The Glossy Beauty Podcast

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410

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Nov 2026

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About the show

The Glossy Beauty Podcast is the newest podcast from Glossy. Each episode features candid conversations about how today’s trends, such as CBD and self-care, are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. With a unique assortment of guests, The Glossy Beauty Podcast provides its listeners with a variety of insights and approaches to these categories, which are experiencing explosive growth. From new retail strategies on beauty floors to the importance of filtering skincare products through crystals, this show sets out to help listeners understand everything that is going on today, and prepare for what will show up in their feeds tomorrow.

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November 5, 202637 min

How is CVS sneaking Patrick Ta Beauty into its stores without brand approval?

One of the biggest beauty industry headlines over the past few weeks has surrounded an unexpected lawsuit filed by indie makeup darling Patrick Ta Beauty over which retailers can, and cannot, sell its products.  Last month, Patrick Ta Beauty filed a lawsuit against CVS and Canadian distributor Akstrom for the "unauthorized" sale of its cosmetics in CVS’ newly-launched off-price section called "fresh beauty finds." The lawsuit highlights ongoing friction between beauty brands and product diversion into the gray market, best described as the trade of authentic goods through unintended or unauthorized channels.  It comes during a time when off-price is becoming a dominant retail channel for beauty and wellness. Not only do consumers crave a deal, but the quick sale of products to off-price stores can have meaningful financial benefits for beauty brands in need of cash infusion.  Off-price leader TJX — which operates TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods — grew its revenue by 3.95% in 2025 to reach net sales of $56 billion. While CVS generated $400 billion in revenue during fiscal 2025, the brick-and-mortar leader is not immune to industry challenges facing pharmacy retail. Its new "fresh beauty finds" section is a strategic way to boost revenue through competitive categories.  CVS and Patrick Ta Beauty declined to comment on the lawsuit, and Akstrom did not reply to Glossy’s request for comment.  There’s much we don't know about Patrick Ta Beauty's lawsuit, including how Akstrom obtained the Patrick Ta Beauty products, how CVS will proceed with its intended sales and how this may impact beauty’s growing gray market. While early, the lawsuit comes with many valuable lessons that demand analysis.  In today’s episode, Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack is joined by Julie Zerbo, lawyer, legal analyst and founder of The Fashion Law, where she unpacks the legal cases impacting the fashion and beauty industries. Also on today’s episode is Ian Ginsberg, president of iconic Greenwich Village apothecary C.O. Bigelow Chemists and distribution arm Bigelow Trading, which encompasses its private beauty line and a USA wholesale distribution arm that imports brands like Marvis toothpaste for sale across domestic retailers. 

October 29, 202640 min

Which categories should be called ‘wellness’ today?

As the wellness category swells in size, many insiders are wondering the same question: What should be called ‘wellness’ in 2026? In today’s special crossover episode with Glossy’s sister publication Modern Retail, West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack joins Modern Retail senior editor Gabi Barkho and Rachel Hirsch, founder and managing partner at Wellness Growth Ventures, to discuss the products and categories that should, and shouldn’t, be considered wellness in 2026. The trio walks through a variety of categories, from better-for-you food and protein sodas to skin care, oral care, sleep aids and tools for optimized breathing, among others. As previously reported by Glossy, wellness consumers are overwhelmed with the sheer size of the assortment available today, which has bred a growing strategy toward evocative launches and campaigns that "stop the scroll." Think: soda-flavored toothpaste and wellness brands turning into entertainment companies to sell supplements, fiber gummies and beauty peptides. Today’s conversation is rooted in the guests' diverse specialties: Barkho covers food, beverage and wellness for Modern Retail; Lebsack reports on beauty and wellness for Glossy; and Hirsch’s seed fund is dedicated to advancing the wellness sector through investments in brands like Cure Hydration, BelliWelli, Liquid Death, Flaus and Tia. Don’t forget to follow the Modern Retail Podcast for more topics like this.

