Inside Story: Emily Weiss’ Glossier – A Glossy Beauty Experience

Brand:

Rating: ★ 5

Category: Books > Business & Money > Industries > Fashion & Textile

ASIN: 1982190612

Reviewer: SilerSentry
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fun read about the founder and workings of a 2010s beauty brand
Review: As someone interested in retailing, I enjoyed reading this book by Meltzer, particularly her detailed and meticulous reporting from a variety of insider sources, investors, etc. Her focus on Emily Weiss was probably suitable and relevant in the context of the Girl Boss movement, but what I found more interesting is the reporting of the decision making methods adopted by Weiss and others at Glossier in making various decisions (opening stores, closing stores, partnering with Sephora, etc.). I recommend this book for those interested in the retailing industry.
Reviewer: Suzanne
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Millennials rejoice
Review: Loved this well researched deep dive into Glossier and how they became the brand they are. The most interesting part to me was hearing about how they wanted to be the Millenial Clinique.
Reviewer: GardenZen
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not sure why it’s getting such good reviews…
Review: I kind of fell for the hype and bought the book and was really looking forward to reading it. I have to say I didn’t really learn anything new and I think the author missed an opportunity to really explain how Emily Weiss built such a successful millennial brand. She kind of oscillates between, kind of being negative and kind of being positive and in the end it sort of reads like a high school book report. Missed opportunity. And while she alludes to the fact that #GirlBoss is a double standard misogynistic construct, her whole book is basically an extension of of that. Let’s face it, nobody’s written a book like this about a male founder. And while I don’t doubt that Emily Weiss has a bunch of negative attributes, it would’ve been good to vent understood her story with a little bit more depth and rigor.
Reviewer: MaineReader
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Juicy, smart totally addictive read about Girlbosses and Glossier
Review: I’ve been waiting for this book ever since it was announced last year and Marisa Meltzer does NOT disappoint. The girlboss era (think the Wing, Away, Outdoor Voices, ManRepeller, and yes, Glossier) feels far away today but also it was kind of just yesterday. This is an era that deserves to be chronicled. What were the girlbosses thinking? It was this bizarre amalgam of business and feminism and “you can be our friend” that was very internet-fame based and highly curated and highly white. They made millions (and billions in some cases). So they matter. And I’d rather read about them a million times over than Elon Musk. Emily Weiss and Meltzer’s relationship to her and her company and how that is so deeply reported is just plain brilliant. It’s like if Vanity Fair and Harvard Business Review had a baby. These pages turn but I also learned a lot about the DTC era and bad business behavior and also genius ideas (Emily Weiss is no slouch and Meltzer shows that plainly). This book left me with so much to think about. Who are the real girlbosses in the end? Maybe the uberpowerful women in business who never sought that name and fame in the first place, like Rhianna (Fenty! Love!) or Martha Stewart. Or maybe it’s just Gwyneth. Highly Recommend.
Reviewer: carilynp
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Get into the Gloss with this book. Well-researched and a great read.
Review: I do love the beauty industry, all the glamour, and millennial pink. I knew this book was going to be good and did it deliver.Makeup-obsessed or not, an e-commerce consumer, or perhaps intrigued by female entrepreneurship, you’ll find it in this book. Meltzer put her research skills to work like a beauty queen dons the perfect lashes as she uncovers how Emily Weiss, former Vogue intern and brief reality TV star, took her intimate Into the Gloss blog and launched Glossier, a billion-dollar ‘skincare first, makeup second’ DTC brand of which she is the founder and former CEO and now serves as executive chairwoman. An in-depth look at both the ugly and beautiful culture that It-girl Weiss created as she turned her of-the-moment idea into a phenomenon. Essentially, she debuted a minimal skincare line with no-frills photography, ‘real’ looking models via social media, and customers couldn’t get enough. Products became so sought after; waitlists were in the tens of thousands. Glossier put the boom in beauty. A unicorn right out of the gate.With growth comes pain. And Emily had her share. She fancied Glossier as a tech company. Yet she was selling products not software. There was trouble at the office and then they expanded to retail. Toxicity was not limited to work culture. When Glossier introduced its limited foundation line, the lack of shade range spoke volumes to customers. Meltzer is not out to portray Weiss as the Wicked Queen. She’s just telling it like it is. Mirror, mirror, on the wall…GLOSSY is an objective, intriguing behind-the-scenes deep-dive about an ambitious woman who took an innovative idea, ran with it, disrupted the beauty business, stumbled a bit, then stepped back.
