If you're a beauty retailer, it's unquestionably fantastic news when Kylie Jenner tweets to her 25.5 million Twitter followers about how psyched she is that her $1 billion juggernaut makeup brand will make its debut in your store just in time for the holidays. But that's exactly where Ulta is at the moment - smack dab in the middle of the beauty conversation. Of course. it wasn't always that way; heck, up until about five years ago, the Bolingbrook, Illinois-based retailer struggled to grasp even a sliver of the cool-factor of its chief …
Deciem: From Disruption to Utter Destruction, Unfortunately with Estée Lauder Cos. in Tow
Hear that? It's the sound of the other shoe dropping. Several months ago, when I first wrote about Deciem for The Robin Report, a good chunk of my piece was devoted to just getting this mind-boggingly complex, Toronto-based company on our readers' radars. It's hard to keep up in beauty; there's so much going on, and so many new brands popping up on an almost hourly basis, that it's easy to lose track of a few here and there. To recap, the main need-to-know about Deciem, because it's highly likely that the core structure of the company is …
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Chemical Warfare
Let me say this right up front: The New York Times does a bang-up job on the sponsored content coming out of its T Brand Studio commercial arm. Eminently clickable and beautifully designed, the pieces feel so reported and legit that I get pulled into reading a good chunk of them, even when the topic is far afield from anything having to do with my real life. Though each sponsored post clearly states that the Times’s news and editorial staffs had nothing to do with them, I often dig right in. Thus, you can imagine how my eyes lit up when I …
The Dangerously Disruptive Deciem
When I walked into the cavernous, bare bones, industrial-chic Deciem store in the Distillery section of Toronto last summer and saw this bold declaration plastered on the wall, Beauty Is Between You and You, it was my first introduction to “The Abnormal Beauty Company.” I spent a good 20 minutes in the shop on that chilly evening, reading labels and soaking in the company gestalt -- while the group I was with waited patiently outside. Although I didn’t ultimately buy anything, my suitcase was already stuffed to the gills and Toronto was just …
Blu Spas
It sort of makes perfect sense that a company operating in every hemisphere wouldn’t need one main base camp where employees hang their hats. Still, Blu Spas takes the idea of the virtual office to the next level. For starters, the two founders of the high-profile spa design firm have never lived in the same pocket of the United States. While Cary Collier resides in Whitefish, Montana, his partner Doug Chambers calls the L.A. area home. Sure, there are “auxiliary” offices in both partners’ main locales. But with staffers scattered across …
Is NYX the New MAC? Signs – And Sales – Point to Yes
This is ancient history – and embarrassing – but it’s relevant to today’s topic, so I’m sharing. Years ago, in my role as AVP Strategic Development in the Luxe division at L’Oréal SA, I was abruptly called into a private meeting with a Very Important Person. (The most Very Important Person in the entire global organization, if truth be told.) The only other attendee at this high-level confab was my immediate boss, and since the meeting wasn’t on the calendar – a rarity at the highly regimented enterprise -- I didn’t know what to …
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Amazon’s Luxury Beauty Play: Are They In It To Win It?
In an “if a tree falls in the forest” way, is an announcement of a business alliance between two companies really an announcement if neither side publicly cops to it? I’m referring to the report (rumor? wishful thinking?) that surfaced in late July of this year about a potential partnership between Amazon and Violet Grey, a Los Angeles-based luxury beauty content and commerce site we introduced to The Robin Report readers in a Summer 2016 feature entitled “Rise of the Expert E-Aggregators.” A refresher course on Violet Grey: Founded in …
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Kylie vs. Kim: Two Sisters Battle It Out for Beauty World-Dominance
Researching this blog post before dawn on December 12, I thought maybe my morning cup of high-test coffee hadn’t kicked in yet. Why? Because the home page of kyliecosmetics.com looked exactly like the beigey-nude, tone-on-tone core imaging on kkwbeauty.com. Were my sleepy eyes playing tricks on me? Could baby sis Kylie Jenner, whose two-year-old beauty brand is projected to be on track for $1 billion in sales by 2022, be copycatting Kim Kardashian West? I thought Kylie was all about her millennial-centric drippy-lips logo and palettes of …
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