What’s Selling At Credo

Multipurpose merchandise is moving at Credo.

Customers at the 14-unit clean beauty retailer are snapping up makeup-skincare hybrids like Iris&Romeo’s Best Skin Days as well as body care products packed with active ingredients from the brands Nécessaire, Iota and Nature of Things. Meg Lim, senior color merchant at Credo, reasons customers’ busy schedules are behind their preferences for multitaskers. 

“In general, we just notice that our customers are people who want to spend less time getting ready,” she says. “They have a lot to do. They’re going to work, taking care of kids and having a social life. So, they just want convenient, easy-to-apply products that can achieve a lot of different things.”

Body serums, in particular, are benefitting from heightened interest as are skincare sales of products featuring retinol, vitamin C, hyaluronic acid and chemical exfoliants. A smaller category for sales at Credo, haircare is experiencing escalating demand. Shampoos and conditioners are leading the charge.

Wellness products aren’t faring as well at Credo. The retailer has experimented with supplement brands such as The Nue Co and The Beauty Chef over the years, but they’re no longer on its shelves. 

“The educational part can be a little difficult to really nail both online and in store,” says Lim. “Our clean beauty experts, in general, are just very, very comfortable with speaking to skincare and makeup. So, when you have supplements in the mix, it can get a little bit more tricky. Overall, I don’t think that we fully nailed wellness, but we haven’t necessarily completely given up.”

Credo’s supplement lineup now includes Arey and Moon Juice. Arey, a brand that specializes in slowing the growth of gray hair, exclusively launched at Credo in June. Its Not Today, Grey supplements have taken off with customers. At the moment, the product is out of stock on Credo’s website. 

Not that interested in large eyeshadow palettes, Credo customers are asking for single eyeshadow options. In response, the retailer introduced single eyeshadows and refillable palettes from MOB Beauty into its assortment. Refills, in particular, have become a bigger topic of conversation among Credo’s customers.

“We’re experiencing more and more questioning about how refills operate in general,” says Lim. “I think we absolutely see so much potential for refills, but now it’s more so looking at it and saying, ‘Hey, by making this a refill, are we actually using more plastic in the process?’ I don’t think that there’s any clear-cut answers yet.”

Discussions about packaging tie into a broader trend that’s taken hold at Credo of consumers investigating the environmental impacts of what they’re buying. Clean beauty retailer Aillea is noticing a similar trend. Lim says, “Within Credo, we find that our customer is even more in tune and aware of how they’re purchasing, how they’re using products and what waste they’re creating.”

Credo introduced sustainability guidelines in June 2020 with the aim of reducing the amount of single-use plastic, virgin plastic and non-recyclable materials in its assortment. The guidelines called for the elimination of single-use masks, wipes and samples in 2021. By 2024, they call for petroleum-derived packaging to have least 50% recycled content. Lim describes the retailer’s sustainability initiatives as a work in progress.  

She says, “We don’t look at it necessarily as, ‘If you don’t adhere to this, that’s terrible, this is it,’ we see it more as a conversation with our brands and with manufacturers, figuring out together what the right next steps should look like.”

Credo currently stocks 121 beauty brands, including Alpyn Beauty, Maya Chia, Osea, Pai Skincare, Westman Atelier, Ilia, True Botanicals, and its three owned brands: Follain, Exa Beauty and EleVen by Venus Williams. Along with Arey, the retailer exclusively launched Iris & Romeo, Ourside and Gen See this year.

Credo plans to decrease its brand roster in the near future. According to Lim, buyers consider a brand’s sales performance in addition to its potential growth, how it fits assortment gaps, whether it’s exclusive to Credo and its willingness to prioritize its partnership with the retailer when deciding whether to keep a brand in its roster. She says, “Thanks to our co-founder, Annie Jackson, we also have a strict no assholes policy, and we only want to work with nice people.”

When injecting brands into Credo’s assortment, growing brands with distinct positioning and engaged communities are attractive to its buyers. Lim says, “Social media is a factor when considering new brands, but we aren’t necessarily fixated on the number of followers. Instead, we really consider the quality of a brand’s followers.”

Credo isn’t immune to the allure of celebrity-backed brands. It recently introduced Jennifer Aniston’s haircare brand LolaVie. Michelle Pfeiffer’s fragrance brand Henry Rose launched at Credo last year.

Credo is expanding its store fleet. Its 14th location recently opened on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in the Los Angeles neighborhood Venice. Two more locations are set to bow by the end of September in the Silver Lake area of LA and Seattle, Wash.