Rooibos cosmetics

Today, "digital" is practically synonymous with fashion and beauty. But to boast an advanced knowledge of the digital world in the early aughts is what Alessio Rossi, evp of Shiseido and Clé de Peau Beauté and head of digital transformation for the Americas at Shiseido, considers "serendipitous." "I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, so that today, people can consider me a veter...

With roles at Target, The Home Depot, Family Dollar and now Ulta Beauty, Kecia Steelman, Ulta Beauty chief operating officer, can legitimately affirm, “Retail is in my DNA." “Life has [come] full circle because I’m leading the Ulta Beauty at Target partnership,” said Steelman, who spearheaded the collaboration, on this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast. (Steelman worked at Target between 1993 and 2005...

When Carolyn Bojanowski, svp and gm of e-commerce at Sephora, joined the retailer team in 2005, it was an opportunity to pay homage to her childhood as the daughter of a candy buyer. In her mind, Sephora was the "candy store of beauty." "Sephora has always been committed to the digital experience," said Bojanowski on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast. And that e-commerce experience had to go into o...

Clean or effective?  It's a question that the beauty industry has tried to tackle for the last decade. For Tula, a probiotic-based, skin-care brand, it has attempted to combine its doctor-founded, science-backed approach with the appeal of being a modern, clean brand,said Savannah Sachs, Tula CEO, on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast.  Sachs joined Tula in 2018 and has seen the brand through the ra...

True Botanicals chief marketing officer Rebecca Boston‘s work in the fashion industry led her to beauty, and then, specifically, clean skin care. Boston was motivated to take the True Botanicals role after working at Rihanna's Fenty Beauty because of the opportunity for a “branding refresh." “There wasn't a clean beauty brand that made a woman feel herself, feel sensual,” said Boston on the latest...

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, dif...

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...

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 bec...

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 fragr...

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...

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...

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...

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 malar...

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...

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 embrac...

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...

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...

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 yo...

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 c...

Despite taking a self-proclaimed non-traditional career path, Julian Reis, founder and CEO of beauty incubator SuperOrdinary, credits his initial experience in the conventional finance industry as the catalyst to understanding the potential of the e-commerce beauty market.  “E-commerce 1.0 was just beginning,” said Reis, who, while working in finance in Singapore in 2013, successfully facilitated...

From pouring over Revlon magazine ads as a young girl to becoming the first female CEO of the company in 2018, Debra Perelman personifies the “emotional connection” consumers have with beauty. “A big focus of mine has always been, ‘How do you utilize these iconic brands and products in order to really leverage this emotional connection that we can have with the consumer?'” said Perelman on the Glo...

Gillian Gorman Round may have spent her career in big beauty, from L'Oréal to Gucci Group to most recently Revlon, but she couldn't turn down the opportunity to become CEO at Kjaer Weis, even in the middle of a pandemic. Like her former boss Revlon CEO Debbie Perelman, Gorman Round is one of the few female CEOs in the beauty industry today. She joined the organic and refillable makeup brand in Dec...

If the idea of Walmart as a beauty hub seems new, then the expansion of the nation’s leading grocer’s beauty e-commerce business by Musab Balbale may be equally disruptive. Balbale, the merchandising vp of omnichannel beauty at Walmart, has worked within consumer retail for the past 20 years and most recently has transitioned from wellness to the beauty space. This transition, which he said is “ex...

From growing up on a cattle ranch to having his face grace the shelves of Sephora, skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro, 25, has taken the beauty world by storm due to his honest yet informative persona.  “When you're brand new to this world of skin care, you ask, ‘What do all these things mean?’” said Yarbro, on the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. He himself had wondered just that at 18, w...

It was Ben Bennett’s first job working at Limited Brands that showed him the power of working on a portfolio of businesses. Early in his career, Bennett, the founder and CEO of beauty brand incubator The Center, worked on 14 different apparel businesses at Limited Brands, but it was his time helping to conceive Bath & Body Works that got him hooked on beauty. “I’d never considered developing f...