June 21, 2022 | Chris Hobson
Celebrating Successes Along the Way Yesterday we celebrated Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the official emancipation of enslaved Black people in the USA. So it seemed like an appropriate time to step back and celebrate the efforts of the teams at Rare Beauty Brands, Black Girl Ventures and Ulta in creating the most successful Beauty...
Read More
January 29, 2022 | Chris Hobson
Staying relevant in the always changing beauty industry took on added meaning in the context of the recent news that one-time darling startup brand Glossier has seen sales declines of ~20% for the past two years in a row, and just laid off a third of its workforce. 🙁 What happened to Glossier? Some of...
Read More
January 25, 2022 | Chris Hobson
At Rare Beauty Brands, we are “unapologetically” omnichannel. What do I mean by that? The past few years have seen the dramatic rise of DTC brands, followed quickly by the rise of Amazon-only brands. Many of these brands were able to scale very rapidly by leveraging changes in the ways that brands connect with consumers...
Read More
November 18, 2021 | Chris Hobson
So if we accept the premise of my previous post, namely that today’s brand marketers are like hedge fund managers constantly on the hunt for ‘alpha’, the obvious question is, how do they find it? Why is Alpha so Elusive? First, let’s explore why digital marketing alpha has gotten so difficult to obtain. Just like...
Read More
November 9, 2021 | Chris Hobson
Who wouldn’t want to be a hedge fund manager? Enormous pay packages. Private jets. Ownership of sports teams. Art collections. Houses in the Hamptons and Bahamas. Check out the annual (yes, annual) pay packages at right (yes, those are in millions). Well, the fact is that despite all these perks, hedge fund managers are under...
Read More