From Spa Pioneer to Beauty Disruptor: How Marcia Kilgore Transformed the Beauty Industry

During college, Marcia Kilgore became a personal trainer to make money. Soon after she decided to take a course in skincare, largely because she had personally suffered from acne since her preteen years. She began giving facials to her friends out of her East Village apartment. She opened her first single-room office in New York’s Soho district in 1991, followed by the opening of a three-room mini-spa called Let’s Face It! in June 1993.

To accommodate increasing demand, Kilgore opened the first Bliss Spa in SoHo in 1996. Marcia sold a line of beauty and health products, many of which are meant to allow customers to recreate the spa experience at home. Bliss spa is credited for starting the mid 1990s spa boom. Its products and services are marketed with humorous names and slogans. Marcia marketed the brand with a playful “Blissgirl” character illustration which appeared on the products, catalogs and the company website. She is almost always dressed in a signature white towel and Bliss’ Softening Socks and Glamour Gloves. Three years later three companies wanted to buy Bliss.

But what was next for this pioneer. “I was at one of these big beauty events where I could see all the new products being made and coming in from suppliers from all over the world. I had great conversations with the owners of one of the best labs in the world, who produced for all the premium cosmetic companies. Afterwards, on the way home with my bag of factory samples, I saw all the same products on sale with the knowledge of how much they cost to actually make, compared to what they were being sold for.” Marcia had an idea.

“I felt like the whole business had just become so outdated to be hard-sold a product from an assistant in a shop who didn’t really know what they were doing.   The idea was paying less and getting more, and still having access to all of the products that are being made by the best labs.”

Beauty Pie, founded by Marcia, is a beauty and wellness brand that sells products directly from leading labs around the world. Beauty Pie aims to offer high-quality products at lower prices by cutting out middlemen, excessive packaging, and marketing. Beauty Pie offers a membership program with two options: annual and monthly. Non-members can also purchase products from the Beauty Pie website and other suppliers.

Beauty Pie also has a “clean beauty” policy, which means they don’t do animal testing, and they don’t sell their products in places that require animal testing. “We’ve all been brainwashed to think that if something’s expensive, it has to be good. But I wanted to be able to bring Beauty Pie to everyone. I’ve been in the beauty industry for so long, I wanted to be able to make the product, to sell it to my customer for a really fair price.”

What is her advice for other would-be female founders, “You’ll never look back and regret being kind to everyone. When people talk about karma, it’s about having to live with yourself and how you’ve treated other people. And, of course, you want to always feel that you’re a worthwhile person who has done their best to elevate everybody else as you went along. Do your best to treat everyone with respect. Treat yourself with respect.”