While emerging from a decade dominated by sans-serif typeface and millennial pink, it may be hard to remember a time when an ode to simplicity could make a brand stand out. But when Malin+Goetz, a natural apothecary beauty brand, was founded in 2004, its “less is more” approach at a time when the market was about “more and more” initiated the brand’s journey.  “We came at it from a minimalist, different direction, not only in our packaging and design, but also in our formulations and the protocols,” said Matthew Malin, Malin+Goetz co-founder, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. “Nobody was doing unisex [in beauty] at that time." Eighteen years later, in a Covid-19 riddled world, Malin+Goetz has once again proven that it's not afraid to take the road less traveled. In this case, that's meant opening a retail location in Williamsburg, after the beauty industry saw a wave of door closures.  “If a store doesn't have something special, which includes beautiful design, wonderful brands and products, and great service, it's going to be challenging in the post-Covid world,” said Andrew Goetz, Malin+Goetz co-founder (and Malin’s partner) on the podcast.  And while the new normal, and how brands respond, may be uncharted territory, Malin+Goetz expects to take a multifaceted approach in its appeal to the consumer. The brand’s brick-and-mortar stores, luxury hospitality partners and e-commerce play via its own site and Amazon “are all important aspects of how to be a successful brand,” said Goetz. “Being able to support that customer through those different channels is critical.”

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Malin+Goetz's founders say success is a balance between expediency and exclusivity

For many people, a bad hair day would result in a few shed tears and some variation of a head covering. However in the case of Yve-Car Momperousse, CEO and co-founder of Kreyol Essence, a beauty brand specializing in natural hair-care and skin-care products from Haiti, what started as a solution to a “hair catastrophe” evolved into a “social impact brand.” “Hair, dry skin, eczema -- for any issue you had in the Haitian community, you found [a solution in] this bottle of this product,” said Momperousse on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. The product in question, Haitian Black castor oil, served as the solution to Momperousee’s hair loss at the time and the foundation of her brand, launched in 2014. “We're not only looking [at] how we impact our tribe, which is what we call our customers, but we’re also looking at how we impact our producers and every part of the supply chain that it takes to make the castor oil,” said Momperousse. Aside from providing “women of color” with products for “kinky, curly hair," Kreyol Essence is “creating work for farmers, helping with the environment, exporting and changing the relationship that people have with Haiti,” she said. Now, the brand has expanded with more products, like Moringa powder, which also includes “collagen, ashwagandha and vitamin C,” for a holistic approach to beauty, she said. Simultaneously, Kreyol Essence continues to expand its retail presence, from "Shark Tank" to the shelves of Ulta to QVC. Looking ahead, Momperousse continues to look at “the larger picture,” she said. The guiding question is, “Are you doing something above and beyond what a traditional business would do, with [a] clear intention for impact either on the environment [or] for a specific group of people?”

Kreyol Essence's Yve-Car Momperousse on creating a hair-care brand that's also a 'social impact business'

Kristen Noel Crawley, KNC Beauty founder, knows that it takes more than being a “lover of skincare” to become a successful beauty brand founder. The launch of the Black-owned brand in 2016 was “a natural evolution” for Crawley, who networked her way through the beauty industry, starting as a beauty columnist for Elle magazine, she said on this week's Glossy Beauty Podcast. “I started the brand because I had those dry and crusty lips. Since I launched my brand, I haven't had any problems with my chapped lips,” said Crawley, who had found a solution to her lip dilemma in the form of a lip mask in Japan. “The only thing I didn't like was that there were probably 50 ingredients in this one little sachet.” What started as a means to fill the all-natural lip mask void in America evolved into a line of products including KNC’s retinol-infused star-shaped eye mask and collagen-infused lip scrub and lip balms. Beyond trend spotting, Crawley is adept at tapping into larger social and cultural movements. She launched KNC’s School of Beauty, a mentorship program for Black female beauty founders, in 2020, and a collaboration with streetwear brand Bape in July 2021. “School of Beauty was actually a direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement,” she said. “Black women and women of color contribute so much to the success of the beauty industry and I want to see more female founders in that space.”

