Community Builder: A conversation with Sophia Dennis
For the launch of our new Community Builders series, we sat down for a conversation with Sophia Dennis, head of programming and brand strategy at Beautycon.
Dennis—daughter of beauty executive, financier and entrepreneur Richelieu Dennis who founded Sundial Brands—is a rising star in the beauty industry and is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of consumerism and media. She also is keenly intrigued by the idea of community building and its importance in the beauty space.
In the conversation, Dennis talks about how she defines a community builder, it’s importance in the beauty business and how the future of “community” will change in the face of Amazon’s growth in the beauty industry.
Drug Store News: What role has beauty played in your life?
Sophia Dennis: Oh, I would say a lot. I think for me it’s kind of been a way of life. I grew up in an environment where my whole family worked in a family business that was centered around beauty. And so I saw it as something that could be an economic potential for different groups of people, whether that be immigrant groups, women or whoever. I think in addition to that, also seeing it as something that is deeply cultural and something that is a product of so many different cultures interacting and engaging with one another.
DSN: In your role at Beautycon, how are you going to bring some of that into what you’re doing for the organization?
SD: When you’re at a Beautycon event and you’re watching the programming moments on stage and you’re listening to what we’re saying and what we’re talking about, you’re consuming that information, right? And so inherently, when you’re sitting down and you’re listening to our ‘state of beauty’ panel, which talks about sociopolitical issues through the lens of the beauty industry, such as sustainability, et cetera, you’re listening to those conversations and you’re now able to think ‘Oh wait, beauty is so much more complex than I thought.’
It was like, now I can think about beauty from an aspect of innovation. Now I can think about beauty from an aspect of globalization, et cetera. So kind of creating these moments within our events and within our content and with the people that we work with and all the different ways that we engage with our community that really challenge the status quo that tries to box beauty into be this superficial thing is really how we want to try to intellectualize beauty and how we do intellectualized beauty.
DSN: Amazon is projected to be the largest beauty retailer by 2025. What implications does that have for communities and community building?
SD: I think there’s a few things to point out. There’s the increase in affiliate links, which has to do with communities. So influencers are able to build and curate communities and then direct them to Amazon to purchase beauty products, et cetera, via affiliate links and then make some sort of commission because of those links. And so that’s an aspect that really drives sales for Amazon, and that is due to the community that these individual influencers are able to create.
And I think that it’s really often that the creators are able to earn some sort of trackable amount of money based on the amount of people that they are encouraging to go out and purchase a product based on their recommendation. Now the problem is that sometimes the product sold on Amazon can be inauthentic. So if you’re being led to an Amazon link, you might not necessarily be getting your product from the source you think you’re getting it from, and it may not be the authentic version of your product.
I’ve seen it a lot as I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of, for example, sunscreen. That’ll be like the most important thing because that’s a product that has to go through testing in order to get an SPF clearance. You have to go through different regulating bodies, so if you’re buying a counterfeit sunscreen it’s significantly worse than buying a counterfeit body wash.
A body wash is just supposed to clean you. A sunscreen is supposed to give you a level of protection and make you more secure from sun cancer or whatever the case may be. So that is an issue sometimes with larger retailers where there are less regulations on the actual products being listed on the platform and whether or not they’re coming from the actual retailer that you think they’re coming from. That can have a negative impact on the communities that are looking for those products.
DSN: What role, if any, can [Beautycon] play in supporting regional and local retailers?
SD: For us, events are our bread and butter. And so I would love to partner with brick and mortar stores and to do events there. I think that is definitely a way Beautycon can support smaller stores via content, social media, takeovers and different types of partnerships. There are so many different ways for us to support stores.
We are definitely a brand and a company that is interested in promoting small businesses and discussing how the landscape has changed for small businesses, especially post-COVID.
DSN: What does the future hold for Beautycon and how do you plan to expand?
SD: We plan to expand in every way, shape and form. We actually just launched our Beauty Confidentials program. And we’ve had an overwhelming amount of support for that so far.
I’m very excited about that. It’s basically a brand ambassador program where we partner with micro influencers that we’ve sourced through our social media and larger brands to produce content. So I’m super excited about that and super excited to build that out to actually be a very substantial leg of this business. I feel like it would be pretty unexpected and pretty unique. I’m a big ideas girl, so I’m constantly innovating and coming up with new ways to make the business what it needs to be in order to support the community that it has to grow and reach new communities and new audiences. So I think the future is limitless. I’m super excited that we’ve got so many things that we’re working on and so many things that we’re reshaping.
