Latest news with #EmilyWeiss
Harpers Bazaar Arabia
26 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Harpers Bazaar Arabia
The No-Make-Up Make-Up Revolution: Are You Wearing Any?
Glossier may have helped usher in our current 'you get better' era, but the origins of natural-looking make-up go back decades. Here, a brief history of who started it, who ran with it, and how it transformed the way we think about beauty In the autumn of 2014, on the top floor of a makeshift office space in an old brick building in Manhattan where SoHo melds into Chinatown, Emily Weiss gathered the 12 employees of her then nascent beauty brand, Glossier, in front of a wall of images of glowy, fresh-faced, smiling models against a sky-blue backdrop. She asked her team to put little dots on the images they liked best. At the time, 'Glossier' was just a mysterious Instagram account populated with behind-the-scenes images, cute little stickers, and a distinctive pastel shade that would become known as millennial pink. No one really had a clue what Emily, already a fixture in the beauty world herself, thanks to the popular four year-old beauty blog Into the Gloss, was up to, but it didn't matter; whatever Glossier was or wasn't, it piqued readers' interest. 'You don't see any make-up in those pictures,' Emily recalls of Glossier's inaugural campaign. 'You see these amazing women who are themselves and very present.' She's right; they all look eff ortlessly beautiful, seemingly make-up free, and dewy – the now omnipresent descriptor popularised by Glossier that refers to radiant, luminous, hydrated, and moist but not oily skin. Of course, the models were wearing make-up in this campaign, including Glossier's new pigmented skin tint designed to even out tone but still look like skin. You just wouldn't know it. These images would be pivotal in launching a brand that changed the course of the modern beauty industry, creating an aesthetic that would become one of the most copied, not only within beauty but also in direct-to-consumer marketing. Besides the way the products looked and what they were named (Balm Dotcom was simply a cleverly marketed salve, similar to Vaseline or Aquaphor), Glossier talked about beauty in a new way, and it conveyed a lifestyle. Glossier redefined young people's relationship to beauty and the concept of 'no-make-up make-up,' a decades-old approach to thinking about and applying cosmetics that is subtly enhancing and imperceptible. The Glossier look stood out against the prevailing beauty landscape at the time, which was dominated by strobing, baking, overlined matte lips, dramatic eyebrows, and perhaps the Kardashians' biggest contribution to mid-2010s' beauty trends: contouring. But it was simply an evolution of what make-up artist Bobbi Brown had been doing since the late '80s. 'I started looking at a natural, beautiful face in the best lighting and trying to figure out how I could use make-up to make people look like that,' says Bobbi. In 1990, she started selling lipsticks out of her home that 'looked like my lips, but a little more intense.' A few years later, French make-up artist Laura Mercier introduced the concept of tinted moisturiser to the masses, and it quickly became a staple for people who didn't want to wear foundation. No-make-up make-up wasn't just gaining popularity at department-store beauty counters; on TV, make-up artist Victoria Jackson, who publicly started talking about the idea in the 1980s, had success selling Victoria Jackson Cosmetics through infomercials and QVC appearances in the 1990s. In more recent years, a number of newer make-up lines have taken off – Westman Atelier, Saie, Ami Colé, Merit, Brown's Jones Road, and Rhode among them – all of which subscribe to a similar less-is-more philosophy but differ on key points. Some offer advancements in formulations that combine efficacious skincare ingredients with color; Merit comes in multi-use forms that make it 'impossible to mess up'; Ami Colé has created its products specifically for 'melanin-rich' skin first, addressing the dearth of inclusivity in complexion make-up. The concept of no-make-up make-up has withstood decades, recessions, a pandemic, multiple social-media platforms, the Kardashians, and several generations. The reason the look resonates so deeply now owes much to the Covid skincare obsession. Sheerer formulas, dewy highlighters, and barely there lip and cheek stains are great ways to show off skin perfected by a carefully crafted routine. The story of no-make-up make-up really starts with Clinique, which in the 1970s began to offer foundations that more closely matched people's skin tones. At the time, natural-looking make-up was barely on anyone's radar. Eyeshadow was blue and purple; lipstick was red, fuchsia, or pink and frosty. Customers' needs for complexion make-up were far more rudimentary; they wanted to find something that was the same colour as their neck. Clinique, which has sold cosmetics alongside skincare since its 1968 launch, was groundbreaking for merging the worlds of make-up and skincare. 