← The Best One Yet
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- [00:01]
Nick
Yetis, get ready to get dewy, because.
- [00:04]
Jack
Today'S interview is a glow up masterclass for your life, your career, maybe even your lashes.
- [00:10]
Nick
Because we're hanging out with Tarang amin, the iconic 12 year CEO of E L F Beauty.
- [00:15]
Jack
Elf Beauty. E L F stands for eyes, lips and face, and it sold enough blush.
- [00:19]
Nick
To make you blush. E L F. It's Gen Z's favorite beauty brand. It's Gen Alpha's top selling beauty brand.
- [00:25]
Jack
Gen Beta isn't even born yet, but they're probably prepping their elf mascara because.
- [00:30]
Nick
Elf beauty basically invented the dupe. 80% of the value for 20% of the price.
- [00:35]
Jack
Because as touring will tell you, duping is actually the moral thing to do.
- [00:40]
Nick
Oh, by the way, Elf also bought Hailey Bieber's Road Beauty for 1 billion bucks last year because touring can spot.
- [00:47]
Jack
What'S hot faster than a Kardashian can.
- [00:49]
Nick
No company has democratized an industry like Elf has for your face because Tarang.
- [00:54]
Jack
Here has figured out how to sell a $3 lipstick profitably, even during peak infl.
- [01:00]
Nick
Jack, we're gonna sprinkle on some context. For two and a half years, elf grew at least 30% every quarter for 10 straight quarters.
- [01:06]
Jack
Even Costco got jealous. True, but according to Terenggang, E L F Beauty isn't in the beauty industry.
- [01:12]
Nick
No, no, no, no, no. E L F is actually in the entertainment industry.
- [01:16]
Jack
Besties, please welcome the maestro of makeup.
- [01:19]
Nick
The baron of bronzer, the lord of the lip liner. Tarang Amin is the CEO of E.
- [01:25]
Jack
L F Beauty, and today's interview with Tarang is the best one yet.
- [01:28]
Nick
Hey, Sephora, you're gonna want to put down the Mir Durang. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much for coming on, T boy.
- [01:36]
Tarang Amin
Well, thank you for the most gracious introduction I think I've ever had. Or at least the most hyped up one. I'm digging it.
- [01:44]
Nick
You're glowing. Jack's glowing. We're feeling it. We are so excited to be here with you.
- [01:48]
Jack
So, Tarang, we did a bunch of research on you, and we saw that you have a career that really has spanned the consumer packaged goods world. At one point, you sold kitty litter laundry detergent, Pantene Pro V. I have a quick question about Pantene Pro V.
- [02:01]
Nick
Oh, this has been pent up. Jack has been waiting to ask you as an executive this for, I'm gonna.
- [02:06]
Jack
Say, years after you're done cleansing your hair and rinsing it off, do you really need to rinse and repeat with the shampoo or was that a brilliant scheme to double sales overnight?
- [02:17]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, I work for someone at P and G who claimed his claim to fame was he says, you know how the shampoo bottle says lather and rinse, Right?
- [02:26]
Nick
Yeah.
- [02:26]
Tarang Amin
I'm like, yeah. He says, I'm the one who came up with rep. And he says it doubled the volume. I think it got him promoted. He had a very successful career. And if I only knew business was that simple. I just have to come up with.
- [02:39]
Jack
Repeat McDonald's should say, enjoy your Big Mac.
- [02:41]
Nick
Repeat Elf lip liner. Apply three times for maximum doing this. Oh, that's perfect. Now a quick word from our sponsor.
- [02:55]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [02:56]
Noah
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [03:03]
Raj
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [03:05]
Noah
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [03:14]
Raj
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [03:23]
Noah
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:30]
Raj
And for the first time ever, we're gonna have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're gonna be right here to help you do them better.
- [03:38]
Nick
Love y'.
- [03:39]
Noah
All.
- [03:40]
Tarang Amin
Before we had ATT Business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn, an influencer, even livestream the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business wireless routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though. AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
- [04:14]
Nick
Well, Tarang, as Jack and I were researching you, we know you were born in Kenya to Indian parents. You came to this child as an immigrant and you actually joined elf beauty at a really interesting point 12 years ago, shortly after it was founded. You had the role of taking over from the founders. And yet you don't really wear makeup.
- [04:32]
Jack
I think you're a beautiful man, but you don't wear makeup. As far as we're aware. Do you need to use the product?
- [04:38]
Tarang Amin
No, I do actually on this interview right now I've got our poreless putty primer, our matte. I do a little tea here. I've got our camo concealer for these black eyes and our well people press powder. That's why it looks so fabulous.
- [04:51]
Jack
Can you tell us how important is it to use the product if you're going to be a CEO of a company?
- [04:56]
Tarang Amin
I think it's essential and you know, particularly with our skincare range, absolute favorites for me. As I said, I just use our primers, our concealers, our powders for interviews like this when I want to look my best. But I think more important even than using the products yourself is having a team that reflects the community you serve. So I'm really proud that our workforce is 74% women, 66% Gen Z and millennial, 40%, 44% diverse. They absolutely represent the community we serve and frankly are one of the best sources of insights I have. I do a product review every couple weeks. All I'm doing on that product review is looking the chat field. I'll throw out open ended questions like hey, tell me why is this thing so great and and our team, they have, they're so passionate so into these categories and our consumers and making sure that we're delighting them and that really makes my job a lot easier.
- [05:48]
Jack
The elves have Riznick. I think there's 6, 7 all over Terang over here.
- [05:52]
Nick
I believe that's the business school turn Jack. Well yet he's whether you wear makeup or don't wear makeup. This is why we were so excited to bring Tarang and Elf onto the show. We've been studying this business for years. Just over one year ago after President Trump got elected, we said Elf Beauty explained the economy.
- [06:11]
Jack
This was the days after the November 2024 election. In the election year of 2024, Elf Beauty sales rose by 46% because you offered what every voter apparently badly wanted.
- [06:24]
Nick
Affordability and tarang. Jack and I have been keeping track on a whiteboard over here. There's the $1.50 Costco hot dog soda combo, the 99 cent Arizona iced tea and as we've always said, the $3 elf beauty lip liner. As prices as everything rose over the last few years, Elf Beauty has had a lipstick that remained three bucks inflation.
- [06:46]
Jack
PE from 2022 to 2024. And yet during that two year period, everybody flocked to Elf and the stock price grew by 8x.
- [06:55]
Nick
Which leads to our question how do you keep a top selling product just three bucks in the face of inflation? How frankly is that physically possible?
- [07:04]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, it goes all the way back to our our roots. The founders of this company introduced the brand in 2004, selling cosmetics over the Internet for $1. Everyone thought they were crazy. This is pre iPhone. You couldn't sell cosmetics over the Internet and you certainly could make money at a dollar. But they figured it out and we've kept that spirit of disruption ever since. We take nothing more than joy of making the best of beauty accessible for every eye, lip and face. We have a unique supply chain innovation model that allows us to really look at inspiration from the best products in prestige as well as our community, put our ELF twist on it and introduce that incredible value. And that's what we're really all about and have been for 21 years.
