The GLOW UP

How Glossier broke free from DTC, survived the skeptics, and finally achieved profitability.

- AMY ODELL

Emily Weiss feels like she's been keeping out of the spotlight. In recent months, she's given interviews to The New York Times and Marie Claire; talked to the Australian Financial Review's magazine about her taste in design; written for British Vogue; and been profiled in Elle under the headline "How Emily Weiss Influenced Everything." That's what passes for low-key to Weiss.

“I’m still, in a way, lying low compared with how I was living for 15 years,” she says on Zoom from her all-white home office in New York. Since 2010, when she started the beauty website Into the Gloss, which became known for its column “The Top Shelf” detailing “It” girl beauty routines, Weiss has been in the public eye. But she grew to be one of the most recognizable female founders of the 2010s after she launched her beauty brand, Glossier. With an audience of 10 million, Weiss raised $2 million in 2013 to create Glossier’s first four products, which launched in 2014: a Balm Dotcom for the lips and anywhere else one might want a dewy look, a moisturizer, a face mist, and a skin tint that came in three shades. Weiss took the collection, along with a pink bubble pouch and cutesy stickers, to magazine editors in hopes of coverage. It worked. With the ethos of “skin first, makeup second” and a mission to “democratize” beauty, Glossier was an early direct-to-consumer success. Products that followed like Boy Brow and the Glossier You fragrance were bona fide hits. Glossier’s signature light pink became synonymous with not just the brand but also the Millennial generation.