KNC Beauty’s Kristen Noel Crawley on being a founder: It's ‘not what you see on Instagram’

Covid forced social activities, like bar crawls and date nights, to go on hiatus, or move to Zoom. So the fact that fragrance sales increased by 82% in the first half of 2021, compared to the same time in 2020, demonstrates that in the age of wellness, perfume has been added to the list of self-care. Ilaria Resta, global president since March of 2020 of the perfumery division at Firmenich, a fragrance and flavor company, said this shift in consumer preference is just one aspect of change that she has been tasked with reacting to. “The key pillars of my vision are related to anticipating and being on the leading front of the transformation of this industry, and future-proofing the business by anticipating or creating trends,” said Resta on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. That’s included navigating the “shift from fragrance [being worn to] appeal to others to being [worn] for our own relaxation and feeling better with ourselves,” she said. Additionally, Resta has had to determine, “How do we communicate the fragrance in a virtual way [during Covid]?” she said. Fittingly for the digital-centric nature of the world today, Firmenich launched Scentmate, an “AI-enabled platform” that enables users to create a personalized fragrance based on data, as well as their personal preferences. “Innovation is critical as a driver for value creation and differentiation [in fragrance],” she said. Below are additional highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity On the evolution of the fragrance industry “The power of fragrances in triggering emotions [and] memories. It’s outstanding, and [it] is used also for therapies in order to trigger specific emotions. There are ingredients proven to aid concentration and focus, in lowering the heartbeat rate and improving well-being. It’s an industry that is evolving from being pleasure-focused [and] hedonic-focused to being an industry that is also adding real physical and mental benefits. And [it] is very much science-driven, as much as it is hedonic and creative. It is a fascinating sweet spot between the left and the right brain.” Firmenich’s relationship with sustainability “The company started working on [sustainability] before it became even a word or before it became a necessity and a demand from consumers. Decades ago, at Firmenich, we started defining critical roles to assess the role of biodegradable, renewable ingredients in the palette of ingredients that our perfumers work with. But also when it comes to biochemistry, we develop fragrances that mimic nature but do not deprive nature [of these] ingredients. At the same time, we started looking at the broader role of sustainability when it comes to social responsibility. [We] make sure that all the sourcing strategies are [responsibly sourced] from communities that are treated in the best way, not only for the workers, but [also] for the communities they work with. We [ensure] there are equal wages and minimum wages for men and women. We look at the broader ecosystems of sustainability. And this has been inspiring the work at Firmenich, this has been an important glue between us and our clients.”

Firmenich's Ilaria Resta: Driving innovation is 'crucial' to the fragrance industry

Covid forced social activities, like bar crawls and date nights, to go on hiatus, or move to Zoom. So the fact that fragrance sales increased by 82% in the first half of 2021, compared to the same time in 2020, demonstrates that in the age of wellness, perfume has been added to the list of self-care.  Ilaria Resta, global president since March of 2020 of the perfumery division at Firmenich, a fragrance and flavor company, said this shift in consumer preference is just one aspect of change that she has been tasked with reacting to. “The key pillars of my vision are related to anticipating and being on the leading front of the transformation of this industry, and future-proofing the business by anticipating or creating trends,” said Resta on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast.  That's included navigating the "shift from fragrance [being worn to] appeal to others to being [worn] for our own relaxation and feeling better with ourselves,” she said. Additionally, Resta has had to determine, “How do we communicate the fragrance in a virtual way [during Covid]?" she said. Fittingly for the digital-centric nature of the world today, Firmenich launched Scentmate, an “AI-enabled platform” that enables users to create a personalized fragrance based on data, as well as their personal preferences.  “Innovation is critical as a driver for value creation and differentiation [in fragrance]," she said. 

