Emily Weiss: How This Former Assistant Keep Creating One Miracle After Another.
Emily Weiss, 32, the Founder and CEO of the beauty blog Into the Gloss(ITG), and the cosmetics brand Glossier. Her personal Instagram account is (@emilywweiss), her beauty blog account is (@intothegloss) and her cosmetics brand (@glossier) have the followers of 307K, 577K, and 814K respectively.
Emily Weiss grew up in Connecticut. The growing interest in fashion drove her to New York University where she majored in Studio Art. From her sophomore to senior year, she spent most of her time as an intern at Teen Vogue. After graduation, she worked as a fashion assistant at W magazine and then she assisted Elissa Santisi, a style director at American Vogue.
Later, Emily became a freelance stylist for two and a half years. During this time, Weiss began working on Into the Gloss in 2010. She realized that the beauty industry's marketing approach often makes women feel bad about themselves, and then proceeds to sell women products with high price tags. She decided to introduce beauty product recommendations and tips through her blogs from the angle of a fashion industry insider. Her blog wishes to encourage women to feel better about their normal skin instead of feeling worse. The contents quickly drew in large numbers of readers, and a year later, the blog had 10 million views on a monthly basis. In 2012, with the good development of ITG, Weiss attracted two new co-founders: Nick Axelrod; former news editor of Elle who now serves as Glossier editorial director, and Michael Harper as digital director. ITG re-launch in July 2012, and page views tripled overnight and the site now gets 8.5 million page views and 300,000 unique visitors a month. (Business of Fashion)
In October 2014, the Glossier brand came online. Glossier is based on the word "Dossier," and it means: “Treat every product like it's a new issue.” (Inc. Magazine) The slogan of Glossier is “Skin first. Makeup second.” The first four products sold out quickly. After six weeks, Glossier successfully secured a round of $8.4 million in financing. Next, Glossier overwhelmingly big, which featured its own line of skincare, makeup, body care and fragrance. Four products types and nearly 40 products have been developed. Some of the popular products were sold out almost immediately after being released. The products have unique names and competitive prices, such as the best-selling products Balm Dotcom, sold at $12, Boy Brow, sold at $16, and Cloud Paint, sold at $18. The newly released perfume “Glossier you” are the most expensive single item on the website that sells for $60.
In three years of the birth of the brand, with only dozens of products with price at $12 to $60, Glossier hit a miracle: In 2016, Glossier's revenue increased by 600%, and over the past 12 months, the brand's active customers tripled and the flagship store sold more than Apple stores per square foot, with a conversion rate of 65%. In July, Weiss announced on its blog that Glossier would expand into countries such as France, Britain, and Canada.
Glossier's marketing strategy seems without much marketing, but very smart and deeply strategic. Glossier chose her beauty blog and Instagram as a marketing platform and lab, and through listening and running followers, and stepping out of a unique development path.
The first is to create "Bestsellers" based on community opinions. Weiss knows Glossier consumers are from social media. She wants to make sure that the consumers’ voice can be heard, so she asked on her social media marketing, edit, and customer service team to reply to every consumer’s opinion. At the same time, Glossier built a mini-community on Instagram and creates products based on community opinions and feedbacks.
The second is the Glossier agent system. Weiss believes that every user can be a KOL, and in Glossier, the product is the best content. For example, in 2015, Glossier released a mask called Mega Greens Galaxy. Suddenly many selfies appeared on Instagram with the hashtag #maskforce. What Glossier needs to do is just forward these selfies to its Instagram account. These photos are more persuasive than the promotional photos of the brand.
When the traditional brands are worried about how to increase customer’s loyalty, the Glossier has developed a number of "loyal member", and each of them becomes a Glossier spokesman. They spread by words of mouth and bring more and more consumers.
Canal, Emily. “How This Former Assistant at 'Vogue' Is Building the 'Nike of Beauty'”. Inc. Magazine https://www.inc.com/magazine/201710/emily-canal/glossier-emily-weiss.html
Brooke, Eliza. “How 'Into the Gloss' Co-Founder Nick Axelrod Is Carving His Own Path in Editorial”, Fashionista.com. May 9, 2015. https://fashionista.com/2015/03/nick-axelrod
Loizos, Connie. “How to build a brand in 2017: Tips from Glossier CEO Emily Weiss”. Techcrunch.com. Feb. 17, 2017. https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/17/beauty-guru-emily-weiss-on-building-a-brand-from-scratch-in-2017/
https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/emily-weiss
“Emily Weiss: Glossier’s architect of content, community and commerce” Courier issue. Oct. 10, 2017.
https://couriermedia.co/2017/10/10/emily-weiss-glossiers-architect-content-community-content/
