As beauty becomes increasingly competitive, it can be hard not to get sidetracked by what others are doing — especially when it seems to be working.
But for Alicia Yoon, the founder and chief executive officer of skin care brands Peach & Lily and Peach Slices, core to growth has been developing unique strengths — and then doubling down on them.
“We didn’t get here by being the most viral, we got here by being the most curious,” Yoon said at the 2026 WWD Beauty CEO Summit, adding that both brands have seen double-digit growth each year since 2018, with Peach & Lily also being the number-two prestige skin care brand at Ulta Beauty.
“It’s easy to look around in our industry and feel a bit of FOMO, but we keep in mind that our data tells the story of our brand, and what may work for others may not work for us.”
Data, rather than trends, Yoon said, is the crux of decision making at both brands.
“Data is not a back-office reporting function. It’s a high-stakes discipline…when we see our numbers move, we do two things at once: we zoom all the way into the nitty gritty to examine every variable, and we zoom all the way out for the bird’s-eye view to make sure we’re not missing the context,” Yoon said.
That data is democratized across the organization: “Creative, product marketing, operations, sales — everyone is in the same room, pressure-testing the insight from various perspectives,” she said.
The result is not just a greater understanding of the consumer, but also an improved ability to be agile and move with that consumer.
“Data is never complete or perfect, so we also deeply value experimentation. Every win and every failure becomes a deposit into our collective intelligence, and this becomes a powerful, virtuous cycle that sharpens our intuition so we succeed more often,” Yoon continued.
This approach means that Peach & Lily and Peach Slices sometimes pump out less newness than competitors, but also that “our growth comes from velocity per product, not from flooding the shelf with launches,” she said.
For instance, when Peach & Lily launched its $53 MiniProtein Exosome Bioactive Ampoule last year, the product’s active ingredients were informed by an understanding of what results the brand’s community most often expressed interest in.
That same community, data showed, is also more often influenced by dermatologists and cosmetic chemists than traditional influencers, so that’s who Peach & Lily seeded the product to versus necessarily choosing the highest earned media value-driving creators.
“We threw out EMV altogether as a selection criterion for partner influencers,” Yoon said. “The data didn’t take us down a traditional marketing path, but it helped make the product a top treatment within a single month, with sustained growth even a year later.”
