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Two years after its collapse, Beautycon is poised for a comeback this September in Los Angeles. The big-impact beauty festival, which was first staged in 2011 and became known for its emphasis on inclusivity, was, for many years, a must-attend event, with stalls from Mac Cosmetics, Bobbi Brown and Anastasia Beverly Hills and appearances from the likes of Lizzo, Zendaya and Snoop Dogg.
The demise of Beautycon was equally high-profile. CEO and co-founder Moj Mahdara exited, employees were laid off, and allegations circulated of a toxic corporate culture.
The revived Beautycon has a new owner, Essence Ventures. In May 2021, the Black-owned private equity firm founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richelieu Dennis — which also owns Essence, a lifestyle magazine targeted primarily at African-American women — acquired Beautycon’s assets, including its name, website and extensive list of customers, in a foreclosure sale after the media company filed for an “assignment for the benefit of creditors” (ABC) process; an alternative to bankruptcy.
The re-imagined event will take place from 16-17 September in partnership with Walmart. Los Angeles is the first location, but Essence Ventures has ambitious plans to expand Beautycon internationally. There’s a new brand identity, including a refreshed tagline — “rally the rising beauty rebels” — and a logo that features a sideways heart.
This time around, there’s a strong focus on online engagement and reach. Other event brands from Essence Ventures’s portfolio, such as the Afropunk and Essence Studios festivals, will take part (Essence says it is focused on “merging content, community and commerce” and “endeavours to give ownership to Black communities”). “It will be a festival where all our brands show up uniquely. I think that’s a value proposition that not a lot of other companies can bring,” says Erika Bennett, who joined Essence Ventures in May 2022 as its first-ever CMO.
Bennett has experience in entertainment and community leadership from five years working at YouTube (2017-21) and Instagram (2021-22). That is being put to good use with Essence Ventures’s mission: creating equity for communities. Beautycon is one example of that. “[It’s] really about people and putting consumers first. Consumers are not just looking for a brand that puts out a great lip gloss. There has to be purpose and social impact.”
It may take time to rebuild Beautycon, experts say. The absence of Mahdara, so closely and personally connected to the event, is one issue. Also, Beautycon’s original proposition and emphasis on inclusivity have arguably less traction as a unique selling point at a time when inclusivity has become a top priority for beauty companies. And there’s competition: in recent years, retailers have launched festivals of their own, including Sephora’s Sephoria, Mecca’s Meccaland and QVC’s Beauty Bash.
Internal struggles
Beautycon began in 2011 as a small-scale, invite-only meetup hosted by Marina Curry as part of the Beauty and Fashion Vloggers Alliance. It attracted a few dozen beauty bloggers at the YouTube studios in Los Angeles.
That all changed with the arrival of Jonathon Burford in 2013 as creative director and Mahdara in 2014 as CEO. Under the two executives, Beautycon Media was formed. Applying the fandom and experience associated with events such as Comic Con, they turned Beautycon into a money-spinning festival that took place across Los Angeles, New York, London, Dubai and Tokyo and thrived on ticket sales and partnership deals, alongside subscription boxes and e-commerce.
At its peak, Beautycon brought together thought leaders, artists and representatives such as Alok Vaid-Menon, Lizzo, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton, Amanda Gorman and Arianna Huffington. Stars like Zendaya spoke about colourism in Hollywood; Snoop Dogg talked about the culture of hair and the impact of minorities on creative energy and beauty; Tracee Ellis Ross discussed the male gaze; and Jonathan Van Ness spoke about non-binary and trans inclusion.
Most attendees were Gen Z, eager to receive free samples of a buzzy brand or a chance to see their favourite celebrity up close. Event revenues grew from $9 million in 2015 to $16 million by mid-2016, according to a report by Forbes (the new owners declined to comment on past revenues).
After a two-year hiatus, events are returning to their pre-pandemic boom. With big marketing budgets, how can beauty brands cut through the noise with their values intact?
