The Glossy Beauty Podcast

“VICs are the driving force of the luxury business,” Sukeena Rao, co-founder of London-based personal shopping firm Luminaire, told Glossy. “They count for a large percentage of global sales with pretty much every brand.”

VICs, or "very important customers," is shorthand in the luxury market for a growing subset of high-end, wealthy shoppers that are “very low key, very off the radar [and] not known to the public,” Rao told Glossy. It’s part of what she calls a shifting market where, 15-20 years ago, the luxury shopper was mostly well-known celebrities or very wealthy public figures. Whereas now, luxury shopping has become more curated and discreet. To wit: The internet calls this "quiet luxury." 

“It’s not always about wearing [a luxury piece] on a red carpet or being shown to the public,” Rao said. “It's done in a much more stealth way.” 

This changing luxury customer also has changing needs. Whereas a high-profile individual or celebrity may not need an introduction to a luxury brand or referral to an in-demand makeup artist or hairstylist, today’s VIC is looking for access to top lifestyle, beauty, wellness, fitness and health brands and experts, as well as the fashion, jewelry and accessory markets. 

On today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Rao shares the ins and outs of this growing demographic, which she reaches through her London-based personal shopping firm, Luminaire. 

“We have a waitlist right now. … [We’re] very selective about new clients, because we never want to under-deliver,” she says. “We do keep people waiting until we really have the capacity to look after them.” 

Rao launched Luminaire in 2022 with co-founder Harriet Quick, a former fashion features director at British Vogue. While billed as personal shopping, the company is more nuanced than that. For around $57,307 (£45,000) per year, clients receive high-touch appointments with Luminaire’s stylists, personalized mood boards, unlimited sourcing and gift procurement, as well as brokerage of just about anything one can desire, from apartments to cars. 

Meanwhile, entry-level membership starts at $6,367 (£5,000) per year and includes recommendations, mood boards, unlimited sourcing, fashion edits and basic access to luxury wardrobe and gift procurement and planning. 

However, Rao told Glossy that beauty, wellness and health products and services are the fastest-growing requests from clients, whether that is a haircut with a celeb stylist, an appointment with a holistic doctor, a masterclass with a renowned makeup artist or a private shopping experience. “If you really drill down on the data, you will see that, for us, beauty and wellness — alongside jewelry, which is a hugely growing category — is leading,” Rao said. 

Rao discusses these topics, as well as her predictions for the future of the luxury industry, in today’s episode. 

With the fragrance industry expected to generate $59.9 billion in 2024, both new and heritage brands are strategizing to differentiate in the growing market. For some, the result is offering niche scents, and for others, it's leveraging communities. For 8-year-old DedCool, a genderless, planet-first and functional approach is what sets it apart, said founder Carina Chaz.

Since launching DedCool in 2016 with a self-investment of $10,000, Chaz has made her brand one to watch. In August 2022, Dedcool expanded to Sephora stores and its e-commerce channels and introduced three new product categories, including air fresheners, candles and laundry detergent. The latter, Chaz told Glossy, now drives 30% of the business.

"The fragrance category has expanded so much, and DedCool was never meant to be a true fragrance brand. We want to speak to fragrance in ways that our competitors aren't speaking to fragrance," Chaz said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Also on the podcast, Chaz shares how she grew DedCool in its early stages and how she has created a brand that appeals to people in different life stages. 

Shontay Lundy is on a mission to disrupt the sun-care space. 

She is the founder of Black Girl Sunscreen, a sunscreen brand she launched in 2016 as an alternative to the many sunscreen formulas that leave a white cast on skin, a problem that’s particularly noticeable on medium and dark complexions. The line was an instant hit and she quickly gained wide distribution at Target, CVS, Ulta Beauty, Walgreens, and Walmart, among other retailers. The brand also sells direct-to-consumer and on Amazon.

In 2019, Lundy launched a children’s line called BGS Kids, which features its own branding and social marketing channels, and just this month, a men’s line called BGS Mens. The latter also has its own branding, to match the matte finish and more masculine scent. 

