Live Episode! Glossier: Emily Weiss

In 2010, while working as a fashion assistant at Vogue, Emily Weiss started a beauty blog called Into The Gloss. She quickly attracted a following of devoted readers hooked on the blog's intimate snapshots of style makers' beauty routines. Within a few years, Emily realized her readers were hungry for a new beauty brand, one that listened to them directly, and understood their lives. Without any prior business experience, she won over investors and found the perfect chemist to create Glossier, a line of beauty and skincare products with a focus on simplicity. Today, just four years after launch, Glossier is valued at an estimated $400 million. Recorded live in New York City. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And today, we've got a brand new live episode of How I Built This, featuring Emily Weiss of Glossier. But before we start the show, a lot of people ask, you know, how can we support How I Built This? And the best way to support what we do is by supporting your local public radio station. Here at NPR, we're launching our annual fundraising campaign, starting Tuesday, November 27, which is Giving Tuesday. But if you're listening to the show on Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, it doesn't matter. It's never too late to pitch in. It's really easy. Just go to donate.npr.org/built. That's donate.npr.org/built. And thanks.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  So we flew to LA. We got our Hertz rental car. And we drove during rush hour all the way down to this like, middle-of-nowhere place. And we pulled into the parking lot. The parking lot's empty. There's a stray dog roaming through it, like tumbleweeds blowing. I mean, I was like, why don't we just go? Like, let's just call it, this is most certainly not our guy. But we went in, and inside was this like, 6'4", jacked, like, dad, who's so excited about women's skincare. Like, you just would not believe.

• 1:28Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:40Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how Emily Weiss turned her fashion and beauty blog into Glossier, a brand that's now shaking up the entire cosmetics industry.

• 1:57Guy Raz?

  So back in 2012, Facebook paid about $1 billion for Instagram. And you might remember, we actually interviewed the Instagram founders back when we first launched the show. Anyway, what made Instagram a valuable proposition to Facebook at the time wasn't profitability. Instagram was basically a free app where people posted their photos. But what it did have was 20 million users. And Facebook saw in Instagram what it saw in itself years before. You build the customer base first, and then you figure out how to monetize the business with those customers. Now, this isn't an easy way to start a business. You have to create something for free that's compelling enough to keep people coming after

• 2:42Guy Raz?

  you introduce the product. And this is sort of the story of Glossier. And I say sort of because when Emily Weiss started her fashion and beauty blog back in 2010, she didn't do it with the intention of one day creating her own cosmetics brand. But what happened was that blog, Into the Gloss, it blew up. Hundreds of thousands of readers became obsessed with hearing about other women's skincare routines. And so as the blog grew, Emily started to wonder, could I actually create a cosmetics brand for my readers? So in 2014, she found a single investor, and she launched a small line of skincare and makeup products.

• 3:25Guy Raz?

  And today, just four years later, Glossier is valued at around $400 million. And her customer base of millennial women is the envy of the cosmetics world. So now, how did she do it? How did Emily Weiss seem to come out of nowhere to disrupt an entire industry? Well, the first thing to know is, she didn't come out of nowhere. Emily's been walking the walk since age 15, when she talked her way into an internship at Ralph Lauren, and then got a college job at Vogue, where she ended up working for several years before quitting to focus on her blog full-time. It's a blog that inspires fierce passion among her readers.

• 4:08Guy Raz?

  And when I sat down with Emily for a live interview onstage at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York, you could hear that passion in the crowd.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  I think you've got a lot of fans here, Emily.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  That was amazing. I wish I could do that every day.

• 4:32Guy Raz?

  You just like walk into your, into your living room and there's like a big churning section?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, coming from work, you know, just...

• 4:38Guy Raz?

  All right, so, can we, this is really, this is actually a very serious question. Can we clear one thing up? Is it, is it glacia or glacier? Glacier. Glacia, okay. Do people, do people sometimes ask you that question?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  All the time, even in France. We just launched in France and all the girls were like, "It's glacier." And we were like, "No, at least here." You guys should know.

• 5:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:05Guy Raz?

  Let's start, let's start when you were a kid, right? You grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, it's not too, hour, hour and a half from, from New York City. Tell me what you were like as a little girl.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, I was really weird. I mean, I'm still really weird. Um, I'm into a wide variety of things. So, love animals. I had almost every kind of pet. I mean, I had like an iguana, like a turtle, a pair of blue cap cord on blue finches.

• 5:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Like, I bred guppies, fancy tail guppies and tried to sell them to the fish store.

• 5:35Guy Raz?

  A guppy breeder and a makeup, you know, right?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:38Guy Raz?

  Who knew?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  At the same time, I was super into, I think, I think fundamentally storytelling. Like, I was really interested always, and I always have been, in the power of narrative and, and storytelling and kind of imagining like complete worlds or like systems.

• 5:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I was definitely, you know, very into makeup. I used to make my own costumes, like I would like sew like butterfly costumes for Halloween and...

• 6:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:07Guy Raz?

  Was it just something that you kind of naturally gravitated towards, just?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  It's not even like fashion specifically or beauty specifically. It's, again, that like power of creation. Like, you can create yourself through fashion and, and beauty and you can create different looks and you can kind of use them as tools. So I've always been really interested in kind of, you know, beauty products are like crayons, you know, or, or clothes are kind of like crayons.

