How beauty execs are meeting their customers where they are now 

At the Glossy Beauty and Wellness Summit in Santa Barbara, beauty and wellness executives gathered into working groups to discuss the most pressing issues impacting their brands today. Top of mind on day two was how to meet customers where they are, which spawned a lively discussion that centered around Amazon best practices, the power of omnichannel distribution, and customer overlap in mass and luxury stores.

Below are highlights from this conversation, led by Glossy editor-in-chief Jill Manoff. Quotes are in the executives’ own words and have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The power (and struggle) of omnichannel distribution

“Moving forward, to be successful, brands have to operate digitally, at wholesale and at retail. Brands that are digital-only are going to reach a ceiling; you’re going to hit a roadblock and it’s going to be challenging.”

“It’s getting more and more difficult to be a DTC brand. We launched directly to consumers and focused solely on DTC until a few months ago, when we started going into boutiques and spas. We are moving products, and it’s a start, but the orders are so small. I wanted to be part of the progression of retail, and obviously we want to be everywhere, but I feel like it is getting more and more difficult to reach the customer directly.”

“If you’re trying to raise VC capital, the first thing they’re going to ask is whether you’re selling at wholesale. They want to see that.”

“I think you have to have a good mix now. We’ve seen the pendulum go back and forth so many times, and I think now you have to be a little bit in everything so you’re prepared and safeguarded.”

Deciphering retailer overlap

“When you think about channel distribution today, you need to be wherever your person is, but the people shopping at Sephora, Amazon and Nordstrom are not a totally different cohort of people. [Years ago we thought] the Walmart shopper would never come into Saks, but now she might wander into a Walmart for personal care and then go look at handbags at Saks. Luxury retailers who won’t take your brand if you’re in mass need to be educated on that.”

“I disagree that the Amazon shopper is the same as the Sephora or Nordstrom shopper. We knew going into Amazon there was a risk of pulling from somewhere else, but that has never been the case for us. The Amazon customer is very different from the Sephora customer, and that’s not to say that there can’t be overlap — but generally, they’re different and have different needs. Generally speaking, the Amazon customer’s needs are replenishment: They know what they want when they’re purchasing. But in terms of awareness and learning, I now think of Amazon as a search engine. We make sure to have everything we can on our product pages in our brand store on Amazon, because we know it’s informing the customer elsewhere. We use it as a learning channel, even if the customer ends up buying somewhere else.”

“I think it’s interesting that we’re talking about how the Amazon and Sephora customers are the same, because I actually think the Ulta and Sephora customers are completely different. The skin-care brand I work for went into Ulta after ending their exclusivity with Sephora and they expected to see some cannibalization of sales, but there actually was none. So it truly was a different customer we hadn’t met before because they weren’t shopping at Sephora.”

“The Ulta customer is younger. The mix of locations also impacts who the customer is. Ulta offers way more brands, but the online experience at Ulta is so bad.”