Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference

TL;DR

Emily Weiss discusses how she recognized the need for a platform to enable women to connect and share their beauty experiences, and how Glossier is reinventing the traditional beauty experience through direct-to-consumer sales and community engagement.

Transcript

I am Aimee Beger from Y Combinator and I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Emily Weiss here thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me so did you see everybody so Emily you founded two brands that have a pretty beautiful symbiotic relationship your first was into the glass which began as a beauty focused blog in 2010 as a side... Read More

Key Insights

• 💄 Into the Gloss and Glossier focus on beauty as an element of personal style, resonating with women and attracting nearly 1.5 million unique visitors every month.
• 💻 Technology has upended the traditional beauty paradigm, giving women more options, democratizing commerce, and allowing them to curate their own lives and beauty routines.
• 📲 Glossier utilizes customer feedback in their product development cycle, encouraging anyone on the team to contribute ideas and opinions through blog posts on Into the Gloss.
• ❓ Glossier listens to their customer's opinions and combines it with their editorial background as beauty editors to make product decisions, using social media and crowd-sourcing to gather feedback.
• 👥 Glossier's direct-to-consumer model allows for a more personalized and direct relationship with customers, making the experience more special and specific to individual needs.
• 💰 Glossier has had significant growth due to its focus on peer-to-peer recommendations, which makes up 79% of their growth.
• 🏢 Glossier plans to reinvent the beauty experience by creating a more experiential retail environment, focusing on hospitality and creating a space for women to connect and support each other.
• 🌍 Glossier aims to scale their relationship with customers by allowing each woman to have her own level of involvement, and giving them the choice to engage with the brand in various ways.

Questions & Answers

Q: Why did Emily Weiss recognize the need for a platform for women to share their beauty experiences?

Emily Weiss recognized that beauty is a great way for women to connect and share with each other, and technology has made it easier to facilitate those conversations and develop a voice in the beauty community.

Q: How does Glossier use customer feedback in its product development cycle?

Glossier allows anyone on their team to propose new product ideas and gather customer opinions through blog posts on Into The Gloss. They combine customer feedback with their own editorial background to make informed decisions about product development.

Q: Has Glossier ever followed customer opinions that turned out to be incorrect?

According to Emily Weiss, beauty is subjective, so there is no right or wrong when it comes to product preferences. However, Glossier has had to make tough calls, such as using a jar instead of a pump for their priming moisturizer rich, which turned out to be a best-selling product despite initial customer opinions.

Q: How does Glossier plan on scaling its relationship with customers?

Glossier aims to provide a personalized experience for each customer by maintaining a direct one-to-one connection through their direct-to-consumer model. They focus on community efforts and continue to make high-quality products that customers love, relying more on word-of-mouth recommendations than paid marketing.

Q: How does Emily Weiss envision the future of the beauty industry?

Emily Weiss is excited about the power dynamics in the beauty industry shifting, with customers having more options and access to great information. She believes that women now have the opportunity to be the authors of their own lives when it comes to beauty and beyond.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Emily Weiss founded Into The Gloss and Glossier as platforms for women to share their personal beauty routines and product recommendations.

• Glossier's success is driven by its direct-to-consumer model and the ability to gather customer feedback for product development.

• Glossier is redefining the beauty experience by creating a strong relationship with its customers through community engagement and personalized interactions.