The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Bubble Skincare has been one of the most talked-about Gen-Z-focused beauty brands since launching in November 2020. “My passion was always about creating brands that could emotionally connect to consumers,” said founder and CEO Shai Eisenman on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. Eisenman began her entrepreneurial journey at just 21 years old.Out of the gate, Bubble launched its affordable skin-care products with fun packaging through its own direct-to-consumer website, but in June 2021, it went big, launching in 3,900 Walmart stores. While Walmart was seemingly an unusual beauty retailer to partner with, Eisenman said that 42% of U.S. teens shop at Walmart once or twice a month for skin-care products. Since its debut, Bubble has seen week-over-week sales growth in Walmart, and Bubble has been a key pillar of the retailer's larger beauty strategy.Since the very beginning, Bubble has engaged with Gen Z; the company’s first focus groups were comprised of teens who provided feedback on the brand’s initial product lineup and formulations, as well as branding and marketing strategies. Eisenman engaged friends and family members' teens in exchange for Sephora gift cards. Looking ahead, Bubble is focused on further customizing its product offerings to satisfy customers' wants and needs. Additionally, the company is launching over-the-counter products which will enable it to steal more market share from heritage skin-care brands like Clearasil and Neutrogena.

In 1989, the six co-founders of beauty brand Lush created the now-iconic bath bomb. From there, they haven’t looked back.Lush was officially founded in 1995 as an ethical beauty brand, which now has nearly 1,000 global stores, 210 stores of which are in the U.S. Its bath, skin and hair products are sold via its DTC website and owned brick-and-mortar stores. Amid today's common need among beauty brands for wholesale distribution, Lush has managed to remain independent, setting its own agenda.“We're trying to create a cosmetic revolution and trying to get people [on board],” said Rowena Bird, one of the co-founders, on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast.From the start, Lush has always favored minimalism and activism. Early on, with a small budget, the company’s co-founders decided to minimize excess packaging. It is a part of the brand's DNA that has been maintained to this day; now nearly 60% of Lush’s products are sold without any packaging and are referred to as "naked." Its revolutionary agenda also extends to social justice campaigns. Lush uses in-store campaigns, like a 2015 "Gay is OK" U.K.-focused campaign, as a form of social justice education for consumers. In 2015, Lush used its retail stores as billboards when launching the limited edition Love Soap, with 100% of every sale going to the Love Fund that supports the LGBTQ+ community. It raised nearly $400,000 then and recently brought the special soap back in May to inform consumers of the "Don’t Say Gay" bill in Florida.In 2021, the company also took a bold stance regarding social media, after studies demonstrated the harm of social media to young people. Globally, Lush left Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook. When someone goes to the brand's Lush Instagram page, they are confronted with nine posts forming the phrase "Be somewhere else." Despite this stance negatively impacting sales and brand awareness, Bird said, “You have to look at your ethics rather than your bank balance, and think [about] what's right to do.”Since its inception, Lush has always been ahead of the curve, and still, many innovative plans are in the pipeline. The company is continuing to reduce packaging, develop self-preserving products to protect product freshness and become a carbon-positive company.

When indie makeup brand Lime Crime appointed Andrea Blieden as CEO in May 2020, her first order of business was to chart a more transparent and vocal era for the business. Despite being one of the first digitally-native indie makeup brands, Lime Crime was plagued by a series of controversial incidents in the 2010s. In 2018, Lime Crime was acquired by Tengram Capital Partners.  “It was time to start humanizing the brand and being transparent, because [our internal team works] transparently. I want us to operate with our customers in that same regard,” Blieden said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.Blieden is also focused on continuing Lime Crime’s legacy of never putting a price on creativity. As comparable beauty brands increase price due to supply chain and inflation, Lime Crime has dropped its prices. Its Glimmering Skin Stick went from $25 to $15, for example. Lime Crime’s recent expansion into Walmart, Target and Sally Beauty has helped offset the price drop strategy, she said.

