The Beauty of Strategic Pricing: Inside flaconi’s Pricing Transformation with Corina Manea

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome to Pricing Heroes, a uh, podcast sponsored by Competera. This is a series of interviews with the best in class retail pricing experts driving bottom line metrics for major retail brands and the industry as a whole. Today's guest is Karina Magna. Carina is the Vice president of commercial at Flaconi, Germany's leading online retailer for beauty and perfume. Over the past six and a half years at Placoni, she has played a pivotal role in shaping the company's commercial and pricing strategy. She's risen through the ranks from team lead of pricing and forecasting to her current leadership role overseeing campaign and on site management, category management, commercial planning and pricing. She brings over a decade of experience in pricing, analytics and commercial planning with prior roles at e commerce giants like Wayfair and Zalando. Throughout her career, Karina brought together pricing analytics, promotional strategy and demand forecasting to deliver consistent top and bottom line growth. Karina, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot for having me. I'm excited.

Speaker A: We are too. Would you like to begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you found your way into pricing?

Speaker B: So I originally come from Romania where I completed my bachelor's uh, in business administration. I was back then still discovering what I want to do in my career and that gave me a broad exposure, I would say to all kind of business related fields. After that I moved, uh, to Berlin for my master's in international finance. So back then I was quite fascinated by the stock market and imagined building a career in that space. But pretty quickly I realized it wasn't for me. I missed this more dynamic, creative side of the business where you have strategy on one side, customer behavior, analytics, and it all comes together. And yeah, then I stumbled upon a job description at Zalando for a junior pricing manager and it just instantly clicked. So I remember reading it and thinking this is exactly what I've been looking for. Or even during the interview I had this gut feeling like, wow, this could really be my job. And from there it's been a, um, steep but really exciting learning curve. I fell in love with E commerce. I love this fast paced, constant evolution, how measurable everything is. And I would say what really hooked me was seeing how small changes in pricing can have a huge impact on customer perception, on competitiveness and ultimately on the financial performance of the business. It's really that perfect mix of analytical thinking and strategic influence that keeps me really passionate about this field. And after that I took on several roles exploring really opportunities at some of the big e commerce companies. But Eventually I would say most roads led me back to pricing in one way or another.

Speaker A: That's really amazing. It's not surprising that you are big on analytics and you have worked with E commerce. Because I can't imagine having the same access to customer behavior in brick and mortar retail as compared to online.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So is that why you feel so attracted to E commerce? You just really like the digital or is there some other reason besides that?

Speaker B: For sure. So I like first of all the amount of data that you can access to make your decisions really informed and how fast paced it is. Because I think in the brick and mortar you can't do this. Fast changes, whereas in digital it never gets boring.

Speaker A: I think that's true. I've worked in communications for a very long time and I can say that I prefer digital communications to all else because you can just track everything, you know, end to end customer journeys. It's phenomenal for sure. So I totally understand that. So what attracted you to Flockoni?

Speaker B: I mean first of all, pricing for sure. I started as a teammate for pricing and of course also the beauty industry. So uh, I always loved beauty products and it felt like, okay, I can really merge the two of them and it's been quite the journey to be honest. When I first joined, the team was very small, only three people and it required also a lot of hands on work which I really loved. But the work was done very manually. So I soon learned that and it was somehow the uh, first big mission to really automate and streamline everything. And that was very exciting for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's really interesting to hear a team of three and fully manual, that can be challenging, especially for an E commerce company. So you've been at Fleconi for six years and you've grown from a team lead in pricing to VP of commercial. Can you tell us a little bit about that entire journey?

Speaker B: So I mentioned that we started right with these manual processes back then and automating everything and we actually managed to build this in house pricing pool. That was the first huge win for us. We learned a lot during that time, managed to remove most of the manual work and especially as the company was growing at full speed around us, it makes the journey just more exciting. But soon after that I took on a uh, bit more responsibility and I stepped into the role of head of pricing and commercial planning. So it meant extending my focus beyond pricing and diving a bit into the planning side of the business. So setting company targets, forecasting, working a bit more cross functionally so with marketing teams, category Supply chain management and even operations. So this was quite new to me. It was an exciting step because it allowed me not only to grow my skill set, but also to bring, let's say, this pricing lens into the broader planning strategy, as pricing obviously has a big impact in setting up company targets. Right? And then came, uh, another big chapter. So Flaconi was going through some major organizational and strategy changes, especially towards the end of 2022. And that opened a new opportunity for me to step into the VP commercial role, where I took on even more scope. So back then it was including campaign and category management teams. To be honest, I found both topics extremely exciting and I loved how I could then shape even better the pricing strategy. So supporting both campaign performance as well as tiering the brands and categories to achieve the targets. And at the same time, the company was rethinking its overall processes and strategy. And for me that meant a whole new learning curve. So this time really more focused on company steering and strategy. And yeah, honestly, I've loved every minute of it. It's been so super challenging and incredibly rewarding, especially since our results have been really amazing ever since. So constantly exceeding our targets, this brings even more satisfaction.

