How e.l.f. Beauty is winning

TARANG AMIN:  We’ve never actually had a DEI program, quotas, or a number of the things that are getting attacked, but we’re one of less than 1% of public U.S. companies with a board that’s 60% women, 40% diverse. We did a provocative campaign last year titled “So many dicks, so few of everyone else.” There are more men named Richard, Rick, or Dick on America’s corporate boards than entire populations of underserved. I love the fact that 76% of our team are women, 74% are Gen Z, millennial, 44% are diverse. We just posted our 28th consecutive quarters of net sales and market share gains. The composition of our team is the biggest competitive advantage we have.

BOB SAFIAN:  That’s Tarang Amin, CEO of e.l.f. Beauty. Even if you’re not into the beauty space, e.l.f. is a fascinating business. I wanted to talk to Tarang because he’s deploying unexpected disruptive practices that are really working in today’s marketplace, from speed of product development to AI experimentation, to teaming up with Hailey Bieber. e.l.f.’s choices, as Tarang explains it, flow directly from the company’s values. Even if some of those values seem out of Vogue, like sustainability or diversity, how he applies those values to partnerships with everyone from Sephora and Target to Dollar General and H&M — well, it’s a study in principles with nuance that directly reflects our current environment. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Tarang Amin, CEO of e.l.f. Beauty. Tarang, thanks for being here.

AMIN:  Well, thank you for having me.

Copy LinkInside e.l.f.’s Super Bowl ad

SAFIAN:  I have to ask about e.l.f.’s Super Bowl ad featuring Melissa McCarthy. Did it end up having the impact you hoped for? How do you know? I mean, Super Bowl ads are expensive.

AMIN:  Yeah. Well, it had absolutely the impact we wanted. We’re known for moving at the speed of culture. We saw a great cultural moment with Bad Bunny performing at halftime. I think he came on SNL about four months ago, telling everyone they had four months to learn Spanish. So it was a great jumping off point for us to get Melissa and actually do that satire. And the response has been amazing, not only in the U.S. but it also ran on Univision in Mexico. And the amount of responses we’ve gotten from Mexico and throughout the Latin community and even broader has been terrific.

SAFIAN:  Any pause? I mean, there are some folks who, including the president, kind of pushed back about a Spanish language halftime show and you went all in with the ad. Did you have any concerns about that?

AMIN:  No, we don’t. We are for every eye, lip, and face, and that includes the Latin community that we celebrated and the spot was really fun. It’s kind of e.l.f. at its best of really being able to take advantage of the moment and espouse what we had. From the moment that ad ran, we saw an immediate pickup on sales. So it did great both culturally as well as to our sales. So we’re going to continue running it.

Copy LinkPartnering with Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand

SAFIAN:  It’s been about 10 years since you took e.l.f. public, recently announced strong earnings helped by your billion dollar acquisition last year of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand expected to bring in, I don’t know, 260 or so million dollars in sales this year or more. What’s it been like having Hailey as a business partner?

AMIN:  Well, Hailey’s terrific. A lot of people know her as a celebrity, but I consider her one of the most thoughtful founders I’ve ever met. Her vision for that brand and what she’s been able to do with her partners is just nothing short of spectacular. I mean, this is a business that went from 0 to 212 million in net sales in less than three years, direct to consumer only with just 10 products. I’d never seen a business like that. 

And the level of consumer fervor of the brand is unlike anything I’ve seen. I mean, people will camp out literally overnight, wait 14 hours in line for an event that Hailey’s not even at. They’re buying into the entire lifestyle of the brand, the entire products. We just launched the brand into Sephora North America a few months ago, the biggest launch Sephora America’s ever had, number one brand in Sephora. We just did the same with Sephora UK. That launch was five times bigger than anything else Sephora UK’s ever seen. And this week we’re actually taking the brand to Mecca, in Australia and New Zealand.

SAFIAN:  Does partnering with Rhode, does it sort of have impacts or have you had discussions about e.l.f.’s brand positioning? I mean, Hailey arguably has the cultural cachet almost of a luxury brand, right? And you’re moving into Sephora, but e.l.f., I mean, you’re in 11,000 general stores, right?  How do you think about that brand positioning for e.l.f. as you move forward?