All of the brands' products range in price from $10-$23 and are formulated to melt seamlessly into all complexions, whether the formula uses a chemical, mineral or hybrid UV filter. They also feature hydrating ingredients like jojoba oil and shea butter, which deliver a dewy, hydrated finish in some formulas. 

But beyond products, Lundy is on a mission to educate Black consumers about the value of sunscreen, in hopes of debunking the myth that people with dark complexions don’t need sunscreen. As we know, the deadliest form of skin cancer, called melanoma, impacts people of all skin tones and ethnic backgrounds. 

Lundy spoke about managing the line’s omnichannel distribution on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. She shares that being in the biggest retailers in the country comes with its own unique set of difficulties. What’s more, Black Girl Sunscreen's success means that resources must be allocated for battling counterfeiters on marketplace sites. She also discusses the brand’s robust out-of-home marketing strategy, which includes billboards celebrating its many campaigns. 

Lisa Guerrera and Emmy Ketcham, co-founders of Experiment, met in 2019 at an event for the Sephora Accelerate program, which Guerrera participated in with her first business.

Together, they soft-launched their skin-care brand in 2020 with a lime-green silicone sheet mask. Since then, the brand has grown to include products including a glycerin-based hydrating serum, a “micro-slugging” oil gel and a lip balm. Its first cleanser will launch in a few weeks.

In April, Experiment announced a $3.3 million seed round, led by Greycroft.

On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, the duo discusses how they launched the company with $8,500, why theirs is a brand for the “nerdy, smart girl" and why science ultimately beat out "clean" beauty.

Chloe Green-Vamos, the vp of global innovation strategy at the Estée Lauder Companies, leads the company's global research and development strategy, innovation portfolio insights and analytics, and enterprise innovation planning. She’s also the chief of staff to Estee Lauder Companies’ chief research, product and innovation officer, Carl Haney.

Green-Vamos represents a new kind of executive role at a company like Estée Lauder — one that heavily relies upon collecting and understanding all types of new and emerging digital and consumer data, as well as the newest forms of media, technology and social media.

On the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Green-Vamos discusses how she betters the company using AI, including a custom AI-powered tool made by Microsoft, and how social listening is driving innovation at ELC. She also breaks down Estée Lauder Companies' reverse mentorship program, which pairs an executive with a Gen-Z or millennial staffer to help the execs better understand new ways young shoppers think about and use technology. 

Sarah Creal got her start in beauty while working at a Clinique counter. But it wasn't long before Creal was working in product development and marketing at major brands including Bobbi Brown, Tom Ford and Prada Beauty. In 2018, she co-founded Victoria Beckham Beauty with the former Spice Girl herself — she was CEO of that company until 2022.

Then, earlier this summer, she debuted Sarah Creal Beauty, designed for luxury shoppers over 40. Sold direct-to-consumer since its launch, the brand is made up of a tight edit of skin-care and color cosmetics products including a concealer, a brightening and hydrating essence, a lip balm and a priming eye cream.

Next, on September 3, it will debut at Sephora. And on the 10th, it will launch a line of lipsticks.

On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Creal discusses her decision to launch a brand, her brand's upcoming lipstick and women's ongoing struggle to raise funds for their own ventures.

Sloane Stephens started playing tennis at 9 years old and quickly climbed the ranks, beating Serena Williams in the 2013 Australian Open at age 19. She is the founder of The Sloane Stephens Foundation, which works to introduce tennis to underserved students — and, as of August 21, she is the founder of Doc & Glo, a body-care line that debuted with two products: the $18 Game-Changing Deodorant and the $22 24/7 Hustle Deodorizing Body Mist. The brand is named after Stephens’ grandparents. Her grandfather was an OB/GYN, while her grandmother "had all these girls' groups and always gave back," Stephens said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

The brand will retail on its own DTC site, on Amazon and on the Free People Movement website — Free People Movement has sponsored Stephens since the start of 2023.

