Beautiful people

It wasn’t exactly duelling lipsticks at 100 paces when Robin Coe-Hutshing was asked to meet business competitor Jo Horgan. But there was no need for warpaint.

ROBIN Coe-Hutshing is owner and creative director of the pioneering California-based beauty retailer Studio BeautyMix, which she opened in 1984. She reluctantly met Jo Horgan, founder of the Australian beauty retailer Mecca Cosmetica at the behest of none other than Leonard Lauder (son of Estee and former chief executive of the cosmetics giant).

Competiton between beauty companies is notoriously fierce, to the point of being war-like. The idea, therefore, that two competitors could actually work together in a mentoring relationship seems almost heretical, but that’s exactly what Coe-Hutshing and Horgan do.

David Meagher: Why were you so reluctant to meet Jo?
Robin Coe-Hutshing: I’ve been asked 10,000 times to help people with respective business ideas. I got a message on my voicemail from Leonard Lauder’s office asking me if I would meet this woman from Australia who was starting a beauty boutique and could I possibly give her some advice. So instantly I had a notion that it was some tragic figure who was starting some ye olde soap shop, but because it was coming from Leonard Lauder of course I said yes. I put a caveat on it like you would on a blind date:  I said I only had an hour to spare and that I had a very important meeting scheduled after it. But I met her and I immediately fell deeply in love with her and thought she was a genius
Jo Horgan: Leonard came to Australia for the 2000 Olympics when Mecca was about 2½ years old and
I think what he saw was that we were approaching the customer experience in the same way. We were bringing a similar group of varied brands together in an open selling environment and putting the customer in charge of their journey through the store.

DM: What do you talk about?
JH: We have very long telephone conversations and we talk about everything. What do you think of this? Do you think such and such will work?
RCH: We basically compare notes on everything.

DM: As this is your first visit to Australia what do you now think about the Mecca stores?
RCH: I’m beyond dazzled by what Jo has done. I think she’s a visionary and I’m not just saying that. The business model that Mecca and Kit [Cosmetics] have where you are also the distributor for the brand within the Australian market is brilliant. Obviously there is room for improvement everywhere but as a whole
I think it is genius. Jo does such an amazing job of showcasing brands the way they are meant to be, which
I think is an art form that is lost in so many venues. When I got to the store today and I saw the visual
merchandising for Memoire Liquide [Coe-Hutshing’s own line of perfumes] I thought it was better than what we did for our own store.

DM: Jo, did you know of Studio BeautyMix before you launched Mecca Cosmetica?
JH: I’d been into Robin’s store as Studio BeautyMix was really the precursor to this whole industry. I think that’s why Leonard wanted to introduce me to her, because she’s the queen of the independent cosmetics scene who, 25 years ago, came up with this concept at a time when no small brand had the ability to go into any retail environment and be able to connect with their customer effectively. Department stores in America had a very structured model of counter selling of big brands and there was really no platform for the creativity that was coming out of the market.
RCH: When we started there were no independent brands, just our own bespoke perfumery and a few other brands such as Kiehl’s. We were the first to launch Origins and we were the first to launch Bobbi Brown on the West Coast, when it was just six lipsticks and four foundations. We launched these brands out of the gutter and into our store but they weren’t the brands they are now.

DM: Is there competition between the two businesses?
RCH: I actually think Jo is trying to kill me [laughs].
JH: I don’t think Robin has any aspirations to open retail in Australia, I know I don’t have any aspirations to open in the US, so I think we are relatively separate on the retail front. I do think when you get people who are genuinely passionate about what they do it’s almost like a hobby and you talk to people about things you are both so interested in. We stock one another’s products so we’ve gone from being theoretical competitors, albeit in different markets, to actually working together on brands such as Burn and Memoire Liquide.

DM: What will the future of beauty retailing look like?
RCH: You always have to be looking for your next thing.
I wrote a treatment for a reality show and at that point I had never actually seen a reality show. It’s called Beauty Call, which I now realise is somewhere between The Apprentice, American Idol and Project Runway. I showed the treatment to an agent and it’s actually in the early stages of development. The whole thing comes out of how humorous and amazing some of the people who visit us on a regular basis are, some with really great products and some with really ridiculous products. The prize is that our company will help them produce their brand, get their product to market. We’ll also stock it in our store and on our site. So our next retail experiment is going to be something of this nature if all goes according to plan.
JH: Wow! This is what I meant when I said Robin is a visionary. I think we are just going to change the door handles on our stores or something. I think that every single moment you do have to look at your business and think how you’re going to improve it, change it, make it more relevant. We continue to ask ourselves is there some other way the consumer would like to shop. When it comes to the internet our next step is to introduce the customer review process. I love that because I think it’s democratic.
RCH: Of course you realise that there is a certain percentage that says more people write when they have a complaint than they do when they have a compliment?