How Glossier Hacked Social Media to Build A Cult-Like Following Former blogger Emily Weiss had a hunch: If she could translate women's real needs into products, she could build a beauty company unlike any other.
By Alyssa Giacobbe •
This story appears in the September 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
This article is included in Entrepreneur Voices on Growth Hacking, a new book containing insights from more than 20 contributors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders.
On a Thursday afternoon in late spring, 32-year-old Glossier founder and CEO Emily Weiss rides the elevator to the penthouse level of her company's downtown Manhattan headquarters. She's a thoroughly millennial girlboss in jeans, sneakers and a royal blue sweatshirt with weiss embroidered in small white script. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and for the founder of a beauty products company, she wears notably little makeup -- just some mascara and possibly a swipe of Glossier Lip Gloss, a recent product release touted online as having a "fuzzy doe-foot applicator."
A former teen model, Weiss is beautiful but not intimidating, either by nature or by design (probably a little of both). After all, her company's popularity is directly related to her ability to cultivate a feeling of friendship with and among her customers. Just enough relatability is key.
