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JuE Wong: Hi, I’m JuE Wong and I’m the CEO at Olaplex, and to me, It’s A Matter Of Technology.
Kelly Kovack: Leadership is hard to define, and good leadership, even harder. I’m Kelly Kovack, Founder of BeautyMatter. While there are more female CEOs in beauty today than there ever have been, men still dominate the C-Suite and boardroom, at least at the biggest companies. The women who have managed to break through the glass ceiling to reach the top of the org chart are using their influence to pave the way for other females to follow in their footsteps.
JuE Wong, CEO and Executive Board Member of Olaplex, is one of these women. She has a robust track record of scaling emerging brands and globalizing established ones. Considered a progressive executive capable of driving intrinsic change to increase value, she is a powerhouse that should not be defined by her gender.
So JuE, thank you so much for making the time to talk to us today.
JuE Wong: Thank you so much for having me. You’re a python in the business, Kelly, so I’m very fortunate I finally made it to your podcast.
Kelly Kovack: Well, that is incredibly kind. The feeling is mutual here; it’s an honor to have you. Let’s just dive in.
You are one of the most dynamic CEOs in the beauty industry, in my opinion, so I’m sure that there was no shortage of offers coming your way on a fairly regular basis. What was it about the Olaplex brand and business that made you take the helm?
JuE Wong: So, thank you so much for that question because, first and foremost, I cannot claim full credit. I think you have heard me say this before: I have been very fortunate. I have always had great teams behind me and Olaplex is no exception. In fact, this team has taught me more than I can ever teach them, so I feel very fortunate, firstly. Secondly, why I was so interested with Olaplex, as you can imagine, I was already the CEO at Moroccan Oil. Olaplex was always on my radar because it came in and took the market by storm. And when the brand went international, one of the world’s largest private equity firms called me to talk about their potential interest in Olaplex. I felt like the stars aligned and I was very interested to learn more. And then fast-forward, January 8, 2020, I joined them, and I have never looked back.
Kelly Kovack: It is one of those brands where it’s really kind of hard to recreate because it kind of came out of nowhere, and then it was word of mouth, and then it was everywhere. That doesn’t happen very often.
JuE Wong: That’s true. And the reason I think why Olaplex has such long staying power and it seemed like success was overnight, was really first and foremost led by its technology and its size. As you have heard us consistently sort of share in the investment community, we have well over 103 global patents, that truly allows us to differentiate not only in terms of performance, but in delivery and in capturing the community’s interest in staying with us. And what I find really, truly phenomenal about what Olaplex does is that it has all of the equities of color cosmetics, meaning that visually, you can see the difference in the very first use. But it has all of the equity of loyalty and longevity of skincare, where people when they find a product that works for them, they stay with them. And when you have the power of the two, loyalty and visibility in terms of transformation, it’s a match made in heaven for social media. And that is why I think we have been able to capture the imagination of the stylists, of the end consumers, and as well as all of the retailers on and offline.
Kelly Kovack: So you joined Olaplex in January 2020 and, three months later, the world as we know it disappeared. Crisis has a way of showing what real leadership is, and I was totally humbled by how quickly the professional side of the industry sort of closed ranks and took care of itself, not waiting for the government to step in, not waiting to see what might happen. I mean, it happened so fast. And I remember you graciously were on a webinar we had very early on in the pandemic to kind of get a touch base of what was happening on the professional side of the business. Your empathy for what they were going through was absolutely palpable. Given what we’ve experienced in the past couple of years, what are the skills that you believe are critical to being an effective leader during moments of crisis?
JuE Wong: Again, thank you for that question because it is very humbling as well for myself because I am sitting in a position where I have a job, I have a team, I have the opportunity to make a difference. Meanwhile, on the other end, one of my main customer bases, my main community for Olaplex, they were struggling. Salons were closed. It was a service-driven industry. And therefore, I think as leaders come into crisis mode, depending on the circumstances, always realize who you are serving. And in our case, we were serving the professional community. And if you profess to serve them, then what are you going to do for them? And for us, it was very logical that whatever we can do was to help them. Not to give them what I call charity, but really enable them to be better at what they do. And that was, when we started the affiliate program, allowing them to really dive deep into their client book and have their clients really support them. And what was amazing to me was the clients were not asking for special discounts or special packages to buy into our product line, but they knew paying the full price was allowing their hairdressers and their stylists and their colorists to get a commission, and a meaningful one at that.