- [07:46]
Nick
Taran, can we talk about that creative supply chain though? Because that's what we're really curious about is how do you physically do it? When we're in a world where there are tariffs, where there is inflation, are you switching what factories you're working with? Are you moving from Chinese production to Malaysian production? What is it that allows you to keep a product price super low? But on the other hand, are you just losing money on the product? Like Jack and I have said, sometimes you need a sacred cow product to protect your profit puppy. Do you lose money on something like a $3 lip liner to make money elsewhere?
- [08:21]
Tarang Amin
No. You know, we make money on every one of our items. And the key is we have a unique supply chain. It's a hybrid model. We use like minded suppliers who believe in elf, believe in our standards on quality, on lean manufacturing, and then a high degree of control. It's our quality people in those facilities, it's our lean manufacturing techniques. And we work very closely to really make sure we have that best combination of cost, quality and speed. And again, it's an advantage we've honed particularly over the last 12 years and has allowed us to weather the storm, whether it be the pandemic, the post pandemic inflation, right now, even tariffs. And we're committed to our suppliers. We believe in long term partnership and so we have done some diversification. But our favorite form of diversification is take one of our strategic suppliers and have them set up the exact same facility outside of China as well. So it gives us a great model. And I'd say it has less to do with tariffs and more to do. We have a rapidly growing global business and making sure we have a robust global supply chain to meet the challenge.
- [09:21]
Nick
That's a really cool concept. I mean, getting someone to basically duplicate the factory, but in a place where it makes sense for you economically nonetheless.
- [09:29]
Jack
In May, you had to make what appeared to be an emotional Instagram post announcing to your community that you had to raise the price of all the products across the board by $1 starting in August because 3/4 of your products at the time were made in China.
- [09:44]
Nick
Basically, ELF has gotten stuck in the trade war like others have, and your Stock has fallen 35% in the last year mainly because of that.
- [09:50]
Jack
Can you explain to our audience exactly why tariffs forced you to raise prices? Like, was there a new bill that your procurement team was looking at? And it's like, wow, we're paying for these tariffs. What happens at the border? Can you just walk us through, like.
- [10:05]
Nick
How does this go down?
- [10:06]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, sure. So if you take a look at tariffs on China goods are the fiscal year, at one point they were as high as 170%. For the year, we're going to average about 60% tariffs on our goods. So I mean, that's a real cost and it actually really means. Now our approach is we're always transparent with our communities, community. So well before, three months before we took pricing, we announced to the community like, hey, look, we're facing these pressures. We're going to raise our prices a dollar. We don't like doing it, but this is what's going on. And the overwhelming response was really positive. People are like, you know, we love that you're always upfront with us, you're always clear and letting us know what's going on. And our consumers have stuck with us. We continue this last quarter marked our 27th consecutive quarter of net sales market share gains. We've averaged over 20% sales growth every quarter for the last 27 quarters. And it's because consumers really trust us for the quality of the products we have and the value that we deliver. And we take that, we take that responsibility seriously. After all, 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we see it as our responsibility to make sure they have the best of beauty, but at great prices.
- [11:16]
Nick
So you're kind of saying on the communication side, when you got bad news like this, it's you got a few different routes. You could just go on as plans, see how people react, or you could do like an honesty is the best policy. We're just going to come out and tell you what's happening ahead of time.
- [11:29]
Jack
Which seems to be what they did. And that's how I, for you and me to operate. Nick, when we're not sure what to say to our audience, I think let honesty be your guide.
- [11:37]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, that's, that's our approach. We've built trust with our community because we're always upfront with them. We have a two way dialogue and they know that we're there to let them know what's going on, but also to listen and continue to drive superior value.
- [11:51]
Nick
Oh, Terry, we've got some questions about the comments section. We'll get, we'll get to that in a bit because that's an exciting area. But first, Jack, I think there was like some tariff math we were curious about. Right.
- [11:59]
Jack
You mentioned 60% was the effective tariff rate you dealt with in 2025. Does that mean that $10 items have to become $16 items?
- [12:07]
Nick
Yeah, we're trying to understand the tariff math like the audience is.
- [12:10]
Tarang Amin
No, we took everything up a dollar. So a $10 item went to $11, a three item went to $4.
- [12:17]
Jack
10.
- [12:17]
Tarang Amin
And we, we're known for the transparency of our pricing. You know, we, we have an everyday low price. We don't play games with the consumer. We don't have a high price and then put it on sale. Even when people display our products, we tell them do it at full retail because it's such a great value. And so taking a dollar as far as we went on any item, regardless of what the tariff was.
- [12:37]
Jack
So Wall street seems to think that the trade war ultimately cut the value of ELF in half based on the stock price. So how can you overcome the cost of tariffs and prove Wall street wrong?
- [12:47]
Tarang Amin
Well, I think our pricing actions covered a good portion of the tariffs. We continue to have a great program and cost savings. We continue to deliver great value. You know what I tell you on Wall street is we're in it for the long run. So we don't let any short term volatility bother us. We're going to continue to deliver. We've delivered superior financial returns, the best in beauty over these last 27 quarters. And we're going to keep doing that. And over time people will see and they'll continue to see how what we're able to deliver. We've more than tripled our market share just in the last few years. We're now the number one unit share brand in the US the number two dollar share brand with clear line of sight of overall market leadership. So we feel good about progress we're making and what we're delivering.
- [13:32]
Jack
What is that market share.
- [13:33]
Tarang Amin
So our market share nationally is about a 13% share. Beauty is very fragmented, so there are a lot of brands. So that actually is a leading share. But at Target, which is our first national retail customer, our market share where their number one brand, our market share is over 20% of their entire category. And the reason why that's meaningful is Target was our first national retailer and has like a five or six year head start on everyone else.
- [13:57]
Nick
Yeah.
- [13:57]
Tarang Amin
The great news is we're seeing share gains. Every single customer, every single segment we have, and we're going to continue to pick up share.
- [14:05]
Jack
I think elf, Beauty's rival at Target is one of the reasons we started saying Target.
- [14:09]
Nick
I remember, I mean, you talked about how fragmented the beauty industry. I think you shared this wild stab with us in our prep call with you, Tarang, about how, like, There are only 26 beauty brands with over $100 million in business, despite all the broody brands you see at Sephora. That's it.
- [14:24]
Tarang Amin
Yeah. No, that's right. I mean, there's 1900 brands in cosmetics and skincare tracked by Nielsen. That's just what's scanning every week. Out of that, only 26 have 100 million in retail sales. Not even net sales, just retail sales. So I'm really proud that we have four brands that have over 100 million in retail sales. Elf Color Cosmetics, Elf Skin, Natorium and Rode. We're doing pretty well when it comes to our portfolio.
- [14:51]
Nick
You're going to have to watch out, Turang. Or we could partner on this, but Jack and I are coming out with an ear cream because these microphones and these headsets really chafe our ears. I should point out, Tarang, by the way, you just mentioned the topic where you were so excited to Rhode. The same month that you announced you were raising prices by a dollar across the board at elf, you then made the coolest acquisition of the year. One billion bucks for Rhode Beauty, Hailey Bieber's skincare company.