• 6:33Guy Raz?

  It was an outlet for your creativity.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:36Guy Raz?

  So if we were to hop into a time machine and go back to your high school era and we saw you there, would people have identified you at the time as like, "Oh, there's Emily Wise, she's really into fashion," and you would see this high school student sort of dressed, you know, differently?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, but it wasn't good. Like, I wasn't good at it. I was probably doing things way too young. Like, I remember, well, I'll tell you one thing I did. I went to my first day of middle school in a new school and new town, and God bless my mom because Clueless had just come out. And I was really excited about wearing those outfits. And so I wore thigh-high stockings to my first day of sixth grade with high-heeled loafers and like a full kilt and like a feather pen in this like town where people were playing lacrosse and like, you know, and they were like, "Who is this girl?" So, yeah.

• 7:38Guy Raz?

  Like many teenagers, you were a babysitter, and you happened to do a babysitting gig for a family that would eventually land you an internship at Ralph Lauren. How did that happen? What's the story?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I mean, that is, you know, people often ask me what amount of your success is attributed to luck. I really believe in kind of grit, and, I mean, I didn't make that up. That's Angela Duckworth and her book, Grit. A very good book. But that actually just was luck. I mean, there was nothing gritty about babysitting for your neighbor's kid. And he happened to work at Ralph Lauren.

• 8:17Guy Raz?

  The dad worked at Ralph Lauren, but you were like 15, and how did the conversation come up? You were just like, "Oh, my God, I love Ralph."

• 8:24Speaker 01

  It was a very brief conversation. I remember standing in their kitchen, and at some point, I don't know how long I'd been, you know, how many times I'd babysat for them, and at some point, I asked her, he said, "I work at Ralph Lauren in New York City," and I said, "How can I work at Ralph Lauren in New York City instead of babysitting your kids?" And they were lovely. They were really...

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Really great. And he was a real sport to propose, you know, to Ralph Lauren HR. This is a long time ago. I'm sure this is illegal now, given I was 15. But I went in and I interviewed with HR and I went through the process and I think they saw something there. And I worked my butt off for two summers.

• 9:06Guy Raz?

  And you were going to Ralph Lauren's?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Headquarters on 650 Madison Avenue. It was on Madison and 60th. There was a hot dog stand in front that I would eat, like I was so excited about. I'll never forget this. I was so excited about getting these hot dogs. I was in New York City. Like I was like, this is what you do. They were like, oh my God, what are you eating? Like, do not eat that. I remember, like, I didn't know.

• 9:32Guy Raz?

  And what do you, what do you remember about? Like, what did you, what did you do there? I mean, you were a 15, 16 year old.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I did whatever.

• 9:40Guy Raz?

  Whatever they had.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Whatever. Photo, you know, I was so happy. You could give me anything. I was scanning. I was running errands. I was, I was the happiest intern you've ever seen.

• 9:50Guy Raz?

  Did you ever, did you ever meet Ralph?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 9:53Guy Raz?

  You did, really?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  So I, no, I remember I was in a room, you know, I was like the note taker. So I was sitting in the room in the back and in the corner and like, you know, everyone was, I don't know, meeting and I was taking notes. And Ralph turned to me, you know, I think I'd actually maybe shaken his hand about him at one point, but he doesn't know me and, you know. And he goes, and everyone just stops and he looks at me and he goes, what do you think?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  I don't remember what I said. I don't remember. I just remember like the whole thing stopping and him asking because they were talking about something. I don't even know.

• 10:28Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you did those two summers as an intern at Ralph Lauren? And then it was time for you to go to college. You went here to NYU as you studied.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Studio art.

• 10:38Guy Raz?

  And once you moved here, you got another internship at Vogue?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yes, at Teen Vogue.

• 10:44Guy Raz?

  At Teen Vogue.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:45Guy Raz?

  And by the way, I know, I mean, a lot of us have, have an impression of what it might be like to work in, you know, like a Conde Nast fashion magazine from Devil Wears Prada.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It's a great film.

• 10:56Guy Raz?

  It's a great film.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  It's a great film.

• 10:58Guy Raz?

  Is there any truth to that?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  I mean, so I was really fortunate because I had a great boss. So I was actually at, you know, Teen Vogue as an intern and then at Vogue, which was the job that I had before building this company.

• 11:12Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And I was very, I think it's all about, it's kind of like anywhere, it all depends who your boss is. Like, doesn't matter what company you're at. It's like, isn't there that thi- I just heard from someone that your personality is a result of the like, three or five people who you spend the most time with. You know, if you work with great, smart, talented people, which I was very fortunate to do, then you learn a lot.

• 11:35Guy Raz?

  When you were, when you were an intern at Teen Vogue and then you got your first job out of college at Vogue, did you envision that your career would be as a fashion writer or a fashion editor? Is that what you thought? This is what I'm gonna do with my life?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, I, you know, my dream was to be an editor in chief. So, at the time, you know, in my, in my early twenties, that was, you know, I looked at someone like Anna Wintor and that was incredibly inspiring to me.

• 12:01Guy Raz?

  So, how did you, I guess, at some point, you were able to write for Vogue? You were able to write an article, which was about, I think it's about self-tanning?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:12Guy Raz?

