A 2014 internet-born beauty startup, Glossier has met with tremendous success by raising over $35 million in funding, carrying over 22 products, boasting 805,000 Instagram and 46,000 Twitter followers, and now expanding into international and brick-and-mortar domains (Wischhover). A cult-like following emerged and iconic hashtags have popped up due to Glossier's "real girl," "effortless minimal makeup," and "simple coolness" concepts, among many others (Tiku). On top of this, Glossier had 30,000 people on a combined product waitlist as well as customers lining up to become social media product reps and to be featured on the company blog (Tiku; Wischhover).

How has Glossier been able to see such tremendous growth for a cosmetics e-commerce site in just a few years? Based on articles featuring interviews with both Glossier's CEO and social media gurus, it seems that social media mastery holds the key to the answer (Giacobbe 2017).

Intrigued by the fast-paced and continuing rise of Glossier's success, our team defined a research question centered around this achievement: what are the defining factors that led to and carries on Glossier’s success in sales, popularity, and reach, in the social media realm?

Guided by our research question, we hoped to uncover tactics and characteristics that explain the popularity of Glossier – especially as a company with roots in the digital startup realm – and determine whether the reputation and following are influenced more by the products offered or lifestyle promoted, or perhaps something else altogether. The three components of success we listed out above are inextricably linked and we believe the insights we obtain will help us identify impactful business and marketing strategies (specifically in the social media domain) for other beauty retailers, startups, e-commerce companies, or like Glossier, a combination of all these.

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