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast, Remi discusses the history of the brand, including its founding story, as well as its organic rise on TikTok, where #FreckleTok has billions of views. She also went over the product lineup, which has expanded well beyond the “freckle franchise.” Her approach to edgy branding and her plans for upcoming product launches were also covered.

When U.K.-based brand Pai Skincare first launched 14 years ago as an organic beauty brand, the clean category was barely in its infancy. Since then, Sarah Brown, founder and CEO of Pai, has seen the rise and transformation of the clean category. She credits the clean beauty concept for "exploding" the natural category, but said she sees a lot of greenwashing and supports legislation and regulations around clean claims. Brown came from outside the industry when she launched the brand, after trying to soothe her skin condition known as chronic urticaria, she said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Pai has since become known for its hero Rosehip Oil, as well as products including its Rosehip Fruit Extract Cleansing Oil and Chamomile & Rosehip Soothing Moisturizer. Pai sells through U.S. retailers like Credo, Free People, Bloomingdales and Skinstore. In 2020, Pai underwent a rebrand to focus on two main areas: packaging design and third-party certification. The packaging was updated to be more sustainable and better communicate Pai's brand positioning, and to incorporate third-party certification to provide credibility. "We wanted to make the brand look more contemporary and relevant, and [ensure that it also] embodied and communicated our values," said Brown. "It took about two years. It was really about [asking], 'How do we sit within this clean category and this big movement?'" In April 2021, the brand raised a Series B investment round of $9 million, which it used to increase its manufacturing output and distribution. The brand maintains a vertically integrated supply chain with a 12,000-square-foot office in West London, which houses a corporate office, a lab and a manufacturing facility.

In the heart of Los Angeles lies a seven-acre oasis known as Flamingo Estate. Flamingo Estate, the brainchild of Richard Christiansen, is a modern take on an apothecary-meets-sanctuary. Nestled in the foothills of the City of Angels, Flamingo Estate began in March 2020 during the initial upheaval of Covid-19, when all industries were reeling from its sudden shock. But what started as a passion project soon blossomed into something much more. Today, Flamingo Estate works with a collective of farmers, horticulturists and herbalists to develop a 150-product portfolio. It sells products including soap, wine, candles and condiments for the bath, garden, home and kitchen. Christiansen is also the founder of the creative agency Chandelier Creative, which he formed 16-years ago. It has since grown to have 60 employees across three offices in Los Angeles, New York City and Paris. The Australian native grew up on a honey farm but always dreamed of working in luxury goods. "I used to say to everyone at the office that our job was to fight for fantasy, because the real world is so boring," said Christiansen on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. The formation of Flamingo Estate was ultimately a confluence of coincidence, opportunity and the ineffable desire for the paradisiacal. Christiansen, whose hobby was beekeeping while living in New York, gifted people honey while on a photoshoot in Los Angeles, and one recipient asked for a favor: The favor was to place some bees in a seven-acre garden in the city, owned by an eccentric older man. When Christiansen first arrived, the man wore a leopard-print G-string and a red silk bathrobe. Eventually, Christiansen took over the Grey Gardens-esque property and turned it into a modern version of the Garden of Allah. "I put some bees in, and I saw this garden -- this amazing garden. And I thought, 'Oh my god, this is my dream.' It was all rundown and overgrown," he said. "A couple of years went by before I purchased the house." Christiansen spoke with Glossy about the origin of Flamingo Estate, his philosophy around brand building and the lifestyle brand's next steps.

In a special edition of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Jill Manoff, editor-in-chief, sat down with senior beauty reporters Liz Flora and Emma Sandler to review the year in beauty news. The previous 12 months were, in many respects, a rollercoaster. The year started and ended with a bang, in the form of multiple high-profile acquisitions and investments. Plus, the burgeoning worlds of the metaverse and NFTs ruled conversations, and social shopping and shop-in-shops increasingly dictated where and how people shop.

Not long ago, skin-care options for teens were limited to the traditional players in the market. In November 2019, beauty industry veterans Alison Haljun and Christin Powell set out to change that with the launch of Gen Z-focused skin-care brand Kinship. On this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast, the co-founders shared the brand’s founding story, as well as their approaches to distribution, marketing and learning from a younger audience. With colorful branding and a focus on sustainability and meeting clean ingredients standards, Kinship was founded by Haljun, its president, and Powell, its CEO, after they had struggled to find products for their own kids. Since its launch, the brand has entered Credo Beauty and Ulta Beauty, and collaborated with top Gen-Z skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro. The co-founders’ strategy in running the brand is based on their years of beauty industry experience. Powell co-founded original clean brand Juice Beauty, and Haljun is a Benefit Cosmetics alum, plus they sought out input from young consumers and investors. The brand consults with a Gen-Z focus group called its “Kin Circle” for everything from packaging design to product testing, and its first investor was only 18 years old.

