This week’s podcast is about why I like beauty ecommerce. And beauty tech.

You can listen to this podcast here, which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts.

Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting.

Here is the link to the Tech Tour.

There are five points.

• An attractive space. With lots of interesting consumer behavior.
• Premiumization
• Fragmentation and changing competition
• Innovation and Digital Disruption
  • Lots of dimensions for digital to impact.
    • Content (think TikTok). Also education.
    • Experiential
    • Social
  • Plus hardware and science innovation
• Data driven Personalization

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—–transcript below

Episode 228 – What Next beauty tech.1

Jeffrey Towson: [00:00:00] Welcome, welcome, everybody. My name is Jeff Towson, and this is the Tech Strategy Podcast from TechMoat Consulting. And the topic for today, why beauty e commerce and beauty tech are so attractive. Now, I really like digital meets beauty. Beauty being skin care, hair care, cosmetics, things like that. Really a great space.

It’s great for e commerce, the beauty tech segment, which I’ll talk about is getting cool. It’s getting better I’ve spent a lot of time in the last Two years, at least a lot of focus on this. It’s kind of one of my favorite topics. Okay. And a couple of weeks ago, I went out to Dubai and I went to the big beauty world conference there, which was like 2000 exhibitors, 70, 000 attendees.

It was huge. A lot of fun. Learned a lot. [00:01:00] Networked like crazy, which is not really my thing, but it is if I’m excited about the topic. Like, my standard joke is I’m not a good dinner party guest. Like, like, don’t ever invite me to a dinner party. I’m not, I’m not that Talkative, really, and my people batteries run out in about two hours but put me in a topic I like at a conference, I am just the chattiest person in the room.

So, I had a good old time. I thought I’d talk about that a little bit but let me go about like why I’m interested in this, what to keep an eye out for and where it’s going. And that’ll be the topic for today. Standard disclaimer, nothing in this podcast or my writing is a web. Nothing in this podcast or my writing or website is investment advice.

The numbers and information from me in any guess may be incorrect. The views and opinions expressed may longer be relevant or accurate. Overall, investing is risky. This is not legal tax or investment advice. Do your own research. And with that, let me get into the topic. Now there aren’t really any [00:02:00] new concepts for this, so I’m just kind of going to skip over that part.

This is mostly talking about the industry, which is something I should have been doing a lot more of over the last couple months. I’ve been kind of long, I like to get into theory and concepts, but I know I kind of go too far and I need to get back to companies and industries. I try and go between the two, but yeah.

Okay, so let’s talk about beauty. Why is it so cool? So, skincare. is great. Lotions, creams which is increasingly becoming devices with lasers on them and LEDs that you put on your skin, ultrasound, all these things that can, you know, when you’re talking about skincare, you’re usually talking about face, but there’s devices for neck and hands and other things, but that’s usually the largest segment by dollars spent.

Hair care is pretty good. Cosmetics is pretty good. Fragrances, I don’t really pay a lot of attention to [00:03:00] fragrances. All the stuff that I think that’s cool about skincare and cosmetics and hair care, the digital aspects doesn’t really play out in fragrances very much. It’s kind of its own little world.

Not going to talk about that. Okay, so why do I like it? Well, number one, you get repeat purchases. You know, people use these products every day, especially skincare, cosmetics. Haircare, not as much, but pretty frequently. Fragrances too, so you get repeat purchasing, that’s always great. Lotions, things like that.

The pricing can be good. Little serums that you put on your face, around the eyes. You know, depending what level you’re buying at, a 30ml little bottle. Now if you buy it at a Boots pharmacy or a basic pharmacy, okay. Can be everything you buy from the 7 Eleven in, you know, Thailand or somewhere. Okay.

You’re talking about a couple dollars, but it can go up to 20 for sort of value [00:04:00] brands, but when you get up into premium 60, 80 euros for 30 milliliters that you have to frequently rebuy, yeah, the pricing is cool. The repeat purchasing is cool. There is some degree of brand loyalty. Not a huge amount.

