Forecasting beauty sales is more fun and creative—but also more challenging—than medical devices, the sector where Andrea Atwell started her career before joining Maybelline as an eyeshadow and lipstick analyst eight years ago. The business major from Michigan State progressed to running Demand Planning for Maybelline-Garnier, and now, as Vice President, Demand Planning for L’Oréal’s Luxury Products Group, she leads a team tracking Lancôme, Kiehl’s and L’Oréal’s fastest growing asset – Urban Decay.

Uniquely Tricky

“I always had Big City dreams. And coming to L’Oréal was my first foray into beauty, a very subjective industry. There are so many new launches, with product cannibalization to consider. While we use a lot of data often you’re relying on people’s intuition and experience.”

Day-to-Day

“To highlight risks and opportunities for the organization, we follow trends, analyze retail sales figures and go into stores to understand our customer. Our goal is to come up with a future vision of sales to provide an indicator to manufacturing on what to produce.”

Memorable Moments

“We weren’t prepared for the response to the Maybelline Baby Lips launch. We had no idea how big it would be, and it just blew out the market! When integrating Essie into Maybelline we had to forecast 120 nail shades in a fast growing market. We were surprisingly accurate.”

Learning on the Job

“Marketing might say we’ll do $10 million in retail sales on a brand. But we have to quantify that in units, accounting for many other factors—and express it in language our manufacturing engineers understand. Don’t assume that others know what you know, or see something the way you do. Always over communicate.”