'The make-up was formulated in the same way and not only could do no harm but could also enhance your skin,' says Jane Hertzmark Hudis, executive vice president and chief brand officer of the Estée Lauder Companies. 'It was designed to work together.' At the time, the company owned just three brands: Estée Lauder, Clinique, and Aramis. It would be years before Bobbi hit the scene, but the make-up artist's philosophy wouldn't just push this budding beauty movement forward; Bobbi Brown Cosmetics would later become the Estée Lauder Companies' newest brand. Bobbi says that while working as an editorial make-up artist in the 1980s, she would go to theatrical make-up stores to buy yellow, orange, and red to 'fix' foundations for more accurate shade matching. In 1992, fed up with the existing offerings, Bobbi introduced Bobbi Brown Cosmetics foundation sticks in 10 shades, from fairest to deepest, designed to more closely match one's skin tone. She was on to something, and in 1995, the Estée Lauder Companies paid a reported USD$74.5 million for her brand. Another make-up artist saw an opportunity. A year after Laura Mercier released her namesake brand in 1996, her tinted moisturiser made make-up more approachable to people who were hesitant about foundation. It became a cornerstone of the no-make-up-make-up movement. To this day, Laura Mercier's tinted moisturiser is the second-best-selling prestige tinted moisturiser in the U.S., according to the brand. (BareMinerals' Complexion Rescue tinted moisturiser is the first.) Victoria actually trademarked the term 'No Make-up Make-up' in 2002, after she concluded a 10-year QVC run that she says generated a billion dollars in sales for the network. Last year, she introduced a second brand, the on-the-nose-titled No Make-up Make-up, which sells a cream-balm foundation for Dhs200. 'People say it's trending now, but I don't think it's ever not been trending,' Victoria points out. 'There are always the women out there who want to look great but want to look like themselves.' The next generation of beauty consumers, made up of millennials and Gen-Zers, had little interest in buying lipstick from late-night infomercials. Many were too young (or not even born yet) during Bobbi's heyday, and others were seeking something more natural than some of the bolder offerings from M.A.C, Nars, and Urban Decay. An 'artistry' point of view propelled M.A.C and Nars to prominence, making them make-up-artist favourites in the 1990s, and Urban Decay's anti-pink stance popularised edgier items like black nail polish and oxblood lipstick. Although plenty of new beauty brands were born in the two decades following the introduction of nude lip colour and tinted moisturiser, it wasn't until Glossier came along that no-make-up make-up became the look. Glossier's modern repackaging of these ideas – which largely mirrored those of Emily's predecessors – made these products appealing to a younger customer who lived online. Instead of relying on books and Today Show appearances, Glossier won with sprawling stores outfitted with life-size products and sales associates in pink jumpsuits. It helped that Glossier's rise dovetailed with Instagram's, which had launched only a few years before. Glossier used the platform to build its brand and, crucially, a community before many other brands or make-up artists were even active there. Its values – looking like yourself, only better – resonated on Instagram, where there was an expectation to post photos of yourself and your 'real' (but still enviable!) life. It's true that when Glossier came out, there was another dominant trend running parallel to Emily's cast of dewy faces. Make-up was in the midst of a YouTube tutorial boom, and influencers and brands like Huda Kattan, Kylie Cosmetics, and Anastasia Beverly Hills gained massive followings for their expertise in contouring, elaborate eyeshadow and eyeliner application, eyebrow enhancing, and more. Their product offerings yielded highly pigmented, full-coverage looks, giving rise to an entire beauty subculture online. There was also Kim Kardashian, who, along with her longtime make-up artist Mario Dedivanovic, made the contouring technique a sensation of the 2010s. Emily says this is the beauty landscape she was trying to go up against. 'We were so passionate about mainstreaming the adoption and accessibility of a set of values and way of living, which was about freedom in the present moment and acceptance of you in the present without any additional modifications,' she explains, adding that the inspiration behind Glossier was make-up artists and how they prepped and primed skin. The whole point of Glossier was to reject 'the current landscape of 'befores and afters.' It was about 'Wait a second, what's in the middle?'' In other words, Emily was selling the antidote to transformation. Countless brands sprang up in Glossier's wake, hoping to capture that lightning in a bottle (or balm). Glossier alum Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye launched Ami Colé in 2021 as a make-up brand that embraced the no-make-up-make-up look, but with products designed specifically for women of color. Growing up, Diarrha says, there was no 'permission and space' to embrace no-make-up make-up, and as a result she spent much of her life and career 'transforming' to the degree that she wouldn't leave the house without a full face of make-up on. This stopped once she started working at Glossier. 