Speaker A: I would say that sounds like an inspiring career journey, especially within a single company. It's always nice to hear about someone grow into new opportunities. Would you say that you had to proactively look for those opportunities, or did it feel like a natural progression in your career for someone else who's working in pricing specifically now at a company, how can they identify those opportunities and position themselves to make sure that they're able to transition into that next role that allows them to expand their scope and their expertise and grow as a professional.

Speaker B: I think it's important to always take careers in your role and to always challenge the processes. So really trying to maintain also, uh, relationships with other teams, trying to understand how you can help them improve their own processes and, and then it somehow, um, leads into this natural transition. So I was not actively looking. I mean, of course everyone wants to grow, right? And if the company offers you that opportunity, then it's amazing. But really actively staying in touch and understanding what the others are doing, it also allows you to learn and then to somehow be the natural choice for such new opportunities. And I love that about Placoni, that they are always promoting internal growth. So always checking first. Is there anyone who could fill in the role and not instantly looking for an external that gives really good, uh, growth opportunities to the employees?

Speaker A: That sounds great. Uh, honestly, you sound like the Ideal pricing expert. Because when I talk to a lot of pricing professionals, and I talk to a lot, especially those working in consulting, and one of the challenges they always mention in pricing is that there are barriers or silos within organizations between pricing and other functions. And you're talking about being extremely proactive, looking towards other teams, identifying opportunities, questioning processes and figuring out how to better improve those processes and better integrate the functions. And so it's no surprise to me that you've excelled as much as you have at flood coding because it just seems like your mindset is focused on developing cross functional relationships that are crucial to pricing success.

Speaker B: At the beginning, when I started my career in pricing, I also felt maybe it's a bit too restrictive because you work in a silo. But in the end pricing affects so many other teams, uh, throughout the company. Right. You are affecting supply chain management, marketing and performance marketing. So it's really important to understand these connections and that's how you can improve even further the pricing strategy.

Speaker A: And would you say that your background in pricing has allowed you to be uniquely positioned and given you skills that others may not have for a role in commercial.

Speaker B: I think for sure. I mean, especially the way that we built the commercial, uh, department here. So having campaign management and planning, I think it's crucial to understand the pricing strategy because it affects both. Right. So I think in this sense it definitely gave me an advantage because I can understand how any small change in pricing would affect then both players planning and targets as well as campaign performance. So it gave me a, uh, push for the role, I would say.

Speaker A: So what have been some of the biggest challenges you faced while leading pricing at Flaccone? And maybe even you can talk about some of your biggest wins as well.

Speaker B: So I'd say uh, that every year at Flaconi came with its own set of challenges, which in the end is probably also what made the journey so exciting. So in the early days the biggest hurdle was building our own pricing tool from scratch and making sure it could actually scale. So having an in house tool sounds great and it was one win for sure. But in reality it really requires constant resources and upkeep. And since we were also such a small team back then, it meant a lot of prioritizing and constantly balancing between keeping things running and leaving enough space to innovate, to test, to, to implement new ideas. We were also developing our own demand based pricing model with data science back then. And that was a fair share of trial and error, uh, involved. So we learned for sure a lot during that Time and later on as we massively expanded our assortment and onboarded a lot of mass market brands, that was a new kind of complexity that hit us really this long tail products. Suddenly we were dealing with a huge volume of low margin but low rotation SKUs and we were trying to figure out the right price points while still trying to achieve growth and profitability targets. And it wasn't easy. And yeah, at the same time we were committed to protect the brand image of our premium labels and ensuring sustainable growth. So we were constantly walking this really tight rope with between ambition and brand integrity. And then in 2022 we reshape our company strategy, kicked off a major internationalization push and the challenge shifted again. So our beloved in house pricing tool, the one that we had really built and optimized over the years, it started to struggle. So we added more countries and pricing logic became more sophisticated and it became really hard to maintain and too slow to keep us with the market dynamics. And to be honest, in the beauty industry, speed is really everything. So that was kind of the tipping point for us to switch to an external solution. We partnered with uh, Computera and it really changed the game for us so that suddenly we had more time to focus on strategic topics on experimentation or testing. And as a result performance improved significantly. And yeah, we had even more ambitious um, goals on the table but we managed to exceed expectation and this was a huge win for us.