AMIN:  Our vision is to be a different kind of beauty company. The way we do that is we build brands that disrupt norms, shape culture, and connect communities. And even though Rhode is entry level prestige, it’s incredibly accessible relative to the quality of the products they have, compared to products that are priced way more. So we love being able to democratize that access to beauty, whether it be e.lf., which sells for $7.50 versus prestige at $30, or whether it be Rhode that sells in the upper 20s relative to products that are over a 100 dollars.

SAFIAN:  Affordability is a topic that’s much talked about right now. It sounds like that’s always been your – I mean, I don’t know, 75% of your product portfolio is $10 or less. That’s not by chance, and that’s not necessarily, in your mind, down market.

AMIN:  No, it’s not. In fact, the insight that we had, I mean, I’ve been CEO for 12 years, was e.l.f. always had really great priced products, $1, $2, $3. People couldn’t believe that we could do it at those price points. The insight we had though was, why not target the best products in beauty? Put our e.l.f. twist on it, introduce it in incredible value. One of my favorite products right now is – we just introduced – a soft satin concealer. The only other thing like it in the marketplace is priced at $32. We introduces ours at $5. So it is quite intentional and it is a real advantage of ours.

Copy LinkOvercoming tariffs in the Trump era

SAFIAN:  I mean, a lot of your products have been sourced from China, and you’ve only had to raise prices a handful of times in the last two decades, but last year was one of them, in part due to Trump’s tariffs. With the chaotic tariff environment, does that impact how you approach that? Did you have any sort of wake-up moments over the last year?

AMIN:  Well, I’d say it’s over the last few years. We’ve been subject to tariffs since 2019. The first round of Trump tariffs at 25%. Currently, I think our average for this fiscal year is 60% tariffs. If somebody told me we’d have 60% tariffs, I wouldn’t believe it, but we use the same balance plan we did in 2019. We did take prices up by $1 on our products. We also continue to diversify our supply chain as well as diversify our business. 

I just talked about the rapid growth we have internationally, which isn’t subject to tariffs. So if you look at our manufacturing footprint today, yes, China is still the majority, but we also have operations in the U.S., in Thailand, Italy, South Korea. So it really is having this well-diversified supply chain to meet the global demand that we have amongst our brands.

Copy LinkWhat leaders misunderstand about Gen Z & millennials

SAFIAN:  E.l.f. is particularly popular among Gen Z and millennial customers. I know that three-quarters of your staff is also in their 20s and 30s. Are there things that you think leaders misunderstand about the younger generations, as shoppers, as employees?

AMIN:  Well, I think the thing people misunderstand is they tend to try to look at the differences between cohorts versus what the similarities are. The unifying element across all three of those generations is, how do we connect with them? How do we engage with them? I remember a few years ago, my CMO came to me and she said, “We have to be on TikTok because that’s where Gen Z is.” And my response is, “Well, if that’s where Gen Z is, absolutely, we need to be on TikTok. Now, what’s TikTok?”

This was a few years ago. So I’m always learning. I’m always seeing new platforms. We’re the first beauty brand with our own channel on Twitch, we also have the number one branded experience right now on Roblox. So we consciously seek out, where are they living, what are they doing, how do we engage and entertain them? They also care for what the company stands for.

So the fact that we are double certified cruelty-free by both PETA and Leaping Bunny, the fact that we formulate e.l.f. Clean, which means we don’t use 2,100 ingredients in our formulations when the FDA only bans I think 11 ingredients from cosmetics formulations. The fact that we’re vegan, also the only beauty company that’s Fair Trade Certified, means a lot to the community that we serve. They care about the values behind a company as much as how great their products are.

Copy LinkHow e.l.f. is approaching AI

SAFIAN:  And when you look into sort of where you want the brand to meet your customers, how much are you talking about AI platforms? I mean, OpenAI is now accepting ads. Are you thinking about moving into those spaces or does that make you wary?

AMIN:  No, I’d say we’re naturally curious, always looking at different platforms, always looking to get experience. Our first time on TikTok, we had no idea what we were doing, but we were curious and we looked around and we’re like, “Wow, there’s a lot of music on TikTok, there’s a lot of dancing. Why don’t we just commission our own song?” So we commissioned our own Eyes of Face Song, did a hashtag challenge, I think got something like 3 or 4 billion views. 

