Managing a diverse set of commerce channels with Tomei Thomas, Beekman 1802

In this episode, Pierre-Loic sits down with Tomei Thomas, CEO at Beekman 1802, to discuss the secret sauce to the skincare brand’s omnichannel strategy. Tomei will break down how Beekman 1802 navigates its various commerce channels (including the Home Shopping Network, Ulta Beauty, and its own DTC site!) and how prioritizing a diverse commerce set created a winning strategy for the brand.    

During the conversation, Tomei shares

• How word-of-mouth marketing is at the core of the business 
• The value of using core values in every aspect of the business 
• How to effectively use TikTok to drive business goals
• The future of selling beauty products

Tell us what you thought of this episode by emailing us at ft@traackr.com. 

Keep up to date on what’s happening in the influencer marketing industry by following Traackr on social.

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Transcript

Managing a diverse set of commerce channels with Tomei Thomas, Beekman 1802 

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Tomei, welcome to The Fast Traack. Before we dive in and go into the meat of things on social commerce and influencer of marketing. I'd love for you to be able to give us the brand story. So how did the Beekman 1802 come about? How'd you make it what it is today?

Tomei Thomas:

First off, thank you for having me. At Beekman 1802, we believe there is beauty in kindness. The brand started in 2008, really out of necessity when Brent and Josh, our co-founders, lost their jobs in New York City and had this second farm second mortgage in upstate New York. They needed a way to make the property pay for itself. They needed to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. On the property there were 80 goats at the time, it was a dairy farm, and they literally Googled what can we make with goat milk? The first thing that came up was goat milk soap.

Goat milk has held this folklore status in the beauty industry where you can go into any major retailer or even farmer's market in the world and find goat milk beauty products, at least filled milk soap. But there was never really a brand that had consolidated and premiunized the industry.

This was the opportunity that Brent and Josh saw. With the help of their neighbors, they began making goat milk soap, quite literally on their dining room table, and word of mouth spread from there. One neighbor gifted the soap to another neighbor and it changed people's skin, especially people with sensitive skin. Fast forward a little bit, the company has been around for the last 12 years and has grown almost exclusively through word of mouth marketing because we say we don't just change people's skin, but we change people's lives, especially with people that have sensitive skin using the power of goat milk.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

This is such an amazing starter story. What's even more amazing is that if you fast forward to today, you look at the success that you've had over the past couple of years. And as of late, you sold out a couple of new products on Ulta, ranking number one and two in sales. Amazing kudos to having gone all that way to today's performance. Now just between the two of us and nobody's listening, what's the secret sauce? What got you to experience the success lately?

Tomei Thomas:

Well, for us it comes down to probably two or three things. The first is that our brand, as I mentioned earlier, is centered around kindness. We believe in being kind to your skin. Kind to animals as we're always cruelty-free. Kind to the planet, so moving towards a more sustainable future. As well as kind to our community, whether that's our local physical community of upstate New York or our digital community on social and digital. That to us is the center and core of the brand.

The second thing which I think is absolutely table stakes is the product that we create and sell, whether it'd be a QVC, Ulta, our website, or even in our store and upstate New York, that product has to be quality. It has to work. It has to make your life better in some form or way.

Especially if you have sensitive skin, we want to be the solution. We say sensitive skin is complicated enough, and we need to be able to provide you comfort in our skincare and body care products. To me, those two things are absolutely paramount. The third thing I would say is we work with great people and great partners, whether that's our retail partners or team Beekman, the team that we've built in the United States or even our partners like Traackr, who've been able to help us scale the business in vis-a-vis TikTok.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Let me, Tomei, let me just challenge you a bit on this because I think all the things that you just mentioned are probably true to Beekman almost from the onset and ensure progressively things have improved, but what happened over the past 12 months that really got you to get this lift up that was very visible in the market?

