The Retail Journey
Welcome to the Retail Journey where we will cover important topics, interview industry stakeholders, and address emerging trends as we journey through our mission of helping our listeners thrive in retail. Your hosts for this show are CEO James Harris and CGO Charles Greathouse.
The Retail Journey
The Art of Strategic Vision and Focus in the Beauty Industry with e.l.f. Beauty's Nicole Sentivany
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of the beauty industry? Join us for an insightful journey with Nicole Sentivany, Associate Vice President at e.l.f. Beauty, as she shares her inspiring story of transforming e.l.f. from a young brand into Target's number one beauty brand. Having honed her skills at Procter & Gamble over a decade, Nicole is a testament to the power of blending prestige quality with accessible pricing in the beauty sector.
Nicole doesn't just stop at the sales pitch; she pulls back the curtain on the strategies that propel large-scale growth. She unveils her key principles of maintaining balance and focusing on strategic partnerships. But it's not all about making deals, as Nicole highlights the crucial importance of saying 'no' when partnerships don't align with the brand's ethos or customer needs. Listen how an enriching collaboration with Walmart has significantly widened e.l.f. Beauty's consumer reach. Finally, we delve into the realm of retail therapy and success. Here, Nicole shares her wisdom about the indispensable role of a passionate team and the therapeutic power of retail. Get ready to be inspired by her candid advice for those sailing in the same boat, with a strong emphasis on recognizing and harnessing one's superpowers for success.
We invite you to continue this exciting journey with us as we explore the enthralling world of beauty and personal care. Tune in and let's unravel the delicate art of balancing focus and strategic vision together, as we learn to effectively utilize resources at our disposal.
Hello and welcome back to the retail journey podcast. I'm Charles.
Speaker 2:Greathouse and I'm James Harris. Joining us today is Nicole Sintovani, associate vice president at Elf Beauty.
Speaker 3:That is correct.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon.
Speaker 3:Thank you so.
Speaker 2:Nicole, we've we've worked together for the last five, six, seven years and all of that has been with Elf.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about your, about your career at large. I know you spent a good deal of time at Procter Gamble. I did Small little firm out of Cincinnati, little place out of Cincinnati.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I started there out of grad school and was there gosh 12, 13 years, can't even recall, but yeah, always in sales Obviously. I've been in and out of Northwest Arkansas so focused on Walmart a lot of those years and started in like Tide and you know those sexy things like paper towels and toilet tissue and then really found that I love like more the beauty and the personal care businesses. So did hair care cover girl when they had it and just kind of found you know the beauty space is what I always loved. So yeah, moved all around, lived in Cincinnati, came back here and all pass led back to to Walmart.
Speaker 1:So here I am again. Yeah, I love that beauty space and Proctor. I got to launch Vidal Sassoon.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh Second time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, will there be a third, we will see who knows, who knows.
Speaker 1:That was really fun. Yeah, and it's such a fun space to be in. It's where I learned how to launch brands.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Was in hair care and expecting that. That's how brands were launched everywhere, and now I work with folks across that are not in beauty, yeah, or in other areas. It's a different world.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty decent marketing budget. Man, it was just it was.
Speaker 1:It was pretty fun, pretty wild, which is different than how Elf went about it.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I mean, we started online back in the day when that wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 2:At all Wild. It was only about 15 years ago, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, sometimes I even forget. You know we talk about some more competitors, like the Maybellines and Max Factors, which is even older, but yeah, only 15 years and started online with you know a father and the son you know them well in the basement and somewhere in New York.
Speaker 1:City. So it's come a long, long way. It's incredible. So did you go Proctor, then to Elf? I did, I did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was one of those kind of right time, right place. I love Proctor, I love the business, love my team. But it showed up actually on LinkedIn. I've never looked at jobs on LinkedIn in my life, to be fair, and I was like, oh, I like this beauty company and this is what they're looking for. And I was like I'll just talk to someone. And, funny enough, there's a lot of mutual connections that I didn't realize and I was like I'll talk to you and just really fell in love with what they were trying to do and the opportunity and took a big leap and it's really paid off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's. It's Elf beauty. And for those of you that aren't the target market, which is, which is me, pretty solid, elf stands for eyes, lips, face. I learned this embarrassingly recently.
