The dream face wash' that Internet crowdsourced

Last week Glossier released their latest product — a face wash called Milky Jelly. While the beauty brand — which launched in October 2014 — has always focused on consumer needs, the process they used to create Milky Jelly took user involvement to the next level.

“We knew that our customers really wanted a cleanser and we knew that we as Glossier employees were not totally satisfied with our own cleansers,” Glossier founder Emily Weiss told Mashable. “We were struggling actually with the development process in creating a cleanser that was superior. So we said ok let’s just ask our followers directly.”

In January 2015, Weiss published a post to her online beauty magazine, Into The Gloss asking readers point blank, “What’s your dream face wash?”

The article prompted fans to comment on everything from how the product should smell and feel to how much it should cost. Over 400 responses were collected from the website and Instagram, and handed off to Glossier’s chemist. A year later and after 40 plus iterations, the product was approved and released to those who truly created it — the public.

While crowdsourcing is the official term for this information gathering method, Weiss believes it's simply a natural practice for a smart brand in 2016.

“We have authentic conversations all day long across multiple platforms where we ask our customers and readers what they think and what they want,” Weiss told Mashable. “If you’re a modern day brand you understand that customers are all content creators now. You now have ways in which you actually can generate the feedback from them, so why wouldn’t you. To me the best brands and the brands of the future really understand that at a deep fundamental level.”

The process also reminded Weiss why she decided to launch a beauty brand in the first place. A majority of the feedback she received from the Milky Jelly outreach stressed the need for a balanced pH level, a quality that the Glossier team hadn’t realised was so important in a face wash until then.

“The beauty industry perpetuates a notion that they know better than women,” Weiss told Mashable. “I wanted to deliver women a better beauty experience, to speak to them the way that I would want to be spoken to. It was important to really learn and listen to what they want. Their responses proved they have really smart and educated opinions around beauty. You should never underestimate the consumer.”

While the name Milky Jelly was established in-house, every other part of the cleanser was determined by the shopper. The Glossier team now has plans to recreate the process for a new product that will launch in 2017.
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