Adit Nears First Anniversary, Expands To Niche Beauty Retailers

As beauty retail rebounds following a rough 2020, there’s been a proliferation of niche retailers popping up focused on serving specific beauty needs or traditionally underserved communities. While they don’t capture the market share of big chains like Target or Sephora, the emerging concepts have loyal customers and represent an important segment of the retail landscape.

Nearly a year after its launch, Adit, a program connecting indie beauty brands to retailers from Beauty Independent parent company Indie Beauty Media Group, is bringing smaller retailers into the fold by introducing two multi-retailer opportunities to its repertoire involving broader niche beauty e-tailers and niche specialty beauty retailers. These multi-retailer opportunities provide an efficient way for beauty brands to pitch a group of retailers at the same time, helping scale retail outreach. Olivela, Adaya Beauty, Integrity Botanicals, Trellis Beauty and Beautyhabit are among the 10 retailers already signed up for the new opportunities. Live presentations kicked off last week. 

Started in November 2020, Adit specializes in facilitating virtual meetings between rising beauty and wellness brands and the world’s leading retailers. Twenty-eight retailers have tapped its capabilities so far, including Ulta Beauty, Feelunique, Neiman Marcus, Thrive Market, Cos Bar, Credo, The Detox Market, Verishop, Grove Collaborative, Beauty Heroes and Bluemercury. Since its inception, Adit has orchestrated nearly 300 live meetings between retailers and brands while the team helming it has conducted over 600 brand pitches to retailers in its network. Around 80% of Adit brands have secured live meetings with retailers.

For retailers, Adit builds a meaningful pipeline of innovation and interfaces with buyers in a seamless fashion. Grove Collaborative’s buyers have clear standards for restricting their assortment to cruelty-free, sustainable and safe brands. “Working with Adit has saved the team immeasurable time in vetting brands that meet our needs,” says Erin Weibel, VP of merchandising at Grove Collaborative. “Adit can focus its presentations on brands or categories that meet our white space and growing areas of expansion while pre-vetting brands that are true matches for our long-term sustainability goals.” The eco-conscious online destination recently brought on Georganics, a plastic-free oral care brand, through its Adit partnership and is in talks with more brands leading into 2022. 

Grove Collaborative’s buying team uses the Adit program to source and vet brands that fit its stringent safety and sustainability standards. Georganics, a plastic-free oral care brand, was connected to the retailer through Adit.

“The feedback on Adit has been incredible. The support we received from major retailers like Grove Collaborative over the last year is really important,” says IBMG co-founder Nader Naeymi-Rad. “But we realized that smaller, niche players offer an important and unique set of opportunities, too.” He explains the smaller, niche players have upsides like accessibility to the founder or head buyer, speed to market and real-time feedback. Naeymi-Rad also highlights that starting off small gives young brands solid learnings. He says, “It really provides critical validation that you can move product.”

According to Natasha Goldberg, head of Adit’s retail success team, not all brands are ready for massive retailers, especially small brands getting established. Huge wholesale partners require robust logistical capabilities, including warehousing and EDI compatibility, and financial resources to support copious orders and promotions. Even if they hold off on gigantic chains, brands can boost their sales by aligning with several smaller retailers and leveraging momentum in them to land an aspirational retailer when the time is right. 

“A small or young brand could certainly be a fit for Ulta or Neiman Marcus, and we have seen success there, but, for most of these brands, launching in a larger retailer is a heavy lift, one that some emerging brands may struggle with,” says Goldberg. “Many of our younger brands are realizing this themselves, and they come into Adit with a strategy of beginning with the smaller retailers.”

Goldberg believes the new multi-retailer opportunities will create avenues for brands to carefully pursue a larger retail presence. “A certain level of brand awareness and retail experience are big selling points to major retailers,” she says. “Knowing that you’ve had experience dealing with wholesale and managing supply chain needs at a certain volume, as well as proven sales at other retailers, gives the buyer confidence that they can work successfully with your brand.” 

Prior to the expansion, Adit members only had the option of presenting to one retailer’s buyers. The mono-retailer approach will still be a significant component of Adit’s retail mix, but brands now have more options and chances to get in front of buyers. The live multi-retailer meetings enable brands to present to the participating retailers. The multi-retailer efforts will be capped at around 10 retailers per type of retailer, either smaller beauty e-tailer or physical beauty specialty retailer, to deliver on Adit’s promise of providing tailored experiences for brands and retail partners. The multi-retailer live meetings will be offered at a more frequent cadence than single-retailer live presentations.

Launched in February this year, Moringaia uses sustainably sourced, cold-pressed moringa seed oil from the Caribbean in its skincare, body care and haircare products. Moringaia co-founder Elah Barshi explains finding niche e-tail partners with a similar business culture and mindset to her brand has been integral to its distribution strategy. “Moreover, being able to be in touch and build a relationship with the e-tail owners or top decision-makers from day one is attractive to us,” says Barshi. Last week, Barshi and her brother and co-founder Ben-Yam participated in a live meeting with niche e-tailers. She says, “We wanted to join Adit to gain access and build relationships with retail buyers. Having such close-knit and ongoing support from the Adit team has been an added benefit.”

Susana Kempen, founder of Daisy Organics, an e-tailer that stocks organic and natural beauty and wellness products, joined the program in order to discover brands she may not run across on her own. Daisy Organics is a one-woman team. “The Adit program was a no-brainer for me,” says Kempen. She plans on onboarding three out of the five brands presented to her last week.“After this first presentation, I saw the value in being a part of this program even more,” she says. “I’m grateful for Adit and excited to continue working together.”

Looking ahead, Goldberg says Adit will develop further multi-retailer opportunities to complement the first two. For example, grocers and spas could be part of the program in the future.