How Haus Labs Mastered the Art of the Comeback

If there’s any beauty founder who understands the art of transformation, it’s Lady Gaga.

The Grammy winner’s makeup label, originally launched on Amazon in an exclusive partnership in 2019, did not live up to her high expectations. Gaga, whose given name is Stefani Germanotta, and chief executive Ben Jones completely overhauled the brand with a new name, aesthetic, retail strategy and product lineup in 2022. Their gamble paid off.

The reborn Haus Labs by Lady Gaga has been growing “substantially” for the past three years, said Jones. Its Triclone Skin Tech Medium Coverage Foundation has become its hero product and one of the best sellers at Sephora, where it shifted its distribution after the rebrand.

While not all celebrities create brands they wear or promote, Gaga is frequently seen in a full face of Haus Labs for her concerts — the “ultimate benchmark”of the products’ performance, says Jones in an interview with The Business of Beauty.

The Business of Beauty: Since Haus Labs was founded, we’ve seen so many new celebrity brands. How do you stand out?

Ben Jones: We tried to build this always as a brand that could stand alone, and Stefani always thought of herself as the cherry on top, but I don’t think she sees herself as the face of the brand. She is more of the mind of the brand, who happens to also be a face of the brand.

For us, we’ve really spent a lot of our focus on building great product. Gaga will go on tour, she will do movies, she will do many things, and we don’t see a dip in our sales when she’s doing other projects. If anything, all her other projects raise the tides for us.

The Business of Beauty: What specific areas of the brand is she most involved in?

BJ: It’s very much on the creative aspects of the brand — the look, the feel and where we want to go aesthetically on the product side of things. She’s got an incredible mind for product, and she definitely can see where the market’s going ahead of time.

The Business of Beauty: How do you centre the conversation around products when you have such a famous founder?

BJ: [Stefani’s] spark goes off when you’re talking about product and innovation. There’s always got to be a reason for being. For us, it was like, ‘Okay, our reason for being is going to be product, and we’re going to build world-class product that wins over time.’ Where we’ve been winning is probably a surprise to folks, because we’re winning in complexion. We’re not winning in trend. We’re winning in places like concealer and foundation, where brands traditionally at our size haven’t really even played or won.

The Business of Beauty: It’s been three years since the rebrand and shift from Amazon to Sephora. What are the results you’ve seen from that change?

BJ: Since the day we launched at Sephora, it was a total change in our trajectory. Of the 50 people we had when we launched version one, there were probably 45 new people when we launched version two. It was a page one rewrite. Stefani, myself and some of the other people having seen the good, the bad, the ugly on how to do things, we just came in with clear eyes and a better idea of how to execute, and really built the company the second time around that we should have built the first time around.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

This article first appeared in The State of Fashion: Beauty Volume 2, an in-depth report on the global beauty industry, co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.