- [15:16]
Jack
What was it about Rhode and Hailey Bieber? What are they doing that no one else was doing that you wanted a piece of?
- [15:21]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, there are a lot of parallels between what Rhode was doing and what ELF was doing. There's a lot of mutual admiration in terms of how we disrupt, how we engage our community. But the way we look at acquisitions is we use our vision as a lens. Our vision is to build a different kind of beauty company. And we're going to do that by building brands that disrupt norms, shape culture and connect communities through positivity, Inclusivity and accessibility. And Ro did all of those things. I mean, Hayley and her team have built a brand like I've never seen. In less than three years, they went from 0 to 212 million in net sales, DTC only with just 10 products.
- [15:58]
Nick
How uncommon is that?
- [15:59]
Tarang Amin
I've never seen it. And beyond never seeing it, the thing I particularly loved about what Rode has done is the level of consumer fervor the brand has. I've never seen a brand where people will be willing to wait out overnight for 14 hours for an event Haley's not even at. They're buying into the entire product, the entire lifestyle. And it's just a phenomenal brand. You know, since we bought the brand we closed in August, we've launched RODE into all North American Sephora doors, Sephora in the uk. And in both cases, it was the biggest launch Sephora ever saw in their history. Something like three or four times bigger than their next biggest launch ever. So it tells you the specialness of the brand and how much it's resonating.
- [16:45]
Nick
Well, that's an interesting tension point too, right, Tren? Because ELF Beauty is not carried at Sephora, largest beauty retailer in the world, or premium beauty retail in the world. But Rhode is. And is that a conflict that create confusion, frustration, or is that a test by you guys? What's the thought process on two different strategies?
- [17:03]
Tarang Amin
Well, I'd say it's a consistent strategy. So E L F is carried. We just entered last year Sephora Mexico. It was one of the best launches ever seen. We just entered last month the Sephora and the gcc, the six countries in the gcc. So ELF is in Sephora. What RDE does is gives us a whole other platform to really go much broader with Sephora. And so I'd say Sephora is a key customer. But, you know, all of our customers are important to us and they all have different roles.
- [17:31]
Jack
Road's only been there for five months, but I was going to ask, what is there you've learned from the Rode business that you can apply to the rest of elf?
- [17:39]
Tarang Amin
So what we love about Rode is how well they engage consumers and how well curated their product line is. And so we're learning things both ways all the time. I mean, I think one of the things we're able to do and our acquisition approach is different. We don't do any synergy math. We don't think about over integration. When we buy a brand, we. We want the entire team. So Hailey Bieber, her co founders, Nick Flahos, the CEO, the entire team came on board and our approach is, you guys are killing it. Keep doing what you were doing and let us know how we can help. And right away, you know, as they were about to enter Sephora, they didn't have a field sales support. We could hire an entire field sales team for them. We obviously have strength in marketing that we can share learnings back and forth. Our innovation, we have a real power house innovation engine. So all those areas we can help with without changing who they are really supporting the founder's vision and making sure they're realizing it. We do the same thing with Notorium, a brand, clinically effective biocompatible skincare brand we bought two years ago. You know, we bought. The entire team came on board. Susan Yara, the founder, and our, our approach is always, how can we help you? What can we do to accelerate your vision of what you want to do? And that approach works great. We're able to benefit from the best of what that team does, let them continue to thrive, enhance the team and put our capabilities in. It's been a winning formula for us.
- [19:02]
Nick
There's a challenge there that's going to be interesting, which is, and this is what Jack and I find fascinating about rode, you mentioned 10 products. They started with just 10 products. Jack and I called this the Elvis Presley strategy because just like Elvis was the first to have a greatest hits album of just his top 10 hits, Road just led with their top 10 products.
- [19:21]
Jack
Every product is the greatest hit.
- [19:23]
Nick
So how do you find that balance if you're Rode like, how do you expand and continue to grow and add products and. But not dilute the very clear limitations that have made you successful?
- [19:33]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, it comes back to Hayley. I give her a lot of credit. Her vision from the very beginning is I want one of everything really good. And that's the approach she's taken, a very curated approach. She's absolutely involved in every aspect of developing product, making sure it fits her high standards. And, you know, the brand continues to innovate, they continue to deliver new products, but they're very careful and very curated how they do that. And of course that's really resulted in phenomenal sales for every one of their products.
- [20:03]
Jack
Does Hayley still seem motivated and does she have skin in the game?
- [20:06]
Tarang Amin
She has never been more motivated. She is loving. She's not only the chief creative officer and the chief product officer of Rhode, but she's a strategic advisor to Elf Beauty as well. And I think that's one of the things that's really made this work is she's part of the elf beauty family, very engaged. I don't know how she does it. The week we launched in Sephora for North America did a massive event at Times Square. I think she, she probably had a hair and makeup at 3am or 4am was there for the opening. The next day we rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange. And it wasn't just Haley. All of our founders came out. Susan Yarrow was there, Alicia Keys who we developed Key Soul Care with Washington there, the founders of well People. It was a great celebration of our female powerhouse, female pop founders and team. And it was, it was just a terrific time.
- [20:57]
Nick
You always wonder these celebrity brands, like you know, are they just showing up for the bell ringing at the New York Stock Exchange versus like how much time are they spending, you know, doing the whiteboarding with the road team, the R and D, the meeting with the laboratory, like what do you see with road when it comes to like how involved she is like on a week to week basis?
- [21:15]
Tarang Amin
You know what I tell people is Haley is a celebrity for sure. But she's way more than a celebrity. She's one of the most thoughtful founders I've ever met. And by that I mean she is absolutely involved in every aspect of the business from product to the marketing to how much she posts, the level of passion she has. This is her baby and she's all in the same. Is true with Susan Yara Notorium. Susan Yara was a skincare influencer, has real vision for the quality of those products. She continues to educate people on why they need the skin regimens they do. And so that's one of the things we love. Even the founders of well people plant powered pioneering clean beauty brand. Shirley Pinkson actually runs education for all of elf beauty. Dr. Renee Snyder, a board derma certified dermatologist, actually helps us on Elf skin and the rest of our skincare portfolio. So having them fully involved and more importantly being able to pursue their passion is something that we're all about.
- [22:11]
Nick
Well, your next stage, Trang is facing the Coty curse. Your rival Kody acquired 51% of Kylie Cosmetics, 20% of Kim Kardashian's beauty brand. But those deals with celebrity beauty brands have not been successful. Both Kim and Kylie are trying to make moves to buy back their beauty brands. Now according to reports and in general, Jack and I have noticed we've sold a company before and we've studied acquisitions. Two out of three acquisitions tend to fail.
- [22:37]
Jack
So how do you ensure to Haley and the shareholders that ELF won't mess up road. How do you keep the brand cool even though it's kind of gone corporate through an M and A deal?
