Silverist, the haircare brand born out of beauty industry veteran Evelyn Wang’s mission to serve people with gray hair, including herself, is bringing that mission to retail with a Credo rollout.
The retail debut comes not quite a year after Silverist’s August 2024 launch and follows the brand rapidly achieving a six-figure sales total and doubling its forecast within months. In its 15 stores and online, Credo is carrying Silverist’s three products priced at $32 each—9.29-oz. Lustrous Rituals Buildable Tone Shampoo, 9.29-oz. Smooth Harmony Shine-Infusing Conditioner and 5.55-oz. Holistic Benefits Leave-In Hair Serum—and a new $54 travel kit containing 3.4-oz. sizes of the products.
Wang started talking with Credo about the clean beauty retailer carrying Silverist before the brand hit the market. She believes its attention to ingredients resonates with the brand’s core customers of women in their forties to sixties, a group with considerable spending power, that she describes as heavily “hair involved,” researching and trying various hair products to care for gray hair as they transition away from dyes. Wang estimates she tried 20 purple, blue and other shampoos when she chose to embrace her grays in 2015.
“Consumers who have gone this route are much more conscientious about what they put on their hair and scalp,” says the former CMO at Milani Cosmetics, SVP at Wet ‘n’ Wild and CEO at Papa & Barkley. “They’re reading ingredient labels, they ask about ingredients, they understand them. A lot of these consumers are shopping at Credo. They’re very interested in the rest of the Credo Beauty portfolio as well.”
In a statement, Jessica Trieber, VP of brands at Credo, says, “Credo Beauty’s brand community is built on bold founders and truly unique positioning, and Silverist fits that bill perfectly. Embracing and celebrating gray hair isn’t just refreshing, it’s exactly the kind of modern empowerment the Credo Beauty customer looks for from shopping with us. Evelyn’s vision with Silverist instantly resonated with us, and we know our customers will fall in love with her story and brand.”
TikTok has been an important vehicle for sales and awareness. Silverist has sold 6,000 to 7,000 individual units via TikTok Shop, which displays the brand has sold about 2,600 units because its $88 bundle of three products is a bestseller. Its shampoo is now sold out on TikTok Shop and its website, so it could sell even more.
“Credo Beauty’s brand community is built on bold founders and truly unique positioning, and Silverist fits that bill perfectly.”
Although TikTok is known as a gen Z platform, Wang points out that its reach—there are some 170 million users in the United States—means older consumers are on TikTok and are hunting for products on it. Silverist has nearly 8,800 followers and 100,000-plus likes on the platform.
Today, roughly half of Silverist’s sales come from TikTok Shop and half from its website. To support its Credo entrance, the brand is increasing its advertising budget 10% to 15%, and it’s seeding its travel kit to over 100 Credo sales associates and 100 content creators. Currently, Silverist dedicates 60% of its ad budget to TikTok and 40% to Meta, but it will shift that breakdown depending on the return it garners.
Today, its return on Meta ad spend (ROAS) is three to one. In the first quarter of this year, Wang shares that, for every dollar it’s putting toward marketing, it’s received $7 back. She says, “It’s a sign that the way the brand is communicating with its audience is working.”
The messages working the best aren’t focused on selling products or the brand. Instead, they’re focused on gray hair education and empowerment, rebellion and defiance for women, who the brand calls “silvers,” making a choice not to dye their hair in a society that often frowns on that choice. Wang says, “They’re wanting to see these types of messages that reinforce their decision.”
“I want Silverist to be the brand that can help you for all the stages of your grow-out.”
Silverist is expanding into retail as prestige haircare has been a category of relative strength in the beauty industry. In the first quarter this year, data from market research firm Circana shows prestige haircare sales were up 4% on a dollar basis. Overall, prestige beauty sales were flat.
Wang believes that specialization is permeating haircare the way it has in skincare. “The consumer already gets, OK, I can buy different types of skincare for different issues I might have with my skin or, I have a different skin type, so maybe I need different things for my skin or I’m this age, etc.,” she says. “We’re seeing the same thing happen with the haircare consumer.”
As it lands at Credo, Wang’s goal is to drive per stockkeeping unit sales efficiency at the chain. In the future, she is interested in expanding Silverist to a major beauty specialty retail chain. The brand has been fielding requests to venture abroad, and it will explore breaking into international markets, particularly the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, next year. Also next year, the brand will release its next product.
Discussing the product pipeline, Wang says, “I want Silverist to be the brand that can help you for all the stages of your grow-out. As you grow out your hair, your needs actually change.”
Silverist raised an undisclosed amount from friends and family, and Wang has put in personal savings and obtained financing from e-commerce brand financing platform Wayflyer. The brand isn’t pursuing additional funding at the moment, but could at a subsequent milestone requiring greater inventory.
Reflecting on running Silverist’s business so far, Wang advises fellow busy brand founders that it’s perfectly fine not to take a call with every investor. She says, “You are the one who has the vision for this brand and opportunity, and so it is OK to turn things down, and it’s really hard to actually think this, but you have to flip your brain into understanding that you are the entrepreneur doing the hard work and actually you’re the one creating the growth.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.