About the episode
People still want the in-store experience, Andrew Yeager says. What has changed is that the daily stuff gets fulfilled online, and the people building stores and owning brands now have data to support decisions that used to be a little Wild West.
Andrew is Commercial Executive, Beauty Retail and AI at Nielsen. He walks Mike through almost thirteen years in national sales at Muzak, the custom cosmetics brand where he fell in love with beauty, how data can show a retailer its blind spots, how he uses AI with guardrails, and the community he has helped build through CEW and Boys in Beauty.
His turnaround at Muzak started on a flight home from New York, after Ann Taylor told him and his director of programming there was no way they would ever get its business. The two of them came up with audio architecture, a soundtrack evocative of the lighting, the visuals, and the clothing inside each store. Gap, Ann Taylor, Crate & Barrel, Donna Karan, and J.Crew all became his clients.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Andrew Yeager on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewyeager1/
Nielsen – https://www.nielsen.com/
Boys in Beauty – https://boysinbeauty.com/home/
Chapters
0:00 – Intro
3:02 – From Seattle to a Psychology Degree
6:51 – Selling Muzak and Audio Architecture
12:37 – The Flight That Led to Custom Cosmetics
18:59 – Experience in Store, Fulfillment Online
24:45 – Using Data to Find Retail Blind Spots
28:36 – Using AI With Guardrails
31:24 – Boys in Beauty and Building Community
39:36 – Authenticity as the Trend to Watch
ABOUT ANDREW YEAGER
Andrew Yeager is Commercial Executive, Beauty Retail and AI at Nielsen. He spent almost thirteen years in national sales at Muzak, now Mood Media, where he and his director of programming created audio architecture for retail clients, then helped take Colorlab from private label cosmetics manufacturer to retail brand. He later led beauty and OTC account development at NielsenIQ, started a Midwest beauty event series with CEW, and is helping build out Boys in Beauty in the Midwest with founder Ian Michael Crumm.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewyeager1/ | https://www.nielsen.com/
