Last month, I published a feature about Glossier in Inc. magazine. I interviewed founder Emily Weiss, who started her fashion media career around the same time I did, and Kyle Leahy, her successor as CEO, about how they turned the business around after a spate of negative press a few years ago, along with other troubles. Ahead, a brief excerpt from the story, and a gift link so Back Row readers can read the feature in its entirety for free.

The 10-year-old beauty brand is profitable, growing, and back in the zeitgeist after successfully pulling off a transition of power.

Emily Weiss feels like she’s been keeping out of the spotlight. In recent months, she’s given interviews to The New York Times and Marie Claire; talked to the Australian Financial Review’s magazine about her taste in design; written for British Vogue; and been profiled in Elle under the headline “How Emily Weiss Influenced Everything.” That’s what passes for low-key to Weiss.

“I’m still, in a way, lying low compared with how I was living for 15 years,” she says on Zoom from her all-white home office in New York. Since 2010, when she started the beauty website Into the Gloss, which became known for its column “The Top Shelf” detailing “It” girl beauty routines, Weiss has been in the public eye. But she grew to be one of the most recognizable female founders of the 2010s after she launched her beauty brand, Glossier. With an audience of 10 million, Weiss raised $2 million in 2013 to create Glossier’s first four products, which launched in 2014: a Balm Dotcom for the lips and anywhere else one might want a dewy look, a moisturizer, a face mist, and a skin tint that came in three shades. Weiss took the collection, along with a pink bubble pouch and cutesy stickers, to magazine editors in hopes of coverage. It worked. With the ethos of “skin first, makeup second” and a mission to “democratize” beauty, Glossier was an early direct-to-consumer success. Products that followed like Boy Brow and the Glossier You fragrance were bona fide hits. Glossier’s signature light pink became synonymous with not just the brand but also the Millennial generation.

Weiss became a star in her relentless promotion of Glossier. With nearly 800,000 Instagram followers, she is more famous than most founders. But in the past year, the entrepreneur has redefined her role in the brand she built, which itself proved highly influential in the now $100.3 billion U.S. beauty and personal care industry. It has taken a period of reflection and realignment for Glossier to restore its relevance in an increasingly crowded marketplace—and for Weiss to settle into a new role at her business. It’s an example of successful course-correction for other entrepreneurs.

If you had to identify a low point for Glossier, you might go back to 2021. The business then had a reported $1.8 billion valuation after raising $266.4 million, but it had started to stumble. One-time fans were souring on Glossier for reasons ranging from the brand’s limited shade range to negative workplace allegations that circulated on social media. A fan in the brand’s active Reddit community posted a poll with a sadface asking if Glossier was “in its flop era,” with 69 percent of 1,238 respondents voting that “she” was.

Shein plans to list on London’s stock exchange in the first half of the year, perhaps as early as April. British lawmakers held a hearing to address questions about the company’s supply chain in advance of the planned IPO. Shein’s mysterious CEO, Chris Xu, didn’t take questions — that task was left to Yinan Zhu, Shein’s general counsel for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Zhu dodged questions about IPO plans and Shein’s cotton supply, declining to state definitively: if Shein sourced cotton from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or elsewhere in the country; whether Xinjiang was home to forced labor; and whether Shein prohibited suppliers from using Xinjiang cotton.

“You can’t tell us anything about listing, you can’t tell us anything about cotton in Shein products and you can’t tell us much, in fact,” said Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North and chair of the House of Commons’s Business and Trade Committee. As Sourcing Journal notes, Shein has previously said it does not employ manufacturers in Xinjiang. But during the hearing, Zhu said she would have to get back to the committee in writing about the cotton question because she lacked “detailed operational information” about the origin of Shein cotton. Stop Uyghur Genocide has urged regulators to block Shein’s listing in the U.K.

Byrne also cited Channel 4’s 2022 investigation finding that Shein workers put in 18-hour shifts with one day off per month, and asked, “How many hours do you think is an appropriate number for a shop-floor worker at a supplier for Shein?”

Zhu said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to judge what’s appropriate.”

These very issues contributed to Shein, valued at $64 billion, being blocked from going public in the U.S., hence its attempt in London. According to Reuters, Britain's finance minister Rachel Reeves has a trip planned to Beijing and Shanghai to meet with officials that could help speed along necessary regulatory approvals. The head of Britain's Financial Conduct Authority that approves IPOs like Shein’s, will go along on the trip and attend meetings as well.

If I had to guess whether or not Shein will pull this off in London, I would predict they will. They’re planting sponsored stories in U.S. publications like Elle that state, “SHEIN knows that it’s become increasingly important to consumers to shop things they like stylistically from brands whose ethos, values, and business practices align with what they care about as well.” Frankly, hearings are isolated events, and Shein has money to wage its own PR campaign. As Gerri said in Succession, “The money will wash you away.”

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