By the time people were copying us on TikTok, we were already partnering with Simon Cowell, the co-founder of American Idol, to create a rock band on TikTok. And we had a challenge for a makeup artist to accompany the group around the world. That ended up doing 15 billion views. So I’d say we’re always curious, always looking for, how can we disrupt, where can we go? And I’d say the same is true with AI.

Our initial focus on AI is, how can it enable our team to be even better? So AI has enabled our community managers to be able to communicate and basically handle a hundred percent of the DMs that come in. It’s allowed automation in areas that, frankly, people don’t really want to do over and over and over again. And so we really look at it as an enabler of, how can we better connect with the communities we serve?

SAFIAN:  And you’re not worried that getting closer to AI resources will in any way put off any customers who might be more wary about it?

AMIN:  Well, I’d say that’s always experience-based. We’re going to do some things, and we’re not afraid. We are always testing and learning. We’re not afraid of failing somewhere and, basically, learning from it and keep moving. People often ask me, “What mistakes have you made?” And my response is usually, “You mean since this morning?” We’re constantly trying things, we’re constantly messing up.

Copy LinkHow e.l.f. shows up in different environments

SAFIAN:  Do you find consumers are more loyal to brands, to retailers, or to influencers these days? How do you look at that ecosystem?

AMIN:  Well, I’m a little biased because I spent 35 years in the consumer branding space. So I would say it’s always about brands, and brands can be anything. Some influencers have their own brand, and that’s a brand people believe in. Retailers have their brand, and that’s a brand people believe in. I remember there’s a quote from a former CEO of one of the big consumer companies that said, “There’s no such thing as a tired brand. There might be tired brand managers, but not a tired brand.” And so it’s our duty to continue to refresh and make sure that brand has meaning for people.

SAFIAN:  And whether your brand is in Dollar General or Sephora, which you mentioned, or TikTok Shop, all across, you are modulating it differently in each of those channels based on those brands, or are you like, “No, we’re ourselves wherever you find us”?

AMIN:  Well, it’s a combination. e.l.f. is always e.l.f. I don’t care if you find it at Dollar General or at Sephora, e.l.f. is e.l.f., but then we’ll figure out what each retailer wants and how they win. A great example is Dollar General. We surprised a lot of people when we went to Dollar General, but the thesis was really clear. Many of their stores are in rural areas with less than 20,000 people where you have to drive 20 miles for your beauty products. So we found them to be beauty deserts and we said, “If we introduce e.l.f., we can serve a population that isn’t currently being served.” Not only was it the most successful launch Dollar General’s ever seen, but 60% of the people who buy e.l.f. at Dollar General have never bought cosmetics at Dollar General.

So we’re happy to be in Dollar General. We’re happy to be in Sephora. We’re the number one brand by far at Target, which was our first customer. I think we have over 20% of their entire category. You also find us at Ulta Beauty at Walmart. Amazon’s one of the fastest growing customers we have. We tend to be agnostic in terms of where someone buys or experiences e.l.f. We wanted to make sure that we’re accessible though.

Copy LinkThe power of listening to customers

SAFIAN:  So you just launched your first fragrance in partnership with H&M. This is a new area, I guess, where you could have more accessibility, but also, trends move so fast today, you’re talking about TikTok at speed. When you make a choice like fragrances or really any new product, how do you know what’s a long-term commitment? Or is everything, as you say, “I could decide by the end of the day that it was a mistake?”

AMIN:  I remember the days where you used to try to come up with a concept, make a product, make up a whole bunch of it, and hope people came to buy it. That’s not our model. Our model is going to our community and seeing what they want. One of the things my CMO does is, she terrorizes me by taking me on TikTok live every once in a while, she’s not even very nice about it. She’ll say, “All right, you got the big boss here. Tell him what you want.” And our community isn’t shy. I remember, last year I went on one of those TikTok lives, and I’m looking at the chat, and the community was like, “Hey, there’s this prestige bronzing drop. We love it, but we can’t afford 38 bucks. Help us out.” And then it would be like 20 more chats after that, like, “No, no, boss man. We want them now.”

