Indie Beauty Media Group is enhancing its educational programming with the introduction of BeautyX, an evolution of its CONNECT INDIE initiative providing knowledge and resources to beauty entrepreneurs through panel discussions and classes.
BeautyX will kick off in Los Angeles from Jan. 22 to 23 with a focus on the press and influencer landscape. IBMG, producer of Indie Beauty Expo trade and consumer shows spotlighting independent beauty, lifestyle and wellness brands, will be partnering with media company Condé Nast on the inaugural summit to bring insights from leading beauty editors as well as other notable figures to an audience expected to reach 200 people.
“BeautyX supports entrepreneurial learning whether you are an indie brand, thinking about launching an indie brand or larger company considering developing a smaller, entrepreneurial operation inside your business,” says Nader Naeymi-Rad, co-founder of IBMG. “From the very beginning, we built a platform for beauty entrepreneurs. We started with trade and consumer shows, then developed the digital publication Beauty Independent and our retail partnerships. Ongoing business education is the next piece of the puzzle, and it really brings IBMG’s expertise to the fore.”
Tickets for the debut BeautyX are priced at $825 each, and IBE L.A. exhibitors a receive 20% off discount. Following the summit’s L.A. edition, BeautyX will travel to Dallas from May 7 to 8, where it will delve into retail and e-commerce distribution, and New York from Aug. 20 to 21 with programming centered on capital and finance. BeautyX follows IBMG’s establishment of CONNECT INDIE in L.A. and New York in N.Y. in January and August, respectively. Together, the events drew 600 attendees.
“Despite the great start, we purposely have very conservative goals for BeautyX. Everything we’ve done at IBE hasn’t been to maximize profit, but to address an unmet need, and we are doing the same thing with BeautyX,” says Naeymi-Rad. “We know the price isn’t inexpensive, but it compares favorably to other events that charge easily twice as much for this caliber of programming in a major metropolitan venue.”
At BeautyX’s premiere in L.A., IBMG will present a Deskside Domination contest during which a select number of IBE L.A. exhibitors will pitch their brands to a panel of top beauty editors. The brands will receive feedback on how to win over members of the media.
Beyond the Deskside Domination contest and panel discussions, BeautyX’s structured courses containing beginner, intermediate and advanced material foster intimate environments for learning. Entrepreneurs are privy to instruction from authorities in specific fields and can share experiences with classmates facing similar challenges to them.
“Many conference organizers shy away from producing their own content and instead rely almost entirely on presenters and panelists for material. That can be disjointed and often creates inconsistencies. We believe entrepreneurs need classes where they can sit down and immerse themselves in a topic, learn the fundamentals and understand the vocabulary. Once they do that, they are ready to digest advanced topics from expert panels,” says Naeymi-Rad. “People really want to learn more and wanted real-life case studies on particular topics, so that’s why we’ve leveraged our incredible depth of content at Beauty Independent for BeautyX. They fit one another perfectly.”
As BeautyX matures, IBMG plans to expand it to cities across the country and in Europe with shorter satellite summits. Work-life balance could be a potential topic for a satellite BeautyX. Naeymi-Rad says, “We want to build a network across the U.S. and Europe in cities like San Francisco and Denver where there’s a lot of entrepreneurs, but those entrepreneurs may not be able to fly to L.A., New York or Dallas. They are hungry for business education, too.”
Jillian Wright, who founded IBMG with Naeymi-Rad in 2015, concludes, “Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, and we want to change that. Together, Indie Beauty Expo, Beauty Independent and BeautyX offer beauty entrepreneurs a cutting-edge, knowledge-rich, vibrant and supportive community that now addresses their market access, news, business learning and networking needs, all year, in-person or remotely, from coast-to-coast.”