So I think whatever crisis comes your way as a leader or as a team, really focus on what is the best you can do in that moment in time, and worry less about what it means in terms of press coverage or in terms of marketing because it’s like anything, if your heart is in the right place, it really captures the imagination and the support of the people that you really want to be part of your continual community.
Kelly Kovack: You know, it’s interesting because pre-pandemic, affiliate programs didn’t really exist for salon professionals. The way to purchase sort of professional beauty brands was really kind of old school: you bought it at the salon because the salons have always wanted that sort of exclusivity. So it was very antiquated in how they wanted you to purchase products. But I feel the pandemic kind of opened up the eyes of the salon industry to really put the power in the hands of the stylists. And I think most stylists hate to have to sell, but when there isn’t sort of that pressure to sell, it happens organically. And I think the affiliate programs that sort of were born out of the pandemic were really powerful.
JuE Wong: I could not agree with you more. I mean, this is a good example of emotional relevance. If you look at the professional community, especially our hairdressers, I think they hear more stories about their clients’ lives than a psychiatrist would, and yet, they don’t get paid like a psychiatrist gets paid. But because they are so empathetic in their own right, they understand what it means to really help their clients. And I always like to say this—my CFO always calls the relationship between the hairstylist and their client is one of a doctor-patient relationship. And if you think about it, they are actually more powerful than doctors. Why? Because before I go into a hair salon, I’m not Googling all kinds of things. I will let my stylist tell me what to do, what products to use in my hair; I listen to him or her. But when we go see a doctor, guess what? We’re Googling all our symptoms and the doctor is basically saying, stop, just come see me and I’ll diagnose you accordingly. So I feel like the emotional relevance, the emotional intelligence that the stylists exhibit really helped them through the pandemic on many levels. Because they understood when they were struggling, their clients were struggling too. It wasn’t a chip on their shoulder to say, I need all of the help and you guys can just help me. It was, how do I help you as well? And the nimbleness and the ability for them to be empathetic has all worked in their favor and in our favor as well.
Kelly Kovack: Yeah. I think all those at-home color kits that stylists put together during the pandemic had consumers—I’m one of them, I couldn’t wait to be back in the salon and not be in control of my own hair coloring.
JuE Wong: So if you think about it, there’s been so many people going in after the pandemic for color correction. And that’s the reason why there’s a new appreciation for their stylists. And I think in May 2020, less than three months into the lockdown, The New York Times did an article and polled a lot of their readers and asked, “What was one place that you don’t want it to be the new normal?” Because there was a new normal of working remote, a working culture or a hybrid system, a new normal of being more aware of self-care and well-being. But everybody said the one place that they want to go back to was their hair salon because nobody wanted to go back to coloring their own hair, cutting their own bangs and making a mess of it, and doing anything remotely that a hairstylist could do a hundred times better.
Kelly Kovack: I would say that among all beauty professionals, I never really realized how many human beings are involved with me maintaining myself.
JuE Wong: Absolutely. It’s a place where you always come out looking beautiful, feeling better about yourself, and that is priceless, right? The emotional sort of connection that you have and looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing that wow, I can look like my best self.
Kelly Kovack: Pre-pandemic, Olaplex really was primarily a professional brand and you had wildly loyal and, I mean, you have wildly loyal stylist followers. But even with the salons closed, your business grew, and you also expanded into more traditional consumer outlets. How did the business evolve during the pandemic? And how do you maintain sort of that salon-consumer distribution balance? Because it’s a tenuous one because professionals like to have sort of that exclusivity.