'I walked into this space where I can put on face oil and actually be okay with the insecurities with my brow,' Diarrha says. 'I was shocked at how much that affected my confidence. It was okay to look like you and lean into those imperfections or perfections. 'Th is is me; take me as I am.' ' In 2019, Diarrha decided to take the leap and start her own brand. After securing funding (Ami Colé shares an investor with Skims and Glossier), the line had entered more than 270 Sephora stores by the end of 2022. Diarrha says her point of difference is that she formulates for darker skin tones first, not the other way around. 'I knew there was magic in this make-up form,' she says, 'but there was no one talking to this customer the way I knew her or understood her.' One of the most indelible beauty moments of the last decade occurred on May 19, 2018, when Meghan Markle (now Sussex) married Prince Harry. Everything about the moment bucked convention: Meghan was a Hollywood star, a commoner, and a woman of colour marrying into the most royal of families. Expectations for how she should look could not have been higher. Yet she did things her way, right down to the beauty look she chose for that historic day. Rather than adhering to the more formal, full coverage foundation and heavier make-up often favoured by brides, the duchess looked natural; her skin was luminous, and her freckles were visible. Online reactions ranged from celebratory to downright vicious. 'It made people realise, 'I don't need the pomp and circumstance of looking a certain way on my wedding day,'' Daniel Martin, Meghan's make-up artist, says of this 'cultural fork in the road.' He adds: 'When you saw her make-up, you saw her. Not the make-up first.' A few years later, Covid would solidify the appeal of skin forward make-up. Lockdowns, quarantining, and social distancing led to plummeting make-up sales. A collective obsession with self-care and skincare emerged in response, including a newfound emphasis on ingredients and what they do. This, coupled with advances in formulations and, more recently, skincare's inclusion in make-up and vice versa, pushed the idea of no-make-up make-up further into what has become known as the 'skinification' of make-up. The idea was that if your skincare routine was on point, barely there make-up would simply highlight a poreless glow. Brands like RMS Beauty and Ilia, which focus on sheer, minimalist, and easy-to-apply make-up, took off, and newcomers like Saie, Merit, Kosas, and Westman Atelier developed cult followings. Hailey Bieber launched Rhode as a skincare line in 2022, and it was an instant success, thanks to Hailey's massive social following and obsession with 'glazed donut skin,' as well as the fact that the products were actually good. She has since expanded into colour cosmetics that contain ingredients like peptides and lactic acid, more commonly found in skincare. These newer labels promised innovations (lighter-weight formulas with superior coverage, pigment added to unconventional skincare items, multi-use products, and more) with modern messaging, but most importantly, they offered 'better for you' ingredients that emphasised skincare benefits. 'Glossier was the first to boldly call out 'skin first' when skincare related to make-up was only 'How do you remove your make-up?' and 'How do you prep for make-up?' ' says Cassie Cowman, co-founder of View from 32, a beauty consultancy. 'Ultimately, no-make-up make-up works at its best when you have good skin, and that's why it resonates so much today. Yes, it's still about covering up, but it's about putting good things on your skin.' Even Bobbi Brown has followed up on the success of her original brand with Jones Road, a make-up line she introduced in 2020 that feels refreshingly new. Jones Road's Miracle Balm, which became an instant bestseller, can be used almost anywhere for a hint of glow or tint. She says her newest product, a tinted moisturiser called Just Enough, has 'coverage and luminosity' yet 'looks like you have nothing on.' And then there's Gucci Westman, the celebrity make-up artist who launched her own make-up line, Westman Atelier, in 2018 with a skin-first focus. Her Vital Skin Foundation Stick was part of the original line-up and remains a hero product, and Gucci has expanded upon the concept with complexion drops and a concealer. Her products are beloved because they sit at the intersection of 'real skin' and this idea that one can wear make-up, including foundation, but also see skin. As for Emily, she admits that, at the time she was launching Glossier, she wasn't even thinking about no-make-up make-up. 'I don't think we've ever historically even said the words… I don't think we've ever even talked about ourselves in that way,' she says. 'It comes back to a higher order, mission, spirit, purpose – and the industry has gone in that direction. It's also allowed for something really beautiful – which is choice.'
