Rooibos cosmetics

Biossance president Catherine Gore has always considered skin care as medically significant, and believes customers will be more inclined to share that thinking as coronavirus lockdowns continue around the world. "Our skin is our largest organ, and it's also our first line of defense against outside aggressors," Gore said on the latest Glossy Beauty podcast. Education is a big part of Biossance's marketing strategy and value to customers. One of Biossance's central ingredients for skin care, for instance, is squalane, which it derives biochemically from sugar cane -- the larger cosmetics industry sourced a similar squalene (with an e) from a not-so-vegan source: shark liver. That makes a big difference for the typical customer who has more time to do her research, according to Gore: "What's actually driving her is a curiosity to do better for her own skin and the planet and to make better choices," she said.

Korean-based and -inspired beauty companies expanded rapidly in the U.S. and globally in the last few years, but AmorePacific turned to e-commerce sooner than others, a saving grace in this coronavirus climate. "E-commerce was already very top of mind for us. This just sped that up. Right now, our penetration of our own brand dot coms has already doubled for year to date," Jessica Hanson, the company's U.S. president and general manager said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. " In the U.S., Amorepacific sells its portfolio brands Amorepacific, Laneige, Sulwhasoo, Innisfree, Mamonde, Primera and IOPE. The company closed all 10 of its brick-and-mortar Innisfree stores in the U.S. on March 17, the same day as Sephora, where five of its brands are sold. And though the pandemic has halted those retail sales, Hanson said that customer loyalty is strong enough to keep sales afloat, especially on the domestic front. "The biggest piece of the luxury business has been in that traveler. And that's what is lost right now," Hanson said. "The level of travel is just not happening anywhere in the globe. But domestic sales have not shifted."

Beautycounter isn't your typical beauty brand. Given its network of roughly 50,000 independent consultants marketing and selling its products, company founder and CEO Gregg Renfrew feels "an enormous sense of responsibility to make sure that we are operationally sound," she said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "I say it's both our opportunity and our responsibility right now," she said of the company's place amid the current coronavirus' outbreak. "Because it may be just a three-month, short term gig for them." But for others, she added, it could be a way to "continue to pay their mortgages, their rent, when other things have dried up." Renfrew said Beautycounter has seen a rise in younger consultants joining as a way not just to make money, but to find community in a time of frequent isolation. Overall, she thinks the pandemic will amplify the advantage of direct-to-consumer businesses like hers. "I think the wholesalers in general are in a lot of trouble right now. I hope some of them weather the storm. I think some of them will not, unfortunately," she said.

RéVive Skincare CEO Elana Drell-Szyfer has been in the beauty industry long enough to weather past global crises. "I've lived through them all," she said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, in reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. But this is her first time at a smaller, independently-owned company. Drell-Szyfer was at L'Oréal and Estée Lauder Companies, respectively, during those past challenges. "I think the measures are the same, you just feel them much more acutely, probably because your resources are much more constrained and the effects are much more immediate," Drell-Szyfer said of Covid-19's impact on RéVive RéVive felt the effects of the pandemic early, because of its large customer base in China -- the company expanded to Tmall, Little Red Book and Taobao last year, and 15-30% of its customers in the U.S. are actually Chinese tourists. "Even before the virus spread to the West, we were going to re-forecast our year based on things that were happening in China," Drell-Szyfer said. "And then of course March hit." The company is adapting much the way every sector is: by taking previously offline efforts into the virtual world, from deskside promotions (where the company representatives present products to customers, influencers and reporters where they work) to meetings with retailers. "I don't think it's been a hindrance to communication at all," Drell-Szyfer said. Despite the concept of luxury "revenge buying" RéVive is still anticipating lean times, projecting no domestic demand in April and May. "Domestically, we're essentially expecting no orders -- or that's how we're projecting our own cash flows, from a very conservative perspective," she said.

Sylvie Chantecaille has no illusions about the commercial difficulties presented by the coronavirus pandemic. "Basically our business went dead overnight," she said of her eponymous prestige beauty company, Chantecaille, where she serves as president and CEO. And whereas her industry competitors anticipate a run back to stores once the world-spanning practices of social distancing soften, Chantecaille isn't so sure. "Before we could figure out 'Neiman's will buy this, Nordstrom will buy that, Saks will buy this.' Now we have no idea. We don't know what they're going to buy, if they can buy, if there's anyone to buy. And if they're going to be there!" Chantecaille said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. She added that the beauty business is now focusing on survival, and assumed that its revenue forecast for 2020 is down 30% (the company doubled its retail sales in 2018 to $200 million, and has grown since then, according to Chantecaille). At the same time, the company's forced focus on e-commerce has seen that side of the business mushroom. "We did last month the amount of money we do in six months normally," Chantecaille said. That focus concerns Asian markets in particular, where the company is working with KOLs in China and doing direct videos on Taobao. Chantecaille talked about how she considers Amazon "the death of retail," her ideas for Chantecaille's future product direction and how people want to wear makeup even just for video calls.

