The Glossy Beauty Podcast

In a lot of ways, supplement company Cymbiotika has perfected the form factor and distribution of modern-day vitamins.

The San Diego-based company launched in 2018 and quickly found its footing in the marketplace with single-serving pouches of Liposomal supplements. So far, the company has sold more than 200 million individual packets and grown its revenue 3,000% over the past 3 years to reach $150 million in annual revenue, according to the company.

Cymbiotika sells across mass, online and grocery retail in boxes and individual pouches at point of sale. It entered Target in 2025, Ulta Beauty in March, and Walmart last week. Now, the brand is making a big bet on a new category by launching its first beauty supplement for hair, skin, and nails.

Called Liposomal Beauty Peptide Complex, the launch is being promoted with the brand's biggest campaign to date. "The investment was a big one in the sense that we've never really done anything on this level,” said Cymbiotika co-founder Durana Elmi. “I think you're starting to see a shift in the consumer's approach toward beauty, and being there in the forefront of that today is something we're really, really proud of.”

The new product will be sold at retailers like Ulta Beauty, Walmart and Target. Elmi joined Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to walk through the brand’s strategy to win in the notoriously competitive world of beauty supplements. This includes the brand’s biggest campaign to date, starring model Amelia Gray and made with OBB Media, the content company owned by Rhode co-founder Michael D. Ratner.

Ritual founder and CEO Kat Schneider knows that winning the female supplement consumer requires taking big bets and big swings.

“When I started the company and I was fundraising. … I was told pregnancy was ‘niche’, postpartum was ‘niche’, perimenopause was ‘niche,’” Schneider told Glossy. “This was a decade plus ago. Now, women's health has never been hotter.”

Ritual launched direct-to-consumer in 2016 with a transparent supply chain and science-backed formulations. Now, it has the best-selling prenatal supplement on the U.S. market, according to the brand, and is sold across Target, Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Whole Food and more retailers.

Still, when the company entered the perimenopause space last month, it still felt like the Wild West. “There's almost no market sizing [into subcategories of women’s health],” Schneider said. “You have to have a lot of conviction when you're going into something earlier, ahead of the time that people see it.” Perimenopause, the hormonal precursor to menopause that can last a decade, has received new attention in the past few years as women’s health takes a front seat in popular culture.

In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sits down with Schneider to walk through exactly what it took to launch into the burgeoning space, which is also the brand's first new category launch in six years. Its big swing includes a dedicated foundation supplement called Perimenopause Health, plus a foray into creatine, an essential nutrient for perimenopausal women, with the launch of its new Creatine Greens powder drink mix. Then there is the multi-million-dollar marketing budget that includes hiring “Nobody Wants This” actress Jackie Thon for a campaign and TV spot created with full-service media agency Giant Spoon.

What if new product development didn’t have to be so complicated and expensive?

NIOD, the second brand from Estée Lauder-owned Deciem, entered Sephora in August with an NPD tactic borrowed from tech companies like Apple.

“NIOD is all about high science and high tech, and then bringing it to the consumer in as simple of a way as possible,” Amy Bi, vp of global brand at Deceim, told Glossy. “It's very similar to an iPhone. As technology within skin care evolves, as research evolves, we simply upgrade our products.”

For example, NIOD’s best-selling Copper Amino Isolate 3 1:1 (CAIS) serum is on its third iteration, which is noted in the name as "3." Similar to an iPhone, which is on its 18th iteration, NIOD can constantly innovate without having to reinvent the wheel.

“We're just upgrading them similar to how your iOS goes through a software upgrade overnight and then a bug is fixed or something has been simplified for you,” Bi said. “It's the exact same approach.”

She told Glossy that some consumers stay well-informed about the latest version, which is messaged across traditional marketing channels like email and social media. But most consumers simply appreciate that the brand is always optimizing its formulas. Others never even catch on to the process.

NIOD, pronounced nee-odd, launched in 2015 as the second brand from Deciem, the beauty incubator behind The Ordinary. Deciem was purchased by Estée Lauder Companies in 2017 for a total investment of $1.7 billion.

As previously reported by Glossy, NIOD is positioned as a science-meets-longevity skin-care brand and serves a burgeoning cohort of biohacking wellness enthusiasts. The brand was early to the copper peptide skin-care trend that’s growing today and, like The Ordinary, prices the entire line competitively. NIOD’s products range from $26-$93.

Bi has been with Deciem for five years. Her CV includes nearly seven years at Nike, her last role being global brand director of women’s lifestyle.

NIOD still launches new products; its cadence is simply slower. “We're not constantly on this new product launch cycle that so much of the industry is on,” Bi said. “ We're actually just focused on maintaining our key SKUs, our key products, and then upgrading them when we see that there's exciting technology that serves the same benefit, or there's a way that we can improve the texture, the efficacy, anything to do with the product itself.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean every consumer loves saying goodbye to older versions, so the company has mastered a slow process of phasing out older iterations, similar to how Apple slowly discontinues older iPhone models.

