New E.l.f. CMO on the company’s rapid category expansion

If there’s one thing to know about E.l.f., it’s that its team is staying busy. And this year, the company is seeing just how far it can stretch itself.

When it comes to marketing, the beauty brand has become known for its penchant to move quickly, but it’s recently accelerated its category expansion, too, expanding beyond color cosmetics and skin to debut three new beauty categories across two new product lines in just six months.

That growth has been supported by one of its newest C-suite members, Oshiya Savur, CMO of E.l.f. Beauty, who joined the company in April. She’s a beauty industry veteran with stints at Unilever, Revlon, and Charlotte Tilbury, and most recently served as chief brand and marketing officer at mass beauty incubator Maesa.

With this rapid expansion, Savur’s role is a “constant state of juggling,” she told Retail Brew, especially as each launch has its own distinct retail strategy. Savur broke down how the company determines where to go next.

Read my lips: When deciding to expand into new categories, the E.l.f. team asked itself three questions, Savur said. First, “Is it right for your brand ethos?” The company questions whether the product supports its brand values—“disrupt the norms, shape culture, connect with communities”—or dilutes them, she said. Second, “Do you have a right to play?”, evaluating whether the launch can be executed in a way that adds incrementality through new consumers or channels. And third, “Will it delight the community?”, which it often proves through feedback and ideas from its consumers and retailers.

With both new lines, the company’s answer was “yes, yes, yes to all three questions,” Savur said. Its first category expansion of the year came in June, with the launch of E.l.f. Hair, a Target-exclusive line with six products all priced below $10. Then, just three months later, the company stretched itself further with the debut of fragrance and body care line E.l.f. POP, launched on TikTok Shop and Amazon and priced at $13 and under.

E.l.f. first tested the waters of fragrance earlier this year when it partnered with H&M on the apparel retailer’s first beauty partnership, a three-product perfume line inspired by E.l.f.’s popular products. The collab “was met with extreme community excitement,” Savur said. Hair, meanwhile, was a highly requested category when e.l.f. Chair and CEO Tarang P. Amin and President Kory Marchisotto hosted a TikTok Shop Live a few years ago, Savur said.

“When we launch categories, we’re always leaning in and listening to our community, and the signals for both of these categories were so strong that it made sense to launch them,” she said.

Its financial results largely support continued expansion, too: In August, the company reported net sales were up 36% in its most recent quarter, marking its 30th consecutive quarter of net sales growth.

Sharp eye: The high volume of beauty distribution channels today allows the company to “easily pick and choose and say where you want to place your bets for which item that’s launching,” she said. Those options have allowed the company to use different insights and paths to launch its new products.

TikTok Shop has become a “proven demand gen channel across the board” for E.l.f. POP, with TikTok Shop and Amazon functioning as “demand capture,” she said.

“There is just such a correlation,” she said. “As soon as we start reading signals on TikTok Shop, very quickly thereafter we start seeing searches on Amazon go up as well.”

Its hair line, meanwhile, debuted with Target as its exclusive retail partner with the idea from the line stemming from a suggestion from Target’s team, Savur said. Amin said the company is “excited” by early results for hair, with almost half of the line’s consumers new to the E.l.f. brand.

“It just boils down to who you’re tapping into, what your campaign insight is, what your consumer insight is for the product, and how do you make the right choices there?” Savur said.

In between those two category expansions, E.l.f. also launched a pickle-inspired product line at Ulta Beauty and on Ulta’s TikTok Shop page, debuted in Brazil in Sephora, and, on the marketing side, expanded its “Change the Board Game” initiative and even released an album. Plus, more products in its E.l.f. POP line are slated for 2027.

Simply put: “The plate’s full,” Savur said.