mmon principle: moving into a new category or cultural conversation is most convincing when it builds on qualities consumers already associate with the brand. How Ulta Beauty, Halle Berry and Respin are tapping into a “taboo” retail white space In a panel led by journalist Sheena Butler-Young, Hollywood star Halle Berry and Ulta Beauty’s chief merchandising and digital officer, Lauren Brindley, discussed how listening to customers can help retailers identify unmet demand. Ulta Beauty has more than 47 million active customers in its database, and those customers account for roughly 95 per cent of its sales. Brindley said this provides the retailer with a wealth of information about the categories shoppers are seeking. The data revealed particularly strong interest in wellness-focused brands among female customers at a later stage of life. Brindley said the level of demand was “overwhelming”. Brindley and Berry, co-founder of sexual wellness brand Respin, explained that there is a large and growing market for innovative sexual wellness products designed to meet the needs of mature women. Many of these customers have historically felt too cautious or insufficiently informed to discuss issues such as later-in-life sexual dysfunction. They have also struggled to find products that address those issues. Berry had experienced this herself. “I was a woman who was dropped smack dab into perimenopause with no warning,” Berry told the audience. “There was not even a conversation about this time of my life, when I realised that I was unaware, uneducated and basically ignorant as to what I would be facing from my midlife years. I knew right away that there are millions of other women who feel just like I feel.” Berry and co-founder Ally Tam Tumasova launched Respin in partnership with Joylux, an intimate-wellness technology company. The brand is designed for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause symptoms. Soon after Respin entered the market, Ulta Beauty announced an exclusive retail partnership with Berry and the brand. Brindley said Ulta Beauty takes a two-pronged approach as it expands into the wellness category and increases its range of wellness brands. Alongside analysing customer data, the retailer must ensure its sales associates can comfortably explain the products to shoppers. Customers trusted Ulta Beauty to enter wellness because they expected it to curate products that were safe, rigorously tested and of high quality, Brindley said. They also trusted its associates to help them find the right products. As conversations about female sexual wellness become more normalised, Ulta Beauty hopes to make the category’s products and information more accessible. Its predominantly female leadership team and more than 60,000 associates are central to that effort. “We’re a predominantly female executive leadership team, with many of us in our 40s and 50s, so this is personal to many of us as well,” Brindley said. “We feel really proud to be leaning into this [category].” She acknowledged that the retailer was still learning as it developed the category but said its early experience had given the team confidence in its potential. “We’re delighted with the partnership that we have with Halle Berry and other brands. The quality is outstanding, the guests are loving it and I think we can build something really powerful together.” How Gap is driving a cultural conversation everyone wants to join While Ulta Beauty is using consumer trust to enter a new category, Gap is drawing on its heritage to reclaim a familiar position in popular culture. In a panel led by The Daily Beast’s chief creative and content officer, Joanna Coles, Zac Posen, Gap Inc.’s executive VP and creative director, and Faby Torres, the company’s global chief marketing officer, discussed how Gap is reconnecting with popular culture. From the internet-breaking Katseye campaign to the recently launched GapBag collection – the retailer’s first dedicated handbag line – Gap has reconnected with customers through carefully chosen celebrity partnerships and culturally relevant product launches. Posen, who joined Gap in May 2024 at the invitation of CEO Richard Dickson, said his role extended beyond creating new designs. “It’s about designing a brand, which is different from designing in itself. The purpose obviously starts with product always, then goes into the storytelling of it all,” Posen said. “How do you bring that sense of story and connect it to the customer?” Gap, he said, is an “incredible heritage brand” that has influenced retail, culture, the way consumers dress and their sense of community over its 57-year history. Torres, who also joined Gap Inc. in May 2024, said she was not hired to “challenge” the company but to listen and help define a new strategy for the well-known brand. “Everybody has a Gap memory,” she said. Those memories, she explained, are about more than hoodies or jeans; they are tied to experiences such as working at a mall, graduating from high school or wearing a first Gap hoodie in middle school. Together, Posen and Torres set out to reaffirm what the brand already represented. Posen recalled telling Dickson that Gap was an asset whose shine could be restored. Music has been central to Gap’s identity throughout its history, Torres said, from earlier collaborations with artists such as Lenny Kravitz to more recent work with Katseye and Sienna Spiro. “Music is fun,” she said, describing it as a unifying force and part of the brand’s DNA. As the brand’s marketing lead, Torres had to determine how to move the company forward without straying beyond its established identity. “The important thing to keep your brand authentic is to really have a playground in where you live.” Brands may want to pursue every opportunity for growth, but Torres argued that the strategy will ultimately fail if they lose sight of their identity and values. Posen and Torres, who immediately “clicked” upon meeting, agreed that initiatives such as GapStudio and the GapBag collection could extend the brand while remaining faithful to its history of cultural connections through music and celebrity. The spring 2024 “Linen Moves” campaign was one of the company’s first bold marketing moves. It starred musician Tyla and featured Jungle’s viral song “Back on 74”. When the campaign went live, it signalled that Gap was once again helping to drive a cultural conversation that consumers and the wider retail industry wanted to join. Ulta Beauty and Gap are pursuing different opportunities, but their strategies rest on the same principle: expansion feels more credible when it grows from something consumers already believe about a brand. Further reading: How Richard Dickson’s ‘fashiontainment’ focus boosted Gap Inc’s Q2 profits