Here’s what’s on BeautyMatter founder and CEO, Kelly Kovack’s Radar
Conversation highlights…
- Peak season is right around the corner. Excess inventory is a real concern. Why?
- It’s those secondary tariffs that brands need to be watching. (Think: aluminum.)
- Why today’s top ops pros can just “do ops.”
- How ops teams can fuel brand PR.
- How AI is impacting the beauty industry – and what ops and marketing pros should be paying attention to.
Kelly Kovack’s entry into the beauty world was not remarkable.
“I was young, living in New York – and I needed to pay rent,” she says.
But it proved a pivotal moment, that started with an opportunity at Bliss Spa as the brand was just finding its footing. There, Kelly managed the Bliss catalog.
“We disrupted not only the professional spa industry, but also how products were purchased. What seems like an ordinary thing was groundbreaking at the time. The catalog was huge.”
From there, Kelly took on brand-side marketing and strategy roles, most notably at Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare. She also launched a number of brands of her own. In 2016, she noticed that there really wasn’t any sort of B2B media ecosystem for the beauty industry.
So, she started a newsletter, BeautyMatter.
Almost 10 years in, BeautyMatter has expanded from a humble email to a full-on platform with events, awards programming, webinars, memberships and a podcast.
Said differently, BeautyMatter is a tremendous source of industry knowledge and insights – so why not tap its leader for a No Two Days the Same conversation?
Here’s what we covered.
How is Peak Season Going to Shake Out for the Beauty Industry?
“There’s just so much uncertainty. I know that’s not a unique perspective but it’s true. The data points are contradictory. You have the stock market at an all-time high but consumer credit card debt and delinquencies are also at record levels. Healthcare costs aren’t slowing down. The job market is uncertain. Wages aren’t moving. Tariffs are looming but constantly changing. So for the beauty industry, I think we’re going to see brands stuck with inventory. You might see consumers buying early, ahead of the traditional peak season. You might see them buying less. People have less disposable income and we’re seeing choices shift.”
“If I’m leading operations for a beauty brand right now, I’m keeping a close eye on cash flow and inventory. More so than normal. I’m thinking through potential scenarios where maybe we’re implementing strategies like discounting and bundling.”
How are Beauty Brands Thinking About Tariffs?
“We haven’t seen the full impact of tariffs yet, but the timing isn’t ideal – especially when you’re talking about secondary tariffs. By that I mean tariffs on stuff like aluminum. That’s not something you immediately associate with beauty, but it’s a core material for packaging.”
“We’ve been dealing with tariffs since the beginning of the year and I think the advice is largely the same: stick to your strategy, map out contingency plans and keep your eyes and ears open.”
What’s Happening with Ops Talent in the Beauty Industry?
“There are deep structural changes happening in how beauty businesses operate. The talent required to run a beauty business is very different now than it was even just a few years ago. For operations professionals, I think that means they need to know more than ops. They need to understand tech stacks and how to use tools to streamline everything from product development to logistics. If a business is leveraging technology correctly, it takes fewer people to run that business. So the operations people that get that are the ones that are positioned really well.”
“At the same time though, this industry is still built on relationships. Your network is everything. Your relationships are how you get your boxes out of a warehouse during a crisis. Invest in them. Communicate openly about both the good and the bad.”
What Role Can Operations Play in a Brand’s Media Coverage Strategy?
“I wish PR teams engaged the operations side of their brands more often! As an editor making coverage decisions, I need a few things. Tell me a story and back it up with proof points. Because operations people sit at the center of these brands they always have both. They experience consumer trends, economic trends, business trends every day and they have massive amounts of data at their fingertips that can either support or poke holes in an idea.”
“So ops people: talk to your PR people. You might inspire a pitch that gets an editor like me excited.”
How is AI Reshaping the Beauty Industry?
“You can look at it a couple of different ways. For us, as a media platform covering the industry, our initial knee-jerk reaction was to lock everything down and protect our content. But now we’re opening it up, optimizing and figuring out how to make it work for us.”
“For brands, tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are new ways to be discovered. Marketing and ops teams need to figure out if and how their customers are using AI. Then they need to figure out how to make themselves discoverable. There’s obviously no magic formula but we know ChatGPT leans on sources like Wikipedia, Reddit and media sites. So your coverage in BeautyMatter might ultimately be informing AI.”
“We know AI can process massive amounts of data faster than humans. But humans are still smarter. It’s a new tool just like search engines in the mid 90s. We all have to figure out how to use it.”
Kelly’s Key Takeaways for Ops Pros
- Be extra thoughtful about your inventory this peak season.
- Pay attention to secondary tariffs.
- Know your brand’s tech stack top to bottom.
- Collaborate with your PR team.
- Stand up your AI optimization strategy yesterday.