Shelley E. Kohan (00:04)
Hi everybody and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Cohan and I’m very excited to welcome Lauren Thermos, General Manager of Atelier. Welcome Lauren.

Lauren (00:15)
Got it.

Thank you for having me.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:19)
What I love about having you here on Retail Unwrap is that you are a self-professed addict for disruption. And we love talking about disruption. And you actually have a business background, both in marketing and business, but you come from some pretty impressive brands like Elf Beauty, Revlon, L’Oreal, Whole Foods, Target. I mean, the list can go on and on. So.

What we’re going to talk about today is really about the major challenge facing beauty and CPG companies today in terms of product development, supply chain and manufacturing process. So welcome, Lauren.

Lauren (00:58)
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited, like I’m a beauty nerd and you know we’re at the very interesting juncture right now where we’re seeing disruption across the whole company organizations from the front end to the back end. So excited to have this conversation and share a little bit more about what I’m doing in Atelier.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:18)
That’s great. And you know what’s interesting is I’ve always looked at beauty as kind of a head of like retail as a general segment. Like beauty’s always been more innovative. Beauty’s been, you know, further out with the marketing initiatives. I always feel like there’s retail and then beauty’s one step ahead. But now beauty is moving so fast through culture, commerce, creativity, and it’s really reshaping how brands are being built, discovered, and sold. So let’s start with that idea.

Lauren (01:47)
Yeah.

Honestly, if you think of just even the last couple of weeks, so much has happened in the beauty landscape, the acquisitions, you’ve got L’Oreal buying Caring, you’ve got Rare Beauty, like you’ve got Selena Gomez buying Kate Summerville from Unilever just two weeks ago. So we’re really seeing disruption at every level and the legacy brands trying to keep up through acquisition. And then those indie brands and celeb brands like a Rare Beauty really stepping into becoming the next frontier of these holding companies.

that we’ve seen in the legacy world. So we’re really seeing a shifting of the guard.

I think, you know, if you look at all the retail pieces as well, like the speed in which you can buy, can shop and where you need to sell. Like ⁓ CMO has a very big job right now. It’s not just driving growth. It’s like thinking about how do you actually get to market and that speed to market and the saying like, you need to move at the speed of culture. Couldn’t be more true when we’re thinking about the reduction in friction between platforms like TikTok, who is now like the eighth biggest beauty.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:35)
Ha!

Lauren (02:52)
just shopping destination to what we were talking about recently in a Gentic AI and Walmart partnering with Chat GPT So that time between making a decision or even researching and then buying is reducing and it’s really putting everybody in a place where you have to think about what is next, how do I keep up and how do I do that economically, you know, you’ve got Estee Lauder, know, layoffs, we’ve got seen it at Cody. So there’s really a tension right now of how do you

survive in this world where you have to move quickly in regards to your consumer preferences.

be everywhere at once and then also innovate in those channels so you’re bringing the newness and the consumer, the beauty consumer specifically is looking for and the legacy systems don’t necessarily cater to that. So we’re really seeing every organization type from legacy to the indie scale-ups struggling with the how do I keep up and how do I remain profitable in this climate.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:53)
It’s so true. And I want to go back. You mentioned something about the CMO job and we actually have had, I don’t know, three or four podcasts specifically to about that CMO role change. And it is dramatic. And I think in beauty, it’s probably even bigger, more impactful. I also like what you said about Kate Somerville. So here’s a fun fact you might not know about me, Lauren, but I helped launch the space and K brand here in the United States.

And I love Kate Somerville. That was one of the brands that was in the highly curated luxury and space and K environments. So ⁓ I love hearing that name.

Lauren (04:29)
that. was

one of my first brands, like I love the goat milk, like they’re known for it and yeah I’m so glad that they’re getting a second life with Red Beauty.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:38)
Me too, I do too. So the other thing that’s really interesting to me is so we have everything you just discussed, but then we have these creators, right? Beauty creators that are now a big part of brands and the sales force. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Lauren (04:54)
Yeah, I think that there’s, I’d say two years ago, I’d say, know, brands becoming studios and, you know, being a hub for creators is the future of marketing and like how to get ahead. But over the last course of the last year, what we’re really seeing is the world of creators becoming not only, you know, their own studios and their own entertainment houses, but moving into CPG and beauty where they’re really the ones that are selling the products off the shelves. And it’s really easy to