- [22:46]
Tarang Amin
Well, I think it's our approach, our vision is to support a founder's vision and to really support a founder and help them realize what they want. Haley would be the first one, Susan Yara would be the first one to tell you ELF has done everything we said we'd do, which is continue to support their vision, continue to support with whatever they need to be able to realize their vision. And that was the whole beauty of it. Haley actually had a lot of admiration for elf. How we engage consumers, how we develop community, what we stand for. And those things really mattered. I mean, I think the first dinner we had during the courtship, I remember she left saying, you know, I kind of want to hang out with these guys. I really like them. And I think that's important. I think that chemistry and making sure that you're. You're truly supporting them is I think the key versus, you know, buying something that's a celebrity and having a celebrity lend their name who may or may not be there. Our approach is very different. And we're also really choiceful. In our 21 year history, we've only made three acquisitions in that entire life. And part of it is we've got the great luxury of very strong organic growth with our existing portfolio of brands. So we never have to do another deal if we don't want. So they have to be quite special. We look at hundreds of brands and only, I'd say in the last two years, only Notorium and Road Pass that bar. So it's a pretty high bar that we have and we really make sure. And I'd say the biggest thing that a lot of people miss, it's all about the culture and it's about the team and making sure that there's a shared ethos, a shared belief system, how you engage consumers, how do you really nurture a brand? Those things we spend a lot of time, I'd say we spend most amount of time on, hey, do we see the team as part of ELF Beauty? Do we see them live in the same values that we believe in? And I think that's actually been the real secret too. Why our acquisitions, every one of them's worked.
- [24:32]
Nick
The hangout test is underappreciated. Like the classic one your dad tells you. Like, would you grab a beer with them? Like when we met with the Robinhood co founders before we sold our previous Media company to them. Like, we hung out with them and it made a difference. We were like, yeah, we see ourselves hanging out with these guys.
- [24:46]
Jack
Sorry to go all page Six on you, but what restaurant was that initial meetup?
- [24:50]
Tarang Amin
I was funky in Beverly Hills. It was a fabulous dinner, by the way.
- [24:56]
Nick
We jumped in t boy style to your latest earnings today. We love reading a good earnings transcript. And we noticed you mentioned Rhodes 62 times that earnings. But you mentioned Hailey Bieber zero times in the earnings report.
- [25:07]
Tarang Amin
That's a miss on my part. Thanks. We have earnings coming up in February. I'll make sure I mention her 62 times. And rode zero times.
- [25:16]
Jack
You know, it's interesting. You don't want a brand to be too dependent on the celebrity founder.
- [25:21]
Nick
Well put, you.
- [25:22]
Jack
And so at a certain point, you want there to be. Unless Hayley's gonna be involved for the rest of her life, you want to eventually, you know, separate the brand from the founder at some point. What do you see as the future of celebrity driven beauty brands?
- [25:36]
Tarang Amin
Well, I think it's a combination. Hailey's all in. As I mentioned, this is her baby. So we want Hailey absolutely fully engaged. But there are three things we agreed with Hayley when we did the acquisition. We said, hey, we think we can help you build up a field sales support for Sephora. She loved that. We said, we love the fact that this is your baby. The brand's so well associated with you, but we want to build a brand for the long term, and we're known for our marketing engine, so we actually want to invest more in marketing and really make sure ROAD stands by itself as well. And she loved that too. And the third thing we said is we have incredible innovation capability, particularly on our R and D side. And I think she was the first one to say, oh, my God, I'd love that. She goes, I'm not a scientist. Sometimes I think I am, but I'm not. And if you guys give me that help. So we went in before we even did the acquisition. Fully aligned on where are areas that we could help. We could leverage the incredible capabilities we have, and where could we let them continue to run and continue to nurture their vision? And that's the approach, is you want to do both. We're building this brand for the long term in it's already an incredible brand. I haven't seen another brand like this. And we couldn't be more excited to help her continue to realize that vision.
- [26:47]
Nick
Now a quick word from our sponsor.
- [26:53]
Noah
Hey, it's Raj and Noah. And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [27:01]
Raj
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [27:03]
Noah
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [27:12]
Raj
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [27:21]
Noah
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [27:28]
Raj
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [27:37]
Jack
Love y'.
- [27:37]
Nick
All.
- [27:40]
Tarang Amin
Why pay when you can slash TikTok.
- [27:42]
Jack
Slash and free lets you cut prices.
- [27:44]
Tarang Amin
All the way to zero. Download Tik Tok search, slash free and share the link to get free items. Start slashing now.
- [27:58]
Jack
One of the big moves you made relatively early in your tenure as CEO of ELF was closing the physical stores.
- [28:06]
Nick
This was one of the biggest things we've ever seen a CEO do. This is incredible.
- [28:11]
Jack
I mean, I didn't know until I was researching this story that ELF used to have physical stores, but you shut them down. I mean, first of all, when I think of cosmetics, I picture going into Macy's and being mobbed by those people who are, you know, trying to paint your face.
- [28:24]
Nick
Jack's hanging out at the Mac counter. He's got a 42 step skincare routine.
- [28:27]
Jack
I should point out, how certain were you that you could sell cosmetics and skin care online?
- [28:31]
Tarang Amin
Well, I mean, that was the roots of the company. The first few years of the company, we were DTC only and so we absolutely a digitally native brand. We absolutely knew. And even today, digital is such an important part of our entire model. It's how we engage consumers. Our strength with our own site. Our Beauty Squad loyalty program has over 6 million members. The momentum we have at Amazon on TikTok shop, it's always going to be a key part. But the thing we realized back in 2018, the founders had a real passion for their own boutiques and we had 27 boutiques. And as we looked at our strategy, we're like, wait a minute, we're all about digital Empowering digital. We now are with big national retailers. 1800 Target doors, 5000 Walmart doors, 1400 altar doors were it drug, et cetera. So we really made us look and say, all right, what's the role for 27 boutiques? Because we're never going to hit as many consumers as we can versus our national retailers or digitally. And so it was both one of the most difficult and easiest decisions we made. The difficult part of that decision is we had about 250 associates associated with the stores. And so when we made the decision of the day, we had earnings. February of 2019. I remember it like it's yesterday. We sent out 27 of our leaders to every one of our stores because we wanted to do in person, tell them why these stores weren't working. Most of them were in malls that were never going to see a better day. We paid three times severance to each of the associates. But that was the painful part. The easy part was it was the right strategic decision to kind of say, all right, what are we really going to focus on? And we're really going to focus on our national retailers and, and our digital business. And we took the $16 million we're spending on our stores and we doubled down on marketing and digital and we saw an immediate improvement of the entire business everywhere we're going. So it was one of those. I mean, I think every once in a while you got to take a look and say, all right, what are you doing? What's working, what's not? And then have the conviction to say, hey, we got to make the tough right choice here and make sure we treat people with dignity and respect, but keep move in the business and keep pivoting to what consumers want.
- [30:38]
Nick
Well, Tarank, Jack and I have been curious. Would you ever reverse that decision? Because when we look at the digital world today, it's gone so far digital in one direction, it's almost like the pendulum swinging the other direction now. Like all the direct to consumer mattress and eyeglasses companies that we grew up with, they now have physical stores. Netflix, totally digital company now has Netflix like mini theme parks that they launched at the end of last year. So would elf Beauty ever get back into the physical game as almost even a marketing move?
