Business of Beauty Newsletter Launches at BoF

September 18. Business of Fashion launched a beauty newsletter. The Business of Beauty, filed weekly by Priya Rao, went live Thursday with its first edition. The scope: global retail competition, brand acquisition cycles, executive moves, and product-line strategy.

Rao's opening dispatch covered Sephora's retail positioning, L'Oréal's acquisition horizon, Gap's beauty play under John Demsey, and the current M&A wave in beauty brands. The newsletter sits inside BoF's paywalled subscription tier. No standalone product. The beat overlaps with BoF's existing beauty coverage but narrows to industry mechanics rather than trend reporting.

BoF has run beauty pieces since 2015. This marks the first dedicated vertical with a single byline and a fixed weekly schedule. Rao previously covered beauty at WWD and Glossy. The hire happened in July. The newsletter build took eight weeks.

The format: one long-form lead piece, three to four short takes, occasional Q&A. Length runs 1,200 to 1,800 words per edition. Thursday morning delivery, 10:00 ET. The first edition clocked 1,450 words across five sections. No product recommendations. No affiliate links. Pure trade angle.

Beauty newsletters have had a run the past three years. Estée Laundry folded in 2023. The Temper still files. Glossy's beauty vertical runs daily but isn't single-author. BoF is betting on depth over frequency. One sharp file per week rather than five thin ones.

The real test: whether Rao can hold the line between editorial distance and insider access. Beauty PR is tighter than fashion PR. Brands pull ad spend faster. A weekly column that names weak plays or bad bets has to stay clean on sourcing. The first edition didn't name any brand as failing. It will be interesting to see if that holds past issue five.