Post by Descartes & Mauss

Teams do not miss market shifts because they fail to see them. They miss them because seeing a shift is not the same as backing it early enough, clearly enough, and seriously enough to turn it into growth. Take beauty. For years, many prestige beauty players were built to win through a familiar formula: heritage, premium pricing, strong retail distribution, polished brand codes, and slower innovation cycles. That model worked. But another one was rising alongside it. Consumers were showing growing appetite for products that felt prestige-inspired but were more accessible, faster-moving, more digitally native, and more culturally relevant online. e.l.f. Beauty was one of the clearest companies to build around that new logic. It moved quickly. It priced accessibly. It translated trends fast. And it used digital and social channels not just for marketing, but as engines of relevance and scale. → By 2020, that model was already proving it could work. → By 2024, it was no longer a fringe dynamic. It had become commercially meaningful. → And by 2025, e.l.f. had reached $1.314B in net sales and announced the acquisition of rhode, pushing further into a fast-growing, creator-led, prestige-adjacent segment. The point is not that incumbents were blind. The point is that many were still built to evaluate growth through the logic of the old model: higher price points, more controlled brand building, retail-led distribution, longer cycles, and clearer category boundaries. So even when the signal was visible, the opportunity was harder to back internally. - Was this really a serious growth space? - Was it big enough? - Was it strategically credible? - Did it fit the brand? - Would it strengthen the business or dilute it? That is where many teams get stuck: not at signal detection, but at opportunity conviction. Because leadership does not fund a shift; it funds a case. A case that shows where the growth is, how large it could be, why it matters commercially, and why it deserves priority now. At Descartes & Mauss, our Growth Opportunities feature helps strategy and innovation teams do exactly that: turn visible market shifts into concrete opportunities they can size, prioritize, and take to senior decision-makers with confidence. In our next post, we will show how teams can identify those opportunities, assess them with the right inputs, and build the evidence needed to act. Sources in comments (e.l.f. Beauty Q3 FY2026 results + e.l.f. to acquire rhode ). #GrowthStrategy #Growthopportunities #FMCG #BeautyIndustry #DescartesMauss