You know, this is mostly women. They will tend to stay within a set number of brands that they’re comfortable with that work with their skin, but they will move around within those and every now and then they’ll try something new. So, there’s loyalty there’s, but it ain’t a hundred percent but it’s there to some degree.

Okay. That’s standard CPG like thinking. Now, if you’ve been listening to me for the last couple months, I’ve been talking a lot about consumer behavior and why certain consumer behaviors, psychology, is a lot more powerful than others. So, I talked about gambling, gambling behavior, rewards behavior collecting behavior you know, group behavior, shared identity, tribal [00:05:00] behavior shared belief.

Thank you. Religious idea. There’s certain aspects of human behavior that run much deeper than I need to go get detergent. You’re not hitting any of the main buttons in the human brain with that one, but you are when you’re talking about gambling and you are when you’re talking about skincare. It is a, it can be a fairly powerful form of consumer behavior when you start talking about the desire for beauty.

Mostly women, but not a hundred percent. That one runs deep and it has what I like most in products, which is there is a functional need, a utility, and there are also emotional and psychological aspects on top of that. And that doesn’t have to be negative. It makes you happy. That’s positive. I like products that are a combination of, look, there is a functional need with [00:06:00] this.

The example I always give is Nike. I need sneakers. I can’t get anywhere in this world without a pair of shoes. I can’t. Try to walk down the street in bare feet. Most of us don’t make it more than a block. So, I need shoes. I need them every single day. However, that’s pretty functional. Layer on top of that.

You know, just do it and emotional. And it makes me happy. And I think Nike’s cool. And I think sports are cool. You know that emotional layer, that’s how you get from a 20 product to a 200 product. So, I always like products that are a mix of functional and emotional. There’s a practical goal, but a lot of the goal is to make the consumer feel a certain way.

Those are my fave. Okay. Beauty totally lives in that category. There’s a lot of consumer psychology. A lot of it is just entertainment and enjoyment. You know, I have a joke with, with my girlfriend when we go to a department store or something. You know, I, I, [00:07:00] let’s say I’m sort of walking and, you know, I’m kind of saying where we’re going.

I will steer clear of the beauty; I’ll walk down a floor. to avoid the beauty and cosmetics area because I know if we go through that, even if we’re just passing through, I know we’re going to end up stopping like it is just all the time. One joke I had recently was I was looking at serums that you put on your face around the eyes.

These are the little 15 bottles. They can run you 10 euros, 20 euros, 50 euros, 80 euros. And you know, there’s a scientific aspect to this, a functional aspect. Some things are more effective at taking care of wrinkles, blemishes, whatever. And on the more scientific aspect, you have peptide serums, which are different than hyaluronic acid and other things, and the leading edge of that, you could argue is copper peptides.

So, I was looking at these and I’m like, [00:08:00] sure enough, the girlfriend comes in. Every day she comes into my office and she puts something on my face and I’ve never bothered to ask what it is. I’m just working and she walks in and puts it on her face. And that same day I was reading about copper peptides.

I’m like, what are you actually putting on my face? And she showed me and it turns out I’ve been using serums and specifically peptide serums. for years and I had no idea. I just sort of said, Oh, thanks. And I never really bothered to look what was she was doing. Now, I don’t, I think that’s kind of a lost cause in my case, but yeah, it turns out I use serums and peptide serums, something I’ve been using them for years.

I didn’t know that before a month ago. Anyways, there’s an enjoyment aspect. It’s fun. There’s content. There’s videos. There’s a social aspect. People know what their friends are using. They’ll talk about it. [00:09:00] There is a worry aspect, fear of aging, desire for beauty, fear of aging. It can run deep. I mean, it’s different in different people.

Some it’s shallow, some it’s very deep. So, there’s a lot of psychology there. Anyways, you put all that together. I really like this space. Now. Let me make one little side comment here. And this is kind of stupid, but I also think it’s kind of true. I saw a tweet a couple months ago where someone said, basically, look, don’t try and sell stuff that is too hard to sell.

Certain things are easier to sell in this life. And they had a little list of about 10 things, eight things. And one of them was the women’s desire for beauty. It’s easier to sell that because you’re not fighting the tide. You’re not trying to convince. And I’ll give you another one on the men’s side.