When Dr. Yannis Alexandrides first formulated a healing serum for patients of his London-based plastic surgery clinic, he had no intention of turning it into one of the beauty industry’s most sought-after luxury brands. The brand came about after Dr. Alexandrides, a still-practicing plastic surgeon, sought a post-operative treatment that patients could use to heal any residual wounds and marks. But when one of his patients mentioned her affinity for the serum to a Harrod’s personal shopper, the famous luxury department store sought to stock the brand, and things took off from there. The location of Dr. Alexandrides' practice, at 111 Harley Street in London, inspired the brand name. Since starting with a single shelf in Harrods in 2012, the brand has slowly and quietly grown a global distribution network that includes Bergdorf Goodman, Net-a-Porter, Neiman Marcus, Harvey Nichols and Mecca. When the business was formed, 111Skin brought on board Eva Alexandridis, Dr. Yannis Alexandrides’ wife, as a co-founder to help with retail expansion. She now also oversees the brand's creative direction and new product development. “We never made decisions based on a board meeting or according to trends,” Dr. Alexandrides told host Priya Rao on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "We make product decisions based on patients that I see in the clinic -- on real skin problems and on real skin solutions with great results. That's what sets us apart -- being a highly scientific brand that doesn't chase the trends.” This strategy has paid for the brand, which earned $20 million in wholesale sales in 2020 and approximately $50 million in retail sales. In Feb. 2020, 111Skin raised an undisclosed amount in outside funding from Vaultier7, which previously invested in hair-care brand Gisou and fashion resale platform Vestiaire Collective.

At L’Oréal, Erica Culpepper has overseen a portfolio of brands that have been at the forefront of the beauty industry’s transformation, when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. With a tenure of over 17 years in the L’Oréal Consumer Products Division, she has worked across much of the company’s brand portfolio including holding positions at L'Oréal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier. Now the general manager for Carol’s Daughter, Softsheen-Carson and Thayers Natural Remedies, Culpepper candidly discussed the direction of the industry with host Priya Rao on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. “It's important to support Black-owned brands. It's also important to support Black-founded brands, as well as Black-led brands. So it's all a very big and important conversation, and we need all of it in order to be successful,” she said during the interview, discussing the backlash that some founders receive when they sell their companies. She also discussed the positive changes she’s seen in the industry, including retailers’ efforts to stock a more diverse range of brands, and the way social platforms like TikTok and a new generation of brand ambassadors are helping legacy brands reach a younger audience.

While many children begin to pursue hobbies around eight years old, they are not typically along the lines of curating a skin -care routine, unless of course, you are Shani Darden. The founder of her eponymous beauty line made a name for herself working as an esthetician for Hollywood celebrities like Jessica Alba, Kelly Rowland and Chrissy Teigen. Darden paved the way for her next role as beauty founder in 2013 after identifying a white space in the market for retinol products without the typical harsh side effects of flaking, irritation and redness, she said on this week’s Glossy Beauty podcast. After coverage in 2017 from publication US Weekly an influx of orders began. Michelle Shigemasa, former CEO of Murad and current CEO of Shani Darden Skincare, joined in July 2021 because of its “highly efficacious” products as well as Darden’s “authenticity and her approach to skin care,” said Shigemasa, who also joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast this week. Now, as the Beverly Hills-based brand approaches the end of its own eighth year, Shigemasa focuses on facilitating Shani Darden’s evolution from the inside out. In addition to building the internal team, influencer outreach, and overall brand awareness, “We want to win in a meaningful way with Sephora,” said Shigemasa. Shani Darden launched on Sephora.com and Sephora.ca in March 2020, and later in-store at Sephora in October of the same year. However, “We’re not yet a huge brand at Sephora, and that’s our ambition,” she said.

Today, "digital" is practically synonymous with fashion and beauty. But to boast an advanced knowledge of the digital world in the early aughts is what Alessio Rossi, evp of Shiseido and Clé de Peau Beauté and head of digital transformation for the Americas at Shiseido, considers "serendipitous." "I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, so that today, people can consider me a veteran of the space," said Rossi on this week's Glossy Beauty Podcast. Brands were taught to be "one talking to many," he said of the first wave of digital 20-plus years ago. "We weren't necessarily taught to listen, to get feedback and to engage in many multiple, concurrent, sometimes synchronous conversations with our audience... That was a huge change for brands around the world, specifically in luxury." Rossi landed at Shiseido six years ago, after over 12 years in the luxury industry with companies like L'Oréal and Kering. In January 2021, he transitioned to his current position, where his main task is discovering "the ongoing redefinition of what luxury beauty online means from an experiential standpoint," he said. Now, Rossi harnesses social as a community-builder, ensuring Shiseido's spot as a key successor in the U.S. beauty landscape and responding to customer preferences changed by Covid-19. The pandemic pushed shopping toward livestreaming and direct selling, he said. "We tried to reinvent the proposition immediately because this is what was needed. And we are in the process of reinventing it because consumers [have even more] options now."

