“Who doesn’t want a free mascara?” asks Athr Beauty CEO and founder Tiila Abbitt.
She’ll know the answer to that question in two weeks, when her clean makeup brand’s campaign offering its $28 Big Bang Mascara complimentary to people who pay $5 to cover standard shipping will wrap up. Athr Beauty has committed 5,000 to 10,000 units to the campaign with the goal of acquiring an equivalent number of new customers. It’s happening concurrently with a 50% discount on Big Bang for existing customers.
“In this era of small indie brands closing left and right and brands only pushing through with VC funding, indie brands have to be more radical and come up with even more unique ideas in order to break through the noise of new brands launching every day, especially indie brands with much lower advertising and marketing budgets,” says Abbitt. “How can I break through the noise without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads? It’s actually cheaper to just give away the mascara.”
Although she hasn’t detected price resistance on the part of Athr Beauty’s customers due to economic uncertainty, she continues, “Especially in the time of a looming recession, we think the way to get people in is to give them stuff for free. I wouldn’t necessarily do it with all our SKUs. I wouldn’t do it with an eyeshadow palette. Those have low replenishment rates, but with something we know people will come back to, it’s a recipe for us to expand to other SKUs.”
Following Apple’s iOS 14 update last year that decimated digital advertising performance, brands have been experimenting with a variety of techniques to convince consumers to trial its products, including doling them out for free. In a recent interview with Beauty Independent, Kiva Dickinson, co-founder and managing partner of Selva Ventures, backer of brands such as Cake and Kinship, expressed support for the strategy, particularly for products pricier than Big Bang.
He said, “Frankly, if you’re a beauty product with 50%-plus gross margins and a $40-plus ticket price, it’s likely a lot less expensive to give your product to the right person and hope that they rebuy it than it is to buy a relatively expensive social ad that only converts X percent of the time.”
Athr Beauty is running Google and social media advertising during its free Big Bang program. The program has its own landing page on the brand’s website. Word of mouth and influencer marketing have largely been the sources of Athr Beauty’s new customers lately. After the iOS 14 update, the brand’s Facebook ad results tanked, and it stopped paid Facebook activity.
“We are now getting back to it because the numbers are finally there again. Google ads are hit and miss these days,” says Abbitt. “Right now, our budget is about $15,000 a month for Google ads, and the ROAS has been 1 to 1.5, which is not very good. So, we are going to be shifting that budget more to Instagram and Facebook starting with this mascara trial.”
“Indie brands have to be more radical and come up with even more unique ideas in order to break through the noise.”
Upon its launch in July last year, Big Bang immediately sold out at Sephora. It’s sold out four times in total. Across its assortment, the brand has 17 products priced from $20 to $58. Its bestsellers are Rose Quartz Crystal Gemstone Palette and Desert Rose Lip + Cheek Oil.
On Sephora’s site, Abbitt points out that Athr Beauty is consistently one of the highest rated clean makeup brands. It has an average rating of 4.61 compared to the 4.2 average rating of its conventional competitors. In addition to Sephora, Athr Beauty is carried by Credo, Free People, The Detox Market, NakedPoppy and many mom-and-pop stores.
Clean mascara has traditionally been considered a hard product to formulate, but the market is now teeming with clean mascaras from brands the likes of Tower 28, Merit, Freck, Kosas, Ilia, Saie, Milk Makeup and Athr Beauty attempting to pull consumers away from conventional mascaras from brands the likes of Too Faced, Benefit, Charlotte Tilbury and Pat McGrath Labs. Abbitt says Big Bang’s smudge-proof formula makes it stand out. It’s housed in recyclable plastic and has a biodegradable wand.
“It’s pretty much waterproof without having those ingredients that we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting in our formulas,” says Abbitt. “It doesn’t irritate your eyes, and it has castor oil for lash growth.”
The two-week free Big Bang campaign isn’t the only method Athr Beauty is employing to place its products in front of consumers. Subscription box services are an important consumer outreach tool for it. For the holiday season, Big Bang will be in FabFitFun’s advent calendar. In December, Athr Beauty will partner with Kinder Beauty to showcase Big Bang.
“To me, boxes are almost what retailers used to be. Retailers used to really build brands and create their own curation and stories. Now, retailers are building on brands that have already been built through social media and driving the product that sells best,” says Abbitt. “Boxes are actually curating, and they are focusing on a certain story and targeting different influencers and a clientele. I find it fascinating that they have been helping to drive smaller indie brands versus retailers.”
Athr Beauty’s 2022 sales are level with its 2021 sales so far. Last year, it dealt with a trademark dispute with Aether Apparel. Athr Beauty began as Aether Beauty in 2018. The brand cleared out inventory with its original name last year to transition to Athr Beauty and agree to end the dispute with Aether Apparel. This year, instead of doing 20% to 30% discounts, it’s moving to buy one, get 0ne promotions to encourage consumers to try multiple products.
“People who come and try one Athr product come back and buy them all. That does not happen these days, people are not brand agnostic whatsoever,” says Abbitt. “We know once a client tries our formula and sees the shades, the performance, they are blown away.”
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