Tomei Thomas:

It's taken us 12 years to become an overnight success. It's not something that I think was easy or I could point to one thing. In my view, it's a combination of the community we built, the retail partnerships we built, and a testament to the brand. The brand has in some ways maybe reached a tipping point of sorts where again, we've depended largely over the years on word of mouth, and now we've reached a sense of scale where millions of people have tried the product and experienced the benefits of goat milk. Growth for us has really been tremendous over the last five years. Again, I can't really point to one or two things to say this was absolutely it. I think we've been trying to fire on all cylinders for quite some time.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Interesting. I completely see how the market dynamics would actually come at play and at some point reach that tipping point. It also takes a team to recognize that's where you are, so that you keep pedaling. So congratulations again on this success. If we go back to the past 18 months or so. So from the beginning of COVID, you know the adage that goes, "Never let a good crisis go to waste"? How would you say the last 18 months have morphed or changed the business in a way that is structural? We all experienced things during the last 18 months from the kids at home to like a whole bunch of things, socially, professionally, et cetera. But how would you say that changed the business in a way that five years from now, you'll be able to look back and say, yes, this was at that time that we started X or that we stopped Y?

Tomei Thomas:

For us as a brand, especially a brand that talks about kindness and has kindness at its core, for us 2020 was a moment where this mission of ours came into the forefront. We knew that more than ever the anxiety was high, people were afraid. There was so much going on even beyond COVID last year, that kindness was really important. And I think people came regardless if you were an existing neighbor, we call all of our customers neighbors. If you were an existing neighbor, you knew to come to Beekman to find that retreat or reprieve to kindness. If you were a new customer, I think you saw a brand that really had a mission and purpose that was meaningful at a time when everyone needed a little bit of kindness in their lives.

From a business standpoint, certainly digital accelerated and beyond just digital. A lot of time was being spent at home, on social, on watching TV, and shopping online. We've been preparing for this moment for a very long time. We've made a lot of investments not only in our team but also within the infrastructure and specifically the digital infrastructure all the way from front-end to the back-end fulfillment in our digital business.

For a large piece of not putting a crisis to waste is we were ready. We had the things in place to take advantage of and maximize the environment that we were in. We are a video brand. We have always resonated more on video than in any other format. So when TikTok came to rise during the pandemic, we were ready to go, and we wanted to really be a first mover on the platform. Of course, Traackr has been really instrumental in our success there.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

As you're mentioning TikTok I can't help but draw a parallel between your brand values and what the markets saw in TikTok. In my view, in part of explaining the rise of TikTok in a moment where everything was gloomy, just finding a seed of positivity and in entertainment was uplifting. It feels like your guys just sort of fit right in into that trend. I can see how your brand values and what TikTok was bringing to the world around that time also helped the success of both partners.

Are there things specific when you look at TikTok and the amazing success that you guys have had there that you could point to for your fellow entrepreneurs that they should look at say, "what works and what doesn't when it comes to success on TikTok?"

Tomei Thomas:

Let's start with what doesn't work. Maybe that's the easier answer. What doesn't work on TikTok is, what I think is a problem in the beauty industry in general, which is highly stylized, High production, and sometimes high-cost content. You're just never going to be able to produce unless you're a massive multi-national company, but I think even then you probably can't afford it. You're never going to be able to produce the type of content and the amount of content required for TikTok in a highly stylized high production format. TikTok requires a minimum of three pieces of content a day. They have to be highly relevant each day. What is relevant is changing. So if you need a studio, if you need pages and pages of storyboards and scripts and an agency, I don't think you're going to turn the amount of content in a relevant way that's required for TikTok.

So what does that mean? Everyone's been talking about UGC [User Generated Content], but I don't even think UGC outside of your own team is relevant for TikTok anymore. I think you need to have a team internally that is able and capable of spitting out three to five pieces of content every other day. And I think it has to be raw. I think it has to be engaging, compelling, relevant, but I don't think you need to spend a whole lot of time on it, and I don't think you need layers of approval on it. I think you just have to hit go and test and learn. One of the things that was great about Beekman is we don't have that bureaucracy here. Certainly, we didn't want to spend a whole ton of money on content and creating content. Leveraging our team to be able to produce that rapid clip of content has been absolutely paramount to our success at TikTok.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

This is great advice. You mentioned as well that in many ways you had prepared for COVID, or at least COVID times without knowing this was coming for quite some time when it comes to your go-to-market strategy from e-commerce to sort of the multichannel strategy that you've been able to apply. You have such an interesting and diverse commerce mix and strategy. I'd love for you to sort of talk to this and explain how you handle things from channel conflict to how the last 18 months and the social commerce, and e-commerce coming to the front. How do you go from that piece of the business being a bit more of a sideshow being center stage, and what has it changed in the business?

