Competition is high for both established and emerging beauty brands working to stay above the fray in beauty retail — it might even mean being everything, everywhere all at once.
At WWD’s second annual L.A.B., or L.A. Beauty Forum, Sonia Summers, founder and chief executive officer of Beauty Barrage, and Noah Rosenblatt, president, of North America of Space NK, discussed what it takes today to not only make it into retail, but stay there, with WWD’s Ryma Chikhoune.
Summers said that she is part of a conversation at least twice a week where she is asked what young brands need to know as they prepare to launch at retail. “Everybody thinks it’s really hard to get into a store, but it’s even harder to stay in-store,” she said. “To go about it, you have to have a great product and you have to make sure that you have a strategy and budget.”
Related Articles
Budget is usually the “killer.” With so many brands on the market, “there is just no way you’re going to rise above the fray without a real marketing plan or a real strategy,” Summers said. “It’s better to take the time to do it right.”
Brands need to provide the same experience digitally as they do in-store. Consumers may be aware of a brand’s digital presence, but if they come into a store and the brand “isn’t singing, no one’s talking about it, then it’s flat. You need to have that human touch and experience in-store,” Summers said.
At Beauty Barrage, Summers helps brands build bespoke strategies that include merchandising, in-store education, demoing experiences and creating a signature experiences. Summers believes that each brand is different, and the experience should reflect that. While for many large, legacy brands, like Dior, Beauty Barrage creates big-budget activations, other brands find success by enticing consumers with smaller, personal experiences.
Rosenblatt said that while building a unique experience that fits the brand, it is also important to consider the retailer. A strategy that will work, or even skyrocket, in Nordstrom is different from what will drive traffic and gain eyeballs at Walmart. Brands, he said, need to think about the ‘what ifs,’ to develop a strategy that considers all possibilities. No one plan makes success happen.
At the same time, Rosenblatt urged brands to consider the bigger conversation of the wealth distribution that is happening across the country. He said that for a long time, Space NK believed it was a boutique business, associated with high street retailers, but now counts partnering with Walmart and Nordstrom Rack as one of the company’s greatest successes. The partnerships have brought beauty to communities outside of the markets Space UK was initially targeting.
For all brands, Summers and Rosenblatt said consistency is key — speaking to the customer and continuing to help them, to educate them, on the brand and its products through social media and in-store. “You can’t stop, it doesn’t stop,” Summers said. “[Shoppers] go in-store to be guided by an expert and find out what the new thing is. They’re looking for that same experience or what they believe your brand is because that’s what you told them online or digitally. It’s an experience.”
