Sincerely Yours CEO Julia Straus Answers Your Burning Questions, From Funding To The Right Age To Start Skincare  

Celebrity and influencer brands are icebergs in the consumer packaged goods ocean, where the famous names are the glaringly exposed tips, but there’s foundational management infrastructure underneath that rarely rises to the surface yet is critical for avoiding crashes.

Julia Straus, former CEO of Sweaty Betty and Tula, serves as the CEO and co-founder commanding that infrastructure for Sincerely Yours, the new skincare brand from influencers 15-year-old Salish Matter and her 58-year-old father Jordan. Salish has over 4.5 million Instagram followers and 3 million YouTube subscribers, and Jordan has 2.5 million Instagram followers and 32 million YouTube subscribers. Jordan’s posts feature Salish and his 19-year-old son Hudson.

Straus, a mother of three daughters aged 1 to 8, was tapped to help create a tween and teen skincare brand connected to the Matters in 2023, when the Sephora kids pandemonium was in full swing, by Strand Equity, the consumer growth equity firm that had backed Sweaty Betty and contains beauty and wellness brands Tone, R.e.m. Beauty, Apothékary, Cake, Hum Nutrition and InnBeauty Project in its portfolio. Sincerely Yours has raised nearly $7 million in funding from 26 investors, including Straus, Jordan, Strand Equity, Coefficient Capital and Habitat Partners.

Franklin Isacson, managing partner at Coefficient Capital, says the firm was persuaded to invest in Sincerely Yours for two principal reasons: “A real gap in the market and the strength of the founding team. Teen skincare was either made for adults or felt too functional while sometimes trying too hard to speak to teens, but lacking any emotional connection or cultural relevance. Salish, Julia and her team saw that and built something that feels made for this generation: dermatologist-developed, parent-approved and actually appealing to the teens themselves. That combination did not exist at the premium price point in the market.”

Sincerely Yours has started with four products—Kindly Clean Hydrating Cleanser, Hit Fresh Soothing Serum Mist, So Soft Lightweight Moisturizer and Sunny Side Up Mineral Sunscreen—priced from $22 to $28. The products were informed by cosmetic dermatologist Mara Weinstein Velez, dermatologist Robin Schaffran and Longchuan Huang, a chemist and product developer, as well as a 30-member teen advisory board and larger community of about 70,000 teens in a closed texting group.

Sincerely Yours’ exclusive retailer is Sephora, where it’s available online and at 384 locations. The beauty specialty chain will be adding to its gen alpha brand stable soon. On Sept. 6, Sincerely Yours kicked off with a launch event at American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, N.J., which drew more than 80,000 people, making it the biggest event ever at the shopping center, according to a post-event YouTube video uploaded by Jordan on Saturday, with a crowd larger than Jonas Brothers, Tom Brady and MrBeast events. Fans of the Matters flew in from overseas and waited for as many as 15 hours to get into the event.

With American Dream Mall overwhelmed by the hordes, Jordan’s video is entitled “I’m Sorry,” and in it he chronicles he and his daughter being pulled from the scene to avoid stampedes and 100 police officers being called in from their day off to bolster security. Acknowledging in the video that tens of thousands of people were disappointed by the Matters’ early exit from the event, Jordan says, “To go from hoping 100 people show up to the biggest ever in one night is insanity.”

Beauty Independent chatted with Straus about the event, sensitivity around young kids’ involvement in skincare and social media, the business danger of virality, fundraising, the name she wanted for Sincerely Yours that teens called “cringe,” and the brand easter egg hidden in the Matters’ content in advance of its launch.

When you started working on Sincerely Yours in 2023, it had no name. What was the naming process like?

We had a pretty long list. Of course, all the adults in the room thought we knew the answer, but we said, we need to, of course, talk to Salish and our community. We have about 70,000 members of a community from her audience that is two-way closed text. You can poll them and ask them questions.

We put some of the names in front of the group to see what they think. Of course, Sincerely Yours was on that list. Salish loved the name. I didn’t think they would even understand what a letter is, but it was such a clear winner.

What was your pick for the name?

I really liked Homecoming. They were like, “No, that’s so cringe.” The nice thing about using this group is that you could also ask why they vote for something. The feedback was Sincerely Yours feels genuine. It feels like a name that isn’t loud and yelling at us, and that’s refreshing.

They also said, “We do know what a letter is. My grandmother writes me a letter.” They understood that connection, and it was just a very visceral reaction.

There are reasons a brand like Sincerely Yours could be made for a mass retailer. Why did it go to Sephora?

