California Naturals Grows Retail Network As It Gears Up To Close Series A Funding Round

California Naturals is doubling down on retail distribution with a new CVS partnership.

Starting today, the clean haircare brand will be sold at 2,000 of the pharmacy chain’s over 9,100 doors nationwide, with plans to expand to 5,000 by January. CVS is stocking California Naturals’ Coconut Daily Shampoo, Coconut Daily Conditioner, Deep Repair Hair Mask, Super Moisture Shampoo and Super Moisture Conditioner. The products are priced at $11.99 each.

California Naturals launched in July last year in direct-to-consumer and exclusive retail distribution at Target. It has a presence on Amazon. Additional store partnerships are lined up for early next year. According to the publication Glossy, California Naturals ended 2023 at 220% above its sales forecast and projects sales will increase 800% this year.

DTC takes a backseat to retail at California Naturals. California Naturals VP of brand marketing Georgie Holliday points out shipping fees for relatively heavy haircare products make it difficult to maintain affordable prices in an e-commerce-only setting. California Naturals has updated its bottle sizes from 12 to 16.5 ounces, but hasn’t bumped up its prices, which are on the masstige end in the mass market, and it’s infused its formulas with what it describes as food-grade fragrances in a move it calls a first for a brand.

Holliday says, “Shampoo and conditioner aren’t generally impulse purchases, so it’s more about spreading brand awareness on the mass scale…Retail just makes a lot of sense for us from a scale perspective.”

Coconut Daily Shampoo and Coconut Daily Conditioner are California Naturals’ bestsellers followed by Super Moisture Body Wash, a product that won’t be available at CVS, at least to start. It’s sold at Target for $9.99. Founder and CEO Shelby Wild says California Naturals will lean more into body care in the future. Along with Super Moisture Body Wash, the brand offers $10 Body Moisturizer, $12 Cleansing Body Bar. $12 Scrubbing Body Bar and $12 Lotion Stick on its e-commerce website.

Holliday says California Naturals is resonating with college and post-college students aged 22 to 28 years who are searching for clean and affordable haircare and body care options. Its products tend to be shared among family members, a goal of Wild’s since the brand’s development.

Prior to California Naturals, Wild founded Playa, a clean haircare brand that was carried by Sephora domestically and internationally. Wild sold the brand to Morphe owner Forma Brands in 2020 and left shortly after. In 2022, she sued Morphe and private equity firm General Atlantic seeking $15 million in damages for shelving Playa’s growth strategies. The case is now disposed. Forma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January last year. In March, it agreed to a $690 million acquisition deal with lenders Jefferies Finance and Cerberus Capital Management.

At Playa, Wild often received messages from women customers telling her their daughters and husbands were stealing their Playa products from them in the shower. However, with Playa’s products priced at almost $30, it was too expensive for them to continuously replenish. With products priced at $12 and under, California Naturals is easier on the wallet.

Wild says, “I wanted to take the aspects of Playa that everyone loved—the performance, the natural, the high-end fragrances—and then apply that to something that can work for everybody and can also kind of matriculate through the household.”

At launch, professional skateboarder Tony Hawk was brought on as chief culture officer of California Naturals. In February this year, it announced Owen Wilson as the face of the brand as well as an investor and advisor. The “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” star is helping diversify its customer base with millennial and older women and men. Wilson has been featured in California Naturals content on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. The brand is slated to release another campaign with him in 2025.

Holliday says, “We’ve already seen amazing community response from our first videos with Owen—and an uptick in interest from social convo to conversions—and are excited to see where we can take it next.”

Outside of Wilson, California Naturals is ramping up organic video content via gifting to loyal customers and micro-influencers. “We’ve built a micro-influencer army, which we have activated at different retail stores where they go in and take videos and buy products,” says Holliday. “We have taken it back to basics rather than investing in high media spend on digital marketing while we launch into all of these other stores.”

California Naturals gifted products to 1,000 micro-influencers initially and increased that number by 400 this year. It tapped 11 paid macro- and mega-influencers, too, tied to its campaign with Wilson. For the moment, it’s pulling back from mega-influencers to focus on the power of micro-influencers.

Holliday says, “They’re highly impactful versus someone that might have hundreds of thousands of follower and promotes a different products every single day and doesn’t necessarily have the same sell-through.”

California Naturals has raised $4 million in funding from L Catterton, Sandbridge, Midnight Venture Partners, Elizabeth Street Ventures, Eric Ryan, the entrepreneur behind Method, Olly and Welly, and Roth Martin, co-founder of Rothy’s. The brand anticipates closing a series A funding round this month. Wild discloses all of its existing investors have reinvested.

She says, “We’re really happy that everyone has been in it with us for the long haul.”