Speaker 3:Well, I will tell you, there are retailers that don't even realize what we actually stand for, so we are here to educate everyone as a recovering merchant.
Speaker 1:That's what I'll blame.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and we do sell skincare. So I do think you were in our target market, so I'll work on you after this Elfs?
Speaker 1:No, yeah, this else.
Speaker 2:Well, we call ourselves.
Speaker 3:Elf beauty.
Speaker 2:You know, we just were cosmetic but, yeah, we're getting into skincare and a lot of other different things, so I mean the thing that's really like kind of earth shattering in that story of a 15 year old brand. They're now at four or five beauty brand in the US.
Speaker 3:I mean, and we say this on our earnings, I'm not saying anything I shouldn't say, but at target, which is a pretty decent size retail, we are the number one beauty brand.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So to think 15 years ago we didn't exist and we started in a basement.
Speaker 2:So it's not a. There's a lot of innovation that's come along in new brands in the last five years or so, but before that there were like four.
Speaker 3:Oh, and it was the same four for 50 to 100 years.
Speaker 2:And if your mom used Maybelline, then that was probably the first thing you got.
Speaker 3:It's the truth. I mean, like I worked on actual CoverGirl before they divested to Cody from PNG and yeah, it was. You know, cody Maybelline Revlon CoverGirl. And then there's these little ones that come in and out, but they were, like you know, most of the category so and I grew up. I mean I bought CoverGirl as my first item at Walmart in Washington, missouri.
Speaker 3:And my mom used it and I used that for a very long period of time. So, yeah, the trajectory we've had against some of these like really amazing legacy brands is really, you know, we're really proud of what we've been able to do Well and it's not just because they showed up and had some products that were the same as what was on the shelf.
Speaker 2:What are the like two, three things that really make Elf pop and stand out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean one thing we talk about is really we have amazing quality, so prestige like quality, right. So the things that you're buying at Sephora or some places like that, we have the same and sometimes better quality, if I do say so myself and then at accessible prices. So the people that thought, oh, I could never have this primer or this foundation because it's 46. I mean the prices are crazy at some of these other retailers, like they're able to get that same type of product and again I would offer are you better at prices that they can afford every day 8 10, 12.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, we are launching items that are $2 to this day. So we just really, like our CEO says, everyone says this. Our goal is to make our brand accessible to every eyelid and face, and that's every ethnicity, every gender, every, you know, price point, demographic, and part of that is offering great product at a great price. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2:All right. So when you're looking at yeah, you work with, I assume, other retailers, I do.
Speaker 3:Now Walmart and others.
Speaker 2:I do so when you, how do you, Nicole, approach category growth?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think, no matter what I worked across, you know many categories, different brands, over my career and I think the what you look at is somewhat the same. The how is different. So I would say I think where you're most successful in growing a category is when you start with your shopper. So not even like your retailer, it's like your true shopper. So, like in hair care, you have experience in this, charles you know.
Speaker 3:It's about regimen, right, how you know most people use shampoo, some use conditioner, few loose treatments right, it's better for your hair if you use them all. So if you expand that category, you have category growth and it's educating that shopper. You know other things. It's about trade up. When I worked on Tide back in the day, it's like people were using powder. It's so much better to use liquid to how to get kind of that trade up within the category. And I'd say with ELF, one of the things we've done again really well is there's so many new users we're bringing into kind of this mass Mastige space because they didn't think they could afford some of these products elsewhere. So it's bringing those people in to, you know, the Walmart's of the world, the grocery channel of the world, target's of the world, saying you can have these really amazing products at a price that you can also afford.
Speaker 1:At Mastige.
Speaker 3:At Mastige. I like that. I hadn't heard that one yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no Mastige, so I bought the called internal beauty, the vitamin business.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:And there's, you know, a lot of correlation is the things you're willing to put into your body. Things you're willing to put onto your body, yes, and the trends here of late. How is? How? Have those trends impacted ELF, if at all?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think it's something we're always like looking at, right, Because, yeah, internal beauty has become even bigger, so whether it's like collagen or beauty vitamins I mean, back at P&G, we've even tried some of those things like Olay so we're always looking at what the future trends are again to serve like every need that our shopper has. But I think that's another thing we do really well is we don't look at the categories like we serve lipstick and foundation, like we're here to build beauty and that might get into things like that. I mean nothing on the horizon.