[00:10:00] Men’s lust. Well, specifically men under 35 to 40. Like. You don’t have to convince them to be interested in this case, let’s say women that are attractive. They’re going to do it on their own. Now you don’t sell that directly, which is usually illegal. You sell something that gives them the vision for being a winner in that area.

So, you show them pictures of successful men on jets with attractive women around them. Dan Bilzerian and these people. You show a guy with a big house. You sell status. You show status. But a part of that is high status men, lust, things that all sort of, if you ever go on Twitter or Tik Tok and just sort of count how many people are selling various versions of that story.

Success for men. A lifestyle. Being a high-status man. There will be women in every single photo. Well, for the most part, there’s a, there’s a different version of that as well. Anyways, there’s certain [00:11:00] areas you can sell to that are much easier. I’ll put some others that aren’t, you know, male, female, like rich people have a tremendous fear of losing their money.

You can sell stuff to people with a lot of money about fear. You better buy Bitcoin. You better put some of your money in gold. Don’t let your money be devalued. Things like that. You can sell people a desire to get rich quick. Super common. Get rich quick schemes. Buy Bitcoin. You know, sign up for this multi-level marketing scheme.

And usually that is targeting people, poor people. That’s pretty evil in my experience. Teenagers, their desire to be unique, to get status. Easy to sell there. Older people, you can sell them stuff about health. Anyways, there’s certain buckets where you don’t have to convince and educate. They’re kind of coming your way.

This is in that bucket, broadly, and the point there being, one, it’s a funny list. I’m [00:12:00] not going to post it because it’s kind of, yeah, it’s kind of stupid, but there’s a decent, there’s a significant amount of truth in that, which is, okay, beauty is one of those areas where selling is just easier. Now there’s two additional little asterisks that will go on top of that.

When you’re selling to any of these sorts of, let’s say, eight categories, it’s easier to sell if you can promise rapid results and it’s easier to sell if you can promise it if it’s kind of a lazy activity. One of the reasons educations is hard to sell. I’ve been involved in education. People always ask me, why don’t you sell online courses?

I say, because it’s too hard. Studying is difficult. You know, it’s like, do you want to sell gym memberships, or do you want to sell a pill that helps you lose weight? The pill will sell a hundred times [00:13:00] easier than the gym memberships, because one is kind of, you know. Lazy is a mean way to describe it. Human beings avoid difficult things that require effort.

There’s a reason we walk down the street and we don’t run. Walking is easy. Doesn’t require a lot of physical energy. Running is hard. We all avoid it as much as we can. Thinking fast, thinking slow, Daniel Kahneman. You know, our brain likes to do things that it already knows without thinking. But if you ask someone to do an advanced math problem, it requires a lot more energy.

They don’t want to do it. It’s the same idea. So, if any of those things I just mentioned, you can sell in a way that requires no work, no struggle, no pain. It’s a lot easier to sell. And if it happens quick Instant wealth, get rich quick, quick success fast beauty, all of those things easier. Now, having all [00:14:00] said all that, wrap all that together, that’s beauty as an industry.

Combine that with digital tools, which is the point of this podcast, it gets even better. So, I already liked it before we brought into the digital bit, which is my area. So, wrap everything I just set up into the beauty is really awesome as a space Now let’s talk about beauty meets tech meets digital it all gets better.

I like it even more. That’s why I like beauty tech That’s why I like beauty e commerce I’m not talking about; you know launching a something you’re going to put in Sephora Which is very difficult to get on the shelves. Okay, so to point one beauty in itself is awesome All right, let’s talk a little bit about Dubai because it was great fun.

I thought I should talk about it I used to live in well, I didn’t live their full time But I used to do business in the Middle East for seven or eight years. I was usually flying in and out Almost on a weekly basis to [00:15:00] New York That’s what living in Paris at the time a lot of weekends in London actually when I started we would fly back This is 2001 23 years ago we used to base in Beirut, which was fantastic.

Beautiful place back then. You know, people always say it’s the Paris, the Mediterranean, everyone always says the Paris of whatever. But Beirut was absolutely beautiful back then. On the Mediterranean, you could go up and ski in the mountains, which are, you know, there’s a mountain range that cuts across from the ski slopes on the mountains.

