Malin + Goetz CEO Bradley Horowitz on turning a brand into a lifestyle

Bradley Horowitz is a legend within the beauty retail sector. With over 25 years of strategic, sales, marketing and management experience, Horowitz has worked for brands including Clarins, L’Oréal, and Amorepacific.

The executive has built his reputation on understanding what the modern consumer is looking to purchase for their vanity table and medicine cabinets. Currently, Horowitz is leading the charge at Malin + Goetz, a gender-neutral skincare, fragrance, and lifestyle goods brand. 

Inside Retail spoke with the longtime beauty executive to learn more about his start in this hypercompetitive industry, the brand’s plans for international expansion and so much more. 

Inside Retail: How did you get your initial start in the beauty retail space?

Bradley Horowitz: My wife is from Philadelphia, so when I graduated from Syracuse University, I knew I wanted to find a job in Philly. Admittedly, I fell into the beauty industry in this way, as a matter of where I wanted to live. However, I quickly fell in love with the industry because it’s extremely creative and driven by innovation. 

IR: Can you walk us through your journey through the retail industry?

BH: I got my start at Liz Claiborne for a short period of time, and then grew up in the beauty industry with Clarins. 

Following my last role at Clarins as the president of the North American division, I went on to become the senior vice president of sales at L’Oréal. After a few years [with them], I started a consulting business, which was natural for me. At that point, I had accumulated a fair amount of experience in marketing and sales.

I had several great clients for four years, and then I got approached by Amorepacific, who was interested in bringing some of their larger brands from Asia over to Western markets.

I had studied their brand extensively and saw it had a tremendous amount of potential. During my time there, we grew it to nearly $50 million [in profit], and Laneige became one of the top 10 skincare brands at Sephora. 

Lastly, I left Amorepacific to be the first CEO of Malin + Goetz, which is owned by private equity, Manzanita Capital. 

Over the last six years, I’ve built the business up with a great leadership team, and we’ve had compounded annual growth rates of over 20 per cent every year for the last six years. 

The difference [in my current role] is that my responsibility is now global, whereas for Amorepacific, it was specific to North America. I enjoy building brands, alongside both the marketing and sales teams. I am excited about the innovation of the beauty industry and the impact that it has. 

IR: Aside from the aspect of working on a global level, what inspired you to switch over to Malin + Goetz? 

BH: I found the company to be interesting as a lifestyle brand. At Malin + Goetz, we sell across five categories; face, body, hair, candles and fragrance. 

I don’t see many brands in the beauty industry today that truly sell across five categories, and within our top 20 [best-selling items], we have products from all five categories. To me, that is lifestyle. 

If you walk into someone’s apartment in NYC, and they have a Malin + Goetz peppermint shampoo and cilantro conditioner in their shower, alongside a handwash at their sink, a candle in their living room, and are grabbing a lip balm on their way out the door, that is a lifestyle. 

People are living our brand this way globally; in London, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. I think that ultimately what excites me about this role is being able to create a global lifestyle and gender-neutral brand for people who live in cities.  

IR: Malin + Goetz has had quite a busy year, having opened up several locations in the US in the past six months alone. What are the company’s plans for international expansion?

BH: Today, we do about 50 per cent of our business outside of the US, and our approach is focused on cities. 

Rather than trying to win countries, we target cities, identifying specific places where we try to create a flywheel on multiple channels, including a freestanding store, wholesale account, online presence and so on. 

London is a great example of this – we have freestanding stores and are also in Space NK and Liberty. If someone is coming to London, and if we’re doing our job perfectly, there are many different touchpoints as to how they can interact with Malin + Goetz. This has been our strategy when looking at markets outside of the US, telling our story in target cities. 

IR: Out of curiosity, do you have any favourite scents amongst Malin + Goetz’s offerings? 

BH: I’m wearing the Malin + Goetz strawberry eau de parfum myself, and people ask me about it all the time. When I tell them it’s strawberry, they get surprised, but strawberry smells more like a garden – it’s not sweet like people anticipate it to be. I think part of our brand is to be unexpected. 

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