Firmenich’s Ilaria Resta: Driving innovation is 'critical’ in the fragrance industry

The launch of Fenty Beauty in 2017 marked a turning point for diversity within the beauty industry, as makeup brands were tasked with matching the new standards of Fenty’s foundation shade range of 40 colors. Brands like Revlon and Dior stepped up to the plate with more inclusive shade ranges. Meanwhile. a blank space remained in the beauty industry for brands catering to Afro-textured hair. Maeva Heim, founder and CEO of Bread Beauty Supply, a Black-owned hair-care brand catered to textured hair, aimed to fill this gap with Bread Beauty Supply. Heim, an Australia native, worked within the beauty industry prior to launching Bread, so she experienced the lack of inclusivity in the hair-care sector from an insider's perspective, as well as from the perspective of a Black female customer. “The brands that I was working on personally -- and even the brands in the beauty industry, in general -- weren't speaking to me as a woman of color,” she said on the latest Glossy Beauty podcast. Bread, which offers products including a scalp-serum, hair masks and oils for curl types 3a to 4c, came into fruition during the pandemic, in July of 2020. Since then, sales for the brand, which has a core customer who is “young in her career" and "on that cusp between Gen Z [and] millennial,” have tripled, said Heim. Now, Bread Beauty Supply is available on both breadbeautysupply.com and sephora.com. According to Heim, she's successfully created an indie brand that “resonates” with customers in a way “that a giant, multinational corporation can't.” And, while Bread’s partnership with Sephora is set to continue, Heim aims to expand her brand in a bigger way. “Our priority is existing where our customer wants us to exist, and we're constantly refining what that looks like in the next 3-5 years, and where we need to go and exist internationally,” she said. “Because this issue and this gap exist not just in the U.S., but [also] in pretty much every Western market.”

Bread Beauty Supply's Maeva Heim on the ‘renaissance’ of hair care

When you reach for a bottle of shampoo in the shower, you may not be familiar with the brand founder -- or know if he or she actually uses the product. But as Crown Affair founder and CEO Dianna Cohen tells it, her hair-care line was launched as an extension of her own routine and the products that she recommended to her friends.   She wanted to create a brand that fit within the "luxury world” of products she gravitated toward, said Cohen on the most recent episode of Glossy Beauty Podcast. “[With those products,] when you held the tool or used the product, it brought you joy. And it felt like a part of who you were.” Crown Affair's line includes scrunchies, hair oils, towels and combs, and aims to transform the health of customers’ hair. This month, Crown Affair is venturing into tried-and-true hair must-haves, like shampoo and conditioner. And next year, it will launch in a national retailer. But above all, the brand, which remains digitally-focused, prides itself on its focus on community. "Our customer and community is the woman who is super dynamic. And she does care about her hair, but she has a lot of other things going on in her life," she said. The Crown Affair community is made up of its loyal customers and even non-customers, who learned about the brand by word-of-mouth. It also includes the 100 women who make up Seedling, the brand's mentorship development program. “If you're thinking about launching a brand into the world, one of the most powerful things that you can do is build a community,” she said. “That's [an] important lens as a founder, to [think], ‘How are you shopping for other things?' 'How are you finding out about products?'” said Cohen. “The only way to build authentic relationships is by taking time to build authentic relationships.”

Crown Affair's Dianna Cohen: 'One of the most powerful things a new brand can do is build a community'

In New York City, one can find a nail salon almost as easily as a bodega. But across the Atlantic, in London, the same could not be said -- at least until the early 2000s, according to Charlotte Knight, founder and CEO of Ciaté London, Lottie London and Skin Proud. After noticing the overall void for nail care within the beauty industry in London, Knight, an interior designer turned celebrity nail technician, founded nail-care brand Ciaté in 2009.  “I wanted to bridge that gap between runway to retail,” and expand the availability of the nail art seen on the runway and in magazines to the public, said Knight on the Glossy Beauty podcast.   “We have become known as innovators and disruptors in all things -- pigment, innovation and color,” said Knight, who later founded Gen-Z makeup brand Lottie London. “Lottie’s collaboration strategy is all about ’90s nostalgia,” with nostalgic characters like My Little Pony. “What I love about this Gen-Z community [is that] they have bundles of confidence like never before,” said Knight, who attributes this, in part, to social media.  Like the company’s Gen-Z consumer, Lottie London and its sister-brand Skin Proud, which launched in April of 2020, have also tapped into TikTok, a factor that may have helped them to “[stand] firm” amid the challenges of the pandemic. In terms of sales channels, the company also expanded into Walmart, which has worked to reach the Gen-Z consumer’s radar. “Their commitment to social challenges and environmental issues is incredible, [which] is so meaningful to the Gen-Z consumer today,” she said.  As for the future, Knight pledges to maintain a focus on her current brands, along with new brands that are in the works. “We [the Lottie brand] create product that enables that demographic to unleash their creativity,” she said. “We're going to be using all of our efforts to double down with the three brands that we currently have.”  

