An eye-opening exploration that connects the wild world of tracking lions in Africa with mastering the beauty industry. Discover how the ancient skills of tracking and intuition are more relevant than ever in navigating modern challenges. Learn how confronting fears and breaking patterns can transform your approach to beauty and business. Get ready to embrace your inner strength and rediscover control with the revolutionary Core Survival Ability Benefitting Activities aid (CSABA)—a unique opportunity to elevate your understanding and achieve unparalleled clarity in your personal and professional life.

As the saying goes, some people need no introduction, but few reach the lofty heights of mononymous status. Mention the name Vennette (no last name required) to anyone in the beauty industry, and they’ll know exactly who you are talking about. As Managing Director and Head of Beauty and Personal Care at Raymond James, she is a dealmaking powerhouse and BeautyMatter’s 2024 Person of the Year. Her success is marked by serendipitous encounters, determination, and open-mindedness in a high stakes business, with individual livelihoods and industry-wide reputations on the line. If there is a mega deal in the making often Vennette is at the epicenter.

It’s no secret that an organization’s success hinges on leadership and the team it builds. This requires the ability to attract and retain the right talent but the time, effort, and resources spent on inefficient or ineffective recruiting strategies can quickly become a bottomless pit. Being competitive on compensation for senior hires and understanding the evolving expectations and priorities of Gen Z can necessitate rethinking the who and how of building a team. As brands scale, the business needs to evolve, sometimes creating a chasm between the talent you need and the talent you can afford. We'll dive into what Gen Z wants and how to leverage outsourcing and fractional hires to build nimble high-performing teams.

Sometimes, disruption is loud; other times, it operates in stealth mode quietly upsetting the status quo. Finding a white space is one way to shake things up, but opportunities are also uncovered by exploring the why. Categories get dusty and strategies have a way of becoming formulaic. Just because it's always been done that way or that's what everyone else does, doesn't mean it still works or there isn’t another approach. Some great brands that break through the noise are built by founders willing to zig when everyone else zags, identifying a market gap hiding in plain sight. It's a unique skill that requires confidence, vision, and the ability to make others follow.

While the Lipstick Index has an economic barometer of sorts and beauty may be more resilient than other CPG categories, it is not immune to downturns. For much of the last decade, the industry has been booming, fueled by easy access to capital and what felt like an insatiable consumer appetite for beauty, which created a rush of new brands and business concepts entering the market. The fact remains, most start-ups fail and everything that goes up eventually comes down. Business and trends are cyclical even in beauty. While there are signs that demand is moderating, not all categories or markets are moving in tandem. However, a confluence of factors has created fertile ground for an era of "beauty Darwinism" to take hold. The ability to read the market will determine the outcome for many businesses. Some will not make it. Others will come out the other side stronger. And it is in these moments when some of the most innovative companies are born.

Online trends come and go, but others have the potential to permanently change how customers shop online—hello TikTok Shops. From augmented reality and artificial intelligence to social shopping and shifting search, e-commerce lives at the forefront of technology and innovation. Brands and retailers must constantly assess, adopt, test, or watch when it comes to trends and technology. Being early might mean a competitive edge. Being wrong could mean wasted resources. Creating a seamless omnichannel experience that serves consumers who are not constrained by borders or defined by channels is the holy grail.

The beauty landscape is undergoing a transformative evolution. From citizen scientists to veteran cosmetic chemists a new crop of founders is raising the bar on how start-ups play the beauty game. The formula of speed to market fueled by marketing, stock formulations, and turnkey solutions has been replaced by the rise of science-backed brands. They have thrown out the playbook rethinking innovation in formulation, technologies, and textures and embracing possibilities limited only by the imagination. These brands rely on scientific research and evidence to deliver effective and transparent products, meeting the needs of new, highly discerning beauty consumers.

Social media has enabled a bottom-up, bubble-up, decentralized way for culture to emerge. The dynamics are fluid, spanning platform environments, content codes, and user behavior. What worked six months ago may no longer apply today. To compete, brands must now deliver a more dynamic, relevant, and meaningful value exchange amid a web of complexity and contradiction. Success requires brands to strike a balance between performance and creativity, paid and owned, creators, and superfans, and AI efficiency and human engagement. The energy, velocity, and amplification power of social media will continue to reshape our world and how brands do business—so what's next.

$100 million has become the new $50 million. For investors and founders, hitting the $100 million revenue mark has become an important milestone and the threshold for what's next—build and hold or strategic exit. Scaling can happen quickly with the right mix of brand, marketing, distribution, and a little luck. For many founders, launching and generating buzz is easy, but launching a brand and building a business are fundamentally different things. Getting the fundamentals right lays the groundwork for a sustainable business that can convert buzz into performance, priming it for long-term success.

Retailers and brands increasingly see Roblox and its nearly 79.5 million daily active users as a significant marketing platform that brings millions of people together through shared experiences. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, gaming is a top entertainment activity and is viewed as a form of socializing and self-expression where the virtual world is an extension of their physical world. The global platform has become ground zero for beauty brands looking to capture the attention of virtual beauty consumers, providing a powerful integration into omnichannel marketing strategies.