off a creator because you look at it and go, oh, that’s like another celebrity. But the fandom and the communities in which they’ve…

cultivated around them are so deep and passionate about these creators and what they’re doing that when they do move into this new for these frontiers of cpg or whether it be launching a beauty product you know they’re bringing that cult following with them and that’s something that i think as an industry we really need to keep an eye on because you’ve got hailey bieber on one scale which is a celebrity but there’s the big in between where they’ve got millions and millions of followers and a very passionate following and that is really going to translate

into

the next frontier and the next gen of beauty products which we’re seeing at Sephora. We’re seeing like, know, the, can’t, the name mistakes me the moment, but you know, the creator, the 14 year old with her teen range, literally sold out within like, you know, the first week of launching. And then you also then have the big beauty retailers like Sephora tapping into creators to be their storefronts. So the power in which these,

group of creative individuals have in the world, not only in what the entertainment pieces they’re putting out, but how they’re influencing and steering preferences is huge. So I’m really excited to see what that next frontier is. I think it’s only just starting to begin.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:44)
I agree. And the other thing is, know, we TikTok, Instagram, we kind of get that, but also YouTube. Is it YouTube, a big, huge beauty selling vehicle now?

Lauren (06:52)
100 % YouTube has

always been, think I would argue it has always been. It’s the digital hub and the crux that everybody, if you’re listening to this and you’re in beauty and you’re not taking your YouTube channel seriously, it is the thing you need today. It is the new TV and it will prevail the way in which the algorithm is set up and it becomes your digital hub. It’s kind of, you have a website and you should have a YouTube page.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:57)
Okay.

So I also think it’s interesting, you mentioned agentic shopping. So thank you for mentioning that. That’s kind of on my brain recently. And it’s interesting because with the agentic commerce, what’s happening is a lot of brands are seeing less visits to the websites because the agentic AI is really the one that’s curating the product list. And now you can do purchasing, as you mentioned. So talk to us a little bit about what you think the impact of agentic shopping is going to be for beauty.

Lauren (07:46)
It kind takes me back to, you know, even the TikTok shop, but back to the Amazon storefront where beauty brands at the time, back in 2014, were like, there’s no way I’m selling beauty on Amazon.

Consumers are not going to buy beauty on Amazon and I think we’re at that juncture again where we’re seeing the Gentie commerce come into these chat chat GPT and copilot environments and we’re like no one’s going to buy by beauty through text and a picture and a review but the reality is it’s a distribution channel that is going to grow and that’s speeding up decision-making because they’re using these machines to learn research and the information that is getting aggregated into these LLMs is the scraping of the internet so your

credibility, your PR, your reviews, what is on your website. And so I’d argue your website’s gonna be even more important because that LLM is feeding its information from these different sources. And if you’re the main source and you’re not up to date with your reviews or the information or the blogs or the details that you want your consumer to know, then you’re gonna fall behind within these spaces as they come up.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:32)
Okay.

That’s really interesting. The other thing that I think is really interesting is this whole, and I don’t know how impactful it is specifically in beauty, but I know you know, so I’m going to ask this question. Is this whole dupe culture? So is that something in beauty that’s actually happening and should brands be concerned about that?

Lauren (09:13)
I think that juke culture, it’s been accepted within beauty. I think like we all kind of shy away and go, we don’t know what that is. But the reality like in beauty and potentially in fashion as well is this notion of looking to luxury or, you know, high performing mass to each product and then recreating those for your brand really is the way in which most brands are operating. I think I’m in a unique position where I’m seeing multiple brands come

to us with different product ideas in beauty, skin and health and the reality is that they’re all inspired by each other, referencing each other and wanting to create a similar version because that is what is trending at the time or what they see to be the next consumer need and there’s not much room for innovation there. They really want to just make the thing because they want to get it to market quickly. You have some brands like Emco who are proud and loud about dupes and they’re a billion dollar business

Shelley E. Kohan (09:52)
Yeah.

