I talk about:

🔥The launch of the Glide Wand in 2020 which focused on meeting the needs of customers with dexterity challenges.

🔥Background of the Founder, Terry Bryant, and how the product came to life. 

🔥Role of Selma Blair and how she added authenticity and personal experience to the brand's mission as the chief creative officer.

🔥How Guide Beauty fills a significant market gap by providing inclusive beauty solutions

Let’s connect:

Episode Transcript:

Inclusivity in messaging isn't just talking about skin color or gender. A very underrepresented group is disabled people, and often a group people forget about until it's them or someone very close to them. Imagine creating a brand that was so inclusive, you even geared to not only your messaging, but your actual products, your service, your offers toward disabled people. 

Hi, hello, and welcome to Business Unfiltered™: The Podcast. I'm Kristen Kubik, and I'm an Inclusive Marketing Consultant and Business Compliance Advisor dedicated to helping companies run ethically and make sure all voices are heard. Guide Beauty launched in 2020 with a small edit of makeup. It was founded by makeup artist Terry Bryant, who had lost some dexterity, fundamental to her job, obviously, as a makeup artist, as a result of a Parkinson's diagnosis.

In 2022, the brand brought on actor Selma Blair  who, one of my favorites by the way, if you're a Legally Blonde fan, chef's kiss. Anyway, she was diagnosed with MS back in 2018. They brought on Selma Blair as their chief creative officer. Now, Guide Beauty is widely known for their multiple award winning Guide Wand.

Which is an eyeliner wand that is specifically designed for efficiency and comfort to make it easier for people of varying abilities to apply eyeliner. It's created with a universal design in mind to allow for literally anyone and everyone to use it. Very similar to Bendable Straw's OXO's Good Grip line and remote controls, which are all designed with universal designs. Now,  I thought the Guide Beauty brand in general was so fascinating, especially because of why it was created, but also the things they've done with it. Since then, they've also launched an eyeshadow palette that has some extra slots so you can open it in different ways.

And I think it's very, very interesting, the things that they have done, but also their messaging. So, let's see if Guide Beauty fits into the formula that I talked about back in the Fenty Beauty episode. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I'll link that in the show notes because it's a really good episode and it talks a little bit more about the inclusivity formula that I like to use. 

Number one, does it fill the market gap? Absolutely it does. When we're talking about the market gap, what is one thing, when we talk about guide beauty, that we're looking at? We are looking at the market gap of,  this is a product that no one has really seen before. When we're looking at something like the beauty industry, it is a very ableist industry, meaning it's not a bad industry, it's just not designed for anyone except super healthy people. 

It's not designed for you if you are a certain standard. That being said, if you are disabled, if you are usually plus size, if you are dark skinned at all, if you have melanin at all, Like, it is usually not designed for you, and there are a lot of people working to change that. Guide Beauty is one of these people.

There is a major market gap being filled right here with a dexterity inclusive eyeliner wand, and now they also have brushes, which I think is cool also. Does it fill number two, the need? Yes! Because there are people out there who are losing functions in their hands. You've got not only people who have been diagnosed with MS like Selma Blair,  people who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's like Terry Bryant, you have people who also maybe just have, I don't want to say just, let me not minimize that, I want to say that people who have autism, who may have shakes or tremors, who have migraines and have a hard time holding things. 

There are also people who have rheumatoid arthritis. They have diabetes. They have TBI, traumatic brain injury. There's even chronic stress. All of these things can make dexterity in our hands, in our feet, so minimal. I personally, and this is just sharing a little bit more about me, I take migraine medication that makes my fingers go numb. When that happens, it is very hard for me to pick up anything, right? 

So when we're looking at  something like this to where I don't have to completely grip my hands around, then that's super exciting to someone who may sometimes not be able to grip something or who might lose feeling in their fingers. 

Then we're looking at number three, the experience. Now, the experience I feel like is an easy one at this point because both Terry Bryant and Selma Blair have the experience, so they don't need to necessarily look very far for the experience. When we're looking at the experience, if you personally don't have the experience, you should be looking elsewhere. 

This right here, though, they have life experience. They know, on a daily basis, what it's like not to be able to pick something up, not to be able to completely wrap their hand around a brush, an eyeliner pen, a regular, like,  a regular cylinder of any kind, honestly. And that itself goes back into the need for the product and filling the market gap.

So again, you're stacking these and they're compounding, and the more they compound, the stronger the product, the stronger the service, the stronger your offer, and ultimately the stronger your messaging. 

So, these are the things that So, now that we know that this is very easy to fit into our formula, this is easily an inclusivity yes from me. And it should be clear that it's an inclusivity yes to you. Now. If you haven't already, be sure to follow the podcast so you can find out more on is the brand an inclusivity yes or is it an inclusivity they could probably do better.

And are you an inclusivity yes? Could you be doing better? Find me on Instagram at Kristen Unfiltered. I want to hear about it.  You can find video versions of the podcast on YouTube. You can also find me on Spotify, Google podcast, wherever you get your main source of your podcast. And I will see you next time on Business Unfiltered™: The Podcast. 

Thank you for listening. Bye.