You could see the Mediterranean when you looked west. If you looked east, you could see down the other side of the mountain into the Baalbek Valley Syria, a place, a desert beautiful place. We used to have so much fun there going out for those of familiar, we’d go up to the Shouf, up into the mountains nightclubs in Beirut are fantastic.

I’m not a nightclub person generally, but they’d just be great fun to go out with friends. Anyways, had a great time there. [00:16:00] But mostly was flying in from Beirut into Dubai or Saudi Arabia because that’s where the money is and the business is. So, I ended up going and working on projects in Dubai starting around the same time, which was really interesting.

For those of you who are familiar, this was, Dubai was about half the size, maybe 30 to 40 percent of the size it is now. I mean that place was just exploding in terms of development. Most of the city was sort of near the river, Deira the Burjuman area. And, yeah, I can remember, like, bringing in consultants from Lebanon and the U.

1. and renting apartments near the Burjuman Mall, for those of you who are familiar. We used to stay in, like the Golden Sands, which was these apartments in the area. And then we would, you know, we would drive west. out into the desert to get to, like, Dubai Internet City, which was out in the middle of nowhere back then.

Now, I was in, staying near Dubai Internet City a couple weeks ago for the [00:17:00] conference. I mean, it’s just, that’s barely even the middle of Dubai now. It’s surrounded by city on all directions. You know, so we used to drive up and down the coast to Dubai Internet City. For those of her familiar, the Mercato Mall.

The Jumeirah Beach Hotel, we always used to sit and have drinks there. And then sometimes actually we would drive all the way to Riyadh, into Saudi Arabia, which is about a 9-hour drive. I mean, technically it’s 9 to 10 hours, but everyone drives. Basically, if you look at a map, Riyadh is in the center of Saudi Arabia.

Dubai is sort of on the coast of UAE. It is a one, a long straight road that goes right through the deep desert, the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia, which is southeast. That’s the hottest part of the country. It’s where the oil is too. So, in theory it’s a nine-hour drive, but everyone would go on this one lane road so fast.

That like it was it was kind of [00:18:00] scary a little bit. It was one lane going each direction and people would just be hauling down this road. And there’s just sand on either side of you. So, on a regular basis as you’re going the Saudi drivers who are kind of crazy they would pull out into your lane to pass.

On a regular basis, you have to swerve off the road into the sand on the side to avoid the crazy guy coming at you who’s pulled into your lane. Like, not once or twice. You do these five to ten times on this road. So anyways, the point of that is, you make it in a lot shorter time than nine hours. But yeah, we used to drive through the deep desert, and because it was the desert and it was so hot One of the problems you have is your tires would pop because the asphalt was so hot that popping tires was a regular thing.

So, I remember one time I went there, I popped two tires on the way. And so, you pop the tire, you pull over, you got one in the trunk, you change it, you keep going, but then you have a second tire pop, which happened to me. Now [00:19:00] fortunately there’s gas stations along the way that are all stocked with tires.

So, you used to buy a new one and, one time I had to have someone from Riyadh. I was probably three hours outside of Riyadh in the desert on the way into town. I had to call one of my staff to come get me because I got stranded in the desert. Anyways, that stuff’s all fun. So anyways, I’m back in Dubai, my old stomping ground, going to the Beauty World Conference, which is right near the Financial Center.

Fantastic. The conferences in Dubai are just the most fun. They really do conferences quite well. I mean, China does them better. Nobody does conferences better than China in this world. They’re unbelievable. Dubai We’ll call them a runner up. They’re quite good at this You know, everything’s easy. It’s all scanned in here and there.

They’re massive. So, I spent three days walking through this exhibition hall meeting everybody [00:20:00] Constantly apologizing because everyone would ask for your business card. And in China, Asia, we don’t have business cards anymore. We haven’t had them for 5 years. I haven’t had a business card in like 7 years.

