For MCoBeauty CMO Meridith Rojas, the ability to democratize the beauty industry lies in the power of dupes. 

“We're in this moment, in this cultural zeitgeist, where people don't want to have to spend $1,000 on a face of beauty and don't want to be left out of the trends,” said Rojas. “We really want to create luxury for everyone. And of course, we have amazing dupes, but we also have some homegrown innovation. The combination has been really magnetic, and our community is growing in the U.S. so fast. We have a very exciting year ahead of us.” 

Dupes, the colloquial term for a lower-priced product inspired by a luxury category leader, makes up about half of MCo’s offering. Unlike counterfeits or copies, which are often associated with unsafe formulas and flagrant IP violations, dupes are in their own category and are incredibly popular globally. 

MCoBeauty sells recognizable dupes for popular products from brands like Charlotte Tilbury, Drunk Elephant, Sol de Janeiro and Laneige for around a third of the price. For example, MCo Beauty’s best-selling Flawless Glow Foundation retails for $14.99, and its Miracle Flawless Pressed Powder goes for $9.99. Similar products from Charlotte Tilbury retail for $49 and $28, respectively.

It also offers non-dupes, like its best-selling XtendLash tubing mascara, which sells for $13.99.

MCoBeauty was launched in Australia in 2016 by founder Shelley Sullivan, a former modeling agency owner. It is currently the top-selling color cosmetics brand in Australia and New Zealand, according to Greg Barker, MCoBeauty’s evp of North America.

As previously reported by Glossy in December, MCoBeauty launched its U.S. expansion at the end of 2024 with entry into 1,700 Kroger stores, which include regional grocery stores like Smiths, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Frys, Ralphs and more. The expansion also includes DTC sales via MCoBeauty’s site and Amazon. This week, MCo Beauty also launched into 1,300 Target doors and on Target.com. 

Rojas joined The Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss MCoBeauty’s U.S. expansion and the marketing strategy supporting it. She shared anecdotes about the company's OOH and digital marketing successes, including advice on building a digital community, connecting with influencers early in their careers, getting the best community UGC and hiring digitally-minded celebrities to lead social-first campaigns.

Longtime beauty executive Lori Singer has been instrumental in some of the biggest fragrance license deals of the past 20 years.

Singer spent more than a decade at Coty, where she worked on bestselling fragrances by Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, Balenciaga and Nautica. She also tripled global net revenues for Marc Jacobs with its iconic Daisy franchise launched in 2007. Singer got her start at Revlon, and her CV also includes Calvin Klein Cosmetics, Unilever and Benetton Group. 

“I've spent my entire career in beauty. I’m sort of a beauty lifer,” she told Glossy. “I fell in love on day one at Revlon, my first job, and I really have never looked back.” 

Singer joined Parlux in 2019 to grow its license business and immediately set her sights on Billie Eilish. 

“Other than music, fragrance and scent are everything to her. So, upon meeting her and hearing about her deep knowledge [of fragrance, we knew it was a fit for Parlux],” Singer told Glossy. “She knows ingredients and she knows about olfactory territory. She has had a natural nose for scents."

By 2021, her first scent, Eilish, was released, which she followed up with Eilish No. 2 the next year and Eilish No. 3 in 2023. 

Fast forward to last week, and Parlux released Eilish’s fourth fragrance, called Your Turn. The new scent is priced at $90 for 100 milliliters and available DTC — it will launch in Ulta Beauty doors later this spring. Your Turn is gender-neutral and described as “warm, woody and fresh” with notes of peach, ginger and sandalwood. 

Frank Voelkl, principal perfumer at fragrance house Firmenich, was the “nose.” One of the most famous perfumers working today, he has created Glossier’s You franchise, Phlur’s Mood Ring and Father Figure, and Le Labo’s cult Santal 33, among others. 

Parlux is a global licensee for celebrities, fashion houses and lifestyle brands. The company launched in 1984 and is privately held. Its licenses include Kenneth Cole, Vince Camuto, Jessica Simpson, Steve Madden and Jason Wu, among others.