  Right?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  So, this is, this is kind of funny. So, I had interned in, I was always working in fashion. And beauty is kind of like this ugly stepsister to fashion in, in magazines and in media. It's really funny because all of the ad revenue, or most, a lot of it, comes from beauty in these magazines. But if you think about it, like, if you're reading an issue of a fashion magazine, beauty can sometimes, at least, you know, 10 years ago, be like, five or six pages, or 10 pages. You know, there's such little airtime dedicated to, you know, this topic, that in many ways, you're like, forced to deal with on a more fundamental level every day than even what you're wearing, right? It's like, personal hygiene. So, I'd never worked, I'd never covered this.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Like, I enjoyed beauty and I love talking about beauty with people, but I'm not even someone who's wearing, you know, who's like, obsessed with beauty in a way, if you define obsessed as being, you know, wearing a ton of makeup, or spending like, lots of time, I don't know, getting facials, like, that, that was not me. But I was on a shoot in Miami, Florida.

• 13:17Guy Raz?

  This is like 2010?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  This was 2010-ish. And I was on a shoot in Miami, Florida with Doutzen Kross. I don't know if I'm saying her name right, was the, is the model. And we were in a trailer, which is often the case. You're in this like, you know, RV. And at some point, the model, Doutzen, she said, she started talking about this like amazing self tanner that she loved. And I don't even think I'd ever used a self tanner. And she was like, "All the other ones are like crazy, but when you use this one, you exfoliate this way and then you put it on, it's like air foam and it doesn't smell and, you know, all these things." And I was like, "I gotta go get this frigging self tanner. It's gonna change my life." So I remembered it and I got it from the CVS in my, in Wilton, where I was for the summer. And I, and it was great.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it was really a great experience, this self tanner. So I wanted to write about it. Like, I was like, "Someone else needs to know." Like, I heard it because Doutzen told me, which is a super crazy situation that no one else is gonna be in.

• 14:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And I need, like, my civic duty is to like, share this with the world. So I went to the beauty editor of Vogue, who was the full-time beauty editor, and I hadn't met her. And, you know, she's this legend, Sarah Brown. And, and I was like, "Excuse me, you know, I, I have an article I'd like to, if I can write for Vogue.com, I, I think, I would love to just submit it to you. And if you like it, you can publish it. If you don't, like, whatever, I just have to like, tell someone."

• 14:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And she said yes. And, and I wrote this article, it was like, little, little article about this self tanner, and she published it. And so that was where I actually caught the bug, where I was like, I remember I had so much fun writing this post. I'm sure you can find it in Google it. It's like, I don't even know, it might be terrible, but I, it was such a cathartic moment to have this conversation around a product that I never really felt around like a shirt. Like, it was like, I, I mean, I wanted to like, wear a cool shirt and look nice in a picture, but I didn't feel the urge to be like, "Is anyone else out there wearing this shirt? Like, can we talk about how great it is?" It's just, it, it, it didn't get that bug.

• 15:21Guy Raz?

  And it was just a few weeks or months later when you actually decided to launch Your blog, which would become famous, Into the Gloss.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Guy Raz?

  Is that why you did it?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure.

• 15:32Guy Raz?

  It's connected to that article? You wrote that article and you thought, okay, I need to figure this out and do more of this?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, you know, this was the era of personal style blogs. It was like when all the bloggers were starting. And it was kind of this new thing, sort of not democratizing, but like really individual, being like, these are the human beings and how they actually put these things together. Right? As opposed to sort of very tightly held images from fashion brands or campaigns. It was like, this is what's actually going on, literally on the street with fashion. And I remember thinking, well, why doesn't this exist for beauty? Like, why is there no like in-depth exploration of people's beauty identities and like beauty stories? And there's really nowhere to find... I mean, certainly there's blogs that have existed long before Into the Gloss around beauty, but it was typically much more about kind of like, what's new?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Like, it would be like, this new mascara from, you know, XYZ brand just hit the market and it's so great because of all of these things. Yet, I often thought like, it's not necessarily what's new that I'm most interested in. It's what's best. And this idea of what's best in beauty, I think is fascinating because it's... There's no single what's best.

• 16:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Like, I might love a, you know, matte lipstick and say it's five out of five stars, but you might love a shiny lipstick and be like, this lipstick's dry AF. I don't want it.

• 16:53Guy Raz?

  Guilty.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  It's zero out of five.

• 16:56Guy Raz?

  So how did you actually... How did you actually launch this blog? I mean, was it sort of as simple as like going to WordPress or whatever blog, you know, hosting site and setting it up?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  So I'm not very technical. So WordPress is what hosted the first blog. And I had a really amazing set of collaborators who I found.

• 17:19Guy Raz?

  How much money did you have to put in to start Into the Gloss?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Literally, I mean, I'm going to contradict myself because I'm sure in another interview I've said like 900 or 700 or like 850, but...

• 17:28Guy Raz?

  Under a thousand bucks.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Under a thousand dollars.

• 17:30Guy Raz?

  To launch Into the Gloss.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the website part was not expensive.

• 17:33Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  The money literally was just for the camera.

• 17:36Guy Raz?

  To buy a camera. Because you knew you were going to take photos.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I spent a Canon DSLR. It was a great little camera.

• 17:41Guy Raz?

