Clean Beauty Retailer Wren & Wild Hits Its Stride In Bend, Ore., And Readies For Expansion
After a quarter century on the corporate side of the cosmetics industry at Macy’s and Estée Lauder, Mandy Butera took the entrepreneurial leap and opened Wren & Wild three years ago, but the go-it-alone route was bumpy at first.
The clean beauty store started in two different pop-up locations before trying a combo concept encompassing aerial yoga in February 2017. That concept ended in October last year when a subletting arrangement came undone and the landlord wanted to double the rent. Another pop-up carried Wren & Wild through the 2018 holiday season. Now, it’s finally settled at a 500-square-foot space in the heart of downtown Bend, Ore., where Butera is fine-tuning the format for expansion.
“If we are anything, it’s resilient as hell. There’s just no giving up. I believe in my business, and we have an amazing following,” she says. “Our clients love the knowledge that we have. I have a vast background, and they love the education piece. They trust us because they know what we suggest isn’t based on a sale, but their needs.”
Wren & Wild’s assortment includes 45 brands across the skincare, haircare, makeup, fragrance, body-care and ingestible categories. Its top stockkeeping unit is True Glue Organic Mascara. Butera orders around 100 of the mascaras monthly to satisfy demand. Its second bestselling SKU is Lake & Skye’s 11 11 fragrance. Kindred’s Blemish Cleanse and Odacité’s BI + J Energy Serum are strong sellers as well.
Butera isn’t afraid to place a bet on an unknown brand, but thoroughly vets it to figure out if it meets Wren & Wild’s standards. She chats with brand founders to ensure they fully disclose ingredients and tests products extensively. She spent three months using Unwrapped Life’s shampoo and conditioner bars prior to determining they worked and were a fit for Wren & Wild. The store recently picked up the brands 8 Faces, Lab to Beauty and Hero Cosmetics, too.
“If we are anything, it’s resilient as hell. There’s just no giving up. I believe in my business, and we have an amazing following.”
“The biggest hindrance for brands is hiding things. Everybody that has fragrance on their label and won’t tell you what’s in the fragrance is a ‘no’ for me,” says Butera. “I have to talk to the maker, and I need to have them explain to me exactly what’s in their products.”
Butera’s attention to ingredients results from personal experience. Toward the end of her 15-year career tenure as an account executive at Estée Lauder, Clinique products gave Butera rashes. She sought out alternative products without ingredients such as parabens and phthalates, and her rashes began to dissipate. In particular, products from Dr. Alkaitis cleared her skin, and she carries the organic skincare brand at Wren & Wild today. Butera studied nutrition at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition to increase her understanding of ingredients.
The decision to create Wren & Wild suited Butera’s strengths as a people person and businesswoman. “There’s nothing better than having someone come in with a skincare issue, and you’re able to sit them down, talk to them about their life, get something for them that’s going to be effective, and have them leave the store feeling and looking good,” she says. “I’m also extremely competitive, and I love numbers. I’m competitive with myself to keep doing better.”
At Wren & Wild’s current location, which 25 of Butera’s friends renovated over the course of 24 days to ready for customers in January, she’s assembled the selection to encourage interaction. There’s a makeup bar, and areas dedicated to body care, skincare, and supplement brands like Moon Juice and Biocol Labs. A living wall covered in moss is by the front window. In Bend, customers tend to have dry skin, and skincare solutions to address it are popular.
“I’m hoping to differentiate myself by being very thoughtful and mindful about the brands we bring on. People can trust that what we bring in is strictly clean beauty.”
Butera has transported Wren & Wild to Austin, Tex., with a 200-square-foot pop-up at her daughter Carly Olinger’s salon called Volume. The pop-up is a prelude to a possible permanent location in Austin. Butera favors entering a city initially with pop-ups to gather information on customers’ buying habits. In Austin, she’s learned Wren & Wild could benefit from more makeup and skincare products geared to oily skin.
Following Austin, Butera plans to extend Wren & Wild to three additional cities, and is considering Eugene, Portland and Albuquerque. She forecasts locations can be profitable in a year and prefers locations that are roughly 800 square feet. To fund future units, Wren & Wild is evaluating various financing options.
At the Bend outpost, Butera’s goal is to generate $700 to $1,000 in sales per day to push the store squarely into profitability. Roughly 8% to 10% of total sales are dedicated to staffing, and Butera mentions the toughest part of growing Wren & Wild is finding sales associates that are as passionate about clean beauty as she is and can communicate what makes it unique.
“As we scale to other markets, the challenge is hiring the right employees and training them, so, when I’m not there, I will make sure I have people that believe in the dream I believe in,” she says, emphasizing, “I’m hoping to differentiate myself by being very thoughtful and mindful about the brands we bring on. People can trust that what we bring in is strictly clean beauty.”