With roles at Target, The Home Depot, Family Dollar and now Ulta Beauty, Kecia Steelman, Ulta Beauty chief operating officer, can legitimately affirm, “Retail is in my DNA." “Life has [come] full circle because I’m leading the Ulta Beauty at Target partnership,” said Steelman, who spearheaded the collaboration, on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. (Steelman worked at Target between 1993 and 2005 and has been at Ulta Beauty since 2015.) Ulta Beauty at Target, which launched in August and consists of a 1,000 square foot, Ulta Beauty expert-staffed shop-in-shops in Target, is set to reach 100 new shops by the end of this year. The curated assortment of 54 prestige beauty brands is one of the ways that Steelman has facilitated a more convenient shopping experience for Ulta Beauty's existing customers as well as create a new ecosystem of shoppers at Target, said Steelman. Additionally, Steelman has worked to expand Ulta Beauty’s digital innovation with elevated curbside and same-day pickup capabilities last year. “We shifted to be focused on self-care, self-expression, and togetherness because that’s what our guests needed from us at that time,” she said.

When Carolyn Bojanowski, svp and gm of e-commerce at Sephora, joined the retailer team in 2005, it was an opportunity to pay homage to her childhood as the daughter of a candy buyer. In her mind, Sephora was the "candy store of beauty." "Sephora has always been committed to the digital experience," said Bojanowski on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. And that e-commerce experience had to go into overdrive during the pandemic. Not only did Bojanowski spearhead the acceleration of Sephora's in-store pick-up, but she facilitated an unlikely ally in Instacart. She also launched Sephora's same-day pick-up service to expand its customer reach. "If you can give someone back time, that is another way to think about having a luxury experience," she said. During Covid-19, Bojanowski was also tasked with translating the in-store customer service experience to online, where the practicality of in-store product trial did not exist. In addition to its thorough product pages, shade finders, quizzes and UGC, Sephora launched on Sephora.com its live home chat, which enables customers to chat with Sephora's in-house beauty advisors from the comfort of their homes, said Bojanowski. This has also created a whole new retail role for the company.

Clean or effective? It's a question that the beauty industry has tried to tackle for the last decade. For Tula, a probiotic-based, skin-care brand, it has attempted to combine its doctor-founded, science-backed approach with the appeal of being a modern, clean brand,said Savannah Sachs, Tula CEO, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Sachs joined Tula in 2018 and has seen the brand through the rapid expansion of its team, expanded retail distribution and technological development, much of which transpired under a Covid-19 lens. Though Tula launched with Ulta Beauty in 2018, its presence within the beauty retailer grew just prior to the pandemic. The brand launched its "Skin Bar takeover" in Jan. 2020. Although Ulta Beauty stores soon shut down due to Covid, Sachs said, "We retained our retail field sales team throughout the pandemic [and] cross-trained them to educate and serve customers via chat on our direct-to-consumer business." In addition to Ulta Beauty, Tula has also met its millennial and Gen-Z customer base on TikTok, where it has amassed 380,000 followers in the past year. "We have committed to being a positive force for change in the beauty landscape in social media," she said. Tula's commitment to unfiltered spon-con through the hashtag campaign #EmbraceYourSkin this September is just one way the brand has done so.

True Botanicals chief marketing officer Rebecca Boston‘s work in the fashion industry led her to beauty, and then, specifically, clean skin care. Boston was motivated to take the True Botanicals role after working at Rihanna's Fenty Beauty because of the opportunity for a “branding refresh." “There wasn't a clean beauty brand that made a woman feel herself, feel sensual,” said Boston on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. “We need to do a better job showing that a clean beauty brand can do that for you.” But Boston’s passion for beauty started even before she worked within the marketing and social media sector for Fenty Beauty and Ole Henrickson. As a child, she traveled frequently because of her parents’ work with nonprofit organizations, said Boston. “I grew up being exposed to all different types of beauty,” she said. “I recognized the need in marketing and in advertising for more people to be able to see [the diversity of beauty for] themselves.” True Botanicals’ skin-care campaign with Olivia Wilde, in which she posed nude, as well as its sexier Instagram feed are testaments to the brand’s portrayal of diverse beauty. It also shows its transition from “granola [and] crunchy” to “glowing” and “sensual.” In the next few months, Boston plans to narrow in on launching new products and “filling gaps in our assortment.” She also wants to“[bring] on new folks who will help us reach new audiences and new age groups,” she said. “Once someone uses one of our products, they add more and more, and they want their entire skin-care routine to be True Botanicals.” Boston spoke to Glossy about the recent Olivia Wilde campaign, her plan to get people to pay attention to the brand, and the current demands of a CMO role.

While emerging from a decade dominated by sans-serif typeface and millennial pink, it may be hard to remember a time when an ode to simplicity could make a brand stand out. But when Malin+Goetz, a natural apothecary beauty brand, was founded in 2004, its “less is more” approach at a time when the market was about “more and more” initiated the brand’s journey. “We came at it from a minimalist, different direction, not only in our packaging and design, but also in our formulations and the protocols,” said Matthew Malin, Malin+Goetz co-founder, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. “Nobody was doing unisex [in beauty] at that time." Eighteen years later, in a Covid-19 riddled world, Malin+Goetz has once again proven that it's not afraid to take the road less traveled. In this case, that's meant opening a retail location in Williamsburg, after the beauty industry saw a wave of door closures. “If a store doesn't have something special, which includes beautiful design, wonderful brands and products, and great service, it's going to be challenging in the post-Covid world,” said Andrew Goetz, Malin+Goetz co-founder (and Malin’s partner) on the podcast. And while the new normal, and how brands respond, may be uncharted territory, Malin+Goetz expects to take a multifaceted approach in its appeal to the consumer. The brand’s brick-and-mortar stores, luxury hospitality partners and e-commerce play via its own site and Amazon “are all important aspects of how to be a successful brand,” said Goetz. “Being able to support that customer through those different channels is critical.”