This customer is eager to shop in Sephora. They like to shop in person. There’s a real joy to this customer getting offline. Again, we went to the teen group, and we said, “Rank them, where do you want to shop for this category?” It was very clear what was most exciting to them, and that was Sephora.

That being said, we wanted to make sure we found a partner who understood what we were trying to build in the long term and was open to a price point and approach that felt right for us. We didn’t come to Sephora with a completed vision. We came to them with something that was in process, and they were able to provide feedback and really partner with us.

You pitched Sephora a year and a half ago and showcased data on the gen alpha opportunity. What was a key data point?

There’s many, but it all comes down to [young consumers saying], “I want to participate, I’ve not found what I’m looking for. I’m using a cleanser. I want to use a moisturizer. I want to use an SPF.” Do you feel you have one that is exciting, cool and feels like it was built for you? No. Do you feel like you have to trade off between what you know is safe and what you think looks like a great brand that’s aspirational? Yes.

I’ve done consumer surveys and polling my entire career, and usually you’re trying to pull things out, but this group of customers answered very clearly. They’re like, “Can you please stop putting us at the kiddie table?”

What were some key decisions you made before launch?

A key decision was, what does an essential assortment look like? What do you actually need to be using in these years, and how do you formulate in both a safe and effective way?

That’s what informed a very simple routine with cleansing, a lightweight moisturizer and SPF as the three most critical steps. Then, there’s a lightweight mist serum that you can use as an extra step for hydration or as a refresher through the day.

What’s the journey for a gen alpha consumer getting a skincare product? How does Sincerely Yours respond to that?

The journey starts with someone you trust and someone who is you. They do not want to be talked to by just a parent or a derm. They would like to be talked to by a peer. The No. 1 way they learn about products or brands is through their friends. Step No. 1 for us is being able to work with Salish and Jordan to reach their community saying, here’s this thing that I made, but entertain them and share it in an authentic, fun way.

From there, it is being able to tell the brand story in more depth, both to the customer and to the parent, whether it’s the digital or retail channel. One of the things we’ve tried to do even in packaging is to make that storytelling, especially for parents, very simple. If you look at the side of our package, it says, “signed off,” and it gives a simple overview of what we’ve done to make parents feel comfortable with derm involvement, safety tested, non-irritating products, NEA [National Eczema Association] seal.

I’m a parent. You have no time. We have two customers to serve, but we really don’t want to lose sight of helping the parent navigate.

Tell us about the launch strategy. When did you start teasing Sincerely Yours on Salish’s channel?

We didn’t really start teasing until early August. Of course, the texting group and our teen advisory boards knew we were working on something, but we did not tease anything until Salish and Jordan announced that there would be an event on Sept. 6. We did not share what that event was except that there was going to be a pop-up. That was really the beginning.

On Aug. 30, the big launch video was shared. If you look at our socials, we had zero followers on Aug. 29. Since then, we’re at 300,000 on TikTok and 100,000 on Instagram. What has been fun is Salish and Jordan hid Easter eggs in their videos throughout the summer. Their audience loves Taylor Swift. They love putting the pieces together. Ever since May, we’ve had a big SY neon sign in her room on the back wall.

Brands aimed at teens and tweens can struggle with whether to use those words. How do you describe your customers in the copy or messaging?

The moment you label something teen, it doesn’t sound as cool. The way we approached it is we asked them, “Should we call this a teen brand? Do you want to be called gen alpha?” They were like, “What’s gen alpha?” They had no idea what that meant. That’s a business term.

The answer was, “Why do you have to label it anything?” If you have great packaging, if Salish is talking about it, if it’s clear it’s made for us—we say on it, it’s developed for younger skin or developing skin—slapping a label on it just feels like you’re cutting corners.

Certainly, if we’re speaking to a parent or trying to explain the concept, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t say this is the age group you’re targeting, but when we’re speaking to our customer, we aren’t leading with it.

It also depends on where you are on the funnel. In our FAQs, if they ask, “Is this made for this age group?,” we say yes. You want to be clear. We have a very clear demographic that we’re going after, and we’ve tried to make sure that that isn’t confusing.

What is that demographic? We ask because there’s been discourse about very young kids—5, 6 or 7 year-olds—engaged with the brand.

Salish’s core audience is 11 to 16. The guidance for us has been from our derms. When you start with a routine and what you need always depends on the individual and their skin and when they’re starting to hit puberty, but the recommendation has been around 9, 10, 11 you might want to consider a cleanser, you might need a moisturizer if you have drier skin. We know that, at all ages, you need a sunscreen.

