Rooibos cosmetics

Ritual founder and CEO Kat Schneider knows that winning the female supplement consumer requires taking big bets and big swings.  “When I started the company and I was fundraising. … I was told pregnancy was ‘niche’, postpartum was ‘niche’, perimenopause was ‘niche,’” Schneider told Glossy. “This was a decade plus ago. Now, women's health has never been hotter.” Ritual launched direct-to-consumer i...

What if new product development didn’t have to be so complicated and expensive?  NIOD, the second brand from Estée Lauder-owned Deciem, entered Sephora in August with an NPD tactic borrowed from tech companies like Apple. “NIOD is all about high science and high tech, and then bringing it to the consumer in as simple of a way as possible,” Amy Bi, vp of global brand at Deceim, told Glossy. “It's v...

Over the past week, the internet has been ablaze discussing the beauty industry’s biggest controversy of the year. From social media to global news outlets, everyone is talking about something that’s been dubbed "eye patch gate." Around September 17, several beauty brands, including Fenty Beauty, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty, began to tease the release of products that appeared to be almost identic...

What does it take to thrive within the notoriously competitive world of Sephora?  In many ways, Ilia Beauty is a case study in success in America’s biggest specialty beauty retailer. The brand has thrived within Sephora for a decade and makes the retailer’s No. 1 mascara, and Ilia founder Sasha Plavsic helped to architect the industry-leading "Clean at Sephora" program.  “Going into Sephora was re...

What does it take to win Allure’s Best of Beauty awards? In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Allure editor-in-chief Jessica Cruel sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the ins and outs of its prestigious beauty awards program, including how beauty and wellness brands can better appeal to her team of editors.  Launched in 1996, five years after the first issue of Allure hit newsst...

Helmed for the past six years by veteran beauty executive Mary van Praag, 25-year-old mass beauty mainstay Milani Cosmetics is in the midst of meteoric growth. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, van Praag sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to discuss Milani’s growth engine, including the tactics and retail partnerships she’s betting on to reach $500 million in annual sales in the next...

CPG disruptors have entered just about every legacy category over the past few years in hopes of capturing bored consumers looking for more interesting everyday products.  We’ve seen this play out across dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and mouth wash, supplements, sunscreen, and, most recently, the allergy aisle.  “We did a ton of consumer work up front, probably too much, pulling research reports, d...

There’s an interesting tension happening in the beauty industry today around makeup.  Last year, consumer beauty publications and industry executives heralded 2026 as the year bold, maximalist makeup would return. Top publications predicted a shift away from the persistent "clean girl aesthetic" that entered the zeitgeist around 2021 toward bolder, brighter makeup. Meanwhile, executives from Sepho...

Midi Health is betting on topical skin care and body care as it diversifies its telehealth offerings to capture more women. “Women in midlife go through amazing changes with their hormones, … [and] our skin care needs actually change over time with our hormone evolution,” Dr. Kathleen Jordan, MD, chief science officer of Midi Health, told Glossy. “I usually talk about [this care expansion] as ‘hor...

Behind every great in-person beauty or wellness event is an invisible team of insiders that has engineered the gathering for maximum impact.  Bilal Kaiser, the founder and principal of Agency Guacamole, is one of those insiders. Kaiser and his team have produced events for leading retailers and brands like Olive Young, NYX, Therabody, Matrix, Redken, Ole Henriksen, Evereden and many more.  Kaiser...

Have you ever wondered how awards show beauty partnerships come together to create big, splashy red carpet moments that seem to reverberate across social media for weeks or months? Award season partnerships are big business for everyone involved: the celebrity, who may be fulfilling, or courting, a spokesperson deal; beauty and lifestyle brands, which are often promoting a new product or simply se...

As competition in the beauty industry heats up, leaders are looking for new ways to stand out.  “I've worked in beauty for 24 years now, and I don't think I've ever seen it more competitive than it is right now,” Amy Liu, CEO and founder of Tower28, told Glossy. “Maybe in five more years, I'll say that again. Who knows, right? But it feels like we are at a real peak right now, and a bubble of sort...

