Welcome to the next instalment of the Beauty Insider Q&As, where you can find out who is behind some of your favourite beauty brands, what they are working on and how they got there. This week’s guest is Sylvia Fu, founder and CEO of SHEGLAM, a playful, colourful and accessible makeup brand that’s growing at pace. From her early days as a finance student at the London School of Economics to launching SHEGLAM in 2019, Sylvia turns personal experience into beauty innovation. Seeing a gap in the market for affordable yet creative makeup, SHEGLAM now reaches beauty lovers worldwide with trend-led formulas at an affordable price point. Here and over at My Soho Times, Sylvia opens up about her transition from venture capital to beauty entrepreneurship, and what’s next for SHEGLAM.

1. Hi Sylvia, thank you for being my #BeautyInsider Q&A guest on Fresh Beauty Fix month. Let’s start from the beginning: every beauty brand has a story, what’s SHEGLAM’s?

We were born in 2019, and almost immediately, the world shut down. Most people would call that the worst timing to launch a beauty brand. But the pandemic at somehow also shaped who we became. We didn’t stop. We listened. And we built for the reality consumers were living in, not the one the industry assumed. That’s when the “Beauty That Dares” mindset took hold. And, more importantly, lets zoom in to that stage, we were a team of young women under 30, challenging an industry that had very specific ideas about who gets to play. Every year since, we’ve dared to do something new — community-first, countless product innovations, and IP collaboration collections where the creativity lives in the formula, and now, taking all of that offline into dm, Boots, Donki, Kmart. Six years in, SHEGLAM is now available in almost every corner of the globe — across more than 150 countries and regions, including 14,000+ stores in 23 countries. But the story isn’t the numbers — it’s that we dared anyway.

2. So you turned an unprecedented situation into an advantage! You listened and you dared. Is that what makes SHEGLAM stand out from other cosmetic brands?

We were never trying to be another beauty brand.

We were trying to solve a frustration: why does innovation have to come at a luxury price, and accessibility have to mean basic?

So we found a different way. We partnered with the same manufacturers trusted by prestige brands. We poured creativity into the product itself — 3D-sculpted blush, lenticular effects, cream-to-powder formulas — innovation that doesn’t exist at our price point anywhere else. Prestige quality, playful design, at a price that doesn’t ask you to choose. It’s not easy. But we dare to believe consumers deserve more than they’ve been given. And every day, we try to prove it.

3. SHEGLAM feels like a strong brand name. How did it come about?

The “SHE” in SHEGLAM stands for the all-female founding team who built this brand from day one. “GLAM” reflects our vision: beauty as fearless self-expression — inspiring people everywhere to boldly embrace their unique beauty. And in Chinese, “glam” sounds like 敢 (gǎn), which means courage. Courage has always been SHEGLAM’s lifeblood — the courage to innovate, to challenge conventions, and to believe that beauty can be braver than it’s been.

4. I bet you have a packed schedule! What does a typical work day look like for you?

There’s no typical day. I travel a lot, visiting retail partners, walking their stores, talking to consumers face to face. When I’m not on the road, my days are full of remote calls across nine time zones. But the meetings I love most are with product and R&D, debating formulas, arguing over packaging, choosing among different design options.

Half my time is spent listening to the world. The other half is spent creating with my team. That balance is what keeps this work exciting.

5. That sounds full-on yet fulfilling. But as founder of SHEGLAM, you must have come up against challenges too?  

Two things are consistently hard.

The first is getting the product right, not just making something good, but making something that truly resonates with consumer across the different markets with diversified beauty cultures and preferences. What excites them, what shades work, what “bold” even means — those things shift dramatically from market to market.

The second is localization. We’re in 22 countries offline, and with no doubt, every market has its own unique beauty trends. Building a team that’s international enough, agile enough, and local enough to operate in each of those environments, that’s been one of the biggest challenges of my career.

6. You’ve definitely got your hands full! So what exciting projects are you working on right now?

First, our product pipeline — and that includes both new makeup innovation and new categories. We have products in development that I think will genuinely surprise people, and we’re expanding into hair with SHEGLAM HAIR — tools, care, and styling products. Hair is a huge category with room for the same kind of innovation we’ve brought to makeup: playful design, real performance, accessible pricing. We’re just at the beginning, and that’s the exciting part.

Second, our global offline expansion. In a very short time, we’ve gone from online-only to over 14,000 stores across 23 countries now, with partners like dm in Germany, Boots in the UK, Donki in Japan, Kmart in Australia, Druni in Spain, and Centrepoint across the Middle East. Every new market is both thrilling and challenging since there are different consumers, different retail cultures, different expectations. It feels like starting a new business every time. But that’s exactly what makes it so exciting. We’re not just selling products in new places — we’re earning our place in each market from scratch.

7. With so much already achieved, what so far has been your proudest career moment?

I would say every year has been the most exciting time of my career, and then the next one tops it.

This year is our fastest-growing year — and I’ve said that every year since we started. Steadier growth, stronger products, more passion from consumers, stronger performance and higher morale as one team. Every year I look at what we’ve built and feel proud. And then the next year, I feel even more proud.

So if you ask me my proudest moment — it’s right now. Because it’s always the hardest thing we’ve ever done, and it’s always what I’m most proud of.

8. And finally, what beauty trends do you think we should look out for?

Two directions I’m watching closely.

First, personalization. Consumers are moving away from one-size-fits-all. They want products that feel made for them: more choice in shades, textures, finishes, products that respect different skin tones and different definitions of beautiful. The brands that win will give consumers the tools to express their individuality, not just follow a trend.

Second, the evolution of what “clean” really means. For us, it’s a living, evolving standard. Through our Pure Glam initiative, we’ve already excluded over 2,500 harmful ingredients, and that list keeps growing based on our consumers’ feedback. Beyond excluding harmful ingredients, we’re also paying close attention to consumers’ skincare routines, and exploring skincare-friendly makeup formulas without sacrificing performance.