My thoughts on Glossier x Sephora 👀
Plus, interviews with Saie Beauty CEO, Polina Pompliano, and more.
Hi all,
Happy Sunday! I’m in Sacramento sitting in a coffee shop downtown and wondering how it’s possible we’re already in March of 2023. My head’s still stuck somewhere around early 2021 when I was living my best West Hollywood life a few months before I accidentally stumbled into the whole TikTok fame thing, but so it goes.
Next week I’ll be at SXSW to moderate a panel on the future of search and I’ll be spending the bulk of this upcoming week researching TikTok vs. Google for search and the rise of ChatGPT. If you’re around, give me a shout!
I’ve gotten a lot of requests to cover the Glossier x Sephora rollout recently after having built a considerable chunk of my following dissecting their playbook and missteps so here’s my latest take on what this all means for the brand.
Glossier is officially no longer a maverick upstart — it’s an established household name on a mission to build a 100+ year legacy that is finally regaining its footing after a few years of growing pains and controversy. According to an oft-cited statistic from their leadership team, 1 in 2 of every 18-34 year old woman in the US is aware of the brand, and despite much commentary predicting impending doom (including some predictions by yours truly, which turned out to be prescient) the powerful halo effect from its first 5 years of building unrivaled cultural relevance still lingers, fueling continued demand, aspiration, and opportunity.
Not only does it linger — it has created such pent up demand at Sephora that “Glossier” was reportedly one of the main search queries on the retailer’s website despite the fact that up until now the purveyor of cult brow products refused to sell via third-party retail with a few brand activation exceptions.
But the almost decade-old Glossier is not only no longer in its startup era — in the parlance of TikTok, it has risen from the tumult of its Flop Era. With a seasoned new CEO, a restructuring to chart towards profitability, and a long overdue reprioritization of beauty over tech, Glossier is now officially in its ✨Scaling Era.✨
It’s here to prove the naysayers wrong (but don’t call it a “comeback” as they say) and if I had to make any predictions about the company’s performance over the next few years I’d think twice before betting against them.
Product-market fit through cult favorite beauty products used by everyone from Beyoncé to Gigi Hadid? Check. ✅ Doubling down on its DNA as a CPG brand vs. chasing tech ambitions possibly fueled by the $200M+ in venture capital it raised? Check. ✅ 9 years of painstakingly cultivating and obsessively protecting a brand that has become nearly mythical in stature so they can finally relinquish *some* control by partnering with a retailer like Sephora without worrying about brand dilution? Check. ✅ And a plan to turn on the spigots of revenue through an increase in its cadence of product launches and a partnership with the preeminent prestige beauty retailer known for their ability to forge true partnership with their brands? Check. ✅
The future is looking bright and dare I say ~dewy~ for this DTC darling.
But that’s not to say long lines outside of its new flagship store or sales on Sephora.com are a guarantee that sustained growth will come easy. Competition remains fierce (see my thoughts on the “unbundling” of Glossier), headwinds for digitally native consumer brands are plenty, and customers have voiced some disillusionment with the products in recent years.
Not to mention the important (and underappreciated) difference between being a company that generates hundreds of millions in profitable revenue — and one that can deliver on its lofty promises to top-tier Silicon Valley investors for whom anything less than outcomes in the multiple billions of dollars is typically a disappointment.
So the path ahead isn’t smooth but it’s promising. And for all intents and purposes, Glossier has achieved what few brands have been able to: it’s a cult brand with true scale that has emerged from that mid-2010s part of the frothy low interest rate period of yesteryear in which Silicon Valley and consumer packaged goods were in their honeymoon phase before the stark realities of acquisition costs and scalability set in. To say Glossier emerged unscathed from this phase would be a stretch, but few of the initial industry darlings have made it out at all, so by any rational measure of success Glossier has accomplished something genuinely exceptional.
And speaking of brands making moves in beauty — this week on the podcast, I interviewed Laney Crowell, Founder of Saie. If you’ve kept up with my TikTok, you know that I’m a big fan of the brand and the strategies behind its rapid growth since launching in 2019.
To learn how Laney manifested her dream investors and to get creator advice from the man who managed Jake Paul as well as interviewing tips from the writer who’s crafted profiles on icons like Melinda Gates and Simone Biles, keep reading :)
As always, my DMs are open to feedback and suggestions from you. Full episodes of Due Diligence are available on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Love,
Dulma
THE BOTTOM LINE
The three things from each episode that you need to know.
