Interview: Feelunique boss on its restless drive to be a ‘destination for beauty’

When Feelunique’s boss Sarah Miles took the helm at the beauty etailer in late 2019, the self-confessed skincare obsessive says it was a combination of her personal interest and a sense that beauty was an industry on the cusp of major transformation that wooed her from Amazon.

“It was the perfect Venn diagram of an industry that was changing – and more radically than many – and a personal passion,” she says.

“There aren’t many 15-year-old ecommerce businesses with hundreds of brands, a bespoke tech stack and 5 million customers. It was a triumvirate of fantastic business, fantastic opportunity and a space that I love.”

Far from dampening those spirits, the coronavirus pandemic has only served to further enthuse Miles about what the future holds. 

Nearly two years into the role – and 12 months since Covid-19 reached the UK – the pace of change in beauty, which has had historically low online penetration compared to other retail sectors, has taken even Miles by surprise.

During a period that has witnessed globally mandated store closures and the demise of department store chains like Debenhams, beauty brands have had to think differently about how they reach their customers.

“I came to Feelunique because I thought it was a fantastic business and I thought beauty ecommerce was going to change. I didn’t realise quite how quickly,” Miles laughs.

“I don’t know when we’ll next see fingers in pots in department stores, which means people have had to accelerate their thinking about different models for helping the customer”

Sarah Miles, Feelunique 

“Many brands had a model of how beauty was bought, which served everyone well. It had big physical installations in stores, paid-for beauty advisers, sampling – and all of those things have been challenged.

“I don’t know when we’ll next see fingers in pots in department stores, which means people have had to accelerate their thinking about different models for helping the customer choose what product and brand she wants.” 

Against that backdrop, Miles believes Feelunique has a substantial opportunity to fill the void left by empty department stores and encourage major brands once stuck in their ways to think differently.

Although Miles believes consumers will flock back to salons and nail bars for treatments as soon as they are able, the way they buy beauty products, and in particular repeat purchases such as night cream or foundation, has swung irreversibly online. 

Miles is therefore focusing on increasing the breadth of brands sold on Feelunique’s platform and driving its use of technology and innovation, in her bid to make the business “a real destination for beauty, where people can come to solve all their beauty problems across a wide range of products”. 

Progress towards that aim is already being made. During the pandemic to date, Feelunique has made 72 changes to the front end of its website to improve the user experience, added more editorial content and personalisation to its platform and launched five different sampling services, allowing online shoppers to test potential new make-up bag staples before committing to a purchase.

Miles attributes the pace of such development to Feelunique’s “restlessness” to drive continuous improvements and its proprietary in-house technology – something she says is “very distinctive” for an online beauty business. 

“We are getting data from our customers every day. We can turn on a dime”

Sarah Miles, Feelunique

“If I was using someone else’s [website] platform and they didn’t have a piece of functionality that I wanted, I’d have to lobby or wait for them to build it,” she explains. 

“We are getting data from our customers every day in terms of what they buy and don’t buy, how they browse, all sorts of different things, and using that information to make the site better for our customers. We can turn on a dime.”

Feelunique’s senior management discusses what changes are being made to its website “on a weekly basis” and its development teams are “continually improving” the user experience.

Alongside its agile, tech-led approach to the customer, Feelunique’s wide and rapidly growing proposition is also wooing shoppers.

The business now stocks more than 900 brands across its retail arm and its marketplace, which allows third-party brands to fulfil and price products directly. Some 300 brands have been added to the platform in the past year alone.

Miles believes that depth of range sets Feelunique apart from online rivals such as LookFantastic, Cult Beauty and Beauty Bay. But the etailer shows no sign of slowing down.

Miles says Feelunique “fixates on laying siege” to brands it does not yet have listed on its website and aims to have “well over 1,000 brands” on its platform in the next few years. Growing its share in the wellness category through products like supplements is a key aim. 

That is among a slew of more than 50 annual goals that Feelunique is measuring progress against – a lengthy list that Miles says is a hangover from her time at Amazon, where she led home and garden and latterly the apparel and private brands categories, during a five-year stint. The etailer “measured about 2,000 things at once”, she says.

Measuring Feelunique’s success during the pandemic isn’t quite black and white just yet, given that its financial year only ended last month. But Miles says it will deliver “very strong” growth in profits and sales during that period – no huge surprise given that revenues during the crucial golden quarter surged 40%.  

Yet Miles believes this is merely the beginning of Feelunique’s growth potential, both in the UK and in key international markets like the US and the Middle East.

Its tech prowess, a relentless focus on customer experience and its growing stable of brands have certainly left it sitting pretty to capitalise on the changing face of beauty retail.