As the beauty landscape shape shifts around the world — Amazon ascendant, China decelerating, TikTok dominating and new consumers emerging — the jobs market is evolving accordingly. Companies both established and emerging are reconfiguring their workforces to better meet the demands of these fast-changing times, whether reshaping certain departments, opting for more agility with a fractional model or restructuring. “The bottom line is simplify to amplify,” said Oliver Chen, an analyst at TD Cowen.
“Part of that is managing for speed and agility.” For many larger players, this changing landscape involves some component of restructuring, with layoffs in certain areas of the business even as others are enhanced. “The intention is to maximize profitability, given the China slowdown, and also even just a touch of overall slowdown in this market as well,” said Cassie Cowman, a cofounder of View From 32, a beauty consultancy that works with both founders and investors.
“Companies are figuring out how to structure these teams to maximize that,” she added. “I have some clients that are still seeing decent traffic, for example, but the conversion is very low or maybe the dot-com channel is suffering. So, how are they investing more in the brick-and-mortar business to maximize that channel while it’s seeing strong momentum?” Unilever has unveiled a “comprehensive productivity program,” involving 7,500 office-based layoffs globally to achieve total cost savi.