Latest / Building Brands with Fexingo: Identity, Reputation, and Long-Term Business Equity / How Glossier Built a Brand on Community and Co-Creation
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this moment in 2014 when a former fashion assistant named Emily Weiss launches a beauty brand with essentially one product — a moisturizer called Priming Moisturizer — and she sells it before she's even made it. She posts a survey on her blog asking readers what they want, gets thousands of responses, and basically builds the formula around that feedback. Luna: And that blog was Into The Gloss, which already had a massive following. So she wasn't starting from zero — she had a community in waiting. Lucas: Exactly. Into The Gloss had been running since 2010, and it was known for these deep-dive interviews called 'The Top Shelf,' where celebrities and influencers showed their actual bathroom cabinets. So by the time Weiss announced Glossier, she had a direct line to tens of thousands of potential customers who already trusted her taste. Luna: And the really smart move was that she didn't just ask what they wanted — she published the results. So the community felt like they were part of the decision, not just a focus group. That builds a different kind of attachment. Lucas: Right. And if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way — maybe you've applied a brand insight from one of our episodes to a project — you can support the show at buymeacoffee dot com slash fexingo. It's listener-funded, ad-free, and that support keeps us going without sponsors. Luna: Yeah, it really does make a difference. Even a small contribution helps us keep exploring these stories. Lucas: So back to Glossier — that co-creation model didn't stop at product development. They also used it for packaging, for shade names, for the whole brand voice. The original Glossier pink pouch, the bubble-wrap zip bag — that came from customer feedback too. Customers said they wanted something reusable and fun, and Glossier delivered. Luna: It's interesting because that bag became almost as iconic as the products themselves. People would post unboxings on Instagram, and the bag was part of the content. That's organic marketing that you can't really buy. Lucas: And the numbers back it up. By 2019, Glossier was valued at one point two billion dollars, with most of its sales coming from its own website — not Sephora, not department stores. They had about five million customer email addresses, and a social media following in the millions. All built on this idea that the customer is a collaborator. Luna: But then they started opening retail stores, and that changed the dynamic a bit. The first store in New York was designed to be Instagrammable, but once you have physical retail, you're no longer just a digital cult brand — you're competing with every other brand on the shelf. Lucas: And the growth curve has been bumpy since. In 2020, during the pandemic, they had to lay off staff. In 2022, they expanded into Sephora, which was a big shift from direct to consumer. And then in 2023, they launched a new brand called Glossier You, which is a fragrance, and that's a whole different category. So the question is: does the community model scale? Luna: I think the key tension is between intimacy and scale. When you're a small brand, you can actually read every customer email and respond. When you have millions of customers, you can't. So the co-creation becomes more about marketing — still valuable, but not the same. Lucas: Yeah, and there's a risk of the community feeling like it's being used. If the brand stops listening, or if the feedback loop slows down, the same people who felt ownership can feel alienated. That happened a bit when Glossier launched new products without the same level of customer input. Luna: I remember when they launched the Body Hero line in 2019 — there was some backlash because the shade range wasn't inclusive enough, and the community felt like their earlier feedback hadn't been heard. So the very model that built the brand can also create higher expectations. Lucas: And that's the real lesson for brand builders. Co-creation isn't a one-time launch tactic — it's an ongoing relationship. You have to keep showing up, keep asking, keep iterating. Glossier has done a lot of things right, but they've also learned that community equity is fragile. Luna: So what's the takeaway for someone building a brand today? Should they start with a community, or can they build community later? Lucas: I think the Glossier case suggests that starting with community is powerful, but only if you genuinely intend to stay in dialogue. If you just use community as a focus group to validate your ideas and then disappear, people will notice. The brands that sustain co-creation — like Lego with its adult fan community, or Patagonia with its environmental activism — they treat it as a permanent part of operations, not a launch campaign. Luna: And Glossier is still trying to figure out the balance. They recently brought in a new CEO, and they're focusing on profitability over growth. So the story isn't over. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes it such a good case study — it's not a simple success story. It's a brand that built something real through conversation, and now has to figure out how to keep that conversation alive at scale.