Likely when you hear the name Glossier, you get a little excited. You think, “oooh tell me what to spend my money on today.” And no one can blame you, they’re thinking the same thing. But did you ever wonder how Emily Weiss, founder, and CEO of Glossier managed to take all your money in one aesthetic sweep and leave you covered in Haloscope with a smiley face sticker?
Easy, she asked you.
I know you’re thinking, Louisa, no one asked me if I wanted to look like a Glossier model, but if they had I would have said yes!
But in a way, they did.
Companies like Glossier, Go-To, and Summer Fridays all are pioneering a new way to create products. Asking the customers.
Before, products were made more for their value in a branding or marketing approach than actually to the customers. Back in the days our mothers told us about going to the Chanel counter and picking out that bright red lipstick, products were not made for us, they were made in the grand scheme of how a product fit the brand, what stores they wanted the product to be sold in and what that store’s key values were. Stores like Sephora and Ulta are still acting as branding barriers that makeup carriers have work around.
Source // Beautiful Makeup Search
But social media was born, and the consumer platforms like Instagram and Facebook were created. Most companies still operate the old way, like Too Faced and Urban Decay, but some have begun to use social media as an outlet to make skincare products asked for by us.
Glossier’s Emily Weiss began as a beauty editor for Vogue and slowly realized that she gained a lot more from her beauty and skincare experiences when friends recommended products to her. She started a little blog now known as Into the Gloss, to create a community for her and her followers to talk about skincare and beauty. She realized that we as consumers had so many requests and we knew where the holes were in beauty and skincare. She founded Glossier to fill that void in our hearts and now is everyone’s personal beauty guru. Now she uses the Into the Gloss Facebook group to continue making the products we want. I highly recommend you join it, I have learned so much about skincare.
Founder and Ceo of Go-To, Zoë Foster Blake, also found social media as a platform to create and grow her skincare line. She started as a beauty editor in several beauty magazines in Australia and eventually became beauty director for Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar. So it’s safe to say she is a bit of a boss babe. She wrote a book on skincare, Amazinger Face, and of course, I have it, it’s perfect for knowing the exact order of all your products because let’s face it, we’re winging it. She is using her social media platform along with her blog and her all-around awesomeness to ask us what products we’ve been missing in our lives. Luckily for us, Go-To just came to the US in the last few months, feel free to find them at Sephora.
Also, just check out this adorable branding:
And of course, Summer Fridays. I have used the Jet Lag Mask every day for the past 3 months and let me tell you, it truly filled the gaping hole in affordable winter moisturizers. Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Gores Ireland co-founded Summer Fridays and both work together as the co-CEOs. They were originally, social media influencers who heard our cries for skin care help daily, and you guessed it, helped it happen.
So there you have it, female entrepreneurs are amazing and they look out for us to give us the skincare we need. And also, social media is truly an amazing community.
Also, did I mention, all three companies are cruelty-free? Now let’s all throw on a face mask and support our favorite beauty brands who are looking out for us.
P.S Summer Fridays released a new mask… tell everyone you know…
Love you babes,
Louisa