The Glossy Beauty Podcast

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Kjaer Weis CEO Gillian Gorman Round: "Luxury is not having everything all of the time" Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

Gillian Gorman Round may have spent her career in big beauty, from L'Oréal to Gucci Group to most recently Revlon, but she couldn't turn down the opportunity to become CEO at Kjaer Weis, even in the middle of a pandemic. Like her former boss Revlon CEO Debbie Perelman, Gorman Round is one of the few female CEOs in the beauty industry today. She joined the organic and refillable makeup brand in December 2020.

Many of Kjaer Weis' points of differentiation are catching on industry-wide, namely its organic formulas, high performance, and sustainable and refillable practices. As such, Gorman Round believes the brand awareness opportunity is ripe for the taking. This is especially true since founder and makeup artist Kirsten Kjaer Weis has been perfecting that proposition for 11 years. It helps that Waldencast, which recently announced its better-for-you SPAC, recently took a majority stake in the brand.

"Kirsten, when she founded the brand a decade ago, was the very first creator to be able to develop certified organic, high-performance, refillable, sustainable products. Now we see a decent amount of activity within that space...but [in] certified organic, which is our principal and our philosophy, we really stand alone, " said Gorman Round on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Throughout the pandemic, Kjaer Weis was able to own that point of view digitally and with retail partners. To date, its DTC business, which is up 300% for the year, accounts for 50% of the business. Sales in the wholesale segment, which makes up the remaining 50%, doubled year-over-year.

"It's not that we are shifting 50% of our business to DTC because our wholesale business isn't performing," she said. "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Walmart's Musab Balbale: "The ethos of Gen Z squarely matches Walmart's ethos" Jun 24, 2021

Show notes

If the idea of Walmart as a beauty hub seems new, then the expansion of the nation’s leading grocer’s beauty e-commerce business by Musab Balbale may be equally disruptive.

Balbale, the merchandising vp of omnichannel beauty at Walmart, has worked within consumer retail for the past 20 years and most recently has transitioned from wellness to the beauty space. This transition, which he said is “exciting” began when he had the chance to spearhead the beauty and health e-commerce businesses for Walmart in 2016. “[Beauty] combines considered purchases -- those that are infrequent higher price points [alongside] daily regimen purchases. And [the consumer] is also looking to be inspired,” said Balbale on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Within the last year, Walmart's beauty team has “nearly doubled" the number of new brands coming into the beauty aisle by “[evolving] our stores to work in a new way to accelerate the freshness of our assortment on our shelves and to make it easier for the customer,” said Balbale. The ingenuity of products on Walmart’s shelves isn't the only measure that the team has taken to increase customer engagement. They have also begun to step into the popular worlds of TikTok and livestream shopping, hosting their first live shopping event through TikTok in March.

According to Balbale, Walmart’s involvement with TikTok has to do with its new customer base: Gen Z. “This was the first live selling event on TikTok,” said Balbale. “We were striking the balance between showcasing products that you care about and talking about it in an authentic and genuine way, while also making it a selling event.” He said the ultimate goal was to “create energy in the industry.”

Along with their identity as “digital natives,” Balbale admits that Gen Z is “leading us to be more focused on inclusivity and equality,” a core value that the omnichannel beauty team has capitalized on through their selection of mission-driven beauty products.

The current political climate, with calls from the public for racial and environmental justice, has become “articulated in the beauty shelves” in the past 12 months, according to Balbale.

Walmart beauty’s new partnership with Uoma by Sharon C, a Black-owned, sustainable beauty brand from Sharom Chuter that is inspired by Gen Z, exemplifies the team’s push to “change how we engage the beauty community” through “diversity," as well as “inclusivity, accessibility [and] sustainability,” said Balbale.

Uoma by Sharon “has pushed the boundaries on sustainability” by including vegan, eco-friendly and cruelty-free products within the line. Both the omnichannel beauty team and Chuter shared the desire to “bring these values that we all care more about now than we did pre-Covid and make them more accessible, both in terms of price point and physical reach to consumers.”

Also during the pandemic, Balbale said the beauty team translated to beauty products the “simplicity and convenience” of grocery pick-up. “We were conscious about making sure that the beauty products she was already purchasing were in front of her [and] easy for her to reorder,” said Balbale.