  But what was the, what was the vision of it at the time? And I'm sure it evolved, but when you, when you went to like your parents or your friends, you said, I want to start this blog that's going to do what?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  That's going to give a voice through beauty, give people a voice through beauty.

• 17:55Guy Raz?

  And what was the first post about?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  First post was a publicist who worked at a fashion PR firm called Nikki Deane. And I thought she had like really cool hair and great sort of like style. And she was Australian and kind of, and I, I just interviewed her and I took a picture on the street.

• 18:12Guy Raz?

  Just asked her about like her whole routine?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Her whole routine, yeah. Beauty, approach to hair, beauty, makeup, the whole thing. And it was a very, very short, they'd progressively gotten much longer. And it was a picture of her and that was it. And we were off to the races.

• 18:27Guy Raz?

  Now, here's the thing, you are at that point Emily Weiss, a young woman in the world. You don't have a giant network of people. You don't have a whole lot of money and access to media platforms. How did you, how did people even know about it?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, listen, I definitely was in a great position to attract, you know, people to be featured on the blog. Now, whether or not they said, yes, I want to take an hour out of my day to go be featured on an unknown website with an unknown reporter was a different question. But I was sitting on, you know, the floor of photo shoots with like a 15-year-old Karlie Kloss, like tying her shoes. Now she's like, you know, a supermodel who's got nine million Instagram followers.

• 19:11Guy Raz?

  So you would say to her, hey, would you mind talking to me?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we, you know, it's, we're all kind of spending so much time together. It'd be like, hey, can I like, you know, take your picture for my new blog? And I had enough goodwill and sort of that some, a lot of people said no. I mean, literally like 80% of the people I would ask. But I think once I started featuring, you know, if you have a couple of people, then different media sites would start to, you know, hyperlink and say, oh, today there's a profile on, you know, Karlie Kloss on this blog called Into the Gloss. And so that's how it, how it took off.

• 19:40Guy Raz?

  And you would basically feature a different person.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:43Guy Raz?

  And their regimen and the products they liked. And that was, that was, that was it. That was, because that's a pretty clear model.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very clear. And I think, you know, we've always, I've always focused a lot on good design. Like, my personal philosophy is just like, don't put things out into the world. Don't like make work that isn't really great.

• 20:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Like, it should be time well spent, you know? Like, don't, don't waste people's time with like, bad content. So, um, the fascinating thing about Into the Gloss is some of our most popular features, like, they're not celebrities, you know? Like, we're in this celebrity culture and we, we hear how much, you know, influence, influencers have. And yet, like, if we all really take a moment to think about, like, who's the last person who told us where to eat? Or like, you liked their outfit and, you know, you saw, it's like, they're probably not the biggest celebrity. It's probably someone who, like, a friend from college that you follow on Instagram or, you know, someone you work with. And I think that democratization of expertise and around, not just expertise, the democratization

• 20:45Speaker 01

  of influence, just like the power of the individual to influence another individual, is something that's fascinating and part of the reason, I think, why Into the Gloss really resonated.

• 20:56Guy Raz?

  You were doing this, just to put this in context, you had a full-time job at Vogue. This was your side hustle. You were like, doing this on nights and weekends?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I was like, 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.

• 21:07Guy Raz?

  On Into the Gloss.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  On Into the Gloss, like, transcribing or posting or editing. And then, on the weekends, I would do all the shoots and the interviews. So I'd book the interviews and the shoots. And each one, I mean, I'd spend, I had, I had your job. Like, this, like, I love interviewing people. So I would sit on people's floors in their bathrooms on their, like, closed toilet seat lids, you know, with my tape recorder out.

• 21:29Guy Raz?

  Taking note, right.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And, um, it's amazing because it's so hard for women to be the right level of maintenance. If you're too low maintenance, then you're lazy. You know, there's this stigma of like, the person who like, isn't doing enough. And yet, if you're wearing a lot of makeup or you're like, look like you really care about, you know, beauty or appearance, then you're seen as sort of frivolous or like, not to be taken seriously. So, the kind of intricacies of beauty as like a...

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Even just like a anthropological tool is really, really, really fascinating to me.

• 22:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I'm wondering like, at what point after you launched Into the Gloss, did you start to realize that it was more than just, you know, some friends or a couple dozen people or a couple thousand people, but like tens of thousands of people? Like, was that pretty soon after it launched?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  No, it's, you know, it was, it was a slow build, but within, within the first year, it was such that, you know, I, I had gone to my first brand and I had my first media partner with Lancome.

• 22:40Guy Raz?

  That was advertising?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  It was cash money.

• 22:43Guy Raz?

  And it was Lancome?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it was, it was Lancome.

• 22:45Guy Raz?

  And was it enough money to like sustain it?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  No, no, it was $5,000. And, you know, this was more money than I'd ever had in my, like, ever had in my bank account.

• 22:55Guy Raz?

  I mean, I think it was two and a half years before, you know, after you launched Into the Gloss, you were still with Vogue for-

• 23:01Speaker 01

  One year.

• 23:02Guy Raz?

  One year.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  12 months, because at that point, you know, we had enough, you know, it's funny, because people always say, well, how did you, I mean, this is one of the key questions for entrepreneurs, right? Like, when do you quit your day job?

