How Glossier's perfume saved it from the millennial dustbin
- The beauty brand Glossier has a hit on its hands with its "You" perfume, driven by a viral TikTok.
- Glossier had been a peak millennial direct-to-consumer brand but has recently struggled.
It seemed for a moment like Glossier might be headed the way of skinny jeans or Allbirds — yet another brand aligned with 2010s millennial appeal that lost its relevance.
But the recent success of Glossier's "You" perfume — which isn't new but has been introduced to a new Gen Z audience thanks to a viral TikTok — is helping pull the brand back to life.
The TikTok wasn't part of some big plan from Glossier to get back into the good graces of the younger crowd. It came about organically — just a fan posting about how she loved the scent — and soon, the company noticed sales had jumped by 10 times. It jumped on the trend and amplified it.
Bloomberg has the fascinating story on how Glossier avoided the dustbin of once hot products.
Here's how it happened: First, it was just one TikTok where a young woman talks about how she was stopped on the street by a man asking what scent she was wearing. The video went viral, and Glossier employees woke up to the flood of sales the next day.
A single viral TikTok, in theory, might fade away, but Glossier reacted to the successful viral moment among Gen Z buyers. From Bloomberg:
The other business hurdle was figuring out the logistics of dealing with a big sales spike in one product and estimating how many sales there would be for the upcoming holiday season so it wouldn't run out.
What was so fascinating about this story to me is that Glossier's success has typically been thought of in very conceptual ways: how its packaging and product line hit upon a zeitgeist, its glamourous founder, the aesthetics of cool-girl beauty, and what that all means in some hand-wavy cultural context.
But this is about the nuts and bolts behind what actually makes the company work: the people planning a fast-reaction marketing response and the people who use Excel spreadsheets to estimate the orders at the factory — and how those people are the ones who low-key saved the company this time.
Glossier started in 2014 with just a few skincare items, and its pink packaging and dewy makeup look stirred something deep in the millennial DNA.
The brand, which was initially direct to consumer, exploded, and its founder, Emily Weiss, became a business celebrity. (I highly recommend the book "Glossy" by Marisa Meltzer about the rise of Glossier!) But things started to falter.
In 2022, the company laid off 80 employees and discontinued the ill-fated, sparkly Play makeup line. A Business Insider investigation at the time on Glossier showed a company at a crisis point, hamstrung by its founder's missteps and plans to run its site like a tech company rather than a traditional beauty brand. (Glossier, for instance, wasn't even sold in Sephora until 2023.)
For the record, as a dutiful millennial woman, I own and enjoy several Glossier products (I personally love its mascara). And I've sniffed "You" at Sephora and wasn't super into it — although knowing now it's a Gen Z hit, as an aging millennial who wants to stay cool … I'm considering it.