ve you got planned for the next financial year? Sarah Hamilton: It’s been nuts. It’s all about expansion for us. We haven’t launched a new product in over a year, [but now we have two new SKUs]. One’s a mask, the other is an exfoliating treatment. I think we’ve sold over 800,000 masks worldwide. The last year has been about product development, how we can create more ranges around Australian ingredients and how we expand our global footprint – we’re looking at Indonesia and India at the moment.  It’s about continuing to grow but engaging with the customers about what they want and almost refining the brand a bit. ‘Brand Australia’ and the colours are a big push for us. We’re excited for the next chapter all the products will bring, because you’ll see a lot more of the brand come through. The behind-the-scenes work will come to fruition in the next few months. IRW: I feel like new indie beauty brands are popping up all the time. How do you feel about the competitive landscape and how do you cut through it all? SH: It’s so funny. Beauty is really competitive. When we created Sand and Sky, we thought, ‘Where is there a gap in the market?’ We knew what we wanted – beautiful, fun products that work straight away. We looked at the black mask treatments everyone was doing at the time and the horrible stripping of the skin. Nobody had really heard of Australian pink clay, so despite the competitiveness, we found that gap. We just came on the back of that trend and also Korean Beauty which we love, but it is quite extensive and we really wanted to simplify things. So despite all the noise, rightly or wrongly, we found an area we could concentrate on, and the push of the brand from now on is to keep refining those niches.  You have to win your race. If you worry too much about what the competitors are doing, you won’t be true to your brand, so with all our new products, that’s what it’s about. IRW: There’s so much out there now. So much brand discovery is through social media and now if you’re in beauty, you’re competing with Rihanna and Kylie Jenner. SH: When we saw Kylie Skin coming out, we went, ‘Oh my God!’ It does seem like she’s very involved in product development and so is Rihanna. So yes, we’re competing against a celebrity, but again, you have to rely on your product being good. Despite all of that and especially because our first product went well – we know our customers loved it. So we just stood back. We didn’t need to be Kylie, we just needed a product that worked and resonated on social media. But we were laughing the other day when we were part of Amazon Prime Day and our mask was the 11th bestseller. And if you look at clay masks there, ours is four times the cost of anybody else’s! We didn’t expect or plan it – it’s amazing how it works.  IRW: Was it your first Amazon Prime Day? SH: Second. IRW: What did you learn from the first one? SH: Oh my God, we ran out of stock. This year was all about planning for Prime Day, so we had stock in three weeks prior. We focused on the US and UK and we have account managers, so we were working with them to work out deals. It was a much more coordinated attack. Right now, we have two staff members who work on Amazon – as of yesterday, we had our second. We had no idea last year, but this year, we were 120 per cent up on last year.  I love Amazon. Our point of view is we love people buying directly from us, so then we have a known relationship with the customer, but we can’t forget that people buy on Amazon. It’s convenient and we can’t deliver in one hour like they can. And we have lots of resellers, so if we’re on Amazon, we can protect our trademark and we kick off … Ten per cent of our sales are done there. IRW: Sand and Sky started off as direct-to-consumer and there are heaps of new D2C brands popping up these days. Why did you decide to go down that route? SH: Again, we really want to own the relationship with the customer and to control the channel. That engagement is so important for us, but retail is about us getting credibility on beauty brands, which is why we entered into it. Seventy per cent of our sales are direct to consumer and that’s our goal. IRW: Are you looking to grow that percentage SH: We’re going to keep growing revenue in that arm, but in terms of percentage, we like the retailers we work with. We’re working in China cross-border through a distributor, so it might change a little bit. We still want D2C to be the majority of what we do so we know what the customer wants, but in terms of how it all changes, we’ll see. IRW: What’s it been like creating a product that’s gone into so many different markets so quickly? Have you needed to tweak the product when it goes into different markets? SH: There’s a lot of work around compliance but because we launched wanting to sell in the EU, UK, Australia and the US, the compliance work you do in Europe helps you with everything else. We’re working with Indonesia Sephora, so they’re helping us through the regulation process. The list of documents they want are the same as the ones we’ve given to someone else. There are some language issues. In the EU we need 12 different translations; in Quebec, certain things need to be in French. We’re trying to create a universal packaging footprint, but it’s hard. We’re just trying to make it easier for ourselves, but there are different requirements everywhere. IRW: Tell me about A Beauty and the rising consumer interest in Australian brands.  SH: When Emily and I both lived overseas, as soon as we’d speak, people would ask, ‘Are you Australian?!’ They really love Australians overseas – I just found it so hilarious. So as we got into beauty, we changed packaging and now it has Australian landscapes on it. So many people want to travel to Australia but they can’t, so we wanted to bring them a bit of Australia.  To us, A Beauty is about that easy lifestyle – not the 11-step Korean routine, which is amazing but a lot of work. We want our products to work quickly. It’s about simple, natural, effective beauty products, sunshine, the beach….That’s how we started talking about it and we called it Oz Beauty to start, but then editors just took it up as A Beauty.  