Building Estee Lauder a $4,500,000 market cap ‘Virtual Selling’ affiliate program for hair stylists

One of my most recent projects has been supporting Estee Lauder on a 6-month contract to build & launch a ‘Virtual Selling' program with $4,500,000+ market cap by 2027.

Aveda has a very unique business model in that aside from traditional e-commerce & brick and mortar sales channels, they also have a network of over 1,500 salons in the United States who participate in their ‘A-commerce’ program, meaning that these salons drive affiliate commission sales via their own online & in-store traffic.

This is a significant revenue channel for Aveda, however the user experience has been significantly dated, and while they are leveraging the relationships with these salons, there had been a massive opportunity missed in empowering the salon artists of these salons themselves to drive affiliate sales and earn additional income for themselves.

Enter the Aveda Virtual Selling Program

I was brought in to support Estee Lauder in spinning up this program that would allow a new ‘Virtual Salon Shop’ to be easily spun up by any of the over 3,000 artists in the Aveda network, and begin selling products to their audience & clientele immediately.

My Role

The early stages of this project had been mapped before my arrival, however the program had been at a standstill for nearly 2 years with zero momentum.

It was my responsibility to pull together there different technology vendors (of which there were many) to make sure the phased pilot launch happened within 4 months, and the new Virtual Selling Program could be scaled broadly to all salons & artists on the United States.

Technical Complexity

Bringing this project to life required serious technical product management chops. As far as the technical solution, we had Hausmart as the front-end artist web shop builder, aveda.com as the platform that all affiliate traffic were driven to, Bond who was the Legacy administrative portal for the salons & artists, and Rakuten who ensured the salons got their affiliate sales income & backend analytics.

The greatest lesson learned in bringing this project to life is truly how critical efficient communication is. When there are so many parties involved (not to mention internal database teams, user experience, and software team), it is absolutely critical to constantly keep a pulse on dependencies, blockers & timelines to ensure the project is delivered on track.

Business Impact

Initial metrics point to an increase in commission sales revenue of $150,000 in the first quarter of launch, with a projected $4,500,000 market potential by 2027 as the program enrolls more artists and conversion rates continue to optimize.