Sydney Morning Herald
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Darkness, desire and dewy skin: Debut novel skewers beauty culture
Like many women who came of age in the 2010s, I know the hypnotic pull of beauty and wellness culture all too well. As a teenager, I obsessively read Into The Gloss – the cult beauty blog founded by Emily Weiss, who later launched the million-dollar brand Glossier. I chugged green juices and squatted diligently to videos of chirpy, lycra-clad fitness influencers. Now, as a lifestyle writer who often reports on beauty and wellness, I know first-hand how the media operates as a cog in this glossy machine – the same one that made Kylie Jenner a billionaire and turned Gwyneth Paltrow from actor into a bona fide wellness guru. Their founders preach self-love and empowerment, while in the same breath pushing expensive potions intended to 'enhance' the real you. They're not just selling products; they are selling a lifestyle. It might be a cliché to describe these brands as having a cult following, but the term fits –given their larger-than-life founders, year-long product waitlists, and legions of devoted fans. But what if a beauty brand was literally a cult? This is the premise of Rytual, the debut novel by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson – a deliciously dark exploration of 21st-century beauty and wellness culture, told through the lens of an erotic thriller. Published last week, the novel was hotly contested in a fierce bidding war, the rights of which have already been sold for a TV adaptation. Marnie Sellers, the novel's protagonist, is a 20-something screenwriter stuck in a cycle of partying by night and manning the reception of a fitness studio by day. Still reeling from her mother's death and the fallout of an affair with a married older writer, Marnie is adrift until she finds herself under the spell of Rytual – a fictional beauty brand with a rabid female following for its 'no make-up, make-up' products. Wilson appears on Zoom from her light-filled Melbourne apartment, flanked by a bookshelf bursting with indoor plants and the colourful spines of novels. She holds up her The Substance water bottle – a fitting accessory, given the body horror film's take-down of a culture obsessed with youth. For the past year, she's worked as a researcher for Shameless Media, the hugely successful youth media company founded by Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald. But it was her colourful employment history – including a brief stint as a Pilates instructor and time at Emeis Cosmetics, a L'Oréal-owned company that makes products for Australian luxury skincare brand Aesop – that partly inspired the book. 'I was working for an Australian beauty brand with a reputation for being a bit of a cult for a while, and I wanted to write something about that environment,' Wilson, 32, says. 'I just wanted to pluck out the very theatrical things about my real job and push them out to the complete extremities of what a reader might believe. There's so much comedy in just how serious the whole thing was.' For reasons that will become clear as you read the book, it's important to point out that Rytual is very much a work of fiction. But the broad strokes of Millennial beauty culture will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has so much as wandered into one of these stores. Wilson says brands such as Glossier, Rare Beauty and Westmann Atelier all served as inspiration. Loading In Rytual, they're echoed in the soft pink packaging of lip oils bearing names like 'She' and 'Lust' written in sans serif fonts and the fairy floss painted walls of the company's headquarters. The female-founded start-up Rytual leans heavily on feminist rhetoric, with conference rooms named after women deemed to have been persecuted in the public eye (Britney Spears, Billie Holiday), and weekly sessions where employees are encouraged to lay bare their bad experiences with the male species. The brand is inseparable from its charismatic founder Luna Peters, a petite, green-eyed brunette who Marnie's housemate describes as a 'hot Jim Jones in designer clothes'. Luna, too, is an approximation of women Wilson has come across before – only with a penchant for murder and little regard for personal boundaries. 'There were a couple of women who worked in that office [at Emeis] that I was really drawn to, and I should say they were gorgeous people that I adore, but there was something so charismatic about them and they had so much power within that context that I was probably more interested in my reaction to them,' she says. Marnie has some similarities with Wilson – they're the same age, have a background in screenwriting and live in inner Melbourne (Rytual is filled with tongue-in-cheek quips about the city's hipster culture). Emotionally, Wilson understands how a character like Marnie could be so easily sucked into the vortex of a woman like Luna. 'I was at a point in my life where I didn't feel like I had a lot going on for me, and I had this job that at times was really frustrating, and it had really high expectations, but also it wasn't paying me very much. So I found myself lapping up the law of the org chart and looking at these women as like, 'they know what to do'.' 'I then just built out this idea of this person who, you know, maybe my younger self or maybe a person who didn't have much going for them, like what would it take?' 'What kind of person would it take for them to just keep inching towards doing bad things under the spell of this person?' A fan of erotic thrillers, Wilson says the genre, historically dominated by male voices, was ripe for reimagining. She cites classics, including Susanna Moore's 1995 novel In the Cut, as well as films Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, as inspiration. 'A lot of those texts from the 80s and 90s, the punchline is always, 'and the woman was crazy and evil, so she had to be punished',' Wilson says. 'I just wish the endings weren't ruined by scared little men.' Another key influence was Dead Ringers, the 2023 gender-flipped television remake of the 1988 psychological thriller, starring Rachel Weisz as twin gynaecologists. Loading Sex, then, or rather the twisted attraction between the two main characters, serves as the novel's engine (does Marnie want to be Luna, sleep with her, or escape her?) 'The things from the erotic thriller I took were this sense of arousal and danger being on this knife edge and maybe doing things that you knew you shouldn't because you were like following your desire and then having to deal with the consequences,' she says. With echoes of the female-led revenge fantasy, like that of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, Wilson's characters tiptoe an increasingly grey moral area as the novel progresses. It makes readers ask: What does justice look like when the odds are so often stacked against young women like Marnie? Where is the line between feminism and misandry? And what does it mean to perpetuate a cycle of violence in the name of women's empowerment? Having written Rytual, how does Wilson now feel about the beauty industry? 'I put on a Glossier lip liner this morning and I love their products,' she laughs. 'I love beauty, I love make-up and I think it's more just examining when it tips over into merging with your identity or believing that these brands and founders can tell you how to live your entire life rather than just how to put on some mascara.' Chloe Elisabeth Wilson will appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival (May 8–11) and the Sydney Writers' Festival (May 19–27).