Lauren (10:13)
now within one year into the US they have scaled that business very well and then you have Elf Beauty where they don’t talk about dupe culture as such but you know we know that from creators and how they are trialing different products that you know that is part of the strategy too is there’s some likeness to certain products and I don’t think it’s going to go away because the reality for these brands is that speed is everything and the quickest way is to potentially take the reference of something that you like

make it and then story tell for your community and your audience and it all becomes the marketing piece. And I’ve been seeing the S-Day Laundries of the world on Instagram who keep the beauty industry in check, question whether there is any true innovation in the marketplace. And I do similarly, I do know there are pockets of it, but the reality is that to be able to develop true innovation and do that within less than a year is nearly seen as impossible within the beauty industry.

I don’t believe that and I can tell you a little bit about it, but the traditional system, CE products, take up to three years to get to market.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:21)
Well, see, that’s the thing that’s so interesting, Lauren, is that you have this technology innovation that’s speeding ahead. You have the consumer shift of behavior and how they’re shopping, speeding ahead. Everything’s like running far ahead, except how we develop and manufacture the actual product stays the same. So how are you dealing with this disconnect?

Lauren (11:43)
Isn’t it wild? Like you think of all the systems, like you just said, it’s like the power of social media and like the speed of culture in which everything is happening and consumer preferences is changing. How could you possibly keep up? Well, the legacy systems, like they’re failing beauty brands. I’d say that’s the thing we don’t talk about. We often reference like the fall of Estee Lauder or the fall of Cody, which has just been written about in business of fashion to them not being able to

keep up digitally and socially. And that part is true to an extent. Absolutely. State Lord had just launched on Amazon at the end of last year. They haven’t even been on there for a year yet. But what the thing we don’t speak about is how these legacy houses are built upon old legacy models of supply, like product development and manufacturing. And that reality takes us to at least an 18 to 36 month development time. Teams are stretched. You need people to be doing the

research, the R &D, understanding the trends, the forecasting, the selling in, whether you have a big database of contract manufacturers or your own facilities, if you have a new idea and a capability, the reality is you need someone to go find out where that capability is. And by the time you get that first sample, it’s within the 12 months, you might not even be close. And so there is really this friction and challenge that I think is an existential issue across.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:09)
you

Lauren (13:13)
and CPG is that we just can’t rely on these traditional models to get ahead and bring products to market and products of quality and that align to your values within a 12 month period. And that’s why I so like being the general manager of Atelier why it appealed to me was that I’d get the question at ELF like why how how do you get products to market so quickly and the reality is that you need a whole bunch of people in a team sitting in these different

markets

where supply chain manufacturing is happening to move quickly and that we’re not in a climate where you’re getting extra headcount to be able to do that. And so being at a company where we’re aggregating global supply chain resources and creating an interface for brands, we’re empowering brands to speed that process up because they don’t need to add that extra headcount. We’re able to literally reduce their timelines from 18 to 36 months

to three months is our average, and we’re looking at like three to 12 months depending on the different type of product. So it’s possible, it’s just understanding and thinking a different way and how to bring your R &D and development timelines up and what do you need to do that.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:35)
think it’s interesting because when you, you know, it’s very difficult to do what you just described in house. And it’s fine if you’re just working on one thing. If you’re just working on one product innovation, maybe you could squeeze a little bit quicker of a timeframe. If you’re a legacy brand or through the traditional, you know, 18 month, 36 month cycle of getting new products out there. But these brands are working on multiple, multiple skews that they’re trying to bring to market. So Atelier, you can,

I want to make sure I heard this right. You can actually bring a product to market in three months.

Lauren (15:09)
That is correct and we have give you a case study. So we’re working with a global mass legacy color cosmetics player where I know because I worked there back in 2017 that you can only get four products to market like four new product launches if that and maybe an extension or a renovation of an existing SKU and the reality is that they did not have the bandwidth the people power to add more to the team in order to

currently run additional product development. ⁓

for the process and so we were able to accelerate that for them. They started with four a year and now we’re launching 40 products a year and that’s because we can take the burden off them and concurrently run the product development process leveraging the data, the proprietary data that we have in being able to identify the best fit supply chains and manufacturers for the pulse or the idea that they have within the color cosmetics realm. So it’s really reducing that time of discovery.

and research and speeding up their ability to get to a sample. Otherwise you have, you know, a small team could be, you know, two to five people trying to develop across five to six different categories. It becomes a really cumbersome on the team. And so we take that burden away and bring the people, the technology and the logistics so we can accelerate the product development process all the way through the distribution and delivered goods.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:43)
I think it’s even more complex in the past year or so. I think one of the things that you actually educated me on is that when you’re looking into beauty products, you spend all this time sourcing suppliers, and then you end up finding out that the product actually can’t be manufactured as it’s designed. So you go back to square one, and we have the tariffs and the global disruptions, and we’re all materials that may not be around to be able to product develop.