Hyram Yarbro on his new beauty brand: 'The primary intent is social change' Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

From growing up on a cattle ranch to having his face grace the shelves of Sephora, skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro, 25, has taken the beauty world by storm due to his honest yet informative persona.

“When you're brand new to this world of skin care, you ask, ‘What do all these things mean?’” said Yarbro, on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. He himself had wondered just that at 18, when he first started to notice signs of premature aging in his skin. “I realized that there was a gap where there wasn't anyone simplifying skin care and teaching people how to do the basics -- how to have a good, simple skin-care routine.”

Just a few years later, in 2017, Yarbro started his YouTube channel to try and fill that gap with an authentic “documentation of [his] personal skin-care philosophy.” Yarbro’s progression to TikTok at the height of the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, was a natural extension of his philosophy to remain “reliable and trustworthy,” while also simplifying important skin-care information in short 60-second videos.

“I wanted my videos to feel like you were talking to a friend -- like you're just sitting down with your best friend,” said Yarbro. “What I try to do is unapologetically show my skin-care opinions and push brands to be more accessible, while still being respectful.”

In doing so, Yarbro captured and held the attention of millions. He experienced rapid growth from 4,000 to around 4 million followers within six months -- a milestone that he doesn’t take lightly. “Every single day, I'm still in awe and in shock, and I don't take it for granted,” he said. The exponential growth of his following yielded a plethora of sponsorship opportunities, which, according to Yarbro, can be “a slippery slope.”

“I see the mistake of a lot of people taking sponsorships that don't align with their personal philosophy,” said Yarbro. “I only accept the ones that fall in line exactly with my philosophy, and I encourage that for other creators, too.”

With the release of his own skin-care brand, Selfless By Hyram, in partnership with The Inkey List, Yarbro is living proof of the benefits of staying true to one’s own philosophy in what can be a cutthroat industry. When looking at his options for launching his own brand, Yarbro “didn't want the purpose and entire philosophy of the brand to be swept away by corporate semantics.” The philosophy in question for Yarbro is about social change, specifically through reforestation and clean drinking water efforts, which he found to be perfectly aligned with The Inkey List, founded by Mark Curry and Colette Laxton.

“I think it's amazing, and it's definitely not something that fell into our laps. Mark and Colette can attest to the sheer workload that is involved,” said Yarbro. “But it's a testament to the power that we as a collective can have when everyone is aligned on the same philosophy.”

Ben Bennett of The Center: “I disagree that the market is saturated” Jun 10, 2021

Show notes

It was Ben Bennett’s first job working at Limited Brands that showed him the power of working on a portfolio of businesses. Early in his career, Bennett, the founder and CEO of beauty brand incubator The Center, worked on 14 different apparel businesses at Limited Brands, but it was his time helping to conceive Bath & Body Works that got him hooked on beauty.

“I’d never considered developing fragrances or personal care products,” he said on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. “I looked at Bath & Body Works like this was another specialty business that I was brought in to help influence seasonality and trend: What would that mean, season after season, to look at what was happening culturally in the world and how we could incorporate that into the things that we were developing?”

At the time, body wash hadn’t quite upended bar soap and consumers were shopping in drugstores. “Body wash was something that maybe wealthy people used when they went to a spa. It wasn’t such a common item. Bath & Body Works opened up a whole new category of personal care for consumers and created almost a frenzy around coming in and experiencing the new fragrance,” he said.

Since then, Bennett has been instrumental in creating the next guard of beauty brands, first at incubator Hatchbeauty and now at The Center, which he founded in 2020. At just over a year old, The Center has been busy, relaunching Make Beauty under new ownership and debuting Naturium with skin-care influencer Susan Yara. Bennett will bring Phlur’s rebrand to market in fall and launch a fourth brand in the first quarter of 2022.

Charlotte Cho on Soko Glam and Then I Met You: "We have the best of both worlds" Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

Charlotte Cho, Soko Glam co-founder and Then I Met You founder, was one of the original purveyors of K-Beauty in the U.S. But nearly nine years after launching the e-commerce platform Soko Glam, she acknowledges that the category has changed significantly.

"Korean beauty has never been about one product, one category or even one brand. It's been a skin-first philosophy. It's really helped introduce skin care as a self-care moment. It's been about the general innovation at large; it's helped push the envelope in the beauty industry to innovate," said Cho on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

While there have been murmurs that K-beauty has plateaued, with Innisfree's recent store closures in the U.S., Canada and China, Cho disputes that point.

