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For Glossy’s E-Commerce Summit this week, leaders from influential brands and retailers headed to Miami to discuss how they’re winning customers, driving sales and reshaping the omnichannel experience. To kick off the three-day event, Glossy’s editor-in-chief, Jill Manoff, spoke onstage with Oshiya Savur, chief brand and marketing officer at 25-year-old mass beauty incubator Maesa.
Since joining Maesa in March 2023, Savur has prioritized strengthening the brands in the company’s portfolio by increasing awareness and creating a deeper connection with consumers. According to previous Glossy reporting, from 2020-2023, Maesa’s revenue doubled, growing approximately 25% year-over-year in the three-year period. This year, the company is building on that momentum through a heightened focus on the “superpowers” of each existing brand’s founder, Savur said. And, from here, it will identify additional gaps in the mass market and launch more brands. Savur’s comments from the discussion, below, have been lightly edited for clarity
The brand incubation process
“We have a lot of founder-backed businesses, and over the years, what we’ve realized is that it’s by design. The fundamental quality of a strong founder-partner is somebody who gets that this is a business. If you’re walking into a business partnership, it’s not a licensing deal where we issue a certain contract with a number of assets. … What makes a difference is the attributes of the partners you work with, but also [identifying] the gap that you need to fill. If there is a project launching and we want to bring credibility to it, [then we have to pick a founder who makes sense]. … It’s a partnership. But what we’ve recently started doing is launching Maesa-owned brands that launch from scratch without partners.”
The importance of having a niche
“You would think that our incubator brands would be niche and small, but some of our brands are quite sizable. … These are very sizable businesses. Having said that, when you think about trends, there are always the dominant trends in the market. Then are the trends that are emerging that encourage innovation. These are where the small, little, beautiful new companies are coming in, and new ideas are popping up. Where I come in is identifying which of these companies will meet a niche. We’re following consumer needs and trends that will remain large trends and become dominant trends. It’s important we have that pulse on the market.”
According to a Maesa spokesperson, one of Maesa’s brands is doing $200 million in annual retail sales and another has crossed the $100 million mark. Two of the company’s newer launches are on pace to reach $50 million in sales this year.
Finding your North Star as a founder
“A North Star is important in the same way that purpose is very important. Just because I dropped a brand doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful or deserves to be there. The purpose of why we are launching that brand is what makes it powerful. The purpose is very powerful, and a superpower is the reason to believe that you can achieve that purpose and grow up to be who you want to be. Your purpose is that thing that defines you and what differentiates you within your frame of reference to competition. That’s what we think about it as incubate different brands.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated that a couple of Maesa brands generate over $30 million in retail sales and one just crossed the $50 million threshold. The story has been updated to reflect the brands’ accurate revenue figures..