Like, you just tap your phone and you scan the other person’s WeChat or whatever. So, yeah, stupid me, I’m apologizing for 3 days straight. And I have to add them on WhatsApp or whatever. But exhibit after exhibit, but particularly looking at beauty tech. Now, what is beauty tech? It’s, this is why it gets interesting.

China in particular, Asia in particular is very good at innovation in hardware because everything, if it’s in your pocket, it comes from Asia. It used to be just basic stuff like cheap electronics. Then it became smartphones. Then it becomes smart devices, smart refrigerators anything that’s in a smart home lock, doors, refrigerators.

I mean, they [00:21:00] have the manufacturing scale air conditioners, refrigerators. That’s all China. As these things have become smart, have they have become integrated with software? In many cases, they’ve gotten really interesting. In some cases, it’s kind of stupid. I don’t really need a smart refrigerator. I don’t need to have an app, but in other cases like smart cars, electric vehicles, you know, it was not a surprise at all in the last year to see Chinese EVs just take the world by storm because we’ve been seeing versions of this story for 25 years.

It used to be refrigerators, air conditioners, things like that. Now it’s manufacturing plus digital combined. You know, who leads in drones? DJI, China. Who leads in smart vehicles? China. Robotics are coming online. Who’s going to win? It’s going to be a China thing again. They just have so much scale and they are so fast [00:22:00] at innovating in hardware, as well as software, that they’re really hard to beat.

Elon Musk is giving them a run for their money in cars. He’s going to give them a run for their money in robotics, but I’m a little, I’ll give you my standard story, which is 2010 2011, 90 percent of smartphones in China were foreign. Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, iPhone. Within 5 years, all those companies were gone, except for Apple.

Samsung held on, they’re in trouble too. Now it’s 80 90%. It’s the same pattern. We see the Chinese players dominating. We see a couple of niche players that live at the premium level. I think we’ll probably see the same thing in cars. I don’t know the car space that well, but I would expect them, maybe not in the U.

1. and Europe where we have tariffs and all this stuff, but let’s say Thailand. Brazil. [00:23:00] I would expect to see 80 90 percent Chinese EVs with one or two niche players. Let’s say Tesla, maybe Toyota, who knows. It’s not my space, but that pattern is very common. Okay, that’s what we’re seeing in beauty tech.

Beauty tech is things like it used to be when you would apply a lotion, you’d take it out of the bottle, rub it on your face, whatever. Now you have a little handheld device where you scoop it on. And you apply it with your face with the device. You run it, rub it in with your finger, probably. And then you apply a red LED or an ultrasound device, which is on the other end of the little device used for scooping, and that will make it perform better.

And there’s science behind this. Some of it’s true, a lot of it’s fake. But it’s this combination of, let’s put an LED light, let’s put an ultrasound device that you can put on your, I don’t know, your neck to handle wrinkles. Let’s have a [00:24:00] face mask, which you put on your face. And on the face mask you will have LEDs, let’s say red ones, that will take care of things like blemishes and anti-aging and you’re supposed to put it on your face for 30 minutes per day.

If we put in the blue LEDs that helps you with acne. Let’s say there’s a helmet, like, kind of like what you’d wear for a bicycle. Inside the helmet we have red lasers. The lasers, you put it on your head, it helps you with hair growth. There is all this interesting tech kind of combining with traditional beauty treatments, which was a lot of lotions and serums and things like that.

There’s a lot of creativity happening. It’s pretty interesting. You can get a device that just wraps around your neck with LEDs on it that helps you with aging. You can get certain masks that are just for your eyes. Things like that. You can get ultrasound device, handheld device. They can go small, [00:25:00] where you put them in your home, or they can be quite large and you have to go down to a clinic.

And so, you can sell them to clinics where you will go in and get hydrotherapy. And, okay, that’s sort of the device and the, let’s say, lotions and serums and all that. Chemistry meets technology. But then you can add software. Well, we can have cameras that look at your face and assess what you need, and we’ll recommend things, or we’ll tell you what to apply, or we’ll do the treatment in real time, so as the LED lights are flashing, the camera is looking at your face and adjusting for you.