Kevin Gould — How Creators Can Build Lasting Success
On The Most Common Mistakes Creators Make: At this moment in time, there’s a lot of heat around talent as they rise, and it’s easy to think that it will stay like this forever — it will not. Creators need to be mentally prepared for that. And they need to stick by the community they built up. “You can’t lose touch with your audience as you grow.”
On How to Turn 15 Minutes of Fame Into Long-Term Wealth: License, endorse, or own (and don’t go for the third just because that’s what everyone’s doing). Starting your own company as a creator is trendy, and lots of influencers are jumping right in — without the commitment that it takes. There’s a “very small, finite amount of creators who can stand up their own brand.” Licensing and endorsement opportunities are often the more straightforward paths to building wealth.
On His Best Piece of Advice for Creators, Brand-Builders, and Founders: “You can’t shortcut time. Sometimes [with creators], you can get hyper growth, but ultimately, that stops.” Especially for consumer brands, you generally need to dedicate a 7-10 year window for what you want to build.
This is just the bottom line from my conversation with Kevin. For the rest of our discussion, listen to the podcast episode here.
Polina M. Pompliano — Profiling the World’s Most Interesting People, Interviewing Tips, and Building Community
On Pursuing Perfection: Building in public means you’re open to criticism and feedback, but that’s what makes you better at your craft. You have no idea what’s interesting until you put it out there and people tell you. “If I waited [to share anything] until there was this perfect iteration of The Profile, I would have never launched it. Because how do you [alone] know if something is perfect?”
On Building a Successful Community: Overserve your audience, build goodwill, and create moments of serendipity. Organizing an initiative like global meetups for readers of The Profile wasn’t scalable, and didn’t result in increased page views or subscribers. But “there’s an element of serendipity it brought to a community that might have never met. It’s not just me talking to my readers, it’s my readers talking to each other.”
On What Makes a Great Profile Writer and Interviewer: Really, really listen. Instead of thinking about your next question, listen to their answer — that’s where you might find the most interesting thing. Great profile writers “capture the tiny things that we all do differently but are hard to see unless you’re very closely observing the person.”
This is just the bottom line from my conversation with Polina. For the rest of our discussion, listen to the podcast episode here.
Laney Crowell — CEO of Saie Beauty on Manifesting Your Dream Investors and Making an Impact
On What She Wishes She Knew While Fundraising: Understand equity. For every person or fund you take investment from, you’re giving up a piece of your company. “I didn’t realize how much of my business I was giving up. If you can forgo fundraising until after you launch, you’re gonna be able to hold onto so much more of your business.”
On Faking it Until You Make it: “Whenever I feel anxious or nervous about something, I act and feel and think as if it’s already happened.” Worrying or thinking negatively about what’s ahead will only attract what you don’t want. It’s a simple mental switch — but makes all the difference — to act as if you’ve already achieved the thing you’re working towards.
On Following Your Gut Instinct: Whether it’s an opportunity or project you can’t stop thinking about, or someone who you know would be the ideal investor in your company — chase the opportunities that feel right. “That gut instinct — that strong pull that I think we all feel. The more we practice it, the stronger it gets.”
This is just the bottom line from my conversation with Laney. For the rest of our discussion, listen to the podcast episode here.
THE LEARNING FUND
Invest in your business knowledge.
This Week: Capitalization (Cap) Tables
In addition to helping founders and investors make informed decisions about the company, cap tables — which present a startup’s ownership breakdown — are especially critical when it comes to raising money and working with investors. They can be used to infer how incentivized startup founders are, how well they are able to attract and retain talent (depending on the size of the employee option pool), provide details on who the other investors are and how much of the company they own, and help investors decide how much to invest. When people refer to “being on the cap table” it’s typically shorthand for an investor or team member having some stake in the company.
For founders, cap tables are essential to managing the stock option pool for employees, ensuring smooth financial audits, and overall in maintaining strong relationships with their most important stakeholders.
SMALL INVESTMENTS, HIGH RETURNS
A little support goes a long way.
Goody is my go-to for sending small “thank you” gifts to people I work with or anyone who provides particularly generous help and advice. It’s a delightful app to use and makes it super easy to find fun, quality gifts from a trendy and curated assortment, from Bombas socks to Levain cookies to Brooklinen goods. And the best part is you just need the recipient’s email or phone number to send them something with almost no friction. Goody, a startup that launched in 2020, has raised over $30M in a bid to make gifting easy & delightful at scale — and for me personally, it’s done the trick.
PSST —If you have any fun apps, products, or tools you’ve been loving that you’d like to nominate for a shoutout in the newsletter, fill out the form below! Bonus points if they’re female/POC-founded.