How Crowdsourcing Worked For Glossier’s New Face Cleanser

We've supported crowdsourcing for our Kickstarters, our American Idols, and our Wikipedia-based knowledge set. So it's kind of amazing that Glossier's Milky Jelly is the first time a beauty company has turned to the masses for input. The cleanser, which just hit the market in January, was developed almost entirely based on customer comments. If anyone was going to do crowdsourcing beauty right, it makes sense that it would be Glossier, founded by Into the Gloss blogger Emily Weiss. When she launched her product line in 2014, she told Refinery29, "I want to foster a real dialogue with Glossier. If we sold through a department store or mass retailer, that would be more difficult to do. Conversations are so important to building the Glossier community." And thus, she used Into the Gloss to ask, "What's Your Dream Face Wash?" last January. "We were really struggling, actually, with the development process in creating a cleanser that was superior," Weiss told Mashable. "So we said okay, let’s just ask our followers directly." Weiss and her team compiled the nearly 400 comments for the company's chemist, who came up with 40 different versions before landing on the final product, according to Mashable. Just before the launch, Weiss listed some of the user-generated criteria Glossier went with: low cost, gentle cleansing, makeup removing, balm-like (but not oily), a travel-friendly pump, and fragrance-free. She told Mashable one of the common requests her team hadn't come up with on their own was the need for something pH-balanced. "It was important to really learn and listen to what they want," she said. "Their responses proved they have really smart and educated opinions around beauty. You should never underestimate the consumer." The result is a product our own beauty editors have already endorsed. And if you didn't get to have your say this time, keep your eyes peeled. Glossier has plans to repeat the process again for a product to be released in 2017.