Can Glossier disrupt beauty retail a second time?

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Move over millennial pink; Glossier’s gone red.

At the beauty brand’s new pop-up, ‘Realms of You’, which opens this weekend in London and is the first to be dedicated to its You fragrance franchise in Europe, the vibrant red of the perfume bottle’s cap appears everywhere, from the sign outside the store to the sumptuous curtains and anthurium flowers that greet visitors the moment they arrive and throughout each room.

Located on the high foot traffic area of Regent Street, next to the flagships of Aesop, Michael Kors and On Running, Glossier’s new space is sure to draw queues. The UK is Glossier’s second largest market, and its permanent Covent Garden store is “a crown jewel” as the brand’s best performing store globally, having hosted over 650,000 visitors in 2023, up 35 per cent on the previous year, according to CEO Kyle Leahy. “The UK is an incredibly important market as Glossier now opens the aperture into global expansion in the years ahead.”

Glossier set out to make the London pop-up different from its past retail stores. Instead of airy, brightly lit rooms where the full product range would have typically been promoted, the space is divided into multiple rooms that have a moodier feel and are separated by red walls and curtains. Consumers won’t know what to expect in each room until they move into the next, making it feel like an unpredictable maze with surprises to be discovered. Leahy describes it as an Alice in Wonderland and David Lynch-inspired experience.

There are two rooms designed to stimulate multiple senses beyond just olfactory. One room encourages users to watch a creative film using hyper-sensorial, ASMR-like techniques — an increasingly popular tactic for luxury brands enticing consumers back to physical retail — that highlights the different formats of Glossier You. Another has rows of booths with mysterious red gloved hands, protruding from curtains, each of which have different personalities, such as sassy or informative, that interact with visitors before handing them a red rose.

Glossier is in much different standing now than it was when it first ventured into retail. Last year, it laid off one-third of employees. The brand’s decision to move away from more “real” marketing and hire celebrity ambassador Olivia Rodrigo was seen as a departure from what differentiated it. And, this year, Glossier made its debut in Sephora stores, with updated formulas of some of its most popular products, including its Balm Dot Com lip balms. Customers have been disgruntled since, with many posting on social media to “mourn” their old bottles of You in its original formula.

Leahy, who joined Glossier last June, taking over from prolific founder Emily Weiss (who is now executive chairwoman), has outlined her ambitions to reignite growth through the brand’s own retail experiences and broader omnichannel activities, as well as finding ways to keep the community flywheel spinning.

Next year will be a continuation of that, she tells Vogue Business prior to arriving in London, where she and Weiss will be later this week to celebrate the pop-up launch. The strategy, which includes ongoing product innovation and positioning itself for international expansion, comes off the back of a recent management overhaul (Glossier now has an all-female executive team) and a pivot away from its direct-to-consumer origins with the launch at Sephora.

In 2021, Glossier raised $83 million in a deal that valued the company at $1.8 billion, putting its total funding to date at $266 million. The brand is expected to bring in retail sales of $275 million this year, according to media reports (Glossier says it does not comment on speculation). Leahy declined to comment on profitability or annual sales growth, but says that it’s on track to surpass $100 million in retail sales at Sephora in its first year, exceeding its forecasts by 50-70 per cent.

2023 will be Glossier's “biggest year in history,” according to the brand, with annual sales up 73 per cent year-on-year.

Finding its way back

Glossier’s You franchise first launched as a fragrance in 2017, so why is the brand celebrating it now, six years later? New channels, such as TikTok, have helped to drive “incredible momentum” and boost sales over the past year, says Leahy. The perfume went viral after user @bitcoin_papi shared a video talking about the intense reactions she’d received from strangers when wearing the fragrance. To date, the post has been viewed by 14 million users and liked over 559,800 times.

As Glossier moves away from a DTC to omnichannel strategy, that has also helped to get the product in front of new audiences. A Glossier You purchase has been placed every 39 seconds since it began trending on TikTok, and it is currently the number one fragrance in Sephora, according to Leahy.

The rise of Glossier You (formulated to be a personal skin-scent enhancer, so it smells different on everyone) as well as recent launches like the Stretch Fluid Foundation (which builds on the popularity of its existing Stretch Balm Concealer and consists of 89 per cent skincare ingredients) harks back to Glossier’s roots promoting natural, uncomplicated beauty — a novel idea when Weiss launched the company in 2014 in an industry obsessed with perfection. Taglines such as “You look good” and “Skin first, makeup second, smile always” resonated with Glossier’s online community, who drove sales for products like the Boy Brow eyebrow gel-pomade and Milky Jelly Cleanser.

Some critics questioned whether Glossier was losing its way following the decision in 2019 to launch Play, a line of bold colour cosmetics, which quietly shut down after less than a year, and the 2022 appointment Rodrigo in a surprise pivot away from its typical community-led marketing approach. As the brand switched out its product formulas, people questioned whether or not it did so specifically to earn the “Clean at Sephora” label, which the retailer allocates to products that meet a set of formulation requirements, such as being made without aluminium salts, animal fats and oils, and plastic microbeads. A You deodorant launched next without baking soda, water, exfoliating acids or aluminium (an ingredient commonly used as an antiperspirant).

Leahy denies those claims. “We did not make any changes to our product formulations specific to entering Sephora,” she says. The ongoing focus is on creating “intuitive, enjoyable and efficacious products that are really easy to use”, she adds.

A return to its roots could help to give Glossier a boost among consumers, who today have so much choice in a crowded market. Glossier You not only embodies the brand’s core values; it also represents what younger shoppers look for in fragrance, sas Leahy. “I think what the next generation are looking for in fragrance is a symbol of their authentic selves and individuality.”

A multi-sensorial experience

Sephora, while a powerful channel, is just one leg of Glossier’s omnichannel strategy. The brand remains focused on opening its own retail stores (it counts 11 to date, including those in Washington DC, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Brooklyn that opened last year), and also recently replatformed and redesigned its website, to improve the online shopping experience. A month ago, the brand launched global shipping and now delivers to 180 countries worldwide. “We still do the vast majority of sales through our own channels,” says Leahy. “We see incredible demand across markets and the next phase of growth will be international expansion.”

While Weiss once viewed Glossier as not just a beauty company but also a disruptive technology company, Leahy says she views the brand as a beauty products-meets-experiences company. “We always think about the interconnectivity through the products that we make and the experiences that we uniquely innovate. Realms of You brings that immersive 360-degree experience forward.”

As it enters its tenth year in business, 2024 will be defining for Glossier, Leahy says. She remains focused on the core vision, which is building a multi-generational, multi-category brand that can last a hundred years. “Experiences like [Realms of You] where we can really immerse the customer in the world, the feeling, the mood, but also through products that we invest in, will be a continued growth driver for us into the future.”

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