Ciaté, Lottie London and Skin Proud founder Charlotte Knight on reaching the Gen-Z consumer

Alastair Dorward may be new to the biotech company Amyris -- he joined as chief brand officer in August -- but he's not unfamiliar with the better-for-you beauty and personal care space. Dorward was the founding CEO of natural, non-toxic brand Method and CEO of hand sanitizer brand Olika. The latter was acquired by Amyris in June. "I've been a close student of Amyris, [their] trajectory from malaria into the world of production of really valuable and rare molecules and the whole conversation around making the scarce abundant... Over the course of the last year or so, there's been this emergence of the portfolio of beauty, and that's when I really started leaning forward," said Dorward on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.  In many ways, Dorward considers beauty the last frontier of the progression for consumers to natural, organic or clean. Having worked across the food, toddler, personal care and beauty categories, he said, "There's been a trade-off that is unacceptable -- a trade-off between results or efficacy and clean." For its part, Amyris and its swathe of brands have been a tugboat that has pushed other conglomerates forward. Its portfolio includes Biosannce, which popularized industry-wide the use of squalane derived from sustainable sugarcane; clean baby brand Pipette; Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's clean color line, Rose Inc.; and most recently, Jonathan Van Ness' vegan hair-care launch, JVN. While beauty consumers are just starting to have more options at their fingertips, Dorward said, "The beauty industry has had the greatest challenge. [Mastering] cleaning [products] is one thing, but beauty and results are a much harder proposition to get right."

Amyris' Alastair Dorward on the "guilt and penance" of buying better-for-you beauty

Long gone are the days of popping pimples in secret or attempting DIY acne solutions, like toothpaste or liquid Advil, as an influx of acne-positivity brands have entered the market. In turn, the stigma surrounding acne is slowly being erased. Peace Out Skincare, a brand dedicated to acne and aging products, launched in 2017 “to market effective products that deliver on the promises,” said Enrico Frezza, Peace Out Skincare founder and CEO, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. Frezza struggled with acne as both a teenager and adult. As a beauty outsider (Frezza's background is in cybersecurity), he hoped to “build a strong, accurate, positive community where people can talk openly about the mental struggles of acne and educate one another.” Notably, among the brand’s repertoire are the Peace Out Acne Dots. Despite the small size of the patches, the acne healing dots contain a complex ingredient profile of salicylic acid, retinol, aloe vera and calcium. Nowadays they're considered as much an acne treatment as a fashion statement. Peace Out has also released products that address wrinkles, dark spots and puffy eyes, as well as topical products like its acne and retinol serums.  And while the brand started as a Sephora exclusive, Peace Out looks forward to its partnership with Kohl’s through the retailer's shop-in-shop to reach the everyday customer through its “affordable pricing,” he said. Peace Out products start at $5 and range up to $34. Additionally, the brand found success on its DTC website, as online shopping became the new normal as a result of the pandemic. Apart from the success found on its website, Peace Out's digital presence has manifested into an acne docuseries, "Acne Champs." The brand can also be found on Facebook, with a focus on anti-aging, as well as TikTok, where the brand reaches its Gen-Z audience through acne education and fun videos, he said. “Instagram is a balance between the two,” targeting the millennial consumer.

