Entering a beauty retailer’s doors marks a rite of passage for many emerging brands getting their start via budding social media followings or their own direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels. Retail partnerships can be among the most effective methods of growing a consumer base, increasing brand awareness and driving sales. But, getting on these retailers’ radar in the first place poses its own set of challenges as beauty brands are up against a heap of up-and-coming competitors.
For retailers, finding the next big thing in beauty doesn’t happen overnight: It begins with a thorough process spanning inbound pitches, trade shows, network connections and, of course, social media. Ahead, beauty retail executives from Ulta, Credo Beauty, Bluemercury and Thirteen Lune share what they’re searching for in emerging brands, their advice for the next generation of innovators and their key channels for discovery.
Inbound Pitches and Industry Events
“We receive hundreds of submissions from brands every single year who’d like to be carried with us,” Leigh Quilhot, Bluemercury’s managing director of merchandising for color, fragrance, hair, sun and strategic initiatives, tells Fashionista. “Where we spend our most time is sifting through all of those and reviewing the incredible decks that brands send us and asking them to send us product and testing and trialing and talking to the brands and trying to gain a better sense of their story.”
Since first launching in 2020, Thirteen Lune has positioned itself as an inclusive beauty retailer with 90% of its shelf space dedicated to founders of color, making it a hub for emerging brand discovery. Nyakio Grieco, co-founder of Thirteen Lune and founder of beauty brand Relevant, emphasizes the retailer’s curation process as its point of difference, with some new brand referrals coming from its other stocked brands or stemming from beauty industry events like Cosmoprof.
With “no shortage of brands” reaching out to enter its assortment, Credo Beauty, one of the industry’s leading “clean” beauty retailers, also serves as a space for discovery: “We find a lot of brands, especially smaller brands that really want to start with more of an indie footprint before potentially growing, or new brands that never want to grow outside of Credo, which is great,” Credo Beauty’s Vice President of Brands Jessica Trieber says.
Incubator Programs
Alongside attending industry events, meeting with investors and fielding thousands of applications per year, two cornerstones of Ulta Beauty’s brand discovery process include its Sparked initiative and Muse Accelerator program, both of which spotlight and uplift emerging beauty brands. Sparked functions as Ulta’s launchpad for new, often digitally native DTC brands entering retail for the first time. Familiar names like Touchland, Vacation, Dune Suncare, Live Tinted and Lolavie have passed through Sparked, with its newest class of up-and-comers featuring Dibs Beauty, Holo Taco, Doré and Magic Molecule. As for its Muse Accelerator, Ulta offers eight early-stage BIPOC beauty brands mentorship opportunities, a brand-building curriculum and $50,000 to accelerate their businesses.
“We do help those early-stage brands prepare for coming to retail because we do periodically meet brands that aren’t quite ready, but just with a little bit of assistance and education — we do some mentorship, both on the merchandising side and with the brand founders — we’re able to get them ready for that next step into retail,” Muffy Clince, senior director of merchandising for emerging brands and initiatives at Ulta, says.
Social Media
Social media — be it Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest or even Facebook — plays a major role in today’s beauty marketing landscape, allowing retailers to gauge emerging brands’ strategies for building their communities and customer bases. As Grieco notes, “Old tried-and-true reviews are great, but social media really gives us that in-real-life experience with the brands and the founders.” While beauty retailers focus on how brands foster dedicated online communities and organic engagement, Quilhot shares that it’s important to be “savvy” when examining an emerging beauty brand’s social media presence to assess its retail readiness.
“There are brands investing incredibly heavily in social media, and I think it’s important not to conflate a brand with a really robust digital media budget with a brand that is actually really resonating with the customer and going to actually convert,” she continues. “The brands with a really high spend, they might make their way into our algorithm via influencers or direct ads on our feed, and we certainly, if it looks interesting, want to look into them and we have launched brands through those, but it’s important to draw a distinction between the two.”
Qualities Retailers Look For
Beyond retailers’ initial discovery process, what brand characteristics actually break through the sea of inbound pitches? For starters, Thirteen Lune evaluates proof of performance, which Grieco says is “table stakes.” Once brands check the efficacy box, the retailer analyzes brands’ before and after examples, customer reviews, sustainability initiatives and dedication to inclusivity. “Whether the brand is created by a Black or brown founder or not, how are they making sure that nobody feels neglected at [the] shelf?” Grieco considers.
Credo Beauty is focused on expanding its “clean” beauty assortment: All prospective brands must first adhere to its Credo Clean Standard, or guidelines regarding ingredient sourcing, safety, sustainability and transparency. For those that meet its standards, Trieber notes that Credo Beauty is also looking for brands that succinctly articulate their brand story while honing in on their point of difference, whether that may be an innovative ingredient, delivery system or new technology.
With a similar emphasis on efficacy and innovation, Ulta zeroes in on a beauty brand’s scalability, or the potential to grow and expand once it hits Ulta’s shelves. “We’re very passionate about building long-term relationships and partnerships with our brands, so we want to make sure that we’re able to grow and scale a brand at Ulta Beauty, and so we’re really excited to make sure that they have those pieces, that foundation, so that we can do that together with them,” Clince says. With nearly 1,400 U.S. stores and hundreds of stocked brands, Ulta is also searching for beauty products that fill a need in its assortment as well as speak to the values of its diverse shoppers.
As Bluemercury assesses a brand’s product performance, packaging and overall branding, Quilhot also notes that while a proprietary active ingredient can help catch the consumer’s attention, it needs to offer enough differentiation from another brand’s offerings. “There has to be a way for the product to really resonate with the customer [so] that she’s willing to open up her wallet and spend on this versus something she’s already spending on,” Quilhot notes. In pursuit of introducing Bluemercury’s customers to products worth buying, Quilhot shares that the retailer recently launched Manucurist, its first nail-care brand in over three years, after the French brand’s easily removable gel polish surprised the team.
However, across these beauty retailers’ stacked prospective brand checklists, one characteristic ranks high on all of their radars: A compelling founder story. On the consumer-facing side, founder-led brands can bring a sense of authenticity and relatability to its product offerings. “They love connecting, they love to know who’s behind the brand and they want to know the founder story and they want to hear directly from them,” Trieber says of Credo Beauty’s audience.
Advice for Emerging Brands
For emerging beauty brands looking to take that next step into retail, Clince recommends learning as much about the industry as possible, surrounding yourself with a talented team and ensuring the brand is financially prepared for that shift. Though supply chains and spreadsheets aren’t necessarily the most glamorous part of the beauty industry, Clince emphasizes the back office work “is some of the most critical to success.” Grieco advises up-and-coming brands to go to smaller retailers first and be open to any feedback along the way: “All feedback is valuable as a founder, and even though it may be disappointing to get a ‘no’ in the beginning, there’s always a second chance, there’s always a third chance, so don’t give up.”
Above all else, retailers underline the importance of authenticity paired with understanding (and promoting!) the brand’s point of difference when searching to enter a retailer’s shelves.
“One of the questions I always ask in an interview is who [do] you benchmark yourself against? What brands do you look at for inspiration? Who do you want to be sitting next to on a shelf?” Quilhot says. “It’s important to be able to articulate how you make sense within the context of these brands, but also offer the client something that’s totally different than what these brands bring to the table. Being able to communicate that to the retailer will get you a long way because that’s how we’re thinking about it.”
Source: Fashionista.com