Speaker A: I've worked for a lot of tech companies, SAP, EPAM and a few other smaller services companies and the question always comes down to build or buy. And having worked with some of these companies, I've built internal tools for communications and I think people just underestimate the cost and time. And when you work for a global systems integrator and you are looking for a tool when you know you have the talent to build it, there's like this tendency to push for it. Yeah, but there were so many times when it just made more sense to buy a tool. Like yes, we could build it if we want to, but the infrastructure and the maintenance cost, sometimes it's just too excessive. And so sometimes buying the industry standard for the best in class is preferable to building. But it's a fun process. At least going through the process of building you understand what's required and what you're looking for and what the challenges are associated with that. So I think there are definitely lessons to be learned from it for sure. So you mentioned that speed is essential in luxury and I think that makes sense. One of my past CEOs would always say speed kills when you don't have it. So besides speed, how does Fliconi use pricing to differentiate itself and support long term profitability?

Speaker B: What sets Flaconi really apart from other beauty retailers is our commitment to embrace change and innovation. So we're constantly evolving, challenging our processes to meet not only financial goals, but also to maintain supplier relationships, to improve cooperation between employees and to ensure this really smooth pricing process. And I mean pricing obviously is a key strategic lever for us and not just for hitting short term revenue goals, but setting our brand apart and ensuring this long term sustainable growth. And in a highly competitive market like beauty, we see pricing really as a way to communicate value while still protecting the positioning of our premium assortment. Because I mean, many say it's about being the cheapest, but it's not, it's not about being the cheapest. It's really about creating this best value for your customers and offering this high quality product products at a fair price. We work with a, uh, dynamic pricing setup that allows us to react really quickly to the market trends and to customer behavior and to consider also seasonality. So we use really a combination of factors from stock to demand to competitive data. Uh, and what we're trying to do also to differentiate ourselves is to predict this optimal price. And obviously on the other hand we've implemented really strong pricing thresholds for our assortment, so ensuring that we maintain this brand image and also like protecting margins. But yeah, I would say what helps us stay really ahead is strong focus on testing and learning, whether it's new campaign mechanics, um, price elasticity experiments or cross category optimization. So this approach really gives us the uh, agility to adapt fast while also keeping long term goals in sight. And it's this combination of flexibility, structure, strategic focus that enables us to drive profitability sustainably. So we constantly monitor our results. We ensure that growth does not come at a cost. Many companies do that. But for us it's really important to push growth on both top line and bottom line. And of course, last but not least, I would say this unique combination of people first approach dynamic culture means we're not just following the trends, we are creating the success together. And that's really what distinguishes in the uh, beauty retail landscape.

Speaker A: That's a great answer. And when you mentioned experimentation, my follow up question was going to be, and you've sort of already answered this, but you know, it can be very challenging to persuade leadership to allow experimentation, especially when it can impact bottom line, top line growth metrics. Maybe you can comment a little more about how you are getting buy in from the leadership, Are you persuading them or is this something that they bring to you? And how do you balance experimentation with consistency in your commercial approach?

Speaker B: Yeah, so obviously a bit of convincing is always needed, but we are always looking at data and using data. So whenever we come up with an experiment, we also have very clear proof, uh, why do we want to do it and what it could achieve. And we are doing great as a company. So that obviously gives some room for experimentation. And in general we monitor so closely the results. So when we have several days and weeks of, let's say, bad results, then we also decide to stop it. So we don't just test for the best of testing. We make sure we protect growth and margins and really try to make our experiments as successful as possible. But we also believe that in the end we learn from mistakes. Right. And this helps you just grow even further. So it's needed to ensure further growth.

Speaker A: So essentially it's about relying on data and knowing what your objectives are, clearly defining and narrowing the scope of what you're testing and leveraging the insights in your strategy. So Flaconi talks a lot about your We Commerce approach. Can you explain what this is and how it shapes the company's commercial strategy?

Speaker B: Yes, I think it's really what sets Flakoni apart, this We Commerce approach, because it highlights, uh, a goal oriented collaborative action and we are cultivating strong partnerships with different stakeholders, external and internal. So this philosophy basically implies a strong internal culture, collaborative relationships with branded partners, and it's leading to a more integrated and effective business operation. So uh, for example, in our commercial team, everyone plays a crucial role. So from working students to senior members, we always listen to feedback. We encourage everyone to challenge processes, to bring ideas and, and this is what makes our collaboration unique because we value this human interaction. We have daily standups, we prioritize, we list challenges, we give updates, ensuring this full transparency and the continuous flow of information. And this really ensures that all functions are aligned and they're working in the same direction. And yeah, what makes our work meaningful isn't then just about delivering the beauty product. It's really about creating genuine connections, understanding how each transaction in the end represents a relation relationship that we value. And through this we have heavily boosted our company culture. Everyone is committed to Flockoni success, making everyday fun. It transforms traditional online shopping into something more meaningful, like a community where everyone plays a role in creating beauty experiences.

