For any founder-led company, there is always a critical leadership question: Who takes the reins after the founder?
The truth is, having a CEO transition plan in place is critical at all junctures of your business growth – and this certainly is applicable for the beauty industry, too.
Iconic brands often have iconic founders, and their company names are often intermingled and associated with that person. Whether a beauty brand is an established global entity or a dazzling newcomer, the timing and choice of a new leader can be a complex and emotionally charged process, requiring more foresight, time, and thoughtful planning than other leadership transitions.
There are some unique elements that make beauty founder succession particularly complex. One is that the brand often starts as the solution to a personal problem or challenge and many of the brands carry the founder’s name in their moniker. Secondly, beauty founders are often highly visible in consumer-to-consumer communications, engaging on social media, conducting retailer tours, and getting involved in product development. However, as the business scales, new leadership muscles are required, and founders (and funders) must evaluate how to build for the next chapter – approaching the delicate and critical topic of succession.
Based on conversations with our clients and other industry leaders, we have compiled examples of what has worked well in leadership transitions along with some pitfalls to watch out for as businesses prepare for their own next chapters.
What Is a CEO Transition Plan – and Why is it Critical for Founder-Led Brands?
A CEO transition plan is a structured roadmap designed to ensure a smooth transfer of leadership from a founder to a successor. In founder-led beauty brands, where personal identity and brand identity are often closely linked, having this plan in place is crucial for safeguarding continuity, preserving company culture, and maintaining consumer trust. It’s more than just replacing a leader – it’s about honoring the founder’s legacy while preparing the business to evolve and scale under new leadership.
Without a clear plan, transitions can become reactive, creating confusion among employees, misalignment with investors, and even loss of customer loyalty. A CEO transition plan provides clarity, builds stakeholder confidence, and ensures that strategic momentum is not lost during the change.
How a CEO Transition Plan Supports Brand Equity in Beauty
In the beauty industry, brand equity is deeply tied to the founder’s story, style, and public presence. A well-orchestrated CEO transition protects this equity by maintaining consistency in brand voice and vision – even as leadership changes. The plan ensures that customers continue to feel connected to the brand and its purpose, regardless of who is leading behind the scenes.
By proactively managing how and when a transition is communicated, as well as how the new leader is introduced, brands can reduce the risk of consumer alienation. This careful communication also signals to investors and retail partners that the business is stable and forward-thinking, strengthening commercial partnerships.
What to Include in a CEO Transition Plan
A thoughtful CEO transition plan for founder-led beauty brands should include the following components:
- Role clarity between founder & new CEO: Define specific responsibilities for each party, especially if the founder remains involved in a strategic or representative capacity. .
- Timeline & stakeholder alignment: Establish a realistic timeline that allows for proper onboarding and gives internal and external stakeholders the time needed to adjust to a new transition .
- Communication strategy (internal & external): Outline how the transition will be announced to employees, investors, partners, and customers.
- Accelerated integration and impact plan for incoming CEO: Ensure the new leader is immersed in the brand’s culture, values, and operations early on to ensure organizational fluidity, build stakeholder credibility, and initiate the new CEOs journey with promise for early success
- Founder’s future involvement: Clarify expectations for the founder’s ongoing role—whether as board member, advisor, or brand voice—and establish clear boundaries.
- Highlight cultural onboarding: Help the incoming CEO understand the unique cultural elements that define the brand and its ongoing development both internally and externally, from team dynamics to consumer expectations.
Why Beauty Brands Need a Founder-Sensitive Transition Plan
Founder transitions in beauty are not like other sectors. Consumers follow brands because of the people behind them – founders are often influencers, creators, and public-facing visionaries. As such, transitions must be handled with extra sensitivity to emotion, legacy, and storytelling.
A founder-sensitive transition plan ensures that the emotional considerations are acknowledged and addressed, not brushed aside. It supports founders in letting go of operational control while remaining connected to the brand’s evolution. This emotional continuity helps maintain internal morale and strengthens the external narrative around the brand’s growth.
3 Best Practices for Your CEO Transition Plan
When approaching the CEO transition planning process, consider these tried-and-true best practices we have observed in our client work:
1. Plan for the Long Term
While succession planning is always delicate,requiring founders to grapple with theiridentity and legacy, advance planning is necessary for a smooth transition. The first step is alignment between shareholders and the founder, ensuring there is clarity about the intent for a succession and then determining the timing.
For investors, if bringing in a more seasoned CEO is part of the investment strategy, funders should be upfront about this to build trust with the founder. This would also establish succession as a priority and the eventual transition as a deliberate outcome based on that strategic intention.
For founders, deciding “it’s time” to step aside is always tricky. However, the decision to bring in a new CEO is forward-looking leadership, centered around focusing on how to secure the company’s position for the long term, well beyond the founding vision. . “When we got to about 40 people, I realized I don’t know how to do this. What I do know how to do is build a brand,” said Sheena Zadeh-Daly, Founder of Kosas, during the 2023 WWD Beauty CEO Summit. “I’m an artist – I’m probably not the right person to go to ask questions about the supply chain.”
