ELF Beauty’s CEO said he hops on TikTok Live to hear impatient customers demand new products from him.
On an episode of Rapid Response released on Monday, host Bob Safian asked ELF Beauty CEO Tarang Amin how he decides which new products are good long-term bets.
Amin replied that in the past, the company would launch a lot of products and hope people would buy them. But now, their model has changed, and he goes straight to his customers to ask them what they want.
His platform of choice is TikTok Live.
“One of the things my CMO does is she terrorizes me by taking me on TikTok Live every once in a while. She’s not even very nice about it,” Amin said to Safian. “She’ll say, ‘All right, you got the big boss here. Tell him what you want.’ And our community isn’t shy.”
Every time Aditi publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Aditi and get more of their work as it publishes.
Amin said that during one of his TikTok Live appearances last year, people told him they wanted a cheaper alternative to $38 bronzing drop product from another brand. And they wanted it soon, telling him in chats over the livestream, “No, boss man, we want them now.”
He said he left the call “a little traumatized” and called his R&D head afterward to ask whether there was a bronzing drop in the product launch pipeline. She replied that it was scheduled to be launched in 18 months.
“And I’m like, ‘Oh no. I cannot get yelled by our community on something they want.’ We introduced them six months later,” Amin said.
ELF Beauty, which owns Hailey Bieber’s clean beauty brand Rhode, is known for budget-friendly products like $5 concealers and $11 setting sprays. The company reported a 38% increase in its net sales in its latest quarter to $489.5 million, and its stock price is up about 20% in the past year.
Amin’s comments come as livestreams have become an essential component of e-commerce in recent years.
Streamers on platforms like TikTok Live, Amazon Live, eBay Live, and Whatnot promote products to their audiences on regular streams, offering discounts and answering product questions in real time.