You just don’t as a big brand trying to come out to market with many different innovations, you just don’t have the flexibility to adapt, right?

Lauren (17:22)
Exactly. And it’s a bit of a black box too. It’s like, you know, what the transparency in the supply chain manufacturing industry, it’s, it’s low. You have to really be able to navigate and know where to go. And even then it’s like, you’re, stretched. Like we’re working with a heritage brand right now that, you know, being able to deploy people into these different suppliers, supplies and understand, you know, what’s going on on the ground. You know, we’re able to take that lift. And then we also have the technology.

and the relationships that come together. So we really are helping a whole, all of our client suite right now in how to navigate tariffs and how to think about, you know, your possible long-term strategies of diversifying your supply chains. Because I think in this climate, it’s unpredictable, you know, and you want to make sure that you know.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:04)
you

Lauren (18:12)
what you’re currently, what sweet, like what hand you’ve been dealt with the current situation of tariffs, but then also plan for that unpredictability and understand, you know, what are your options of multi-shoring, on-shoring, the costs, like how do you actually go about that? So we’re in a really interesting space right now where supply chain manufacturing is getting disrupted. It’s not the economy and like, you know, how things are happening in the US right now with the tariffs. It’s all happening concurrently. So we’re really well positioned

helping brands navigate that, ⁓ you know, the complexity of how to identify the best suppliers and, you know, diversify their strategies long term.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:54)
It’s really interesting. So one of my big trends for 2026 is that every kind of new hottest job in retail is the chief geopolitical officer and companies need someone that have a background that can help with all everything you just mentioned in terms of tariff policies, trade, all of that. The other thing that some of our listeners may not know who are in a beauty space is that some of the products are also regulated by the FDA here in the United States. Right. So that

actually adds another layer of complexity, right?

Lauren (19:26)
Absolutely, it’s like, again, it goes back to your team’s capacity. Like you need to make sure you’re compliant. Regulatory and compliance is so important. And that is something that we, as being the connective interface to the global supply chain and being an end-to-end platform, that we’re able to help our customers from product development all the way through to manufacturing, like manufacturing and distribution, like I said. And that, in the middle, big chunk of that is regulation and compliance.

and making sure that everything is up to date, it complies with the country of origin and whether that be US or globally, I think that’s a big weight on teams. So that is something that within our end-to-end process is baked in. Like it’s just a non-negotiable to ensure that brands have the safety and know exactly what they’re producing and that it’s compliant with the market in which they’re distributing the product.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:25)
That’s very interesting. So I want to ask you, just because when I was 18, well actually when I was like probably 16, 15, something like that, I fell in love with the beauty brand who is like America’s great brand. And so it’s a brand they said would never fail. And that’s CoverGirl. CoverGirl was great. It’s a drugstore brand. It’s easy access, all of that. It could never fail. What happened with CoverGirl?

Lauren (20:50)
Yeah, that’s like, it’s a good example. It’s like too big to fail, right? Like the equity in the brand is so big that nothing could go wrong. With these legacy, like I was saying a little bit earlier is what’s failing beauty is these legacy models of supply chain manufacturing. And whilst CoverGirl had challenges digitally and socially and staying relevant, behind it, you’ve got a behemoth of ⁓ resources and capability that only allowed CoverGirl to potentially,

don’t know if it’s for certain, but produce a certain amount of products every year. Like they have what they’re good at and they’d have probably a mix of contract manufacturers that they might work with. And these systems is what is slowing a business-like cover girl down because when you have to go into these legacy factories that you own or the manufacturing tools that you have, you’re really stuck to the linear process that you have in place and you want to make the economics have to work. And so what happens is

and I have first-hand experience of my time in Revlon. ⁓

five or so years ago was that you might think of the new product, you have the impulse for the new product like a mascara and that’s something that CoverGirl is known for, but you might not have the capability. And so you go out and get this capability, you create the tooling, you get your manufacturing in place and then speed up to 18 months later, no one wants mascara, it’s not what they wanted. And so you’ve got the tool you’ve stuck with, you might not have the most performant product,

Shelley E. Kohan (22:20)
Yeah.

