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58 August 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com Beauty Store Business: Where did the idea—and name—for Poshly originate? DOREEN BLOCH: The idea for Poshly stemmed from my own experiences as a beauty consumer. I love cosmetics and fragrances, but was often overwhelmed by the number of products to choose from when shopping. Coming from a background in tech—I started my career at Yahoo! in the Silicon Valley—I thought there should be a way to apply a more data-driven approach to the beauty discovery experi- ence. Poshly was born at the intersection of beauty and technology. Before naming the company, I knew it would be important to get a domain name that matched. I wanted a name that evoked beauty and a great life- style—"posh" living came to mind—as well as something techie and cool—"ly" is a common tech ending. I was surprised to find that the domain name Poshly.com was not yet purchased! For those who have not visited Poshly.com, how does the site work? Consumers who visit Poshly.com can enter to win full-size products, deluxe samples and single-use samples from top brands by answering questions about themselves and their beauty rou- tines. As consumers engage more and more on Poshly, they learn about new products and receive samples and promo codes—free and customized to their unique needs. Brands and agencies that use Poshly are able to tap into "anonymized" and aggregated consumer insights that empower their decision-making through- out the product-development, marketing and sales processes. What are the odds of winning a beauty giveaway? Giveaways posted on Poshly.com tend to be pretty low volume. There are usu- ally one to 10 winners. This is great for brands because it gives them a low-cost way to promote to many consumers. More consumers are usually eligible to receive "Poshly Perks," which are sam- ples, or often full-sized products, that match the unique needs of a consumer. For example, we've worked with Dove to distribute its new Advanced Care deodorant, Cutex to send out samples of its Advanced Revival nail-polish remover and Benefit Cosmetics to mail deluxe samples of the POREfessional; these are received by thousands of members. Once you join Poshly, even if you're not the lucky winner of a giveaway, you'll typically receive complimentary prod- ucts within eight to 12 weeks. How many members do you currently have? Poshly has more than 200,000 consumer members and dozens of brand clients, including L'Oréal, Estée Lauder, SkinFix, Weleda, Cutex, Incoco and more. Where do the products come from that are given away? All the products come from brands and retailers that work with Poshly. What is your background in the tech/data and beauty industry? I began my career as a three-time intern at Yahoo! when I was in college at UC Berkeley in California. While I was in college, I founded one of the first col- legiate fashion publications called BARE magazine—featured recently by Teen VOGUE as one of the best college fashion magazines in the country! After graduat- ing, I moved to New York City to work at a financial technology company, but I really missed the more esthetic businesses of fashion and beauty. Coming up with the idea for Poshly enabled me to bring my passions for beauty and tech together. Who are the key personnel at Poshly? Bradley Falk is Poshly's chief technology officer. He is responsible for the entire Poshly technology stack. Prior to Poshly, he was an engineer at cosmetics brand Bare Escentuals. He brings a wealth of experi- ence from more than 15 years in the field. Belinda Chan is Poshly's chief client officer. She is responsible for pre- and post-sales processes with our brand clients, and came to Poshly from Digitas. She was actually a super-user of Poshly. com, and sent me an email in mid-2013 asking if we were hiring. She's a perfect fit for our team because of her account Poshly Acquires Coterie.com The official announcement that Poshly acquired Coterie.com came in June. "Poshly is a platform for private information about beauty, but our members have always asked for a way to communicate with each other about products and trends," said Poshly co-founder and CEO Doreen Bloch then. "We're excited that Coterie.com enhances our user experience and creates community by enabling beauty consumers to share and socialize." Coterie.com launched in April 2012 to make discovery and purchase of top beauty products communal and effortless. The website allows users to shop new and coveted products from their favorite brands, and encourages users to collect these products in a "Virtual Vanity," marketed as the world's first socialized beauty sharing platform. Coterie.com features more than 100,000 beauty products and 16,000 brands, and prior to its acquisition, the website partnered with 100-plus prestige brands to create exclusive social shopping experiences for consumers. As part of the deal, Coterie.com co-founders Catherine Magee and James Warner will join Poshly's Advisory Board. Magee brings more than 15 years of experience in marketing and strategy—most notably at Bare Escentuals, Visa and skincare company Rodan + Fields. Warner now serves as chief technology officer at Survata, a San Francisco-based market-research startup, and he has previously held key technical positions at Threadflip, Oracle and Amazon. Magee stated then, "We are thrilled that Coterie.com will help to further Poshly's vision of building the most comprehensive consumer insights technology platform for the beauty industry. We look forward to utilizing our expertise in the industry to contribute to Poshly's continued growth and success." Here's a short Q&A; with Bloch after the acquisition was announced: BSB: What does the recent acquisition mean for Poshly? BLOCH: The acquisition represents two core benefits for Poshly. First, we are so excited to enable our users to have a space to socialize beauty products. Consumers, especially in the beauty category, love to share their favorite products and advice, and Coterie.com is an incredible social network to centralize this kind of activity. Second, we're going to be able to leverage all of the brand and SKU-level information available on Coterie. com for Poshly's clients. We'll be able to see trends in usage and purchase, and connect this data with the physical and lifestyle attributes we aggregate on Poshly.com. Ho ill it affect current operations? There will not be any changes to staffing due to the acquisition, except that Coterie.com's co-founders Catherine Magee and James Warner will both be joining Poshly's Advisory Board. We are thrilled to have their expertise and passion contribute to Poshly's growth. Will members of either site be affected in any ay? In the future, there will be more cross-pollination between Coterie.com and Poshly.com. Coterie members will be able to seamlessly access product giveaways, and Poshly members will be able to seamlessly discover products and will be encouraged to share their favorites. Ho does this acquisition strengthen Poshly's position ith beauty brands? We know our clients want to have a granular view of the industry, and they want to see trends before those trends take off. Bringing Coterie.com under the Poshly umbrella enables our technology to access a whole new type of data. We're excited to match that data with our existing data sets to create a more powerful understanding of the beauty landscape in real-time for our clients. P o s h l y _ W h e r e B e a u t y M e e t s D a t a . i n d d 5 8 Poshly_Where Beauty Meets Data.indd 58 6 / 2 6 / 1 4 4 : 4 4 P M 6/26/14 4:44 PM