JuE Wong: So for Olaplex, what we have always recognized is that the community that we serve is the professional community. And this is why we have what we call our professional Rx, our professional prescription products that only licensed hairstylists and hair professionals can buy from their distributors or their beauty supply stores with a license. And that is what we call our back-bar products. The retail products allow them to give their clients the opportunity for at-home care. And if you think about especially in the US, and even globally in the international market, the majority of the hairstylist community is what we call single-payroll entities, and when you are a single-payroll entity it is very difficult for you to really generate awareness for yourself. So when Olaplex was able to make inroads into specialty retail and then also on our own Olaplex.com and direct-to-consumer with pure play, what we did was we amplified the brand awareness to a point that people will go into their hair professionals and ask for that service by name. It is quite rare when you walk into a salon and you say, I want that Olaplex treatment. And when you get that kind of an ask, it helps the hair professional to make a better living, right? Now they are no longer selling; it is a balance of power where the consumers are coming in asking for the products.
And so what Olaplex did very well was really looking at a synergistic reinforcing omnichannel, grounded by the professional that gives us the credibility, flagged by specialty retail that builds brand awareness, and direct-to-consumer, which includes our Olaplex.com, which gives us consumer insights and convenience for the consumer 24/7. The combination of these three channels essentially gave us that flywheel of communication marketing as well as community building. And I’ll give you very specific data. 35% of our customers are referred by our professional hairstylists and 50% of our direct-to-consumer also buy at retail as well as at their hair professionals, and this truly indicates and amplifies that our synergistic omnichannel is reinforcing, not only for the channels, but also for the professional community.
Kelly Kovack: Also, this omnichannel approach is sort of compounded by the growth in the premium haircare market. I mean, the haircare market is on fire right now. And Olaplex is—I hate to use the word disruptor because it’s so overused—but in the case of Olaplex, it’s really appropriate because they created the bond-building category; it didn’t exist before Olaplex. But the brand’s success fueled the emergence of this new category and then of course the competition followed. So how does Olaplex maintain its competitive advantage in the hair category? Because bond-building, now people understand what it is. Olaplex sort of defined the benefits and I guess the science of bond-building, so there are lots of imitators. But Olaplex still stands out as the category leader. So how do you maintain that?
JuE Wong: So, great question, Kelly. But first and foremost, let me just kind of define what hair bonds are. Hair bonds are hair agnostics, meaning you cannot tell the ethnicity of the individual, the gender, nor the age. So what I call that is foundational. If you want healthy hair, just like if you want healthy skin, you need to have a good foundation, a good canvas. And with us, by having that good foundation, it’s like having a house. If you don’t have a foundation, call off your architect and call off your interior designer; it’s useless. So while we may have attracted competition because of creating the bond-building category, and with our 103 global, worldwide patents, no one can make bond-building claims. They can have bond-building in their names. They can alert to the fact that they have bond-building benefits. But as soon as they infringe on our patents, you know what we will do: we will defend it vigorously.
Kelly Kovack: And you’ve been very successful at it.
JuE Wong: Yes. And the reason why is we would never want to compromise the hair professional who uses this bond-building technology in elevating their craft. If you think about it, before Olaplex, what happened? Every hair colorist was very nervous when they were going back to the sink and undoing the foils and seeing hair breakage from their clients. There is a reason why when you are in a hair salon, there is no mirror in front of the sink bowl because you would not want your client to see your face as you’re undoing those foils. And what happened was with Olaplex, that feel was gone. All they were focusing on was elevating their artistry and their color artistry or their chemical service artistry. When they did that, they knew the hair wasn’t going to break. They knew the bond was going to be repaired—the hair bond, that is, and that it was going to be strengthened. And when you give the hair professional that kind of mastery, it is very difficult for the competition to really come and insert themselves.
But what we welcome is competition that continues to develop products that truly deliver performance. Because now that you have a clear canvas and a great foundation, guess what? Whatever products that you’re going to use on your hair are going to perform that much better. So we are leading, we are shaping, and we are defining the haircare industry. We also know it is but just the beginning. The total term for global haircare is $77 billion dollars and you’ve seen from our last earnings call, we just scratch the surface with $598 million. So there is so much room for ourselves and the competition that we feel like this category will continue to be on fire.