• 23:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, how did you know when to quit Vogue to go full time on the side hustle?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Super personal decision, based on a ton of different, you know, very personal factors for, for any, any entrepreneur. For me, it was really just one decision to make, which was, I have to pick one. This is taking too much time and there's too much momentum. It's impossible to continue to deliver the product that people want, like people, you know, readers wanted, and at this point, a really big community was really wanting, that I felt like I really, there was really no choice. It's not even just follow your gut. It's like, follow something that is, is really working, is really delivering, like, you know, changing things.

• 23:57Guy Raz?

  And once you knew that, you knew it was time to-

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:00Guy Raz?

  -throw, throw everything into that.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was time.

• 24:02Guy Raz?

  I mean, I, I would have thought that, that at that point, you know, Into the Gloss was, you were gonna, you were sort of thinking about this as a media property, right? Like, this is a blog. Maybe you would spin it out into a podcast or a video show or something else, or like a deal with cable TV. But that's not what happened. You decided to create a product. Was that, I mean, again, was that something that just kind of happened on its own? Or was it a really deliberative, thought-through thing?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a really good question. And I think the thing that has led to every decision that I've made is this very central thesis that you can create conversations and connections through beauty. And Into the Gloss was the first version of that. Like, that was the first step. It was the necessary beginning that showed a certain behavioral shift. You know, it was like, encourage people to be like, oh, okay, I'm sharing now what goes on in my bathroom, you know, that I used to do totally alone. And in doing, you know, in working on Into the Gloss for the first year, I was exposed to all of these beauty companies.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  So I was working with Lancome, I was working with Estee Lauder, I was working with Codi, I was working with, you know, every big conglomerate. And beauty is a huge industry. It's a $450 billion global market. It's going to be $750 billion in six years. And why is that? Because of social media, because of sharing, because of the ability to have conversation, that beauty is now something that is not just tightly held in the hands of salespeople at, you know, a counter. You know, when was the last time any of you have, like, really relied on that?

• 25:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  50% of people who go into a Sephora take out their iPhones. You're Googling, you're texting your friend, I'm in Sephora, should I get, what was that thing you told me about? You know, that's how things work. And what's interesting is these companies... I was hearing in these interviews from women as I was sitting on the bathroom floor, I was hearing this disconnect that would have been answered if beauty brands just listened. Like if the actual beauty brands were listening to, well, first of all, if they knew who you were, which they don't because their client is the retailer. Beauty brands build products and clients for the needs of Macy's and Sephora and Ulta

• 26:32Speaker 01

  and CVS, and those are shelf space needs and seasonality needs and margin needs and all of these different needs that have nothing to do with you as the customer. So that results in this kind of subpar product experience and kind of brand relationship. There's not really this personal, you get me relationship. And that was what led to the creation of Glossier because every beauty brand that I've ever known has been built tops down. And the idea for Glossier is what would happen if you could build a beauty brand bottoms up? You could ask a question like, who makes your dream face wash and get 1,000 responses? Who would play your face wash in a movie and have them say Eddie Redmayne? It's like, what the [bleep].

• 27:17Speaker 01

  So that was where the idea from Glossier came from was this is the next phase. Like this is the next way that we can bring together this mission of giving voice through beauty.

• 27:27Guy Raz?

  I mean, weren't you, I mean, didn't anybody say to you, do you really think you can take on L'Oréal and Estee Lauder and Revlon? I don't even know the names of the biggest companies. I mean, these are huge, enormous multinationals. Like, did anybody say, you know, this is, this probably is not going to work?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, literally, all the odds are against you, like are against, you know, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. I mean, for one, you know, 4% of venture capital deals last year went to female CEOs. So four out of 100 deals went to women. So already, it's like, well, how am I going to fund this thing? Because, you know, no one's going to give me money for this.

• 28:18Guy Raz?

  You needed money, obviously, to create a product line.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  And did you have a number in your head of what you needed to start?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  In fact, I do. And it was based on precisely nothing.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  I was like, it is going to take $1 million.

• 28:33Guy Raz?

  That's what you said.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:35Guy Raz?

  Million dollars.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I was like, I bet you. I need $1 million to make this happen.

• 28:45Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Emily got her million dollars, found a chemist in the middle of nowhere, and a new tribe of customers just about everywhere. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 29:10Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 2013, and Emily Weiss has decided to make her own beauty products. And she thinks she'll need about $1 million to make it happen. How did you know where to start? I mean, you're in the New York fashion world. Obviously, you've got the successful blog. But like, a lot of that is Silicon Valley. It's like VC money's out there, and that's a whole world. How did you know where to start?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I was like, what is VC money? Like, what is VC? Like, what is... I'm like, oh, venture capital. What is that? I mean, let's not forget, I went to art school. Like, I did not go to business school. I did not... I did not work at a tech company. And by the way, a lot of founders of, you know, fast-growth venture-backed companies worked at a fast-growth venture-backed company, right? So as an outsider, really hard to sort of understand this.

• 30:09Guy Raz?

  And intimidating, probably.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Very intimidating. But again, back to that power of grit. I just kind of plowed through on this, you know, exploration. Like, I think my personal superpower, if there's like one thing that I think I'm really good at, I'm super curious. And so I kind of made a list, frankly. It wasn't even just about raising money. I remember having a whiteboard.

• 30:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Like what are all the steps it's going to take to to build this company? And I wrote, you know, VC, like raise money, build website, uh, find chemist, you know, make logo, uh, you know,

• 30:45Guy Raz?

