B-Glowing’s New Cosmetics Brand Targets Gen Xers And Baby Boomers (Almost Everything Else Remains For Millennials)

Lisa King, the 52-year-old founder of e-tailer b-glowing, searched extensively for a high-end makeup brand that celebrated her age, addressed her beauty needs and didn’t depend on tired tropes about cosmetics for older women. Her search came up empty, so she developed one herself.

B-glowing Beauty has premiered with the Illuminate + Shine eye and face palette containing eight eyeshadows, a cream primer that doubles as a concealer and highlighter for $58. The product is the first of what’s expected to be several from the brand featuring formulas designed to not rest in wrinkles, and accentuate the many assets of the baby boomers and gen x consumers applying them.

“Smart beauty companies will be embracing this demographic and creating products specifically for it over the next decade or so. It’s a large group. We have a lot of money, and we are fashion-forward. We are not the 50-year-olds from 1960. We are very different. We don’t shrivel up and die like we were told to in the past,” says King. “We are concerned about how we look. We are health-conscious and live glamorous lives. I believe our brand is giving this demographic what they want and acknowledging the lifestyle they want to have.”

B-glowing Beauty is based on the premise that beauty for women 35 and over doesn’t have to be bland. The Illuminate + Shine palette’s shadows incorporate vibrant colors like Baroque, a deep plum, and are buildable to yield dramatic as well as subtle looks. More importantly, sparkle isn’t off the table. King underscores women in a certain stage shouldn’t be afraid of shine.

“We’ve been fed a lot of rules that aren’t true like, the older you get, you can’t wear shimmer. That’s absolutely false. You need some radiance to brighten your look,” says King, stressing b-glowing beauty will release “cool products. They’re not boring or matronly.” Among the shadow shades in the Illuminate + Shine are Cashmere, a champagne with silver shimmer, and Rococo, an antique metallic gold.

Housed in a travel-friendly zipper case, the palette’s shadows are infused with a blend of collagen, hyaluronic acid and other moisturizing compounds to hydrate the skin and support a smooth texture. The ingredient deck steers clear of chemicals and additives considered potentially harmful or irritating such as synthetic fragrances, parabens and phthalates.

“I’m a survivor of breast cancer. I have no idea whether it was because I spent a lifetime practically bathed in beauty products, but I feel you can have incredibly performance-driven products, and you don’t need toxins in them, and that the packaging can be beautiful and luxurious with the color in the pan giving you the color you’re going to get. I want strong pigmentation that’s creamy and buttery, so it doesn’t sit in lines and wrinkles,” says King. “I feel confident that this palette will be a core part of the beauty routine for this demographic.”

King has vast experience dealing with the demographic b-glowing beauty targets. The e-commerce website b-glowing’s core demographic is women aged 32- to 55-years-old. King has learned beauty consumers in that age span are willing to spend pretty pennies on products suiting them. “She doesn’t want to be talked down to. She wants quality, and she wants us to give her good advice,” she says. B-glowing has published a series of blog posts on makeup tips for mature women.

As b-glowing ramps up its own brand, it isn’t abandoning third-party relationships. Roughly 150 brands are available at the e-commerce destination, including IT Cosmetics, Laura Geller, Caudalie, GlamGlow, Origins, Stila, Molton Brown, Peter Thomas Roth, Foreo and By Terry. King founded b-glowing in 2003 when online beauty shopping was in its infancy, and it survived the recession and Amazon. B-glowing now has a storefront on Amazon.

King asserts b-glowing Beauty will lift b-glowing’s overall business. “When you create your own brand, you have a way to reach more people than you have with someone else’s brand. You have more control over it, and you can bring more eyeballs to the website,” she says. “There will be more eyeballs for our other brands.”

To jumpstart its sales, b-glowing Beauty is busy getting the word out that there’s a new brand on the scene paying attention to women who aren’t millennials and gen z members. Already, the shades in its palette have graced the face of Jamie Lee Curtis, a famously pro-aging actress.

“It’s going to be a grassroots movement getting this customer behind us and influencers behind us,” says King. “This year and next are all about branding and adding more stockkeeping units. By year three, we will be on a really solid path for growth.”