The beauty industry disruptor that brought clean beauty into the mainstream is back with a shiny new brand concept.  Gregg Renfrew, the entrepreneur behind Beautycounter and Counter, is launching her third beauty brand on September 1 in an effort to reach consumers ages 14 to 30.   The brand is called Beecee and, in a lot of ways, is an iteration of now-defunct Beautycounter. The line will launch...

To discuss what makes a successful retail pop-up, Glossy is joined by three powerhouse executives in today’s roundtable episode: Jacquelin Barrett, Patrick Ta Beauty svp of marketing; Matte Projects president Neda Whitney; and Michelle Lee, chief brand officer at Front Row Group, fractional CMO of Landing International and former editor-in-chief of Allure magazine. 

It’s tough to compete with Supergoop, the sunscreen startup that entered the market in 2006 and quickly became the industry darling before selling to private equity firm Blackstone in 2021. In many ways, the company created the modern sunscreen playbook by marketing it as skin care, not sun care.  “[Supergoop started] with the mission of really transforming the SPF category, so that people wouldn'...

Cindy Gustafson has checked off a laundry list of accomplishments during her first 18 months as CEO of Nutrafol.  This includes an app launch designed to improve retention and a product release tailored to reach one of its smallest customer demographics in men over 50. These rollouts happened while she led the team toward double-digit growth during 2025, her first full year as CEO, on a path to so...

How are beauty and wellness business leaders actually using AI today?  That was the question posed to three longtime industry executives on stage during Glossy’s annual E-Commerce Summit in Miami Beach earlier this month — and the answers may surprise you.  For example, Jenna Manula Linares, vp of digital marketing and TikTok Shop at Tarte Cosmetics, has recently added 15-minute team check-ins at...

Daniel Landver is the head of UTA's creators product group — a role most people may not even realize exists. While his job keeps him behind the scenes, Landver is behind some of the buzziest brand launches of the past decade. Think: Patrick Starrr's One/Size, Alex Cooper's Unwell (beverages), Mikayla Nogueira's POV Beauty and Alix Earle's recently launched Reale Actives, to name a few. Much has ch...

Artificial intelligence is the undisputed main character of 2026, showing up everywhere from the wedding industry to perfume creation. But even while AI’s place in society remains contentious — in the buzzy “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” AI is a bigger antagonist than Miranda Priestly — beauty brands and retailers are rushing to adopt AI into their platforms. That includes two of beauty’s major player...

Over the past three years, L'Oréal Group has been quietly assembling the perfect team, ingredient, product and marketing rollout for its next big skin-care category: longevity.  Helmed by veteran L'Oréal Group executive Vania Lacascade, a doctor of pharmacy and MBA who has spent more than 15 years with the conglomerate, the first longevity skin-care range dropped on May 1 under the Lancôme brand. ...

On Sunday, Amazon wrapped up its fourth-annual Summer Beauty Event. Over two weeks, Amazon tempted shoppers with discounts of up to 50% on everything from makeup to vitamins. Even prior to the sale, the retailer did not seem to have trouble courting the beauty consumer. According to data from e-commerce agency Front Row, Amazon cleared $8 billion in U.S. beauty revenue in the first quarter of 2026...

What is PDRN? You've probably seen the four letters on serum bottles, sheet masks and even lip balms — or heard them on TikTok. PDRN stands for polydeoxyribonucleotide and typically refers to a DNA fragment that's often, but not always, derived from salmon sperm and most commonly found in K-Beauty. Of course, on social media, PDRN has an obvious shock value to it, which has led to an onslaught of...

L’Oréal Paris is betting on “The Devil Wears Prada 2” through an official partnership that spans TV ads, OOH advertising, social campaigns, consumer eventing and product placement in the film. L’Oréal officially announced the partnership in March through a commercial that debuted during the Oscars, which drew more than 17 million viewers this year. “It was a huge, huge success and [created] huge b...