Peace Out Skincare's Enrico Frezza on building 'a strong, acne-positive community’

You may know her best as an actress, but Tracee Ellis Ross’ efforts to highlight diversity, equity and inclusion do not stop in Hollywood. In 2019, Ross launched her line of natural hair products, Pattern Beauty, to fill a void she witnessed in beauty and culture at large. “My journey in hair care started with my own personal journey,” said Ross, who spent 10 years fine-tuning her vision to embrace the “authentic” beauty of Black hair. “The mission of the brand is to meet the needs of the curly, coily and tight texture community.”  The peak of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 was when “people started to understand that diversity and inclusion need to be anti-racist,” which is why “equity” is the key to implementing change within the beauty industry, she said. “That’s one of the spaces that I have worked on with Ulta Beauty, in holding them accountable and creating measurable goals." Ulta Beauty has been Pattern's exclusive retail partner for the last two years. As Ross heads into the eighth and final season of the ABC show “Black-ish,” her journey with Pattern is far from over. “If you can't keep growing, if you can't keep expanding the narrative and expanding the dialogue with your customer, [the brand is] not going to grow,” she said.  Dialogues with customers showed the need for larger sizes of hero products, for example, which resulted in the release of Jumbettes, or Pattern’s styling cream and curl gel in jumbo-size bottles. Down the line, Ross hopes to expand Pattern into other beauty categories. She is currently looking to widen Pattern's reach at retail.   “One of my original goals and visions for the company [was] that it be accessible to everybody,” she said. Pattern Beauty is currently available at PatternBeauty.com, at brick-and-mortar and online at Ulta Beauty, and at Ulta Beauty shop-in-shops at Target. The brand is set to release in Sephora this fall.  "My goal is to change the industry, so that all of us have choices," said Ross.   

Tracee Ellis Ross, Pattern Beauty founder: ‘Beauty ends up being a portal into your soul'

While many industries took hits during the pandemic, Covid-19 set the stage for brands within the wellness industry, like Uncle Bud’s CBD, to grow. Customers “were coming to us not necessarily because of hemp and CBD, but because they wanted hand sanitizer. “From just buying hand sanitizer now we’ve gained a longtime customer,” said Bruno Schiavi, Uncle Bud's CEO, on the Glossy Beauty Podcast this week. Schiavi co-founded Uncle Bud’s in 2018 with Garrett Greller, a sufferer of arthritis since he was 14. “I wanted [Greller] to be the pillar of the brand,” said Schiavi, who added that his co-founder is “at the forefront of every campaign” along with mega ambassadors including basketball player Magic Johnson and actress Jane Fonda. “We wanted Uncle Bud’s to be a brand for the people,” from 15 to 99 years old, said Schiavi. “We have everything for everybody, again, from pain relief to sun care to anti-aging, to pet products, [to] personal wellness,” ranging from $2.50 to $46.99 retail, he added.  Before launching the brand’s DTC site in January 2020, Schiavi ensured that Uncle Bud’s CBD was “linked to big national retailers” like Walmart and The Vitamin Shoppe. This was largely for awareness, but also to combat the still challenging digital landscape that exists for hemp and CBD brands. As for the future, Schiavi hopes to expand Uncle Bud’s reach even further as he looks to increase penetration in China and launch in Australia. “We have a strong plan for the next two to three years in terms of making sure that we grow our DTC business, making sure that we grow with the customers, and also expand with new customers," ” said Schiavi.

Uncle Bud's CEO Bruno Schiavi: "We have everything for everybody"

Although growing up in an “organic lifestyle” meant eating “turkey and sprouts” at school instead of tater tots, Jessica Richards, founder of Shen Beauty, benefitted from that "granola" upbringing in Southern California, she said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. It allowed her to narrow in on her future niche of clean beauty. “It was 100% the mission and the proposition of Shen from day one to import products that were not sold in the U.S. -- that my friends, family, everybody always wanted -- and to focus on and only sell organic and natural [products],” said Richards. She opened Shen Beauty in Brooklyn in 2010, when the borough was still a beauty desert of sorts. Although Sephora is now filled with a mix of both heritage and indie beauty brands, at the time, consumers were more focused on “brand recognition and buying from marketing” in magazines, Richards said. To appeal to the brand-focused consumer audience at the time, she brought Bobbi Brown products into the store, which “made people more confident and OK with shopping brands that they had never heard of before.” Simultaneously, “[customers] also wanted the heavy payoff of the pigments that mainly come from non-clean beauty brands," said Richards. "That was the catalyst for me in realizing that people want organic, natural, clean -- whatever you call it. But they [also] want results.” Moving forward, while Richards doesn’t have an interest in opening up any more store locations in New York, she does plan to open brick-and-mortar in California and to launch a “full site rebuild” next year. Regardless of whether customers shop on the East Coast, the West Coast or online, Richards plans to maintain a focus on “showcasing products and giving the consumer the understanding of what it will do to their skin and how it will help them." “[It’s] an interesting thing to see a woman feel better about themselves after buying products," said Richards.

