CEO and Cofounder Bluemercury, Inc.

Marla Beck believed that the experience of shopping for cosmetics needed to be more customer focused, so in 1999 she launched Bluemercury, a retailer of high-end beauty products. Perhaps the most obvious evidence that Beck’s thoughtful strategy and hard work have disrupted the beauty market lies in the fact that a department store that previously was her competition—Macy’s—is now her partner.

Beck has a remarkable ability to set high goals and achieve them. Frustrated that drugstores didn’t carry prestige beauty products and that department stores organized cosmetics by brand, making comparisons difficult, she was determined to offer consumers a better option. “I wanted to build an empire in the beauty industry,” says Beck, who oversees Bluemercury’s 195 stores along with her cofounder and husband, Barry.

Initially Beck intended to build an e-commerce platform, but she changed course and invested in bricks and mortar when she saw a need for customer-friendly neighborhood stores. The pivot offered a personalized shopping experience that relied on a cadre of beauty experts. Key to Bluemercury’s success was Beck’s decision to buck the industry standard and invest in employees. “Our business model gives employees a career path,” she says, noting that half of the company’s top managers started as sales associates.

As she expanded Bluemercury beyond its first stores in the Washington, DC, area, Beck also built its e-commerce presence, coining the term “clicks and bricks.” She retained the firm’s neighborhood-store DNA as well as its mission—to be the best at giving beauty advice. After opening 16 stores, in 2006 she was looking for capital to expand nationally. “Marla had tremendous credibility and passion,” says Ray Debbane, CEO of Invus, the company whose investment enabled the launch of stores 17 through 60. While scaling up, Beck remained connected to customers. “The data only tell part of the story,” says Beck, who frequently weighs what she sees in a spreadsheet against her own instincts, a method that has proven effective across all aspects of the business. It was instinct, in fact, that prompted Beck to develop two natural, vegan brands, M-61 and Lune+Aster, and both are now best sellers.

By 2015, with several firms interested in acquiring Bluemercury, Beck wanted to reach an even broader customer base and needed the administrative and technical power of an established firm. In brokering the deal with Macy’s, the Becks were determined to remain part of the company. Marla serves as CEO and Barry as COO, and Bluemercury operates as a stand-alone division of Macy’s, Inc. The company has 1,500 employees, 93 percent of whom are women, and they operate hundreds of stores and counters in Macy’s.

The daughter of an entrepreneur and a teacher, Marla Beck grew up in Oakland, California. She was a voracious reader who tagged along with her father on real estate deals, helped balance his books, and worked in a clothing boutique during high school. After studying political economy at UC Berkeley and working for McKinsey, she came to Harvard to earn her MBA and MPA. At HBS, where she helped launch a Women Entrepreneurs seminar, she was intrigued by a presentation about selling books online. “Jeff Bezos was then an obscure entrepreneur, but he gave me my first exposure to thinking about different ways to sell things,” recalls Beck.

Beck’s success has put her on the cover of Inc. magazine twice, led to numerous awards, brought her back to HBS as a case protagonist and Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and enabled her to serve as a role model for those who are pursuing their dreams. The parents of three children, each a budding entrepreneur, she and Barry have very naturally merged their home and work lives. Every night after dinner with their kids, the couple takes a long walk to catch up and share ideas. “I don’t think there needs to be a line between ‘work’ and ‘life,’” says Marla Beck. “There is power in accepting that the two are intertwined.”

Photo by Susan Young

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