Amanda Baldwin, incoming CEO of Olaplex and previously the founder-successor CEO of Supergoop!, explained, , “The greatest founders are often the ones who fundamentally believe they don’t need to do it on their own. Bringing in a CEO is the biggest sign of saying, ‘I believe in what I’m doing.’”
2. Look for Different Pieces of the Puzzle, Not for the Same Shape
While it might seem tempting to select a successor who appears to be much like the founder, everyone involved in succession planning should stay aware of looming affinity bias (which is the tendency to be naturally drawn toward individuals with similar characteristics, backgrounds, and interests). The incoming leader should share the core values and beliefs of the company mission, but they also might need to possess different skill sets to scale and drive the next chapter of the business. “The process is about matching-making and fit with each other, not about right and wrong,” explains Baldwin.
This type of approach has worked out well in many instances. “The best founder/CEO combos bring complementary, often opposite ends of the spectrum, skillsets but, at the same time the two hold anappreciation for each other’s respective strengths,” says Hui Chan, Managing Director at Bain Capital, where he invests in the consumer and beauty sector. “Take the Creative/Analytical duo where the creative also loves data, and the analytical one deep down is also an artist – those are the partnerships that have worked best. They each bring something to the table while pushing each other’s capabilities at the same time.”
These complementary duos enable creative tension, spark new ideas, and empower each other to shine in their respective areas of expertise. Zadeh-Daly describes her work with Kosas CEO Jean-Marc Plisson as a “loving partnership….It gives me the space to connect with people and know that finance, ops, and supply chain are in a great place [with Marc].”
Successor CEO Elana Drell-Szyfer shares the reflection framework she applies: "What is important for you to achieve as the CEO? What is important for the founder to hold onto, both internally and externally?" These lanes are deeply nuanced and need to be explicitly stated.
3. Allow for Flexibility and Evolution
A major part of succession planning is crystalizing clear decision-making lines and differentiating roles and responsibilities of the incoming CEO and the transitioning founder well ahead of time. This is especially key if the founder will stay involved in the business. These roles may also shift as the company expands and scales., The team should work together to establish a clear decision-making order of command to ensure the founder is engaged at the relevant moments, and the board, CEO, and founder will want to revisit the role specs as needed to avoid making assumptions.
Also critical is determining how to honor the founder’s vision and legacy and preserve the company values they helped to develop. It’s important to remember that the founder has poured their heart and soul into the business and while a leadership transition may seem like standard business practice, it is also important to honor the founding work. Companies will want to underscore that even if new leaders may bring different perspectives and strategies, the soul of the brand will remain intact. Consumers are often attached to a brand based on the founder’s vision. So a new leader can build trust and customer loyalty by recognizing that.
Essential CEO Transition Plan Principles for Beauty Brands
There are three key principles for beauty companies to keep in mind in succession planning:
- Time: Allocate sufficient time, as traditional CEO successions take at least 12 to 18 months. Founder succession should not be rushed , and it is crucial that all key stakeholders are engaged, including the team members that will ideally remain after the transition.
- Transparency: The more all stakeholders are on the same page about the long-term goals of the company, the reason for a CEO transition, and what good looks like, the better the outcome. These conversations can be difficult and may require facilitation and deep reflection to separate personal attachments from the long term business strategy. .
- Trust: Actively establishing and maintaining trust early on and consistently is the most critical element in succession, and there are multiple ways to build it. Founders tend to appreciate those who share their convictions and vision. Trust is also built through transparency. Many founders appreciate people who will speak the truth, share information openly, and understand that full disclosure is in the best interest of the business.
Applying these three principles as the foundation for a well-paced transition, beauty companies can ensure that incoming CEOs have access to a thorough understanding of the brand's values and vision. Engaging all stakeholder(from shareholders to employees), fosters a cohesive commitment to the company's trajectory. This clarity not only facilitates smoother transitions but also solidifies cohesion around the vision for the brand's continued success. Through open and honest communication, the intricate process of succession becomes an opportunity for growth and an investment in the the brand's – and the founder’s – enduring legacy.
Partnering with Experts to Build a CEO Transition Plan
At Egon Zehnder, we specialize in helping founder-led businesses build thoughtful CEO transition plans that honor legacy while preparing for future growth. We work closely with founders, boards, and executive teams to assess leadership needs, identify successors, and design transition strategies that safeguard culture, engage stakeholders, and build confidence.
Our executive search and succession advisory teams bring deep expertise in navigating high-stakes leadership changes, with a tailored approach that reflects the emotional, strategic, and brand-related complexities of founder transitions—especially in industries like beauty.
Contact us today to begin designing a CEO transition plan that aligns with your company’s values, vision, and next chapter of growth.
