April 4, 2024 | Chris Hobson
Just yesterday Dave Kimbell, the CEO of Ulta [full disclosure: one of Rare Beauty Brands’ largest customers] made comments that precipitated a roughly 15% decline in the company’s stock price, the largest single-day decline in several years. Shares in several other prominent beauty companies saw similar declines in the wake of his remarks. Specifically, Mr....
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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...
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May 19, 2022 | Chris Hobson
If you’ve been following the press coverage of Rare Beauty Brands you’ve no doubt seen that we announced the acquisition of the Dr. Dana nail care brand last November. We’re super-excited that re-launch day is finally here and the brand is now live at drdananails.com! Why Did RBB Acquire Dr. Dana? The Dr. Dana brand...
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April 25, 2022 | Chris Hobson
Last week (almost) the entire Rare Beauty Brands (RBB) team traveled to Arizona for our first annual RBB Summit. This was our way to address the WFx blues. As a company we’ve fully embraced the Work From Anywhere (WFx) transition over the past several years. A the same time, we feel that it is super-important...
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March 4, 2022 | Chris Hobson
This article was originally published in Beauty Independent. The Lipstick Effect By now pretty much everyone in the Beauty industry has heard of the “lipstick effect,” a phrase that was coined by Leonard Lauder. It specifically refers to the fact that even in a down economy, people will make small splurges on treats, and a...
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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...
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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...
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December 4, 2021 | Chris Hobson
My last post took a swing at some of the oft-cited downsides of the new WFx experiment that corporate America is running in real-time. In contrast to what has quickly become popular wisdom, I think most businesses (including us at Rare Beauty Brands) have found that at least in the short term, productivity is up...
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December 1, 2021 | Chris Hobson
Full disclosure: Rare Beauty Brands has completely embraced the WFx (Work From Anywhere) shift that COVID-19 thrust upon many of us. Before the pandemic most of our team commuted daily to our offices just outside of Boston. Almost 2-years on, we still maintain a smaller version of that office, but it is there for mail...
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November 22, 2021 | Chris Hobson
It seems that everywhere you look these days, people are talking about the supply chain crisis, both in the economy overall, and in the beauty industry more specifically. I won’t rehash those analyses, but you can check out some of my favorite ones here and here and here and here. Personally, my best guess is...
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