Emily Jensen, Senior Reporter at Glossy, shares insights on emerging beauty trends for 2025. She discusses the potential impact of a TikTok ban on marketing strategies and the evolving authenticity issues in influencer culture. The conversation also dives into the rising fragrance market, the fusion of beauty and sports partnerships, and the implications of GLP-1 drugs on skincare. Additionally, Jensen highlights changing beauty standards, including the controversial use of beef tallow in products and the growing interest in DIY beauty among consumers.

Glossy reporters Lexy Lebsack, Sara Spruch-Feiner and Emma Sandler welcomed dozens of guests onto the Glossy Beauty Podcast in 2024. This included top executives at L’Oréal Group and Kendo Brands; longtime industry leaders from Retrouvé and Versed; and breakout indie brand founders from Flamingo Estate and Fazit.But it was the six interviews highlighted below that best capture the ways in which the beauty industry changed in 2024. In today’s special end-of-year podcast episode, Lebsack and Spruch-Feiner walk through six can’t-miss clips.In the clips ahead, Estée Lauder VP Chloe Green-Vamos discusses how the conglomerate is utilizing AI to better the business while longtime beauty exec Sarah Creal muses about reaching women over 40 with her new namesake line — two massive trends that swept the industry this year.This special 2024 episode also highlights an important change in retail’s role in business, as heard in a clip from Black Girl Sunscreen founder Shontay Lundy’s September episode. Speaking of sunscreen, Beauty of Joseon founder Sumin Lee joined the pod this month to discuss entering the U.S. market with the TikTok-famous brand.In another clip, Beachwaver’s Sarah Potempa shares the secret behind her knockdown success live-selling business on TikTok. And finally, in Glossy’s Tweens Talk Beauty episode, three Gen Alpha tween shoppers discuss the role beauty plays in their lives.The Glossy Beauty Podcast will be back next week with another special episode looking ahead at 2025 and will return on January 9 with our regular episodes.

“I believe that every great brand should evolve its look and feel about every five years,” said Katherine Power, serial entrepreneur and the founder of Versed skin care. “Since our launch in 2019, we've seen that our core customer, who is primarily an older millennial or young Gen X — I call them Xennials — has really grown along with us, and we wanted to continue to grow with them and to create something fresh and modern.”This included a refresh of packaging, visuals and language overseen by Lola Gonzalez Marra, Versed’s longtime creative lead. Power and Marra have worked together for more than a decade on Power’s many entrepreneurial projects, including editorial sites WhoWhatWear and Byrdie — which Power launched with Hillary Kerr in 2006 and 2013, respectively — as well as color cosmetics line Merit, which Power founded in 2021. “We decided we needed to evolve enough that it's a change, but not so much that you go on Versed one day and it's a completely different brand,” said Marra. As Power and Marra explained on this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, the refresh has been in the works for over a year. Versed was launched in 2019 from data and insights learned at Byrdie and WhoWhatWear, which Power and Kerr have since sold to publisher Dotdash in 2019 and publisher Future Brands in 2022, respectively. Thanks to Versed’s omnichannel strategy where 75% of its sales are through Target, switching over merchandise has required a unique strategy. Hint: Versed is selling off older products DTC for 30% off right now. The team also rolled out tweaks to its social media aesthetic and naming formula for products. The brand also used this as an opportunity to fine-tune the assortment by making product cuts. But perhaps the biggest change is in its packaging colors, which Marra desaturated and leveraged into category IDs, all of which the duo discusses in the podcast episode. 

Aliett Buttelman and Nina LaBruna launched Fazit Beauty in January 2022. When it first debuted, the brand focused on various skin-care patches. In the years since, it has built a following on TikTok (76,000 followers) with products like oversized acne patches, silicone scar patches and patches that help treat ingrown hairs. According to Buttelman, by October 2024, the brand had amassed around 200 million views on the app when its trajectory changed overnight.That's because, in October, Taylor Swift wore Fazit's Faux Freckle Makeup Patches to a Kansas City Chiefs game. The patches, which come in a variety of metallic hues and some sports-themed shades, apply like temporary tattoos. They launched in April 2024.Within 48 hours, the brand's site traffic spiked by over 3,500%, resulting in $1 million in sales. Last week, Fazit entered 400 CVS doors with its Gold Stardust Speckle Makeup Patches. It is also sold at Urban Outfitters and on Amazon. On the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast, Buttelman teased that a dream retailer is coming soon and noted that the experience with Swift gave her and LaBruna more confidence in negotiating such deals.

