“We’re fruit-forward, yet clinically effective, and that can all be shown via the world of TikTok,” says Lee. featuring the same products just days later. “That was the best foundation application I’ve ever had in my life,” Nogueira exclaimed in her video.
For the founders, it was like Christmas in March. Site sales that week rivaled that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, with 84% of sales driven by new customers. “It resulted in an overall halo effect across the brand,” says Lee. Lee and Chang, former employees at L’Oréal, left corporate beauty in 2014 to launch Glow Recipe by pooling a total of $50,000 in personal savings.
“Our fruit-forward products come from our heritage of having lived, grown up and worked in both countries, Korea and the U.S.,” says Chang. “That gives us a unique cultural perspective to the beauty traditions we grew up with, but we also know how beauty is embraced differently here in the States.” “Our desire from the very beginning was to really bridge that gap,” she continues. This involved simplifying K-beauty, infamous for its meticulous routines that could involve 13-plus steps.
Continues Chang: “[Tradition K-beauty] was very promotional, and the packaging was often a little bit more on the kitschy side. And for us, it was important to help modernize things by creating content and storytelling.”