- [31:07]
Tarang Amin
I'd say we are in the physical game. It's a question of do you want to do it yourself or do you want leading partners? Our strategy, as I mentioned, is the best of beauty made accessible. As we look at that, we want to be wherever consumers want to buy beauty. And I feel Great. About our retailer portfolio, I mentioned Target, Walmart, Ulta Beauty, CVS, Walgreens, Amazon, TikTok shop. Look, we are where consumers want to buy. Elfcosmetics.com and so that's the strategic choice we made, is we would rather partner with people who have amazing presence and reach. There's over 100 million Walmart shoppers every week. And so if we want to give them the best of beauty, let's make sure it's accessible to where they want to shop. And for us, that means it's not necessary to have our own stores. We'd rather partner with leading retailers and be strong digitally to be able to meet their needs.
- [31:58]
Nick
Outsource the bricks and the mortars. You want to talk about the D word, Jack?
- [32:01]
Jack
I want to talk about the dupes.
- [32:03]
Nick
Drop the Ds, because core to the.
- [32:05]
Jack
ELF strategy is to find a prestige product that's wonderful but simply overpriced, and then you make your own ELF version of the product, often at one third of the price.
- [32:14]
Nick
Can you give us the best example of when this strategy has worked? Because in our opinion, you're the pioneer of the dupe.
- [32:20]
Tarang Amin
Yeah. So, you know, it's consistently worked. We don't actually use the word dupe because we don't do the dupe thing. What we do is we take inspiration from prestige as well as our community, and we put an ELF twist on it and introduce it. I'll give you a great example. Christian Dior has these lip oils. They've been in the market more than a decade. They've been around for a long time, but for some reason, the last couple of years, they took off virally. Our community will come to us and say, hey, Elf, there are these lips oils out there. We love them, but we can't afford 38 bucks or whatever they cost. Help us out and we'll do it. We'll take a look at it and we'll say, okay, what do they like about this product? In this particular case, they love the glossy finish. They love the pigmentation. But then we'll also look and say, what don't they like? And we found is for some consumers, those lip oils were drying out their. Their lips. Others didn't like the fact the applicator was really small. And lip oil is something you got to reapply throughout the day. So when we introduced ours, it was a completely different hydrating formula. Same glossy finish, same pigmentation, a much bigger applicator called a doe foot. But the key difference was not only was the product we thought even better. But Instead of the 38 bucks, we introduced ours at $8. Eight, right. And then the next day, $8. And. And we never make direct comparisons. We don't have to, because I got to tell you, the next day, there are a thousand TikTok videos that said, like, I, I actually like the elf lip oil is even better. It's probably the biggest launch we ever had.
- [33:50]
Jack
Tarang those people who narked on Christian Dior by commenting and asking you to make the product when they saw that you came out with a comparable product for eight bucks, that's less than one fourth the price. I mean, you could have come in at 28 bucks and they still probably would have been happy.
- [34:06]
Tarang Amin
Well, that's our entire model. We have a concept where we call it 0 distance. 0 distance between the C suite in our community. You know, I'll tell you a story. My CMO terrorizes me every few months. She comes and drags me onto TikTok Live. And, you know, she'll just get up there and she's not even very nice about it. She'll just say, all right, you got the big boss. Tell them what you want. And the chat field will just light up. It'll just go crazy. There was one last year where I got on and a bunch of people said, hey, there's this prestige product. They make these bronzing drops. We love them, but I think they're 39 bucks. We can't afford 39 bucks. Help us out. And I'm reading the chat field. I'm like, yeah, okay, you want some bronzing drops? And then there's like another 20 chats right after that. And they're like, no, no, boss man, we want them now. I will, I will literally leave that call a bit terrorized or traumatized. And. And the first thing I'll do is I'll call it my head innovation. We have a three year product pipeline. I'll say, oh, my God, please for the love of God, tell me we have some bronzing drops. And she's like, yeah, we do. I'm like, great, great. When are they coming out? And he's like, oh, we got them slated for 18 months from now. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. I cannot have our community yell at me, move it up. And we launched them within six months. And that's our entire model. It's like, we look at our community. What do they want? Where can we bring the best of beauty? Put our elf twist on and bring it at an incredible value. And that's fueled the entire model, particularly this day and age. Our strength with our community, particularly on social media, really makes that model work where we're not dependent on some celebrity or advertising or something else to be able to get the word out. Our community is our absolute best advocates.
- [35:45]
Jack
They must have freaked out when you launched that product for eight bucks.
- [35:49]
Tarang Amin
Oh my God. They did.
- [35:50]
Nick
Well to bring two questions about that Christian Dior dupe product that Jack and I have been dying to ask on dupes in general with you. The first is any moral hesitation on copying someone's idea. I see how you're saying you're influencing, but was there any moral hesitation there?
- [36:04]
Tarang Amin
I'd say it was a moral authority responsibility. I actually think it's immoral to charge a consumer 40, 50 bucks or something that we can clearly show you can make for less and actually have just as good or better quality. And you know, I mentioned earlier, 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. We think it's immoral to charge a lot of money to those people who are barely making it. So we take great pride in being able to put our elf twist on and be able to have the best of prestige at a fraction of the price.
- [36:35]
Nick
Lululemon, if you're listening, Tarang Amin just made the moral case for the dupe as the right thing to do. The second question, by the way, Jack, is just why, by the way, is Christian Dior so expensive in the first place? Jack's got that 42 step skincare routine I just mentioned. We launched a second podcast just to pay for his skincare routine. Why is cosmetics so except expensive in.
- [36:59]
Jack
The first place or beauty in general?
- [37:00]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, I think that was the insight the founders had. They couldn't figure it out. They couldn't figure out, you know, why are these products so expensive? And, and they looked at it and they're like, you know, a lot of these brands have very high gross margins that they spend back in associates and marketing and, and a bunch of other things.
- [37:16]
Jack
Turing very high gross margins, meaning huge markups.
- [37:20]
Tarang Amin
So yeah, they have bigger markups and they use that money on other areas. And so the insight the founders had were their original model is if I'm going to sell something for a dollar, somebody's going to buy it from me for 50 cents. I got to figure out how to make it for 35 cents. And they figured that out. And then we've basically been able to hone that model that says, hey, why just do a $2, $3, why don't we actually go after the best products in the marketplace? You'll have a little bit higher price umbrella and you can engineer an even greater quality. And that was really the insight 12 years ago when I took over was really, no, let's make the best of beauty accessible. Let's not just have low prices. Let's. Let's really make the best of beauty accessible. And so, look, I have a lot of respect for our competitors, including our prestige competitors. There are consumers who love. There's a real blurring of the lines. Like you could find an ELF consumer and their makeup bag. They might have a Chanel product. Consumers in this space, particularly the consumers we appeal to, number one amongst Gen Z, Gen Alpha millennials. They're incredibly savvy digitally. So they know and including through word of mouth what might work for them. And so there's a broad range of brands that are acceptable. And so I'd say there's enough room for people. The part I love, as much market share as we built, the real secret for ELF is we can give millions more consumers access something they couldn't have before. You know, I'll give you another example. A few years ago, there was a. A prestige brand had a silk canvas. It was a primer. I think they charged 56 bucks for it. We introduced our putty primer for $9, right? And I'd say the quality is just as good, if not better. And what we did is we tracked that prestige item and we said over the next few years, that prestige item continue to grow because there are some people that equated 56 bucks with quality, the image, everything else that came with it. And there's a market for it, and they did great. The only difference is we sold nine times number of primers. They did so because the fact is most people can't afford $56 for a putty primer, but a lot of people can afford nine. And so we, again, that's. There are plenty of business models in our space. There's some incredible, incredible brands. They have a different model and, you know, I respect them for their model, but I prefer ours.