Tina Bou-Saba didn't anticipate becoming a dedicated beauty investor, but the path become clearer once she started investing in indie brands."A few years into investing as an individual, founders started telling me, 'Tina, you've been our best investor. Could you lead our next round?'" Bou-Saba said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Bou-Saba started her career in investment banking before transitioning to angel investing. As an angel investor, she was early to makeup brands like Kosas. "As a small individual investor, that was certainly not something that I could do, but it highlighted the opportunity for a specialist investor that could lead deals at the early stage and truly be a value-add," she said. In 2021, she co-founded Verity Venture Partners, a consumer-focused firm.The firm's focus is on female-founded beauty and wellness brands, and its portfolio brands include August, Dae and Noto. Bou-Saba said, "Independent beauty has been an incredible vehicle for female entrepreneurship. For me personally, that was something I was excited to get behind." Bou-Saba's said that, as an early-stage investor, she has to push herself and brands to think of what comes next and where consumers and the beauty industry are headed. "What I found, which gives me confidence, is that I have developed an informed perspective on the needs of [beauty and wellness] companies. I see the same questions coming up again and again," said Bou-Saba.

The Honey Pot is still only an 8-year-old indie brand, but co-founder, CEO and chief innovation officer Bea Dixon has seen her fair share of ups and downs. After a preservative system reformulation this year, the sexual wellness and feminine health brand has been involved in controversy since May. Customers took to social media to question the reformulated ingredient list, which now features the preservative phenoxyethanol and new emulsifiers. Rumors were even spreading that the company had been sold and was no longer Black-owned. In the latest Glossy beauty podcast, Dixon shares the pitfalls of going "viral.""We admitted to the fact that we could have communicated better," said Dixon. "You work so hard to do something, and when people feel like there's an opposite communication happening, you want so badly to prove that that's not the case. Sometimes it can almost be worse to do that because it looks like you're being reactive and like you're defending something. [I] try to find the fine line between not being defensive, but [rather] owning up, being vulnerable and being responsible.”However, Dixon states that the company's investors and retail partners have remained supportive throughout. "[They] understand the good preservative system, they understand things change, and they understand the complexity of social media," she said. Still, Dixon emphasized how important her customer's journey is, as the products came to life from a very personal experience. After suffering from bacterial vaginosis for eight months in 2014, Dixon woke up from a visionary dream from her grandmother with a list of ingredients to heal her condition. That led Dixon, who was then working as a buyer at Whole Foods, to found the brand as a plant-derived vaginal wellness brand. Glossy's Priya Rao spoke to Dixon about The Honey Pot’s founding story, growing list of retail partners and reformulation challenges that led to the recent social media backlash.

After becoming a mother in 2017, Sarah Paiji Yoo cut out all single-use plastics from her life for the sake of her family. In 2019, she took that practice a step further by creating Blueland, a brand offering sustainable home goods and hygiene products. Blueland sells hand soaps, home cleaners, dish soaps and laundry products, made with respective plant-based formulas. And all products come in a reusable bottle and are shipped in recyclable cardboard. Its newest product, body wash, released in May, further expands the brand into beauty. "Blueland tackles the bulkiest products people use in the personal care and beauty space," Yoo said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.In February 2022, Prelude Growth Partners, a female-founded growth equity firm, led Blueland’s fundraising round of $20 million. Blueland has raised a total of $35 million to date from investors including pop star Justin Timberlake; Nicolas Jammet, CEO of Sweetgreen; and Jennifer Fleiss, co-founder of Rent the Runway. 