"Maybe you're not seeing K-beauty trends popping up in the media, because honestly, the industry and the brands have wised up and they've actually started producing and manufacturing a lot of their products in Korea," she said.

And though some of Cho's original K-beauty peers -- think Glow Recipe, Memebox and Peach & Lily -- have moved beyond curation to branded products, Cho was clear to state that curation will always be a part of her founder's story, even with the addition of her skin-care brand, Then I Met You, which will be launching at Cult Beauty this week.

"I truly take delight in introducing Korean brands and innovations through Soko Glam, and providing a platform for new and exciting indie brands. I think that people in our community really trust us and want to hear from our lens -- a K-beauty lens but, ultimately, a quality skin care lens… That will never change," she said.

Natura chief brand officer Andrea Alvares: "We were a social network before social networks existed" May 27, 2021

Show notes

Like many beauty executives, Andrea Alvares, Natura chief brand, innovation, international and sustainability officer, saw her business completely change with the onset of Covid-19. Meetings on Zoom became commonplace and a digital-centric model became priority No. 1. But while the U.S. is close to normalcy, the bulk of Natura's business is in Latin America where the pandemic ravages on.

"We're still in a weird space. In Latin America, you've got some countries like Chile that are a bit further down, in terms of the vaccination programs for everyone. The majority of the Latin American countries are still in the initial stages of vaccination," said Alvares on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "It was very difficult also to do complete lockdowns because the whole socio-economic landscape isn't a favorable one, in terms of ensuring that you keep people really in isolation. There are some situations where it's just not possible. We've seen a reduction in overall death rate -- it's dropped by half -- but it's still very high, and we can't get used to it."

Still, the Natura brand saw net revenue grow by 12.6% in Brazil and 60.4% in Hispanic Latin America for the most recent quarter, announced in May.

Alvares largely credits the wins to Natura's holistic approach to beauty and the brand's social selling model. Of the latter, she said. "It has been absolutely critical to the fact that we've been so resilient and that we actually fared well in 2020. We were a social network before social networks existed; they've been dialed up with digital tools [now] that actually amplify the reach of that business model. We actually helped many of our consultants up their capabilities in digital -- so, their skills using digital tools and actually be[ing] able to sell in this environment. We reached 1.3 million virtual consultants in Latin America over the past year, which is incredible -- that's more than double the size we were seeing pre-pandemic."

The Skinny Confidential's Lauryn Bosstick: "I don't claim to be an expert, I'm a practitioner of beauty" May 20, 2021

Show notes

Lauryn Bosstick, the blogger, podcast host and beauty brand executive -- she launched her Skinny Confidential-branded product line in April -- has had an unusual route to becoming a founder. But being a disrupter has always been her m.o.

"I am not an expert. I do not claim to be an expert. I am a practitioner of beauty. I am someone who's tried every product," said Bosstick on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "I want to show women that you can be a bartender and be broke, and you can go disrupt a space that's cliquey."

Bosstick was, in fact, a bartender and a Pure Barre instructor while attending San Diego State University, when she started her blog in 2011. It later spawned a podcast show and a line of products.

"I joined a sorority, and in the sorority, they told me it was $800. I was like, 'What do you mean, it's $800 to have friends and community?' I couldn't believe it. I was already broke. I couldn't afford $800. So I left the sorority after two seconds, [thinking,] 'This isn't gonna work for me.' And [I thought,] 'How can I do this online? How can I do it better? And how can I do it for free?" she said.

Bosstick was more than able to grow that community: She has 1.3 million followers on Instagram, 278,000 fans on Facebook, 38,000 newsletter subscribers and 2.6 million monthly impressions on her blog. The Skinny Confidential podcast has 90 million downloads, and the new line of "beauty wellness" products, which started with a facial roller and oil, has beat projections since launch by 300%.

Bybi co-founders Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minarovic: "The term sustainable is a little bit problematic" May 13, 2021

Show notes

"Sustainability" was a buzzword in beauty and wellness well before the pandemic. But due to 2020's stay-at-home orders, coupled with the sheer volume of boxes and waste from online shipping, beauty companies recognized they needed to up their focus on sustainable practices.

