Glossi-yay or Glossi-nay?: Glossier’s New Balm Dotcom

Launched in 2014, Balm Dotcom (according to Glossier, a ‘universal salve’) has been one of the beauty company’s first products and a continuous bestseller. 

Nine years later in 2023, its reformulated twin (more like its cousin, but we will get on to that later) made its debut – a decision that angered and frustrated many, or as @umj0celyn puts it, “I want to rip out my hair”. 

Glossier dropped the bomb (*winks*) in mid-January, announcing that while the cult-favourite balm will now have a finger-free applicator and a new vegan formula, the cherry flavour will also be discontinued when the revamped version drops. 

And the Internet was furious.

People have been speculating whether this decision was prompted by Glossier’s imminent arrival at Sephora stores. The beauty retailer tags products with ‘Clean at Sephora’ labels as a gold star for excluding certain questionable ingredients, including petrolatum, a major non-renewable component in the old formula.

The gTeam (a.k.a. the staff at Glossier) has since clarified that “the new Balm Dotcom formulation will not qualify for ‘Clean at Sephora’ because the flavour load is not under 1%.”

So what has changed, and why? According to Retail Dive, petrolatum is now replaced by castor jelly (“renewable and vegetable-based”). This allows the new Balm Dotcom to help pull moisture into skin, on top of acting as a barrier to lock moisture in. To veganise the formula, plant-based multi-functional emollient and synthetic beeswax have substituted lanolin and natural beeswax respectively.

While lanolin and beeswax are animal-derived ingredients, the former is extracted from wool, and the latter from hives of honeybees. Some argue that these are animal by-products and can be harvested ethically.

In fact, this reformulation is not the first of its kind. Many netizens have compared this move to Bite Beauty, a cosmetic company that went out of business last year. When the brand went vegan back in 2019, they replaced their fan-favourite Agave Lip Mask with a lanolin-free version, which fell short of the original’s hype. 

On February 1, 2023, along with the new vegan formula also comes the wild fig flavour, a limited edition coral tinted balm of which fans have been begging for its return.

However, as much excitement as that caused, an unanticipated £1 (USD $2) increase deterred people from trying out the new product. 

Customers are unhappy that the new counterpart is less effective but more costly (@kerigannn went as far as calling it a “recession balm”), to which Glossier responded, the price increase was “to reflect the changes to the formula and packaging”. 

So is this a Glossi-yay or a Glossi-nay?

Blake is “a big fan of the new applicators”, Elizabeth is glad that “Glossier is making the switch away from using industrialised animal products” but Kate complains about how the new Balm Dotcom “leaves [her] lips dried out and slightly irritated”. (And I will be happily sticking to my £1 Vaseline.)

With Glossier’s two launches this year – an £18 (!!) deodorant and a controversially reformulated lip balm – the people are upset. Perhaps their debut in Sephora this February would bring in the business Glossier seemingly needs.