Like I said, I’ll leave that call a little traumatized. I’ll call my head of R&D and tell her, “Please, tell me, we have a three-year pipeline. We have bronzing drops on the pipeline?” She says, “We have it.” I’m like, “Oh, thank God.” “When are they coming out?” She’s like, “18 months.” And I’m like, “Oh, no. I cannot get yelled by our community on something they want.” We introduced them 6 months later. So our model is one where we already know there’s demand because our community’s asking for it.

SAFIAN:  And so fragrances were something you were hearing from the community?

AMIN:  Our community’s been asking us forever, “When am I going to see an e.l.f. fragrance?” Now, we don’t have expertise in fragrance, so this is a great opportunity to partner with H&M. So we needed a limited time drop of three high-end fragrances, and the response has been terrific. And so we’ll take those signals and say, “Okay, should we be in the fragrance business longer term? Let’s see how it does.” And we’ll take that and we’ll keep moving.

Copy LinkHow can a 60-year-old man lead a cosmetics brand?

SAFIAN:  Your career is in consumer products and brands writ large, but it sounds like you’ve had to do a lot of study yourself about the specific areas of beauty to know what’s different and what can move the needle.

AMIN:  I would say nobody had ever accused me of being a makeup enthusiast as a 60-year-old male, but I have an entire team of passionate enthusiasts and I do a product review every two weeks, and I make it an open ticket. Some people are horrified, “Wait a minute, these are our nuclear codes. How are you letting anyone in the company who wants to be there?” I’m like, “I’m letting them in.”

First of all, if anybody beats us with one of our ideas and we’re too slow, I want to make sure we keep our e.l.f. speed.  But second of all, I want the insights that come from our team, that represents our community.

So I go to that product review and all I’m doing is asking open-ended questions. “Tell me what’s so great about this concealer?” Like, “Hey, why do we have to charge $5? Why can’t I charge a little bit more? Why can’t I charge 7 bucks for it? You just told me the prestige item was $32.” And the number of responses I get, the level of engagement I get, frankly, makes me smarter every day.

SAFIAN:  And being a man when a lot of your customers and a lot of your products are geared to women, I mean, how much of a challenge is that? I talked to another CEO who went into a different business, was the first woman running it, and she’s like, “I’m trying everything. Our predecessors never tried these products.”

AMIN:  Yeah. No, I tried. In fact, today for this interview, I have our holy hydration moisturizer, our poreless body primer, which I swear by, smooths out all of my big pores here. I’ve got our Well People powder, our hydration concealer. So you’ve got to be curious about the areas you work in even if you’re not the end consumer. I’ve always had that curiosity, and it’s one of the things that, frankly, energizes me to constantly learn.

SAFIAN:  Nothing like hearing from a CEO about what face products he uses. What strikes me just as much though is how Tarang blends discipline with experimentation. So how is he responding to the Trump administration’s evolving positions on sustainability and diversity? And what do other businesses most misunderstand about the beauty industry? We’ll talk about that more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, e.l.f. Beauty’s Tarang Amin explained how working with both Hailey Bieber and Dollar General fits in e.l.f.’s strategy. Now, he talks about why e.l.f. is vocally committed to sustainability and diversity regardless of White House policies and how he thinks about partnering with brands like Target that may pursue a different course — plus a rapid fire round about lessons he’s learned from iconic college basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, how his family buying a motel when he was 14 changed him, and what people most misunderstand about the beauty business. Let’s jump back in. 

Copy LinkChampioning diversity and sustainability as core strengths

You mentioned earlier the care you take with the materials that go into your products. A lot of businesses sort of deprioritized sustainability over the last couple of years with the new occupant in the White House. Has your relationship to sustainability evolved? I mean, do customers care about it as much as it seemed they once did?

AMIN:  They care about it just as much as they once did. We pay less attention to the rhetoric around us. The reason why we’re the only beauty company that’s Fair Trade Certified is, it meant something to our consumers. They want great quality products at great prices, but they also want to feel good about the company they’re buying them from. And knowing that every one of our factories is certified fair trade, where the worker conditions are certified, the sustainability practices, really gives them peace of mind that this is a company that I can do business with. 