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Olaplex is one of those products that really has cultlike status. In the early days, it was really sort of word of mouth, there was the mystique of it being developed in a garage. It really has that sort of Crème de la Mer narrative, when Crème de la Mer was one miracle cult cream, and it has insanely loyal professionals and consumers. It really has achieved the type of momentum that’s the holy grail for indie beauty brands. And sometimes even when you have that momentum, it can be a little elusive. How do you harness that type of brand love to scale a business? Because it’s one thing to kind of keep it going and get that initial hit in momentum, but sometimes it fades away.
JuE Wong: Absolutely, and this is a great question because this is something that all brands focus on and really want to give themselves the permission to understand where the balance of power is. In our case, the community we serve is the community that we also want to stay true to. And so when we are creating and developing and innovating products, there is a continuous feedback loop that is from the community that loves and supports us, and then we take those into consideration when we are developing our innovations as well as testing our innovations. Because we believe that real, live testing is a lot better than having it just done in a very focused, what we call clinical setting. We obviously do make clinical claims that we will do and run qualitative and quantitative research and clinical support to support the claims that we make, but ultimately, the products that we develop and introduce or launch into the marketplace have to serve a purpose. And it has to serve the community that wants products of that nature from us. So keeping ourselves focused, making sure that size and technology are what lead us, and then ultimately providing it to the community that truly wants those products is the continuous cycle of keeping us focused, honest, and always delivering.
Kelly Kovack: Just to build on that a little bit, now that you are in sort of traditional retail, very often the formula for growth is predicated on newness, which on some level with all of the conversations we’re having on sustainability, I feel like—I mean, maybe it’s just me, but brand and product launches have sort of reached this fever pitch. I don’t even know who’s buying all of this product any more. For a relatively mature brand, Olaplex has a very tight SKU assortment compared to competitors. I have to imagine this is completely intentional. So what is the philosophy that drives the cadence of new launches?
JuE Wong: Yeah, I mean, to build off my last answer, the way it is is that every launch for us is an A launch. There’s no such thing as a mediocre launch, right? And I also do believe when you come edit with that kind of an attitude, it helps everyone in your team to really focus on being the best of the best. And so we built an arsenal of base formulas and finished-goods formulas that is way out 2027, 2028 because we want to give ourselves the permission to look at products whether we can pull them forward or delay them if we choose to. But we have announced to the street that every year, we are looking at two to three new introductions, and one of which is going to be the professional back bar, specifically for the professionals to use in their services. When you have that kind of a focus and that kind of a mission and you’re launching two products retail and one pro a year, you have the luxury to really be the best that you can be, because we are not dependent on newness to drive growth. We are leaning on newness to showcase innovation and our commitment to our community.
Kelly Kovack: I want to build a little bit more off of—you mentioned culture a little bit. Olaplex started, as we said, in a garage in 2014, and last September was valued at $15 billion after a successful IPO. The culture of a business is often not discussed enough relative to its success. I read that when you joined the brand, you were employee 36, which relative to the brand’s revenue seems like a pretty small team. Can you share a little bit about the Olaplex culture?
JuE Wong: Absolutely. And you know, you talked about hating to use the word “disruptor.” It is, I mean, Olaplex disrupted every phase of business, from the way we innovate, which is through crowdsourcing and really a continuous feedback loop based on science and technology. We disrupted the way we are looking at going direct to our retailers to amplify our partnership but using distributors and sub-distributors where we needed to. And then really building our own Olaplex.com, where we not only help to educate, entertain, and do e-commerce, and then ultimately our remote work-from-home culture. The remote working culture when we started in 2014, I can tell you people probably thought, what was this all about, right? There was even conversations of building an office at some point. But when the pandemic hit, we became the leader in remote working culture, where everybody was talking how to get their team into a remote working space. We did not have to spend time talking about that. Instead, we were spending our energy and our calories in trying to help our community be better served. So I think on many levels, the culture of the company is one of can do. That nimbleness is a criteria to be successful, and that while we are building structure and discipline, we know that we always want to put on the entrepreneurial hat because that is what defines us. And we actually do a culture survey every year since I’ve been there. So in 2020, we did one at the end of 2020, we did another one in February of 2021, and we just recently finished one in 2022. And as we reported in our last earnings call, we have now about 106 people. When we did the first culture survey when I joined in 2020, or rather at the end of 2020, there were about 60 of us, and then there were about 80-something of us, and now there’s 106 of us.
