The New York Post’s weekly horoscope used to hang in the elevator of Glossier’s New York offices for employees to comment on, probably via one of their Slack channels. Emily Weiss herself, the founder of this cosmetics brand, which was worth 1.8 billion dollars (around 1.7 billion euros) in 2021, was responsible for setting it up. “That was one of the many reasons why I had a great time at work,” says former intern Marisa Meltzer. It is one of the testimonies collected by the author in Glossy. Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’ Glossier, a book that examines the keys to the success and failure of the brand launched in 2014: “In fashion and beauty, there are many women whose stories have not been told. “I wanted to write a book that fans of the brand would like, but that someone like my father could also read,” explains Meltzer in a video call from his home in New York.
Cover of the book “Glossy. Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story from Emily Weiss’ Glossier.
The author has interviewed Weiss several times over the years, as well as more than 2,000 people around her: “I loved talking to store employees about how difficult it was to find a job, almost like getting one Casting.” They had to send out videos, do all sorts of interviews… Then they were treated like celebrities in the neighborhood and given free cupcakes, facials and the like.” With millennial pink walls, beige chairs, big windows and fresh orchids, it was New York Headquarters in the heart of Soho was the epicenter of this emerging universe, where Weiss was the cool boss who gave away products and sang karaoke. The brand’s Instagram account was full of beautiful images of this environment and fans using their products. Compared to the standard of retouching of other cosmetic companies, these were fresh and natural photos that everyone could identify with: there were wrinkles, freckles or imperfect teeth, although they were always aesthetically pleasing. Glossier knew how to opt for a disruptive approach that favored understated beauty compared to the Kardashian contours that were prevalent at the time; a simple make-up that does not change the face but rather improves it. But between those pastel walls, hardly anything was simple. Customer photos were not taken spontaneously but were carefully staged by the employees, and life in the office ended up resembling that of high school. “If Weiss consciously sought to replicate the culture of tech companies, he unconsciously copied that of Condé Nast. This corporate environment in which beautiful, charismatic and classy people stand out,” the author notes. Because the journey of Weiss and Glossier is a story full of rough edges.
Glossier founder Emily Weiss at a 2018 conference in San Francisco.Steve Jennings (Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Condé Nast, the editors of Vogue or Glamor, was one of Emily Weiss’ first job targets in the early 2000s. After an internship at Ralph Lauren (which she got by caring for a brand employee’s children), the Glossier creator landed an internship at Teen Vogue and appeared briefly on the reality show The Hills. “What surprises me most is his ambition, he had an unshakable goal. I met her and started writing about her when I was 20, but while researching the book it was very interesting to see that she had always been this person. It was like that even as a teenager. How many of us know what we want at this age? “Even as a young woman, she moved among adults.” She wasn’t born into a particularly wealthy family, but privilege oozes from every imperceptible pore: pretty, white, upper-middle class, well-connected… The walls of her room were in Painted Tiffany blue and she went to class with her Louis bag. Vuitton “knew how to pronounce Chinoiserie correctly and distinguish between types of roses,” Meltzer writes in his book.
As Weiss networked at the magazine, he discovered that beauty associated with big budgets was not shrouded in the same attractive halo that surrounded fashion. In 2010, she started the blog Into the Gloss, which opened up popular culture to cosmetics: “I would say that was fundamental to this change. There were all these fashion or street style blogs that became famous, but there was no equivalent for beauty, even though there are products that sell en masse and that everyone uses. His idea was to tell beauty with a different, more intimate approach and to put it in a new spotlight.” She was a visionary of this movement and made her portal a regular contact point for insiders and fans. Particularly in “The Top Shelf,” a voyeuristic view of other people’s bathrooms from which Weiss photographed corners and collected tricks. He popularized these snaps with Diptyque’s glass candle jars filled with cotton pads, Aesop’s brown bottle of Resurrection hand soap, and Biologique Recherche’s bottles of P50 lotion. Her followers were not just readers, but also beauty fans and shoppers willing to discuss the pros and cons of each product in the comments. Everything was close and felt real. Reading “Into the Gloss” was like being invited to a party at the home of some wonderful women. In 2016, 1.3 million visitors came every month. The audience loved it and Weiss knew how to create what is now the Holy Grail of digital marketing around his content: a loyal community. But that wasn’t enough, he also used all this information from his readers as invaluable field research into his audience’s tastes. Data on which Glossier launched four years later. “She has a very good sense of what’s coming next,” says Meltzer, “and she’s also very good at asking about things, something that people aren’t usually good at, especially women.”
With its founding, Glossier transformed the beauty industry, and five years later (thanks in part to Weiss’ gift for raising multiple rounds of funding) the company became a unicorn valued at more than $1 billion. “They had a community on Into the Gloss who loved reading, commenting and sharing their articles. And they did that with the Glossier products when they came out because they looked great on social media with that pink and that packaging. “They managed to give them a sophisticated look even though they weren’t expensive.” They didn’t introduce the idea of natural makeup, but they did break with the prevailing aesthetic. “The type of products offered was fresh in this context. They didn’t even have brushes because you could apply them with your hands the way many women want to apply their makeup: with something that’s easy to use and helps them look good and get on with their lives.”
Glossier’s influence extended beyond the world of beauty and Weiss became a symbol of the Girlboss Generation, young, media-driven women who ran successful companies: Sophia Amoruso (Nasty Gal), Leandra Medine (Man Repeller) and Yael Aflalo (Reformation). But in 2023, they have all taken a step back and resigned. Unlike her colleagues, Weiss was not canceled, but her defense of corporatist feminism or her millennial rise soon became obsolete and in 2022 she left the position of the company’s CEO. “She was at the center of many epoch-making issues: racial discrimination, the labor movement, pandemic-related shutdowns, supply chain problems, and the decline of female founders,” Meltzer writes. She also points out that there was a lot more to be expected from this generation of entrepreneurs than any Silicon Valley tech bro. They didn’t use feminism as a selling point (obviously). Because certainly one of the problems of the Girlboss generation was that they used a movement to grow without having any interest in applying its principles.
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There were voices that pointed out that the jobs for which casting had to be done were not that great and that the pandemic was fatal to the balance sheet of the company, which had to close its stores (although it did keep employees’ jobs for several months kept). Weiss stepped down so Glossier could be reborn, and today the brand is looking for a second Gen Z teen to discover it on TikTok. After nine years of adventure, the brand stopped selling exclusively through its channels a few months ago, reopened stores and landed in 600 Sephora points of sale in the US and Canada. A few weeks ago it was made available to the world and can now be purchased (currently online) in 180 countries, including Spain. “We still have to find out whether the company has the potential to survive,” says Meltzer. “At Glossier they like to say that it’s nine years old and that it’s going to be a century-old brand like Estée Lauder and things like that.” But that remains to be seen. It remains to be seen whether these new generations will fall in love with the products as much in a much more saturated market than a decade ago. Nowadays there are a lot of beautiful cosmetic brands, there is a lot of competition.” Because Glossier has popularized a very specific aesthetic, and with such success that their main problem today is differentiating themselves from it.
The writer and journalist Marisa Meltzer, author of the book “Glossy. Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story from Emily Weiss’ Glossier.