How Glossier's perfume saved it from the millennial dustbin

• Beauty brand Glossier has a hit on its hands with its "You" perfume, driven by a viral TikTok.
• Glossier had been a peak millennial direct-to-consumer brand but has recently struggled.
• It's fascinating to read how Glossier capitalized on the viral perfume hit to resurrect the brand.

It seemed for a moment like Glossier might be headed the way of skinny jeans or Allbirds — yet another brand aligned with 2010s millennial appeal that lost its relevance.

But the recent success of Glossier's "You" perfume — which isn't new, but has been introduced to a new Gen Z audience thanks to a viral TikTok — is helping pull the brand back to life.

The TikTok wasn't part of some big plan of Glossier to get back into the graces of the younger crowd. It came about organically — just a fan posting about how she loved the scent — and soon, the company noticed sales had jumped by 10 times. It jumped on the trend and amplified it.

Bloomberg has the fascinating story on how Glossier avoided the once-hot product dustbin.

Here's how it happened: First, it was just one TikTok where a young woman talks about how she was stopped on the street by a man asking what scent she was wearing. The video went viral, and Glossier employees woke up to the flood of sales the next day.

A single viral TikTok, in theory, might fade away, but Glossier reacted to the successful viral moment among Gen Z buyers. From Bloomberg:

"Time is of the essence," Glossier Chief Executive Officer Kyle Leahy says. She pulled together a task force of a half-dozen executives to track hourly sales of Glossier You, which retails for $78 for a 50-milliliter bottle.

Given the strong demand, they decided to put in more orders for a deodorant based on the perfume that was about to be released and for a smaller version of the scent with a rollerball applicator that was slated for December.

Meanwhile, the marketing team sent out bottles of the perfume to about 200 influencers, many of whom had requested to sample the hot item. Mack also paid TikTok to boost Werner's video for six weeks, ensuring more people saw it.

The other business hurdle was figuring out the logistics of dealing with a big sales spike in one product and how much to estimate for sales for the upcoming holiday season so they wouldn't run out.

What was so fascinating about this story to me is that Glossier's success has typically been thought of in very conceptual ways: how its packaging and product line hit upon a zeitgeist, its glamourous founder, the aesthetics of cool-girl beauty, and what that all means in some hand-wavy cultural context.

But this is about the nuts and bolts behind what actually makes the company work: the people planning a fast-reaction marketing response and the people who use Excel spreadsheets to estimate the orders at the factory — and how those people are the ones who low-key saved the company this time.

Glossier started in 2014 with just a few skincare items, and its pink packaging and dewy makeup look stirred something deep in the millennial DNA.

The brand, which was initially direct-to-consumer, exploded, and founder Emily Weiss became a business celebrity. (I highly recommend the book "Glossy" by Marisa Meltzer about the rise of Glossier!) But things started to falter.

In 2022, the company laid off 80 employees and discontinued the ill-fated sparkly Play makeup line. A BI investigation at the time on Glossier showed a company at a crisis point, hamstrung by its founder's missteps and plans to run its site like a tech company rather than a traditional beauty brand. (Glossier, for instance, wasn't even sold in Sephora until 2023).

For the record, as a dutiful millennial woman, I own and enjoy several Glossier products (I personally love their mascara). And I've sniffed "You" at Sephora and wasn't super into it — although knowing now it's a Gen Z hit, as an aging millennial who wants to stay cool … I'm considering it.