This week, I’m on site at Glossy’s annual Beauty & Wellness Summit. On Day One, we heard from industry leaders like Carina Chaz of Dedcool and Hayley Williams of Good Dye Young. Additionally, Skims makes a big beauty hire, and Neutrogena’s parent company gets acquired.
At Glossy’s Beauty & Wellness Summit, brand leaders share how to make a rapidly evolving digital landscape work for them
On Monday, Glossy kicked off its annual Beauty & Wellness summit at the Pendry Hotel in Newport Beach. Executives and industry leaders from major fragrance, hair-care, cosmetics and wellness brands gathered to share both their successes and their struggles in what has been a year largely marked by new challenges like tariffs and agentic search capabilities.
One thing that has been certain in 2025 is the success of fragrance. And with consumers looking for more ways to introduce scent into their lives, fragrance no longer means just a classic perfume.
“With fragrance, it’s an amazing category. And for those of you who know about fragrance, the margins are fantastic,” said Carina Chaz, founder and CEO of Dedcool, which is preparing to celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2026.
“[Perfume] is not as replenishable as your home product,” Chaz said while speaking at Glossy’s summit. “So laundry is, at this point, meeting 30% of our business, which is quite large. We have scented air fresheners for your car, and we have pet products. But we’re definitely taking a step back and really looking at the category and seeing how we can expand in a way that really resonates with the consumer.”
Brands that successfully speak to Gen Z have also been able to stay afloat in a challenging environment. That includes Byoma, the Gen Z-targeted skin-care brand that was acquired by Bansk Group in September.
“One of the things that’s been the draw for the younger consumer is that [Byoma] is not complicated,” said Reuben Carranza, executive chairman at Bansk Beauty, while speaking at Glossy’s summit. “It’s not multiple steps. It’s pretty straightforward. We thought the price point was actually very accessible. And in the current environment, we think it’s a democratization of clinical skin care.”
But there are still many new and untested retail models and paths to acquiring new customers that brands are figuring out. That includes how to ensure their products and services are showing up not just in Google search results, but also ChatGPT answers.
“Something we’ve done is definitely more of a pay-to-play route: It’s investing in partnerships with publishers and getting way more articles covered across different media publications, etc.,” said an executive at a wellness brand during the Summit’s Town Hall discussion. “And we’ve seen that, in the last three months — specifically for product-specific features — we’ve been brought into ChatGPT within the top rank.”
One brand exec said her team has been finding success with Google’s AI Max for Search capability, which was launched in May and claims to offer features like tailored ad text to match customer search queries.
“Month over month, we saw a 28% improvement in our search competitor rank just when we enabled AI Max Campaign,” she said.
But brands are not letting go of older school methods to show up in searches and acquire new customers. One executive from a leading makeup brand said old-fashioned influencer seeding is still effective.
“We have seen a lot of success with our recent foundation launch by seeding that product to creators and then whitelisting that content, as well,” she said. “We’ve been seeing [customer acquisition costs] come down by 20-30%.”
TikTok, while no longer new, is still a new frontier for some brands. But one skin-care brand who has found success on TikTok through organic virality said the landscape on the platform is only growing gore competitive and costly.
“The earlier you get onto TikTok, the more likely your chances are of succeeding,” she said. “What the needs are and what the requirements are are changing every day. The SLAs are getting shorter, the fees are going up, and the percentage of content creators is changing. So the earlier you can get on there, if you’re interested in taking the ride, I think the better.”
Executive moves:
- Diarrha N’Diaye was named evp, beauty and fragrance of Kim Kardashian’s upcoming Skims Beauty. N’Diaye has worked in marketing and branding for the likes of Glossier and L’Oréal and was most recently the founder of Ami Colé, which shuttered in July. She will lead product development, innovation and brand strategy for the Skims Beauty launch. Kardashian teased the launch of beauty under her Skims umbrella earlier this year after buying her SKKN by Kim beauty line back from Coty in March.
News to know:
- Kimberly-Clark Corp. will acquire Neutrogena owner Kenvue Inc. in a deal valued at $48.7 billion. Kimberly-Clark, whose portfolio includes consumer brands like Huggies, Kleenex and Cottonelle, will acquire roughly 54% of the combined company, while Kenvue shareholders will own about 46%. Kenvue has been in the headlines throughout 2025 as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made claims that Tylenol, which is owned by Kenvue, is linked to autism.
- Bath & Body Works is scenting Grand Central Station as part of its holiday campaign. The body-care brand launched its holiday takeover on Monday, which includes an immersive takeover of the New York City transit hub. The Bath & Body Works Fresh Balsam scent will greet riders entering and exiting the Grand Central subway station, alongside ads throughout the station promoting other holiday scents.
- Mikayla Nogueira’s first makeup launch hit stores on Tuesday. After launching her beauty brand POV Beauty with skin care in March, the TikTok influencer expanded into color cosmetics with a lip kit launch featuring a lip liner and pigmented lip gloss.
Stat of the week:
46% of beauty consumers are turning to Amazon for replenishment. According to Kearney’s inaugural Prestige Beauty Consumer Index, Amazon ranks above retailers like Sephora, Ulta Beauty and department across the purchasing funnel, with a predominant lead in replenishment. Just 34% of respondents cited using Sephora for replenishment, and 32% cited using Ulta.
In the headlines:
Products are changing what we think ‘clean’ smells like. Layoffs are piling up. Here are companies that have cut jobs. Nobody wants this (product placement). From two fragrance veterans, Fascent wants you to find your fragrance vibe
Listen in:
On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, aesthetician-turned-packaging consultant Allison Kent-Gunn provides an in-depth hall of fame and shame for several packaging categories, including sustainability, accessibility, celebrity brands’ packaging and more.
Need a Glossy recap?
Thanks to double-digit fragrance growth, The Estée Lauder Companies reports optimistic outlook, announces Shopify partnership. What is Creed actually worth? Some creators say brands are delaying their holiday deals later than ever this year. Introducing the Glossy+ Wellness Briefing.
