The Glossy Beauty Podcast

Over the last week, the beauty industry has seen the closure of three major makeup brands: CoverFX and Mally Beauty are shuttering, while Pat McGrath Labs, once valued at $1 billion, is headed to bankruptcy. This comes on the heels of unexpected 2025 closures that included Ami Colé, Drew Barrymore’s Flower Beauty, REN Clean Skincare, Apostrophe telehealth skincare and Gwyneth Paltrow’s mass line Good.clean.goop.

At the helm of two of these brands, CoverFX and Mally Beauty, is AS Beauty CEO Joey Shamah, the founder and former CEO of E.l.f. Cosmetics.

“We’ve been coined as a purchaser of distressed assets [at AS Beauty], but we’re not only buying [brands in] distress,” Shamah told Glossy. “We look at them in three buckets. Distressed or challenged is definitely one of them, a second one is divestitures, … and then the third way is similar, but different, where private equity funds have invested in a company, and their funds are sunsetting, so they’re looking to exit.”

AS Beauty was founded in 2019 by Shamah and three co-founders. It is the parent company of CoverFX and Mally Beauty, as well as Laura Geller, Julep and Bliss. While the latter two were sunset this past week, Laura Geller has grown more than 10x to over $300 million in sales, Julep has been the No. 1 selling eyeshadow brand on Amazon for several consecutive years, and Bliss has evolved into a multi-category lifestyle brand, according to AS Beauty. In total, AS Beauty’s annual revenue is around $500 million, Shamah told Glossy.

Shamah is also the founder and operator of Fit for Life, a fitness equipment licensing company behind brands like GAIAM, New Balance and Fila.

AS Beauty purchased Mally Beauty and CoverFX in 2021 and 2022 from investment firms Beauty Visions and L Catterton Partners, respectively.

In today’s episode, Shamah joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the decision to shutter CoverFX and Mally Beauty — at least for now, we learned — and the economic pressure that led to the decision. He also discussed the challenges of running an underperforming brand, the warning signs that a brand is in distress, and the way an operator comes to the decision to sell, shutter or file bankruptcy.

Ulta Beauty is doubling down on the wellness category.

“We’ve been on the journey with wellness since 2021 when we launched the wellness shop at Ulta Beauty, and we’ve learned so much about the category,” Laura Beres, vp of wellness at Ulta Beauty, told Glossy. “Wellness continues to grow in the market, and importantly, our guests just continue to demand more of it. … This is really an evolution of the Wellness Shop.”

Launching next week, the retailer is rolling out a pilot program called “Wellness by Ulta Beauty,” a shop-in-shop boutique concept piloted in four U.S. stores. It will include an education-focused wall, gondolas, end caps and a sampling table, all staffed by specially trained wellness advisors.

“This is much larger [than our existing Wellness Shop]: It’ll be about 475 square feet in the store, which is a significant experience [for Ulta]. And it will have some space for guests to be able to really explore and navigate in a way that gives them that sense of calm and peace throughout the store,” Beres said.

The boutiques will be located in Columbus, Ohio; Short Pump, Virginia; Peabody, Massachusetts; and Naperville, Illinois.

Beres joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the launch, how brands can participate, and what’s coming next for Ulta Beauty’s continued wellness expansion. Listen in now, then learn more in Glossy’s latest Ulta Strategies story on the launch.

After a few sleepy years, beauty M&A had a gangbuster 2025, including three deals worth more than a billion each, leading many insiders to speculate on whether the momentum can continue in 2026.

“We were excited to see what we saw last year; M&A had become so dormant for a while, we were getting a little concerned,” said Kimber Maderazzo, professor of marketing at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and former Proactiv and L’Oréal Group executive. “But I think we’ll see something different [this year].”

In 2025, E.l.f. Beauty purchased Hailey Bieber’s Rhode for $1 billion in May. Then in June, men’s care brand Dr. Squatch was acquired by Unilever for $1.5 billion, and L’Oréal Group bought clinical skin-care brand Medik-8 for approximately $1.1 billion.

“When you see big deals like that, it sends a message out to private equity that strategics are looking for big, big brands that will last over time,” Maderazzo said. “And when we look at the history [of beauty M&A], a lot of those brands [acquired in the past] didn’t.”

In this week’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sits down with Maderazzo to discuss the new acquisition rulebook, as she sees it, what strategics are looking for today and what we can expect in 2026. 

Lebsack also taps Maderazzo to share her “2026 in and out” prediction list and an insider glimpse into the trends and topics most important to the beauty-industry-focused graduate students she teaches today.

The latest Glossy Beauty Podcast episode features board-certified dermatologist Dr. Marnie Nussbaum and beauty industry veteran Jodi Kaplan — the founder and CEO, respectively, of the Dr. Marnie skin-care brand. Dr. Nussbaum gained popularity while catering to dermatology clients in New York City’s Upper East Side before launching the brand, which was called Lines before rebranding in November. For her part, Kaplan built her industry prowess through roles at brands including Droplette, Dr. Barbara Sturm and Augustinus Bader. 

Dermatologist-founded brands continue to resonate with beauty consumers, who are seeking credibility, education and expertise in an oversaturated market. On the podcast, Glossy Pop editor Sara Spruch-Feiner asks Dr. Nussbaum and Kaplan why they chose to lose “Lines,” what a founder’s name on a product line signifies and what’s in store for derm-led skin care in the years to come.

What will 2026 mean for the beauty and wellness industries? 

In today’s special episode, hosts Lexy Lebsack, Emily Jensen and Sara Spruch-Feiner share their 2026 industry predictions. 

This includes a slowdown of the "no-makeup makeup" aesthetic in favor of bolder color cosmetics trends, the rise of experimental peptide therapy among wellness consumers and an uptick in budget-conscious beauty shoppers. The hosts also made specific predictions, such as an increase in savory scents in fragrance and more clean, value-priced body care in big-box stores. The trio also muses about the bubbles that could burst in 2026, and so much more.