The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Amanda Chantal Bacon is often ranked alongside Gwyneth Paltrow when it comes to seminal figures in wellness. But that's not to say she's fully comfortable with it. "I try to stay out of the fray of what the wellness world has become, which is odd, because I'm smack dab in the center of it, and have probably contributed to a lot of everything that I shy away from now," Chantal Bacon said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast."And so what can I do -- I do feel like I was there and helped create a bit of this beast -- to really stay true to the mission and to spread that to my team?"Talking about it in earnest is one way to address the problem. Chantal Bacon also seeks to live out her values with Moon Juice, which opened its first shop in Venice, California in 2011 and carries products that offer more than what you'll find in just about any grocery store or gas station these days."What would be the difference between a Moon Juice with some type of pasteurization on it in a cute juice shop, and a juice for maybe $2.99 in a grocery store that's the same blend and organic?" she asked. "It would really be the difference of a label. So that didn't feel worthwhile. Herbs, though, that was something that when you scale it, it makes sense. Your costs go down. You're able to reach more people. Supplements are actually something that you need scale for safety reasons alone."In the latest Glossy Beauty podcast, Chantal Bacon discussed Moon Juice's focus on research over marketing ("people are always surprised to find out that we really don't spend any money on marketing"), the company's use of Instagram and its move into beauty and skincare products.

Zoë Foster Blake, the founder and chief creative office of DTC-first company Go-To Skin Care, has found many opposing marketing dynamics between her home country of Australia compared to the U.S."In Australia, I say that we're not really taking customers from other brands, but instead, we're creating new skin-care customers," said Foster Blake. "These are women who have never tried a sheet mask or a face oil, or worn SPF. And we're saying, 'Hey, it's really easy, and it can be fun.'" Though coming to the U.S. has been more challenging given the competitive landscape, via its sole partnership with Sephora, 80% of the brand's U.S. sales are now through retail versus online. In Australia, it is an even split.Foster Blake joined beauty editor Priya Rao to talk about the brand's potential for venture funding ("In Australia, it doesn't really happen," she said), the originality of the DTC model and the outsized importance of influencers in the U.S.

"At a certain age, every woman colors their hair," said Amy Errett on this week's Glossy Beauty Podcast. As the CEO and founder of the rapidly growing hair-color brand Madison Reed, she would know. Concretely, "every woman" means a market of about 90 million customers coloring their hair "on an average cadence of about seven weeks."Madison Reed first came to market as a DTC brand to be an at-home solution for color, but Errett could not stop before expanding to the salon market, too. The company announced last month that it would begin franchising in order to make its nearly 60 shades available to more consumers across the country."Our highest penetration just basically follows the U.S. population. Urban metros have the highest population, but we reach out to about a 150-mile radius around any of those cities and suburbs in a big way," said Errett.Errett joined beauty editor Priya Rao to talk about how she's breaking the stigma around coloring at home, how she's catering to a younger customer and what tough words of advice she would give to a competitor.

This week, beauty editor Priya Rao sits down with Bobbi Brown, the CEO of Beauty Evolution and founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. Brown discusses her career's origin story in unwittingly creating the "no makeup" makeup look, her stint as Yahoo's beauty editor ("which was amazing for someone who doesn't know how to type"), and why 2016 was high time for her to leave Estée Lauder Companies.

This week, beauty editor Priya Rao sits down with Anne Maza, the co-owner and vice president of sales and marketing at hair brand Olivia Garden. Maza discusses evolving a 52-year-old brand for today's customer, walking the line between the professional and consumer hair segments, and protecting the company's top quality products against counterfeits.

This week, beauty editor Priya Rao sits down with Katia Beauchamp, CEO and co-founder of Birchbox, the company that sends monthly packages with a few samples of beauty products -- after that, it's up to the user to determine whether they want to take their relationship with this or that swatch of makeup to the next level. Katia discusses establishing Birchbox's appeal to the everyday beauty consumer, its recent partnership with Walgreens, and its plans for international expansion.

This week, beauty editor Priya Rao sits down with Nicola Kilner, CEO and co-founder of Deciem, umbrella company to cult-favorite skin-care brand The Ordinary. Kilner discusses why demand should lead product supply, why fashion retailers make good partners and how Deciem is faring following founder Brandon Truaxe’s removal from the company and subsequent death early this year. 

In two short years, direct-to-consumer company Hims launched a sister brand Hers, raised nearly $200 million in funding and became one of few digital-only unicorns. And it all started with taking medicines like finasteride and sildenafil (better known by brand names Propecia and Viagra, respectively), and repositioning them with the end customer in mind. On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Hilary Coles, cofounder and vice president of product development at Hims and Hers, sits down with Glossy's Priya Rao to discuss whether telemedicine is wellness, how Hims and Hers have evolved their out-of-the-box engagement efforts, and what the company is planning for retail.

Michael Bumgarner was not an avid beauty consumer before launching his CBD skin-care brand Cannuka in 2017, but he did have a history in rural farming that led him to see the power of cannabis. "Because of my background in farming, I got really interested in industrial hemp, and I wanted to create a brand that was very much approachable to the canna-curious consumer," he said. "Looking at the cannabis industry, we saw a big gap in products being developed specifically for that consumer, and so we looked at it as an opportunity to reintroduce cannabis in a different way." Shortly after the Farm Bill passed in December 2018, Cannuka ramped up distribution in nearly all Ulta stores, as well as at Free People, Anthropologie, Riley Rose and Neiman Marcus. On this week’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Bumgarner sits down with Glossy’s Priya Rao to discuss why betting on a direct-to-consumer strategy was not viable, why retailers are taking a risk on cannabis and how making a splash in skin care will open the door for cannabis wellness products and ingestibles. 

When beauty influencer and content creator Jackie Aina got her start on YouTube over a decade ago, her very new, public persona wasn't something she necessarily wanted to shout from the roof tops. "If you were a YouTuber in 2009 you were a weirdo," she said. "People were like, 'You're literally talking to yourself' and you're recording the process, so it wasn't something that I was like, 'Oh guys, look what I'm doing.' Clearly, that has changed today as Aina has a 5 million-plus social following across platforms. Her take on beatuy extends to culture, which is why some of the most talked about brands in beauty, like Too Faced and Anastasia Beverly Hills, have come knocking on her door. On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Aina sits down with Glossy's Priya Rao to discuss developing her social voice, the business of being an influencer and yes, the Kardashians.