Alpyn Beauty’s President Nance Hastings Is Using Strategies She Learned At Estée Lauder To Grow The Indie Brand

Once beauty brand founders reach a certain scale, there’ll come a time when they need to shore up executive leadership, perhaps for the first time in their brands’ history.

That time arrived for Kendra Kolb Butler last year. As her thriving clean skincare brand Alpyn Beauty, which is available at Sephora, entered its third year in business, she realized she should fortify its leadership team. In May 2021, Butler brought on industry executive Nance Hastings as president to bring bootstrapped Alpyn Beauty to the next level. Prior to joining the brand, Hastings was with Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. for two decades. Most recently, she was the SVP of strategic initiatives North America. Butler herself is an industry veteran, having held positions at Clarins and Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare before moving from New York City to Jackson Hole, Wyo., where she founded and runs Alpyn Beauty to this day. 

“I was thrilled to welcome Nance to our team at Alpyn Beauty,” says Butler. “With more than 25 years of beauty experience, she is leading the charge in developing omnichannel campaigns and initiatives that reinforce our unique points of difference for both new customers and brand loyalists.”

The prospect of growing Alpyn Beauty’s budding beauty business was irresistible to Hastings. “One of the things that I loved in my previous role was taking small brands and building them into midsize and larger brands,” she says. “Even though, in the first half of my experience I was a big brand girl, I ended up moving to more boutique brands and growing them, which I find incredibly exciting. It’s really what attracted me to this opportunity.”

After joining Alpyn Beauty in the spring, Hastings got right to work on ensuring the 2021 holiday season was Alpyn Beauty’s ever, especially on its own direct channel. Arriving at the brand from Lauder, Hastings was accustomed to planning far out. By utilizing an aggressive promotional Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategy involving bundles and leaning into Google versus Instagram and Facebook, the brand drove 60% customer acquisition. 

With supply chain issues causing widespread delays, Hastings knew there could be issues getting packages to customers promptly. Proactively confronting the delays, Alpyn Beauty zeroed in on drawing consumers early in the season. “We really kicked off with our anniversary celebration at the end of October,” says Hastings. “Then, we moved into planning a very strong BFCM program, and then December was about our friends and family. We were very strategic about the pulsing of activities to ensure that our consumer was engaged throughout the entire holiday time period.”

The pulsing of activities included a promotion during the anniversary celebration with a 360-degree communication approach. Customers were alerted about the anniversary through traditional email and SMS campaigns, and a big social media campaign across multiple platforms. Hastings says, “We captured not just our existing consumer, but a new consumer to the brand as well.”

Alpyn Beauty is also attracting new consumers via its distribution. On top of Sephora, the brand is available at Bluemercury, Credo, Anthropologie, The Detox Market, Goop and Shen Beauty. At Sephora, it entered stores in October, one of 16 brands in the specialty retailer’s Clean + Planet Positive initiative, with its three bestsellers: $60 Plantgenius Melt Moisturizer, $58 Wild Nettle & Niacinamide Firming Serum and $58 Wild Huckleberry 8-Acid Polishing Peel. This month, Alpyn Beauty will add a fourth product, $62 Plantgenius Line Filling Eye Balm, to its Sephora assortment. Alpyn Beauty currently has eight products total.  

“We do see a very strong presence with a younger consumer that is very much wanting clean yet effective products that work for their skin, give back to the community and be sustainable, “says Hastings. “Those are really core pillars within our brand.” 

As important as the Sephora partnership is, Hastings is concentrating on expanding Alpyn Beauty’s direct-to-consumer channel this year with the aim of achieving 50-50 split between wholesale and retail. “What we’re building this year is off of triple-digit growth from the previous year,” says Hastings. ‘We’ll continue to focus on our DTC because that’s where we can tell our story, and it’s really where Kendra connects with her community.”

For several beauty brands preceding Alpyn Beauty, a partnership with Sephora paved the way for investment and acquisition. In the fourth quarter last year alone, Supergoop was acquired by Blackstone, Youth To The People was nabbed by L’Oréal and Farmacy was snapped up by Procter & Gamble. Thus far, Alpyn Beauty has raised a private funding round of an undisclosed amount to finance its launch. Hastings declined to discuss whether investment is a near-term objective, but she’s been excited by the beauty industry’s deal pace in recent months. 

“The customer has spoken, and they are interested in these indie brands,” she says. ‘We feel confident about Alpyn fitting in this very congested industry because we have so much to offer.”