Maria Ashe (Founder)

Maria is a lover of all things beautiful. The beauty industry and the brands she helps shape know that her eye for uniqueness and relevancy, in addition to her focus on strategy and positioning, are a rare and powerful combination.

A trained market eye honed through 20 years of industry experience, she knows what it takes for a brand to successfully emerge and expand its distribution while raising the brand profile and engaging the consumer. In an increasingly saturated market, Maria knows how to disrupt the crowd and have the brand’s story heard by consumer and retailer alike.

As a former owner and President of Beauty Addicts, the spa market color cosmetics brand, Maria approaches business from a unique perspective. She understands the challenges that both emerging and established brands face at each step of their growth. Maria developed a strong understanding of the TV Home Shopping channels when she launched her own brand, as well as creating Beauty Lounges for major awards shows such as the Emmys, MTV VMA’s, and ESPY Awards. She now brings that expertise to the Beauty-Footprint clients.

Maria has experience developing new product and packaging concepts for a major skincare manufacturing lab giving her solid expertise and relationships with lab facilities for color cosmetics, skincare, and haircare. Her insight into the market, social media skills, and sales and trend forecasting are key elements to the firm’s success. She has built and maintained a solid network of industry relationships.

 

Chris Czajkowski

Chris is a multi-discipline professional with a strong record of successful brand and sales development, forecasting, marketing, merchandising, and training in the Cosmetics and Fragrances industry demonstrated through a career of building top-performing business organizations within nationwide markets. He is a strong communicator with excellent relationship-building skills adept at launching successful initiatives, as well as an effective strategist and negotiator able to refine objectives and execute plans to achieve. His varied experience enables him to approach each business with a resourceful insight and expertise.

Chris has held senior-level responsibilities in the Cosmetics and Fragrances industry for over 20 years in all aspects of the business: brand and product development, wholesale brand management, retail buying and store management. In the wholesale field, Chris has overseen the development and launch of new brands, as well as the entry of international brands into the United States. In the retail field, his resume includes senior level-buying positions with Barneys New York and Saks Fifth Avenue with nationwide responsibility. This experience involved the marketing and financial development of major established brands, as well as the identification and launch of new concepts and businesses.

 

Michael McDermott

Mike has been working in the wholesale apparel /soft goods industry for over 20 years as an operations/financial executive. He has a multi‐disciplinary background with expertise in customer service, logistics, finance, accounting, systems management and human resources. His experience includes senior level positions with Lugz Footwear, Akademiks and Delta Enterprise. While at Lugz as the Vice President of Finance and Operations, the company grew to over $250mm in sales worldwide becoming the 10th largest footwear company in the United States. As the CFO/COO of Akademiks, Mike was part of the senior management helping to grow the company from $5mm to $125mm in sales in just over 4 years. In all three companies, he was responsible for delivering high impact technical solutions that solved operational issues with an immediate ROI. Mike has a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering and Masters in Finance