Blissoma is formulated by a woman, run by mostly women, and the vast majority of our customers are women.
Anyone can use our skincare, but realistically women have supported us and we support them back.
Every day as we mix, bottle, ship, and talk about our work we celebrate the strength, wisdom, labor, and worth of women.
We embody that "beauty" is much more than the beauty industry often portrays.
We really try to be the change.
The reality is that change is still very much needed.
Men are the minority of the beauty industry workforce, but somehow they end up concentrated at the top of the companies.
Representation of women at the senior management level of the beauty workforce drops by nearly 50%. (source)
What's more, the investment side of the industry has issues too.
While we could say a lot about the problems with venture capital the reality is that a huge part of the beauty industry is controlled by venture capital. We've been able to make our way without it but it's not easy.
In 2023 about 48% of beauty sales were in mass retail. (source) The scale of money that is needed to enter mass retail is just too big for most people to fund on their own. That's where VC funding often comes in to help with the expenses of displays, testers, gift-with-purchase products, marketing campaigns, and more.
Women make up only 11% of investing partners at VC firms and nearly 75% of VC firms don't have a single female investing partner. (source)
Only 13% of venture capital funding goes to companies with a woman on the founding team, and it gets worse for all-female led companies.
All women-led companies receive less than 3% of VC funding.(source)
These stats say a lot about who is in control of what gets promoted and how.
The people making most of the decisions unfortunately aren't women.
That's as bad for business as it is for women as individuals since including women in leadership positions increases organizational effectiveness and growth. (source)
When we think about how women are portrayed in beauty advertising, it seems strongly likely that the complicated issues of women and self image have a lot to do with men controlling a lot of the narrative about our bodies and our beauty.
Too often the beauty industry stokes our self criticism, makes us compare ourselves to others, and has people reaching for unrealistic goals. (source)