Sumin Lee, founder of Beauty of Joseon, shares insights on her K-beauty brand's explosive growth in the U.S., notably through social media. She highlights the remarkable success of their lightweight sunscreen, praised for its innovative SPF filters and affordability. Lee discusses the brand's strategic expansion into retail, partnerships with influencers, and the ongoing battle against counterfeit products. With roots in traditional Korean ingredients, Beauty of Joseon is captivating a new generation of beauty enthusiasts, both online and offline.

Cale Guthrie Weissman, Editor-in-Chief of Modern Retail, dives into the evolving landscape of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in beauty retail. He discusses the significant $990 billion forecast for holiday sales and contrasts luxury shopping with value-driven trends, spotlighting new immersive stores from iconic brands like Chanel. The conversation shifts to 'chaos shopping' trends, driven by platforms like TikTok Shop and Amazon's low-price strategies, and uncovers Gen Z's unique spending habits for this holiday season.

Richard Christiansen has learned many priceless lessons since he began fundraising for his brand, Flamingo Estate, around two years ago. This includes his surprising realization that many investors care little about the brand or the founder’s story. Instead, he said, there's a near-universal desire among the VC set for 90% margins across personal care products. “Know your audience; they're there to look at the numbers. … No one cares about the [brand or founder] story,” he told Glossy. "I, too, spent so much time on the storytelling, but at that moment, in those meetings, it's only about the numbers.” In the 160 investor meetings he’s attended in the past two years, he’s been told to abandon key parts of his business to increase profitability and to trade its sourcing practices — many of which reflect a hallmark of the brand — for cheaper, faster ingredients. On the podcast, Christiansen also shares with Glossy that he has secured his dream investor and, pending contract finalization this week, will have funding for brand expansion in the coming months. Christiansen launched Flamingo Estate in 2020, during the pandemic, by selling boxes of produce in a Los Angeles parking lot. Nearly five years later, the brand has become an in-the-know measure of luxury and has expanded to subscription produce boxes, candles, books, and personal care products available at Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Bergdorf Goodman, Forward, Mecca and many smaller retailers. The story behind Flamingo Estate, which Christiansen shared on the Glossy Beauty Podcast three years ago, is a departure from the luxury marketing Christiansen was well known for over the past decades, but it still possesses the elevated luxury branding consumers love. The latest in his releases is “The Guide to Becoming Alive,” out this week from San Francisco-based Chronicle Books. The 600-page coffee table book retails for $50 DTC and across the brand's retailers. Its chapters are anchored around in-depth interviews with Jane Fonda, Martha Stewart, Kelly Werstler, Chrissy Teigen, Mecca CEO Jo Horgan and many more influential people. The book includes life lessons from Christiansen's garden, anecdotes from his life and stories about growing his business. 

Jill Biren, co-founder of JB Skrub and former Condé Nast editor, reveals her inspiring journey of creating a personal care brand for tween boys alongside actress Julie Bowen. They discuss the unique challenges of marketing to this audience, emphasizing gender norms and the importance of relatable products. Jill shares how their body wash and spray use natural ingredients for active kids, and delves into the influence of fathers and grandfathers on grooming habits. Additionally, she highlights the brand's unexpected appeal across different age groups.

