The Glossy Beauty Podcast

For New Yorkers, C.O. Bigelow is an institution. “There's something about the [Bigelow] apothecary that emotionally appeals to people,” Ian Ginsberg, president, pharmacist and third generation owner of C.O. Bigelow, told Glossy. “Everybody, no matter how young or old you are, has some memory about going to the apothecary and the pharmacist telling you what to do. That's where I started [when I joined the family business four decades ago]. I started focusing on what happens when you walk in the door.”Opened in 1838, C.O. Bigelow is a mainstay in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City and touted as the city’s oldest apothecary. To wit: The original Kiehl's apothecary opened 14 years later in 1851. C.O. Bigelow is known as a go-to for well-heeled New Yorkers, NYU students, tourists and neighborhood locals. Its lore includes customers like Sarah Jessica Parker and the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who purchased her iconic headbands in the shop, according to C.O. Bigelow. “It's not always about what you buy, it's about how you feel when you're there,” said Ginsberg. “I always say we have to be in the want business, not the need business. The minute we're in the need business, we're dead.” His family has built more than a pharmacy and retail. The company also has an eponymous beauty brand made in partnership with Bath & Body Works, formerly Limited Brands. The products range from makeup to body care and currently sell in the Greenwich store as well as through Bath & Body Works, Bloomingdale's and Revolve, among other retailers. The company also sells its wares direct to consumers. They include the namesake beauty line and the diverse curation found in store. Its stores offers luxury brands like Westman Atelier and Augustinus Bader, prestige offerings from RMS Beauty and Caudalie, and masstige products like Avene and Bioderma. “You can't just put stuff on shelves anymore,” Ginsberg said. “Anybody can find unique things and put them on shelves, but it's about making people feel good -- that's more important now than ever before. People talk about experiential retail, but our experimental retail is just person-to-person communication, helping people, explaining things to them and answering questions and showing them how to use things in whatever category it is. That's the secret sauce.”The company also owns a distribution company called Bigelow Trading that imports and distributes small brands into the U.S., for its own retail and others. Marvis toothpaste is among those brands. In addition, Bigelow Trading has a thriving hotel amenities business that works across hospitality brands like Aman, Nobu Hotel and Soho Grand Hotel, among others. But perhaps the most surprising thing about C.O. Bigelow is the role of the pharmacy in the overall business. “People sometimes say to me, ‘You have this great beauty business because you have this strong pharmacy business,” Ginsberg said. “But they have it all wrong. [The pharmacy business is supported by the beauty business].” As previously reported by Glossy, 2024 was a bad year for American drugstores, and 2025 could end up even worse. Just last year, CVS closed 586 locations, Rite Aid closed 408 stores, and Walgreens closed 259 locations, which has created “drugstore deserts” across the U.S.As a pharmacist and third-generation pharmacy owner, Ginsberg also shared his perspective on a buzzy topic in the industry: pharmacy benefit managers, which act as middlemen between drug companies and consumers. PBMs are currently under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for alleged pricing abuse, according to reporting by Reuters in January, Paired with razor-sharp drug margins, pharmacist staffing shortages and more issues native to pharmacies, the industry is struggling. Ginsberg joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the company’s secret sauce behind its thriving brick-and-mortar business and the role beauty retails plays in it. 

There is a traditional path for successful makeup artists nowadays: Build up a roster of influential clients, accrue a following on social media, and start a brand of your own. After all, makeup artist-led brands — think: Makeup by Mario, Patrick Ta, Violette Fr and Fara Homidi — have never been hotter.But makeup artist Kelli Anne Sewell is taking a different approach.Sewell started her career in tech and would slide into the DMs of influential people, offering free services during her time off from work and posting the results on social media — even when she had 10 followers, she recalled. Her strategy has since paid off. Sewell has now provided glam for celebs and influencers including Kelsea Ballerini, Alix Earle and Kristin Juszczyk.Along the way, Sewell realized she also has a knack for education. So, rather than stamp her name on a product collection, she founded Makeup By Kelli Anne, a members-only app and website featuring long-form beauty tutorial content ranging up from makeup 101s, like "How to line your lips" and "How to cover dark circles," to joint features with big names like Jaclyn Hill, Sir John and Daniel Martin.Now, Sewell herself has 331,000 Instagram followers and 159,000 TikTok followers, and her company's Instagram account has over 73,000 followers.In this episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Sewell talks about starting scrappy, building a community and giving back to that community.