For British beauty brand Bybi, which came to market in 2017, its road to "sustainability" has been a work in progress. "The term sustainable is a little bit problematic in itself. It's not regulated, so what does it even mean?," said Elsie Rutterford, co-founder of Bybi, on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Rutterford started the natural brand focused on performance with Dominika Minarovic, a friend and colleague from their time in advertising. With no professional beauty experience, the twosome first started a natural beauty content platform called Clean Beauty Insiders before going on to make products in their kitchen. A full-fledged beauty line wasn't in the cards.

"When we first started, we grew this content platform... We had a book published by Penguin, which was kind of a recipe book for your skin, your hair -- all centered around natural ingredients. We were running these events, workshops in central London, where we would bring together people who were interested in making their own beauty products. We spent quite a lot of time just testing out different ways of monetizing the content that we'd sort of begun to do as a hobby. [Products] were never our end goal," said Rutterford.

But their authentic approach to beauty building yielded more than they bargained for. In December 2020, Bybi raised a $7 million Series A, and it launched into 1,800 Target doors in January. Minarovic said that the brand grew 200% in the pandemic and has high hopes for Target to be a $10 million to $20 million account.

Below are additional highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

Trinny London's Trinny Woodall on building "a brand she can live the rest of her life with" May 06, 2021

Show notes

Trinny Woodall was well-known and beloved in her native U.K. as style writer and "What Not to Wear" host, well before she started her DTC makeup brand Trinny London in 2017. But, Woodall, who acts as founder and CEO of her brand, doesn't think of herself as an "influencer" who is dabbling in beauty.

"I'm not really an influencer who's launched a brand. I think I always knew I would launch a brand," she said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Woodall said her business was on her mind for at least five years prior to its debut, but actually started taking shape when she was a child. "From six years of age, I did makeovers on girls in my boarding school, and I think I got the bug then of how you could transform how a person feels by these different aspects: by doing their makeup, their hair, their clothing. I spent 20 years refining that."

The pandemic helped solidify Woodall's point of differentiation. Her brand remains digital-only -- a saving grace during Covid-19 -- and banks on its Match2Me technology that personalizes the makeup assortment a customer sees based on their hair, eye and skin color. Last year, Trinny London hit about $62 million in revenue, and growth is on Woodall's mind -- but not necessarily in the same way that others increase their market share.

"I don't want to be a [founder] that goes in and says, 'OK, here's brow. Let's see if the 28 different variations of brow we can do [work],'" she said. "I feel that, because we have so much choice, it makes it harder and harder to decide what woman you are and what you want to buy."

The Lip Bar's Melissa Butler: "Beauty doesn't look like one thing" Apr 29, 2021

Show notes

Unlike many beauty entrepreneurs, Melissa Butler, founder and CEO of The Lip Bar, wasn't a makeup or skin-care fanatic. Butler started her professional career at Barclay's, and her entree into beauty was driven by being frustrated with how women were judged by their looks -- this was especially true on Wall Street.

"I oftentimes was having to show up for myself in a multitude of ways, thinking about what my hair looked like, what my makeup looked like, and also, ultimately, thinking about what my core work performance was," she said on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "In thinking about how I showed up and what beauty meant to me, I became incredibly frustrated -- frustrated with the beauty industry, its lack of diversity, not seeing people who look like me. [It] really was just this idea that beauty was linear. And I was like, 'Wait, no'. Beauty doesn't look like one thing. It looks like all things, and I'm included within that."

In many ways, The Lip Bar, launched in 2011, was the opposite of what was prevalent in beauty at the time.

"I very vividly remember the beauty industry and the media essentially putting the Kim K. look on a pedestal. That Kim K. look was supposed to be aspirational for every single woman in the United States. Meanwhile, only probably 2% of the women in the country look like her," said Butler. "It's like, 'Well, if she is the standard of beauty, then how am I to be made to feel?' That's something that I was questioning -- I was questioning it for myself, for my friends, for my family and just everyday women."

The Lip Bar, which first debuted with lip products, launched with unexpected colors like purple, blue, yellow and orange. "We didn't even have a single red or nude lipstick... [That was] really to say I'm making a statement that beauty is a matter of self-expression," she said.

Ten years later, the once DTC-only Lip Bar has expanded beyond lip to complexion products, launched in national retailers like Target and Walmart, and doubled its sales every year for the last four years.

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