On this week's episode, Stephens discusses her venture into entrepreneurship, the target audience for her brand’s first two products and tennis’s current moment in the cultural spotlight. 

Back in 2014, Lindsay Dahl’s career trajectory took an unexpected turn. She’d spent a decade working at chemical safety- and environmental-focused nonprofits in Washington D.C. before she got an offer she couldn’t refuse. 

“I never thought I would go to the corporate side,” Dahl told Glossy. “If I'm being honest, I really liked being a part of the nonprofit community where I felt like I could be both challenging companies and also challenging those in power in government.”

But then she got a call from Beautycounter. “I sat down and talked to Gregg [Renfrew], the founder and CEO, and she said, ‘Look, I know how to start companies. But I don't know how to do what you know how to do, which is … to use this business model to essentially see if you can do advocacy at the company level.' And this was before corporate activism was cool.”

Dahl moved to the West Coast and served as Beautycounter’s head of mission for seven years. In this new type of executive role, she created a blueprint for a company to have safe, ethically sourced and sustainable products, while also educating consumers about industry-wide issues and lobbying for better regulation and a more transparent industry. 

Today, Dahl is bringing those learnings to another trailblazing company: Ritual, an 8-year-old brand of supplements founded on a mission of transparent sourcing, efficacy and purity. For the past two and a half years, she’s served as chief impact officer where she oversees much of the mission-driven side of the business, including traceability and sustainability — which Ritual is known for — as well as advocacy, certifications, PR and community.

Dahl joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss her career trajectory, the ins and outs of running a mission-driven company, and her hopes for the future at Beautycounter. She also speaks about the biggest issues plaguing the supplement space today, such as contamination, purity and unsubstantiated claims. And she shares the changes taking place at Ritual, including a recent shift from its DTC subscription model to an omnichannel strategy that includes retailers like Target and Whole Foods.

Nathalie Gerschtein’s career at L’Oréal started before she even graduated college. 

“One of the reasons I joined L'Oréal, [which I met] on campus [in college], was because it would give me the opportunity to work internationally, and I knew I really wanted to discover different cultures, different go-to-market strategies,” she told Glossy. “Then when I started to work in beauty, I realized how joyful it is because beauty is about self-esteem, it's about self-confidence, it's about self-expression. And it makes people happy to interact with this category. So here I am, 22 years after starting in L'Oréal, [and] I'm still working in beauty today.”

More than two decades into her tenure at L’Oréal, Gerschtein has accomplished those early goals and more. She started in a brand marketing role for L’Oréal Paris skin care in France, was able to work across European and Asian markets, and, most recently, became the first woman to hold the title of president of the consumer products division at L'Oréal, North America, now based in New York City. 

Today, she leads her team through a mix of experience and intuition. “Sometimes you have to look at all the analytics, understand your consumer, understand the data, and understand the market panels and everything — and sometimes you also have to trust your intuition and take a leap of faith,” she said. 

This strategy has served her well, allowing her to put steam behind the right trends and products while continuing to better understand the evolving shopping habits of the mass consumer. 

Gerschtein joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss her career growth and lessons learned, predictions for the future of the mass shopper, and recent challenges. 

When Javon Ford (@javonford16, 455,400 TikTok followers) graduated college, he knew he wanted to be a chemist and wanted to work in the cosmetics industry. What he didn’t anticipate was becoming wildly popular on TikTok with nearly half a million followers.

Ford’s background in chemistry, working on making new formulations for cosmetics companies, has given him an in-depth knowledge of what goes into beauty and skin-care products. His videos involve him busting some of the most widespread myths in beauty and skin care, pointing out which ingredients are harmful or, more commonly, useless. In a recent video, he helped diagnose what ingredient in a lip product was making Olympian athlete Simone Biles’ swell.

According to Ford, his newfound popularity has led to multiple brand collaboration offers, but he’s steadfast about refusing to do work with companies whose products he doesn’t trust or who don’t provide the scientific data to back up their claims.

Ford joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss his career development and where he’s going next.