{"id":1,"date":"2019-02-25T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T12:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/female-business.eu\/?p=1"},"modified":"2020-10-13T16:21:47","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T14:21:47","slug":"a-woman-who-moved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/2019\/02\/25\/a-woman-who-moved\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Weiss \u2013 a woman who moved a beauty blog into a $1 billion brand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From 4 products to around 40. From initial $2\nmillion in seed funding to the value of more than $1 billion. From 15000\nfollowers to more than 3 million customers. Everything in 5 years. We are\ntalking about Glossier<\/em> – an\nonline beauty start-up with\nsimplicity as a key part and Emily Weiss as a founder and CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did it start?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Emily Weiss got into the fashion and beauty\nindustry since her teenage years when at the age of 15, she joined Ralph Lauren\nas an intern. Weiss also had a brief modelling carrier, an internship at Teen Vogue<\/em> and a role on TV series The Hills<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After getting a degree in studio art, Emily\nWeiss has joined W Magazine <\/em>as a\nfashion assistant and Vogue <\/em>as an\non-set styling assistant. While working at Vogue,\n<\/em>in2010, Emily Weiss started the\nbeauty blog Into the Gloss<\/a><\/em>, which featured\nmainly interviews with famous women. The blog produced very personal content with\nconversations with magazine editors, street-style icons, entrepreneurs and models,\nsome of whom shared the secrets of their beauty routines, images of their\nbathroom shelves and medicine cabinets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In about two years the site had more than 200.000\nunique visitors per month. After Into the\nGloss <\/em>reached 10 million views per month, Emily Weiss gained corporate\npartnerships, staff and left work at Vogue\n<\/em>to fully concentrate on her business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beginning of Glossier<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Running her blog, Emily Weiss realised that\nmany beauty brands were not engaging enough with the new generation of\nmillennial consumers. They were expensive, and they were promoting an idea of\nideal and not of natural beauty. They were not on social media which was\nrapidly taking off either. So, instead of being an intermediary between beauty\ncompanies and consumers, Weiss decided to build a new makeup and skincare\ncompany which would be close to its customers \u2013 online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily Weiss planned to start her business with\nonly four products (a moisturiser, a face mist, a skin tint and a lip\nbalm) and managed to get an\ninitial $2 million in seed funding. She also planned to do things a little\ndifferent and to concentrate on millennial-friendly marketing and social\nmedia. As E. Weiss told The Cut<\/a><\/em>, \u201cI wrote\nout, \u2018Here are all the things we need to launch: Website. Chemist. Office\nspace.\u2019 And then I just checked them off, one by one. Put all the balls in the air. Got\npregnant with Glossier<\/em>. Incubated.\nGave birth to four beautiful products.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founder of Glossier <\/em>decided that the company would focus on communication with\nits customers, maybe even involve them in the creation process, be digital and\noperate direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the key element of\nsuccess?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Direct-to-consumer model greatly influenced the\nimpressive success of Glossier. <\/em>The\ncompany does not have a presence in department stores or beauty retailers.\nInstead, online sales are managed through its own e-commerce site at Glossier.com. <\/em>The company markets its\nmakeup and skincare products on its very well maintained Instagram page, which\nis followed by almost 3 million people. As Weiss has said to the Wired<\/a><\/em>,\nthe decision to not distribute the products via other channels was taken in\norder for Glossier<\/em> to be in complete\ncontrol of its relationship with customers, with no third-party intermediaries.\nAlso, to have the first-party customer data for marketing purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original beauty blog Into the Gloss <\/em>also cannot be forgotten as it had an enormous\nimpact on the success and in a way, was a springboard for Glossier<\/em>. Thanks to the blog, Glossier<\/em> had more than 15,000 followers on Instagram before it had\nlaunched a single product and most of the readers and followers of Into the Gloss<\/em> became customers of Glossier<\/em>. The company used social media\nand digital content creation very wisely to get cult-like status and create a\nglobal community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glossier<\/em> was launched in the era of social\nmedia and influencers and company\u2019s attitude towards it differentiate it from\nthe rivals that usually focus on luxury and glamour, but hard to reach images. Glossier<\/em> features regular people in its\nads. It creates a more youthful, modern image to the company and feeling that\nit is much closer to its customers. People want to be unique, have their own\nstyle, not to cover their faces, but rather enhance the natural beauty, and Glossier <\/em>suggests exactly that. Simplicity\nis the key element, and this is why started with 4 products, right now they\nprovide about 40 different products across skincare, makeup and\nfragrance \u2013 a minimalist offering by beauty brand standards. This way Glossier\n<\/em>tries to produce \u2018\u2019the best in kind\u2019\u2019 products, which would be simple and\nwould become essentials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Youtube bloggers, Instagram influencers,\ncelebrities and simple women \u2013 they all love Glossier<\/em> products. In 2018, the company claimed to have sold\nthe equivalent of one eyebrow pomade every 32 seconds. Weiss and her company have helped millions of\nconsumers to love themselves, while the beauty industry usually failed to do\nso. Glossier<\/em> values its customers and\nincludes them to the creating process. A few years ago Glossier<\/em> started a Slack channel for around 1,000 of its\nmost engaged community members to chat directly with each other and the team and this way the Glossier<\/em> team gets the real opinion from\nactual customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glossier <\/em>achievements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to CB Insights<\/a><\/em>\nin April 2020, there are over 450 unicorn companies (companies with a valuation\nof over $1 billion) worldwide, and Glossier<\/em>\nhas been among them since the first half of 2019. That time Emily Weiss wrote\non her Instagram post<\/a> \u2018\u2019Baby\nme in 2014 wasn\u2019t sure if we could afford the next hire, didn\u2019t know if anyone\nwould like her idea for a beauty company\u2026 Emily\nin 2019 has been through hell and high water to build an incredible company\nwith incredible people\u2026 and been among a very small minority of\nwomen raising this kind of money at these kinds of prices, to build the things\nthey believe in. Today Glossier<\/em> was\nable to achieve something very special. And all it means, is that we get to\nkeep building things that make people happy.\u2019\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company and Emily Weiss as an entrepreneur\nare well-acknowledged; in 2019 Emily Weiss was included\nin \u2018\u2019Time\u2019\u2019<\/em> magazine\u2019s \u2018\u2019Next 100\u2019\u2019<\/a><\/em>list as one of the innovators. As it is\nsaid on Time<\/a><\/em>, <\/em>\u2018\u2019 Emily is proof that you don\u2019t need to\nhave gone to business school to understand the fundamentals of community. \u2018\u2019 The company now employs\nmore than 200 people and has over 3 million customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From 4 products to around 40. From initial $2 million in seed funding to the value of more than $1 billion. From 15000 followers to more than 3 million customers. Everything in 5 years. We are talking about Glossier – an online beauty start-up with simplicity as a key part and Emily Weiss as a […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/female-business.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}