In this engaging discussion, Meridith Rojas, CMO of MCoBeauty, shares her insights on how dupes are revolutionizing the beauty industry by making luxury accessible to all. With products like the Flawless Glow Foundation priced at just $14.99, she emphasizes the appeal of high-quality, budget-friendly alternatives. Rojas also highlights the importance of building community connections and adapting to cultural trends, showcasing how brands can thrive by engaging authentically with consumers in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Longtime beauty executive Lori Singer has been instrumental in some of the biggest fragrance license deals of the past 20 years.Singer spent more than a decade at Coty, where she worked on bestselling fragrances by Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, Balenciaga and Nautica. She also tripled global net revenues for Marc Jacobs with its iconic Daisy franchise launched in 2007. Singer got her start at Revlon, and her CV also includes Calvin Klein Cosmetics, Unilever and Benetton Group. “I've spent my entire career in beauty. I’m sort of a beauty lifer,” she told Glossy. “I fell in love on day one at Revlon, my first job, and I really have never looked back.” Singer joined Parlux in 2019 to grow its license business and immediately set her sights on Billie Eilish. “Other than music, fragrance and scent are everything to her. So, upon meeting her and hearing about her deep knowledge [of fragrance, we knew it was a fit for Parlux],” Singer told Glossy. “She knows ingredients and she knows about olfactory territory. She has had a natural nose for scents."By 2021, her first scent, Eilish, was released, which she followed up with Eilish No. 2 the next year and Eilish No. 3 in 2023. Fast forward to last week, and Parlux released Eilish’s fourth fragrance, called Your Turn. The new scent is priced at $90 for 100 milliliters and available DTC — it will launch in Ulta Beauty doors later this spring. Your Turn is gender-neutral and described as “warm, woody and fresh” with notes of peach, ginger and sandalwood. Frank Voelkl, principal perfumer at fragrance house Firmenich, was the “nose.” One of the most famous perfumers working today, he has created Glossier’s You franchise, Phlur’s Mood Ring and Father Figure, and Le Labo’s cult Santal 33, among others. Parlux is a global licensee for celebrities, fashion houses and lifestyle brands. The company launched in 1984 and is privately held. Its licenses include Kenneth Cole, Vince Camuto, Jessica Simpson, Steve Madden and Jason Wu, among others.Most recently, Parlux entered into a partnership with basketball player LeBron James to create The Shop, a line of grooming products distributed through Walmart. Then, in late 2024, the company launched its first fragrance with influencer-turned-designer Danielle Bernstein, the creator behind WeWoreWhat, called WeWoreWhat 001. Later this year, the company will celebrate another milestone: Paris Hilton’s 30th fragrance over 20 years. Called Iconic, the scent will launch this spring. Singer joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the secret sauce behind Parlux’s celeb fragrances, the evolving fragrance consumer and 2025 industry predictions.

Jordan Samuel, a former ballet dancer, launched his eponymous skin care brand in 2013, with just two products: The After Show Treatment Cleanser and the Hydrate Facial Serum.He has grown, since then, but remained small, which he calls, a “badge of honor.” The brand is beloved by leading skin care influencers like Caroline Hirons (776,000 Instagram followers). It is primarily DTC but is carried at the fast facial bar, Formula Fig, as well as C.O. Bigelow, and available to international customers via Cult Beauty.In this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, he discusses his unique trajectory from ballet dancer to brand founder, the autonomy he’s been able to maintain by being carefully selective with retail partnerships, and staying small, and why launching less makes a big difference.

