How Emily Weiss Built and Scaled Glossier
Highlights from the AMA With Emily Weiss on Elpha
Emily Weiss is the CEO and founder of Glossier, the direct-to-consumer, community driven beauty company that proves everyone is an expert. Glossier is laser focused on changing two industries, beauty and e-commerce, through the people powered ecosystem that they are building. Over the next 12–18 months, Glossier will be rolling out digital products that will invert Amazon’s model of e-commerce, introducing new brands, and continue to work towards their mission of giving people a voice through beauty — one of the greatest conduits for connections out there, and a $450B market growing to $750B within six years.
These are highlights from Emily’s AMA from building and scaling Glossier, to how she thinks about e-commerce and the future of brands and more. You can check out the entirety of the conversation on Elpha.
Q: When you first built Glossier, did you already have a good relationship with several makeup manufactures/ production companies?
Emily: I didn’t! That was one of the hardest parts of building Glossier. One of the first hires I made was a Head of Product Development who had spent years in the beauty industry (Mac, etc.). Luckily, she had great relationships with manufacturers. This was a lesson I learned early on — hire for your weaknesses! Surround yourself with people smarter than you are!
Hire for your weaknesses! Surround yourself with people smarter than you are!
Q: When you were first getting started on Into The Gloss did you know where you wanted the site to lead?
Emily: I didn’t know when I first started ITG that it would evolve into Glossier. At the time, I was focused on storytelling — enabling women to tell their stories, through talking about their beauty routines, in a way that didn’t exist at the time. I would say almost none of my path has been planned — I always say that curiosity is my superpower, and by constantly asking questions and learning more about what I don’t know, I end up building things that I could have never planned for.
Q: We have so many brands in the world, how have you made yours so desirable?
Emily: I genuinely think that being customer-devoted is the answer to all of this. So many companies ask me, “how do you make people feel heard?” and my answer is always “listen to them!” We didn’t start Glossier with the objective of building community; we started the company because we wanted to build the first bottoms-up beauty company. We wanted to create a company that made women feel proud, excited, and confident in talking about the products they use and love. The “must have” is simply being customer-centric in every part of the organization — not just marketing, or customer service.
Q: When Glossier first started, it seems that you’re heavily relying on Facebook for user acquisition. Is Facebook still the most important channel for you?
Emily: The most important channel for us is word of mouth! ~70% of our sales come from direct/organic/referral traffic. That’s important to us because it shows us that our customers care so deeply about Glossier that they’re referring other people — they’re true advocates of the brand. That advocacy behavior is what we’re always focusing on!
Ensuring that everyone in the company has the information that they need to do their jobs is critical, and honesty and transparency is a large part of that.
Q: How do you incorporate that kind of transparency & honesty into your approach to leadership at Glossier?
Emily: I think most people who work at Glossier will say that I’m very candid — it’s not something that I consciously try to do, I’ve always been naturally very transparent with people. In fact, it’s often a joke with our comms team because they know how honest I can be at public speaking events. Honesty is key — I get up in front of our entire company at All Hands every two weeks and give a state of the union address, I’m instituting bi-weekly AMAs; ensuring that everyone in the company has the information that they need to do their jobs is critical, and honesty and transparency is a large part of that.
Q: How did you decide to go with the direct-to-consumer route in the cosmetics industry?
Emily: This is a great question, and actually touches on a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately. You’re right — the current e-commerce experience isn’t perfect, and people have to go out of their way to go to Glossier.com. We’re currently working on building a new digital experience that IS exciting to go to — something that offers a breadth of connection, not just product. I wouldn’t do it differently because I still really believe in the value of being direct to consumer.
Q: Will we ever see Glossier in Sephora or elsewhere?
Emily: Great question! One of the things we strongly believe, as a customer-centric company, is that we can’t form the meaningful relationships that we value with our customers if we sell through other distribution channels. Being able to communicate and engage with our customers across various channels, and ensuring that we are delivering the true Glossier customer experience, is challenging if we go through other channels. I love discovering beauty products at all sorts of retail environments — for us, it’s not about what retailers are doing wrong, but more so ensuring we are able to deliver the Glossier customer experience that we’re proud of.
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