TheIndustry.beauty has unveiled highlights from its recent event - The Omnichannel Opportunity, in partnership with Bleckmann and sponsored by Revieve and SoPost. Business leaders and panelists from Shiseido Company, Lush, Elemis, The Inkey List, No7 Beauty Company, and more, shared their insights on opportunities within omnichannel, from driving growth through personalised AI and AR to creating an elevated and locally relevant retail experience, building a strong logistics platform to power omnichannel and cross-border growth. Key takeaways were:

Build a strong logistics platform to power omnichannel and cross-border growth

Matthias Vandecasteele, Sales Director at Bleckmann, Lewe Goldmann, Supply Chain & Operations Director at Cloud Nine, and Daniella Chavarria Banks, Consultant for Logistics, International Customs & Trade, Supply Chain at Olaplex, came together to discuss how to build a strong logistics platform to power omnichannel and cross-border growth. They discussed how to take a brand from multichannel to omnichannel as well as the give-and-take between DTC and BTC retail. Olaplex, for example, is focusing on growing its DTC offer, but both channels are important and hold value.

"We are multichannel right now. We have a strategic plan to be omnichannel. One of the reasons is that we’ve gone from retailers to becoming completely DTC and are now going back to work with our retail partners. This is the glue to connecting all channels," said Goldmann.

"To manage stock, you can set up different warehouses in different regions. We dedicate different SKUS to different markets. It’s not only about single pool inventory – it’s the ability to balance it out. If there’s a large demand or order, we need to have the ability to be flexible. You need a partner who can scale," added Vandecasteele.

Driving growth through personalised AI and AR

Miikka Mäkiö, SVP EMEA at Revieve, was joined by Kiran Sandhu, Global Head of Beauty Incubator at No7 Beauty Company, to discuss how growth can be driven by AI and AR.

"It's so important to make these experiences as seamless, frictionless, and easy to use as possible while maintaining accuracy and credibility," Sandhu said.

To achieve this, personalised AI & AR platform Revieve works with businesses to create a personal experience for each brand and its customers. "There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to ensure each experience is high-quality, credible, and personal to the brand and its products," Mäkiö shared. The session also highlighted the added benefits of these services' data and customer insights.

Driving growth through digital sampling

During a session with Bianca Chambers, Head of Brand Partnerships at sampling experts SoPost, it was revealed that beauty brands should elevate their sampling strategy to become more inventive, easier, and engaging to capture the attention of consumers and drive sales.

As part of its service, SoPost offers a suite of intelligent tools to process, filter and confirm orders to maximise the impact of sampling campaigns. "Whether it's shipping address verification, advanced order deduplication, or intelligent order filtering, we can help brands improve their spend and return on investment as it means they wouldn't be sending wasted products," Chambers revealed during the session.

Creating an elevated and locally relevant retail experience

Simon Ford of Malin + Goetz and Kasey Swithenbank of Lush spoke about their retail strategies. In this session, the duo discussed choosing shop locations, size, staff, and target demographics.

"When choosing a location for a new store, there’s an element of heart and mind. You must feel it in your gut, but ultimately, it's about the data. We look at heat maps and test foot traffic through mobile phone tracking", explained Simon Ford.

"We originated in Poole in a small store, so brick-and-mortar will always be at the forefront of our brand. However, digital and store go hand in hand," added Kasey Swithenbank.

Laying the foundations for a strong international brand

Susan Harvey, General Manager for Elemis UK, and Suzanne Coulton, COO of The Inkey List, discussed the international expansion of the two brands.

"One of the key things for global expansion is learning how to get it wrong, being ok with that, and reacting fast," revealed Coulton.

"We've put a lot of focus on growing our US and Asia operations but are now turning our focus back on the UK," said Harvey, while referencing the upcoming opening of its first standalone store in London.

Leveraging community to create and grow a brand

Jasmine Wicks-Stephens, the Founder of Faace, and Holly Brooke, the Commercial Director of Skin Rocks by Caroline Hirons, discussed the importance of community when creating and growing a beauty brand.

"We developed with the press in mind, but in terms of that resonating with the customer on the streets, their wants are different. Consumers believe they need a multi-step regime, so we’re telling them something different and that's a challenge for us and making the brand commercially viable," said Jasmine Wicks-Stephens.

"Your community is your community, but your customers are very different and we learned this the hard way. This was a mistake that we’re still paying for a year and a half after launch. We designed the brand for the community, but without engaging the customer," added Brooke.