Most recently, Parlux entered into a partnership with basketball player LeBron James to create The Shop, a line of grooming products distributed through Walmart. Then, in late 2024, the company launched its first fragrance with influencer-turned-designer Danielle Bernstein, the creator behind WeWoreWhat, called WeWoreWhat 001. 

Later this year, the company will celebrate another milestone: Paris Hilton’s 30th fragrance over 20 years. Called Iconic, the scent will launch this spring. 

Singer joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the secret sauce behind Parlux’s celeb fragrances, the evolving fragrance consumer and 2025 industry predictions.

Jordan Samuel, a former ballet dancer, launched his eponymous skin care brand in 2013, with just two products: The After Show Treatment Cleanser and the Hydrate Facial Serum.

He has grown, since then, but remained small, which he calls, a “badge of honor.” The brand is beloved by leading skin care influencers like Caroline Hirons (776,000 Instagram followers). It is primarily DTC but is carried at the fast facial bar, Formula Fig, as well as C.O. Bigelow, and available to international customers via Cult Beauty.

In this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, he discusses his unique trajectory from ballet dancer to brand founder, the autonomy he’s been able to maintain by being carefully selective with retail partnerships, and staying small, and why launching less makes a big difference.

To her 769,000 Instagram followers, fitness entrepreneur-turned-brand founder Amanda Kloots feels like a friend who just happens to sometimes star in movies or host TV shows — she wrapped her gig on CBS's "The Talk" when the show ended last year and hosts "Live From The Other Side" on Netflix. Some of her fans have been following her journey since she started teaching fitness classes nearly a decade ago, in 2016. That was when she first transitioned out of her previous career as a Radio City Rockette and Broadway dancer and started building her fitness business, Amanda Kloots Fitness.

Earlier this month, Kloots launched Proper, a wellness brand that debuted with five powder supplements. It is the seventh brand to launch in partnership with Ben Bennett's incubator, The Center — its other brands include Naturium, which exited to E.l.f. Beauty at the end of 2023. Bennett and Kloots are striving to create products that appeal to the "everyday woman who comes to my classes, who is really just looking for something to keep her happy and to make her feel her best," Kloots said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Proper's first five products include the greens powder Daily Boost, Metabolism + Energy Boost, Digestion + Bloat Relief, Immune Support, and Calming Aid. Each is $28 and, for now, exclusively available direct-to-consumer. And they're brightly colored to represent the idea of "drinking the rainbow," Kloots said.

On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Kloots discusses how the early days of the boutique fitness boom made her social media savvy, what business lessons she learned from past ventures and collaborations, and what's next for Proper.

Dr. Jonathan Leary is on a mission to change how and where consumers socialize. 

“We're the world's first social wellness club. What I mean by that is we're not a gym, we're not a spa, we don't do beauty, and we don't do aesthetics. All we do is self-care, but made social,” said Remedy Place founder and CEO Dr. Leary. “I'm really trying to change the narrative of how people socialize, but in a healthy way.”

That means he encourages his clients to substitute happy hour for a group cryotherapy appointment or a work meeting for a group sauna session at one of Remedy Place’s three locations in L.A. and New York City. “We call them social substitutions with self-care experiences,” he said. 

This aligns with an overall sea change he’s seen in the U.S. that includes more interest in preventative health and less interest in drinking or socializing in bars and clubs. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, young adults are drinking less than previous generations: 62% of adults under age 35 say they drink, down from 72% two decades ago.

“We're the sickest we've ever been, and people are lonelier than they've ever been,” Dr. Leary said. “There are so many things that need to change, and I think social self-care has the potential to be the largest vertical in the health and wellness industry.” 

Dr. Leary has a doctorate in chiropractic medicine from USC and got his start as a wellness- and sports medicine-focused concierge doctor in Los Angeles, traveling to the homes or offices of wealthy clients, many of which were professional athletes. This allowed him to test and perfect the offerings now available at Remedy Place. Many of his private patients became investors in Remedy Place, and Dr. Leary opened his first location in 2019. 

Remedy Place offers acupuncture, chiropractic care, cryotherapy, infrared saunas, red light therapy, IV therapy, contrast therapy and many more wellness modalities, all of which can be booked for groups or individuals. The company is known for its 30-minute ice bath class which includes guided breathwork before a group-led ice bath plunge. Clients strive to join the “six-minute club” after lasting as long submerged in the 39-degree water. “You are getting a huge endorphin rush and dopamine spike, which is responsible for that mood change [people talk about],” he said. 

