The biggest business lesson from Emily Weiss is that a genuine audience, built through listening and honest conversation, is worth more than any product idea on its own. She spent four years running a beauty blog before launching Glossier, proving that understanding real customer behaviour must come before you manufacture anything to sell.
Emily Weiss is the founder of Glossier, the beauty brand that grew out of her blog Into The Gloss. She began her career as an intern and assistant at Ralph Lauren, W magazine, Teen Vogue and Vogue, and started Into The Gloss in 2010 as a side project documenting how real women approached beauty and skincare. That blog became the research engine for Glossier, which launched in 2014 and went on to be valued at over a billion dollars. Her career offers a rare, well documented case study in building a brand from audience insight through to scale, setbacks and leadership change.
Build the audience before you build the product
Before Glossier existed, Emily Weiss spent years running Into The Gloss, a blog she started in 2010 while working full time in the fashion industry. It grew steadily through interviews and features about beauty routines, eventually attracting hundreds of thousands of readers. Weiss did not set out with a product in mind. She set out to understand what women actually did with their skin, their makeup bags and their bathroom shelves, and to build a readership around that honest curiosity. By the time Glossier launched in 2014, she already had a warm audience who trusted her judgement and had been part of the conversation for years. The blog was never just content marketing. It was the foundation of everything that followed, giving her a direct line to customer thinking long before she had a single product to sell.
How to apply this to your business: Start documenting and engaging with your target market before you have anything to sell them. Use blogs, newsletters or social channels to learn what people actually want, not simply to promote a future launch.
Let customers co-create the product
One of the most distinctive features of Glossier’s early growth was how openly it built products in public. Weiss and her team read through thousands of comments on Into The Gloss and later on Glossier’s own channels, using them as informal research. Reader requests for a simple, natural looking brow product fed directly into the development of Boy Brow, which became one of the brand’s most recognisable bestsellers. The same approach shaped the Milky Jelly Cleanser and other early launches, with the company running surveys and treating customer feedback as a genuine input into formulation and packaging decisions, not just a marketing afterthought. This gave customers a sense of ownership over the brand, because many of them could see their own suggestions reflected in what eventually shipped.
How to apply this to your business: Build structured ways to collect and act on customer feedback before and during product development, whether through surveys, comment threads or direct outreach. Show customers when their input has shaped a real decision, since this builds loyalty far beyond a normal transaction.
Identify a genuine gap rather than chase trends
Through years of interviewing women for Into The Gloss, Weiss noticed a consistent pattern. The beauty industry was enormous, yet much of it focused on transformation and heavy coverage rather than on the daily reality of skincare and light, natural looking makeup. She used this insight to define Glossier’s founding philosophy of skin first, makeup second, and launched in 2014 with a tightly curated range of just a handful of products rather than a sprawling catalogue. This was a deliberate contrast to the crowded, trend chasing shelves of traditional beauty retailers. The gap she identified was not a flashy new ingredient or a celebrity endorsement, it was a shift in attitude, and that shift became the entire basis of the brand’s positioning.
How to apply this to your business: Look for gaps defined by attitude and behaviour, not just missing features or price points. Launch with a small, focused range that clearly answers the specific need you have identified, rather than trying to compete on breadth from day one.
Make your brand a community, not just a store
Glossier became known almost as much for its visual identity and social presence as for its products. The millennial pink packaging, the bubble wrap pouches customers photographed and shared, and the heavy use of Instagram to feature real customers rather than only professional models, all encouraged people to see themselves as part of something rather than simply as buyers. Weiss and her team actively featured user generated content, ran a paid representative programme in some markets, and encouraged a tone of voice that felt like a conversation between friends rather than a corporate broadcast. This turned ordinary customers into unpaid advocates who created content and word of mouth that no advertising budget could easily replicate.
How to apply this to your business: Design touchpoints, from packaging to social content, that customers genuinely want to share without being asked. Treat your most engaged customers as partners in telling your story, and give them visible ways to participate rather than only ways to purchase.
Use direct to consumer to own the customer relationship
When Glossier launched, it sold exclusively through its own website rather than through department stores or third party retailers, which was the traditional route for beauty brands at the time. This meant the company controlled pricing, presentation and, crucially, the data on who its customers were and how they behaved. That direct relationship let Weiss and her team test, learn and adjust quickly, rather than depending on retail buyers or losing visibility into customer behaviour once a product left the warehouse. It also meant the brand’s identity stayed consistent, since there was no need to compromise on packaging or shelf presentation to fit someone else’s store format.
How to apply this to your business: Where possible, build and grow your primary sales channel yourself before handing distribution to third parties. Owning that direct relationship gives you the data and flexibility to make faster, better informed decisions as you grow.
Choose investors who understand long-term brand building
Glossier’s funding history shows a clear pattern of relationships with investors who specialised in consumer brands rather than pure technology plays. Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures was an early backer and remained closely involved across multiple funding rounds, alongside firms such as Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, as the company grew towards a valuation of over a billion dollars by 2019. These were not investors looking for a fast flip, they were people with a track record of understanding how consumer trust and brand equity compound slowly over years rather than months. That alignment mattered when Glossier needed patient support to build out its community first model rather than being pushed towards short term retail expansion or discounting.
How to apply this to your business: When raising capital, prioritise investors who have genuine experience and patience with your specific type of business model. Aligned expectations about timelines and growth strategy matter as much as the size of the cheque.
