Glossier (pronounced Gloss-ee-ay) is getting a lot of traction lately. It’s not hard to imagine why. Their branding is on fleek, and it’s as though their products are the collaborative work of Millennials worldwide. Clever names like “Boy Brow” and “Stretch Concealer” give an instant facelift to any Instagram feed. And at one time, Glossier had a waiting list of over 10,000 girls waiting for a lipstick. What’s the reason behind Glossier’s wild success?
Glossier is community-based beauty
“Community” usually conjures up ideas of small-town familiarity.
And that’s exactly what Glossier has, except their small-town population is made up of over 600k Instagram followers, and over one million monthly visits to the beauty site that started it all, Into the Gloss.
Yet even with hundreds of thousands of devoted fans, Glossier’s success secret has never been their vast following, but the followers themselves. When founder and CEO, Emily Weiss, left her job as a styling assistant for Vogue and started her wildly successful beauty site, Into the Gloss, she wanted to do things differently.
The Glossier platform is where women can speak, instead of being spoken down to. From the very beginning, Glossier girls had a chance to say what they wanted their ideal beauty products to be.
And Weiss listened.
Glossier is hard to get your hands on
Up until very recently, you couldn’t purchase any of Glossier’s trendy beauty bits, unless you lived in the U.S., or had an opportunity to visit Glossier’s pop-up location in New York City. And with these products popping up all over social media feeds, it only raised the Glossier fever even more.
Scarcity is a powerful marketing strategy, but it was an accidental, rather than conniving, one. Even now, as Glossier is preparing to open a flagship store in London, and to ship outside of the U.S. to countries like Canada and France, they’re still struggling to meet growing demands.
Is Glossier worth the hype?
Apart from Glossier’s large social media following, and the perfect branding, what about the products themselves?
Are they any good? Apart from being a cruelty-free brand, they strive to create a balanced product, using both natural and chemical ingredients to create a simple product.
Despite their simplicity and relatively small range of products, Glossier is attracting A-listers, like Miranda Kerr, who used one of their products for her wedding day look. Glamour magazine staff have also given the latest finishing powder, “Wowder” A+ reviews.
London-based beauty influencers, such as Lily Pebbles, The Anna Edit and Estee Lalonde, have all put a good word in for Glossier. Since this beauty brand's success can be credited to the Millennials' obsession with social media, it’s safe to say that Glossier is here to stay.
