How Glossier Hacked Social Media to Build A Cult-Like Following Former blogger Emily Weiss had a hunch: If she could translate women's real needs into products, she could build a beauty company unlike any other.

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On a Thursday afternoon in late spring, 32-year-old Glossier founder and CEO Emily Weiss rides the elevator to the penthouse level of her company's downtown Manhattan headquarters. She's a thoroughly millennial girlboss in jeans, sneakers and a royal blue sweatshirt with weiss embroidered in small white script. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and for the founder of a beauty products company, she wears notably little makeup -- just some mascara and possibly a swipe of Glossier Lip Gloss, a recent product release touted online as having a "fuzzy doe-foot applicator."

A former teen model, Weiss is beautiful but not intimidating, either by nature or by design (probably a little of both). After all, her company's popularity is directly related to her ability to cultivate a feeling of friendship with and among her customers. Just enough relatability is key.