- [39:40]
Nick
This reminds me of a takeaway I did, one of my favorites. The beauty industry really captures it. But where there's mystery, there's margin, and there's a lot of mystery in the cosmetics industry. But trank, you're also like, literally in the comment section, like Jack's saying there's R and D research and development, and then we say there's S and D scrolling and development. Like, can you give us an example of when you guys may have like noticed comments and then innovated a product from there. And how does that compare the hit rate of that kind of a product to one you developed on your own in house?
- [40:09]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, you know, I'd say the hit rates are both good, but the ones that we're actually getting inspiration from the community is even better because you already know there's pent up demand. I mean, our innovation teams do a phenomenal job. And it's both the art and the science. I mean they're analyzing data to see like, hey, what's really selling, what's really working, what are people socially really engaging on that they really want. And then the art of how do you bring that elf to how do you actually bring it out at even a better value? And so that's our entire approach. And overall our hit rates are way higher than the industry average. I think new item hit rates and consumer are less than 50%. Ours are closer to 100 because the insights are coming from what people want.
- [40:49]
Nick
So are there any particular examples of a product that comes to mind for you where you're like, wow, we wouldn't have thought of that unless people started mentioning it on Instagram.
- [40:57]
Tarang Amin
Well, you know, I'd say the Power Grip Primer, one of our main products. In fact, Power Grip Prime Primer is the number one cosmetics sku across all of mass and prestige. By far the biggest item. Which is really surprising because Primers aren't a huge category overall, but Power Grips are number one.
- [41:15]
Jack
To clarify, Power Grip Primer is the most sold cosmetic product in the United States.
- [41:21]
Tarang Amin
You buy a wide margin.
- [41:22]
Jack
Wow.
- [41:23]
Nick
No way.
- [41:24]
Tarang Amin
What we find is that came from an insight. We done a collaboration with Ulta where we did this jelly pop collections, this watermelon flavored collection. We saw a lot of the comments coming off of that. We had a primary source and people couldn't get enough of it. And we were at first like, wow, it's so sticky. And they're like, we love the stickiness. So we said, all right, let's go have some fun with this. Let's go introduce Power Grip. When we introduce Power Grip, I mean it's just, it's just a phenomenal blockbuster success and again comes directly from listening to your community and giving them what they want.
- [41:55]
Nick
Well, when it comes to making decisions, as a CEO, Tarang, Jack and I are always curious how a top executive does this. So the balance, metrics versus magic, information versus intuition, graphs versus guts, how you make decisions.
- [42:09]
Jack
Let's Use one of Haley's products as an example. When she says, I want to launch a glazing milk face serum, which, by the way, I need to have a whole vacation where I try that product out. Do you look at a spreadsheet and do the diligence there, or do you trust her?
- [42:24]
Tarang Amin
No, we trust her instincts and we trust her passion, and that's what we rely on across the board. I mean, I'll ask questions in my product review every couple of weeks of, like, why is this thing so great? And the level of insights a team has in terms of. This is what the inspiration was. This is why it's going to work. This is why we got. Conviction is really all I need to kind of say, all right, let's go.
- [42:46]
Jack
You've mentioned the innovation teams a few times. Is that the name of the team department? I've never heard of an innovation team.
- [42:51]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, we have. I mean, the Innovation, they have multiple departments within it. You have product development, you have R and D, you have product marketing. But it's a collective. But, you know, I tell people, everyone at ELF owns innovation. It's. I mentioned my product review. That's why I approve products every two weeks. I actually make it an open ticket. My cmo, who came from Prestige at first, is horrified. She was like, oh, my God, these are the nuclear codes. You're letting anyone in.
- [43:15]
Nick
I'm like, yeah.
- [43:16]
Tarang Amin
Anyone in the company can join. Anyone in the company can join. I'm looking at the chat field, and we get the best insights from anyone in the company, not just the people whose job is innovation, but, you know, somebody who does inventory planning, had such incredible insights on a recent product. I can't talk about it because we haven't launched yet. But where she had, you know, a contrarian point of view. It was really great. I'm looking at the point, and I was, all right, tell me a little bit more. More. And so I think our. This approach of zero distance goes well beyond zero distance between the C suite and our community. It's zero distance to our employees. It's zero distance to equity. We're one of the few companies that grants equity to every single employee every year.
- [43:57]
Jack
Not just Haley, not just everyone.
- [43:59]
Tarang Amin
Every. Every single person.
- [44:01]
Jack
Fine.
- [44:02]
Nick
Trang will take some ELF stock after the interview.
- [44:06]
Tarang Amin
But I gotta tell you, it means something. You know, I've been in environments in the past where it's like, you know, we want you to. Want you to be an owner, but I'm like, but, But. But we're not owners, and, like, oh, we want you to act like an owner.
- [44:17]
Jack
What am I playing pretend?
- [44:18]
Tarang Amin
This is a lot more effective of give them a piece of it. And they're, they're passionate owners in a high performance team culture. And I would say by far that's.
- [44:27]
Jack
Our biggest advantage are they granted as like a bonus at the end of the year.
- [44:30]
Tarang Amin
And the way it works is our model is different. We call it one team, one dream. And so the way it works is every single person in the company is bonus eligible. You have a target percent of bonus, but we all get the same payout. It's 0 to 200%. And it's based on the adjusted EBITDA the board sets with some compensation consultants that came in and said, hey, wait, don't you want to compensate your product supply or ops people differently than your salespeople? Different than my.
- [44:59]
Jack
No.
- [45:00]
Tarang Amin
I want our operations people to know if we have one quality issue, it could piss away more EBITDA than if they saved half an RMB on something. And so we're all in it together. We say we rise or fall together. And by the way, I think last year as our sixth consecutive year of paying out 200% of target bonus, which makes people feel like winners, like we're in it together. And then on top of that, we give equity to every single employee. And, you know, if you exclude, exclude the named executive officers like me. Since our IPO in 2016, we've granted over $220 million of equity in a stock that's gone up Eightfold. And I'm explicit, I want meaningful wealth creation for every single person because they're the people who are driving our results.
- [45:43]
Nick
Again, if you insist, Tarang, we will.
- [45:45]
Tarang Amin
Take the ELF stock.
- [45:47]
Nick
By the way, Yetis, if you're listening on Jack's question, by the way, that actually is a really important point. You know, we talk about so many companies that innovate in a lab or keep research development secluded. They want it to be a secret Alpha saying, hey, we're open enough to everybody, even if you know the nuclear codes, the secrets of the company. We just want to hit. We just want to get products out there.