So, we get this interesting combination of hardware, software, chemistry, and the chemistry is getting a lot smarter. Right? A lot of the chemical stuff, this is going to help you with aging. It’s a copper peptide. A lot of that’s fake. Copper peptide, that’s real. There’s science behind it. So, you get science, let’s not call it chemistry.

Science, plus software, plus hardware, [00:26:00] innovation, all happening at the same time. It’s really cool. And people are getting into it and there’s a lot happening. So anyways, I spent three days walking through what everyone is doing. These companies like to sell to the Middle East because it’s kind of a lot of high-net-worth individuals.

There’s a, it’s not a huge market, but it’s an interesting market. Anyways, that was kind of my day, or several days. Pretty cool. Let me give you the so what’s, since this is me rambling a little bit today. I’ll finish up quick. Why is this space cool? Beauty e commerce and beauty tech. I’m looking at three to four things.

Number one, and a lot of this is not my thinking. This is McKinsey. This is BCG. This is market research firms. This is not me. This is me summarizing what everyone knows.

Premiumization. You know, anytime you can move from a value-based product up into a more premium, luxury, [00:27:00] ultra luxury, it becomes very attractive. That is A nice aspect of this space. You can sell serums for 5, 10, 20, 100. Selling above 100 is a bit difficult. Medical devices, LED masks, you can buy them on Amazon for 25.

You can buy high quality ones out of Europe, 500, 300, 800. There is a nice premium category in all of this. Those categories are showing growth, but it kind of depends on wealth. The wealth effect in various regions. If the stock market’s doing well and everyone’s real estate is up in China, they buy more premium stuff.

If it goes down, they hold off this year. So, it tracks perception of wealth. But generally speaking, if you’re looking at premium products, China is awesome. Middle class Asia is awesome. The Middle East is usually pretty good. And [00:28:00] then obviously EU and Europe. So premiumization, I can’t say that word.

Premiumization. is just growing sporadically, very attractive in this space. Number two, a lot of fragmentation and sort of intensifying competition in this space. It used to be a couple of big companies really controlled all this on the brand side and then a couple of big companies on the retail side.

It was kind of a close game. That’s getting fragmented pretty quickly. And this is not unique to Beauty, but obviously we saw an explosion of small brands over the last five years who sort of came in orthogonally using social media, clever marketing to break in. That has slowed down a bit. The big boys aren’t losing market share as quickly as they used to.

But it is still increasingly fragmented in terms of brands. It’s increasingly fragmented in terms of retail [00:29:00] channels. The big retailers have lost somewhat of their power or at least they’ve lost their market share. They’re getting sort of hit by Omni Channel and things like that. However, they’re also, these are smart companies, the Carrefours the Sephoras, the big department stores.

I mean, they’re getting smart as, as their fight for market share has gotten more difficult. They start to do things like private label. Well, that’s not good for brands. So that’s difficult. They start squeezing money out of the supply chain. Also, not good for brands. So, you know, the, the dynamic is, continues to evolve, but generally speaking, Omnichannel, digital marketing, niche and smaller brands, everything is more fragmented than it used to, used to be.

That’s generally good for smaller brands. Not a hundred percent, but overall things are, there’s room to play and there’s room to make your mark. That is [00:30:00] not true if you’re looking at, you know, condiments, let’s say condiments, mustard, ketchup. No, no, pretty hard to break in. This space you can break in and we see people doing it all the time.

So that’s cool. Number three, now we get into my area. Innovation and digital disruption on multiple levels. I kind of talked about, look, we’re seeing hardware and science innovation especially the hardware innovation. A lot of it’s coming out of China. The science innovation we’re seeing companies position themselves with.

Our product is just better. If you have blemishes, this works better and we have the science to prove it. If you have acne. We can recommend a regimen for you that will work better. You can go down to Sephora all day long and those staff don’t know how to solve this chronic acne problem. We know how to solve that for you.

So, when we’re talking to function and utility the science is getting really interesting. [00:31:00] And then the hardware is also cool on the more emotional side. Software and digital, this is a really great space. You can really distinguish yourself in terms of content, videos, TikTok. I mean, the videos for people watch videos, people will not watch videos for catch up on TikTok, but they watch beauty videos.