To her 769,000 Instagram followers, fitness entrepreneur-turned-brand founder Amanda Kloots feels like a friend who just happens to sometimes star in movies or host TV shows — she wrapped her gig on CBS's "The Talk" when the show ended last year and hosts "Live From The Other Side" on Netflix. Some of her fans have been following her journey since she started teaching fitness classes nearly a decade ago, in 2016. That was when she first transitioned out of her previous career as a Radio City Rockette and Broadway dancer and started building her fitness business, Amanda Kloots Fitness.Earlier this month, Kloots launched Proper, a wellness brand that debuted with five powder supplements. It is the seventh brand to launch in partnership with Ben Bennett's incubator, The Center — its other brands include Naturium, which exited to E.l.f. Beauty at the end of 2023. Bennett and Kloots are striving to create products that appeal to the "everyday woman who comes to my classes, who is really just looking for something to keep her happy and to make her feel her best," Kloots said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.Proper's first five products include the greens powder Daily Boost, Metabolism + Energy Boost, Digestion + Bloat Relief, Immune Support, and Calming Aid. Each is $28 and, for now, exclusively available direct-to-consumer. And they're brightly colored to represent the idea of "drinking the rainbow," Kloots said.On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Kloots discusses how the early days of the boutique fitness boom made her social media savvy, what business lessons she learned from past ventures and collaborations, and what's next for Proper.

Dr. Jonathan Leary is on a mission to change how and where consumers socialize. “We're the world's first social wellness club. What I mean by that is we're not a gym, we're not a spa, we don't do beauty, and we don't do aesthetics. All we do is self-care, but made social,” said Remedy Place founder and CEO Dr. Leary. “I'm really trying to change the narrative of how people socialize, but in a healthy way.”That means he encourages his clients to substitute happy hour for a group cryotherapy appointment or a work meeting for a group sauna session at one of Remedy Place’s three locations in L.A. and New York City. “We call them social substitutions with self-care experiences,” he said. This aligns with an overall sea change he’s seen in the U.S. that includes more interest in preventative health and less interest in drinking or socializing in bars and clubs. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, young adults are drinking less than previous generations: 62% of adults under age 35 say they drink, down from 72% two decades ago.“We're the sickest we've ever been, and people are lonelier than they've ever been,” Dr. Leary said. “There are so many things that need to change, and I think social self-care has the potential to be the largest vertical in the health and wellness industry.” Dr. Leary has a doctorate in chiropractic medicine from USC and got his start as a wellness- and sports medicine-focused concierge doctor in Los Angeles, traveling to the homes or offices of wealthy clients, many of which were professional athletes. This allowed him to test and perfect the offerings now available at Remedy Place. Many of his private patients became investors in Remedy Place, and Dr. Leary opened his first location in 2019. Remedy Place offers acupuncture, chiropractic care, cryotherapy, infrared saunas, red light therapy, IV therapy, contrast therapy and many more wellness modalities, all of which can be booked for groups or individuals. The company is known for its 30-minute ice bath class which includes guided breathwork before a group-led ice bath plunge. Clients strive to join the “six-minute club” after lasting as long submerged in the 39-degree water. “You are getting a huge endorphin rush and dopamine spike, which is responsible for that mood change [people talk about],” he said. Remedy Place is privately held. The company took on an undisclosed round of seed investments in 2021, according to Crunchbase, and a $5 million bridge round of investment in 2022. Investors in the latter include music producer Zedd, NFL player Marcedes Lewis and Australian music group Rüfus Du Sol. The latter investment was part of a company valuation of $60 million. While memberships are offered for a small price break on services, Remedy Place operates like a traditional spa or fitness studio where appointments for classes, group rooms and individual appointments can be booked in advance. Costs start at around $40 per session. The ice bath class is around $50 a session, while other modalities such as the lymphatic massage, start at over $100 per session. Remedy Place has three locations: one in L.A.’s West Hollywood neighborhood and two in NYC in Soho and Flatiron, with a fourth planned for Boston early this year. To grow awareness, Remedy Place has a robust OOH events strategy that includes pop-ups at cultural events like the Cannes Film Festival and Art Basel. Back at home, Nike, Peacock and Saint Laurent have all rented out a Remedy Place location for private events. But perhaps the largest collaboration planned for 2025 is a luxurious ice bath created in partnership with Kohler. It retails for $15,000 and is available for pre-order now for home and commercial use. Dr. Leary joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss all of this, as well as the evolving role of self-care for wellness consumers, in today’s episode.

