according to data collected by management consulting company McKinsey & Company, while 11 per cent of all beauty consumers are Black, Black-owned brands account for only 2.5 per cent of total beauty industry ventures.  For consumers, this lack of diversity can often be seen in the people advertising products through traditional channels. This often drives frustrated consumers to social media and other platforms in the hopes of finding influencers or fellow beauty enthusiasts with similar complexions or hair traits. From a brand perspective, this process often leads interested shoppers away from retailers’ and brands’ e-commerce sites and slows down the shopping cycle.  This is where Nicole Clay, one of the co-founders of Hue, a video marketing platform, is working the change the system. Clay describes Hue as “a video marketing platform that analyzes brands’ video content so that it accurately displays the right content for their customers.” It is powered by artificial intelligence and aims to enable beauty shoppers to more accurately and confidently purchase makeup products suited to their specific complexion needs. Hue connects shoppers with their Hue Twins, a community of several thousand micro-influencers with diverse skin tones, skin types, purchase histories and beauty preferences. The tech is integrated into beauty brands’ and retailers’ websites so consumers can browse authentic video and photo reviews from their recommended Hue Twins to get a clearer sense of how a product will appear on them.  Hue also provides a shade-matching service in which customers can complete a simple series of questions resulting in AI-product recommendations with a 90 per cent accuracy rate for complexion products with over 40 shades.  The company has reported a 29 per cent increase in conversion rates on websites that incorporate its user-generated content and tech. Clay explained that Hue “adds a layer of personalization and optimization to the video shopping experience that doesn’t exist today outside of social media”. “So let’s imagine you’re shopping online and you are at the product page and you’re ready to buy the product,” she said. “Most customers leave [the product page] and go to TikTok or Google and they search for characteristics that resemble themselves, such as ‘dark-skinned women with under-eye bags’ then insert the product name in the search to see it on people like themselves. At Hue, we pull video content from real customers so that your customers can vet your products visually, and get the confidence to ‘add to cart’.” For Clay, Hue was born out of her personal experiences of shopping for beauty products online and in-store. She recalled a story of unsuccessfully purchasing a foundation at Walmart when she was 13 years old and feeling insecure about her deeper complexion, since, at the time, she saw advertisements showing only models with lighter skin tones. She ended up buying a foundation that was several shades lighter than her actual complexion, and the experience discouraged her from buying makeup again until she was in college. “Reflecting on that experience, it goes back to the emotional side of Hue,” Clay stated. “When we speak to customers, they get so excited that they can see themselves represented [in product demo materials] and that there’s someone with acne or hyperpigmentation being shown, or someone with a deeper skin tone or super fair skin tone. If we could make it so that those other 13-year-olds out there don’t feel insecure about the things that aren’t traditionally shown in beauty advertisements, that to me is such a huge win.” From L’Oréal to launching her own business To say that Clay has extensive experience within the beauty industry would be a bit of an understatement. A longtime beauty lover, Clay got her professional start in the field as a marketing intern for legacy perfume and cosmetics house Lancôme in 2013. In 2014, Clay joined the L’Oréal family as a marketing assistant before building her way up to director of global business development at Kiehl’s over the next six years. While she greatly appreciated the knowledge she gained working within brands, Clay felt the itch to drive change within the industry and decided to enroll in Harvard Business School as an MBA candidate. It was there that Clay met fellow HBS classmates Sylvan Guo and Janvi Shah and eventually launched Hue. During her time at HBS, Clay attended a webinar event hosted by Vicky Tsai, the founder of the luxury skincare brand Tatcha. In the session, Clay asked questions that piqued the interest of her would-be co-founder Janvi Shah, a former product manager at Google. The two met up for a cup of coffee, which led to a glass of wine, which led to a brainstorming session back at Clay’s place. Clay jokingly refers to these early meetings as “founder dating”. “The next day, she [Shah] came over to my apartment, and we whiteboarded some ideas, so very quickly ‘dating’ turned into a very serious, established relationship,” Clay said. The two friends met their third co-founder in HBS’s Startup Bootcamp. Sylvan Guo was working on her own startup at the time, but once she joined Clay and Shah’s team, the trio eventually landed on a concept they all felt passionate about: bringing inclusivity into an industry that historically has not catered to women like them. And thus, Hue was born. The trio ended up raising approximately $2.1 million in pre-seed funding before launching in 2020 and after signing Credo Beauty and Thirteen Lune, the company took off. Today, Hue is working with over 30 clients across the beauty industry, including Laura Geller, Lawless, and Ceremonia, with plans on adding on non-beauty-centered clients in the future. From working with beauty giants like L’Oréal to running her own business alongside her co-founders, Clay noted that there are great advantages and disadvantages between the two work environments.  “I’ve learned how important it is to have community and a support system when you found a company,” Clay admitted. “I think before I started, I would have classified myself as a very resilient person. I can take rejection and I don’t need people to think that what I’m doing is great. But, you know, after you’re told no for the millionth time, and after someone tells you over and over again that what you’re doing isn’t right, it does start to wear you down. I don’t think I would be able to weather the storm if it weren’t for my co-founders.” Of her team, Clay fondly said, “If I’m feeling down, I have them to pick me up and if one of them is feeling down, then the other two can pick us up. because we are this trio, there’s always one person that’s doing okay, so I just feel very grateful for them.” The founder explained that even though you’re on a team in larger corporations, that personal sense of ownership for a company’s success is much more intense and harder to take a break from. “When you go home from work in a big company, most people turn it [the sense of responsibility] off, whereas with a startup, it’s like always on. You’re showering and thinking about the company, or you’re out to dinner with friends, and you’re thinking about the company. So it’s nice to have people that are also going through this odd life experience.”