The Glossy Beauty Podcast

A beauty industry veteran, Victor Casale knows a thing or two about building brands. After serving as the chief chemist at MAC Cosmetics from its inception through its acquisition, he later went on to found CoverFX. Now, he’s back in the beauty startup world in a big way as the co-founder of two brands he’s helping run simultaneously: custom skin-care brand Pure Culture Beauty and refillable makeup brand MOB Beauty.His interest in revamping the way beauty is packaged and sold comes from a long-held interest in sustainability. In fact, he spearheaded MAC’s “Back to MAC” package recycling program 35 years ago, pre-dating municipal recycling in many cities. Now, he’s the co-founder of beauty recycling program Pact Collective, which has 160 members and partnerships with retailers including Ulta Beauty and Sephora. On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Casale goes into extensive detail on refillable beauty, his experience with recycling in the early days, the way Pact Collective works and how consumers can demand change.

From an early age, Richard Parker was aware of his skin. When Parker was a teenager, he was diagnosed with a skin condition caused by sun damage called ochronosis. And in his early 20s, he suffered from acne. After meeting multiple dermatologists and learning more about products and ingredients that could help his conditions, Parker was inspired to venture into health and beauty to share that knowledge with others.The knowledge Parker gained from medical experts and his own studies led him to launch Rationale in 1992. Since its creation, the skin-care brand's sole purpose has been to equip consumers with the necessary information and products to help repair damage caused by the sun and other free radical exposure. "The information [on how to maintain healthy skin] was so valuable to women [when we launched] because there weren't any of the codebreakers or websites that we all have access to today," Parker said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "Some of the vital components that we now know are important to skin health, like immune boosters and antioxidants, didn't exist in skin care at that time." Rationale's unique and medically-backed approach to skin care catapulted the brand's growth in Australia. Three decades later, Rationale is considered a cult favorite among many of Australia's biggest celebrities and skin-care enthusiasts. Parker is now grooming the brand to connect with consumers around the globe. He's currently focused on the U.S. and Southeast Asian markets. 

After selling her skin-care brand Nyakio Beauty to Unilever in 2017, Nyakio Grieco set her sights on beauty retail with the launch of Thirteen Lune in 2020. As multiple beauty retailers were pledging to offer at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands, she came up with a “90/10” model for Thirteen Lune: 90% of brands are BIPOC-owned, with 10% owned by those who demonstrate allyship.With $1 million in funding from celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Combs and a $3 million seed round led by Fearless Fund, Thirteen Lune is in the process of taking over all of JCPenney’s former Sephora locations. It also stocks Grieco’s new skin-care venture, Relevant, which was launched in 2022.Physical retail is a big part of Grieco’s vision for Thirteen Lune, which will be launching its first standalone physical store early this year in Los Angeles. In this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Grieco shared her success story from the inspiration of her first brand launched in 2002 to her current beauty ventures.

Beauty trends of 2022 include TikTok's impact on brand strategies, the end of DTC era as beauty startups shift towards retail, and the exploration of beauty brands in the metaverse. The popularity of TikTok for marketing and Elf Cosmetics' viral success are highlighted, along with the potential of virtual reality shopping and NFT campaigns in the future. The discussion also touches on Gen Alpha's focus, the closure of indie beauty brands, luxury brands on TikTok, the shift towards body care, and brands' interest in established platforms and overlooked apps.

For many consumers in the market for cosmetic procedures, busy lives often mean that anything with an at-home recovery period isn’t always possible. That concept has been a big selling point for Dr. Dennis Gross’ eponymous skin-care brand, which is still going strong with its cult Alpha Beta Universal Daily Peel after over two decades.Created to offer a chemical peel with no skin redness or need to stay home, Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare’s peel is “now the number one selling peel in the world,” said Dr. Gross on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. With a growing number of products added to its lineup, a minority investment from private equity firm Main Post, and plans to expand further internationally, the brand has seen “explosive” growth, he said.On the episode, he shares its founding story and plans for expansion, while weighing in on the rise of dermatologist brands and why he’s not succumbing to TikTok trends.

In 2008, Mario Dedivanovic was working the retail floor at Sephora. Now, his own eponymous brand can be found on its shelves.On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, celebrity makeup artist and brand founder Dedivanovic sat down to discuss his epic career journey and how it brought him from becoming a top celebrity makeup artist to launching his brand Makeup by Mario in 2020.The conversation, of course, includes Kim Kardashian. Fans of her reality shows have likely seen him by her side in glam session scenes throughout the years. While most closely associated with Kardashian, he’s worked on a high-caliber client list over the years that includes Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, Kate Bosworth, Demi Lovato and Naomie Harris.