Lauren (22:25)
And you also have then up against the consumer that’s like actually today I don’t want mascara, lip is trending. That means that is a lot of sunk cost for a business and this is not unique to CoverGirl. This is across all those big players. If anyone is listening to this I would be surprised if there was any reluctance to not nod your head and go yeah that definitely happens. Because then what happens from here is a domino effect. You have already sunk the cost. You now need to move this stock or it truly is sunk cost.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:34)
Absolutely.

Lauren (22:54)
that’s when the marketing budget gets started to eat away because you need to push this thing out and make sure your custom base is aware of this product and some brands do it better than others, but there really is the risk of you know taking the time that like taking the 18 to 3 18 months to 36 to make the product you’re really taking that leap of faith in hoping that that is still relevant and what your consumer wants and if it’s not Like I said, it chips away from the thing that you know is pushing forward and helping you generate that awareness

and then you end up taking away from other initiatives, unfortunately. It becomes all about the product, adversarizing the product, trying to push the product and move it and stay productive at the retailers and that’s the tension and I think one of the big reasons that CoverGirl has found themselves in this situation and it has been one of the reasons the Estee Lauder are in this position too. They haven’t innovated ⁓ their way in which they work

the scenes on the product development and supply chain manufacturing side. It hasn’t changed.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:00)
And Lauren, what’s interesting, and you didn’t bring this up, but I know you know this, the, everything you did, all these sunk in costs, these investments, that just, you know, that margin, just shrinks that margin down and, you know, makes it very difficult to be profitable.

Lauren (24:16)
Exactly, and so when you’re like it’s exactly at the profit margin and then you’re trying to back that and being relevant and putting the marketing dollars in there’s really not much room to move and then when it really comes back to it being a people business so how do you innovate and increase your innovation velocity every year without adding more cost and so a CFO looking at a P &L is going I hear you, you need to innovate and bring your products to market as a beauty company and that’s how you sell newness and growth.

⁓ a brand but the economics just don’t make sense so therefore you’re kind of stuck in this infinity loop of okay we’re in the 18 to 36 month cycle we can bring four products to life let’s take a bet take a punt and it loops because you’re unable to free yourself from that and so yeah I think it’s something we’re to continue to see over the next few years because if the system doesn’t change or how we think about product development supply chains

Shelley E. Kohan (25:03)
Yeah. ⁓

Lauren (25:17)
manufacturing then these companies are going to still be in the same spot, the uni levers, the P &G’s of the world.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:24)
So I know Lauren, you and I have a common mission in the world. Well, in the retail world, that is. We both want to make the retail industry better, right? So we do a lot of work in our own ways. And so tell me, Lauren, I know you want to make a difference in this change of innovation and product development. Tell me, like, how would you summarize? What is it you want to do for the industry?

Lauren (25:47)
I hope that to inspire the industry to see another way to do things. And I think there’s a lot of fear right now in that AI taking jobs and not sure how to actually leverage AI and the capabilities to create commercial outcomes. But what I’d say is strip that fear away. There is so much out there and being Attila, this is shameless plug as one, is reimagining what is possible.

important at all stages within a business and being able to see, preempt the future. Like if I think about 2014 and all the e-comm, the bubble that was created and beauty went digital, a lot of brands at that time just shook their head and were like, no, that’s not real. Well, I hate to say that we’re in this time again and it’s real. And so if I can educate and help someone change their mind about the future of product development and manufacturing and provide the resources

and the tools and like even my own mentorship on this is changing. CPG and beauty is changing and the way in which it’s going to happen is that we’re going to get a networked supply chain and manufacturing approach. Like you can’t just rely on your own.

capability to move forward. so that’s what I hope is like people taking this and being inspired to look a layer deeper and it’s not even becoming an early adopter. It’s really understanding the landscape shifts and the changes and being open to them and taking that, you know, one like taking your, I guess your sunglasses off and seeing that this industry is about to be, it is being disrupted. It is happening now and it hasn’t in many, many years.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:26)
Yeah.

Lauren (27:33)
So getting excited for that next frontier.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:37)
Well, Lauren, thank you so much. you for joining us. And I love what you’re doing and I admire the work you’re doing for the industry. So thank you.

Lauren (27:45)
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.