See Glossier founder Emily Weiss's wild ride from Teen Vogue 'super intern' to head of the billion-dollar beauty brand — and what's next now that she's no longer CEO

Emily Weiss was the CEO of Glossier, a beauty company that started online and found success in selling makeup directly to customers through Instagram.

Weiss moved to New York at 18 to study at New York University, majoring in studio art. It was at this point that she made her first foray into the fashion and beauty realm by taking up a three-day-a-week internship at Teen Vogue during her studies.

During this time, Weiss was featured in the US TV show The Hills, where she worked alongside Lauren Conrad at Teen Vogue.

She was referred to as the "Super Intern" at Teen Vogue in the series.

After graduating in 2007, Weiss worked briefly for W magazine before moving to Vogue, where she worked as a fashion assistant.

Source: Fashionista

While working as a fashion assistant, Weiss set up her beauty blog, Into The Gloss, spotting a gap in the market for beauty product coverage.

"I was surrounded by so much magic … All these models and makeup [artists]," she said in an interview with Fashionista in 2015.

"That was the inspiration for Into the Gloss, wanting to know more about these women who were so cool and interesting for all these different reasons."

Weiss would candidly interview celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Karlie Kloss about their beauty regimens.

"There's this yearning to connect with other women," she told Insider in 2016.

The blog quickly gained a following among beauty enthusiasts.

These followers commented on posts to share their experiences with various products and make suggestions to other readers.

Weiss decided to leave her job to focus on the blog full-time.

She asked Nick Axelrod, a friend who had also worked in publishing, to become the editorial director.

Weiss re-launched the website and upped the number of posts; overnight traffic to the site tripled.

As the blog scaled up, they started posting three to four times a day.

Product feedback on the blog laid the foundation for what was to come. Weiss was now armed with a wealth of information to create products that were directly tied to what readers wanted.

In 2013, the company raised $2 million in venture capital funding. At the time, Weiss said the funding would be put toward eight to 10 new hires across editorial, tech, and design.

A year later, in 2014, Glossier was born.

Weiss teased the new brand on Instagram about four weeks before launch. Within the first week of selling the new products, she had more than 18,000 followers.

Instagram influencers and celebrities spread the message, posting photos of themselves in Glossier swag. Glossier launched with four products: a facial mist, moisturizer, skin tint, and balm. These products were intended to give off a "no-makeup" look.

A month after launching, Glossier raised an additional $8.4 million in venture capital funding.

A key part of Glossier's early success was Weiss' commitment to the brand identity.

"Brand is really, really important. It's kind of everything," she told Insider in 2016.

Glossier has always been known for its signature pink hue, playful marketing voice, and images of diverse women with minimal makeup.

But the most defining part of its business model is its customer feedback system.

The product team previously depended on the user community and feedback to innovate and iterate.

Between 2016 and 2018, the company raised $76 million in two funding rounds.

It opened two stores: a showroom in New York, which transitioned into a permanent flagship store, and a store in Los Angeles.

The company said it surpassed $100 million in annual revenue in 2018, doubling its 2017 numbers. It also acquired a million new customers that year.

At this point, it was selling one of its Boy Brow eyebrow shapers every 32 seconds. This was one of its best-selling products.

In 2019, the company was valued at $1.2 billion after receiving $100 million in funding.

Throughout 2019, Glossier expanded its retail presence by opening pop-up locations in major cities around the US, including inside a selection of Nordstrom stores.

Its stores became an important part of the brand image, and a haven for social media content with their shades of pink decor.

Store associates, known as showroom editors, wondered around in signature pink boiler suits.

In 2020, the tide turned. The COVID-19 pandemic led to store closures, and all of its retail staff were eventually laid off.

Workers started to speak out about working conditions at the company toward the back end of the year.

In an open letter posted on Medium in August 2020, a group of former store workers said that managers had done little to intervene when they reported racially charged incidents with customers.

This echoed conversations Insider had with another group of former Glossier retail workers, who said that employees of color were often discriminated against by managers and customers.

These comments came out in the wake of the George Floyd shooting after Glossier announced that it stood in solidarity against systemic racism. Other startups such as Everlane, Away, and Reformation faced similar claims of problematic work cultures at that time.

Glossier later apologized.

Glossier's color makeup brand, Glossier Play - two years in the making and which launched in 2019 - was quietly discontinued in early 2021.

These products were a departure from its neutral core collection and didn't resonate with customers, who were largely upset about them not being environmentally friendly because of the packaging they were sent out in.

Sales dropped by 26% in 2021, and its Instagram fanbase started to dwindle.

In the background, several execs were worried that the company had lost its way and wasn't focused on its core business of beauty.

Between 2018 and 2021, Weiss was reportedly set on building a digital social-media platform - similar to Instagram or Facebook, where customers could shop and chat with one another.

In early 2022, she admitted that the company had gotten "distracted" from its core business.

At this point, 80 corporate employees, largely from its tech team, were laid off.

Weiss stepped down as CEO in May to become executive chairwoman. Kyle Leahy, formerly the chief commercial officer of Glossier, took on the role of CEO.

Weiss told The New York Times this month that she had a moment of realization in 2021 after reading comments on TikTok about the brand.

"The top three things people were asking us for, loud and clear, were, 'Why aren't you available in Ulta or Sephora? 'Why don't you ship to my country?' and 'Can you please make new products?'" she told The Times.

As of February, all 600 Sephora stores in the US and Canada began selling Glossier products. And according to The Times, we can expect to see new Glossier items being rolled out to the market every four to six weeks.

"We started as a millennial brand," Leahy told The Times. "We were founded as a direct-to-consumer business. We are beyond that. We are bigger than that because we can now resonate with Gen Z."

Glossier now has 10 stores around the US and in London. Its New York flagship opened in Soho earlier this month.