These influencers are huge so there’s an entertainment aspect to it. That, you know, the content side keeps evolving with short video, long video, live streaming. The beauty influencers are all over that. The major beauty brands are all over that. There’s also an education aspect to that as opposed to, let’s say, entertainment.

If you are launching a new type of peptide or a new, usually it’s not one product, it’s a And so I’m going to show you how to use a package of products. Here’s a regimen you should use that will work for you. Well, to tell that sort of story, [00:32:00] you can’t do that with a print ad. You’ve got to have people’s eyeballs and you’ve got to do significant content to educate people about, look, let me tell you why our regimen of seven different products is going to work for you and why it’s better.

Well, I need short videos. I need long videos. I mean, so there’s, you know, within the content world, you’re, you’re. You’re moving both down entertainment and education, especially if you’re a niche brand trying to convince people to switch. So that’s all outstanding. There’s a social aspect to this social media.

People talk about the brands they use to other people. That doesn’t happen in some product categories. You ever buy anything on Amazon or let’s say Shopee and they say, hey, you want to share this with your friends, your purchase? I never shared that with them. Oh, I’m not going to. Blast out to people.

Oh, look what I just bought socks. No, people share their beauty stuff. No, some of it, not all of it. Some of it’s private, but a lot of it [00:33:00] is public and they talk about it. There’s a nice content meets social media aspect to this whole business. That’s compelling. And then the third bit there is there’s an experiential component.

People like to try these things. So, pop up stores make sense. Department stores are a big part of this. Boutique specialty shops are a big part of this. Events are important. So, you have all these levers you can pull as a beauty brand or as an e commerce site that are available to you. There’s just a lot of room to be creative and so we see businesses doing cool stuff all the time in e commerce.

Pop up stores, retail outlets. It’s just kind of a vibrant space. Yeah. So that’s kind of why like innovation, digital disruption, things are moving. I would [00:34:00] generally say pay attention to China because they are definitely the frontier of innovation, at least on the consumer facing side. And last point, why I like beauty meets tech.

And this is, I’m just going to repeat my Emails from earlier this week data driven personalization. For those of you who are subscribers, I sent you a couple long emails this week. I did a podcast about, you know, personalizing the experience never ending improvements to the customer experience, you know, that is just a key marathon.

Well, then beauty, that’s a huge part of this and you have a lot of ability to do this. You can recommend different product regimens for each individual customer. You can customize your content for them. You can customize sort of how they engage with your website if you’re an e commerce site.

You can customize what emails you send them, [00:35:00] which can be education, they can be entertainment. You have a tremendous ability to personalize, maybe not person by person, but you know, sort of customer types. You can really go to town in this area. And then that gets you on your personalization marathon with the more you personalize, the more you improve the experience, the more data you’re going to get, that’s going to give you a feedback loop in some cases, that’s going to make you even better.

So yeah, data driven personalization. That’s kind of my fourth point. Why do I like this space so much? I think the product category is great. I think that Premiumization is really attractive. Fragmentation is opening the door for lots of players innovation and digital disruption is happening on multiple layers, and then you can do beta, you know, data driven personalization.

So anyways, I’ll, I’ll summarize that, but that’s not really a digital strategy. [00:36:00] That’s kind of just why I like this industry. And why I spent a lot of time on it, even though I used to say, even though I don’t use the products, but it turns out I actually do, I just didn’t quite notice. Anyways, I think that’s it for content for today.

I hope that was helpful. As for me, I’m, I’m getting ready for sort of a whirlwind tour of really kind of a who’s who of digital China. So yeah, in the next week or two, I’ll be putting out a lot of content of visiting various companies, which is, it’s kind of one of my favorite things to do in life.

So that’s on the way. Anyways, that is it for me. Hope everyone is well, and I will talk to you next week. Bye bye.

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I write, speak and consult about how to win (and not lose) in digital strategy and transformation.

I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps retailers, brands, and technology companies exploit digital change to grow faster, innovate better and build digital moats. Get in touch here.

My book series Moats and Marathons is one-of-a-kind framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses.

Note: This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. Investing is risky. Do your own research.