Speaker 3:I know, nothing that nobody else knows. But I think you know we're always looking at, like, what the shopper wants and, again, being very shopper, customer focused.
Speaker 1:I think that is what is. If I were going to boil it down to something that has led to the success. It's what happens if you really truly focus on the customer and then innovate from there. Exactly With a mindset of. You know the customer. I had a as a negotiation tactic from trying to remember which DMM it was, but I haven't yet had a customer asked to raise the price and they may have been Scott Huff, I think he may have been the one that said yeah if you go ahead and ask the customer, they suggest that we raise that 50 cents, then okay, yeah, I'm totally fine with that.
Speaker 1:But until then let's go ahead and fight to try to not do that, and just seeing how you're approaching the category and bringing affordability and accessibility to it is, I think, such a powerful lesson. That's risky and that's probably terrifying, at least early on, and then you get to see the success of volume.
Speaker 3:Agreed. And I would say one other thing just to your point on pricing. That's one thing we're also really proud of. We don't. We are like very EDLP, edlc type of model, which Walmart loves right, like we don't do a lot of gimmicks, we don't do high low, we don't do promotions, like we really stick to like here is a very obvious price $1, $2, $3, up to $10, $12. And very transparent for all of our shoppers. So you know you're getting the best value every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that there's. Obviously the three P's are important with retail. There's something that's unique about ELF in the kind of joyful, playful pursuit Like I've got a 15 year old daughter and for the last three, four years like nothing makes her happier than being dropped off with a friend at a store and 20, 30 bucks to go and buy new and try new and then make the videos and share it with friends. And ELF was kind of a pioneer in consumer generated content.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Is that still a primary driver of your voice in marketing A hundred percent.
Speaker 3:I mean, again, we are very and our CMO, who's brilliant, she always says like we are very community led. So we don't call our shoppers shoppers. We call them our community because they are more just people that buy products from us. Like, even if you don't buy anything from us, we want you to be part of our community, right? Yeah, and some of that is just like social engagement. We put out like we were one of the very first beauty brands on TikTok. We put out a music video. We put out music like we're somewhat of an entertainment company and I think that also makes us like very relevant, especially to like the younger generations even myself, no longer younger but it just starts that social buzz. If you want to be part of it and it's not just about we want you to buy something which just also feels like a friend, right, Like there's so much user generated content.
Speaker 3:Because of that, you know the good and the bad is. It's crazy. We are picked up on TikTok or buy, like someone like McKayla who's a huge influencer, and we might just say, oh, she loves this product, she posts it, and then, yeah, I mean units go through the roof, which is great for me, terrible for forecasting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a buy chain.
Speaker 3:But I mean it's just exciting to see that people just like really want. It's not the traditional marketing of years past, it's really like building this community that's excited to see what you have coming.
Speaker 1:So six, seven years ago when you joined Elf. How have things evolved over the last seven years?
Speaker 3:I mean, I mean the scale of the company is just, you know, started blowing. I mean again being like the number one, two, three brand, even at like a Walmart is huge. Like who would have ever thought, especially, you know, for my history of working for a big, big, big company.
Speaker 3:Like whoever thought we could do that. You know, since it's a small company, I think also some of the things that we're branching out into. So we have, you know, elf, which you guys are familiar with. We have Well People, which is an Uber, clean, ewg type of brand. We have Key Soulcare with Alicia Keys, and then Exciting App, which actually just happened this week we closed the deal for a Noturium. So if you're not familiar, it is a personal care brand.
Speaker 1:It is body care, mostly skincare.
Speaker 3:Amazing, right now in the US, pretty much exclusive at Target. Okay, but just again like we want to go after every eye, lip and face and a lot of people are looking for that, like deep care for skincare, and by requiring them like the sky's the limit, right.
Speaker 2:We just keep branching out so great. What about international yes?
Speaker 3:That is probably beyond skincare. We say our two biggest kind of white space opportunities are skincare and then also international. So our percentage of the business that's international is still pretty small and we just continue. You know, because everywhere like if asking for us. We get so many social comments on our things.