Remedy Place is privately held. The company took on an undisclosed round of seed investments in 2021, according to Crunchbase, and a $5 million bridge round of investment in 2022. Investors in the latter include music producer Zedd, NFL player Marcedes Lewis and Australian music group Rüfus Du Sol. The latter investment was part of a company valuation of $60 million. 

While memberships are offered for a small price break on services, Remedy Place operates like a traditional spa or fitness studio where appointments for classes, group rooms and individual appointments can be booked in advance. Costs start at around $40 per session. The ice bath class is around $50 a session, while other modalities such as the lymphatic massage, start at over $100 per session. 

Remedy Place has three locations: one in L.A.’s West Hollywood neighborhood and two in NYC in Soho and Flatiron, with a fourth planned for Boston early this year. 

To grow awareness, Remedy Place has a robust OOH events strategy that includes pop-ups at cultural events like the Cannes Film Festival and Art Basel. Back at home, Nike, Peacock and Saint Laurent have all rented out a Remedy Place location for private events. But perhaps the largest collaboration planned for 2025 is a luxurious ice bath created in partnership with Kohler. It retails for $15,000 and is available for pre-order now for home and commercial use. 

Dr. Leary joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss all of this, as well as the evolving role of self-care for wellness consumers, in today’s episode.

Dr. David Shafer has been a practicing plastic surgeon for 15 years, but since 2020, the Shafer Clinic, where he practices, has also operated Advitam, a metabolic aesthetics clinic. Through Dr. Shafer's work with both, he sees patients who are striving to lose weight or gain energy, and he's also had a front-row seat to the rise of GLP-1s. In the plastic surgery clinic, patients may come in for skin removal surgery, having lost a lot of weight taking a GLP-1. At Advitam, they may be supervised while taking one. If you've seen headlines in the past year about Ozempic face (or breasts, or butt), then you already understand how the two practices can work hand-in-hand. On this week's episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Dr. Shafer discusses them.

Despite being around for nearly 100 years, pilates has never been so popular. 

As previously reported by Glossy, search volume for “pilates” was at an all-time high in January 2004, with small yearly spikes each January since. It wasn’t until 2022 that search numbers topped those 2004 numbers before hitting an all-time in January 2023 and then again in January of 2024. 

However, searches have already topped 2024 numbers during the first week of the new year, according to Google Trends. The highest search numbers are coming from Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and the U.K. The U.S. ranks ninth for searches so far this year. 

Pilates is a low-impact strength and mobility training practice designed by Joseph Pilates in 1920s Europe to rehab injured WWI veterans. He developed its tenets on a machine crafted from bed springs and wooden boards, which later inspired the "reformer," a machine with straps and springs that’s been evolved many times over for pilates practices today. Pilates is also taught on a yoga mat using hand weights, stretchy bands and other props. 

Partially fueled by celebrity devotees like Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner, and propelled by viral fashion trends like 2024’s #PinkPilatesPrincess, the exercise modality shows no signs of slowing in 2025. 

It’s something that Australia-based Emma Stallworthy is betting on with 4-year-old pilates rental and digital class subscription company Your Reformer. The company is well-known in Australia and New Zealand markets and, as of September, has officially expanded to the U.S. with its signature $39-per-week in-home reformer bed rentals. They come with more than 800 high-quality training videos on a corresponding app. The company also sells its reformer beds to consumers as well as studios, gyms and hotels.

Your Reformer is fully bootstrapped by Stallworthy and her husband and co-founder Ben. The duo started as gym owners in Melbourne. After renting out their gyms' reformer beds during the pandemic, thy sold their gyms and doubled down on this new business. Emma is also a pilates instructor.

The company has nearly no competition for reformer rentals. Leaders in the space selling or financing equipment include Stott Pilates, Balanced Body and Merrithew. Your Reformer beds sell for around $2,500, while the reformer bed prices of the aforementioned manufacturers start at around $5,000.