The Age
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Darkness, desire and dewy skin: Debut novel skewers beauty culture
Like many women who came of age in the 2010s, I know the hypnotic pull of beauty and wellness culture all too well. As a teenager, I obsessively read Into The Gloss – the cult beauty blog founded by Emily Weiss, who later launched the million-dollar brand Glossier. I chugged green juices and squatted diligently to videos of chirpy, lycra-clad fitness influencers. Now, as a lifestyle writer who often reports on beauty and wellness, I know first-hand how the media operates as a cog in this glossy machine – the same one that made Kylie Jenner a billionaire and turned Gwyneth Paltrow from actor into a bona fide wellness guru. Their founders preach self-love and empowerment, while in the same breath pushing expensive potions intended to 'enhance' the real you. They're not just selling products; they are selling a lifestyle. It might be a cliché to describe these brands as having a cult following, but the term fits –given their larger-than-life founders, year-long product waitlists, and legions of devoted fans. But what if a beauty brand was literally a cult? This is the premise of Rytual, the debut novel by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson – a deliciously dark exploration of 21st-century beauty and wellness culture, told through the lens of an erotic thriller. Published last week, the novel was hotly contested in a fierce bidding war, the rights of which have already been sold for a TV adaptation. Marnie Sellers, the novel's protagonist, is a 20-something screenwriter stuck in a cycle of partying by night and manning the reception of a fitness studio by day. Still reeling from her mother's death and the fallout of an affair with a married older writer, Marnie is adrift until she finds herself under the spell of Rytual – a fictional beauty brand with a rabid female following for its 'no make-up, make-up' products. Wilson appears on Zoom from her light-filled Melbourne apartment, flanked by a bookshelf bursting with indoor plants and the colourful spines of novels. She holds up her The Substance water bottle – a fitting accessory, given the body horror film's take-down of a culture obsessed with youth. For the past year, she's worked as a researcher for Shameless Media, the hugely successful youth media company founded by Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald. But it was her colourful employment history – including a brief stint as a Pilates instructor and time at Emeis Cosmetics, a L'Oréal-owned company that makes products for Australian luxury skincare brand Aesop – that partly inspired the book. 'I was working for an Australian beauty brand with a reputation for being a bit of a cult for a while, and I wanted to write something about that environment,' Wilson, 32, says. 'I just wanted to pluck out the very theatrical things about my real job and push them out to the complete extremities of what a reader might believe. There's so much comedy in just how serious the whole thing was.' For reasons that will become clear as you read the book, it's important to point out that Rytual is very much a work of fiction. But the broad strokes of Millennial beauty culture will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has so much as wandered into one of these stores. Wilson says brands such as Glossier, Rare Beauty and Westmann Atelier all served as inspiration. Loading In Rytual, they're echoed in the soft pink packaging of lip oils bearing names like 'She' and 'Lust' written in sans serif fonts and the fairy floss painted walls of the company's headquarters. The female-founded start-up Rytual leans heavily on feminist rhetoric, with conference rooms named after women deemed to have been persecuted in the public eye (Britney Spears, Billie Holiday), and weekly sessions where employees are encouraged to lay bare their bad experiences with the male species. The brand is inseparable from its charismatic founder Luna Peters, a petite, green-eyed brunette who Marnie's housemate describes as a 'hot Jim Jones in designer clothes'. Luna, too, is an approximation of women Wilson has come across before – only with a penchant for murder and little regard for personal boundaries. 'There were a couple of women who worked in that office [at Emeis] that I was really drawn to, and I should say they were gorgeous people that I adore, but there was something so charismatic about them and they had so much power within that context that I was probably more interested in my reaction to them,' she says. Marnie has some similarities with Wilson – they're the same age, have a background in screenwriting and live in inner Melbourne (Rytual is filled with tongue-in-cheek quips about the city's hipster culture). Emotionally, Wilson understands how a character like Marnie could be so easily sucked into the vortex of a woman like Luna. 'I was at a point in my life where I didn't feel like I had a lot going on for me, and I had this job that at times was really frustrating, and it had really high expectations, but also it wasn't paying me very much. So I found myself lapping up the law of the org chart and looking at these women as like, 'they know what to do'.' 'I then just built out this idea of this person who, you know, maybe my younger self or maybe a person who didn't have much going for them, like what would it take?' 'What kind of person would it take for them to just keep inching towards doing bad things under the spell of this person?' A fan of erotic thrillers, Wilson says the genre, historically dominated by male voices, was ripe for reimagining. She cites classics, including Susanna Moore's 1995 novel In the Cut, as well as films Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, as inspiration. 