For Akash Mehta, Ayurvedic beauty is a family business.Growing up in a British-Indian household, Mehta interacted with Ayurveda, an alternative medicine system with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent, through his mother and grandparents. Meanwhile, his father worked in the beauty industry as a fragrance entrepreneur. Despite not initially planning to work in beauty, Mehta now sees the value in his exposure to the industry through his father. In early 2020, Mehta launched Fable & Mane, an Ayurvedic-inspired hair-care brand, with his sister Nikita Mehta. It debuted out of SOS Beauty, an incubator behind brands like Summer Fridays, Ouai, Patrick Ta Beauty and Shani Darden Skincare.Fable & Mane sells shampoo, conditioner, an oil mist and a scalp scrub, among other products. Products are priced $16-$49 and sold through Sephora and Fable & Mane's e-commerce site."At the same time [of our launch], there was no representation in the industry like us. We went to Sephora, and there was no Ayurvedic hair brand," Mehta said. "With Ayurveda products, [the issue] is that they smell. But we're all busy and going out, so I wanted [to introduce] something that smells great and performs."On the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast, Mehta spoke with Priya Rao about building the brand, unexpected viral moments on TikTok, plans for 2023, and the brand potential within the buzzy and booming hair space. 

When Harry Slatkin and his wife, Laura, built Slatkin & Co., they disrupted the fragrance industry by making home fragrances accessible to a wider demographic.Slatkin sold Slatkin & Co. to Limited Brands, which owns Bath & Body Works, in 2005. But he kept his role as executive chairman and president of the company, and eventually took over the entire home fragrance division. After growing the business to $1.3 billion, Slatkin stepped down from his role in 2012. Today, the company does $2.3 billion in home fragrance sales, according to Slatkin.'When I started, I was entrepreneurial at Limited Brands. [Lex Wexner] let me set up offices in New York, and I had my own team," Slatkin said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "As soon as we started hitting $400 million and $500 million [in sales], I was becoming a part of these big teams, and the entrepreneur and the excitement of it starts to leave. … It was no longer what I could call hands-on, for me. I decided, after getting to a billion dollars [in revenue], that it was time for me to step down."Slatkin consulted for Bath & Body Works for three years after selling his company, but at the same time, he pivoted into fashion through a partnership with Tommy Hilfiger. The duo went on to acquire apparel brand Belstaff in 2011.Slatkin is now focused on growing the company's distribution for its current offerings, with no plans to expand to more categories in the near future.

When beauty and personal care executive Rod Little joined personal care conglomerate Edgewell as CFO in 2018, the company’s core businesses of shaving and feminine care were seeing mid-single-digit declines. Competing with giants like Procter & Gamble and DTC disruptors like Billie, the company was in need of a transformation. Rising to CEO in 2019, Little identified the areas that needed to change at the company, which owns household name brands such as Schick, Banana Boat and Playtex. “We had gotten into a rhythm of being too technology-focused, and we had been led by technology, as opposed to being led by the consumer,” he said on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. His turnaround strategy included not only moving the focus to the consumer, but also adopting a startup mentality and embracing new acquisitions in growth categories. While the company’s attempted acquisition of Harry’s was blocked by the FTC in 2020, the company has made four acquisitions in the past five years: men’s grooming brands Bulldog, Jack Black and Cremo, and razor startup Billie. With its new brands driving double-digit growth, Edgewell’s shaving and feminine care categories have moved up to “mid-single-digit” growth this year, while its sun-care category is going strong. On this week’s episode, Little shares details on the company’s acquisition strategy, his thoughts on the FTC decision and ways brands can stay innovative while scaling. 

Nearly every turn in Isamaya Ffrench’s career was unexpected. Ffrench grew up in a family of engineers and didn’t ascribe to the glamorous rituals her mother and grandmother practiced when she was a child. Her introduction to beauty came by way of discovering Kevyn Aucoin’s iconic beauty book “Making Faces.”But even after studying that book cover to cover, Ffrench still didn’t have dreams of becoming a makeup artist, content creator or founder of her namesake beauty brand — all of which she is now. In fact, Ffrench danced professionally for 15 years. But a colleague at the contemporary theatrical performance group Theo Adams Company put her up for a body painting job at i-D magazine, knowing Ffrench painted faces at children’s parties. While unplanned, that gig planted the seeds for Ffrench’s future career.“I was hired to do a very specific thing,” said Ffrench on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. “I was using clay and mixed media and turning these models into Demigods. It was all very creative, but there was another makeup artist on set who had been booked to do the beauty because I guess I was a wildcard. I just remember there was this moment when I was washing up my really dirty, grubby brushes in the sink with washing liquid. I had big paintbrushes and sponges and all this grimy stuff. I looked over at this makeup artist who sat there with her beautiful kit laid out looking very clean. I was like, ‘Hold on a sec, why am I not doing that job? I should be doing that job, as well.'”Ffrench continued to book editorial jobs, all while refining her subverted beauty aesthetic. Her work landed her ambassador and creative director posts at YSL Beauté, Tom Ford Beauty, Burberry and Byredo, which proved to be fortuitous primers to launching her own brand, Isamaya, in June.“I don’t ever think I planned to do my own brand, or not until very, very recently, probably because I was very happy doing it for other people. … And then I sort of thought, ‘Well, maybe there are some things I would like to do for myself that brands wouldn’t let me do because they have their own language,'” she said.Since debuting Isamaya this summer, Ffrench has leaned into the drop model, first launching the Industrial collection, a BDSM-inspired offering. Wild Star, a rhinestone cowgirl-esque drop, debuted Thursday with L.A. pop-ups supporting the collection.