Sara Happ Inc. has appointed Peggy Fry as president to advance the pout specialist’s sales and technological capabilities while its namesake founder concentrates on product innovation, marketing and promotion.
The hire of Fry, who was an advisor to the brand before joining it full-time and has a resume studded with digital media and advertising executive roles at companies the likes of AOL, Netflix and AddThis, comes as Sara Happ is positioning itself to move from emerging player to established force. Its goal is to lift revenues 35% this year, prepare for a round of funding and release first-to-market lip merchandise that crosses over with the skincare category.
“When I met Peggy, what I was saw was the opportunity to radically shift the way we look our business and the beauty business in general because she had outside eyes. She wasn’t saying, ‘This is the way we’ve always done it at L’Oréal.’ She was looking at it through the experiences she had at Netflix, AOL and AddThis,” says Happ. “I thought that was fascinating because so many beauty companies are becoming essentially tech companies now. Glossier is essentially a tech company. That’s where everything is going.”
Fry welcomes the chance to peer at Sara Happ through digital lenses to help catapult it to the next level. “I love the idea of being able to take a company that already had great products and a loyal fan base of customers, and figuring out how to scale that,” she says. “At a startup, you learn to do a lot with very little. Sara was doing that. She was focused on profitability and being able to manage with very few people, but she arrived at a point where she said, ‘This is great, but I want to grow. I want to have lip world domination. How do we do that?’”
“When I met Peggy, what I was saw was the opportunity to radically shift the way we look our business and the beauty business in general because she had outside eyes. She wasn’t saying, ‘This is the way we’ve always done it at L’Oréal.’ She was looking at it through the experiences she had at Netflix, AOL and AddThis. I thought that was fascinating because so many beauty companies are becoming essentially tech companies now.”
Among Fry’s initial responses to Happ’s question are to amplify data collection and try outside-of-the-box initiatives she admits could stumble such as a smart labeling system that’s unusual for an indie brand. Sara Happ recently relaunched its website, instituted metrics and amped up customer retargeting. It’s also experimenting with BeautyCue’s near field communication (NFC) mobile engagement technology enabling shoppers to tap their cellphones to labels at store displays to trigger how-to videos and allowing the brand to begin an ongoing relationship with them.
“One of the keys is having data that measures everything in really simple and easy-to-access ways,” says Fry. Happ chimes in, “For me, the checks and balances are great. I actually love it when we nix an idea because the research and data says we shouldn’t go forward with it. Previously, I would do everything I wanted because it creatively felt right, but now we know more of what’s going to happen, and I sleep better at night.”
Happ’s spigot of creative merchandise concepts has certainly not been shut off. Last year, her brand tapped skincare ingredients for the lip space with the offerings Sweet Clay Lip Mask and Plump & Prime Lip Airbrush. Plump & Prime Lip Airbrush contains konjac and hyaluronic acid, and Sweet Clay Lip Mask combines bentonite clay with a Himalayan herb called swertiamarin. This year, Sara Happ continued the skincare theme with The Dream Slip, a product Happ describes as a face serum for the lips that has fatty acids, sweet almond oil and macadamia oil. The three items run from $28 to $32, elevating Sara Happ’s pricing from the $22 The Lip Scrub and $24 The Lip Slip that have been the brand’s mainstays.
“At a startup, you learn to do a lot with very little. Sara was doing that. She was focused on profitability and being able to manage with very few people, but she arrived at a point where she said, ‘This is great, but I want to grow. I want to have lip world domination. How do we do that?’”
“Let’s start treating your lips with a skincare regime that matches what you would do for your face, neck and body,” says Happ. “Everyone thinks of lip [products] as colors, glosses, balms and plumpers, but I know what the problems are with lips and can put skincare technology to work to address them. That allows us to look at more luxury channels.”
Currently, Sara Happ is available at 900-plus retail doors in the U.S., including at Bluemercury, Nordstrom, Anthropologie and J. Crew. Happ suggests the brand can increase its penetration in prestige retailers at home and abroad, where it has been strong in Japan and Canada, but has limited presence elsewhere. The brand is in the process of obtaining EU certification to set the stage for a distribution push in Europe.
Sara Happ has been profitable since 2005, the year it launched, according to Happ. However, the brand could pull back on profitability to fuel expansion. “We want to accelerate growth and profitably isn’t going to be our focus, it’s going to be growth,” says Fry. Meanwhile, she and Happ are getting their ducks – or, in their case, data – in a row to pursue investment. Fry says, “It’s important for us to really work with investors who bring something to the table, maybe that’s experience in addition to their money.”
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