'A lot of those texts from the 80s and 90s, the punchline is always, 'and the woman was crazy and evil, so she had to be punished',' Wilson says. 'I just wish the endings weren't ruined by scared little men.' Another key influence was Dead Ringers, the 2023 gender-flipped television remake of the 1988 psychological thriller, starring Rachel Weisz as twin gynaecologists. Loading Sex, then, or rather the twisted attraction between the two main characters, serves as the novel's engine (does Marnie want to be Luna, sleep with her, or escape her?) 'The things from the erotic thriller I took were this sense of arousal and danger being on this knife edge and maybe doing things that you knew you shouldn't because you were like following your desire and then having to deal with the consequences,' she says. With echoes of the female-led revenge fantasy, like that of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, Wilson's characters tiptoe an increasingly grey moral area as the novel progresses. It makes readers ask: What does justice look like when the odds are so often stacked against young women like Marnie? Where is the line between feminism and misandry? And what does it mean to perpetuate a cycle of violence in the name of women's empowerment? Having written Rytual, how does Wilson now feel about the beauty industry? 'I put on a Glossier lip liner this morning and I love their products,' she laughs. 'I love beauty, I love make-up and I think it's more just examining when it tips over into merging with your identity or believing that these brands and founders can tell you how to live your entire life rather than just how to put on some mascara.' Chloe Elisabeth Wilson will appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival (May 8–11) and the Sydney Writers' Festival (May 19–27).
Forbes
05-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
3 Proven Ways To Build A Personal Brand That Grows Your Small Business
When you're a small business owner, you're not just building a business, you're building belief. In a time where consumers are inundated with choices, trust has become the ultimate differentiator. For small business owners, that trust doesn't come from a logo, a clever tagline, or even a great product alone, it comes from the person behind it. Your personal brand is your secret weapon. When you're a small business owner, you're not just building a business, you're building belief. People want to know who they're buying from, what you stand for, and why you do what you do. And in saturated markets, where countless businesses may offer similar products or services, the story, values, and personality of the founder often tip the scales. Why You Need to Be the Face of Your Business Whether you're running a boutique fitness studio, a digital marketing agency, or a family-run bakery, customers want a human connection. They want to know your "why." Sharing your journey, how you got started, the values that drive you, the lessons you've learned, not only builds authenticity but creates a relationship. When people feel like they know you, they're far more likely to support your business and refer others to it. Think of brands like Glossier, whose founder Emily Weiss built a cult following through storytelling and visibility. Or Marcus Lemonis, whose personal brand of transparency and business acumen has become synonymous with the companies he backs. They've shown that founder-led businesses have an edge because their face builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. Three Ways to Build Your Personal Brand as a Small Business Owner 1. Share Your Story (Not Just Your Product) What inspired you to start your business? What challenge were you trying to solve? What keeps you going on tough days? Start showing up on LinkedIn, Instagram, or even through a weekly newsletter to share your perspective. Your journey is what sets you apart. Don't just celebrate wins, try to share what you're learning in real time. Vulnerability builds trust. 2. Speak Where Your Customers Are Small business owners often think visibility means becoming an influencer. Not true. You just need to show up in the places your ideal customers are already spending time. That might mean speaking at local events, joining panels in your industry, or being a guest on niche podcasts. Every interaction builds awareness and authority. 3. Use Content to Build Credibility Educational content positions you as a leader. Teach people something they didn't know. Answer their frequently asked questions. Break down industry trends. The more value you provide, the more you'll be remembered, not just as a business owner, but as a trusted expert. Why This Matters More Than Ever In today's digital landscape, your online presence is often your first impression. According to recent studies, 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when its leadership is active on social media. Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or leading a small team, your visibility directly impacts your business growth. And here's the best part: You don't need a massive following to make an impact. You just need to be consistent, clear in your message, and committed to showing up. The Bottom Line You are your brand. Your voice, your story, your values, they are what set your business apart. In a time of faceless logos and automated messages, being a real human is your biggest advantage. So if you're a small business owner wondering how to compete, start by being seen. Show up. Speak up. Share what matters to you. Because when people believe in the person behind the brand, they'll believe in the business too.
