Gwyneth Paltrow started Goop as a newsletter in 2008, with the soul purpose of giving her personal recommendations on fashion, health and beauty.
Nowadays, Goop is a fully-fledged lifestyle brand with books, e-commerce and a newly added quarterly magazine in the works. There is a lot to learn from the actress’ venture, and Paltrow sat down with Glossy to give her tips on creating a successful lifestyle brand…
On building a lifestyle brand that will last:
“The recipe for success is to build a brand that authentically connects people to a mission. It has to mean something. Brands will succeed when they have values that the founder and the team honestly believe in, because the consumer can smell from a million miles away when a lifestyle play is just trying to get them to buy shit.”
On the intersection between data and creativity:
“I like to be constrained by the numbers. If I want to create something, but the margin is terrible, I won’t do it. But it’s all very nascent for us. We just hired a business intelligence analyst who is helping us mine through all the data on customer behavior, like how our customers differ when browsing for, say, fashion versus vitamins.”
On mixing content and commerce:
“With content, we’ve always been led by the questions that both we and our friends want answered. We make products that we want to help solve a particular problem for ourselves. We’re not trying to chuck shit at a wall to see what works. We’re creating things that are aligned with our values and bringing context to all of the product.”
