Emily Weiss

Emily Weiss (born March 22, 1985) is an American businesswoman. She is the founder and CEO of the cosmetics company Glossier and the blog Into the Gloss. She was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 list on 2015.[1] In 2019, she was included in Time magazine's "Next 100."[2]

This article is about the American business executive. For the American research chemist, see Emily A. Weiss.
Emily Weiss
Weiss in 2017
Born
Emily Weiss

(1985-03-22) March 22, 1985
NationalityAmerican
EducationNew York University
OccupationFounder and CEO of Glossier
Partner(s)Will Gaybrick

Early life and education

Emily Weiss was raised in Wilton, Connecticut.[3] Her father worked as an executive at Pitney Bowes and her mother stayed at home.[3] In high school, Weiss interned at Ralph Lauren for two summers and briefly had a modeling career.[3][4] While interning at Teen Vogue in college, she appeared on The Hills on a three-episode arc with Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port.[5] Weiss graduated from New York University in 2007 with a degree in studio art.[4] She was a fashion assistant at W Magazine and an on-set styling assistant for Vogue where she assisted Elissa Santisi.[3]

Career

Into the Gloss

Weiss launched Into the Gloss, a blog featuring predominantly interviews with women, in September 2010.[4] She stayed at her day job at Vogue and worked on Into the Gloss in the mornings between the hours of 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.[4] A popular series on the blog is Top Shelf, where subjects are interviewed in their bathrooms and photos of their shelves and medicine cabinets are featured. Previous interviews include Jenna Lyons and Karlie Kloss.[3] By early 2012, the site had more than 200,000 unique visitors per month. By May 2016, the site garnered 1.3 million visitors.[6] After Weiss reached 10 million page views per month and acquired corporate partnerships for the site and a small staff, she quit her job at Vogue to focus on her business ventures full-time.[4]

Glossier

In 2014, Weiss started approaching venture capitalists with ideas for expansion, including a potential Into the Gloss-curated e-commerce platform.[4] Weiss eventually raised $2 million in seed funding, with the help of venture capitalist Kirsten Green, the founder of San Francisco-based Forerunner Ventures. Weiss used this initial investment to hire a small team and launch Glossier.com.[4]

In October 2014, Weiss introduced Glossier's first four products on her Into the Gloss blog and announced the launch of Glossier.com.[4] The Glossier team launched the e-commerce site with an all-purpose balm, a facial mist, a sheer skin tint, and a moisturizer.[7] Six weeks after the first product launch, Glossier announced $8.4 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital. Glossier has since gone through three rounds of funding and raised $186,400,000.[8]

According to Polina Marinova of Fortune, Weiss, "Quietly turned Glossier into one of the most disruptive brands in beauty."[9] She initially pitched the company to 12 firms, with 11 not interested.[10] In February 2018, Weiss released that Glossier had successfully raised an additional $52 million in a Series C round of funding.[11] In March 2019, Weiss announced that Glossier had officially raised $100 million in a Series D round of funding and was valued at $1.2 billion.[12][13] The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Glossier announced at this time that it more than doubled its revenue in 2018, adding over 1 million new customers.[14]

Since its initial launch with four products, Glossier has expanded its product line to include skin serums, masks, shower gel, body lotion, fragrance, lip balms and several other beauty and skincare related items.[15]

Glossier dropped GlossiWEAR on July 17, 2019.[16] They released limited edition products in addition to their original grey Glossier crewneck sweatshirt. They are set to release more GlossiWEAR products in the near future, according to glossier.com.

In early 2019, Glossier added Glossier Play to its product umbrella. The line includes pigmented and metallic makeup products, such as eye shadows and eyeliners. In 2020, the company announced plans to suspend the line's production.[17] Weiss stated that launching a sub-brand was, in hindsight, unnecessary, “The realisation we had was, ‘Huh, we could have just launched more make-up products’.”[17]

Personal life

Weiss is engaged to Will Gaybrick, a senior executive at Stripe.[18][19]

References
  1. O'Connor, Clare. "How Glossier's Emily Weiss Is Using The Internet To Build A Beauty Brand For Generation Instagram". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  2. "TIME 100 Next 2019: Emily Weiss". Time. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  3. Jacobs, Alexandra (2015-03-10). "Emily Weiss: the Beauty Guru for Millennials". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  4. Giacobbe, Alyssa (2017-08-15). "How Glossier Hacked Social Media to Build A Cult-Like Following". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  5. "Fashion Stars You Completely Forgot Cameoed In 'The Hills'". Harper's BAZAAR. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  6. Meltzer, Marisa. "How Emily Weiss's Glossier Grew From Millennial Catnip to Billion-Dollar Juggernaut". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2020-03-31.
  7. Del Russo, Maria. "Your New Favorite Makeup Line Is All About Skin Care". Refinery29. Retrieved 2014-10-06.
  8. "Glossier | Crunchbase". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  9. "Term Sheet -- Wednesday, December 12". Fortune. Retrieved 2020-03-31.
  10. Term Sheet: A Year of Mega-Deals, Fortune
  11. Mandell, Janna. "Glossier Just Got $52 Million In Fresh Capital, Bringing Total Funding To $86 Million". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
  12. Roof, Katie; Chernova, Yuliya (2019-03-19). "Glossier Tops Billion-Dollar Valuation With Latest Funding". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-04-22.
  13. Gross, Elana Lyn (March 19, 2019). "Glossier Raises $100M And Now Has A Billion-Dollar Valuation". Forbes.
  14. Berger, Sarah (20 March 2019). "Glossier: How this 33-year-old turned her beauty blog to a $1 billion brand". CNBC. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
  15. "Beauty inspired by real life". Retrieved 23 October 2019.
  16. Rearick, Lauren (14 July 2019). "Glossier Is Coming for Our Closets with Glossiwear". Allure. Retrieved 1 Feb 2021.
  17. Bridget, March (2020-02-20). "Glossier to pause sub-brand Play". The Business of Fashion. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  18. Leskin, Paige. "Glossier founder Emily Weiss and Stripe executive Will Gaybrick are engaged. Here are 14 other power couples who rule the tech world". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  19. "Glossier Founder Emily Weiss Is Engaged: See Her Gorgeous Ring". PEOPLE.com. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
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