Glossier announced that it has raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The beauty company now has a $1.2 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Founder and CEO Emily Weiss, featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 in Retail in 2015, started the beauty blog “Into The Gloss” in 2010 alongside her full-time job as a fashion assistant at Vogue. “Into The Gloss” quickly gained popularity generating around 10 million page views a month with 60% of readers checking the site daily, according to Forbes.
Weiss realized that many women didn’t have brand loyalty and decided to create a direct-to-consumer line of beauty products in October 2014, with products like “Balm Dotcom” lip balms, “Milky Jelly” cleanser, and “Cloud Paint” blush. Like “Into The Gloss,” Glossier gained a following, and today it has 1.9 million followers on Instagram alone.
The company’s annual revenue more than doubled in 2018, surpassing $100 million, it gained more than 1 million new customers and it launched a second brand, Glossier Play, according to a statement. The New York-based company now has more than 200 employees across three offices and operates in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, France, Denmark, and Sweden.
The estimated billion-dollar valuation would make Glossier one of the few billion-dollar companies founded by women. There were 134 U.S. venture capital-backed companies valued at $1 billion or more in 2018 and just 16 had a female founder, according to Pitchbook reporting. The statistics don’t improve globally, of the 239 there were just 23 with a female founder. Today there are 14 billion-dollar venture capital-backed companies with a female founder in the U.S. and 23 globally, according to Pitchbook’s current valuation.
Glossier previously raised $86.4 million, according to Pitchbook, and was valued at $390 million last year. When asked if she has initial public offering plans, Weiss declined to discuss dates or other specifics but told the Wall Street Journal, “We are certainly in a position where…we are able to do that.”
With an estimated $1.2 billion valuation on the horizon, Glossier could be one of the few female-founded and female-led “unicorns.”