October 22, 202634 min

Cymbiotika sold 200 million liposomal sachets. Now it's taking on the beauty supplement market

In a lot of ways, supplement company Cymbiotika has perfected the form factor and distribution of modern-day vitamins.  The San Diego-based company launched in 2018 and quickly found its footing in the marketplace with single-serving pouches of Liposomal supplements. So far, the company has sold more than 200 million individual packets and grown its revenue 3,000% over the past 3 years to reach $150 million in annual revenue, according to the company.  Cymbiotika sells across mass, online and grocery retail in boxes and individual pouches at point of sale. It entered Target in 2025, Ulta Beauty in March, and Walmart last week. Now, the brand is making a big bet on a new category by launching its first beauty supplement for hair, skin, and nails.  Called Liposomal Beauty Peptide Complex, the launch is being promoted with the brand's biggest campaign to date. "The investment was a big one in the sense that we've never really done anything on this level,” said Cymbiotika co-founder Durana Elmi. “I think you're starting to see a shift in the consumer's approach toward beauty, and being there in the forefront of that today is something we're really, really proud of.”  The new product will be sold at retailers like Ulta Beauty, Walmart and Target. Elmi joined Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to walk through the brand’s strategy to win in the notoriously competitive world of beauty supplements. This includes the brand’s biggest campaign to date, starring model Amelia Gray and made with OBB Media, the content company owned by Rhode co-founder Michael D. Ratner. 

October 15, 202637 min

Why Ritual is launching its first new category in 6 years, with CEO Kat Schneider

Ritual founder and CEO Kat Schneider knows that winning the female supplement consumer requires taking big bets and big swings.  “When I started the company and I was fundraising. … I was told pregnancy was ‘niche’, postpartum was ‘niche’, perimenopause was ‘niche,’” Schneider told Glossy. “This was a decade plus ago. Now, women's health has never been hotter.” Ritual launched direct-to-consumer in 2016 with a transparent supply chain and science-backed formulations. Now, it has the best-selling prenatal supplement on the U.S. market, according to the brand, and is sold across Target, Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Whole Food and more retailers.  Still, when the company entered the perimenopause space last month, it still felt like the Wild West. “There's almost no market sizing [into subcategories of women’s health],” Schneider said. “You have to have a lot of conviction when you're going into something earlier, ahead of the time that people see it.” Perimenopause, the hormonal precursor to menopause that can last a decade, has received new attention in the past few years as women’s health takes a front seat in popular culture. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sits down with Schneider to walk through exactly what it took to launch into the burgeoning space, which is also the brand's first new category launch in six years. Its big swing includes a dedicated foundation supplement called Perimenopause Health, plus a foray into creatine, an essential nutrient for perimenopausal women, with the launch of its new Creatine Greens powder drink mix. Then there is the multi-million-dollar marketing budget that includes hiring “Nobody Wants This” actress Jackie Thon for a campaign and TV spot created with full-service media agency Giant Spoon.

October 8, 202627 min

Why does this Estée Lauder-owned brand keep reformulating its hero products?

What if new product development didn’t have to be so complicated and expensive?  NIOD, the second brand from Estée Lauder-owned Deciem, entered Sephora in August with an NPD tactic borrowed from tech companies like Apple. “NIOD is all about high science and high tech, and then bringing it to the consumer in as simple of a way as possible,” Amy Bi, vp of global brand at Deceim, told Glossy. “It's very similar to an iPhone. As technology within skin care evolves, as research evolves, we simply upgrade our products.”  For example, NIOD’s best-selling Copper Amino Isolate 3 1:1 (CAIS) serum is on its third iteration, which is noted in the name as "3." Similar to an iPhone, which is on its 18th iteration, NIOD can constantly innovate without having to reinvent the wheel.  “We're just upgrading them similar to how your iOS goes through a software upgrade overnight and then a bug is fixed or something has been simplified for you,” Bi said. “It's the exact same approach.” She told Glossy that some consumers stay well-informed about the latest version, which is messaged across traditional marketing channels like email and social media. But most consumers simply appreciate that the brand is always optimizing its formulas. Others never even catch on to the process.  NIOD, pronounced nee-odd, launched in 2015 as the second brand from Deciem, the beauty incubator behind The Ordinary. Deciem was purchased by Estée Lauder Companies in 2017 for a total investment of $1.7 billion.  As previously reported by Glossy, NIOD is positioned as a science-meets-longevity skin-care brand and serves a burgeoning cohort of biohacking wellness enthusiasts. The brand was early to the copper peptide skin-care trend that’s growing today and, like The Ordinary, prices the entire line competitively. NIOD’s products range from $26-$93.  Bi has been with Deciem for five years. Her CV includes nearly seven years at Nike, her last role being global brand director of women’s lifestyle.  NIOD still launches new products; its cadence is simply slower.  “We're not constantly on this new product launch cycle that so much of the industry is on,” Bi said. “ We're actually just focused on maintaining our key SKUs, our key products, and then upgrading them when we see that there's exciting technology that serves the same benefit, or there's a way that we can improve the texture, the efficacy, anything to do with the product itself.” Of course, that doesn’t mean every consumer loves saying goodbye to older versions, so the company has mastered a slow process of phasing out older iterations, similar to how Apple slowly discontinues older iPhone models.  Bi sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to walk through the benefits, the challenges, and advantages of an iterative approach to new product development. 