After more than seven years in business, Angela Caglia Skincare is having its hockey stick moment. “Our sales are up 437% in the past year,” founder Angela Caglia told Glossy. “We'll finish this year at close to $4 million [in sales] and around 90% of that will be the Cell Forté Serum; it’s all we're promoting.”Since launching the hero product in October 2023, the brand’s Cell Forté Serum has garnered several beauty industry awards from publications like Elle, Byrdie, TZR and Essence, and sold out three times on Violet Grey. And it was the catalyst for the brand’s expansion into Nordstrom last month. Caglia’s focus now is keeping the serum in stock, and she hopes to expand the franchise next year with face and eye creams. The serum retails for $395 for 1 ounce.The serum’s value proposition rests on its ability to replace antioxidant and hydrating serums, like those focused on vitamin C and hyaluronic acid, as well as exfoliating products and retinols, Caglia told Glossy. The brand leads marketing materials with results from a 28-day clinical study where nearly all participants (87-91%) reported less hyperpigmentation, increased luminosity, improved skin elasticity and a more youthful appearance. The serum is powered by "human-derived adipose mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) conditioned media," a technology Caglia discovered when researching treatment options for her mother’s ongoing treatment of dementia. Today, she sources the material from a stem cell research lab based in Texas that specializes in stem cell banking and FDA-cleared clinical trials, she told Glossy.MSC-conditioned media is sourced from fat, called adipose tissue, which is donated by young and healthy plastic surgery patients and then processed in a lab. As Caglia explained in the latest Glossy Podcast episode, the stem cells are removed from the tissue and placed in a human-like environment where they excrete growth factors, cytokines and proteins, which are then used in the serum. The stem cells, which hold the patient’s DNA, are removed before the broth goes into the serum. Growth factors are a bit like little emails: They tell the other cells how to regenerate and act younger, which we don’t fully understand yet. Caglia is only one of very few brands playing in this space. Whereas there are many brands — like Eighth Day and Dr Diamond Metacine — that offer "bio-identical copies" of growth factors, few brands offer human-derived versions of growth factors. According to market research company Spate, growth factors are a rising trend in online searches alongside skin care, with an average of more than 32,000 Google searches per month over the past year, marking a notable +202.7% surge.Coglia joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss her new hero product, Cell Forté, as wll as her journey to the brand's hockey stick moment. 

Years ago, a strong retail strategy often included brands staying in one pricing category, such as mass, prestige or luxury. Today, those best practices have come into question. “It’s strategic, … and it's also nerve-racking at the same time,” Rosie Jane Johnston, founder of fine fragrance and body-care line By Rosie Jane, told Glossy about her company’s expansion into the mass market this month through Target. “It’s always been in the back of my mind to make By Rosie Jane, particularly the body-care side of the brand, accessible in a real way.” As of this week, Johnston is executing against that goal with a strategic expansion onto Target.com — the line’s first and only mass retailer — with just the brand’s body-care line, which Johnston developed during the pandemic. “Body care is a new category for us, [and] we take it very seriously,” Johnston said. “I don't want [this expansion] to just feel like an extension of my perfume line — that's a different experience. I want this experience to be something unique.”By Rosie Jane launched with a clean, fine fragrance direct-to-consumer in 2012 before expanding into Sephora in 2019. The brand currently offers seven fine fragrances. It also sells through Revolve, Nordstrom and other select retailers, and has maintained its DTC channel. By Rosie Jane has sold limited-edition body-care extensions of its fine fragrance in the past, including body oil and body wash in best-selling scents like Rosie or Missy. But today, Johnston is focused on three new fragrance franchises called Wake the F Up, Calm the F Down and Chill the F Out. Based on mood-boosting ingredients like essential oils, the line is meant to evoke feel-good emotions and was inspired by Johnston’s menopause journey. The line includes body wash, oil, lotion and deodorant all priced between $15-$42. To start, the products will be sold on Target.com, though the hope is to further expand to Target stores. By Rosie Jane fine fragrances will remain exclusive to retailers like Sephora and Nordstrom, while the body-care will be offered at both mass and prestige retailers. According to a rep from By Rosie Jane, the company is set to reach $10 million in sales in 2024, with body care making up around 8% of revenue. Johnston joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss her brand's expansion, including her hopes for the body-care category.