Shen Beauty’s Jessica Richards: Let the consumer choose 'to shop toxic, organic or clean'

Like many of the hopeful young adults before him, Sean Garrette, an esthetician and influencer, moved to New York with his sights set on a career in fashion. But when his dreams to be a fashion editor or stylist didn’t work out, he leaned into the beauty space, which he found to be “more inclusive." “You didn't have to be super-skinny or super-rich to fit into the beauty space. It was all about your creativity, your knowledge and your skill,” said Garrette on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Since then, Garrette has amassed 158,000 cumulative followers across Instagram and Twitter, an esthetician license, and partnerships with some of the top skin-care brands like Paula’s Choice and Fenty -- the latter branched into the skin-care world in June 2020. His journey to becoming an esthetician, and later a ‘skinfluencer’, was fueled by his need to fill a “void” that he saw within the skin-care industry. “There weren’t many people talking about skin care that was specifically focused on treating Black skin and skin of color,” said Garrette, who began to work as an esthetician in a spa in 2016 before quitting three years later to start his own business. Garrette began to build his social media presence by posting facials and clients' before-and-afters, and contributing to the skin-care conversation online. In the “Last 3-4 years, skin care has taken over the conversation,” said Garrette. He attributed the success of his business, in part, to social media and hopes to tap back into the tangible aspect of his business with spa pop-ups in the near future. Regardless of where his career takes him, whether that be on social media or in the spa, “My focus and passion will always be treating black skin and treating people of color,” said Garrette. “We're still marginalized in the health and beauty spaces.”

Skinfluencer Sean Garrette: 'My focus and passion is treating people of color'

Although QVC may have set the blueprint for modern-day livestream shopping, which was accelerated by the pandemic, the televised home shopping network was not exempt from the challenges of the past year. “[QVC] still had its own complexities for the way that we thought about the business, the way that our associates were engaged and [the way that our] team members were engaged in connecting with customers,” said Brian Beitler, CMO of QVC U.S.A and HSN. QVC was also tasked with adapting to changes in customer preferences, as the demand for categories outside of the beauty and wellness spaces increased. “We saw those categories that were built around creating a sanctuary at home take off,” said Beitler. “That included everything from [investing in] home decor to bringing your gym inside your home, so that you could take care of your body and your health, to evolving even your beauty routines and rituals." In conjunction with evolving alongside consumers, Beitler said that the unique experience that QVC provides its customers is also crucial for its success. “People [were] looking to be able to get the kind of experience and education that they might have been getting in a retail experience,” said Beitler. “We're set up very much from a video commerce perspective to give you some of that social experience that happens in the store." And while QVC and HSN may be “the original innovator[s] in this space,” there is still room for the network to grow, especially as competition ensues between different livestream shopping platforms, said Beitler. “We've been working over the last several years to innovate our storytelling in these spaces and to access more of the places that we tell these stories,” said Beitler. Since launching on Roku in 2013, QVC has recently expanded its accessibility to devices like Amazon Fire TV and Comcast Flex.

QVC and HSN CMO Brian Beitler: Video commerce is becoming the new standard

The Glossy Beauty Podcast is the newest podcast from Glossy. Each 30-minute episode features candid conversations about how today’s trends, such as CBD and self-care, are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. With a unique assortment of guests, The Glossy Beauty Podcast provides its listeners with a variety of insights and approaches to these categories, which are experiencing explosive growth. From new retail strategies on beauty floors, to the importance of filtering skincare products through crystals, this show sets out to help listeners understand everything that is going on today, and prepare for what will show up in their feeds tomorrow.

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The Glossy Beauty Podcast

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