October 1, 202634 min

Veteran exec Jaimee Holmes unpacks ‘eye patch gate’ and why innovation spurred Fel Beauty’s quick Sephora sell out

Over the past week, the internet has been ablaze discussing the beauty industry’s biggest controversy of the year. From social media to global news outlets, everyone is talking about something that’s been dubbed "eye patch gate." Around September 17, several beauty brands, including Fenty Beauty, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty, began to tease the release of products that appeared to be almost identical. A small plastic jar that twisted to reveal a freshly sliced hydrogel eye mask. What was meant to be a first-of-its-kind innovation from each of the brands ended up looking more like an April Fools' joke.  As a response, Fenty Beauty and Glow Recipe meme'd themselves before continuing their launches, while Huda Beauty announced it was pulling the product from production. Turns out, the products all came from the same K-beauty manufacturer named Samhwa. “It really comes down to a question around exclusivity, meaning these brands likely received some degree of the [same] innovation in a very similar capacity [but have no exclusivity on the innovation],” Jaimee Holmes, veteran beauty exec-turned-brand founder, told Glossy. “[When] I was leading merchandising at Goop [from 2019-2023], I was really seeing this across every single category. So many brands presented quite literally the same product from the same suppliers, same presentations, but sometimes there might be a price difference of up to $100 between two [of them].”  Holmes knows a thing or two about innovation. She got her start at Sephora, followed by Benefit Cosmetics, then Too Faced, where she was an integral part of bringing one of the top-selling mascaras of all time, Better than Sex, to market in 2013. She’s also held executive roles at Kendo Brands, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Memebox and L’Oréal-backed Timeline Longevity.  At Goop, Holmes “would get samples from the same suppliers sent to my doorstep [on behalf of different brands],” she said. “It gave me a lot of pause. … Ultimately, it's what led me to step away and create something of my own called Fel Beauty.”  Fel Beauty (pronounced like "feel") launched in December of 2025 at Sephora and DTC with just one product. Called Kissylips, the $22 lip-and-cheek hybrid launched in eight universal shades and has since sold out several times. The line is made in Canada with a custom formula and custom packaging, which was far from easy. “This was a two-year development cycle to create [the product],” Holmes said. “It was 56 trials, which means we failed about 55 times before we succeeded to create this at all. And we didn't give up.”  Fel Beauty has taken on minimal funding from angel investors. With a lean team of five – including secret weapon Erik Frey, a packaging design expert who’s made products for Rhode, Tatcha and MPH – Fel Beauty has since added an overnight lip mask and is soon expanding into other categories. Certain shades, like CutiePie, have sold out four times at Sephora. “We've been beating our plan as a brand by over 200%,” Holmes said. “The last time we tracked and pulled this number, it was around 35,000 [units sold].”  Holmes sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the innovation struggles in the industry, share lessons from her career, and spill the secret sauce behind 10-month-old Fel Beauty’s quick success. 

