Achelle Richards knows what it takes to make a quality beauty product.
Richards, global artistic director at e.l.f. Cosmetics, has created more than 1,000 products since she started at the company in 2005, after leaving San Diego and moving to New York with her dog, sans job or apartment. Now she heads up product innovation for the beauty company, where she tracks global trends and conceptualizes affordable products that meet consumer needs. During her 12 years at e.l.f., Richards has worked across several departments, including marketing, customer relations and digital.
“I was the fifth employee, and it was very much in the startup phase then,” she said. “I loved their whole outlook about what they were trying to achieve as far as accessible luxury, which was a gray area in the beauty category. At first, I was wearing a lot of hats, but then I started to really find my niche in product development and innovation, and it took off from there. It’s been a wild ride ever since.”
This year alone, e.l.f.’s sales have increased by 20 percent, coming on the heels of the company’s initial public offering in September 2016. As part of its growth, it’s expanded to a number of retailers, including Target, Walmart and Ulta Beauty, and has also launched standalone stores in select cities.
Between promoting e.l.f.’s latest skin care collection, Richards stopped to share with us five of her favorite recent Instagram posts, weigh in on the pictures and share the inspiration behind them. The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
Behind the scenes with Sweet
One of the things I love to do is talk to beauty editors about the latest and greatest innovations by e.l.f. I did a Facebook Live discussion over at Sweet about Beauty Shield, our latest skin-care collection that launched online last week. It’s all about finding ways to protect your skin against environmental factors while showing your beauty. In the video, I talked through the collection, which I helped develop, and how to incorporate those products into a trendy summer beauty look.
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Mastering the art of the selfie
Here, we have a shameless selfie. That was taken at the Beautyscape event we held in March. I was so inspired by our community. They all take amazing photos on Instagram, and their makeup looks are so beautiful. I couldn’t figure out how to achieve their amazing looks — I just have one look: a side pose and a smile — so they showed me how to pose. This was me trying to slay.
When you realize you lost an hour of sleep 😳
A post shared by Achelle Richards (Dunaway) (@askachelle) on
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Rock and roll
I did this when I was in London a few weeks ago. It was a really exciting opportunity to announce that e.l.f. is now selling on the beauty website Superdrug, and I love taking time when I’m traveling to see the countryside, the culture and the history. This is at Stonehenge, and I’m super corny, so I thought it would be really funny to do a “rock and roll.”
Born to be seaside
I am definitely a water baby. My mom named me for a shell — literally “a shell” — she just spelled it differently. My mom and I are from California, and she loved the beach. You can always find me in my natural essence, near water. I love to get outdoors and hike. My husband runs a company called So Ripe, which is all about lifestyle and nutrition. They host wellness retreats, which are all about happy, healthy lifestyles, so we went on one of them in New Hampshire.
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“Congradulations”
I’m continuously throwing back to my wedding in August. This is one of my favorite pictures for a couple reasons. One is the cake. If you zoom in, you can see “congratulations” is actually spelled incorrectly. We were so laid back with our wedding, and we didn’t have a wedding cake, so we asked my grandma to help us get something small so we could still have that tradition. She was so sweet and went and got a sheet cake from the store to feed the entire family. I don’t think she realized they had spelled it wrong.