Speaker 3:Like can you bring us to India, which obviously we're? We have some business there. You know we love you in Australia, just across the globe. So you know lots of interest we're, you know, at Boots and Superdrug in the UK. But just continue to build you know, kind of those footholds which is exciting.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of folks that have dreams of being number one, number two, number three and some of the most competitive categories in the planet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the vast majority of them never grow to become number one, two or three, no, so, over the last seven years, lots of change and evolution. If you could, you know, think back and give yourself advice, the things you've learned over that period, what would you say as a you know, a guiding light or some of the principles to hold on to as you actually go on the journey of large-scaled growth?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd say it's all about focus and coming back to like what we call our values and our superpowers. Like what do we do really well? Like accessible beauty, you know great value, great quality, clean, you know all those things. Like those are our focus areas and don't get distracted by everything else in the beauty universe to some degree. Yeah, and then just also like be very strategic, Like we're at a place which is good and bad, Like I probably get 25, 30 emails a week from both domestic and international retailers. Like we want to carry your brand. We want to carry your brand and I would say back in the day, I think we actually were in 7-11 years before I even started. So we're like we're a new brand. Who wants us?
Speaker 2:That's a great problem. Oh my gosh, it is.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, like we want to make sure we can treat like our core customers and fulfill every need that they have, that we're searching and how we're going to go forward, but also, again, serving every light.
Speaker 1:I look at base.
Speaker 3:You do need to have some breadth of distribution. So I would say, just continue to focus on what we're doing well, on our superpowers, and then just build real strategic in what we do for going forward, versus just kind of putting ourselves out there to focus and have superpowers is what I heard. Yes.
Speaker 1:I need to get some of those superpowers, let's go.
Speaker 3:No, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:So the business at Walmart specifically, when you think about just going from one place and growing from one specific need into multiple to from there, what have been the things that have unlocked the bigger conversations over time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'd say the thing that we were. If you look at our strategy, they're very well aligned with Walmart, which is great. I mean again, things like EDLP, edlc not just like price gimmick offering great value to shoppers, and I think we're just very principled in everything we do, much like Walmart. It's like they're a very big company, very principled we are as well, so I think that helps us partner together and I think we want to build a different kind of beauty company and they really want to make beauty a destination for them and we've really been able to do that.
Speaker 3:And I think some of the areas where we have a lot of experience in digital and social commerce and things like that, I think that's places where we continue to partner with them, like TikTok live streams, things like that. We're really good at that and that's a place where they have a great consumer base. We have this great experience and knowledge on these types of things and really coming together to build a business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the younger demographics really love that medium and it's huge in other countries around the world. It could be like an intro to say China or other Asian countries, great.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the other thing we do really well is, like you're saying, you're a 15-year-old daughter. I mean I truly actually buy off makeup. My mom uses his own makeup, so I think we do span a good amount of ages. However, a lot of retailers realize these younger generations, like my 10-year-old, already wants makeup. They're going to be the ones that are going to have the spending power. I think she has more spending power than I do right now.
Speaker 1:I don't know where she gives it.
Speaker 3:But that's going to be the future, especially in some of these categories, and I think we just have such a good relationship again with that younger community that we bring that to our retailers.
Speaker 2:Well, we've been talking about Gen Z. They're going to change things. They're buying now. Some Gen Zs are in their career. The people that have grown up in the digital age only ever known that have completely different shopping patterns, interests, values. They're here.
Speaker 3:Yes, that is now Where's the putt going.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, so just kind of comparing a little bit of P&G, a little bit of ELF. What are some of the challenges you've run into in terms of looking for growth, looking for category growth, and that maybe your partnerships or your relationships with the retailer cross-functional, whatever. What are some of your kind of biggest wins, so to speak, or things that you've learned the most from along your career journey?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean some of the biggest wins. I hope that they're ahead. I mean we have a lot of great things kind of on the horizon. But yeah, I mean I'd say some of the biggest learnings in terms of wins with, whether at P&G or at ELF, is it becomes very hard sometimes to come to a win-win situation.
