Summary of Glossy By Marisa Meltzer: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of Glossy By Marisa Meltzer: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier

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Glossier, a beauty startup, revolutionized the industry with its sophisticated branding and unique influencer marketing. The company taught a generation of business leaders how to talk to Millennial and Gen Z customers and build a cult following online. Emily Weiss, a former Teen Vogue "superintern" and beauty blogger, was at the center of the story. Marisa Meltzer's Glossy explores the company's culture, fundraising, product launches, and unconventional hiring practices, revealing the inner workings of the company and the story of Weiss herself. The book is a gripping portrait of one of the most important business leaders of her generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Sep 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223001829

Willie M. Joseph

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The Crosby

Emily Weiss, the billion-dollar makeup company, has made a significant impact on the beauty industry by introducing intangible products alongside skincare and makeup. The brand, which launched in 2014, has become a millennial and Gen Z brand that launched on Instagram before its first products. Weiss is one of the most visionary and consequential business leaders of her generation, having gained an ignominious start in the public eye while working as an intern at Teen Vogue.

Weiss founded the beauty blog Into the Gloss in 2010, which had more than 200,000 unique visitors per month by May 2016. She didn't build Glossier to be acquired by a beauty monolith like Estée Lauder; she wanted to become the beauty version of Nike. As of July 2021, Glossier was valued at $1.8 billion.

Despite being compared to household names like LeBron James, Barbara Walters, Mary Kay Ash, and Steve Jobs, Weiss was a recessive CEO. She views her privacy as a kind of political stance, as women are hungry for more role models and know more about women who have achieved what they want in their careers. Weiss's collection of books in her living room includes books about Elizabeth Holmes, Ray Dalio, Angela Duckworth, Small Fry, The Everything Store, Powerhouse, Sophia Amoruso's Nasty Galaxy, StrengthsFinder 2.0, The Innovator's Dilemma, Mindset, Originals, Imagine It Forward, Sensemaking, A Mind of Your Own, and The Secret Language of Relationships.

Weiss's success is attributed to her ability to create products and create a sense of power and mystique within the beauty industry. Her privacy and curiosity have generated more curiosity about her life than any other CEO.

In 2019, Glossier CEO, Yves Weiss, was exploring her legacy and the need for her own story to be told. She had encountered a gender disparity in start-up stories about female-led companies, with few biographies about founders of beauty companies born in the early twentieth century like Estée Lauder or self-help books like Sandberg's Lean In. The gender imbalance was also evident in who writes books about gures in business, with a sea of men.

The author, who has been reporting on beauty for nearly two decades, had a warmly professional relationship with Weiss. They had a brief text exchange about writing a business book together, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed progress. The author decided to write about Weiss's story and started working on a book idea.

During an interview in October 2022, Weiss asked not to record the conversation, as she didn't entirely agree with the book's direction or that it should exist at all. She did not enjoy having her professional life put under a microscope, and there were rumors she was taking a dicult maternity leave and feeling lonely in Los Angeles.

Weiss had an alarm set for when she had to go back to her room upstairs to nurse her daughter. The author hopes to create a balanced view of Weiss and her company without sugarcoating her achievements.

The author discusses the decision to write a book about Emily Weiss, the founder of Glossier, a beauty brand that has had a significant impact on the industry. Weiss, a skilled operator, was known for her ability to stir up old adolescent insecurities and delight customers. However, the author believes that Weiss was underestimating herself and her company, as Glossier's influence far exceeds beauty. The company was at the center of various issues that defined the era, such as racial reckoning, the labor movement, pandemic shutdowns, supply chain problems, and female founders falling from grace.

Weiss is the only public-facing girlbosses of the 2010s who founded a scalable, billion-dollar company at the age of twenty-ve. Despite not attending business school and barely holding more than an assistant job, she survived while leaders of brands like the Wing, Away, Reformation, and Renery29 resigned or were replaced amid scrutiny of their business practices.

The author is also fascinated by Glossier's impact on the beauty industry, which generates more than $500 billion globally every year and is predicted to reach $800 billion sometime this decade. In the United States, we spend more on beauty than any other country in the world, and six of the twelve richest selfmade women under the age of forty made their fortunes at least partially in beauty.

The author's questions include whether Weiss is a business genius or a well-connected rich girl, how Glossier cultivated unprecedented brand loyalty, and whether the company scaled too fast.

PART 1

THE SUPERINTERN

1

Emily Weiss, a high school student from Connecticut, grew up in a predominantly white town with a wealthiest per capita income. She was an entrepreneurial girl who bred guppies and had a lot of pets as a kid. Her parents, Kevin and Nancy Weiss, were gold benefactors of the Wilton High School yearbook, and her mother stayed home to raise Emily and her brother, Austin.