Beautiful Thinking.
At the recent BeautyMatter FUTURE50 event in New York, one thing was clear: beauty growth is no longer a straight line.
This standout panel, moderated by Janna Mandell, Senior Editor at BeautyMatter, brought together a sharp mix of strategic, commercial, and digital leadership: Rina Yashayeva, SVP of Brand Strategy at Front Row; Reuben Carranza, Executive Chairman at BANSK Beauty; and Genevieve Head-Gordon, VP Digital at OUAI.
Together, they unpacked one of the most pressing topics in modern beauty: what it really takes to scale when discovery, retail, DTC, Amazon, and social commerce are all colliding at once.
From a brand agency perspective, it was one of the most grounded conversations I’ve heard in a while, not about being everywhere for the sake of visibility, but about being connected in the places that matter most.
The old funnel has officially left the building.
Today’s consumer might discover a product in a TikTok “get ready with me,” visit a brand’s site to learn more, check Amazon for reviews, and ultimately purchase wherever trust, convenience, and speed align in that moment.
That journey is messy, layered, and completely normal.
What this panel captured so well is that brands can no longer afford to think in silos. The path to purchase isn’t owned by one retailer, one platform, or even one team internally. It’s shared. And when those touchpoints are disconnected, growth starts to stall.
A phrase that stood out was “connected commerce,” a term Front Row uses to describe the reality of how consumers move today.
It’s more evolved than the traditional omnichannel conversation. Not just “are you present across channels?” but “do those channels work together in a way that reflects real consumer behaviour?”
That distinction matters.
As beauty leaders, we’ve spent years talking about omnichannel as a distribution model. But connected commerce is about experience design. It’s about making sure discovery, validation, education, conversion, and fulfilment feel aligned, whether the customer shops in Sephora, on Amazon, through social, or directly on your site.
For brands, that shift is strategic, not semantic.
One of the strongest themes from Reuben Carranza was the importance of defining and winning in a “home base” before expanding too quickly.
That could be a hero retailer, a core channel, or a primary market. But the point is the same: brands need time to build traction, loyalty, and productivity before spreading themselves across multiple doors and platforms.
This is especially relevant in beauty, where growth can look exciting on paper long before it’s actually healthy.
Too often, brands chase the next purchase order or the next “big” retail opportunity before they’ve built enough strength in the channel they’re already in. The result? Diluted focus, stressed teams, weak productivity, and rising costs.
The reminder was simple and smart: growth without foundations is not scale. It’s strain.
Genevieve Head-Gordon brought a refreshingly modern view of Amazon’s role in the beauty ecosystem.
For OUAI, Amazon is not just a conversion channel. It’s a validation layer, a data source, a marketing engine, and increasingly, an early discovery platform in its own right.
That’s an important mindset shift.
Too many brands still treat Amazon as a replenishment channel, a discount environment, or a place to offload discontinued inventory. Meanwhile, consumers are using it to compare reviews, validate claims, check pricing, and watch product usage in real time.
In other words, Amazon is shaping brand perception, not just basket completion.
For beauty brands, that means the Amazon experience has to be treated with the same care as DTC and retail. Content, imagery, mobile experience, reviews, stock position, and storytelling all matter. A beautiful brand world cannot stop at your homepage.
Rina Yashayeva made another critical point: while it may be easier than ever to launch, it has never been harder or more expensive to win.
In beauty, particularly on Amazon, competition is intensifying quickly. More brands are entering, media costs are rising, and the bar for content, performance, and conversion is significantly higher than it was even two years ago.
That has big implications for founders and leadership teams.
Scaling today requires more than ambition. It requires operational readiness, channel clarity, and the discipline to invest in the basics before pouring money into traffic.
As agencies and brand partners, we see this every day: too many brands want acceleration before they’ve fixed the shelf, the page, the stock, or the story.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the panel was this: the consumer does not think in channels the way brands do.
She just wants the best version of the brand, the right product information, social proof, and the easiest path to purchase.
If she sees your product in store and it’s out of stock, she’ll check Amazon. If she discovers it on social, she’ll validate on reviews. If your DTC experience is rich but slow, and Amazon can get it to her by tonight, she’ll make a practical decision.
That’s not disloyalty. That’s modern behaviour.
The winning brands will be the ones that stop trying to force a linear journey and instead build systems around how people actually shop.
What made this FUTURE50 panel so relevant is that it moved beyond buzzwords.
It was a conversation about timing, discipline, channel roles, and the commercial reality of modern beauty. Not just where to show up, but how to scale with intention once you get there.
From where I sit, the future belongs to brands that understand this balance: strong foundations, connected channels, and a consumer-first mindset.
Because in beauty today, growth doesn’t come from being everywhere.
It comes from making every touchpoint work harder, smarter, and more cohesively together.
