Business Desk: Alison Hahn, Beauty Retail Expert and Former SVP of Makeup, Fragrance, and Sephora at Kohl’s

Jessica Matlin (0:06)

Hey, everyone, welcome to Fat Mascara. We've got a very special business desk here today. I have got Alison Hahn in the studio. Alison Hahn, if you don't know who she is, I mean, if you're in beauty retail, there's a very good chance you do, or you either rub shoulders with her, hope to get in on a meeting with Alison, or you could certainly benefit from a little bit of wisdom from Alison Hahn, so buckle up. Alison Hahn was most recently the SVP Merchandising Makeup Fragrance and Sephora at Kohl's at where else? The beauty behemoth that is Sephora, the unignorable Sephora.

So I've met Alison over the past year or so. She is really a retail genius. She has brought brands like, I mean, where do we start? But Rare Beauty, House Labs, Makeup by Mario, Patrick Ta, Kayali. She's brought all of these into Sephora. She is full of wisdom. She's very direct, which I think is much appreciated if you're about to invest time, money, heart, blood, sweat, and tears into launching a brand. In the next 40 minutes or so, I have asked her to give us the brand launch commandments. Now, whether or not you're launching a brand, or you already have an existing brand, you're launching a product, I want her to give us a little bit of what are some of the gems, what does she learn on the long hard road of retail that she can share with us and save us some time, save us some grief. She's given us a lot here. I think you'll find this conversation worthwhile, almost whatever industry you're in, whatever project you're about to step into. Let us know what you think of the episode. I thought she was great. Alison, thank you so much for your time and really just your energy and your wisdom.

Let's go, Alison.

Alison, welcome to Fat Mascara.

Alison Hahn (2:07)

Thank you, Jess. It's great to see you.

Jessica Matlin (2:10)

We've got you at the business desk and there is nobody better to be at the helm of the business desk than Alison Hahn. I've been to a few of these retail bonanza, consulting fest, whatever we want to call it, and you really dominate. People really want to hear what you have to say. So who better to give some advice to brands who are about to launch, brands who are launching a new product than you? So Alison, you've been doing this for, like I alluded to at the beginning, you've been doing this for a few years.

Alison Hahn (2:44)

Yes, and thanks, Jess, for the compliments earlier. Yeah, I've been doing this. Well, in beauty, I've been doing it for 15 years.

But as you mentioned, in retail for a long time, but I have to say beauty was the best.

Jessica Matlin (2:57)

So you started in fashion?

Alison Hahn (3:00)

Yeah, I was.

Jessica Matlin (3:01)

What's the difference between fashion and beauty, like in your mind, if you just have to sum it up?

Alison Hahn (3:05)

Well, I haven't been in fashion in a long time, but I would wrap it in, this is what I would say about beauty that I think are so unique to beauty. I would say A, very founder driven, and founders are really a part of the story, the ongoing story, which I think is great. It's female founder driven, which I love even better. It's also from an executive perspective, there are a lot of high level female executives in the beauty industry, which I think is great. I believe that beauty has been able to unleash the intimidation of the category via social media through incredible content creators from 14, 15 years ago, and I think that's one of the unlocks of why beauty continues to grow, is because the leveraging of these content creators, not just for product and what's in the product, but also how to use the product. How would it look on different skin tones or face shapes or whatever it is?

I think that that's actually beautiful.

Jessica Matlin (4:07)

Do you think that fashion is unwilling to do that, or do you think that it's just not part of the culture?

Alison Hahn (4:14)

I think fashion should do it, actually. I don't see why there aren't people out there that are buying all of the different fits of, let's say, gapped jeans and taking their body shape and showing how all the different fits fit on someone's body to be able to show the difference. I think there's nothing better than showing someone how things look, and so people want to be able to see themselves. It's such an easy way to communicate things that are complicated. Buying jeans is a complicated process.