I would say it’s less about whatever policies are in place at any given administration or time. We’re the first mass brand that was cruelty-free, not because I had a dog and I really cared about pets. It came from how our community really cared, and we got other companies to go cruelty-free as well, as we hope to do the same with Fair Trade.

SAFIAN:  You’ve also continued to be an advocate for DEI practices, when there’s been pushback on that. Do you feel – what’s the right word? — lonely among your peers who aren’t maybe being as vocal these days?

AMIN:  I would say I don’t feel lonely because maybe some of my peers are quieter about the topic just given the pressures they may be facing. But deep down, I’ve never met a CEO who didn’t want the best possible workforce, who didn’t want the best advantage they could get. And that starts with people. 

And what we found, when your team reflects the community you’re serving, it’s a competitive advantage. I love the fact that 76% of our team are women, 74% are Gen Z, millennial, 44% are diverse, and I see the advantage every day.

SAFIAN:  And the fact that you’re in a category where catering to diverse skin tones is sort of central, I mean, does that make it easier for you to be more vocal maybe than some of your colleagues?

AMIN:  I’d say a couple of things make it easier for us. First of all, we’ve never actually had a DEI program, quotas, or a number of the things that are getting attacked. It was more fundamental to us. I don’t need quotas, I don’t need anything else, I just have an openness to invite anyone who’s passionate about making the best of beauty accessible. 

Our authority speaks for itself in the stats, not only for our employee base, but we’re one of less than 1% of public U.S. companies with a board that’s 60% women, 40% diverse. We did a provocative campaign last year to shine a light on the homogeneity of America’s boards. The campaign was titled “So many dicks, so few of everyone else.” And picture a billboard that had a picture of a bunch of white men on it. And the basic insight was, there are more men named Richard, Rick, or Dick on America’s corporate boards than entire populations of underserved populations.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a Richard, Rick, or Dick. We just wanted to shine a light for others. We ran it on every one of our social channels, and what we got back was 98% positive sentiment. This is why e.l.f. stands out from others. Yeah, we did get 2% that said, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with men on boards. There’s nothing wrong with being Richard, Ric,k or Dick.” And that wasn’t the point of our piece, but we’re going to continue to be outspoken on the things that are important to us.

SAFIAN:  When your value is based this way, how do you navigate the partnerships you have with others, with retailers who may take a different approach? Does it matter if you align on all values with H&M or Target when you’re in those places?

AMIN:  We align on the things that matter the most. All those companies are incredibly ethical. They treat their employees well. They care about serving their guests. Those are the things we align on. But I don’t fall into this polarized world of extremes. “Unless you’re 100% on that extreme,” I feel that’s a little bit of what’s broken in the country right now, which is losing that ability of having an intelligent dialogue, including things that you disagree on. 

And so, no, it doesn’t have to be 100% alignment. It has to be alignment on the values that matter most. So we always find ways and places where we can agree on people even if we disagree on others.

SAFIAN:  And so if H&M maybe doesn’t have the same public commitment to sustainability that you do, or that Target is not being as vocal about DEI practices, that doesn’t necessarily give you pause?

AMIN:  No, it doesn’t give us pause as long as, I mean, if Target stopped caring about their guests, that would be a bigger issue. But we can’t weigh in, and it’s not our right.  Back to the framework I talked about, to talk about other people’s policies or what they should do, that would just be preaching, and that’s never been e.l.f.. 

e.l.f. has been much more positive and much more inclusive. I believe in inclusion in all possible ways. Somebody once asked me, “Oh, you got two white males on your board.” And I said, “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” And they’re like, “Oh, but you’re all about diversity.” I’m like, “We’re for every eye, lip, and face, by the way, that includes white men as much as it does people of color and women and everyone else.” And so that’s a part I was talking about earlier is I just don’t understand the polarization. Inclusivity is inclusivity. We’re for everyone.

SAFIAN:  It’s refreshing to hear someone actually say it out loud because a lot of folks are afraid to these days.

AMIN:  I know there’s a lot of fear out there. And again, we have some advantages. We’re not a federal contractor, we’re not subject to executive orders. We didn’t ever have quotas or some of the small things that are being attacked. We just posted our 28th consecutive quarters of net sales and market share gains. And I can tell you the composition of our team is the biggest competitive advantage we have. The team and the culture that we have.

