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It’s been almost 17 years since Gwyneth Paltrow launched Goop as a newsletter—since then there have been beauty products, a fashion line, vibrators and vagina candles. But this year—after some tough restructuring—Goop is getting back to its basics, Paltrow tells Fortune in an exclusive interview.
While the brand did multiple rounds of layoffs in 2024, Paltrow says that the overall business is healthy. The company’s 2024 revenue increased 10% from 2023, Fortune is the first to report. Goop Beauty, one of three categories the company is now focusing on, was up 34%. Its fashion line G. Label grew 42% year-over-year. Goop Kitchen revenue, from six ghost kitchens throughout greater Los Angeles, grew 60%.
Paltrow called Fortune to talk about growing Goop into its “heritage brand” era, whether she’d sell and when she expects to reach profitability, and the female CEO group chat that has helped her come into her own as a founder. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where are you seeing the most growth? What are you most excited about?
What I’m most excited about is the refining of the brand that we’re doing—our hyper focus on beauty, fashion, and food. Those are the verticals where we’re seeing incredible product-market fit and margin. Food, beauty, and G. Label all grew exponentially last year. Since COVID, we’ve had to stay so agile, and getting to the other side of that and focusing on our strengths—there’s power in that.
When you say you’re refining the brand, what made you realize that was necessary? When did you say, it’s time for us to take a look and refine what we’re doing?
There are things that have bugged me for a while—like our beauty product had different architectures, if you will. I always found them a bit confusing. I wanted to streamline that. Our design, when I did it 12 years ago, felt really innovative-looking. A lot of it was oft-copied—design, colors, fonts. It was time to refresh everything and get back to the core of this beautiful, aspirational brand that from a curatorial perspective is finding the best of the best in service of our discerning customer. The best way to put a stake in the ground around redefining your values is that the touch points look redefined. I think all brands should be doing this, even a soft rebrand, every once in a while.
What is Goop today? How are you defining the brand now?
It’s very much back to its DNA of being a pioneer in content and beauty and fashion—being that go-to place for women who trust that we do the work and research to surface and make the best of the best.
There’s been some reporting about layoffs at Goop over the past several months. What wasn’t working and needed to be restructured?
When COVID happened, it threw so many consumer businesses into instability. I was really trying to conserve all the money on the balance sheet. For that reason, I became very risk-averse and I didn’t want to make any bold changes. I felt like we just have to keep our head above water and keep growing the best we can. I got to a point about a year ago where our payroll number was high, and I needed to be fiscally more disciplined. I needed to reallocate some of that payroll into growth again. I think, because we’re Goop, it’s more fun to write about a layoff at Goop. But companies do this all the time. This is a very healthy, normal thing to do. It’s very painful, and probably why I don’t do this as often as I should. Because I love the people who work at Goop. It’s always a very difficult thing to do, but sometimes for the rigor of the business, it’s necessary. But it wasn’t coming from a place of financial need, it was coming from taking a sharp look at the business and understanding that we really needed to reallocate some of that back into growth. I hate doing that more than anything in the world, but it’s actually been very necessary for the business.
As you focus on three categories, you’ve pulled back from some others. How did you decide what to let go of?
I created a complicated business model by mistake when I started this, because I didn’t start it to start a business. I started it to send out content—I was looking for a space on the internet where I could be a reader. The product lines came later. So it’s not so much that something wasn’t working, it was that you’re spreading resources across a lot of things. Where are you getting the most bang for your buck, if your resources are limited? What are the businesses that have the best customer with the most longevity, buying the products with the most margin? I sort of let the data help me find that.
Take sexual wellness, for example. It was a really important idea for the brand and it’s an absolute important part of wellness. But our vibrators, for example, were a one-and-done customer. There’s no [lifetime value]. I’m so glad we made them, I’m so glad we are helping dispel this idea that there’s shame in sexuality. But you want to be investing in the products with [the best] buying patterns.
On the content origins of Goop, what is your content strategy today? The landscape has shifted a lot, with Substack and other publications with similar points of view to Goop.