- [46:04]
Jack
Tarang, we've been talking to you for 40 minutes and you've obviously done really good by your customers. $8 instead of $38. That blew my mind. Have you ever failed by your customers and. And recognized that was a mistake? And can you share a story about it?
- [46:20]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, look, we're a digitally native brand, so we're inherently test and learn. We fail all the time. The key to me is making sure people don't get scared or get afraid of taking risks. We want people to be able to continue to push and continue to learn. You know, we had one a few months ago. We did a, we probably do 100 marketing campaigns a year. We had a one time post, we feature it had the comedian Matt Rife in there and we got a lot of blowback on that. We got people like hey, he made some comments on domestic violence and we clearly missed the mark. We apologized for it and we said, all right, well let's, let's keep, let's keep delighting our community. But that's not going to stop us from trying and being disruptive and doing different things. I mean we're known for our brand on brand collaborations. You know our collaboration with, with Liquid Death I think had something like 9 billion views with Chipotle, had one with Duncan, you name it, American Eagle. So we're going to continue to partner with like minded disruptors and we're going to continue to find ways of delighting and entertaining our community. But that doesn't mean we don't fail. We fail and, and that's okay. We, we gotta, we gotta learn from it, we gotta own it and you gotta keep moving.
- [47:32]
Nick
Well, yet he's a little backstage behind the scenes info we should share with you. Before this interview we spoke with Tarang because we wanted to get to know him a bit more. And in our chat, Tarang, you mentioned that you're not in the makeup industry, you're not in the beauty industry, you're not in the cosmetics industry. You said we're actually in the entertainment industry. And Jack and I didn't ask any more questions because we wanted to ask you more during the interview.
- [47:56]
Jack
So how is this beauty company actually in the entertainment industry?
- [47:59]
Tarang Amin
Well, it's completely community driven. And the way you connect to the community is there's too many companies that do a one way street. We're going to project things of what we want you to buy. We're going to tell you what, what you need to know, what you need to go do. Ours is a two way street back to that zero distance concept. And so for us, the way we engage with people is not to try to sell them more makeup or skincare products. We sell plenty of those. It's really to actually make sure that we're getting to know what motivates them. What do they love, where do they, where you go? That's, that dictates where we go. Why do we have a channel on Twitch. Why do we have an entire experience on Roblox? It's because that's what our community wants. So that ability to engage. And you know the great thing, we have this concept. A lot of times we call it, like, minimal viable control to enable maximum achievable freedom. And what we mean by that is we really look at how little, what little can we control as a senior team and really put that empowerment in our team's hands. Most of the time, I'm finding out about our marketing the same time everyone else is. I'll be texting my CMO and going, like I was a few months ago. I was like, did we just drop some guy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a care package? And she's like, yeah. Someone on our team in LA saw this guy blow up on the Internet. He hated his job, he quit it, and now he's sailing around the world with him, his cat. And they thought it'd be a great idea to send him a care package. Well, you know, I'm classically trained. I started Procter and Gamble and brand marketing and I was like, but, but we didn't even brand it. It doesn't say elf. It doesn't say anything. And. And they're like, yeah, no, they, it's okay. These guys know the word will get out. I. I forget how many, how many tens of millions of views we had on that. But, but that's really. The concept is let the people closest to our community that represent our community, community really drive the direction we take the brand in. And how does it delight them? And, you know, people would say, like, what the heck is a beauty company sending? And, you know, the care package had, like, food, had, you know, cat toys, snacks.
- [50:04]
Jack
What are you, my nana and I'm going to college?
- [50:06]
Tarang Amin
Yeah, a few. I had some sunscreen. He definitely needed some sunscreen. So we did put some of our sun touchables in there. But. But it. The whole genesis isn't the traditional, I'm trying to get you to buy something. So here's how I'm going to engage with you. I'm gonna. It's less transactional and more of, let's build a real relationship. And if you're doing that, it's really about how do you delight, how do you delight our community? And that a lot of times is how you entertain them. How do you make fun of yourself and have some fun with them? And that's how people engage with us.
- [50:37]
Nick
Oh, speaking of having fun, before we get to our final question, Trent, can you Just repeat that line again. That ethos, maximum minimum. It sounded like a rocket ship term. SpaceX style.
- [50:47]
Tarang Amin
I call it minimum viable control to enable maximum achievable freedom. Right. And so a lot of times the management looks at their job as we got to control. And don't get me wrong, we're a public company, we got plenty of controls. But really taking a look at and saying, how do you put power in the people that are closest to your community and give them the authority to run with it like I would never come up with. I wasn't even watching the guy blow up on the Internet. But letting them have that freedom and that ability to do that dictating, you know, we're the number one brand by far amongst Gen Z. I remember asking our team, hey, who else is call it killing it with Gen Z? That's where the Chipotle collaboration came from. Our team of Dallas, hey, Chipotle. Gen Z loves Chipotle too. Let's do something together. And we, when they went to see them, they said, you know, they call their food area, they call it their palate. We said, what, the black beans and the rice and all, that's a palate? We're like, hey, let's make a eyeshadow palette out of that. You know, we had guacamole and black bean and chicken. And you know, the thing sold out, I think in less than three minutes because it hit a nerve with people of where they look. And so I think that's the key for us is give the power to the people that are closest to our community. Give the power to the community. And it's their brand that works for us.
- [52:07]
Jack
Nick and I were entertained by your so Many Dicks campaign. To be clear, this was research by Elf Beauty on how many corporate board members were named Richard, Rick or Rich. Yeah, Jack.
- [52:19]
Nick
I believe it was specifically men named Dick. On corporate boards, outnumber all Hispanic women and outnumber all black women and all Hispanic women.
- [52:26]
Jack
Yeah, it was about not enough diversity on corporate boards. And in the last year, as the conversation of DEI has shifted, it seems like Elf Beauty has doubled down. And we wanted to ask you, how is it all working out?
- [52:39]
Tarang Amin
I mean, for us it works. Cause it, it's all about our community. I mentioned the inclusiveness we have as a team of making sure the team reflects the community. That goes all the way to the board. We're one of only five public companies in the U.S. out of 4,000 that have a board that's over 2/3 women, 44% diverse but the fact is we don't want to be one of only five public companies in the US with that level of diversity. So we believe business has a role for societal good. So we started this initiative of increasing diversity on America's corporate boards by partnering with Billie Jean King, serving out basic facts of just how homogenous the boards America's boards were. We took it a step further. That campaign, that provocative campaign we ran on like Wall street at the Oculus, you know, featured a bunch of pictures, a bunch of white dudes. And the line was, and the insight is there is one more, there are more men named Richard, Rick or Dick on America's corporate boards than entire groups of underrepresented populations. And by the way, by the way, there's nothing wrong with being Richard, Rick or Dick. I want to make sure people know that. For the record, we just want to make room for others. And then, you know, we take it a step further. We partner with the national association of Corporate directors. We've sponsored 40 women and diverse members through their Accelerate program to qualifying for board service. We partner with NCA&T University on research to show the direct correlation of diversity and better corporate board performance, including, I think the latest research they published, showed that boards with above average gender diversity outperform boards with below average gender diversity by a whopping 270% return on equity. And they did this over a six or seven year period. And so I think it's an important time where there's so much rhetoric out there to let the facts be out there. And, and, and we feel we have a role. It's something we, we deeply believe in. After all, we're for every eye, lip and face. And you know, we have, we do have an advantage. We're not a federal contractor. We're not a bigger company that might be subject to different rules. And, and, and the reality is we've actually never had a DEI program. We've never had quotas, we've never had anything like that because it's more fundamental to us. We're big believers. If you represent the community you serve, you get better results. And I think we're living proof of that.