Speaker A: So it sounds like Flakoni centers people at the core of the brand for sure. Okay. So you have people at the center, but I assume you don't just achieve success for an E commerce company by leveraging people. It's also technology. You've mentioned a little bit about pricing automation and some demand forecasting algorithms that you use. Perhaps you can elaborate a little bit more on what role technology plays in how you serve your customers and stay ahead of the competition in the very competitive luxury beauty space.

Speaker B: So we are constantly building on Fiaconi's beauty in your pocket mobile first strategy. So obviously technology is then the key pillar of this approach to serve customers and to stay ahead in the competitive, uh, digital landscape. So we are very agile and fast in all that we do. So we prioritize simple yet scalable solutions over complexity. To be honest, once we understood the importance of this, it was a major turning point towards success. Our core value is customer centricity, so we're focused on delivering exactly what our customers need. And we actively encourage trying new things because it's essential for growth, as I've mentioned. And our open failure culture also supports learning with every attempt. And especially in beauty, where trends shift fast and the customer expectations are very high, the speed and adaptability is really everything. So that's why we see technology not as a support function, but rather as a key enabler to move really quickly and to stay ahead of the curve. So whether it's pricing, campaign setup, planning or product discovery, we are really investing in tools and infrastructure that allow us to iterate fast and to react to the market signals, if possible, then in real time. And that agility helps us to constantly learn, test, improve, which is so important because we're trying to enhance customer experience in really meaningful ways. And also important for us to acknowledge what you already mentioned, which technologies we can build ourselves and where it makes more sense to outsource because speed is everything.

Speaker A: Wonderful, thank you. So what advice would you give to pricing professionals who aspire to grow in their careers?

Speaker B: What helped me the most and what I'd really recommend is being honest. So really voicing both ideas and concerns openly and always challenging the status quo. Don't be afraid to question how things are done and to suggest improvements. And at Laconi, we have the strong feedback culture. And I truly believe this is a key driver for personal and for team growth because it creates this space to learn, to reflect and to get better every day. What I also think is incredibly important is to really give yourself time because there's often this, uh, rush to climb the ladder quickly. But real growth, I think comes when you really allow yourself, to make mistakes, to ask questions, to figure out what really excites you. Because it's not about just moving fast. It's about building a strong foundation and understanding where your strength really lies. And finally, always to stay curious. Because pricing doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's really understanding the wider industry, new technologies, consumer trends, and what's happening around you will help really to stay ahead and to keep learning. And yeah, be open to inspiration from unexpected places. That's often where the best ideas come from.

Speaker A: Um, thank you for that advice. I think our audience will really appreciate that. So, final question. What books, podcasts or other resources would you recommend to our community of pricing professionals?

Speaker B: Well, so one of the first books that I read when I started in the pricing field was Predictably Irrational. It's one of those books that fundamentally shifts the way that you think about pricing and consumer behavior in general. So for anyone starting out in this field, I think it's really a eye opener because it helps you move beyond the traditional idea that people make rational, value driven decision and instead it shows how emotion, perception and context play a massive role in how people respond to crisis. And what I loved back then about the book was that it's really actionable and as a, uh, young professional it gave me so many ideas for testing in the pricing field. So I definitely recommend it. And yeah, last but not least, I think nothing beats really talking to your peers. Whether it's through LinkedIn groups, pricing communities, conferences, these real life cases, informal exchanges have been the most valuable learning experiences for me. So I totally recommend that.

Speaker A: Do you have any favorite pricing communities or events that you frequently attend?

Speaker B: Yes, I attend quite a lot of E commerce conferences and there are some that are also in Berlin I like because it gives a, uh, more broader perspective than just pricing. Of course there are also tailored conferences in the pricing field, but I think really this e commerce focus give you a good understanding and for me also being part of the commercial team, it gives me also this wider perspective.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well Karina, thank you for being on the show and sharing your insights with us today.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot for having me.

Speaker A: I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Karina Magno. Be sure to follow and connect with our guests on LinkedIn. For more information about AI pricing solutions, visit Compitera AI. Remember to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app to ensure you don't miss future episodes. And please help us spread the word by leaving a five star review so that others can discover the show. If you find the insights on this show valuable. I encourage you to check out the retail pricing community on LinkedIn where you will find a community of pricing experts sharing their expertise and latest trends. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Pricing Heroes. Take care. Until next time.