Why I Started Glowie Co

Ever since I could remember, I’ve always been into beauty, especially skincare. As a teen, like many others, I struggled with acne, so I tried my best to put together a routine to minimize it. Everytime we went the drugstore, I’d excitedly rush to the skincare aisle and restock up on some of my favorite items: St. Ives Walnut Scrub (yikes!), Clean & Clear Moisturizer with SPF, and Neutrogena face wash.

Annual trips with my family to Taiwan helped expand my skincare obsession to Asian Beauty. The wide variety and assortment of Asian skincare in Taiwan was amazing, from Japanese sunscreen to Taiwanese sheet masks that became staples in my skincare routine.

The obsession got more serious after college. After graduating, I finished my college credits by studying abroad at the London School of Economics during the summer. When it ended, I moved back to the Bay Area in California to start the job search.

Within a month of coming back, I had found an entry level corporate job at a popular retailer for children’s clothing in San Francisco. I started commuting to the city daily but was missing both college and study abroad life. The pollution from the city and taking public transport daily started wreaking havoc on my face and I experienced the worst breakouts of my life. My skin was so bad that I started avoiding going out (besides for work) because I was feeling extremely self conscious about my face.

I started to learn more about skincare and took time to research both ingredients and products that could help my skin get better. About a year after I started my job, I left to take a job at my dream company, the leading global prestige beauty retailer.

I was lucky enough to get a position on the Skincare team where my main responsibility was getting inventory to the stores. Working with our different brand partners was definitely my favorite part of the job. I got the opportunity to work with a multitude of different brands, ranging from ones that I was obsessed with to brands whose products I always admired and couldn’t afford. Brands would also come to our office to host special events with free products.

Ironically, even though I was working on the Skincare team, my breakouts continued to be bad. I started receiving a ton of skincare products from work, which was amazing, but I made the mistake of trying multiple new products at once. My skin was still suffering and I felt even more embarrassed about the state of my skin⁠—I was working for a beauty company and with skincare brands with access to the best products, how am I STILL breaking out?

I quickly pared back my routine and tamed my curiosity by only trying one new product at once, a rule that I still follow today. Luckily, my skin recovered to a better state and I was only breaking out occasionally.

Despite having access to free products from some of the best and most popular skincare brands out there as well as sitting on piles of free skincare, I still found myself spending money on Asian Beauty online (much to the shock and surprise of my coworkers).

I was so happy to see the KBeauty movement gain momentum and getting bigger – my company had even started to stock some popular KBeauty brands and I got a chance to work with some of my favorite brands, like Amore Pacific and TonyMoly.

But I still loved products from other brands, like CosRX and Skinfood where I wasn’t able to find any close dupes, so I resorted to purchasing off Amazon and Yesstyle. The experience of buying Asian Beauty online can be extremely frustrating. Yesstyle had the widest assortment of Asian Beauty, but there were still a few issues:

• I couldn’t always find what I wanted

• Their shipping times took forever

• There was always the threat of a customs charge.

It was so annoying to have to pay an additional fee to receive my package, so I stopped shopping at YS and resorted to Amazon when I saw my favorite products pop up there. But a few months later, I had the unpleasant experience of purchasing fake CosRX product and didn’t realize it until I had applied it and my face was burning. Definitely my worst online shopping experience to date.

I stopped buying Asian Beauty after this and started going back to using the skincare I was receiving from my job. I was managing around 50 different skincare brands, so luckily, I had plenty of product to choose from and it did the job.

A few years later, I was still at the same company and my responsibilities changed being a fragrance buyer for our website. I had also started a side hustle on Etsy selling digital templates and seen success, which was so exciting. I still loved my job and the company, but I found myself day dreaming of starting my own business. E-commerce was booming and I wanted do more, like create a business that sold physical products.

My boyfriend (at the time) was self-employed and working at a digital marketing agency. One of his clients was running a successful skincare line, but had previously sold (authentic!) Asian Beauty on Amazon and wanted to start this business up again since he still was in touch with his distributors in Asia. With my beauty industry background and his e-commerce experience, a partnership was being explored. We met in person to discuss partnering and Glowie Co was born!

It’s been a ton of challenges, hard work, and fun running our own business. Transitioning from a corporate career to self employment and being an entrepreneur is both something I’m still figuring out but this journey thus far has been so rewarding.