Dr. David Shafer has been a practicing plastic surgeon for 15 years, but since 2020, the Shafer Clinic, where he practices, has also operated Advitam, a metabolic aesthetics clinic. Through Dr. Shafer's work with both, he sees patients who are striving to lose weight or gain energy, and he's also had a front-row seat to the rise of GLP-1s. In the plastic surgery clinic, patients may come in for skin removal surgery, having lost a lot of weight taking a GLP-1. At Advitam, they may be supervised while taking one. If you've seen headlines in the past year about Ozempic face (or breasts, or butt), then you already understand how the two practices can work hand-in-hand. On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Dr. Shafer discusses them.

Despite being around for nearly 100 years, pilates has never been so popular. As previously reported by Glossy, search volume for “pilates” was at an all-time high in January 2004, with small yearly spikes each January since. It wasn’t until 2022 that search numbers topped those 2004 numbers before hitting an all-time in January 2023 and then again in January of 2024. However, searches have already topped 2024 numbers during the first week of the new year, according to Google Trends. The highest search numbers are coming from Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and the U.K. The U.S. ranks ninth for searches so far this year. Pilates is a low-impact strength and mobility training practice designed by Joseph Pilates in 1920s Europe to rehab injured WWI veterans. He developed its tenets on a machine crafted from bed springs and wooden boards, which later inspired the "reformer," a machine with straps and springs that’s been evolved many times over for pilates practices today. Pilates is also taught on a yoga mat using hand weights, stretchy bands and other props. Partially fueled by celebrity devotees like Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner, and propelled by viral fashion trends like 2024’s #PinkPilatesPrincess, the exercise modality shows no signs of slowing in 2025. It’s something that Australia-based Emma Stallworthy is betting on with 4-year-old pilates rental and digital class subscription company Your Reformer. The company is well-known in Australia and New Zealand markets and, as of September, has officially expanded to the U.S. with its signature $39-per-week in-home reformer bed rentals. They come with more than 800 high-quality training videos on a corresponding app. The company also sells its reformer beds to consumers as well as studios, gyms and hotels.Your Reformer is fully bootstrapped by Stallworthy and her husband and co-founder Ben. The duo started as gym owners in Melbourne. After renting out their gyms' reformer beds during the pandemic, thy sold their gyms and doubled down on this new business. Emma is also a pilates instructor.The company has nearly no competition for reformer rentals. Leaders in the space selling or financing equipment include Stott Pilates, Balanced Body and Merrithew. Your Reformer beds sell for around $2,500, while the reformer bed prices of the aforementioned manufacturers start at around $5,000.Outside of the rentals, the company's reformer sales and corresponding digital classes mak up a unique business model that is best compared to Peloton stationary bikes. Peloton gained massive popularity during the pandemic but later experienced financial distress that led to cuts and the replacement of its CEO in 2024, as reported by CFO Drive. Stallworthy joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the company’s growth and expansion to the U.S. in September, the secret sauce behind growing its digital class subscriptions, its beauty and wellness partnerships, and the overall rise of autonomous pilates classes.

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.