After 15 years in the beauty industry holding various positions, Alisa Metzger founded Innbeauty Project in 2019. This clean beauty brand, which is aimed at Gen-Z consumers through an accessible pricing strategy, sells its products in major retailers like Sephora and Credo, as well as on its direct-to-consumer site."If you think about the average [skin-care] product price and even the average [skin-care] routine being $100 and up, and then you match that with the average U.S. salary being less than $45,000 a year, it became really evident that clean skin-care was not something that most Americans can afford," Metzger said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Metzger worked with Jen Shane, co-founder of Innbeauty, at Tula when they noticed, “The wellness movement had taken over [beauty],” Metzer said. The early pioneers of clean beauty were at the forefront of the industry because the ingredient messaging resonated with consumers within the wellness movement. However, Metzger and Shane said they noticed that clean products at an accessible price point seemed nonexistent. The two were passionate about democratizing clean beauty. Innbeauty's prices range from $15 for a single lip oil to $120 for a 6-piece kit, which is still more affordable than the prices of individual products from some competitors. “We wanted to create a brand that spoke to [Gen Z] that didn’t exist. This industry is driven by innovation, which comes in many forms, including creating something that doesn't exist for an audience that's starving to consume," Metzger said.Metzer spoke to Glossy about the clean beauty industry, Gen-Z skin-care marketing and Innbeauty's future goals for further innovation in the beauty space.

“We're in a makeup [and] a self-expression renaissance right now," "Euphoria" makeup artist Donni Davy said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast.After three years in development, Half Magic, the beauty brand by Davy and A24, debuted this week to extreme fanfare. Davy sees the brand to be an expression of "dopamine makeup," where it encourages its users to experiment with their self-expression and identity through makeup. Half Magic is selling DTC to consumers and will stay that way in order to maintain Davy’s direct and close relationships with customers. Despite the bold colors and glitter rhinestone masterpieces seen in "Euphoria," Davy wants to showcase all types of looks with Half Magic. With a wide variety of beginner-friendly lip kits, rhinestone packs, eye paint and applicator tools, Half Magic reassures customers that the "magic" of a makeup look is within oneself. 

Created for BIPOC in mission and purpose, Tristan Walker’s health and beauty brand, Walker & Company, has been instrumental in shifting the norms of the beauty industry since its conception in 2013. At W&C, Black women and people of color hold the majority of leadership positions. It's changed the diversity in beauty aisles of department stores like Walmart and Target by putting razor and hair-care collections for all different hair textures on the shelves. After almost a decade of simplifying beauty and grooming for BIPOC, hygiene and home goods corporation P&G acquired Walker & Company in 2018 for an estimated $20 million to $40 million. Walker & Company's business has often been led by technology. But Walker, founder and CEO, said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast that, moving forward, the business will be led by culture. Walker’s perspective on how closely culture affects business was instrumental in the creation of Bevel and Form, W&C’s grooming and beauty brands, respectively. And prioritizing the needs of BIPOC doesn't stop at W&C's products. W&C has partnered with various community outreach programs, like Urban Prep academies in Chicago, where it donated laptops for students forced to remote-learn during Covid. Plus, it provides free mental health resources on Headpsace for W&C customers. 

NYC-based makeup artist Meredith Duxbury is a well-known digital content creator among the TikTok beauty community with over 14.8 million followers on the platform. Referred to as “the complexion queen of TikTok,” she is also the face of the Morphe Making You Blush collection, which launched in March 2022.Duxbury grew up following beauty creators like Jacqueline Hill before deciding she wanted to post her own beauty content on social media. “I started on TikTok. I would stack up some cardboard boxes and make a random tripod out of whatever I could find, and I started doing [before-and-after] transitions here and there," Duxbury said on the latest Glossy Podcast. "My videos took off when I started doing rap lip-syncing videos to Nicki Minaj’s 'I’m Legit' song. And I created a trend called #thefoundationchallenge where I would smear foundation all over my face. It would get hundreds of millions of views.”The TikTok star hit 1 million followers in December 2020, and one month later, she reached 7 million followers.“I created three videos a day during quarantine and learned so much about the [influencer] industry. But I’d say 2019 was when I [first] immersed myself in the beauty world,” said Duxbury. “[The TikTok algorithm] shows that, if you’re consistent, you can grow."