Four years ago, Milani Cosmetics announced an important change in leadership, appointing industry veteran Mary van Praag as chief executive officer. In addition to her expertise spanning over three decades at companies including Revlon, Johnson & Johnson and Coty, van Praag brought a vision to the beauty brand that would require it to undergo significant change for a shining transformation.
Under van Praag’s leadership, Milani has refreshed its strategy and seen notable growth, with turnover exceeding $200 million and 10 consecutive quarters of growth within its category. Milani is one of the fastest-growing brands in mass color today, with 65 percent of its customers under age 44. Additionally, Milani is the only non-portfolio indie brand to earn a spot in the top 10 list of face, lips and eyes beauty brands at mass.
Milani’s transformation has been swift as van Praag has turned “immense potential” into a must-have, must-know brand. Along with her newly invigorated team, she has revitalized Milani’s strategy, rebuilt its fundamentals and strengthened its brand DNA.
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Here, van Praag discusses setting goals, implementing a new strategy and navigating ongoing change.
Fairchild Studio: What were your goals when you joined Milani?
Mary van Praag: When I first assessed the Milani business — having grown up in the beauty business and actually having competed against Milani in many of my previous jobs — I always thought the brand had immense potential. Even though Milani has this heritage customer, we’re continually introducing the brand to new audiences and a big portion of our customers today are Gen Zers and Millennials. In the past, maybe their mom or older sister wore Milani, but now many more younger consumers are choosing us. I really thought we could attract a new audience by just making the core DNA more relevant and meaningful to today’s consumers.
I started in this role during the pandemic, when people were not wearing makeup or even going
out that much, but I think that allowed me to rethink the strategy and how we were going to start centering the unique DNA of Milani in the marketplace.
I started with a core assortment architecture and thought about Milani’s winning franchises and how we could reanimate and make those bigger and more relevant. When you think about the way the everyday beauty consumer shops in the category, it’s approximately two or more times a year, so
we have to be careful in our footprint. We need to make sure we stand behind the entry points into the brand and spotlight our great core franchises. I was really thinking about growing those and making sure they resonate with customers.
Fairchild Studio: Can you tell us about the refresh strategy that you put in place?
M.v.P.: I always say, “Respect the past, create the future.” There were things that were successful and there were things that needed a lot of work. And we’re a small entrepreneurial company, with just 80 people, so we had to reinstitute some core processes and think about how to build a profitable, sustainable business that would have longevity.
There were a lot of things that we needed to work on, but transformation is also about taking the good and making it better. I always call it continuous improvement — taking stock of
the things that are there, but asking how they can go from good to great. How do you make
things significantly better and how do we accentuate what we’re already known for? It was a combination of both, but I think both were required.
Fairchild Studio: What were the pieces of the brand that you wanted to foster?
M.v.P: The brand DNA is true in everything we do with inclusivity for our audience and our customers and how we think about product and innovation more broadly. It’s central to how we communicate with our consumers. The Milani DNA remains our North Star as we think about choices.
For example, we work with a core set of suppliers that, in a number of cases, are also producing many of the prestige alternatives. Of course, we could switch suppliers to save money or provide more margin, but that’s not something we’re prepared to do. Our quality is our point of difference and anybody who has tried Milani recognizes that. We won’t let our customers or ourselves down. That commitment to quality remains a core tenet of the business and a choice we’re sticking to because we’re always looking for the best-quality ingredients and manufacturing.
Fairchild Studio: How did you align the company with new goals and a fresh strategy?
M.v.P: We have this core set of strategic pillars and a vision of where we see the brand five years from now, and we align the team by key strategic pillar. Each pillar has a set of objectives, goals, strategies and measures. We have the team build it from the bottom up, with some top-down leadership, of course, but the strategy is to collectively create the path for the future. We get together monthly to review our progress and ask ourselves what’s possible.
That’s how we enroll the organization. It cascades into the culture and goals, but everybody knows where we are on the marker board from all of these key metrics. It’s a transparent way of working. It’s important to have a vision every day you come to work that you’re making a difference and that these are the things to focus on. These are the things that matter. While there are lots of other priorities, we have to make the choices, and these are the choices that we’ve made and the strategy we’re sticking to. It doesn’t mean we don’t pivot when we learn something new, but our core strategy is very solid and has proven successful.
Fairchild Studio: How would you say that Milani has changed under your leadership?
M.v.P.: First, if you look at the visualization of the brand or think about the brand ethos, we’ve modernized it. It’s more relevant and resonant than ever and it represents our diverse community better than it ever has.
And we’ve brought beautiful products to life. We’ve had some winning innovations in the category. We still have a lot of opportunity to grow, but we have the highest brand awareness and market share we have ever had. We’re at the highest point in sales we’ve ever been. We’ve also gained some space with our partners, but we still have plenty of opportunity ahead of us.
Fairchild Studio: What does the future hold for Milani?
M.v.P.: It goes back to having a full conviction about the art of possibility. We think being a top-five brand is achievable. That’s something we have our sights on and that means we have to do a lot of things differently, including investing more and brand building, which we’re ready to embark on with our next
phase of evolution. We’ll continue to drive our productivity while we’re creating.
We have a fabulous pipeline of products for the next three years and a big bold vision of what we’re capable of. We’re a cosmetics powerhouse for the mass arena and I’m super excited about our visual merchandising ideas, our product architecture, what we stand for with our retail partners and, most importantly, creating even deeper connections with our community.