September 24, 202635 min

How to make it in Sephora with Ilia Beauty founder Sasha Plavsic

What does it take to thrive within the notoriously competitive world of Sephora?  In many ways, Ilia Beauty is a case study in success in America’s biggest specialty beauty retailer. The brand has thrived within Sephora for a decade and makes the retailer’s No. 1 mascara, and Ilia founder Sasha Plavsic helped to architect the industry-leading "Clean at Sephora" program.  “Going into Sephora was really a game changer [for Ilia],” Plavsic told Glossy. “That's when the business really took off.”  But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. “You have one shot, more or less, to prove that you can do what they need you to do,” Plavsic told Glossy. “If they're investing in you and giving up space for you to use, you do have to perform. … You have to be ready for the opportunity.”  Plavsic launched Ilia in 2011 in direct-to-consumer e-commerce and small beauty boutiques. In 2016, the brand entered Sephora and quickly became the "guinea pig" for Sephora’s industry-changing Clean at Sephora assortment, Plavsic told Glossy. In 2022, Ilia was acquired by Famille C, the Courtin-Clarins family holding company and owner of the Clarins brand. Between launch and today, Ilia has also diversified its retailer presence to include Amazon, Credo, Mecca, Revolve, Nordstrom and, as of 2025, Ulta Beauty, which Plavsic sees as a separate customer from Sephora.  Cumulatively, Plavsic and her team have successfully navigated the challenges of a diversified retail presence and an expanding clean beauty landscape, all while maintaining their stronghold within Sephora. She sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to share Clean at Sephora’s origin story, advice for brands looking to make it in Sephora and her perspective on diversified retail channels. “Growth can be painful, and I think, with [Sephora], it can be the most painful because they can probably grow you faster than anybody out there,” Plavsic said. “That is an opportunity that you cannot pass up.” 

September 17, 202640 min

Why Allure Best of Beauty is 'the only seal that matters' and how to get your product on it

What does it take to win Allure’s Best of Beauty awards? In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Allure editor-in-chief Jessica Cruel sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the ins and outs of its prestigious beauty awards program, including how beauty and wellness brands can better appeal to her team of editors.  Launched in 1996, five years after the first issue of Allure hit newsstands, the annual Best of Beauty awards anoints the best products across dozens of categories with its coveted Best of Beauty seal.  “The seal can be licensed, so you can put it on your packaging, you can put it on your social media, you can put it in ads, and that's because we know from [our] research that the seal helps that product move,” Cruel told Glossy. “We know that when people see that seal, [the winning product] is more likely to be purchased than the thing that's sitting right next to it, so that seal has power.”  The awards are a hallmark franchise for the Condé Nast publication and a powerful tool for the brands that win. The seal is a recognizable differentiator in the market, which is why Allure’s team tests products all year in anticipation of the big reveal.  The 2026 award winners will be announced today, September 17. To celebrate, Glossy tapped Cruel to talk through the nuances of making it through the first rounds, how the process works and how winners are selected. Cruel also shares candid advice for brands that want to stand out to her editors year-round, including insights around timelines, the categories and topics performing well today, what’s interesting to her, and what she wishes more brands and publicists understood about working with Allure. 

September 10, 202625 min

Mary van Praag doubled Milani Cosmetics annual sales to $250 million in five years. Now she’s ready to double them again.

Helmed for the past six years by veteran beauty executive Mary van Praag, 25-year-old mass beauty mainstay Milani Cosmetics is in the midst of meteoric growth. In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, van Praag sits down with host Lexy Lebsack to discuss Milani’s growth engine, including the tactics and retail partnerships she’s betting on to reach $500 million in annual sales in the next three years.

September 3, 202628 min

How Lorne Lucree used a beauty playbook to disrupt the allergy aisle with Wizard Wellness

CPG disruptors have entered just about every legacy category over the past few years in hopes of capturing bored consumers looking for more interesting everyday products.  We’ve seen this play out across dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and mouth wash, supplements, sunscreen, and, most recently, the allergy aisle.  “We did a ton of consumer work up front, probably too much, pulling research reports, data and our own survey of 600 consumers, and what we realized was that there is a huge experience and efficacy gap,” Loren Lucree, the CEO and founder of 9-month-old allergy-care brand Wizard Wellness, told Glossy. “[We found that] only 7% were loyal to their current solutions, which is bananas. … [The] lesson is nobody's writing love letters to Flonase or Zyrtec.”  Lucree is a beauty industry veteran formulator and executive. His CV includes Unilever and Estée Lauder brands. “One morning I woke up and told my poor husband, ‘I have to do this,' … because somebody else will do it if I don't,” Lucree said. “[I thought], ‘I have this amazing beauty network around me, and now's the time’.” Lucree secured $7 million in funding from True Beauty Ventures, G9 Ventures, Able Partners and The Venture Collective to launch Wizard Wellness via a DTC model in January. The brand is built on a beauty industry playbook, including cleaner ingredients, clear positioning, clinical testing, a dynamic OOH advertising funnel and social-first marketing. Now, just nine months post-launch, Wizard Wellness has entered CVS, Walmart and, as of Monday, Target stores.  Glossy West Coast correspondent Lexy Lebsack sat down with Lucree to learn firsthand how he took on allergy incumbents and what it’ll take to become a leader in the space.