As consumers seek more convenient buying options for even the most historically on-site trial-based categories, the beauty industry is transforming to meet shoppers’ increasing Click-and-Mortar™ expectations.
Ulta Beauty, for instance, discussed this demand for shopping journeys that combine the digital and physical at the William Blair Growth Stock Conference.
“We really think about our business through an omnichannel lens, and we think both our digital as well as our brick-and-mortar business has a really important role in working together and driving growth,” Ulta Beauty Chief Financial Officer Paula Oyibo said. “…When a guest engages with us across multiple touchpoints, whether it is in our stores or online, in our app or on our site, as well as UB at Target, they engage more, they’re more loyal and they spend more. … Omnichannel guests spend 2.5 times to 3 times more than our brick-and-mortar-only guests.”
The PYMNTS Intelligence study “2024 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Edition,” created in collaboration with Visa Acceptance Solutions, found that roughly a third of U.S. consumers are Click-and-Mortar™ shoppers, preferring either to make purchases online for in-store pickup or to shop in stores with the assistance of digital technologies.
Driving digital adoption in the beauty space can be challenging, especially for brands looking to acquire new customers, given how trial-based the industry has been in the past. As such, brands are looking to digital technologies that replicate some of the more immersive, more in-depth experiences you can get in stores. At its simplest, this may look like posting a video demonstrating the application of a product.
In an interview with PYMNTS, Vincent Yang, co-founder and CEO of video commerce platform Firework, observed that as shoppable content gains popularity, the beauty category is at the forefront. Consumers seek out opportunities to see products in use, as the packaging alone does not provide sufficient information about their functionality.
“For beauty, without seeing a video, all that you’re seeing is a package,” Yang said. “…The packs look the same. You need to really see the before and after, etc.”
Augmented reality (AR) try-on is also helping bridge the trust gap for online beauty shoppers. By using digital simulations tailored to users’ facial features, individuals can virtually try a wide range of beauty products without physically applying them. This also helps solve the returns problem for brands.
“Virtual try-on helps to reduce returns because you get the best product, which you like [the most],” Wayne Liu, president and chief growth officer at Perfect Corp. told PYMNTS in February. “…It saves lots of waste. … In the beauty industry, they just throw away returned products. … You don’t know if the customer has already used it, so you won’t be able to really take it back and resell it.”
It seems these digital bets are paying off, as beauty’s online growth is outpacing retail overall. According to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Catching the Coming eCommerce Wave,” which drew from a survey of more than 2,600 U.S. consumers last year, 39% of eCommerce shoppers said they were very likely to boost their online purchases of health and beauty items in the upcoming year. This percentage was higher than any other product category.
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Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is clear-eyed about the chipmaker’s many problems and the tough road ahead as he engineers a turnaround to revive this legendary Silicon Valley company.
“This is an iconic and essential company that is important for the industry and also to the United States,” Tan said in a keynote address at Intel’s conference in Las Vegas this week.
The nuclear physicist, who dropped out of the Ph.D. program at MIT, is best known for transforming Cadence Design Systems into a robust chip design and software company. He was also a board member at Intel.
“We fell behind on innovation. We have been too slow to adapt to meet your needs. You deserve better, and we need to improve, and we will,” Tan told his audience of customers and vendors. “Please be brutally honest with us.”
Tan called this juncture a “defining moment” for the legendary chipmaker.
Intel was once the world’s most valuable chipmaker — a crown that would go to Nvidia. With its “Intel Inside” branding, it was the first chipmaker to become a household name. In the 1990s, Intel and Windows became so dominant in PCs that the pair were called “Wintel.” Intel founder Gordon Moore’s “Moore’s Law” still stands 60 years after it was created.
Intel’s troubles began in the mid-2010s, when it started missing key product deadlines and struggled to advance to 10nm manufacturing, allowing rivals like TSMC and AMD to overtake it in performance and efficiency. Once the industry leader, Intel became hampered by internal bureaucracy, a rigid culture, and a hardware-first mindset that lagged behind a software- and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven future, while competitors like ARM and Nvidia thrived.
Intel also famously turned down Apple’s request to make chips for the iPhone, paving the way for Qualcomm. In the third quarter of 2024, Intel posted its largest quarterly loss of $16.6 billion, including a $15.9 billion charge to reflect lower valuations and costs to lay off 15,000 employees.
Now there are even reports of Intel as a takeover target — humiliating for a tech icon. “Intel Corp.’s fall from market dominance to takeover target is a tale marked by missed opportunities and rising expenses,” wrote Iuri Struta, senior research associate at S&P Global Market Intelligence, in a blog post. In 2020, Intel was the second most valuable chipmaker. As of last September, it had fallen to 14th place, he said.
Tan understands the enormity of his task to turn around Intel. “We have a lot of hard work ahead. We have fallen short of your expectations. I will pull together strong teams to correct the past mistakes and start to earn your trust,” he said. “I will not be satisfied until we delight all of you.”
Read more: Intel Faces Potential Breakup as Broadcom and TSMC Explore Deals
Tan faces a big challenge in reviving a company with decades of inertia to lead in a market that now moves at hyperspeed. His four areas of focus are: changing the culture, strengthening the core business, incubating and growing new business, and building customer trust.
Tan said he will bring Intel back to its roots: an engineering-focused company. He promised to meet with engineers even six to seven levels down from the C-suite to hear their ideas and unleash their creativity. Tan also promised to retain and attract key talent, which had been leaving Intel.
Tan said Intel needs to adopt a startup culture to innovate, where every day is Day One. His weekends are filled with meetings with engineers and software architects who have “brilliant” ideas and who “want to change the world. That’s when I get excited to work closely with them,” Tan said.
Tan also plans to simplify the way Intel works because “bureaucracy kills innovation.” The startup mindset will enable them to act with speed.
“We are operating in a very dynamic, fast-moving industry. Technology adoptions and disruption are accelerating faster than ever. This is being driven by the one transformational force called AI,” Tan said.
Intel will target three AI areas: cloud AI, generative and agentic AI, and physical AI such as robotics. To that end, Tan said Intel will spin off non-core business divisions but did not name which ones.
To right its operations, Tan said Intel must change the way it makes products. The company used to start by making hardware — chips — and then developing the software to make it work. “The world has changed. You have to flip that around,” Tan said. “You start with the problem, what you’re trying to solve. … Then we work backwards from there.”
Tan also addressed Intel’s product and foundry priorities. In client computing, he reaffirmed a commitment to innovation, noting the competitive landscape has shifted and Intel must not “stand still.” Pushing forward with AI-enhanced PCs, the company aims to ship its next-generation Panther Lake processors on its 18A process node later this year.
Perhaps most critically, Tan confirmed Intel’s ambitions to manufacture chips for customers around the world. “Foundry is a service business that is built on the foundational principle of trust,” he said.
At this stage in his career, Tan said he has been asked why he would take on one of the most difficult jobs in tech.
“The answer is very simple. I love this company,” Tan said, with tears in his eyes. “It was very hard for me to watch it struggle. I simply cannot stay on the sidelines knowing that I could help turn things around.”
Photo: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Credit: Intel livestream
