Beauty Independent To Launch C*Suite Summit To Help Beauty Executives Navigate Growth’s Most Challenging Stage
After piloting it in April, Beauty Independent is officially launching C*Suite Summit, a two-day forum running from March 30 to 31 in New York City directed at beauty and wellness executives navigating one of the most difficult stages of growth, the transition from proven concept to scalable enterprise.
This stage of growth is both promising and unforgiving. Brands are growing rapidly, assembling teams with new skill sets and layering on greater complexity. At the same time, leaders face mounting pressure to preserve momentum while building the operational foundations for long-term value. It’s an inflection point filled with opportunity, but carries the potential for the wrong moves to cause lasting consequences. The C*Suite Summit is designed to give leaders the space to wrestle with those choices openly and walk away with practical strategies for scale.
According to Beauty Independent founder and publisher Nader Naeymi-Rad, the idea for C*Suite Summit emerged from conversations with founders, operators and investors. “Again and again, executives voiced the same need: specific, practical insights tailored to beauty and wellness brands at this exact stage of their life cycle,” he explains.
The initial pilot demonstrated the idea has legs. Each participant completed a detailed survey ahead of the event, providing data on their company’s growth, challenges and priorities. Once anonymized and amalgamated, insights from the surveys informed benchmarks that attendees are now actively using to shape budgeting, forecasting and board-level decisions. Naeymi-Rad says, “The pilot’s outcomes—peer exchange, faculty perspective and relevant benchmarks—validated the C*Suite Summit as an essential, ongoing forum for the industry’s top operators.”
Participants of the pilot described the program as unlike any other event in beauty. “We gained invaluable insights and had meaningful discussions around managing an independent business through its lifecycle. Very real and applicable for the whole C-Suite,” says Jill Scalamandre CEO of Beekman 1802. Zack Zavalydriga, Board Advisor at Yellow Wood Partners, said it was: “the most relevant brand-building and M&A content I’ve seen in 2 plus years of beauty—essential for any brand looking to scale toward an exit.”
Sandy Saputo, CEO of True Botanicals said the content-rich event had “the right mix of people and delivered unique data and insights on topics that actually matter to operators.”
For the C*Suite Summit program, Beauty Independent has curated a faculty of seasoned operators, transaction specialists and industry leaders who act not just as panelists and speakers, but also as thought partners supplying candid feedback for attendees. These veterans, who have deep experience scaling and exiting brands, help shape the agenda and participate directly in discussions, offering perspectives that are both hard-won and highly relevant.
By convening a select group of established leaders, C*Suite Summit aims to deliver what’s been missing in the beauty industry: a clear, collective playbook for scaling from early growth to global relevance. “This is not a generalist conference or a trends showcase,” says Naeymi-Rad. “It’s a precision-built forum for brand leaders who need to maintain momentum, avoid costly missteps and make the critical decisions that determine whether their company scales or stalls.”
The C*Suite Summit doesn’t have open ticketing. Attendance is by invitation or application only to ensure that every participant is a leader facing similar challenges. Interested executives can inquire to apply via the C*Suite Summit website, after which a member of the Beauty Independent team will respond with more details.