For many people, a bad hair day would result in a few shed tears and some variation of a head covering. However in the case of Yve-Car Momperousse, CEO and co-founder of Kreyol Essence, a beauty brand specializing in natural hair-care and skin-care products from Haiti, what started as a solution to a “hair catastrophe” evolved into a “social impact brand.” “Hair, dry skin, eczema -- for any issue you had in the Haitian community, you found [a solution in] this bottle of this product,” said Momperousse on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. The product in question, Haitian Black castor oil, served as the solution to Momperousee’s hair loss at the time and the foundation of her brand, launched in 2014. “We're not only looking [at] how we impact our tribe, which is what we call our customers, but we’re also looking at how we impact our producers and every part of the supply chain that it takes to make the castor oil,” said Momperousse. Aside from providing “women of color” with products for “kinky, curly hair," Kreyol Essence is “creating work for farmers, helping with the environment, exporting and changing the relationship that people have with Haiti,” she said. Now, the brand has expanded with more products, like Moringa powder, which also includes “collagen, ashwagandha and vitamin C,” for a holistic approach to beauty, she said. Simultaneously, Kreyol Essence continues to expand its retail presence, from "Shark Tank" to the shelves of Ulta to QVC. Looking ahead, Momperousse continues to look at “the larger picture,” she said. The guiding question is, “Are you doing something above and beyond what a traditional business would do, with [a] clear intention for impact either on the environment [or] for a specific group of people?”

Kristen Noel Crawley, KNC Beauty founder, knows that it takes more than being a “lover of skincare” to become a successful beauty brand founder. The launch of the Black-owned brand in 2016 was “a natural evolution” for Crawley, who networked her way through the beauty industry, starting as a beauty columnist for Elle magazine, she said on this week's Glossy Beauty Podcast. “I started the brand because I had those dry and crusty lips. Since I launched my brand, I haven't had any problems with my chapped lips,” said Crawley, who had found a solution to her lip dilemma in the form of a lip mask in Japan. “The only thing I didn't like was that there were probably 50 ingredients in this one little sachet.” What started as a means to fill the all-natural lip mask void in America evolved into a line of products including KNC’s retinol-infused star-shaped eye mask and collagen-infused lip scrub and lip balms. Beyond trend spotting, Crawley is adept at tapping into larger social and cultural movements. She launched KNC’s School of Beauty, a mentorship program for Black female beauty founders, in 2020, and a collaboration with streetwear brand Bape in July 2021. “School of Beauty was actually a direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement,” she said. “Black women and women of color contribute so much to the success of the beauty industry and I want to see more female founders in that space.”

Covid forced social activities, like bar crawls and date nights, to go on hiatus, or move to Zoom. So the fact that fragrance sales increased by 82% in the first half of 2021, compared to the same time in 2020, demonstrates that in the age of wellness, perfume has been added to the list of self-care. Ilaria Resta, global president since March of 2020 of the perfumery division at Firmenich, a fragrance and flavor company, said this shift in consumer preference is just one aspect of change that she has been tasked with reacting to. “The key pillars of my vision are related to anticipating and being on the leading front of the transformation of this industry, and future-proofing the business by anticipating or creating trends,” said Resta on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. That’s included navigating the “shift from fragrance [being worn to] appeal to others to being [worn] for our own relaxation and feeling better with ourselves,” she said. Additionally, Resta has had to determine, “How do we communicate the fragrance in a virtual way [during Covid]?” she said. Fittingly for the digital-centric nature of the world today, Firmenich launched Scentmate, an “AI-enabled platform” that enables users to create a personalized fragrance based on data, as well as their personal preferences. “Innovation is critical as a driver for value creation and differentiation [in fragrance],” she said. Below are additional highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity On the evolution of the fragrance industry “The power of fragrances in triggering emotions [and] memories. It’s outstanding, and [it] is used also for therapies in order to trigger specific emotions. There are ingredients proven to aid concentration and focus, in lowering the heartbeat rate and improving well-being. It’s an industry that is evolving from being pleasure-focused [and] hedonic-focused to being an industry that is also adding real physical and mental benefits. And [it] is very much science-driven, as much as it is hedonic and creative. It is a fascinating sweet spot between the left and the right brain.” Firmenich’s relationship with sustainability “The company started working on [sustainability] before it became even a word or before it became a necessity and a demand from consumers. Decades ago, at Firmenich, we started defining critical roles to assess the role of biodegradable, renewable ingredients in the palette of ingredients that our perfumers work with. But also when it comes to biochemistry, we develop fragrances that mimic nature but do not deprive nature [of these] ingredients. At the same time, we started looking at the broader role of sustainability when it comes to social responsibility. [We] make sure that all the sourcing strategies are [responsibly sourced] from communities that are treated in the best way, not only for the workers, but [also] for the communities they work with. We [ensure] there are equal wages and minimum wages for men and women. We look at the broader ecosystems of sustainability. And this has been inspiring the work at Firmenich, this has been an important glue between us and our clients.”