  You just like wrote this in a whiteboard?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still have the picture. Like, what are all the ingredients that this is going to take? And of course, you don't know until you find out from one conversation what the other ingredient is you're missing and just, you just have to start. You have to start somewhere. So, you know, the money needing to get raised happened pretty early in that process.

• 31:03Guy Raz?

  What was your like elevator pitch to VCs? They say you go in and they'd say, okay, next?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. My pitch to VCs in the beginning was, you know, we have this great community. We understand, you know, beauty and people and stories. And we have this robust community, um, who we believe deserve a better, a better brand, like a brand that that really hears them and understands them. And, um, and there's a lot of room in the market because this is a huge, huge industry, um, really ripe for disruption. There weren't very many direct to consumer brands at the time. Now you have, you know, Colourpop and Kylie and Kim Kardashian and all these different, you know, D to C kind of brands. Um, but that hadn't happened.

• 31:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I, I read that, that you pitched, I don't know, 13 or 14, uh, VC companies and mostly men, and, uh, only one eventually agreed to give you that initial funding. It was, uh, the, the VC was a woman, Kristin Green.

• 32:07Guy Raz?

  How did that happen?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So 6% of venture capitalists are women and, um, hopefully that will go up. So, listen, we have incredible partners. Um, I think, you know, initially so much of, uh, funding is around pattern recognition. And so you have venture capitalists whose job it is, is to make smart bets on companies that are going to grow super, super fast and, and become the next Facebook, right?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  And so it's hard to, I think, look at like a female CEO who does not have business, a business school degree. And and sort of say that we're going to take the bet and it felt, you know, it's exhausting. And I think I know a lot of entrepreneurs and I think it's hard for everyone. It was it was exhausting to go and we would hand our COO and I, we would hand our products. You know, we'd have our little our little goodie bags and and bring them to different rooms full of guys. And have them get the bag and say, oh, that's so nice. Thank you. I'm going to give it to my wife. And, you know, ask her what she thinks. And I would say to myself, if, you know, some like financial technology company came to me and pitched me,

• 33:21Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to go ask my husband to like, explain this to me.

• 33:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  I would like, learn about it. I would like, be like, show me your product. Let me understand this. Let me put it on the back of my hand. Like, can you tell me about like, how people use this product? And the best people did do that. And we have, you know, a handful of really amazing venture capitalists. We have a 50% female board and our first investor, Kirsten, I spent a lot of time with. And she was the she was that that $1 million check.

• 33:48Guy Raz?

  She she believed in this idea. She wrote you that check.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:52Guy Raz?

  Do you know why she decided to take the take the risk?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  She has a really gut and data-backed knack for identifying consumer product companies. She invested in Warby Parker. She invested in Bonobos. She invested most recently in a way.

• 34:12Guy Raz?

  So she she's got good instincts.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  She has really good instincts around, yeah, around, around, around what are people going to care about? What do they want to live with? You know, like, what do they, what moves people? I mean, this is a really emotional category, beauty, you know? Again, there's no like, single truth, right? So it's really just about like, opinion and preference and and so many other ingredients.

• 34:35Guy Raz?

  All right. So you've got this million bucks, right?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  We raised, we raised two.

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Because you can't spend everything that you, you know?

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:42Guy Raz?

  And so how do you start a makeup company? Like, where do you go? Like, who do you call up and what do you say? Like, oh, can you make me this makeup? There's chemistry involved.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:51Guy Raz?

  Like, like, how do you?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 34:53Guy Raz?

  How do you make makeup?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, let me tell you how I built this.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  So, okay, so my first hire, so first of all, always hire for your weaknesses, right, and surround yourself with just the most brilliant people you can ever convince to come work on the shared vision that you have. And my first hire was an incredible director of product development, who had over a decade of experience at MAC Cosmetics. That was my first hire, because I've never made a product, and I don't know how it works, or vendors, or how long things take. Like, I have no idea. And I remember she ended up getting a recommendation for a chemist from someone who she knew from the beauty industry, who was based outside of LA. So, we flew to LA, we got our, like, Hertz rental car, and we drove during rush hour all the way down to this, like,

• 35:46Speaker 01

  middle-of-nowhere place, and we pulled into the parking lot. The parking lot's empty, there's like, a stray dog, like, roaming through it, like tumbleweeds blowing, I mean, you know, it was very... It did not look like this was gonna be our chemist. And there's this little mirrored building, it was literally like mirrored, so that you couldn't see inside. I mean, I was like, why don't we just go, this is most certainly not our guy? But we went in, and I am so glad we did, because inside was this, like, 6'4", jacked, like, dad, who, like, has, who's like, building game-changing skincare products for some of like, the biggest brands that you've... You guys are literally sitting here wearing products that he's created.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Who's so excited about women's skincare, like, you just would not believe.