In each of the successive culture surveys we had better participation, and well over 90% said they feel like this is a great place for them to work and they see themselves reflected in the environment. And so I am very fortunate that we are hiring people that want to be part of who we are and that we provide the opportunity for them to be successful in their own capacity. So I think the cultural piece of it is very important, not only to myself, but to everyone in the organization, because culture is not mandated on legislature. Culture is part of the company’s and the individual’s DNA and we are really very much about doing that and promoting that, and having a head of HR that is such a people person also is very helpful, because our head of HR, Heather Harper, really constantly reminds me as a leader that it’s not just about driving growth at the expense of people, but you really have to drive growth because of the people.
Kelly Kovack: I think another thing that culture sort of derives from is ESG initiatives. They’ve become top of mind during the pandemic, the requisite, I think, in businesses today. Some of them, I kind of think, feel like people are going through the motions. But the ones that are an extension of the brand’s DNA and the brand’s culture are the ones that I think sort of make the most profound impact. Can you share a little bit about your criteria for these sorts of initiatives at Olaplex?
JuE Wong: Yeah, so let me start off, ESG is a really hot topic, and I think a lot of people are looking into that and knowing and realizing that it’s no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. But if you look at Olaplex, even right from the beginning, before ESG was such a sought-after acronym, if you look at the mix of our employees and our community, PBA has noted that 80% of the professional community identified themselves as female and 41% identified themselves as racial minorities. At Olaplex, 77% of our employees identify as female and 46% are racial minorities. If you think about that, when people say mirror the community that you serve, we are actually mirroring that, right? If you look at our board composition, 82% of us are female and 18% are racial minorities. So it really speaks to you that we put our money where our mouth is; that is, in terms of governance.
When you look at our environmental footprint, Olaplex right from the get-go in 2014 has made a point not to put boxes in their primary packaging; no secondary packaging wherever possible. And when we do have one, it is because it is a set for the back bar, which is for the professional, or because the product is so small in terms of its primary packaging that the compliance documents and the callouts cannot be on the primary, it has to be on the box. But I’ve always been very proud of Olaplex. Since 2015, when we started measuring, up to the end of December 2021, we can document from an independent paper board through an independent environmental network that as a company, we have saved about 35 million pounds of greenhouse gas from being emitted into the environment. 57 million gallons of water from being wasted. And 44,000 trees from being deforested. What does 35 million pounds of greenhouse gas mean? It means 40 million miles of covered emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles is not being emitted. 57 million gallons of water represents a full-year supply of water for an average household in America of up to 5,000 average American households. When we are able to document that, I actually feel that if the beauty industry would all select one product from the line and not use a box, the impact to the environment is immediate. We do not have to pledge something in 2030, 2040. While we will still pledge because we are part of the whole program called Eco Partners. We believe that if we can all do that, think of the impact that we can do on our carbon footprint. Because sometimes I feel badly that if I pledge something all the way to 2030, I may be pledging for my team that is not even situated yet. So if I can do what I can do now, that would be so much more powerful than what I can do in the future because the future will take care of itself. We can do what we can do now. So ESG to us is second nature because to us, if we cannot do what we want, and what we can, we can do well and we can do good, then when are we going to get there? As you mentioned, we already have iconic status. Let’s use the reach and influence that we have to do better.
Kelly Kovack: I think that’s the most amazing thing about brands that have reached the status that you have when you all of a sudden change that and use it to do good, it is incredibly powerful. And it also provides a standard for other people to follow as well.
