Beauty Industry West Emerging Brands Cocktail and Emerging Brands Presentation

This past Tuesday I attended an event sponsored by Beauty Industry West. Beauty Industry West is an established beauty trade organization that holds lectures and other events in the Los Angeles area. It attracts manufacturers of brands, ingredients, and other stakeholders active in the beauty industry. I have been a member for 25 years and have made many contacts.

This event had three components. First, they exhibited emerging beauty brands that were nominated for the BIW Emerging Brands Awards to be given out on November 9th. The exposure gave BIW members the opportunity to vote for their favorite emerging brand.

I am honored to have one of the brands under nomination and hopefully will win the award. The makeup brand is called Queen Cosmetics. The second component was a panel discussion by the judges for the Emerging Brands Awards. They came from all sectors of beauty from packaging, regulatory and product development. It was helpful to hear their views on the future of beauty from all angles.

I was very impressed by the talk given by Kerry Sullivan, CEO of Versed Cosmetics. The talk was moderated by Melissa Hibbert where she is a board member and Chairwoman of the Marketing Committee of BIW. Kerry has a long history in the beauty industry before she took the helm of Versed Cosmetics. She was CMO of Dollar Shave Club and seven years as General Manager for Neutrogena. She was there during some of the biggest leaps of growth of the brand.

Here are my takeaways from Kerry's talk. 1. Know when your company is ready to transition from a founder-led to a management-led company. The difference is that a founder is usually involved in all aspects of the business. There may be a lot of emotion and gut decisions and every founder has their strengths and weaknesses. I currently fill in the gaps for Elimar Depaula founder of Queen Cosmetics and have worked with numerous founders. The time you need to consider functional expertise such as CFOs, COO, and Product Development leadership is just ( 6-9 months) before you enter a major retail chain. The entry costs are very high as are the costs of overlooking basic operating details such as forecasting, cash flow, fulfillment, etc.

The second takeaway was the rationalizing of SKUs. There is no higher cost than having the wrong SKUs or not having the right SKUs that align with your brand concept. In other words, you need to make sure you always honor the fundamentals of what your brand stands for. Do not look only at your top-selling SKUs but constantly review your lower-selling SKUs not for inventory and overhead issues but for why the majority of your customers are not considering buying the least attractive products. It could be messaging, packaging, or something else other than shade or function. As innovation is the lifeblood of the beauty business one needs to also look at not just innovation but the current lineup for sales opportunities.

Thirdly, there is the question of international which is my core competency. Although one would think I would always pitch international expansion the reality is no. The brand needs to be ready. It needs a firm foundation in its home market. Strong social media presence and willingness to invest overseas. The brand also needs to realize that international is not a money or profit tree. Yes, distributors can reduce some of the investment but there needs to be a commitment from the brand to invest in regulatory, packaging, and logistics. If a company is cash-strapped it does not mean that international is the silver bullet.

In Summary another great even put on by Beauty Industry West and look forward to the Gala on November 9th. I hope to see many of my friends and business colleagues there.