First Aid Beauty founder and CEO Lilli Gordon developing and selling one of the first clean brands

Lilli Gordon knew she wanted to start a beauty company before even settling on its place in the market.

"I was studying the landscape because I had this crazy idea that I wanted to start my own beauty company. You know, me and thousands of other ladies and men," Gordon said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

The niche that skin care brand First Aid Beauty would come to fill in 2009 was to sit between "very clinical" companies like Eucerin and Aquaphor and the prestige offerings that seemed to only address one thing: "the challenge of aging," Gordon said.

Gordon launched First Aid Beauty in 2009 with Sephora and QVC. Sans conglomerate support, the company's products are also now widely available at Ulta stores in the U.S., too. International expansion was made possible, Gordon said, by FAB's $250 million acquisition by Procter & Gamble in 2018.

Ahead, Gordon talks about beauty's white spaces, the reason she wanted to sell her company and the difference between Gen-Z and millennial shoppers.