Quite a few once-hugely popular retailers have declared bankruptcy recently. The list includes Bed, Bath & Beyond, Big Lots, Tuesday Morning, TGI Fridays, Christmas Tree Shops, Vitamin Shoppe, Esprit, Rite Aid, 99 Cents Only stores, Express, The Body Shop and many others, and soon, a viral beauty brand and retailer might be joining them.
Glossier, which started as an online company and grew to have brick and mortar locations across the country, is at high risk of going bankrupt. Credit reporting agency CreditRiskMonitor assesses companies and assigns them a score that predicts their likelihood of bankruptcy in the next 12 months. After looking over Glossier’s past payment behavior and federal tax liens, they gave the company a rating of 1, the worst possible with up to a 50 percent chance they’ll need to declare bankruptcy in the next year. The scores have a 96% accuracy rate.
Glossier got big thanks to the company championing real beauty, and influencers promoting the brand’s highly-desirable products, like “boy brow.” However, like many other retailers, the pandemic hit them hard, causing them to close a couple stores. Later, in 2022, founder Emily Weiss stepped down from her role as CEO, and soon after there were two rounds of layoffs. Before she stepped down, Weiss explained what caused the issues, saying, “Over the past two years, we prioritized certain strategic projects that distracted us from the laser-focus we needed to have on our core business: scaling our beauty brand. We also got ahead of ourselves on hiring. These missteps are on me.”
Currently, there are still 13 stores open and the company recently installed industry veterans in C-suite positions and expanded the brand’s partnership with the WNBA, so they have some things working for them. Unfortunately, not all the issues affecting the brand have been solved, so they could be facing an uphill battle this year.
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