Speaker 3:We've all done all the negotiation training trials I know you have. I've taken those two. It's harder and harder to do that, but I feel like if you don't get to play some kind of, you are good to walk away. I think sometimes we're just so hungry to get this business or land this deal. Maybe it's not the right decision for everyone. That plays out at some point, as we all know, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Have a good day. You know, even at an elf, I feel like there's always a point I'm like maybe this is my walk away point that's better for everyone involved and it feels good to kind of have that like even the small company that learns from all the way up to your CEO to say, like if this isn't going to really help the retailer, the customer, our community or us, like let's walk away, let's revisit another time.
Speaker 2:And walking away doesn't mean you can't come back, exactly, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's right place, right time, all of that, but I think that's been a big learning, like over the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so high impact is pretty into data and analytics. Yes, it's kind of in our name and there's, you have some of the same standard inputs that any other category would in beauty, but you also have there's also a large subjective element and trends and what's happening in South Korea and Japan. How do you and how does elf kind of bring all that together to one decide what is the right thing to? Do and then to use it to drive category expansion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we obviously use the traditional data sources Nielsen and POS data, things like that. But even from a quantitative standpoint, even for us because we do a lot of product innovation, that's similar to more prestige, like NPD, to seeing what's happening in the greater market, because a lot of times some of those trends obviously filter down to more of the mass market and then just qualitatively like right now our innovation team is in both China and Korea, so just seeing trends like actually in some of these places that drive the trends and then we do a lot of our own kind of consumer shopper insights types of studies with both our shoppers and others and then honestly like a good place.
Speaker 3:Resource for me is like I listened to all my major retailers like earnings calls right or other retailers' earnings calls or brands' earnings calls. I just think there's so much to learn from there about the industry, what's going on, what's important to our different retailers. So that's just another one that we reference quite often.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's I love it, your insight. So how about? So the trend side and planning innovation? What about operational excellence? You know we think about Walmart. What's the role that's played with Elf? And how do you pursue it? The role of data.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean, as you know, like I think, with Walmart, like operational excellence is, I mean since day one, I work with them. It's critical. Like that is like that's their wheelhouse right and it's so, so important and you have, you know, 46, 4800 stores to try to service. You have to get that right. So I think that is, yes, a huge, huge part of you know what we spend a lot of time on for this business. I mean, this is no surprise. We are manufactured outside of the US for the most part.
Speaker 3:So like longer lead time so it's like really important to get those things right. And I'd like to say like we have a really good partnership with our team at Walmart, which is so, so important Because, again, like you have to hold hands and we think this is going to be viral, who knows. Like we think this is the biggest trend in the world. We'll see, usually we're pretty close to being right, but I think in the beauty it's a little bit different versus you know, 30% to 40% turnover in the items that are carried from year to year.
Speaker 3:And products I mean, and I have like between 400 and 500 items on a set in some cases, like it's a lot of complexity to manage and you have shade ranges, and it's just different than the days when I was, you know, forecasting 20 different skews of scented tie, you know.
Speaker 2:That's something that's impressed me with Elf for a long time is the early and continuous investments in your supply chain. Yes, your warehousing your team in those warehouses. You know that has been a critical part, I think, of your success. Because bringing the great trend awesome, bringing it at a value, but if you're out of stock it doesn't do anything Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:No, and that's I mean. I've seen that time and time again, people who are really good at innovation under value operational excellence. I've also seen people who can only see operational excellence and over time become irrelevant.
Speaker 3:So it's great there is such a. You hit it on the head like there's such a sweet spot, right, because, yeah, we like to say we're very, very fast, but when you go really fast it, you know, shortens your planning time and all those different things. But I mean, in beauty it's, I think, more important than almost any other category.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, one of my favorite quotes from the great and light Jack Shoemaker is the only sustainable competitive advantage is speed, and I thought about that all the time while working a you know 47 week long modular cycle of like all right, how do I, how do I get speed and make sure that I'm I'm flowing ahead and at the same time, you don't hit those mod calendars? You've got 4,700 stores to execute and you do that thing wrong. You got problems. You got 500 items in a set. If that thing doesn't get set right the first time, guess what? It never will, it's not going to get set. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean we always talk about you have to slow down, to speed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's like all that planning on the front end to get it is right. There's always going to be something that's going to come up. We all know this right.
Speaker 1:Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law, what a jerk.
Speaker 2:But that guy.
