The Sweet Success of Glow Recipe

Collaboration, community, and thinking are the key ingredients that have led to success for the co-founders of skin-care brand Glow Recipe. When Sarah Lee and Christine Chang met at the start of their beauty careers over 20 years ago at L’Oréal in Korea, they bonded over shared experiences. “We both have this Korean heritage, and we’d grown up being really obsessed with skin care our entire childhoods,” Lee says. “We’ve built our friendship over time but also over different countries and different life milestones,” Chang adds. Using their knowledge of corporate global marketing, they stepped into the role of entrepreneurs in 2014. Their first joint venture was a website that delivered clean K-Beauty products to the U.S. market. Three years later, their focus evolved, and the buzzy U.S.-based brand as we know it today made its debut. “We saw a white space in the market for a clinically effective, very results-driven line of skin-care products that was also at the same time sensorial, enjoyable, and fun,” Lee says.

Over the years, the pair churned out formulations and acquired a faithful fan base. “We are always on the same wavelength,” Chang says. “There’s also this incredibly strong sense of shared values and goals, and where we want to take the company.” She notes that real skin acceptance is a core brand value. That includes showcasing unretouched skin, along with eschewing terms such as “ageless” and “flawless” that permeate the industry. The commitment came to fruition through a recent campaign. “We did an open casting call to our community but only based on their written answers, sight unseen,” she says.

Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops, a serum that bestows a sun- kissed glow and went viral this spring, is the latest proof. “When we launched the original Dew Drops, we saw a lot of people mixing it with their favourite complexion product, using it with a bronzing powder or a tanning product to give that extra hint of colour,” she says. The new tinted version is the direct result of community requests for a follow up to the award-winning original formula.

As the duo’s first skin-care product that contains colour, it also proved to be the most challenging one to make to date. “It had to be sheer and give the right amount of warmth to all skin tones while working on all skin types, including uneven texture,” Lee says. They take innovation seriously, trying to do things that have not been done before or perceived as not, Another years-in-the-making formula dropped this summer: a clear sunscreen stick that glides over skin, imparting a dewy finish. “In Korea, after lunch at the office, we would go to the bathroom not just to reapply our lipstick—it was to reapply our sunscreen, because this sense of protection throughout the day as the basis of your skin care was so fundamental,” Chang says. “But to do that, you need textures of sunscreen that you really enjoy applying, that make it easy and foolproof.”

To date, Chang and Lee have been at the forefront of trending ingredients, such as niacinamide, as they cross over from Asian to North American markets. “Niacinamide not only helps to brighten skin, instantly and over time, but also it’s great for oily skin, because it helps to balance sebum,” Chang says. “It’s the perfect ingredient for a product that gives a glow for all skin types, not just dry.”

From the very first launch—a wildly popular watermelon-infused sleeping mask—they’ve aimed to offer consumers the best of both worlds while tapping into the power of fruit-based ingredients. “Growing up, our grandmothers used to rub watermelon rinds on our heat rashes, and we both saw first-hand how miraculous the healing power of watermelon was, and how soothing and hydrating it was for the skin. The rashes were gone within, like, 24 hours,” Achieving instant sold-out status many times over, the mask generated waiting lists among thousands of beauty lovers and would go on to win countless awards. “The rest is history,” she says.

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