The launch of Fenty Beauty in 2017 marked a turning point for diversity within the beauty industry, as makeup brands were tasked with matching the new standards of Fenty’s foundation shade range of 40 colors. Brands like Revlon and Dior stepped up to the plate with more inclusive shade ranges. Meanwhile. a blank space remained in the beauty industry for brands catering to Afro-textured hair. Maeva Heim, founder and CEO of Bread Beauty Supply, a Black-owned hair-care brand catered to textured hair, aimed to fill this gap with Bread Beauty Supply. Heim, an Australia native, worked within the beauty industry prior to launching Bread, so she experienced the lack of inclusivity in the hair-care sector from an insider's perspective, as well as from the perspective of a Black female customer. “The brands that I was working on personally -- and even the brands in the beauty industry, in general -- weren't speaking to me as a woman of color,” she said on the latest Glossy Beauty podcast. Bread, which offers products including a scalp-serum, hair masks and oils for curl types 3a to 4c, came into fruition during the pandemic, in July of 2020. Since then, sales for the brand, which has a core customer who is “young in her career" and "on that cusp between Gen Z [and] millennial,” have tripled, said Heim. Now, Bread Beauty Supply is available on both breadbeautysupply.com and sephora.com. According to Heim, she's successfully created an indie brand that “resonates” with customers in a way “that a giant, multinational corporation can't.” And, while Bread’s partnership with Sephora is set to continue, Heim aims to expand her brand in a bigger way. “Our priority is existing where our customer wants us to exist, and we're constantly refining what that looks like in the next 3-5 years, and where we need to go and exist internationally,” she said. “Because this issue and this gap exist not just in the U.S., but [also] in pretty much every Western market.”

When you reach for a bottle of shampoo in the shower, you may not be familiar with the brand founder -- or know if he or she actually uses the product. But as Crown Affair founder and CEO Dianna Cohen tells it, her hair-care line was launched as an extension of her own routine and the products that she recommended to her friends. She wanted to create a brand that fit within the "luxury world” of products she gravitated toward, said Cohen on the most recent episode of Glossy Beauty Podcast. “[With those products,] when you held the tool or used the product, it brought you joy. And it felt like a part of who you were.” Crown Affair's line includes scrunchies, hair oils, towels and combs, and aims to transform the health of customers’ hair. This month, Crown Affair is venturing into tried-and-true hair must-haves, like shampoo and conditioner. And next year, it will launch in a national retailer. But above all, the brand, which remains digitally-focused, prides itself on its focus on community. "Our customer and community is the woman who is super dynamic. And she does care about her hair, but she has a lot of other things going on in her life," she said. The Crown Affair community is made up of its loyal customers and even non-customers, who learned about the brand by word-of-mouth. It also includes the 100 women who make up Seedling, the brand's mentorship development program. “If you're thinking about launching a brand into the world, one of the most powerful things that you can do is build a community,” she said. “That's [an] important lens as a founder, to [think], ‘How are you shopping for other things?' 'How are you finding out about products?'” said Cohen. “The only way to build authentic relationships is by taking time to build authentic relationships.”

In New York City, one can find a nail salon almost as easily as a bodega. But across the Atlantic, in London, the same could not be said -- at least until the early 2000s, according to Charlotte Knight, founder and CEO of Ciaté London, Lottie London and Skin Proud. After noticing the overall void for nail care within the beauty industry in London, Knight, an interior designer turned celebrity nail technician, founded nail-care brand Ciaté in 2009. “I wanted to bridge that gap between runway to retail,” and expand the availability of the nail art seen on the runway and in magazines to the public, said Knight on the Glossy Beauty podcast. “We have become known as innovators and disruptors in all things -- pigment, innovation and color,” said Knight, who later founded Gen-Z makeup brand Lottie London. “Lottie’s collaboration strategy is all about ’90s nostalgia,” with nostalgic characters like My Little Pony. “What I love about this Gen-Z community [is that] they have bundles of confidence like never before,” said Knight, who attributes this, in part, to social media. Like the company’s Gen-Z consumer, Lottie London and its sister-brand Skin Proud, which launched in April of 2020, have also tapped into TikTok, a factor that may have helped them to “[stand] firm” amid the challenges of the pandemic. In terms of sales channels, the company also expanded into Walmart, which has worked to reach the Gen-Z consumer’s radar. “Their commitment to social challenges and environmental issues is incredible, [which] is so meaningful to the Gen-Z consumer today,” she said. As for the future, Knight pledges to maintain a focus on her current brands, along with new brands that are in the works. “We [the Lottie brand] create product that enables that demographic to unleash their creativity,” she said. “We're going to be using all of our efforts to double down with the three brands that we currently have.”