Speaker 3:I'm still blaming him for everything. Murphy or her, we don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They, they. But yeah, like we really try to do so much on the front end so then we can speed up as we go through the process. But again, something's always going to come up. But we've started to get a pretty good cadence of you know how to how to make it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so of what you can share with us, what are you most excited about for next year?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think company-wide, just like so many you know, opportunities, like we talked international, some expansion there with Noturium, I think you know really exciting to see this new brand. It's very, very healthy brand and bring two like very smart teams together. And then I'd say for me specifically, like we have so much opportunity at Walmart, lots of exciting things going on with them. I mean I've been down here forever, so like my heart's, you know my heart's in Arkansas- yeah.
Speaker 3:So love to see them win. They have a great team over there, so I think some really exciting things happening in our partnership there soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of good things. Yeah, let's think we're about out of time. Let's move to our kind of lightning around here. What are you reading?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, Besides the stuff that my daughter's supposed to be reading I'm making sure she's right At most of these days I get as like maybe a Vogue on the plane, and I call that, you know, industry trend stuff for work. Yeah, not as good as I used to be on that, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Well, I hear you, yeah, I hear you there. Biggest win in retail.
Speaker 3:Biggest win. It's upcoming. I'm just gonna say that I like it. Yeah, let's go, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Just you can ask the. I guess the last question here is how do you de-stress and relax?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I try to work out, try to get in a run. I feel like that physically helps me de-stress. I also do like to travel, even though I do a lot for work and then.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest.
Speaker 3:That helps yeah.
Speaker 1:That helps.
Speaker 3:And I will say I love retail therapy. I'm in retail, I love some retail therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You'll know when. A whole bunch of boxes get dropped off my door. It's been a rough week. Yeah, and we're, we retail therapy while traveling Exactly, it'll probably get combined. I mean, I go to New York a lot, it's dangerous.
Speaker 1:That's a Sky Mall magazine. Let's go.
Speaker 3:Oh, I forgot about that Everybody needs a little, you know.
Speaker 1:Statue for the front.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh For a porch or. I miss those honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we gotta get the Sky Mall back.
Speaker 3:Sky Mall, if you're on Release the QR code for a Sky Mall, because then we won't touch all that anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the alarm clock that like does lights and oh yeah, we'll wake up to the sunshine. But the hair growth hat the smell of bacon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, everybody wants that. So just before we sign off, we've got listeners from across the merchandising side and the supplier side. You guys, elf is a heroic story of the ages. I mean, essentially, to go from in this space that's so competitive, from obscurity to prominence, while remaining true to their superpowers. Yeah, you know what's the council to those that are in a position either on that journey or they're deterring from it, what's the encouragement you'd give to someone who's trying to follow a similar path?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, whatever you call them, we call them superpowers, but fine, like what you're really really good at and just focus on that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Because I think we all get distracted because retailers like a lot of different things, Like, oh, we want you to look at this and we think this is exciting and it's very easy to do that. Yeah, but focus on what you're really really good at, and that's where you know kind of like slowing down to speed up.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, you have to say no, to say yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah so bring it back to like at the end of the day focus on what you're really good at and then go execute.
Speaker 3:Execute excellence Exactly Because in all ways, if you can't do that, none of it matters.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:You know, execution needs strategy for lunch, doesn't that something? And you've got to enjoy what you're doing and who you're doing it with.
Speaker 2:That's been one of the great things about working with ELF for so long is, even as the teams have turned over, it's always a great team. Yes, that's so true.
Speaker 1:Agreed. Those are cultural thread through there that we may have not talked about today. But when you've got a team that works together really well, if you don't like, there is no like focus is super neat if people don't work together. But they are working together really well and they're focused and there's a lot of power in that team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, we just a passion to win and we're all very close to still a relatively small company. So when I have to make that call at nine o'clock at nine, be like, hey, you know, quick favorite, I don't like to do this, but this is an important one. And they're like, yeah, what do you need? Yeah, because we just all like truly love what we do, we love the company we work for and we believe in all the values that we have. So it makes it makes those later nights or earlier mornings like all worth it in the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, greatful to be a partner. Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 2:And thank you for joining us oh my gosh, thank you. And, as always, thank you for joining us. And you can listen to any of the retail journey podcasts on the high impact analytics website or wherever you download your podcasts. Thank you for joining us.
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