Be willing to cut what is not working
Not every decision at Glossier succeeded. In 2019 the company launched Glossier Play, a separate colour cosmetics sub-brand aimed at more expressive, bold makeup. It was discontinued within roughly a year after a weaker than expected response from customers, and resources were shifted back towards the core skincare and everyday makeup range that had built the brand’s reputation. Rather than persisting with a struggling line for the sake of appearances, the company made a fairly quick, public decision to step back from it. This kind of course correction is often harder for founders to make than the original launch decision, because it means publicly admitting a bet did not pay off.
How to apply this to your business: Set clear, honest checkpoints for new product lines and be prepared to discontinue anything that is not meeting them, even if it was a high profile launch. Redirecting resources quickly towards your strongest offerings protects both your brand and your team’s focus.
Expand into physical retail deliberately
Although Glossier began as a purely online business, it later opened a series of showrooms and pop up spaces in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and London. These were not designed as conventional beauty counters. They functioned as branded, photo friendly spaces where the online community could meet in person, try products, and generate more social content, and they reportedly produced strong revenue relative to their size in the early years. The rollout was measured rather than rapid, reflecting a view that physical retail should extend the community experience rather than simply replicate a shopping mall counter.
How to apply this to your business: If you move from online to physical spaces, design them as extensions of your brand experience and community rather than as standard retail units. Expand deliberately, testing formats in a small number of locations before committing to a wider rollout.
Accept when the company needs new leadership
In 2022, Glossier made significant layoffs, cutting around a third of its corporate staff and closing its owned retail stores as part of a wider restructuring in response to financial pressures across the direct to consumer sector. In 2023, Weiss stepped down as chief executive, moving into the role of executive chairwoman, while Kyle Leahy, who had previously served as president, became chief executive. This was a significant and public change for a company so closely associated with its founder’s identity and vision. Rather than holding on to the top operating role regardless of circumstances, Weiss shifted towards a role focused more on brand and long term direction, allowing someone else to lead daily operations through a difficult period.
How to apply this to your business: Recognise the difference between the skills that build a brand and the skills that run a maturing operation at scale. Be honest with yourself and your board about which role best suits your strengths as the company grows, and be willing to bring in leadership better suited to the next stage.
Learn publicly from setbacks
Glossier faced public criticism over workplace culture in 2020, during a period when many companies across industries were being scrutinised over how they treated staff, particularly around diversity and internal communication. The company responded with public statements and commitments to change, and this scrutiny continued to shape decisions in the years that followed, including the restructuring in 2022. Rather than only issuing carefully worded statements, the company made structural changes to leadership and operations over time. Handling this kind of criticism in the open, rather than quietly, is part of what has kept Glossier’s brand relationship with its community intact despite a difficult few years.
How to apply this to your business: When your business faces public criticism, respond with real structural change rather than only public relations language. Treat setbacks as information about where your culture or operations need genuine reform, not simply a reputational problem to manage.
Stay close to product details even at scale
Glossier’s most successful products, including Boy Brow and Balm Dotcom, succeeded partly because of close attention to texture, ease of use and packaging design, details that came from Weiss’s own deep involvement in early product decisions. This hands-on approach to formulation and presentation, informed directly by years of interviewing women about their actual routines through Into The Gloss, gave the products a level of usability that competitors sometimes lacked. As the company grew and hired specialist teams, maintaining this attentiveness to small details remained part of the brand’s identity, distinguishing it from larger, more process-driven beauty companies.
How to apply this to your business: As you scale and delegate more decisions to specialist teams, keep a direct channel back to the founding insight and quality standards that made your product distinctive in the first place. Do not let attention to product detail become someone else’s job entirely, even once you have a larger team.
Frequently asked questions
What is Emily Weiss best known for?
Emily Weiss is best known for founding Into The Gloss, a beauty blog she started in 2010, and later Glossier, the beauty brand she launched in 2014 that grew out of the audience and insight built through the blog. She served as Glossier’s chief executive for most of its growth before stepping into an executive chairwoman role in 2023.
How did Emily Weiss build Glossier from a blog?
She used Into The Gloss as a long running research project, interviewing women about their skincare and beauty routines through a feature called Top Shelf, and reading extensive reader feedback. This gave her direct insight into what people actually wanted from beauty products, which she used to shape Glossier’s initial product range and skin first philosophy.
Why did Glossier move away from a pure direct to consumer model?
Glossier began by selling exclusively through its own website, but over time it opened showrooms in several cities to give customers a physical way to experience the brand. It later closed some owned retail locations during a period of restructuring in 2022, reflecting the wider financial pressures faced by many direct to consumer companies at that time.
Did Emily Weiss stay involved with Glossier after stepping down as chief executive?
Yes. When Kyle Leahy became chief executive in 2023, Weiss moved into the role of executive chairwoman rather than leaving the company entirely. This allowed her to remain connected to brand direction and long term strategy while stepping back from day to day operational leadership.
What can small business owners learn from Glossier’s setbacks as well as its successes?
Glossier’s experience with discontinuing Glossier Play, handling public criticism over workplace culture, and going through a significant restructuring shows that even well funded, well known brands make mistakes and face real pressure. The consistent lesson is to respond to setbacks with honest, structural changes rather than only public statements, and to be willing to change course or leadership when the evidence calls for it.
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