Alastair Dorward may be new to the biotech company Amyris -- he joined as chief brand officer in August -- but he's not unfamiliar with the better-for-you beauty and personal care space. Dorward was the founding CEO of natural, non-toxic brand Method and CEO of hand sanitizer brand Olika. The latter was acquired by Amyris in June. "I've been a close student of Amyris, [their] trajectory from malaria into the world of production of really valuable and rare molecules and the whole conversation around making the scarce abundant... Over the course of the last year or so, there's been this emergence of the portfolio of beauty, and that's when I really started leaning forward," said Dorward on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. In many ways, Dorward considers beauty the last frontier of the progression for consumers to natural, organic or clean. Having worked across the food, toddler, personal care and beauty categories, he said, "There's been a trade-off that is unacceptable -- a trade-off between results or efficacy and clean." For its part, Amyris and its swathe of brands have been a tugboat that has pushed other conglomerates forward. Its portfolio includes Biosannce, which popularized industry-wide the use of squalane derived from sustainable sugarcane; clean baby brand Pipette; Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's clean color line, Rose Inc.; and most recently, Jonathan Van Ness' vegan hair-care launch, JVN. While beauty consumers are just starting to have more options at their fingertips, Dorward said, "The beauty industry has had the greatest challenge. [Mastering] cleaning [products] is one thing, but beauty and results are a much harder proposition to get right."

Long gone are the days of popping pimples in secret or attempting DIY acne solutions, like toothpaste or liquid Advil, as an influx of acne-positivity brands have entered the market. In turn, the stigma surrounding acne is slowly being erased. Peace Out Skincare, a brand dedicated to acne and aging products, launched in 2017 “to market effective products that deliver on the promises,” said Enrico Frezza, Peace Out Skincare founder and CEO, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Frezza struggled with acne as both a teenager and adult. As a beauty outsider (Frezza's background is in cybersecurity), he hoped to “build a strong, accurate, positive community where people can talk openly about the mental struggles of acne and educate one another.” Notably, among the brand’s repertoire are the Peace Out Acne Dots. Despite the small size of the patches, the acne healing dots contain a complex ingredient profile of salicylic acid, retinol, aloe vera and calcium. Nowadays they're considered as much an acne treatment as a fashion statement. Peace Out has also released products that address wrinkles, dark spots and puffy eyes, as well as topical products like its acne and retinol serums. And while the brand started as a Sephora exclusive, Peace Out looks forward to its partnership with Kohl’s through the retailer's shop-in-shop to reach the everyday customer through its “affordable pricing,” he said. Peace Out products start at $5 and range up to $34. Additionally, the brand found success on its DTC website, as online shopping became the new normal as a result of the pandemic. Apart from the success found on its website, Peace Out's digital presence has manifested into an acne docuseries, "Acne Champs." The brand can also be found on Facebook, with a focus on anti-aging, as well as TikTok, where the brand reaches its Gen-Z audience through acne education and fun videos, he said. “Instagram is a balance between the two,” targeting the millennial consumer.

You may know her best as an actress, but Tracee Ellis Ross’ efforts to highlight diversity, equity and inclusion do not stop in Hollywood. In 2019, Ross launched her line of natural hair products, Pattern Beauty, to fill a void she witnessed in beauty and culture at large. “My journey in hair care started with my own personal journey,” said Ross, who spent 10 years fine-tuning her vision to embrace the “authentic” beauty of Black hair. “The mission of the brand is to meet the needs of the curly, coily and tight texture community.” The peak of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 was when “people started to understand that diversity and inclusion need to be anti-racist,” which is why “equity” is the key to implementing change within the beauty industry, she said. “That’s one of the spaces that I have worked on with Ulta Beauty, in holding them accountable and creating measurable goals." Ulta Beauty has been Pattern's exclusive retail partner for the last two years. As Ross heads into the eighth and final season of the ABC show “Black-ish,” her journey with Pattern is far from over. “If you can't keep growing, if you can't keep expanding the narrative and expanding the dialogue with your customer, [the brand is] not going to grow,” she said. Dialogues with customers showed the need for larger sizes of hero products, for example, which resulted in the release of Jumbettes, or Pattern’s styling cream and curl gel in jumbo-size bottles. Down the line, Ross hopes to expand Pattern into other beauty categories. She is currently looking to widen Pattern's reach at retail. “One of my original goals and visions for the company [was] that it be accessible to everybody,” she said. Pattern Beauty is currently available at PatternBeauty.com, at brick-and-mortar and online at Ulta Beauty, and at Ulta Beauty shop-in-shops at Target. The brand is set to release in Sephora this fall. "My goal is to change the industry, so that all of us have choices," said Ross.

