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Talking With: H2O+ Beauty CEO Joy Chen on relaunching a legacy brand
It's been a busy year for the company founded as H2O+, a skincare brand started in 1989, as it’s done a complete relaunch as of this past May. With a new name, H2O+ Beauty, the company is moving in a new direction. Now it's all about ecommerce and marketing innovation.
July 11, 2016 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
It's been a busy and challenging year for the company founded as H2O+, a skin care brand started in 1989, as it's undertaken a complete relaunch which it completed this past May. With a new name, H2O+ Beauty, the company is moving in a brandnew direction, closing all standalone stores and hosting its flagship store now on a new website. Its initial focus was on manufacturing. Now it's all about ecommerce and marketing innovation.
And it's all being done for the comfort and convenience of the consumer. For example, the relaunch boasted affordable trial kits to grab new customer attention and enlisted customers to test products.
At the helm of the re-launch strategy is retail expert and Chairman/CEO Joy Chen. The former CEO of Yes To for four years, Chen knows something about corporate turnarounds. After she took the helm of Yes To, building an entirely new company on the foundation of the initial one, she quadruped revenue and greatly expanded the company’s product line. Prior to Yes To, Chen spent 17 years at the Clorox Company, serving as vice president and general manager of the laundry business. She oversaw a $1 billion-plus business segment, handled the company’s valuable brand equity, Clorox, and managed a large multi-functional organization.
In her H2O+ Beauty role she's aiming to succeed once again. Her vision moves far beyond simply increasing revenue and improving its products. The goal is to amplify its founding spirit with a strategy that better serves customers, is more innovative, creative and results focused.
Retail Customer Experience reached out to Chen to get some insight on the relaunch, expectations and lessons learned in undertaking such a massive strategy effort.
Retail Customer Experience: Given its legacy it's obvious H2O+ Beauty knows how to make customers happy and drive loyalty. So what prompted the strategy revamp and brand relaunch?
Joy Chen: A little over a year ago, we decided to implement a sweeping strategic shift in our business model to prioritize innovation over manufacturing. We were inspired by our customers, who push us to be more creative and results driven, and our brand spirit, which has always been about doing things differently in the beauty space. The shift in our business model led to moving our company headquarters from Chicago to San Francisco, broadening opportunities for creativity and innovation with fresh product lines, creating new channels of digital communication to improve access for our audiences, and adding further brand upgrades to better fit the needs of today's discerning consumers. We also reformulated our products by first listening to what was important to customers. Then we leveraged our 26 years of expertise to deliver simple, effective skincare formulas and increased emphasis on performance, investing heavily in clinical testing for many of our key products.
RCE: How many brick and mortar stores were up and running and what is the prime reason for going pure ecommerce?
Chen: The last of H2O+ Beauty's 80 retail stores were closed by the end of 2015 to align with our millennial customers, who tend to shop online. We continue to have an omnichannel approach by offering our products through retailers such as Ulta and others, with our new website serving as our flagship store.
RCE: What is H2O+ Beauty focused on with its flagship online site — does customer experience ranks tops?
Chen: The customer experience is definitely a priority for us, and our new website will serve as our main ecommerce site as well as a key tool for communicating with our customers. Better website functionality and revamped social media channels will now enable us to interact more with our customer. We have H2O+ Beauty staff on hand to connect with customers through a web chat function and on the phone to answer beauty questions in real time. Additionally, for a limited time, the site will sell skin care trial kits at $15 (including shipping), which include three deluxe minis with a $15 voucher if the customer chooses to upgrade to a full size in their next purchase. These trial kits allow customers to explore different products and discover what works best for their skin.
All redesign decisions were made with mobile in mind, since we know mobile use will surpass website use. In fact, we originally redesigned the new site on mobile to make the user experience as visually appealing and as simple as possible.
RCE: What advice, tips would you give to other retailers making such a dramatic business focus change?
Chen: The customer always comes first, and it's important to understand your existing customers, as well as the new customers you'd like to reach. Know how they like to shop and what they're looking for. Customers are savvy and have access to a lot of information. Listen to them, and allow them to push you to be more creative and results driven. It's also critical to do your homework: make sure you understand what's working and what's not working so that the shift underway is as targeted and strategic as possible.
RCE: What's a 'to do' and a 'don't' in revamping retail strategy?
Chen: Creating a healthy and trusting company culture is critical to leading a company through a successful shift in strategy. It's one thing to come up with the right strategy, but another thing to have the right team and culture in place to execute that strategy effectively. It's also important to create a culture that allows for team members to speak their mind and share their ideas, because that environment leads to innovation.
Don't be top-down in your approach. If you don't have the excitement and buy-in of your team, you won't be as effective in implementing the revamped strategy.
About Judy Mottl
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