Tomei Thomas:

This is been widely documented, so I'll try not to reiterate much of what's already out there, but COVID underscored the absolute need to the omni-channel. That's most important when there is a crisis and people are choosing where they want to shop. For us, omni-channel is TV shopping. It's, e-commerce meaning beekman1802.com and it's brick and mortar retail, vis-a-vis Ulta beauty, and our own store in upstate New York.

Having the option to buy something on your mobile phone or in a store or on your TV or on your desktop, I think is absolutely critical in maintaining that brand experience throughout those channels. It is the only right way to do it. When our store was shut down or when traffic was slow to come back to brick and mortar, TV shopping is where we lean into, and then e-commerce throughout the COVID period. Having a multi-prong omni-channel strategy as far as distribution certainly was underscored by COVID, and I think a lot of people are thinking about that in a different way, going forward.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

How have you, if at all tied that strategy, especially when it comes to e-commerce, social commerce to some of your digital marketing strategy, so your successes on TikTok, the work you've been doing with influencers, where do these things collide or are getting combined?

Tomei Thomas:

You know, it's a really hard question to answer, because I think in our view is that media today, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or anything else is becoming so hyper fragmented and within the fragments that are occurring, even within TikTok, there are so many niche audiences and segments to go after.

Our view is that marketing dollars are most effective and content is most effective when you have a combination of high creativity and a high niche perspective. The more niche you can get, and the more creative you can get to target that niche is where we've seen the highest and most return on our marketing dollars and our time, quite frankly.

There is not a one size fits all approach anymore. If you're posting the same thing on YouTube as TikTok, as Facebook, as Instagram, I don't think you're going to get very far today. The formats are so different, the reasons people are on those formats are so varied, and therefore, the way to engage people and be relevant on those various platforms, call for a very bespoke approach.

So that's the approach we take. We have a completely different style of content and purpose across our channel mix whether again, it's across those social channels. Ultimately, that's how we view. It as far as where does it show up between distribution and social. We see it really all over, we see equal parts, Ulta equal parts, or e-commerce. For us, we're channel agnostic. As far as where the neighbor wants to shop for Beekman 1802, we just want to provide them the options to do it wherever they're most comfortable and convenient for them.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

On the vantage point that the Traackr is, because we have front row seats into to all of these changes, industry changes, we're seeing a lot of influencer partnerships with brands, with platforms at times, becoming a lot more center stage when it comes to conversion and e-commerce and influence of marketing used to live much further up the marketing funnel, so to speak around the awareness and advocacy. And now we're seeing a lot more influencer work down to, as an example, Amazon creating their own influencer stores on their platform. What's your thinking of philosophy around influencers getting involved in sales? Is this something that is exciting? Is it something that you're involved in? Is it something that scares you?

Tomei Thomas:

The pendulum has definitely shifted and I think you're right, as far as, influencers, especially VIP influencers not necessarily driving conversion but really an awareness play. We've seen quite the opposite more recently, our VIP influencers have driven very substantial conversion, and we see it the minute they post the sales in our e-commerce and our Ulta beauty spike immediately. They are driving conversion, but I think what is driving conversion today is a highly authentic, specific, and segmented message. Those broad-based influencer campaigns, I was always very skeptical about them. I think at some point they probably did work. I don't know, it's not something we necessarily dabbled in. We choose very specific influencers to work with. Actually, I say they choose us. And that has shown a direct ability to convert.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Getting back to authenticity and sort of brand values that also match the influencer's sort of personal brand values as well. That gets to the core of it. As we shared, the last year or two have really been instrumental in accelerating a lot of changes in the industry. I still feel that we in the midst of it, but if you were to use your crystal ball, that I know is how you probably run the business right? Fast forward 10 years, how do you see all of these changes visualizing? How do we buy beauty products 10 years from now?

