GLOW JOURNAL

Shai Eisenman approached building a beauty brand like a tech company. Bubble, the Gen Z focused skincare brand which had clocked up over $100 million USD in sales by late last year, a mere 5 years post-launch, is built around a consumer driven feedback loop. Where most founders will start the development process with a small focus group, then go away to build the business, then touch back in with a cursory “Hope you like it!”, Shai essentially co-created the brand with her consumers. What’s interesting to me is the complete lack of ego it takes to build something so consumer-focused. One of Shai’s biggest challenges has been learning to trust data over intuition. This might seem pretty simple for someone with a background in tech and gaming, but it’s easier said than done when the data often contradicts your own ideas. As Shai tells me, “You can’t ever assume that you know best.” Shai’s consumer-led, ego-absent approach is clearly working. Bubble is in over 19,000 retail locations globally, has scaled its product offering beyond 20 SKUs, and to this day remains driven by the feedback of their community- which has now grown considerably beyond that initial 5000. In this Episode 155 of the Glow Journal podcast, Shai shares what the tech and gaming worlds taught her about user behaviour, why Leighton Meester was the perfect choice as the brand’s first global ambassador, and gives us a first look at the brand’s latest launch. Listen now on iTunes and Spotify #glowjournal

My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that in 2026, a successful launch, in any category, needs to be rooted in problem solving- it can’t just be a “nice to have.” Cheat Beauty launched in February of this year and completely sold out its first drop in less than a fortnight. The product is a dual ended lipstick and lip liner, in three nude shades with different undertones. It sounds so simple, and that’s the point- Cheat Beauty launched with a goal of making great makeup easier. There’s no guesswork, there’s no confusion, it’s just two ends of a product that work together. Something both Bec Maddern and Bec Gregson mentioned in this conversation that stuck with me is that just about everyone who was advising them financially on this endeavour had pointed out that a double ended product would more or less cannibalise their earning potential- why launch a product that does two things, when you can launch two products and sell more units? But that’s not how we shop. Yes, launching multiple SKUs might mean the potential for more sales- that might be a way to start a business, but it’s not a way to really appeal to your consumers in a meaningful way. As Bec Gregson told me when I asked her how she knows if an idea is actually strong enough to build a business around, “It’s great to have an idea, but it has to be rooted in problem solving.” In Episode 154 of the Glow Journal podcast, Bec Maddern and Bec Gregson share what happens when you have an idea that feels almost too obvious to not already exist, how they’ve balanced luxury with efficiency, and why Aussie consumers have a higher bullshit radar when it comes to new brands. Listen now on iTunes and Spotify #glowjournal

BORNTOSTANDOUT is unquestionably one of the most interesting and industry-defining brands in not only the fragrance space, but the beauty sphere at large. What’s so fascinating to me about BTSO is that it’s built on this idea of rebellion, but the brand is based in South Korea. Now, you hear Korea and you think “Well, that makes sense, it’s the global capital of beauty innovation,” but as Jun puts it- “Korea is simultaneously one of the most innovative beauty markets in the world, but also the most conformist in terms of taste.” He explained to me that K Beauty is, at its core, built on the idea of perfecting a standard, not breaking one. That in mind, I had a lot of questions for Jun about how he’s gone about launching into a relatively conservative market, given so much of the brand’s iconography is tied to sex, to excess, to gluttony- it’s super sexy, which to me feels really natural, but evidently this is a brand that was never formed with solely its local market in mind. In another Australian podcast exclusive, Jun shares how he’s managed to expand the brand to over 75 countries without diluting its DNA, why he believes specificity is what creates resonance, and how he keeps creating perfumes when he only has so many love stories to tell… Listen to the Glow Journal podcast now on iTunes and Spotify #glowjournal

Fara Homidi isn’t interested in the male gaze. You know Fara Homidi’s work. Whether you’re invested in beauty and had been counting down to her namesake brand’s arrival on Australian shelves, or if you’ve had a peripheral scroll through Instagram and seen a Miu Miu campaign or an i-D cover- based on the extent to which she’s shaped 21st century beauty, I can just about guarantee you’ve seen her work. I’ve always been visually very drawn to the way Fara applies makeup and approaches beauty- I’d read a quote from her, years ago, in which she said she’s more interested in makeup looking “alive” than “pretty,” so I pushed her on this a bit as I wanted to hear more. She explained that, for her, it’s about creating something for the female gaze. When Fara talks about sexy, she’s acutely aware of what women find sexy- that’s who she’s creating for. In the early 2000s, for example, when she was finding a lot of her work for magazines was being airbrushed to oblivion, her way of rebelling was to seek out teams of women- female photographers, stylists, creative directors, women who were more interested in something that looked “lived in” as opposed to this idea of “perfection.” That’s how Fara rebelled, and it’s something she’s taken through the decades with her and has since woven through Fara Homidi Beauty. While Fara was in Australia to launch the brand into Mecca, she shared what she thinks some founders miss by never having worked in consumer-facing beauty, how she strikes the fine line between artistry and consumer understanding, and how she convinced Kendall Jenner to bleach her eyebrows for the most recent cover of Vogue Paris. Listen to the Glow Journal podcast now on iTunes and Spotify #glowjournal