- [54:53]
Nick
Was there any discussion?
- [54:55]
Tarang Amin
Oh, there was, there was discussion. I remember, I remember there was. You know, we share everything like any responsible public company would with their board. And I remember one of the board members said, hey, we get this. We're really supportive of what you're trying to do, but how does your community react? I'm like, you know, that's a great question. Let's run it. The next day we ran out every one of our social channels from Instagram on down. We ran so many dicks and everything, we got 98% positive sentiment. Considers like, hey, this is why I buy Elf. You actually care. You care about a broader net of giving people a chance and empowering others. And this is why, yeah, we did get 2% that said, hey, there's nothing wrong with being Richard, Rick or Dick, but. But the vast majority of our community and that, that's actually the lens we use. And we were known for doing a lot of provocative things. We always use the lens we use is, number one, is this tied to our ethos and for us, Best of Beauty made accessible it absolutely diversity absolutely ties to ethos. Number two, do we have any authority on the topic? Being one of only five public companies with the board stats? We do. We absolutely have authority. And number three, how would our community respond? And so that's a great example of kind of how we view the world is it has to tie to our ethos, we have to have authority on this topic. And it's all gotta be about the community and how we're serving our community.
- [56:10]
Jack
Yeah.
- [56:11]
Nick
If you wanna know how Elf became the biggest mainstream beauty brand in America, it's cause they check the comments section.
- [56:19]
Jack
Nick and I usually wrap up episodes of our show by whipping up the takeaway. But as our esteemed guest, we're gonna let you. So Tarang Amin, what is the takeaway on Elf Beauty?
- [56:33]
Tarang Amin
The takeaway on Elf Beauty is making the best accessible to every eye, lip and face has been the cornerstone of our success for 21 years. And we do that by basically reflecting the communities we serve and listening to the communities we serve. And it's really that simple. And if you do that and have a passionate team of owners in a high performance team setting, anything's possible. Well, like we say, we like to say, anything's Elf ing possible.
- [56:59]
Nick
Well, Tarang, before you wipe off the hair and makeup, as we all must do in the dressing room after this, we have a few rapid fire questions for you before you go. First, the best brand that is not Elf or Rode, what is it?
- [57:12]
Jack
And it can't be any of your other subsidiaries.
- [57:14]
Tarang Amin
Okay, I won't name any of my subsidiaries. One of the brands I really like is Arteryx. I love their gear for outdoor. We love hiking and doing a lot of things outdoors. And so I love that brand.
- [57:24]
Jack
What's the best business book you've ever read?
- [57:26]
Tarang Amin
The best one is Joris Kearns Goodwin's Team of rivals, the political genius of Abraham Lincoln.
- [57:32]
Jack
Interesting. You call that a business book?
- [57:34]
Tarang Amin
It is, absolutely. It's one of the best leadership books I've read. And the mastery of his leadership, I think it's particularly important in these polarized times. And so I think I'm going to have to go back and reread it.
- [57:44]
Nick
Speaking of which, best business leader whom you admire.
- [57:47]
Tarang Amin
Oh my God. There's so many. I would say Jensen Huang. You know, if I think about it, he's. He's all this celebrity now with the success of Nvidia. But people forget he's been slogging it out for 20 years when a lot of his competitors are trying to put him out of business with real vision and then more important than vision, being able to lead and get it done.
- [58:08]
Jack
What's the best beauty hack for men and or women?
- [58:11]
Tarang Amin
You absolutely have to try our poreless putty primer. I mean look at this. I am 60 years old and I don't know. Could you tell with my skin?
- [58:19]
Jack
Well, no, actually. Can I ask you a serious question? I do have like pretty big forehead. I'm saying it, not you guys. I also have these big lights on me and they're pretty shiny. Do you recommend a product? I want to reduce the shine a little bit.
- [58:32]
Tarang Amin
Try our well people plant powered product, pressed powder. It'll do wonders for the shine. It'll make you feel great too.
- [58:39]
Jack
Thank you. Press powder.
- [58:40]
Nick
I don't even notice it. Check. I just want to throw that out there.
- [58:43]
Tarang Amin
All right.
- [58:43]
Nick
Tarang best dream collab that you have not done yet.
- [58:46]
Tarang Amin
Oh my God. We actually have this one you're going to have to stay tuned for. So we have two coming up in the next two weeks that I'm absolutely excited about. So. So your listeners are going to have to just stay, stay true to the collabs. We just actually previewed one of them in our town hall. Every two weeks we get the entire company together and we just said hey, don't spill the tea just yet. But by the reaction it's people are, it's going to kill it. And it's literally coming out in two weeks.
- [59:13]
Jack
Okay, and what is the best restaurant.
- [59:16]
Nick
In the Bay area?
- [59:16]
Tarang Amin
I love Kakari Elevated Greek. Can't go wrong with Kakari down the.
- [59:22]
Nick
Street from our studio. We'll see you there soon, Tarang. And if you, Tereng Amin, were a stock, what would be your own three or four letter stock ticker symbol?
- [59:30]
Jack
Can't be elf.
- [59:31]
Tarang Amin
It'd be one of two things It'd either be hpt, which stands for High Performance Teamwork. We didn't talk about it too much today, but I live by it. Or it'd be OT O D. One team, one dream.
- [59:44]
Nick
Do you have both of those tattooed on your biceps right now? Because you are very prepared for that answer.
- [59:49]
Jack
Tarang, you also look. You mentioned your age. 60 years.
- [59:52]
Nick
You look phenomenal.
- [59:53]
Jack
What is your morning skincare routine?
- [59:55]
Tarang Amin
Well, I think you know the importance of cleansing and hydration. Our holy hydration is my go to every morning. Well, hydrated skin does wonders. And then our suntouchables SPF product. Everybody needs spf and it's our invisible sunscreen. You gotta try that as well.
- [60:13]
Nick
Well, Tarang, we cannot wait to collab with you and Hayley on an ear chafing skin cream for these headphones that Jack and I deal with every day. So we'll keep that in the books for Q2.
- [60:24]
Jack
Tarang, you're a consummate professional and we admire your leadership. Thank you for coming on the show.
- [60:29]
Tarang Amin
Well, thanks for having me.
- [60:30]
Nick
Great to have.
- [60:38]
Noah
Hey, it's Raj and Noah, and we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [60:47]
Raj
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [60:49]
Noah
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [60:58]
Raj
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [61:06]
Noah
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [61:14]
Raj
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [61:22]
Jack
Love you.