While many industries took hits during the pandemic, Covid-19 set the stage for brands within the wellness industry, like Uncle Bud’s CBD, to grow. Customers “were coming to us not necessarily because of hemp and CBD, but because they wanted hand sanitizer. “From just buying hand sanitizer now we’ve gained a longtime customer,” said Bruno Schiavi, Uncle Bud's CEO, on the Glossy Beauty Podcast this week. Schiavi co-founded Uncle Bud’s in 2018 with Garrett Greller, a sufferer of arthritis since he was 14. “I wanted [Greller] to be the pillar of the brand,” said Schiavi, who added that his co-founder is “at the forefront of every campaign” along with mega ambassadors including basketball player Magic Johnson and actress Jane Fonda. “We wanted Uncle Bud’s to be a brand for the people,” from 15 to 99 years old, said Schiavi. “We have everything for everybody, again, from pain relief to sun care to anti-aging, to pet products, [to] personal wellness,” ranging from $2.50 to $46.99 retail, he added. Before launching the brand’s DTC site in January 2020, Schiavi ensured that Uncle Bud’s CBD was “linked to big national retailers” like Walmart and The Vitamin Shoppe. This was largely for awareness, but also to combat the still challenging digital landscape that exists for hemp and CBD brands. As for the future, Schiavi hopes to expand Uncle Bud’s reach even further as he looks to increase penetration in China and launch in Australia. “We have a strong plan for the next two to three years in terms of making sure that we grow our DTC business, making sure that we grow with the customers, and also expand with new customers," ” said Schiavi.

Although growing up in an “organic lifestyle” meant eating “turkey and sprouts” at school instead of tater tots, Jessica Richards, founder of Shen Beauty, benefitted from that "granola" upbringing in Southern California, she said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. It allowed her to narrow in on her future niche of clean beauty. “It was 100% the mission and the proposition of Shen from day one to import products that were not sold in the U.S. -- that my friends, family, everybody always wanted -- and to focus on and only sell organic and natural [products],” said Richards. She opened Shen Beauty in Brooklyn in 2010, when the borough was still a beauty desert of sorts. Although Sephora is now filled with a mix of both heritage and indie beauty brands, at the time, consumers were more focused on “brand recognition and buying from marketing” in magazines, Richards said. To appeal to the brand-focused consumer audience at the time, she brought Bobbi Brown products into the store, which “made people more confident and OK with shopping brands that they had never heard of before.” Simultaneously, “[customers] also wanted the heavy payoff of the pigments that mainly come from non-clean beauty brands," said Richards. "That was the catalyst for me in realizing that people want organic, natural, clean -- whatever you call it. But they [also] want results.” Moving forward, while Richards doesn’t have an interest in opening up any more store locations in New York, she does plan to open brick-and-mortar in California and to launch a “full site rebuild” next year. Regardless of whether customers shop on the East Coast, the West Coast or online, Richards plans to maintain a focus on “showcasing products and giving the consumer the understanding of what it will do to their skin and how it will help them." “[It’s] an interesting thing to see a woman feel better about themselves after buying products," said Richards.

Like many of the hopeful young adults before him, Sean Garrette, an esthetician and influencer, moved to New York with his sights set on a career in fashion. But when his dreams to be a fashion editor or stylist didn’t work out, he leaned into the beauty space, which he found to be “more inclusive." “You didn't have to be super-skinny or super-rich to fit into the beauty space. It was all about your creativity, your knowledge and your skill,” said Garrette on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Since then, Garrette has amassed 158,000 cumulative followers across Instagram and Twitter, an esthetician license, and partnerships with some of the top skin-care brands like Paula’s Choice and Fenty -- the latter branched into the skin-care world in June 2020. His journey to becoming an esthetician, and later a ‘skinfluencer’, was fueled by his need to fill a “void” that he saw within the skin-care industry. “There weren’t many people talking about skin care that was specifically focused on treating Black skin and skin of color,” said Garrette, who began to work as an esthetician in a spa in 2016 before quitting three years later to start his own business. Garrette began to build his social media presence by posting facials and clients' before-and-afters, and contributing to the skin-care conversation online. In the “Last 3-4 years, skin care has taken over the conversation,” said Garrette. He attributed the success of his business, in part, to social media and hopes to tap back into the tangible aspect of his business with spa pop-ups in the near future. Regardless of where his career takes him, whether that be on social media or in the spa, “My focus and passion will always be treating black skin and treating people of color,” said Garrette. “We're still marginalized in the health and beauty spaces.”

Although QVC may have set the blueprint for modern-day livestream shopping, which was accelerated by the pandemic, the televised home shopping network was not exempt from the challenges of the past year. “[QVC] still had its own complexities for the way that we thought about the business, the way that our associates were engaged and [the way that our] team members were engaged in connecting with customers,” said Brian Beitler, CMO of QVC U.S.A and HSN. QVC was also tasked with adapting to changes in customer preferences, as the demand for categories outside of the beauty and wellness spaces increased. “We saw those categories that were built around creating a sanctuary at home take off,” said Beitler. “That included everything from [investing in] home decor to bringing your gym inside your home, so that you could take care of your body and your health, to evolving even your beauty routines and rituals." In conjunction with evolving alongside consumers, Beitler said that the unique experience that QVC provides its customers is also crucial for its success. “People [were] looking to be able to get the kind of experience and education that they might have been getting in a retail experience,” said Beitler. “We're set up very much from a video commerce perspective to give you some of that social experience that happens in the store." And while QVC and HSN may be “the original innovator[s] in this space,” there is still room for the network to grow, especially as competition ensues between different livestream shopping platforms, said Beitler. “We've been working over the last several years to innovate our storytelling in these spaces and to access more of the places that we tell these stories,” said Beitler. Since launching on Roku in 2013, QVC has recently expanded its accessibility to devices like Amazon Fire TV and Comcast Flex.