We’re not being prescriptive. We’re not saying, “You have to go buy this.” I think of it as a mom. [My daughter] Sophie’s eight, she can use our sunscreen. She doesn’t need anything more yet. When she gets a bit older, we’ll see what the next step is.

The other thing on the other end is these are quite sophisticated formulas and great for sensitive skin. If you have sensitive skin and you’re looking for an affordably priced gentle cleanser and lightweight moisturizer, there’s no reason why anyone in their 20s or 30s couldn’t use the product as well.

Do you understand the sensitivity around younger kids getting it?

Absolutely. The sensitivity is important, and it’s a part of the dialogue. As a parent, my view is, when there is a dialogue going on and a customer that is looking for a product, we can either ignore it and pretend it’s not happening, and they end up oftentimes with the wrong product in their hands, or we can embrace them.

We can see our role as education and trying to guide them the best we can. We can work with parents and work with medical community and put a product out there that we’re really proud of. It comes with a lot of responsibility, and we take that really seriously.

Younger consumers are often interested in brands for older people. The rush for brands like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe and Rare Beauty is evidence of that. How do you think about that as you build a brand aimed at a younger demographic?

When I asked teens what they find exciting about some of these great brands, it is that they feel aspirational. They feel like something beautiful that they want to put on their vanity or on their shelf, and they create a great community.

Every teen we focus grouped said that’s the part that’s really exciting. If you can bring that into a brand that’s made for our skin, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t embrace that. That’s the opportunity that we see. You have to be led by the consumer conversations, and we will see where that leads.

What was the process of fundraising like?

The conversations were very organic because everyone we spoke to understood this thesis very clearly. There was a lot of friends and family in Jordan’s community who were really excited about what we’re doing and in particular excited about Jordan and Salish. They know the power of their channel. I’ve fundraised before. I’d say it was the least formal and a very quick fundraise.

Why did you want to do a big public event with the launch?

No one knows us yet, and we really want to be a community-led brand. Rather than do a PR event or an influencer event, which of course we’ll do in the future, we thought it was important to start with a celebration of the customer and give them something that was just for them. Oftentimes, the brands you’ve just mentioned, they’re not really welcoming necessarily that customer into their events.

We were planning it to be a couple thousand people. It was incredibly surprising and overwhelming to see the response. We really had no idea. It speaks volumes to the community that they’ve been developing over the past five years.

We’ve seen the reverse effect of the viral Sephora kids phenomenon where a brand like Drunk Elephant caught up in it has seen sales drop. How do you avoid that?

This isn’t a licensing deal. Jordan and Salish are co-founders of the company. It shocks people to share how much time they’re spending on this given she’s a full-time student in school, and they have a whole other content business that they run. They are in it with us for the long haul, for better or for worse.

There’s plenty of success stories where you’re building a consumer product business ground up, and that starts with incredible products and great branding and a brand that can stand on its own. There’s a reason this isn’t called Salish Skincare, which by the way was a name that was available. We could have gone there. It would have made things very easy.

We were all very intentional about that. We want to make sure that this is a brand that lives beyond all of us. We think it’s a category that deserves a category leader. We think it’s a category of its own right. Are there ups and downs for brands that maybe weren’t necessarily supposed to be servicing this customer anyway? Sure, but I think that we know that this is a customer that’s here to stay. There’s plenty of data that supports that.

Among parents, there’s a raging discussion about kids appearing on social media. How do you think about that as you build a brand around somebody who’s heavily online at a young age?

As a parent, we all need to make the right choices for our kids. One of the reasons it’s exciting to do events in person and to be in retail is that there’s ways to reach this brand that don’t involve being on a screen. Jordan and Salish have a very unique opportunity where they’ve built a following that is mainly parents watching alongside their kids. The co-viewership stats are very high.

There’s a genuine relationship between a father and daughter. It’s clean. It is fun. And I think that they take a lot of pride in that responsibility and the channel that they built up over time. Does that mean because that’s something that they’ve chosen to do and that she’s really passionate about—and I spend a lot of time with her and Jordan on this—that they’re telling other kids to do that? I don’t think so.

I’m a parent. I would never tell another parent how to parent. My view is they are going to be there. There is going to be noise, there is going to be content out there. We would really love to play the role as a slightly quieter voice. We’re trying to make this brand not shouty and loud, and I think we’re really trying to fill a gap and use this opportunity to educate. That will be a lot of the content that you see coming from us.