“Buyers want to see qualified brands more than ever and brands are still very eager to build their wholesale business,” says Nader Naeymi-Rad, Co-Founder of the Indie Beauty Media Group (IBMG), in today’s media release about aditnow.com.
“The challenge,” he emphasizes, “is how to connect the two, at-scale, during a pandemic.”
IBMG has taken the indie beauty movement online in 2020
In previous years, IBMG has produced some of the most vibrant and relevant indie beauty events for brands, buyers, suppliers, media, and influencers. In 2020, the team’s calendar of events was cut short: “The health crisis forced IBMG to take a blank-slate approach to developing its new offering,” acknowledges Naeymi-Rad in today’s release.
“We spoke to dozens of buyers and brands over the summer,” he says, “and found that no one was planning on attending trade shows anytime soon and that the current alternatives to trade shows — such as online events or marketplaces — were inconsistent, inefficient and unable to deliver meaningful value to either brands or buyers.”
“So we developed a new program that was designed from the ground-up to be consistent, scalable and impactful.” And that program is Adit.
IBMG aims to keep meeting the needs of indie beauty and wellness brands with new Adit platform
The new IBMG Adit program serves both indie beauty / wellness brands, and beauty retail buyers. A first round of curated brand presentation is set for early 2021; and the platform is currently focused on onboarding brands for that opportunity.
“Once in the program,” explains Shelby Olsen of Adit’s Client Development team, “you can be confident that Adit has the right data for your brand and that if a retailer is interested, it is serious.”
“Then,” she says, “to know that you will be getting in front of the right decision-makers, having your product evaluated in the right context and benefit from guaranteed quality feedback and closure, these are incredible gamechangers.”
Big name beauty retailers are ready for a new brand discovery tool and tech platform
Adit takes full advantage of exisiting IBMG resources and know-how. The platform will help match commercial-ready indie beauty brands with prominent retailers with help form Beauty Independent’s trend and market insights, the Indie Beauty Expo database of some 15,000+ brands from around the world, a savvy team of IBMG employees, and of course new virtual functionalities.
Already, “demand for the program has far exceeded our forecasts,” Naeymi-Rad tells the press. “We had planned to launch with 5-7 retailers, but uptake has been so strong that we had to double our targets and pause onboarding new retailers until 2021.”
There are, in fact, 11 retailers from across both North America and Europe already signed on to the Adit beauty buying platform: Cos Bar, Credo, The Detox Market, Douglas, Feelunique, Flaconi, Harvey Nichols, Kohl’s, Neiman Marcus, Ulta, and Verishop.
And those retailers are eager for a reliable virtual solution in 2021: “As much as I love the human interaction of a tradeshow, Adit will probably be more efficient and relevant for us,” Romain Gaillard, Founder of The Detox Market, tells the press.
“From day one,” he says “IBMG has been a visionary and a leading force in the beauty community. I always loved the curation they made and I know that Adit will bring us a huge value,”
Christoph Honnefelder, Chief Commercial Officer of Flaconi, had this to say about Adit: “One of the key reasons why we are the No.1 pure-online beauty retailer in Germany is that we are nimble. And speed will remain a key success factor for us moving forward. With the Adit program, we get access to a virtual buying team that is constantly scouting the world for fresh and innovative brands that meet our goals, and then bringing them to us. Having worked with Nader and the IBMG team in the past, I know that we can trust them to execute and deliver meaningful results to our buying team.”
This article was updated on 19-Nov-2020 to reflect the current list of retailers participating in the Adit program.