JuE Wong: I hope so. I mean, we don’t profess to be the most influential or have the most reach. We are still a small company by all counts. But what we really want to do is to be able to set an example for big and small companies to kind of say, it can be done. If we did that starting in 2015, measuring it and really starting from our inception, why can’t everybody do the same?
Kelly Kovack: So I’d love to end on a personal note, if that’s okay.
JuE Wong: Yes.
Kelly Kovack: You know, you’re such an inspiration as a leader, and I intentionally avoid the female descriptor because I believe you’re a powerhouse that should not be defined by gender. I think that you could go toe-to-toe with any male CEO in the beauty industry. While it’s getting there and things have definitely gotten better, there’s still not enough women in leadership positions in the beauty industry, especially considering that it’s an industry that serves women. For all those female CEOs in the making, can you share some of the lessons that you’ve learned?
JuE Wong: Thank you for the question, and I just want to preface it by saying, nobody should want to be like me. Everybody should want to be like themselves, because I think I have been very fortunate, I have mentors that have helped me along, and I have people that believed in me. Because as CEO, I have the authority, right, but for trust and respect, they have to be earned. So I always feel that for me to continue to do what I do, and I’m still learning, is that I always have to be mindful where the balance of power is. The balance of power is not in my hands, it’s in the hands of the people that support me. And I am always reminded of this saying on a bolo jacket that I saw not too long ago that says, “The power of the people is greater than all of the people in power.” And I’m always reminded of that because I serve at the pleasure of the people, and the day that I don’t deliver on what they need and want from me is the day that I retire.
Kelly Kovack: Is there anything that you’ve changed, kind of looking back at sort of your first CEO role to sort of how you lead today? I know there was one example that I read in an interview that at some point in your career, no one knew you were married, no one knew you had a child. You really compartmentalized your life because you felt like you had to.
JuE Wong: And that’s exactly where I came from. But I think my first CEO role was one of where I need to go back and apologize to everybody because I probably was impossible. I thought that I needed to know everything and did everything, but really, as a leader of any organization, your job is not to do everyone’s job better, because you can’t, even if you tried. Your job and my job as CEO is really to allow people to do their job bigger and better. And how do you do that? You facilitate. You push people to do more than what they think they can and then provide a net for them if they fall. Because you cannot push someone to the edge and tell them to jump if they do not know if there is a safety net for them. So for me, over the years, this is what I’ve learned: if you hire the best people to do the work, let them do it. Of course, sometimes it’s easier said than done. I tend to be very typical Asian, I still tend to helicopter around my people, my children, but at the same time, I also realize I cannot grow myself if I don’t let everyone grow as well.
Kelly Kovack: Well, JuE, thank you so much for taking the time. And also, you know, you were one of the CEOs in the industry that really makes the time not only to speak to media outlets, but participation in industry organizations and really sort of moving the industry forward, so thank you for making the time and making the industry a better place.
JuE Wong: Well, thank you Kelly for inviting me. You have more power in your hands than I would ever have. I mean, you meet with industry titans. And thank you for giving me a platform to at least share the little that I have, and I will always appreciate that opportunity.
Kelly Kovack: Thank you, JuE.
JuE Wong: Hi, I’m JuE Wong, and for me, It’s A Matter Of Technology. And the reason why I choose that word is because technology will help us build a stronger community.
Kelly Kovack: For JuE, It’s A Matter Of Technology. Leading the cult beauty brand that created the bomb-building category through COVID and a $1.6 billion IPO that value the brand at $15 billion, JuE leans on technology, long-term thinking, and the culture of team. Everything from navigating chaos to maintaining a competitive advantage, to people problems, modern organizations require diversity in thinking, ideas, and perspectives to uncover creative and innovative solutions to the layers of complicated challenges we face. So in the end, It’s A Matter Of Technology. I’m Kelly Kovack, see you next time.
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It’s A Matter Of is a production of BeautyMatter. You can find more content and insights on BeautyMatter.com, and follow us on social media.