Like many entrepreneurs, hair colorist Josh Wood has had to change how he does business in the midst of the pandemic. "We have no salon operations at the moment, but boy oh boy, the DTC has gone crazy," Wood said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast, regarding product sales. Wood founded Josh Wood Colour a year and a half ago, after 30 years of working as a hair colorist and 20 as the owner of a salon in London. The company has transitioned its hair stylists and colorists to instead head up video consultations and live chats, and it soon plans to publish tutorials on finding the right hair color product and how to apply it at home -- which was always a big part of Josh Wood Colour's business. "It's only through DTC that I can really have direct communication," said Wood. Overall, Wood said the pandemic is "really giving me and the team great creativity and great bandwidth to be able to really think how we can best support our person at home with every element of what they need." Wood joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to talk about the market gap he saw before starting his own color line, the emotional value of keeping to a beauty regime even while in isolation and his huge respect for competitor Madison Reed.

BeautyBio founder and CEO Jamie O'Banion describes part of her job as "always thinking through worst-case scenario and planning for it." With the coronavirus pandemic overtaking consumers' health and simultaneously slowing down the U.S. and global economy, that scenario is now -- with one respite, according to O'Banion. "Most beauty brands are really seeing this hockey-stick revenue uptick, the back half of the year," she said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "So from a timing perspective, I think as an industry we're all grateful. If there was a time for this to happen -- which god forbid, we would never wish it upon anyone -- I think we're all really grateful that this is the time of year." BeautyBio, which sells skin care products and a micro-needling tool, had been looking to expand considerably into brick-and-mortar this year. That included plans for 50 Sephora stores this month with the the remaining 400 Sephora stores in the U.S. by fall. It had also planned launches in Australia through Mecca and Sephora’s Southeast Asia in Q2. Now O'Banion sees her company's omnichannel sales capability as a strength against the pandemic's devastating blow to physical retail. "That was a really important initiative to me in the last five years. My number one goal was making sure that we were never totally exposed by single-channel distribution," she said. "And I think [now] it's going to help brands really pause and think about their overall distribution strategy." In the episode, O'Banion also talked about the importance of keeping the company's team together and the test of marketing and messaging in today's climate.

Sasha Plavsic is pretty clear that she picked the right beauty category to start a business in. "The clean category, as they're calling it now, is on an extreme growth pattern," Plavsic said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast, calling it "one of the fastest categories in Sephora, if not the market in general." Plavsic founded Ilia Beauty in 2011, a few years after turning 30 and returning to her hometown of Vancouver. "I had left the guy, left the job and was really searching for something new," Plavsic said. What started as a brand that sold mostly lip products soon became a hot newcomer for complexion and eye products. Though known for those products, lip sales went from 60% to 15% of Ilia Beauty's business after building on other clean product categories." That's not uncommon if you're growing in complexion, but what really took over for us was our mascara," Plavsic said. Ilia Beauty is now carried across approximately 200 doors at Sephora, Plavsic said. Seeking to fuel continued growth, the company raised Series B funding in January, not long after its first funding round in 2018. This episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast was recorded prior to the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesperson for Ilia Beauty said in a statement that the company is "monitoring the situation daily regarding the coronavirus and will adjust accordingly as needed with our forecasts. Like many businesses in our position we believe it is very early still, and too soon to make an estimated guess on what to expect. We have not yet re-evaluated our 2020 revenue projections." With ample funds for retail, marketing and product, Plavsic talked about what the white space she originally felt in the market and the broader demographic for clean beauty products.

When Kim Kardashian 'broke the internet' by way of a photo shoot in Paper magazine, Drew Elliott was its chief creative officer. Now a few months into his new role as global creative director at MAC Cosmetics, he sees continuity between the two roles. "If pop culture could be a brand of cosmetics, it would be MAC. So to me, it was just a new kind of editorial challenge," Elliott said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Indeed the Estée Lauder Companies-owned brand has its own ways of working with influencers and driving shoppers' attention in the age of social media. Those include its latest collaboration with "Euphoria" star Alexa Demie and campaign ideas that come from influencers themselves. Elliott talked about how the world of influencers is changing, MAC's mission and of course, that notorious photo shoot.

Lilli Gordon knew she wanted to start a beauty company before even settling on its place in the market. "I was studying the landscape because I had this crazy idea that I wanted to start my own beauty company. You know, me and thousands of other ladies and men," Gordon said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. The niche that skin care brand First Aid Beauty would come to fill in 2009 was to sit between "very clinical" companies like Eucerin and Aquaphor and the prestige offerings that seemed to only address one thing: "the challenge of aging," Gordon said. Gordon launched First Aid Beauty in 2009 with Sephora and QVC. Sans conglomerate support, the company's products are also now widely available at Ulta stores in the U.S., too. International expansion was made possible, Gordon said, by FAB's $250 million acquisition by Procter & Gamble in 2018. Ahead, Gordon talks about beauty's white spaces, the reason she wanted to sell her company and the difference between Gen-Z and millennial shoppers.