Despite taking a self-proclaimed non-traditional career path, Julian Reis, founder and CEO of beauty incubator SuperOrdinary, credits his initial experience in the conventional finance industry as the catalyst to understanding the potential of the e-commerce beauty market. “E-commerce 1.0 was just beginning,” said Reis, who, while working in finance in Singapore in 2013, successfully facilitated the growth of laser-facial company Skin Laundry. But that was not the end of his innovation within the beauty market in China. “I noticed that a lot of the luxury store counters -- many of the big shops like Lane Crawford -- were being dominated by Chinese tourists. [They were] buying lots of product and bringing it back to China,” said Reis, who made it his mission to “solve this problem in a much more efficient manner.” While Reis was aware of the many marketing agencies and “trade partners” present in China, “No one was bringing all this together under one roof to provide a full service,” said Reis of distribution, marketing and influencer relationships. Reis has begun to fill this gap with SuperOrdinary, which has brought buzz-worthy U.S. brands like Farmacy and Drunk Elephant into China via TMall. The company hit $90 million in revenue alone this past year, but Reis asserts that there is still room for growth. SuperOrdinary comes into play in this area by serving as an “extension of the brands’ arms, eyes, [and] ears,” said Reis. “What we did is focus on each and every brand that we work with to make sure we understand the DNA of the brand and to see whether it would translate in the local market.” Now, Reis is taking that same expertise and applying it to another mega-market and platform: the U.S. and Amazon.

From pouring over Revlon magazine ads as a young girl to becoming the first female CEO of the company in 2018, Debra Perelman personifies the “emotional connection” consumers have with beauty. “A big focus of mine has always been, ‘How do you utilize these iconic brands and products in order to really leverage this emotional connection that we can have with the consumer?'” said Perelman on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. For Perelman, this emotional connection is rooted in her own mainstay products, like Revlon’s Super Lustrous lipstick, which she used as a teen, and her grandmother’s perfume. By maintaining the aspect of heritage while also adapting to changes in the beauty industry and the world, in general, “We’re able to create beauty innovations to inspire confidence and ignite joy in the consumer,” Perelman said. While Revlon has maintained a focus on personal beauty and confidence throughout the brand’s history, the emergence of Covid pushed to the forefront of the beauty industry the ideas of “[making] sure that people are staying safe” and “[giving] back to the communities around us,” she said. Perelman facilitated Revlon’s adaptation to the pandemic by not only transforming some of the company's production lines to make hand sanitizers and donating to underserved communities but also navigating the management of employees who were managing Covid in their personal lives. The pandemic also accelerated the desire for digitization within Revlon. “I was focused on making quick decisions, in terms of further accelerating our digital transformation,” said Perelman. To achieve this, Perelman “focused on moving from a siloed organization to a much more collaborative organization,” with small “pods”, or teams, centered on e-commerce, product development and marketing. In addition, Perelman emphasized her mission to transform Revlon's oldest, most iconic beauty brands, Revlon and Elizabeth Arden. The focus: diversity, inclusion, and sustainability -- not only for consumers, but also for Revlon employees behind the scenes. “For Revlon, the future is just so bright,” said Perelman, who hopes to “leave [the company] in a way that's a bit more positive than when I started.”

Gillian Gorman Round may have spent her career in big beauty, from L'Oréal to Gucci Group to most recently Revlon, but she couldn't turn down the opportunity to become CEO at Kjaer Weis, even in the middle of a pandemic. Like her former boss Revlon CEO Debbie Perelman, Gorman Round is one of the few female CEOs in the beauty industry today. She joined the organic and refillable makeup brand in December 2020. Many of Kjaer Weis' points of differentiation are catching on industry-wide, namely its organic formulas, high performance, and sustainable and refillable practices. As such, Gorman Round believes the brand awareness opportunity is ripe for the taking. This is especially true since founder and makeup artist Kirsten Kjaer Weis has been perfecting that proposition for 11 years. It helps that Waldencast, which recently announced its better-for-you SPAC, recently took a majority stake in the brand. "Kirsten, when she founded the brand a decade ago, was the very first creator to be able to develop certified organic, high-performance, refillable, sustainable products. Now we see a decent amount of activity within that space...but [in] certified organic, which is our principal and our philosophy, we really stand alone, " said Gorman Round on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Throughout the pandemic, Kjaer Weis was able to own that point of view digitally and with retail partners. To date, its DTC business, which is up 300% for the year, accounts for 50% of the business. Sales in the wholesale segment, which makes up the remaining 50%, doubled year-over-year. "It's not that we are shifting 50% of our business to DTC because our wholesale business isn't performing," she said. "A rising tide lifts all boats."