Forbes
11-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Glossier's Era Of Unicorn Hype May Be Over And Ramifications For The Beauty And Venture Capital Industry
The cat unicorn is wearing cute glasses. White background. Glossier has regressed from cult status to cautionary tale, and now its valuation has come back to Earth. At its peak, the millennial beauty brand had a valuation of nearly $2B with a cap table that included top-tier venture capital funds such as Sequoia, Thrive, Index, and Forerunner which poured $266M into the company. Now, it's raising more capital at a depressed valuation 'south of a billion dollars.' It's a signal of broader changes in the beauty landscape. Puck reported on Wednesday that multiple people with knowledge of the situation and access to its latest deck said that Glossier aims to raise $100M and potentially sell significant secondary shares from existing investors, which would give a new investor substantial minority ownership. The company aims to bring in investors and board members with a better understanding of the beauty industry. Last year, Glossier hired bankers to explore a potential sale. While there was a brief flirtation with LVMH, nothing materialized. NEW YORK, NY - MAY 15: Founder and CEO of Glossier Emily Weiss and Founder of Outdoor Voices Tyler ... More Haney speak onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017 at Pier 36 on May 15, 2017 in New York City. (Photo byfor TechCrunch) Multiple sources, including Business of Fashion and WWD, have noted Glossier's ongoing struggles with profitability. In 2022, the company laid off over 80 employees (about one-third of staff), citing the need to refocus on core operations and streamline its path forward. In 2023 and 2024, it pivoted further from DTC and leaned more into wholesale partnerships with Sephora, SpaceNK and Mecca, a move often driven by the need to stabilize cash flow and reduce CAC (customer acquisition costs). Glossier's sky-high valuation — $1.8B in 2021 — was less about current revenue and more about the belief it could scale like a tech platform. The company often referred to itself as a 'technology company' in press and investor conversations. It invested in building an internal tech team early on, signaling ambitions beyond product development, and its investors had tech-level expectations for scale, data, and margins. There were quiet attempts to build more platform-like features, such as a Glossier app and talk of evolving the site into a more social, shoppable experience though these never fully scaled. Glossier and the beauty industry broadly have been impacted by Gen Z's different expectations of brands. Gen Z consumers expect more transparency, inclusivity, and they like to discover TikTok-native brands. Their spending habits are shifting amid recession concerns and there's been an increase in dupe culture. Finally there's been a noticeable increase in the impact of creators and decentralized trendsetting vs. centralized brand narratives. Individual content creators, influencers, and even everyday users on platforms like TikTok and Instagram are now the ones driving trends in real time, not brands. When a TikTok creator with 50k followers posts a rave about a $7 dupe, it sells out overnight. These trends are organic, unpredictable, and often happen outside brand control. The 'decentralized' part means that no single authority (like a brand or media outlet) is dictating what's cool anymore. TikTok Beauty Influencers Beauty brands aren't really tech companies – perhaps that's why tech companies that operate in the beauty vertical (such as Perfect Corp which went public) define themselves as beauty tech whereas beauty brands can't make that distinction. Even if a beauty brand sells products online and engages in digital marketing, that doesn't make it a tech company and tech VCs are not the right fit for beauty brands. First, beauty brands simply cost less to operate than typical software companies. There are fewer high-cost software engineers and there are decades of manufacturing services and infrastructure investment making prototyping inexpensive compared to tech companies. Second, alongside unicorn status of a beauty brand comes a continued expectation of rapid growth, which is largely unsustainable for consumer businesses. It has taken P&G 183 years to build 22 billion-dollar brands and it does not have a deca-corn ($10B+) brand, which does exist in the tech world. Effectively, there is a natural ceiling for scale in DTC. Finally, the more money raised, the higher the 'floor' is for a successful exit. If you raise $100M from investors, you need to exit for $100M just to pay back the investors. The same exit, having raised only $50M, would leave some profits on the table, even in the event of a down round. As the floor increases, alignment between shareholders begins to separate. A down round becomes financially equivalent to a shutdown to all but