“We wanted to build and support a community of creators with beauty at the centre of it,” Burford tells Vogue Business (he departed the business before its collapse to focus on other projects). “Makeup and skincare is an accessible and universal tool for self-expression. I’m proud of our work with Beautycon and championing the idea of the ‘other’ communities who were otherwise being ignored by the industry. I’m mixed race from Trinidad, and Moj is Iranian. We’re both queer. We wanted to create a space for people like us by building a platform for everyone.”
However, challenges began to mount up in 2019. Events are cash-intensive and require operating capital in addition to a huge amount of cash flow. “I remember feeling this constant urge from key stakeholders to scale, but growth takes more capital, and it also puts increased pressure on your team,” recalls Mahdara.
The quality of its events began to suffer. There were also complaints about the internal company culture, which were shared via an anonymous Instagram account, later revealed to be operated by a group of former Beautycon employees. Among the posts were screenshots of the company’s negative Glassdoor reviews and an IGTV video by American influencer and makeup artist Patrick Starrr calling the festival “an organised mess”.
“We were under tremendous pressure from investors. It was hard for everyone to bring their best selves in an environment that was so constrained financially. The organisation suffered because we could not hire, we had to let go of people, and the existing team was stretched very thin,” says Mahdara. The arrival of Covid in early 2020 was a final blow. “We had to drastically cut back on our retail plans, e-commerce and cancel our Tokyo, Middle East and China expansion. We were faced with the difficult choice to do widespread layoffs.”
Much had to do with the company’s financial partners, who “seemed to be aligned with our values, but ultimately weren’t aligned with our ethos or the interest of equity stakeholders and employees”, believes Mahdara. It made the company vulnerable to investors who ended up calling in loans, she says. “We had multiple offers to sell Beautycon, but they were always thwarted. We couldn’t bring in new money; we couldn’t exit; we were stuck.” It led her to make the “difficult” choice of putting the company into a trust to protect its creditors.
The experience was a big learning curve for the entrepreneur, who now leads non-profit org BeautyUnited and runs VC fund Kinship Ventures with Gwyneth Paltrow. “My biggest recommendation to anyone who takes investment is to always meet with other founders who have worked with those investors. Find out how they support brands when times are tough,” says Mahdara. “You have to look closely at everyone you bring in.”
Moving forward
Despite Beautycon’s rocky history, Bennett is optimistic. “We will continue to play an active role in moving the definition of beauty forward and empowering consumers to define beauty on their own terms,” she says. There’s still plenty of work to do: many consumers still try to “live up to standards that don’t exist, driven by airbrushing, filters and being dictated by a small handful of companies”, she points out.
Bennett says Beautycon can make a difference by facilitating conversations and forming new relationships between brands, creators and customers. “When you look at the landscape, there are brands that may be inclusive in their perspective of beauty but are passive about how they push that point of view forward. We still see a big gap for brands that want to push the category and culture forward. That’s the sweet spot for Beautycon.”
Separate to Beautycon — and to drum up excitement for in-person experiences — Essence Ventures will host its rebranded Festival of Culture event in partnership with Coca-Cola in New Orleans from 29 June to 3 July. This annual music festival was launched in 1995 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Essence magazine and has become a regular event. “It’s one of the largest festivals in the country by per-day attendance,” says Bennett. “It’s also our first touchpoint to get consumers really excited about Beautycon.”
For Beautycon in September, there will also be an emphasis on online engagement, says Bennett. “Beautycon carved out an incredible space in real life. What’s different now is that we’re looking at it as a brand with multiple touchpoints. We are showing up in interesting spaces for people to connect, but we also want to create an incredible community online and become a 360-degree platform that is always on.”
The goal is to create a constant flow of dialogue. “There will be dynamic beauty conversations and an opportunity to connect directly with brands,” says Bennett. “I know that samples were a big part of the last iterations of Beautycon, but we’re also thinking about the experience and how to drive more consumer-to-consumer connection and how we can bring influencers to meet with consumers in a more interactive and engaging way. We want to facilitate those dialogues and ensure that people walk away with a more solidified definition of beauty.”
The inclusive agenda is emphasised by Bennett. “Radical inclusion is important to us,” she says. “Every curl pattern, skin type, skin tone, age, gender identity and expression of life is welcome at Beautycon. You’ll see that reflected in our creative [output] and how we embrace consumers.”
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