Glossier: a beauty brand that started as a conversation

Case study · Marketing 465 · Community vs. Audience

Glossier grew from a blog audience into a community that shaped its products and spread the word, and its later struggles show that a community has to be earned again as it changes.

The situation

Emily Weiss launched the beauty blog Into The Gloss in September 2010. Its signature feature was interviews with women about the products in their bathrooms. By 2017, TechCrunch reported the site drew 1.5 million unique visitors a month.

In October 2014, Weiss used the blog to announce Glossier and its first four products. The company did not start with a product and go looking for an audience. It started with an audience that was already talking, and it kept listening.

The challenge

Beauty was dominated by big brands that sold through department stores and spent heavily on advertising and celebrity faces. The relationship ran one way: the brand talked and the customer bought.

Glossier’s bet was that an audience can become a community. An audience reads and watches. A community talks to each other, gives feedback and feels some ownership. The challenge was to build a company that treated readers as collaborators while still running a real business.

What they did

The clearest example is Milky Jelly Cleanser. In January 2015, Into The Gloss asked readers to describe their dream face wash. The team said the post drew almost 400 comments. They recorded and consolidated the answers and sent them to their chemist. Words readers used, like “mild,” “glowy” and “moist,” became, in the team’s words, “the checklist for everything we wanted in the final product.” The cleanser launched in January 2016.

Other practices reinforced the same idea.

• Weiss told TechCrunch in 2017, “I read every single comment that comes in,” and said that in product development “we ask and listen to our customer about what she wants.”
• Customers photographed their purchases and Glossier reposted them on its own Instagram. Weiss called the products “pieces of content” and compared them to crayons for customers.
• A Slack group of a few hundred top customers organized meet-ups and lunches on their own (TechCrunch, 2017).
• Glossier planned to turn loyal customers into formal representatives. Weiss called it a referral program “on steroids” and said, “It comes back to making everyone an influencer.”

What happened

Weiss said in 2017 that friend-of-a-friend recommendations drove 90% of the prior year’s sales, compared with paid marketing. That is a company claim, but it shows where Glossier believed its growth came from. When Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn helped lead a 2019 investment, she credited Glossier’s word-of-mouth acquisition and community building.

• $100 million in revenue in 2018 (TechCrunch, 2019).
• $1.2 billion valuation in March 2019 (TechCrunch).
• $1.8 billion valuation after an $80 million round in July 2021 (Retail Brew, citing The Business of Fashion).

Why it worked

Glossier gave its community real roles. Readers did not just comment. Their words showed up in a product spec. Their photos showed up on the brand’s feed. Top customers had a space to meet each other. Weiss said the brand writes to customers as if “we’re writing text messages to a friend.” That tone, plus visible proof that feedback mattered, is why the brand felt like a friend.

It also cost less. When customers recruit customers, a brand can spend less on paid media. That is the business case for community, not just the feel-good case.

Where it gets complicated

Community cuts both ways. In 2019, fans used Glossier’s own Instagram comments to criticize its pink bubble-wrap pouches as wasteful, and the company responded with a pledge and a limited-packaging option (Dazed). In August 2020, former retail employees calling themselves “Outta the Gloss” published an open letter alleging racism from customers and managers in stores. Glossier apologized publicly (Fortune). A brand that invites people in also invites their criticism, in public.

Communities also age and move on. Weiss stepped down as CEO in May 2022. In March 2026, Cosmetics Business reported that Glossier planned to close nine of its 12 stores, cut jobs and narrow its product range under a new CEO, and noted that its original millennial customer had aged and changed. The community that built the brand in 2014 is not automatically the community that will carry it forward.

The marketing principle

An audience watches. A community participates. Glossier shows how much a brand can gain when customers help shape products and spread the word, and how much it owes them in return. Brands built with community at the core have a natural advantage, but only as long as they keep listening, keep giving members real roles and keep earning trust as the community changes.

Sources

• Milky Jelly Cleanser, Into The Gloss (2016)
• How to build a brand in 2017: Tips from Glossier CEO Emily Weiss, TechCrunch (2017)
• Glossier triples valuation, enters unicorn club with $100M round, TechCrunch (2019)
• Glossier scores $80 million funding round, Retail Brew (2021)
• Former Glossier employees say they faced racism at the brand’s retail stores, Fortune (2020)
• Analysis: Why Glossier is in need of a major reset, and can it succeed?, Cosmetics Business (2026)

---

Back to Community vs. Audience · All case studies

Brand names, images and trademarks belong to their owners and appear here for educational purposes only.