Outside of the rentals, the company's reformer sales and corresponding digital classes mak up a unique business model that is best compared to Peloton stationary bikes. Peloton gained massive popularity during the pandemic but later experienced financial distress that led to cuts and the replacement of its CEO in 2024, as reported by CFO Drive. 

Stallworthy joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the company’s growth and expansion to the U.S. in September, the secret sauce behind growing its digital class subscriptions, its beauty and wellness partnerships, and the overall rise of autonomous pilates classes.

For this week's special episode, Glossy Beauty Podcast co-hosts Sara Spruch-Feiner and Lexy Lebsack brought on colleague Emily Jensen to discuss six topics — all 2024 trends they expect will continue to dominate in the year to come or emerging trends they believe will be big topics of conversation. These included the pending TikTok ban and how it will affect beauty brands, the shifts in influencer marketing including the question of "authenticity," the rise-and-rise of the fragrance category, the boom in sports and beauty partnerships, the impact of GLP-1 drugs on skin care, and the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary and the potential impacts on the wellness industry.

Listen in for a taste of what's to come in Glossy's beauty coverage this year.

Glossy reporters Lexy Lebsack, Sara Spruch-Feiner and Emma Sandler welcomed dozens of guests onto the Glossy Beauty Podcast in 2024. This included top executives at L’Oréal Group and Kendo Brands; longtime industry leaders from Retrouvé and Versed; and breakout indie brand founders from Flamingo Estate and Fazit.

But it was the six interviews highlighted below that best capture the ways in which the beauty industry changed in 2024. In today’s special end-of-year podcast episode, Lebsack and Spruch-Feiner walk through six can’t-miss clips.

In the clips ahead, Estée Lauder VP Chloe Green-Vamos discusses how the conglomerate is utilizing AI to better the business while longtime beauty exec Sarah Creal muses about reaching women over 40 with her new namesake line — two massive trends that swept the industry this year.

This special 2024 episode also highlights an important change in retail’s role in business, as heard in a clip from Black Girl Sunscreen founder Shontay Lundy’s September episode. Speaking of sunscreen, Beauty of Joseon founder Sumin Lee joined the pod this month to discuss entering the U.S. market with the TikTok-famous brand.

In another clip, Beachwaver’s Sarah Potempa shares the secret behind her knockdown success live-selling business on TikTok. And finally, in Glossy’s Tweens Talk Beauty episode, three Gen Alpha tween shoppers discuss the role beauty plays in their lives.

The Glossy Beauty Podcast will be back next week with another special episode looking ahead at 2025 and will return on January 9 with our regular episodes.

“I believe that every great brand should evolve its look and feel about every five years,” said Katherine Power, serial entrepreneur and the founder of Versed skin care. “Since our launch in 2019, we've seen that our core customer, who is primarily an older millennial or young Gen X — I call them Xennials — has really grown along with us, and we wanted to continue to grow with them and to create something fresh and modern.”

This included a refresh of packaging, visuals and language overseen by Lola Gonzalez Marra, Versed’s longtime creative lead. Power and Marra have worked together for more than a decade on Power’s many entrepreneurial projects, including editorial sites WhoWhatWear and Byrdie — which Power launched with Hillary Kerr in 2006 and 2013, respectively — as well as color cosmetics line Merit, which Power founded in 2021. 

“We decided we needed to evolve enough that it's a change, but not so much that you go on Versed one day and it's a completely different brand,” said Marra. As Power and Marra explained on this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, the refresh has been in the works for over a year. 

Versed was launched in 2019 from data and insights learned at Byrdie and WhoWhatWear, which Power and Kerr have since sold to publisher Dotdash in 2019 and publisher Future Brands in 2022, respectively. 

Thanks to Versed’s omnichannel strategy where 75% of its sales are through Target, switching over merchandise has required a unique strategy. Hint: Versed is selling off older products DTC for 30% off right now. The team also rolled out tweaks to its social media aesthetic and naming formula for products. The brand also used this as an opportunity to fine-tune the assortment by making product cuts. But perhaps the biggest change is in its packaging colors, which Marra desaturated and leveraged into category IDs, all of which the duo discusses in the podcast episode.