Tomei Thomas:

It's much of what we've always believed, which is that the evolution of the distribution of content and social platforms is only going to continue. A lot of people say, and I would agree with this is that China is 10 years ahead of the US in terms of how people buy beauty products. So let's take a couple of things that we've been observing in that market and how Beekman 1802 fits into that context. The first is live streaming, which is a fancy word for educating people on products, through video or video commerce. And I think Beekman 1802, we've learned a lot. We say we've been live streaming for the last 10 years, but we intimately understand how to communicate the features and benefits and the brand message through video.

And I think that's only going to continue to be underscored in the future as video becomes more accessible through our technology. There used to be a time when you would take a video on your phone, it would eat up all of your hard drive space. And so that's clearly not the case anymore. And video streaming is becoming more and more expected. And the consumer is getting comfortable with buying things through video, through social platforms. So I think that's definitely part of the future. When is it going to happen? When is it going to happen at scale? I mean, I think your guess is probably as good as mine.

The other thing that we have always been a proponent of and has never changed in our perspective is ownership of the first-party data. For us, email has really been key and communicating with people through digital means.

Email has not changed really that much in the last 20 years. At the same time, it's become more and more important because of all of the privacy concerns that are out there in the world. If you don't have ownership of first-party data and have a strategy around that, I think it's going to be really challenging to catch up as things become more opaque whether it be, privacy changes or social reporting or attribution modeling.

Then the third thing I would say from our perspective, besides first-party data, is that one-on-one physical connection with a customer. I always say that to our data team who's fantastic, and to our digital team, it's not a number, it's a person, right? Whether it's a text message, where we have a pretty robust SMS and MMS platform, there's a person behind that phone number. There's a person behind the email. There's a person behind the order.

When you come into our store or you call up our customer service line, we're going to respect that you are a person you're going to get welcomed with a "Hi neighbor". You're not going to get an answering machine. You're not going to get an automated response. You're going to get a real person. And I think that human connection cannot get lost as digital becomes, 50, 60, 70% of our business and our strategies and our marketing dollars. We can't lose sight that there are real people at the end of the day that is using and buying our products. Those are my three things and I don't think they're much different than anything else we've done over the last five, 10 years.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

I love these, and if I go back to the first one that you mentioned, it's quite interesting to also look at your positioning because you've gotten really strong on the social side. You have a history with home shopping network and sort of this other side of commercialization and what you seem to be indicating is that there's a bit of conversion of these behaviors were some old tactics that we've been using for a while. Now, we have new tools to do it easier, faster on mobile phones, etc., and maybe with different players as well. So it's interesting to think of it this way. I also love the notion of the humanization of marketing. And this is a big trend that we're seeing. I could not agree more.

Let me throw my prediction to this and have you react to it and see how that resonates or doesn't. I feel very strongly that in the next... We'll call it 10 years, but let's remember that a year ago we had sort of like 10 years of changes happening in 12 months - to your point, timing is flexible. But I strongly feel that over the next 10 years, there's a chasm that will take place in the beauty industry and across industries at large between brands with very strong brand values and everybody else who is going to get the white label and commoditized.

You're going to have not one industry, but two industries, one with very high margins, high retention rates, a lot of brand loyalty. And another one that will just compete on pennies on a dollar for margin. In some cases, probably also working off third-party brands like influencer and personal brands. So to me, the brands that are at risk are the happy middle today that don't really have that very strong sense of brand values, brand purpose, you were just expressing about Beekman. And on the other side, that they do not know how to function on the margins because the beauty industry historically, is a very high margin industry. What are your thoughts on this? How right or wrong am I in your crystal ball?

Tomei Thomas:

I would say, it's already happening. You do have inklings of that in the industry, whether it be The Ordinary with their single ingredient, focus, and selling, $6 viles of salicylic acid and retinol and et cetera, et cetera. And that brand has exploded and done a tremendous job. On the flip side, you're right. Brands that have historically had strong values and a moral compass and purpose, since the dawn of time, have been better off. And I think the reason of maybe where you were going with that is, it becomes even more important when you have media so fragmented and you have the evolution and pace of change within media evolving so rapidly. And I think if you don't know who you are, it is quite difficult.