Having the business model be a media model is not what’s interesting to us. But I do think it’s an important lever for marketing and creating community and interest.
Is the Goop customer the same across beauty, G. Label, and Kitchen, or is this a different customer in different categories?
There’s the Venn diagram—there’s overlap and distinct cohorts as well. If you’re in one vertical, you might want to check out the rest of what we have to offer. It’s an interesting way to cross-pollinate the customer.
When you see these new generations of lifestyle and wellness brands popping up, from Meghan’s As Ever to other startups, what do you think of them?
I think startups challenge the status quo. They make a Williams-Sonoma be like, ‘Wow, what is this person doing? Maybe we need to do better by our customer.’ Or a Target or LVMH brand. Quote-unquote competition—you should use that as a lever to make what you’re doing better and not rest on your laurels and to constantly assess why you exist as a brand.
Do you expect to be profitable this year?
We’re very, very close, which is incredibly exciting, and a big milestone. It depends on a couple of levers. We’re had profitable months, many of those, but I don’t want to say full profitability until we have a full year.
Do you want to exit? How are you thinking about your options?
I’m very excited to build. I’m excited to open more stores. To index into our wholesale strategies, to go into other countries. I’m in building mode and not thinking about an exit right now. I don’t even really want to think about it for another three years, or even start thinking about it.
How is the beauty business now? Are there changes you’re making?
Our product is absolutely best in class. We’re not always that good at articulating how incredible they are. I think we could do a better job at communicating the incredible quality of everything.
You want to be where the customer is, which is why we have such a good business on Amazon. We’re talked about other big wholesalers, and we are definitely exploring that right now.
Why has Goop Kitchen worked so well? Do you see it scaling beyond LA? How did you know it was working?
It’s been incredible to watch the product-market fit of that venture—the repeat rates and customer satisfaction, how quickly it’s growing, quarter after quarter. We have a very robust growth plan. We closed a round of funding for that business last year, we have another four stores opening in LA County and in 2026 we will be going into New York.
It just felt like it was intuitively working. All the hard work on Goop for all these years—you set it up so people understand intrinsically if they see Goop Kitchen, ‘Oh, I think I could make an assumption about what that food might be.’ And then we really deliver on that food. It’s been really easy from a customer acquisition standpoint, and people love the food, so they come back and back.
When you look across the landscape of lifestyle brands and competitors, do you feel like you still have some sort of first-mover advantage?
I haven’t really thought about that. Maybe I’m too close to it to know, but I do think we are the OG, and in that sense, we’re becoming kind of a heritage brand. There’s always intrinsic brand value there. When you’re the first mover, you’re category defining. So I hope so.
We’re bumping up against our 20th anniversary in the next few years. It’s amazing to me we’ve been around this long. We want to energetically own who we are and what we’ve accomplished—continue to innovate and accept our place in the landscape and lean into it.
As a founder and leader, what resources have you turned to to grow through all these changes?
I have great help. I have great coaches, mentors. I have a group of female CEO-founders I’m on a group chat with. There are some public company CEOs on there, some very nascent companies. It’s a very safe space where we can go and talk through some of the harder things. I really would not be able to do this without the women in my life who are there in that capacity. We traverse these difficult things, and you forget that it’s going to be OK. So many people have gone through this before.
Any names you can share?
It’s sort of like Fight Club. We’re not really supposed to talk about it. But it’s kind of fun at this point to be one of the women who has something to say to newer founders—like, whoops, don’t step in this pothole. It’s nice to pay it forward.
What are some of those moments you’ve given advice on? What are some of the ‘potholes’ of Goop’s journey?
I have strong feelings about ecommerce platforms and ESPs and ERPs. Don’t be sold software you don’t need. There’s a lot that happens when we outsource expertise and don’t follow our own instincts. Some of my worst decisions have been made from that place. We went on an ERP too early without the right team to implement it. [People will try to convince you], you’ve got to get off QuickBooks, you’ve got to do this and that. A founder’s instinct is really important. Sometimes we sell ourselves short by not listening to that instinct.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Emma Hinchliffe
