The Barefaced Podcast

About The Barefaced Podcast

A beauty business podcast. barefaced.substack.com (https://barefaced.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Barefaced

Category

arts · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Sept 2024

Latest episode

18 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

19 of 21 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   18 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Elf Beauty: How $1 Cosmetics Became a $5B Empire

   The beauty industry is a trillion dollars, and right now almost all of the biggest names in it are struggling. Estée Lauder's stock is down over 70% from its peak. Coty has been in turnaround mode for years. The giants are stumbling, margins are compressing, and the whole industry is watching a renaissance unfold in every corner. And yet, one company did not just survive this shakeout, it thrived. e.l.f. Beauty went public in 2016 at a valuation of around $737 million. Today, it's worth $5.2 billion. A dollar-store cosmetics brand became beauty's best-performing IPO of the last decade, while the legacy giants who were supposed to own the category collapsed around it. In this episode, I trace the full twenty-year arc. How e.l.f. started by knocking on Target's door and getting rejected, accidentally inventing the DTC playbook before DTC was a term, and then navigating one of the most dramatic post-IPO periods in beauty history — proxy fights, sanctions violations involving North Korean false lash manufacturing, the Varsity Blues scandal, and a $1 billion acquisition of Rhode that cemented e.l.f. as a multi-brand platform. We also look at what e.l.f.'s story tells us about the future of publicly traded beauty — why supply chain speed, disciplined capital structure, and the refusal to play by legacy rules might be the only real moat in an industry being rewritten. A series of images, references, graphs and visual aids have been created to help narrate this story. You can find them at barefaced.substack.com (http://barefaced.substack.com). And you can find Barefaced everywhere else at beacons.ai/barefaced (https://beacons.ai/barefaced). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barefaced.substack.com (https://barefaced.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   4 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Death of the Magazine: What Happened to Print Beauty Media?

   Not that long ago, Australia had more women's magazines per capita than almost any comparable market. Australian Women's Weekly, Vogue, Dolly, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Girlfriend, Marie Claire, Grazia. Titles that shaped culture, launched careers, and functioned as the single most powerful distribution channel beauty brands had access to. That ecosystem is largely gone now. In May 2020, Bauer Media shut down most of its Australian titles in the middle of a pandemic, laying off the majority of staff over a single Zoom call. Titles that had been publishing for decades closed within weeks. In this episode, I sit down with Kate Lancaster — a beauty journalist who was on that Zoom call. Kate's words you have undoubtedly read, whether in the pages of Elle, Grazia, or on a billboard for your favourite sunscreen brand. Together, we unpack how the magazine business was structured, how it made money, why it stagnated creatively, and what the collapse actually looked like from inside a newsroom. We also look at what comes next — from the rise of brand Substacks to why journalists might be the most valuable hires in beauty right now.A series of images, references, graphs and visual aids have been created to help narrate this story. You can find them at barefaced.substack.com (http://barefaced.substack.com). And you can find Barefaced everywhere else at beacons.ai/barefaced (http://beacons.ai/barefaced). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barefaced.substack.com (https://barefaced.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   17 Mar 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Sephora Part 2: The Tech Obsessed Beauty Retailer

   Host Chloe Morello interviews industry experts about Sephora's tech-driven approach to beauty retail.

Inside a recent episode

Elf Beauty: How $1 Cosmetics Became a $5B Empire

Published 18 Apr 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And also in 2016, so in this same period, they launched into Walmart, another pro of being a mass brand and also the US market. There is just no mecha style exclusivity is going on here. And then later in 2017, they were also confirmed to be heading into alter. So they are at this point in target, Walmart and alter. That's huge. Their model, according to their CEO, Taryn Amin, was around the pace that they would create their products and then launch them onto their website. So they would have had this model of launching products onto their site to test consumer demand. And then based on that, they could decide whether to distribute into their brick and mortar stores or retailers. […]

Who has been a guest on The Barefaced Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Bec Jefferd
• Ava Chandler-Matthews
• Tera Peterson

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 42 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

71

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

Contact The Barefaced Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.