Reviewer: Ashley P. Dowling
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This book and it’s subject is just odd
Review: Writing is good but the entire Glossier and Emily Weiss story is so strange. Almost like it’s a front for something. How can something appear, shake the market so strongly, dominate Instagram and then just disappear. Big Beauty probably threatened Glossier with bricks and baseball bats.
Reviewer: JesakaL
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent writing
Review: Marissa Meltzer knows how to tell a story. Even though I’ve never been particularly interested in Glossier or its founder Emily Weiss, I could not quit reading GLOSSY. Yes, the backstory and founding of Glossier is somewhat interesting, but what makes this book so fascinating and gripping is Meltzer’s ability to situate the company and Weiss in a larger socioeconomic context. Meltzer’s tracking of the sexist label “girl boss,” giving us an understanding of how the label came to be, followed by how it seemed to become a target on women, adds needed context for people who were or would have been peers to Weiss.Meltzer weaves everything together to create a thoughtful, direct story about an ambitious person who founded a company that was a huge success, then faltered, and now seems to be finding its way back. It reads (almost) like a novel but never dips into hyperbole or serves up “dish” intended to become clickbait.
Reviewer: Wesley Stephens
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: okay, just okay
Review: This honestly seemed less journalistic and more of an emotional book on Emily Weiss’s flaws. That said, as a Glossier fan myself and a business-minded working mom, it was an interesting read
Reviewer: 春雨
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book gave me a lot of clarity into the experience of my generation, of feeling low-key intimidated by the message of “just be you” propagated by the naturally beautiful, and the anticlimactic end of millennial youth. The people who orchestrated that experience feel real; it was oddly therapeutic to learn about their struggles and attempts to stay authentic while at the mercy of larger forces. I appreciate that the author does not force a grand conclusion or lesson out of this story.
Reviewer: Client d’Amazon
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This was decent – the sort of thing I read on my Kindle to fall asleep to.I was interested in Emily Weiss and her success with Glossier. At the end of the book I didn’t feel like we really knew her and while the book was reasonably done, it probably could have covered the same ground in a shorter time. There’s a bit of #girlboss analysis and some business insight but not anything spectacular.Fun but not much more than that.
Reviewer: Gemma Green
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: You know how they say some meetings could have been an email? Well this book could have just been a Vanity Fair feature. Instead, the same talking points are repeated chapter after chapter: weiss had rich pretty girl privilege, her company was like one big non-inclusive sorority, she thought glossier was a tech company but it wasn’t, she made some decisions that were really rather more dull than awful, rinse and repeat. There are no insights about weiss that a glossier fan with an internet connection could not find online. The author herself admits weiss is tight-lipped and never opens up, so anyone hoping for (*Phoebe from friends voice*) brand new information, will not find it here. I bought this book because i had heard of the brand and was interested to find out why it became a ‘unicorn’ but it was just a lot of anecdotes and platitudes. Plus, even the ex-employees the author interviews don’t grind their axes because, as a couple of them admit, they have shares in the company and so don’t want to spill any dirt in case it affects their future potential share price. The writing is pretty basic. The author inserts herself into the narrative far too often and is under the misguided notion that writing ‘vagina’ regularly makes the writing edgy (Describing glossier’s soho boutique: “the space felt like being inside a really fresh-smelling vagina.”). Total nonsense. It’s not a terrible book, it’s just a waste of time and money. Just google what you want to know about weiss and glossier.
Reviewer: KIS
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I love reading biographies but this took me some time to finish. Writing is not the best and there is an overarching bias from the writer against the subject.
Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I am an avid reader, I have been since I was very young however, I really struggled to get through this book. It was much more about the author’s opinion with less about Emily Weiss herself. I loved watching Emily on The Hills (I think it was) and was so eager to hear her story but it didn’t hit the mark.

Read More