SAFIAN:  I’d love to do a rapid fire round, get some big picture lessons from you. Is that okay?

AMIN:  Absolutely. Of course.

Copy LinkLessons from Coach K

SAFIAN:  All right, so the first one is, you sit on the board of the Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics at Duke University. Is there advice that you’ve gotten from Coach K that you apply, that you would share?

AMIN:  There’s so many lessons I’ve gotten from Coach K. The most meaningful are leadership lessons on teams. He uses this analogy of, think of your hand, you’ve got five fingers. That hand is way more powerful when the five fingers come together and make a fist. I mean, he talks all the time. 

His best teams were the most vocal in terms of giving each other feedback. So we don’t leave that to chance. We train people on how to give pinpointed specific feedback in helping the team succeed, because it’s not a natural human instinct for most people to give that.

Copy LinkWhat Tarang learned from the family motel business

SAFIAN:  You’ve said you learned a lot about business after your family bought a motel when you were 14. Can you share a lesson that you continue to hark back to from those days?

AMIN:  Yeah. I would say, just to paint a picture, this was 1979. Interest rates were 18%. Every penny we had was in that motel. It was a little stressful at the time, I do have to admit.

SAFIAN:  Are there things you learned from being in that stress?

AMIN:  I learned this whole point of breathing, calming yourself down, being focused on, okay, what do you have to do? I tell people, it’s a terrible analogy. I use a manufacturing analogy. You’ve either got a batch system or a continuous flow. I always say, I kind of do like, all right, let’s do A, lets get A done really well. Let’s go B, then we’ll go C, then we’ll do that. I always felt like when sometimes in business things get too complicated, I go back to large mathematical formulas. The only way to solve it is, break it up. Break it up into solvable parts, and then put the thing back together again. 

I learned that in the motels, which is, it was almost overwhelming, everything we had to do to turn around that first property. So where are we going to start? And then we can do one problem after the other. I always say, “Look, we can face any reality. We just need to know what that reality is.”

I say, “I’m often the nicest when things aren’t going well because most likely it’s probably my fault anyway.” But people don’t need me to project panic and fear and anger. I tend to be a little grumpy when things are going well just because I don’t want us in turn to get complacent. But the key is one step at a time, and I’ve found no matter how big the challenge, start somewhere and make forward motion, keep moving forward. Not everything’s going to go the way you want, but keep moving, keep trying, keep learning. And if you do that, things tend to solve themselves.

SAFIAN:  What’s the most misunderstood thing, you think, about the beauty business?

AMIN:  I think the most misunderstood is sometimes people think it’s superficial. “Well, this is just about your appearance.” I think what they misunderstand is, a lot of times your appearance ties to your self-worth, your emotions, a reflection of who you are. And so there’s greater depth. And sometimes I think people stop at the superficial, they stop at the headline, and it’s just to dig deeper, dig deeper into what’s the true meaning of what you’re doing and what you’re really trying to achieve.

SAFIAN:  So with all this change, with all the world around you moving so quickly, what do you feel like is at stake for e.l.f. right now?

AMIN:  I think what’s at stake is to continue to transform our industry. If we want to be a different type of beauty company, are we indeed disrupting norms? Are we shaping culture? Are we connecting communities? And if we do that, I mean, this is a business that’s grown more than tenfold in the last decade, and so I can’t wait for what the next 10 years have in store for us.

SAFIAN:  Well, Tarang, this was great. Thanks so much for doing it.

AMIN:  Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.

SAFIAN:  I really like the questions that Tarang poses at the end. “Are we disrupting norms? Are we shaping culture? Are we connecting communities?” Not every business strives to be radically different from those around them. Even e.l.f. presents itself in many situations as a traditional consumer products brand, but Tarang’s aspirations to keep moving, keep shaking things up, that’s an essential trait in a time of change. At the same time, e.l.f. is trying to influence that change to help shape culture and deepen human connection. Sometimes when businesses and leaders talk about values, it can seem like those values are separate from the operating of the company. What e.l.f.’s success to this point demonstrates is how building the company around the values, that becomes a competitive advantage and key to business success. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.