a few shareholders since most will receive zero returns. Effectively, the teams become incentivized to 'go big or go home' regardless of the probability of success or if the company/category can handle that level of growth or scale. VCs and acquirers have learned many lessons via Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Charlotte Tilbury, Oddity Tech, K18, and Deciem. Most importantly, they learned that you cannot just throw money at a beauty brand and expect it to scale in a sustainable way. Although Forerunner got lucky with Dollar Shave's $1B exit to Unilever, that was a mirage. Unilever isn't jumping to acquire another VC darling that isn't profitable. Unilever's acquisition of Dollar Shave Club is widely considered a failure, with Unilever eventually selling it to Nexus Capital Management. The acquisition struggled to meet expectations, with Unilever citing declining performance and a fiercely competitive market. Beyond its viral video, the reality was that Dollar Shave didn't have anything proprietary (it outsourced its razor from Dorco), wasn't profitable and had a high CAC with high churn, and had no point of difference (any brand can offer a subscription and many did via DTC and/or Amazon). K18 developed a unique peptide, K18Peptide™, designed to repair hair damage at a molecular level. This biotechnology-driven approach set K18 apart in the haircare market, offering scientifically backed solutions that resonated with both professionals and consumers. Since its launch in 2020, K18 experienced significant growth, achieving $300 million in sales in 2023, with projections of $410 million for 2024. Additionally, it successfully penetrated professional salons and secured retail partnerships, including distribution through Sephora. This established distribution network provided a broad customer base. These factors collectively made K18 an appealing acquisition for Unilever, facilitating the brand's swift integration into Unilever's portfolio. Although its acquisition happened fast, it wasn't a unicorn and its valuation was 6X its sales. K18 promotional image Oddity Tech (ODD), an Israel-based DTC cosmetics and self-care products company, went public in a Nasdaq offering and its shares jumped in its trading debut on the NASDAQ Stock Market on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. It started trading at $49.10, well above its initial public offering price of $35 a share, according to FactSet. The opening price confers upon the company a market capitalization of roughly $2.8 billion. As of the publication of this article, it's trading at $40.8. Unlike most tech or consumer IPOs, Oddity is profitable, with net income of $38.3 million and revenue of $399.76M million in the twelve months ending March 31, 2023. Revenue is also growing fast, surging 46% in 2022 to top $320 million with most sales coming from Il Makiage, Oddity's flagship makeup brand. Il Makiage was the fastest-growing global beauty DTC platform from 2020 through 2022, per Women's Wear Daily. Its moat is a full-stack innovation play (AI shade matching, proprietary formulas, proprietary biotech ingredients, and proprietary hyperspectral facial imaging technology). Glossier used the language, logic, and structure of tech startups to grow fast and raise money—but didn't always build the defensible tech or IP that companies like Oddity Tech or K18 have. Additional capital could give it a reset and a rebirth or just give it a longer runway. However for its VC investors, the buck stops at an exit. Valuation increases are short-term wins, but the only metric that counts is cash returned, invariably from a sale or IPO. When the market appears less interested in purchasing unicorn companies and the bar for attractive exits keeps rising, as it has been in the last year, most shareholders will not find the outcome they were hoping for. Thus, the unicorn exit becomes a mirage. Despite recent fallouts of hyped VC-backed beauty and consumer DTC brands, DTC sales are continuing to grow. According to eMarketer's forecasts, e-commerce sales will grow by 8.8% in 2024, reaching a total of $6.3 trillion globally. Smart beauty and consumer brands usually have a moat to forge ahead: Let's canonize consumer brands that should be celebrated for becoming profitable and achieving successful exits. In order to do that, we need to refocus on important metrics such as a customer's lifetime value instead of getting seduced by fluffy hype. To put things in perspective, we must think about what revenue numbers mean with respect to the amount of money raised by a company. Operating efficiency matters. Is it smart to be impressed with companies that grow at a loss while only hoping their lifetime value of customers eventually offsets customer acquisition costs? Let's give credit to the camels that can weather droughts and recessions—not the unicorn mirages that raised too much venture capital too fast at inflated valuations.
