Finding a founder is a notoriously tough aspect of starting a company. But, as the story goes, when an entrepreneur finds the perfect-fit partner, it ignites an innovative fire that fails to fade.
In Gloss48’s case, however, there were three founders – Jill Kravetz, Laura Bronner and Jodi Slater – all of whom are responsible for sparking the flame driving their six-women startup. Designed as an online destination, Gloss48 is the beauty-obssessed's solution to discovering amazing brands beyond Sephora’s shelves.
Gloss48 Cofounder and CMO Laura Bronner first met one of her fellow founders, and the startup’s CEO, Jill Kravetz, five years ago.
At the time, Kravetz had just begun building out a franchise of the popular nail salon MiniLuxe, which had recently scored some VC dollars. Bronner herself had also just moved to Boston after setting up a franchising strategy for a nail salon chain in Chicago.
“By the time the fifth person mentioned Jill and MiniLuxe to me, I thought ‘I need to call this woman,'” said Bronner.
The chemistry for creativity was instant.
“I find it really rare that you click with someone in the work environment that easily and quickly,” posited Bronner. “But we really work well with one another.”
Together, Kravetz and Bronner launched MiniLuxe’s franchise, bringing the high quality salon to eight locations in Massachusetts. Kravetz then took time off to try being a stay-at-home mom, which, according to Bronner, who took over the MiniLuxe ship in her wake, didn’t last more than six months.
“I asked her, ‘Whatever you are doing next, take me with you,’” recounted Bronner.
That next venture was Gloss48.
At MiniLuxe, Kravetz and Bronner saw great brands and products, and witnessed how well they were doing with the clientele. During this time, Bronner and Kravetz also had the opportunity to get to know the brand owners themselves.
“Sephora and department stores were the end-all be-all for these brands, and all of them were struggling to get into one or two of their spots every year,” explained Bronner. “Besides that, they had no marketing budget or distribution strategy.” Simultaneously, Sephora was moving away from hosting niche brands, preferring to offer products created by conglomerates, like L’Oreal.
It was then that the two women saw the opportunity to connect beauty junkies and brands that begged for exposure in a new, disruptive way.
“We knew three things. We knew that we needed to be the connectors. We knew it needed to be online, to give brands national presence and reach. And we knew it needed to be really different from the beauty industry in general,” explained the CMO.
With the relationships with brands already established, Bronner and Kravetz turned their attention to finding a tech-facing partner who could bring both design and product expertise to their team. That partner turned into Co-founder and CXO/CTO Jodi Slater, a technically-talented creative with an eye for what the customer desires most and a passion for transforming typically offline experiences into online habits.
“Finding a tech person that understands beauty is really hard. Let’s just say we had to kiss a lot of frogs to find Jodi,” laughed Bronner.
From there, Slater went to building the site and user experience, while Bronner and Kravetz took to detailing the Gloss48 brand and business strategy.
With the Gloss48 power trio in place and idea laid out, the women raised $800,000 from local angels in May 2012. After a summer of iterating, the team moved into PayPal’s Start Tank, and welcomed three employees to their all-women startup in the end of August 2013.
Diverging from the classically girly and feminine style, as well as the ultra-clean spa-like feel currently on the market, Gloss48 channels a playful, carefree and diehard beauty lover brand.
“It’s more like your friend telling you about her latest beauty find,” shared Bronner. “We want to offer a daily dose of newness.”
As part of the latter goal, Gloss48 spotlights one beauty brand a day, which then is available to users at a discount for the next week. When the week of promotion is up, the brand is still available for purchasing on the platform. Products include everything from colorful lipstick to high-quality anti-aging cream, all of which are approved by the Gloss48 team.
The company, then, takes a percentage of each product sale, an amount Bronner was unable to disclose. However, she promises that the brands at the very least break even on the site.
"We have a really good relationship with our brands," noted Bronner. "It's a marketing opportunity for them, and the fact that they can trade a little bit of product margin for marketing, it makes all the difference."
Launched out of beta in October, Gloss48 currently has around 25 brands on the site. The startup had nearly 5,000 users during its beta, but has seen “a ton of growth in the past month,” said Bronner.
“We want total beauty world domination,” the CMO joked. “Really, we want Gloss48 to be the destination for beauty junkies to discover new and exciting brands, the place for people to launch new products and the audience they think of when they’re coming out with new color or line.”