It’s kind of fun. We’re in among some amazing Autralian brands which are getting some cut-through at the moment, so it feels like something that’s happening. Then there are Australian brands like Jurlique and Aesop, which have been around for years. People think of Australia when they think of those brands. People can tell they’re effective and beautiful products. How many open homes do you go into that have a beautiful Aesop hand wash? IRW: How would you describe the beauty landscape at the moment? SH: It’s almost like there’s a divide – the big L’Oréals of the world versus these direct-to-consumer indie beauty brands that are coming through. It’s almost like the department stores versus Mecca or Adorebeauty. The assortment of products has just changed and it’s not a celebrity face that sells a brand anymore. Even when we ran Bellabox, [something] we wanted to break through was you’d go to a department store and buy $500 worth of product that you’d never use because you’re at a counter manned by that brand’s ambassador. Now it’s about beauty that suits you, and I think indie beauty has done that. It’s accessible, and it doesn’t need to be in Sephora for you to buy.  The bathroom ‘shelfie’ phenomenon [where customers take photos of the products on their shelves for Instagram] is full of different brands. Everyone wants cool brands, but they all need to be products that work. IRW: How would you describe the modern beauty customer? SH: They’re really discerning and they do research. When we first launched, we were really big on launching our reviews at the same time. You can’t have bad reviews – people just won’t buy your products. Do you follow Estée Laundry on Instagram? IRW: No, but I follow Diet Prada [a popular Instagram account that aims to expose copycat designers]. SH: Well, welcome to the beauty version of that. You never want to be on Estée Laundry! It’s the same as Diet Prada. People want to know what’s in your products. There is so much more scrutiny over what you put in products. And if they don’t work, then they’re upset. And they’re unforgiving.  Customers are more knowledgeable than before. They know what they want, they want to get it and they want to see those results, so you can’t overpromise, or you get a bad review. IRW: What lessons did you learn from Bellabox that you’ve implemented at Sand and Sky? SH: Probably that same lesson about customer service we were talking about is what we saw through Bellabox. Even though they paid $15 a month to get five products, they tried every single one; they gave feedback and if anything disappointed them – like if the cap wasn’t on – you’d know about it.  So social media is a great beast, but it can be terrifying. What’s the experience like? Does it work straight away?And I think that minimalist design is gone – people want personality out of their brands. If it’s just too vanilla, people won’t buy into it. At Bellabox, people wanted all that information and if there was no brand story, people said, ‘What’s this about?’ and they’d be even less forgiving.  Customer service is so big with Bellabox that it adds to straight away, go onto Instagram and Facebook and if you ignore it, you’ll suffer for it. A lot of brands have had a go at customers and we felt like it at some times at Bellabox, but we learned how powerful customer service is. People want to chat and be able to call you. So when we started a new brand, we made sure customer service was all covered and we were what people want. Now, we’ve had over two million samples worldwide with Sand and Sky. We love it – it’s so powerful. And now we have to make sure they’re happy with product. IRW: Tell me about Sand and Sky’s social media strategy? SH: The aim is to engage – to learn more about the people who we’re working with so to speak, like our customers.  We’re very analytical. We won’t post content our followers don’t like. We look at Instagram the same way we look at any part of the business – what works, what doesn’t, what people like – and we test various things all the time. It’s not just an expression of our brand. It’s also about ensuring the customer wants that content and how we engage with them. We’ll test colours, lifestyle and beauty content – we’re always testing and learning. IRW: When you started being stocked in major retailers, what lessons did you learn immediately after moving from direct-to-consumer? Not to be exclusive to any one retailer – we’ve screwed that up a couple of times!  – and to have an equal partnership. Our job is to build a brand and we’ve got a decent-sized brand, but we want the retailer to support us as well, so our products are not just sitting on a shelf or a site. That’s not how we want to work. Any partnership needs to be two-way, so we need to manage our expectations with the retailer – have a good relationship with them, understand what works for them and share our plans with them.  IRW: Do those insights impact the way you look at product development in the future? Completely. I find it so interesting. We have a self-tanner coming out in February and obviously we won’t push it in India. I was about to tell Sephora in India and said, “We have a new product coming out…which will have no relevance for you!’ When we did the mask in China, I realised it was actually quite active, whereas in the US and UK, the customers are all, ‘More, more, more!’ Those idiosyncrasies are interesting and completely affect product development. We have more products coming out and we’ll make them available to all regions, but we’ll push some things here, step back over there. It’s something we’ve always got at the back of our minds. IRW: What plans do you have for next year? SH: Apart from launching new products, we’re moving our site onto Shopify and trying to make it a better experience. We’re always trying to enhance it.  And we want to push more into the US market. We haven’t really focused on it, even though it’s our biggest market. Emily and I are going to LA, so the next year will be about building that team in LA. We’ve got a new PR in the US, because we’ve realised we have to do more in that market. It’s all happened naturally in the US without us ever focusing on it. It’s really exciting.