At The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2025, the third edition of the annual event held at Stanly Ranch in Napa Valley, California, industry leaders gathered to explore the most pressing, strategic shifts within the beauty industry. Front Row‘s chief revenue officer Christopher Skinner and Tatcha’s chief marketing officer Nicole Frusci joined BoF’s director of content strategy, Alice Gividen, for a fireside conversation on building a lasting beauty business in today’s fast-moving beauty landscape.
The beauty industry has seen a surge in brand launches in recent years, driven by celebrity founders, viral trends and influencer partnerships that also create intense competition for consumer attention. Yet, transforming initial buzz into lasting legacy remains one of the sector’s most complex challenges — particularly for heritage brands seeking to maintain cultural relevance without diluting their core DNA.
Tatcha, founded in 2009 by Vicky Tsai, built its reputation by translating centuries-old Japanese beauty rituals into modern luxury skin care formulations. Following its acquisition by Unilever Prestige in 2019, Tatcha has continued evolving while preserving its distinctive identity — a balance that has become increasingly difficult to achieve amid industry shifts.
Tatcha’s partnership with Front Row, a global accelerator specialising in e-commerce, marketing and creative strategy, represents a strategic approach to purpose-led brand reinvention. As a growth partner for beauty brands including Clarins, Ouai and Kosas, Front Row helps companies to scale their performance marketing efforts without compromising brand integrity.
“When brand and performance are built from the same centre, every touchpoint does more,” Skinner said after the event. “Because when a brand’s perspective is clear, and deeply felt, it builds lift.”
Anchored in Tatcha’s 16-year evolution, the session revealed how thoughtful reinvention can be a growth engine — offering practical insights for beauty leaders in attendance who are navigating their own inflection points.
Below, BoF shares key insights from Skinner and Frusci, on building enduring cultural relevance, unifying brand strategy across touchpoints and balancing heritage with contemporary consumer expectations.
Identifying the inflection point that calls for strategic reinvention
Nicole Frusci: When I joined Tatcha, we evaluated both the greater macro market and what was happening in beauty — from the deceleration of skin care to dupe culture. We were also moving from an exclusive relationship with Sephora into a multi-retailer approach, broadening our distribution and continuing to look at our global footprint.
This expansion meant more teams, more functions, more markets — all touching the brand. With more people touching the brand, we needed to get down to the roots and ensure that we had clarity and consistency across all touchpoints. As a result, we knew that we needed to sharpen our edge by protecting our products as well as elevating our brand experience.
Christopher Skinner: Brands are like pencils — decisions and changes in leadership slowly dull the pencil down. It takes bravery — if you recall those manual sharpeners in class — to stand up in front of the entire class and start to sharpen it. Ultimately, that is what we did with Tatcha.
Commercial strategy and brand strategy are about having a strong, unique point of view.
— Christopher Skinner, chief revenue officer at Front Row
At Front Row, we believe that commercial strategy and brand strategy are about having a strong, unique point of view. That is what brands need to get back to — that distinctive perspective that sets them apart.
Hone your brand DNA to find purpose
CS: For Tatcha, we landed on the idea of “intentional disruption.” Disruption doesn’t necessarily mean loudness — it means focused consistency. That really became our spirit, which we then evolved into a purpose. We all have spirits and energies, but to invite others to join us in that, you need to create a purpose that truly serves as an invitation.
NF: When you have a founder with incredible vision — like many founders here at Global Beauty Forum — there’s this intuition that drives everything. Vicky has had that for Tatcha for 15 years. So when working with Front Row, it was not about changing a purpose just for the sake of it — it became about going to the roots of what that purpose meant and what we wanted to transcend in the next 15 years.
Tatcha’s original purpose was: “To reawaken beauty from skin to soul.” [This] came from Vicky’s founder story of experiencing burnout on Wall Street that manifested as [acute dermatitis] on her skin.
This emotional territory of self-love guided our new purpose: “To inspire self-love as a quiet, lasting revolution.” People want to be part of something larger than themselves, so honing in on our purpose became the thread that united our team at Tatcha.
Weave brand story and strategy across all channels
CS: One of the biggest vulnerabilities we see is when a brand’s story and sales strategy work separately. Front Row is built around this philosophy of “connected commerce” — long gone is the omnichannel strategy where we have individual distribution channels with separate teams, budgets and tactics.
People want to be part of something larger than themselves, so honing in on our purpose became the thread that united our team at Tatcha.
— Nicole Frusci, chief marketing officer at Tatcha
Now, consumers are discovering, validating and converting across multiple channels simultaneously. “Connected commerce” means that every single aspect of the brand has to work in tandem with one another. Your teams need to work together, and brand equity building needs to work in harmony with execution.
Integrate a brand’s cultural heritage for competitive differentiation
NF: Japan is our strategic framework that differentiates us as a brand. We craft our products in our Tatcha Institute in Tokyo; our concept of intentionality and slowing down is rooted in Japanese principles; and as an organisation, one of our values is “omotenashi” — the selfless hospitality that we provide both our clients and partners.
Japan is the internal piece that guides our brand in navigating the cultural zeitgeist. For example, bag charms are having a moment right now, so for our latest campaign we created a bag charm character named Jiyū Chan from Tokyo. This puts us in the moment while remaining grounded in Tatcha and in Japan.
CS: If you can capture the DNA of a brand and its history while understanding what the consumer is looking for, that ultimately adds value. We don’t need playbooks; we need brands that have imagination, innovation and are committed to doing things differently, while respecting the needs of today’s consumer.
This is a sponsored feature paid for by Front Row as part of a BoF partnership.
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