• 36:35Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that, he became our chemist, and he's actually developed, like, I don't know, almost all of our skincare products today.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  And what do you say to him? You say, "I want, you know, this scent," or "I want it," like, how do you tell him what you want?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really a huge collaboration. I'm trying to think of, like, what I can equate it to. Maybe like, the relationship between you and like, your architect? Like, if you're, you know, building a house. It depends, because there's lots of, like, each of us would have a different relationship with an architect. Like, one of us might go to them, knowing exactly what we want, with exactly the ingredients. And the exact approach to sustainability and a exact budget and like might be super involved. And other ones of us might be like, I kinda want like a White House, you know? And, and so like where we were is we were more in the former camp. And so we came and said, we have these four products. We want them to do these things. We want them to, you know, have these ingredients and not have these ingredients. And we want the price to be this.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  And so we have to figure out like how to find the most amazing, you know, ingredients. And it's really just a back and forth. And we would spend, you know, on average, maybe like two or three months or four months of just shipping samples back and forth to each other. But a lot of it was just nerding out in the lab. He had like a little room full of ingredients, like raw materials is what they're called. So literally like there'll be like a vat of like Koopa cow butter from like, you know, the Amazonian rainforest just sitting there. Like that's like part, one of the things you see listed on the back of your, you know, whatever will just be in bulk, sitting in a thing. So he would say like, undo a jar and be like, smell this, you know? Or scoop out a thing and put it on your hand and say, it's like being in a chef's kitchen.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  And so it really is all about that personal relationship that you have and your ability to work with someone, your ability to like riff off each other. That has led to some of the most amazing innovations.

• 38:28Guy Raz?

  It, it seems like baked into the business model from the beginning was this very deliberate idea that you were not gonna have your product in the CBS or Sephora or at Bloomingdale's or Lord & Taylor, wherever. That, that this was going to be direct to consumer. Why? Why, why wouldn't you, you know, make it available at these other places?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Because we can build better product by having a direct relationship to every person.

• 39:01Guy Raz?

  How?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  We don't have to make decisions for anyone other than the end user, like full stop. So first of all, that alleviates a ton of things that don't, things that don't matter to you, holding something and enjoying it and using it. It also enables us to like, ask you questions. It enables us to like, send you like questionnaires, you know? Have, have you been happy with this? Do you like what you got? You know, how would you improve it? What should we make later? It allows us to create platforms that connect our customers with each other to talk about, you know, shared experiences around beauty. So. You know, we've put a thousand of our top customers in a Slack channel who exchange over 10,000 messages a week.

• 39:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I was talking to several people about Glossier. And, you know, it's many people, many women will go into a Sephora and try stuff on. And with the question is, how do you know what this is going to look like? And what's amazing is that you can, you can just go on YouTube and type in, you know, Glossier.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Boy Brow.

• 40:07Guy Raz?

  Right, exactly. And you will find dozens and dozens of videos from women with different skin tones and shades. And you can almost see what it, it looks like.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:19Guy Raz?

  It's almost like you, you know, most companies start with a brand and then build a customer base. You had a customer base and then you introduced your brand to them.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, although, you know, our customer base now is, is much wider than, you know, readers of Into the Gloss.

• 40:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  For sure. But I think what you just described is, again, this kind of like shift of influence. And it's not about, again, the influencer being this 2 million follower, 3 million follower thing. It's the ability for your feedback on Boy Brow, like, that can be our customers' video, right? Like, that's, it's like, this is how I use this and this is how it works for me. And if you go into our stores, we have two flagships, one in New York and one in, one in LA. That is what is happening in there. I mean, women are waiting in line down the block, meeting the person in front of them, the person behind them, talking about whether or not they'd used Glossier before, like, what they like, what they don't like, where they're from, do they need a roommate, like,

• 41:18Speaker 01

  suddenly they like work together, like, you know, these are like lifelong relationships that are being formed. And then you go upstairs and people are up there for like an hour and a half and they're talking to each other in the mirror, saying, what color is that? And they're barely even talking to the people who work, you know, work here.

• 41:32Guy Raz?

  But what about for, for women who don't, who don't have access to those stores? I mean, makeup is such a personal thing. I mean, most of your customers are buying the products without trying them on first. So how did you know that people were going to be willing to take that leap of faith?

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Well, I think part of it is by having a product philosophy and an approach to content that facilitates that leap of faith.

• 41:55Guy Raz?

  What do you mean?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, if we had, you know, a super-high-coverage foundation product, then that would require us to make, you know, 50 shades or something, or 55 shades or something like that, which would be almost like impossible to sell online. I would have a really hard time, like, shade matching myself if there were 50 shades of something. Like, I would not know how to do that. But what we can do is create, you know, a product like Boy Brow that's super intuitive, that's super easy to use, that doesn't deposit too much, that, you know, is sheer enough that it can span a wide range of eyebrow hair colors, you know, something that facilitates that participation.

• 42:36Guy Raz?

  You launched this company in 2014, four years on. First of all, how many employees do you now have?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Oh, we have, so it changes every week, because we have, like, five people starting, like, even this Monday. Now, we're, I think, 186 full-time employees and 150 showroom editors.

• 42:54Guy Raz?

  I think since that first million or two million in seed funding, you've raised more than 80 million. The company is now valued at more than 300 million, maybe close to $400 million.

• 43:11Guy Raz?

  Four years!

• 43:14Guy Raz?

  That's crazy!

• 43:18Guy Raz?

