Ben Jones (Haus Labs by Lady Gaga) - Inside Lady Gaga's Beauty Brand

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Ben Jones, CEO of Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. Haus Labs by Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga’s clean artistry makeup brand powered by innovation.

Here's some of the questions I ask:

1. How did you meet Lady Gaga and what was your first impression? and can you tell me about the founding story of what was originally Haus Laboratories? What was the reason she wanted to start a makeup brand?
2. Lady Gaga is one of the busiest celebrities in the world, touring the world, acting, and engaging in a number of activities. How does she engage and interact with the brand and team? What role does she play in the company?
3. There have been so many celebrity beauty launches in the last few years. Some may argue that the consumer could be a bit fatigued and incredulous of these types of brands. How does Haus Labs break the mold and cut through the celebrity brand launch noise?
4. Why did you decide to launch originally on Amazon? Why wasn’t that successful, what did you learn? Do you think you can build a brand on Amazon? Haus Labs originally decided to launch with Amazon and did not achieve the growth and success originally planned. This was a bold move at the time. (FYI Amazon is a great place to leverage brand awareness and scale but not the best to create it or brand build).
5. Do you thnk you’re original thesis about beauty correct?
6. Haus Labs quickly pivoted distribution to Sephora (now almost in 500 doors) and executed a full brand and product relaunch.
7. What did you learn from Sephora?
8. What are the lessons learned since the original launch and what is the future for Haus Labs 2.0?
9. Why did you change the name from Haus Laboratories to Haus Labs by Lady Gaga.
10. Why did you rebrand to be “clean”? What does that mean to you?
11. What are the challenges building an ecommerce brand?
12. Makeup has seen a major resurgence post Covid. How do you see the beauty industry continue to evolve? What trends and categories are most exciting to you?
13. Building community is so crucial to creating a successful beauty brand. How does Haus Labs leverage Lady Gaga’s existing community to drive product sales and build strong consumer loyalty in this category?
14. In a very challenging DTC environment, how is the company thinking about omni-channel growth? What is the role of DTC, if any, vs wholesale (Sephora, etc)?
15. What changed in their product or marketing as a result of learning from their users
16. What tech do they experiment with as a brand?
17. What are their role models when it comes to product and customer experience?
18. What’s one book that’s inspired you personally and a book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Shoe Dog
    2. Save the Cat - storytelling
19. What’s one piece of advice for founders?
    1. Don’t underestimate experience and pattern recognition