I mentioned earlier this season that, given we’re now 7 seasons in, I wanted to go back and revisit some of my favourite beauty brand stories- I wanted to bring back previous guests from earlier seasons and look at how their brands and the beauty industry at large has evolved since we last recorded. For the uninitiated, Conserving Beauty is Australia’s first ever waterless beauty brand, the first beauty brand globally to be part of the Water Footprint network, the first Australian beauty brand to be backed by both government and impact investment funds, and the brand behind the world’s first dissolving facial wipes. Natassia launched the brand when she was just 27 years old. Since we last spoke the brand has launched into Mecca and Priceline locally as well as expanding into the UK and US markets, the latter of which is now responsible for a whopping 70% of the brand’s revenue. What I found the most interesting, however, is that the data that Natassia and her team have gathered over the last 3 and a half years has shown them that their customer is actually not who they initially thought it was, and how they’ve changed tack to make sure they’re formulating for and marketing to the right consumers. In Episode 150 of the Glow Journal podcast, Natassia shares exactly how they’ve pivoted for an audience they didn’t realise was theirs’, how she’s approaching Conserving Beauty’s US launch differently from their UK launch, and why the pharmacy customer has proven surprisingly lucrative. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts #glowjournal

Two years before Hailey Bieber sold Rhode to e.l.f. Beauty, Susan Yara and her team sold Naturium to the beauty juggernaut for $355 million USD. The Naturium growth story is the kind of story you hear and think “This could be a Netflix doco.” Susan, naturally, tells it better than I do, but this may be one of the biggest beauty comebacks in recent history. Susan Yara, then a popular YouTuber, joined Naturium in a founder and CEO role in the year 2020. There was a controversy, the internet called for her to be cancelled, but against the odds the brand achieved a whopping 80% compound annual growth rate and were acquired by e.l.f. for that eye watering $355 million in 2023- just three years post-launch. This week, Naturium launches into Sephora Australia (into physical stores TODAY), with Susan still very much fronting the brand and, as she tells me, “getting to do all the fun stuff.” So. How did she do it? In Episode 149 of the Glow Journal podcast, Susan shares a timeline of THAT 2020 controversy, whether “clean” really means anything in 2025, and why a viral product launch means nothing if your customers aren’t returning. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal

Eleanor Pendleton knows beauty. She became the youngest Beauty Editor in Australia at just 20 years old, and has spent the better part of the last two decades in beauty publishing, largely at the helm of her own publication, Gritty Pretty. Eleanor is an unbelievable example of a journalist who has been able to not just adapt to but embrace the changing face of the media landscape of whatever we’re calling it, and to this day I really think nobody navigated that change better than Eleanor and her Gritty Pretty team- it was the gloss and the production value of a magazine, but it was digital and, most importantly, it was honest. That in mind, there are very few people I’d trust more than Eleanor to create their own beauty line. Haléau Beauty, a skin-first, Australian made cosmetics line, launches today, October 1st, and Eleanor so kindly gave me the exclusive. This is a brand that harnesses, quite literally, two decades worth of insider beauty knowledge and places it in our hands. Even on the day we recorded this episode, one of the girls at the studio asked who would be joining me and, when I told her, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed “Now THAT’S someone I’d trust with a beauty brand.” In this Episode 148 of the Glow Journal podcast, Eleanor shares how she convinced advertisers to buy into Gritty Pretty when she had no product to show them, her advice for anyone wanting to break into the beauty media landscape in 2025, and why she’s chosen to document the entire Haléau launch process via Substack. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal

Georgie Gilbert and Camille Peressini, both former Mecca execs, launched Bronte, a premium Australian body care brand, in January of this year. They launched SOMA this June. That’s two beauty brands within the space of 6 months. Whilst I love the story behind Bronte (and the products themselves), it’s the SOMA story that I want to hook you in with because I think this is such a great example of really identifying a genuine market gap. Having both worked at Mecca, Georgie and Camille had access to just about every luxury body care brand on the market. They’re also both mums- realistically, are you buying and using a high end body wash in the shower with your husband and kids? No, you’re doing a supermarket run and picking up something there. Both Georgie and Camille knew, however, that the supermarket body care offering was uninspiring. The products didn’t look or feel luxe, the scents were generic, and it felt like the accessible options weren’t formulated or designed with beauty consumers in mind. Enter, SOMA. If the gap itself wasn’t compelling enough, consider that Georgie and Camille were given a 10 week launch timeline from Woolworths. That’s 10 weeks to strategise, formulate, package and market an entirely new brand, all while keeping that accessible price point in mind, and have it on the shelves of over 1000 Woolies stores nationwide in less than three months. In Episode 147 of the Glow Journal podcast, Georgie and Camille share how they’re going about converting habitual supermarket shoppers who’ve been buying the same body wash for decades, the intricacies of creating body care packaging that’s fully and easily recyclable, and what happens when your product accidentally goes viral on TikTok before you’ve officially launched. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal

Both on mic and off, I’ve been having more and more conversations around sustainability in the beauty industry of late. I think about this a lot, my job being my job- as much as I’m grateful every single day that I get to play with, review, and write about new products, I’m also aware that so much of beauty is about excess. It’s an industry of more. We’re increasingly seeing brands bring new sustainability initiatives to the table, but the reality is that the most sustainable thing you can do is to stop producing more things. Now, that’s never going to happen is it, so the challenge here is for beauty brands to figure out how we as consumers can still experience beauty in the way we want, without compromise, but with as minimal a footprint as is possible. I’ve used the word “challenge,” but that doesn’t feel like it has anywhere near enough gravitas when talking about what Lucy Vincent has achieved at sans [ceuticals]. She founded the brand in around 2007 and has always been very much ahead of the curve, across formulation, design, and sustainability, but this week has seen the launch of Perpetual- a completely waterless haircare range, housed in canisters that are designed to be held onto forever that have been crafted from waste to take existing plastic out of circulation, with refill cartons made from discarded sugarcane leaves that can be returned to the earth via compost when you’re done. In seven years of this podcast, I’m not sure that I’ve ever spoken to someone who has considered every single step of the supply chain so thoroughly. In Episode 146 of the Glow Journal podcast, Lucy shares how important it is, as a founder, to know how to take on a number of roles within your business, why every day presents an opportunity for learning, and why your “recyclable” beauty products may not be all they appear to be. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal

@rachhwilde has been on the show before, back in April 2022 to talk about @tbhskincare_ , but this is the first time a founder has joined me for a second time to talk about an entirely new brand- @boufhaircare . That said, we did have over three years of tbh catching up to do- the brand launched into over 400 Priceline stores in March 2023 and Coles later that year, merged with Boost Lab the following month to create parent company York St Brands, and rebranded earlier this year ahead of global expansion. Bouf, Rach’s newest venture and the third brand within the York St stable, was developed in a similar manner to tbh- Rachael was presented with patented hair growth tech called the FGF5 protein, she looked at the clinicals, tried it herself over several months and, upon seeing results, decided to take that tech to market in the form of a shampoo, conditioner, leave in treatment, hair growth tonic and a digestible hair growth supplement. In Episode 145 of the Glow Journal podcast, Rachael shares the reason behind that now infamous Bouf launch campaign that saw brand ambassador Indy Clinton wearing a wig, the details behind 2023’s York St Brands merger and tbh skincare’s subsequent growth, and how she and her team survived an internet hate campaign that, quite literally, captured the attention of the world. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts #glowjournal

This episode came to be in my favourite way- I met Felicity for the first time on a retreat last month, I heard her story for the first time, and more or less immediately afterwards I said “What are you doing next week and can you come on the podcast?” Felicity’s founder story is really different to my usual guests in that she never really set out to create a “brand,” so I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to show you how many different shapes the startup journey, so to speak, can take. The short version- Felicity wanted to overhaul her health, so she started making probiotic drinks in her kitchen. Her friends and family saw a change in her skin, her hair, her energy, and her health, so she started making up batches for them. Word spread, local retailers started asking if they could stock her products, and over a decade on Imbibe is a fully fledged beauty and wellness brand with SKUs spanning ingestible and topical skincare. There’s a lot you can take from this, but what I find the most interesting sits within the “finding the right manufacturer” piece- if you set out specifically with the goal of becoming a “brand founder,” hearing the word “no” time and time again (which is a startup inevitability) would be really disheartening. In Felicity’s case, she didn’t necessarily want to start a brand, so hearing a “no” was kind of a straightforward “okay, well you’re not the right manufacturer” conversation. Business wasn’t her primary motivator- her primary motivator was just getting a shelf stable version of her product to the people who wanted it. In Episode 144 of the Glow Journal podcast, Felicity shares why the hotel space has become one of her most interesting and fruitful distribution channels, the many ways inflammation can show up in the body, and why she’s always used her customers as her biggest influencers. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal

This is something I’d been thinking about doing for a while and, for whatever reason, season 7 feels like the right time to do it. I had Bree and her Frank co-founder, Jess Hatzis, on the podcast back in 2018, season 1- back when I thought this would just be a miniseries on the business of beauty. I’ve been wanting to bring back previous guests from the first few seasons, relistening to their original episode, then looking at how their brands have evolved in the 7 or so years since I last interviewed them, as well as getting their take on the evolution of the beauty industry as a whole. Bree was the perfect founder to do this with. She was SO down to compare her previous answers to today’s feelings and, beyond that, she’s a branding and beauty mastermind. So few brands have been able to achieve what Frank has achieved, globally, so this episode is a treat not just from a beauty perspective, but from a marketing perspective. In Episode 143 of the Glow Journal podcast, Bree shares her thoughts on how new businesses can cut through the noise on social media with a 2025 lens, why frank body has moved away from novelty launches and has moved into high performance body care, and we compare her take on the state of the beauty industry with the answers she gave me back in season 1. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify #glowjournal