As part of our mission to inspire everyone to express their unique beauty, we have spent the last few years focused on expanding our business to be able to delight our community through different beauty touchpoints and experiences. This includes enhancing our IPSY membership offerings, welcoming BoxyCharm into our family, launching our Refreshments personal care brand, and building the beloved brands within our Madeby Collective portfolio. We’ve been able to build an incredible portfolio of brands and are now hyper focused on how we can continue to integrate our teams and processes, creating more unification and alignment around our key strategic initiatives. With this focus we have decided to make some organizational changes and I have shared the following message with our entire team this morning.
Dear BFA Team,
As you know, we have always been a company that celebrates self expression and communicates honestly and respectfully. With that in mind, I want to make sure I express myself clearly, compassionately, and with maximum transparency. Today, we are making the hard decision to reduce our team, which impacts some of our great friends and colleagues. I am going to share as much as I can on what’s changing, what’s happening for those impacted, and what to expect.
No one could have ever predicted these past two years or the amazing response our team has had to adversity. In the midst of a seemingly endless pandemic and with everything we’ve had to go through, I’ve been so impressed with everyone’s dedication and commitment to this company, our brand partners and our members. I can’t express enough how grateful I am for the unbelievable work that you’ve all done to get us where we are.
In the last year alone, we’ve acquired BoxyCharm, launched Refreshments & Tresluce, expanded Madeby Collective, and so much more. We’ve also learned a lot, like how to work together and how to quickly pivot in an ever evolving macro environment. As we look to 2022 and continue to evolve the business, we have decided to rethink our organizational structure and focus.
What’s changing:
- IPSY & BoxyCharm Centralization: Based on our learnings over the past few months, we are further integrating IPSY and BoxyCharm functions for more knowledge sharing and efficiency. To better support our brand partners and streamline communication, we will have one centralized Brand Partnerships and Merchandising team offering a complete membership portfolio and set of services. We will also be integrating more of the IPSY and BoxyCharm Brand teams, creating centralized production, creator partnerships, creative and channel marketing teams.
- Refreshments & Madeby Unification: We are bringing these two strong business units together to create one unified “Owned Brands'' team. This will help us streamline product development, brand, and sourcing teams and processes. It will also allow us to continue to invest in growing, promoting, and expanding these brands within IPSY and BoxyCharm and through new retail partners.
- Strategic Priorities: As we maneuver through the headwinds of supply chain issues and evolving market conditions, we need to be laser focused on our 2022 strategic initiatives, which we outlined in our last all-hands strategy meeting. As part of this hyper focus, we will reduce the number of initiatives and associated resources to ensure that we are aligned across every single team member to maximize our impact towards our key objectives.
Employee impact:
This shift means we are sadly saying goodbye to some of our team members, which is extremely hard because these are our friends and colleagues who have been such a big part of our BFA team. I want you all to know that these decisions are not specifically a result of anyone's work or dedication, but are based on a variety of factors that allow us to better integrate our teams and align the organization to our new strategic initiatives. I personally want to share my immense gratitude to those who are leaving and make sure we care for and provide the softest landing for our fellow colleagues. Here is what we will be doing for those impacted:
- Severance: We are providing impacted team members with 3 months severance to provide some time to determine next steps and career moves.
- Healthcare Coverage: We are providing 3 months of healthcare coverage to help with any health related needs.
- Outplacement & Career Support Services: We are offering support for resume and profile building, career development, interview preparation, networking connections and offering 3 months of Linkedin Premium to help our team members land their next roles.
I encourage you to support, share your networks, and do whatever you can to also lend your friends a helping hand.
What to expect:
Out of respect for the entire team, I want to make sure that you all know what to expect over these next few days.
- Impacted Employees: If you are being impacted you will have already received a meeting invite labeled “People Discussion” for today, where you will be meeting with your People Team and Senior Leadership partners to discuss next steps regarding your employment. We want to make sure that we are being as thoughtful as possible based on the circumstances, so we will be giving you through the end of day, Friday, 12/3 to process everything and be able to say your goodbyes.
- Employees with Evolved Roles: If you are staying and your role is evolving you will be receiving a meeting invite labeled “Role Evolution Discussion” from your department leader over the course of the next few days to discuss how your role may be shifting.
- Remaining Employees: We will be holding a company meeting on Thursday, 12/2 to share more details about these changes and will use our Monday, 12/6 All Hands meeting to share the vision for 2022 and answer any questions. We will also be setting up individual department meetings to discuss specifics as it relates to your team. To be clear, if you have not received a “People Discussion” meeting invite already, you will not be impacted.
I know this may be a bit unexpected, so please take these next few days to gather your thoughts and support your teammates. While I deliver this news with a very heavy-heart, I am confident that these decisions will ultimately help us refocus and build toward a different, but very bright future.
Sincerely,
Marcelo