  I have to imagine that the big cosmetics companies, the L'Oréal's, the Estee Lauder's, are really paying attention to what you're doing and really want to buy this company. They really want to own this brand. I mean, you know, you can go down the list, Bobbi Brown and, you know, some of these other iconic brands that were purchased by the larger brands. What happens if and when they approach you? Maybe they already have.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  So the companies that I most admire are companies that create iconic products that really stand the test of time. The other thing that I think a lot about is our mission. So I think about how else can we connect people through beauty? How else can we help people sit up a little taller, feel better about themselves through beauty? We have a really long way to go in terms of actualizing that vision. In fact, I think about where we are today as truly just the beginning. Like, being four years in for me, I wake up every day, I think it's day one. And typically, when you sell to a larger conglomerate, it's because you need more

• 44:33Speaker 01

  distribution. Because the benefit of having, you know, being a L'Oréal or an Estee Lauder company or something like that, is that they have this vast network of retailers.

• 44:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, store around the world.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Macy's and all those things.

• 44:44Guy Raz?

  And you don't need that.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  We don't need that. We create, you know, our own channel through our digital platform, through glossia.com. And one of the things that we're most fascinated by right now is the fact that this beauty shopping experience, this experience of walking into a store and yet wanting to be connected to someone who you pick and wanting to find information through a person that you relate to or that you are inspired by or choose, there's really nowhere to do that online. Like, you can go on YouTube, but it's really like look-based. It's really about kind of like, I want to do a cat eye, or I want to do a unicorn Halloween makeup, or something like that. But in terms of finding that individual story for beauty, it's really, really tough.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So, we actually just hired the person who built DMs and camera at Instagram. And then we also made another hire of the guy who was employee nine at Instagram, who's an amazing product designer, digital product designer. Because we're spending a lot of time thinking about how to create that digital platform, that channel. Because we've already built these tools, right? But like, where is the place where people can come together to talk about beauty? To share what they've learned from Glossier and all of the other brands and products that, you know, they use and talk about and how can they find each other like they do at our at our flagships.

• 46:08Guy Raz?

  I have to imagine that the big cosmetics companies are looking at your customer base, very young, multiracial, it's a super coveted demographic that you've got, hard to recreate, right, because there's an authenticity to what you do and there's a risk of inauthenticity when you try to manufacture it. Are you watching your competitors as well? Do you keep an eye on what they're doing?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because beauty is not that competitive in my mind because how many different brands are we all using every day? Like, how many different lip products do I have in my purse right now? You don't want to know from like all all different brands, like eight different lip balms and lip glosses and lipsticks. And I'm not interested in like consolidating that. That is like not a realistic expectation of any of us. Like, no single brand can make every can meet, you know, all of your needs when it comes to to beauty, at least in my mind. So for us, it's just about how can we be a part of this of this conversation?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  How can we be a part and how can we, most importantly, facilitate the conversation happening?

• 47:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. When you when you think about, and you partially answered this earlier, but when you think about the arc of your career and you're still so young and you have so much to do ahead of you, you may build two or three more companies, who knows? How much of what what's happened to you and what you've accomplished do you attribute to your persistence, hard work, grit and how much to to lucky breaks?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  I think I definitely believe in luck, but I don't rely on luck and I don't attribute luck to where I am today. I really believe that it is a combination of this passion and this perseverance and probably a little bit of having a very Short memory. I think it's such a gift. I just keep going. I think when you fall or when someone says no, or when you try something and it doesn't work, the ability to just continue, like just pick up, there's a resiliency, right? Like, that's really when I hear the word grit, that's what it says to me, is there's a resiliency to just brush,

• 48:28Speaker 01

  shake it off, right? And keep going.

• 48:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Just one last question for you. If you were sitting in this audience 10 years ago, and you were watching somebody like you, and you had a dream or an idea in your head, what would you have wanted to know? What do you now know that you wish you knew when you were starting out?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. I would use the Phil Knight quote from Nike of like, just do it. You know? I mean, as cheesy as it sounds, be courageous. Like, be curious and be courageous. Because the worst, it's like my friend says about dates, it's either a good date or a good story. And I think that's really good advice. Like, try things. It's going to help you grow and learn, you know, learn something, learn something about yourself. I really do believe that.

• 49:23Guy Raz?

  Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 49:27Guy Raz?

  I spoke with Emily on November 1st at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU in New York City. And just a few days after that, Glossier opened its first permanent flagship store in New York at the very same address where the company was founded. The new space is painted in Glossier pink and is ready for the camera, which means if you couldn't be there, you may have seen it on your Instagram feed. Our episode was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Jeff Rogers, J.C. Howard, and Sanaz Meshkhanpour. Our intern is Mia

• 50:06Guy Raz?

  Venkat. And look out for another live interview coming your way this Thursday. On Thursday, November 29th, check out our next bonus episode from the How I Built This Summit in San Francisco. It's my conversation with John Zimmer, founder of Lift. Oh, and one more quick thing. If you want to actually attend a live taping of How I Built This, we just released a few more tickets to our sold-out LA show on December 5th at the Theater at Ace Hotel. I'll be talking with Michael Dubin, founder of Dollar Shave Club, and you can grab those few remaining tickets by visiting nprpresents.org.

• 50:57Speaker 02

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• 51:00Speaker 03

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• 51:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  It's just me and you, right?

• 51:04Speaker 04

  Well, sure, let's say it is.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Three times a week, Life Kit is in your feeds with episodes on health, personal finance, personal growth, and so much more. Listen to Life Kit from NPR.