Bi sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to walk through the benefits, the challenges, and advantages of an iterative approach to new product development.

Over the past week, the internet has been ablaze discussing the beauty industry’s biggest controversy of the year. From social media to global news outlets, everyone is talking about something that’s been dubbed "eye patch gate."

Around September 17, several beauty brands, including Fenty Beauty, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty, began to tease the release of products that appeared to be almost identical. A small plastic jar that twisted to reveal a freshly sliced hydrogel eye mask. What was meant to be a first-of-its-kind innovation from each of the brands ended up looking more like an April Fools' joke.

As a response, Fenty Beauty and Glow Recipe meme'd themselves before continuing their launches, while Huda Beauty announced it was pulling the product from production. Turns out, the products all came from the same K-beauty manufacturer named Samhwa.

“It really comes down to a question around exclusivity, meaning these brands likely received some degree of the [same] innovation in a very similar capacity [but have no exclusivity on the innovation],” Jaimee Holmes, veteran beauty exec-turned-brand founder, told Glossy. “[When] I was leading merchandising at Goop [from 2019-2023], I was really seeing this across every single category. So many brands presented quite literally the same product from the same suppliers, same presentations, but sometimes there might be a price difference of up to $100 between two [of them].”

Holmes knows a thing or two about innovation. She got her start at Sephora, followed by Benefit Cosmetics, then Too Faced, where she was an integral part of bringing one of the top-selling mascaras of all time, Better than Sex, to market in 2013. She’s also held executive roles at Kendo Brands, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Memebox and L’Oréal-backed Timeline Longevity.

At Goop, Holmes “would get samples from the same suppliers sent to my doorstep [on behalf of different brands],” she said. “It gave me a lot of pause. … Ultimately, it's what led me to step away and create something of my own called Fel Beauty.”

Fel Beauty (pronounced like "feel") launched in December of 2025 at Sephora and DTC with just one product. Called Kissylips, the $22 lip-and-cheek hybrid launched in eight universal shades and has since sold out several times. The line is made in Canada with a custom formula and custom packaging, which was far from easy. “This was a two-year development cycle to create [the product],” Holmes said. “It was 56 trials, which means we failed about 55 times before we succeeded to create this at all. And we didn't give up.”

Fel Beauty has taken on minimal funding from angel investors. With a lean team of five – including secret weapon Erik Frey, a packaging design expert who’s made products for Rhode, Tatcha and MPH – Fel Beauty has since added an overnight lip mask and is soon expanding into other categories. Certain shades, like CutiePie, have sold out four times at Sephora. “We've been beating our plan as a brand by over 200%,” Holmes said. “The last time we tracked and pulled this number, it was around 35,000 [units sold].”

Holmes sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to unpack the innovation struggles in the industry, share lessons from her career, and spill the secret sauce behind 10-month-old Fel Beauty’s quick success.

What does it take to thrive within the notoriously competitive world of Sephora?

In many ways, Ilia Beauty is a case study in success in America’s biggest specialty beauty retailer. The brand has thrived within Sephora for a decade and makes the retailer’s No. 1 mascara, and Ilia founder Sasha Plavsic helped to architect the industry-leading "Clean at Sephora" program.

“Going into Sephora was really a game changer [for Ilia],” Plavsic told Glossy. “That's when the business really took off.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. “You have one shot, more or less, to prove that you can do what they need you to do,” Plavsic told Glossy. “If they're investing in you and giving up space for you to use, you do have to perform. … You have to be ready for the opportunity.”

Plavsic launched Ilia in 2011 in direct-to-consumer e-commerce and small beauty boutiques. In 2016, the brand entered Sephora and quickly became the "guinea pig" for Sephora’s industry-changing Clean at Sephora assortment, Plavsic told Glossy. In 2022, Ilia was acquired by Famille C, the Courtin-Clarins family holding company and owner of the Clarins brand.

Between launch and today, Ilia has also diversified its retailer presence to include Amazon, Credo, Mecca, Revolve, Nordstrom and, as of 2025, Ulta Beauty, which Plavsic sees as a separate customer from Sephora.

Cumulatively, Plavsic and her team have successfully navigated the challenges of a diversified retail presence and an expanding clean beauty landscape, all while maintaining their stronghold within Sephora. She sat down with Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack to share Clean at Sephora’s origin story, advice for brands looking to make it in Sephora and her perspective on diversified retail channels.

“Growth can be painful, and I think, with [Sephora], it can be the most painful because they can probably grow you faster than anybody out there,” Plavsic said. “That is an opportunity that you cannot pass up.”