You have to find meaning behind your company, your culture internally, your types of consumers that you're trying to approach. I think for Beekman one of the things that are really important to the team and the founders and really is culturally instituted here is our message of kindness. We try to figure out how can we implement kindness in everything we do. Whether it's the rubric that we find influencers against or the onboarding process and indoctrination of culture within our team and employees. And I think that when you take that approach, it doesn't have to be about the message of the founders or the product anymore, because everything you do is centered around one singular focus. It becomes really easy when content evolves and social platforms change and retailers emerge to find where you're going to be a fit. For us, do we expect things to change? Absolutely. In the market and with media and distribution? Absolutely. But ultimately the core of peace at Beekman will never change, and that's what I think is super important.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Got it. Tomei, thanks much for all of these insights and amazing views on the market, on the brand.

As we conclude this podcast, there are three questions that I like to ask all of our guests and I'd love for you to contribute starting with, who do you look up to for marketing inspiration, whether it's a brand or a person?

Tomei Thomas:

Oh gosh, that's a great question. We are inspired by brands that do have great values and are great at communicating those values. So we often talk about Patagonia, right? Or Nike. These are people that seem to have a very direct impact on their customers’ lives. We see ourselves as very similar.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Second question. What's the one source of news that you keep going back to for marketing information? And please do not say The Fast Traack because nobody will see me blush over the podcast.

Tomei Thomas:

I don't know if you consider this news or not, but the two things that I spent a lot of time on is, what are our customers saying and where I try to get that data from and where we try to organize that data from is our field teams. We have a team of people that go into Ulta stores and talk to customers directly about the benefits of Beekman 1802, our kindness philosophy.

So I try to understand what are people responding to and what are people not responding to and how we can activate the brand in-store. I read our Net Promoter Score survey every single morning. We probably have to date 25,000 respondents, and our NPS score is at 90. It's this obsession about how the customer would be likely to recommend Beekman to a friend. It is so important to me. And so I try to figure out what is the NPS score on an anecdotal and qualitative basis? And what are the trends that I'm noticing and how can we either lean into that more, or remedy issues.

The other piece is certainly our voice of the neighbor, which is a weekly view of our customer service respondents. This is clearly how internally and isolated I am into Beekman 1802 and probably our entire team because we don't pay a lot of attention to the outside world where we're pretty keen on figuring out how can we impact the lives and make the world a better place for our neighborhood. And those are probably the three ways that I spend most of my time when I think about news.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

I think right there is probably your secret sauce to success which is to be community and customer-obsessed.

Tomei Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. [Laughter] Of course I read the news, but I think it's more of a hobby rather than what we try to do at Beekman.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

And last question, what is the next trend or platform that you're investing time in?

Tomei Thomas:

Well as you know, we spend a lot of time on TikTok. I loved your perspective of it when we talked the other day, but I think TikTok is in the very early innings of their success story. And it's certainly grown rapidly, maybe more rapid than any other platform. Would you agree with that?

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Absolutely. The numbers don't lie.

Tomei Thomas:

Right. So I think TikTok is very early in its trajectory. I have been a big proponent of video and video as you know is 99.9% of social going forward. I think that to me is where we're spending a lot of our attention. One of the unique things about TikTok, and I'll try not to rant here, is that the change of pace within TikTok about the relevance of certain influencers, the relevance of content is at a pace that I think we've never seen across social. Being relevant and engaging and entertaining on TikTok is a real challenge, but I think that's what makes the platform so immersive and how you can spend 30 minutes of your time in a flash on TikTok. So that's where we're doubling down quite a bit in terms of new platforms if you will.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Awesome. Well, Tomei, thanks again for spending the time with us. It's been enlightening. Very much appreciate your insights and you're welcome any time back on The Fast Traack.

Tomei Thomas:

Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Alright. Take care.

Pierre-Loic Assayag:

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fast Traack. Tell us what you thought of this episode by emailing us at ft@traackr.com. That is F-T@T-R-A-A-C-K-R.com If you enjoyed this episode, please share with a friend and leave a review on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you're listening from today. Thanks again and see you next time.