For emerging beauty brands, there’s no single path to growth.
For some indies, like sustainable skincare solution Common Heir, building up a strong direct-to-consumer presence and focusing on a sole-but-strong retail partnership with Credo has yielded dividends. The brand has been dubbed a “skincare hero” by editors and influencers who hail the efficacious formula and biodegradable packaging and racked up more than $2million in a seed round.
Others, like fragrance brand Lake and Skye and textured haircare leader Adwoa Beauty, have garnered cult-like followings by inking deals with major retailers such as Sephora, Ulta and Nordstrom relatively quickly and are now prime targets for injections from small growth investors to further accelerate growth.
During last Wednesday’s Beauty In Conversation webinar, Adwoa Beauty founder and CEO Julian Addo, Common Heir co-founder and CEO Carly Lin, and Lake & Skye founder and CEO Courtney McGuinness Somer underscored that point. They delved into pivots that have been critical to their businesses, distribution strategies and key priorities.
Adwoa Beauty
Background: Addo was a professional hairstylist before transitioning into the banking industry and taking positions with Citi Group, Bank of America and Chase. In 2012, she opened a media consultancy to assist brands with establishing credibility and awareness. At that time, she noticed a disconnect between how textured haircare products were marketed toward Black women and imagery that spoke to her. “It felt like we were perpetuating mainstream standards of what it is to be a texture hair consumer,” she said.
She decided to develop a brand that moved away from loud colors and cartoonish depictions of Black women. Her goal was to put textured haircare in prestige retail environments. “I wanted to be the change I wanted to see,” said Addo. “I wanted to be able to walk into a Sephora where I bought my makeup or my skincare, and I wanted to also buy my haircare.”
Adwoa Beauty premiered in 2017 with products packed with butters and oils that skipped silicones and parabens. It was designed with simple, modern branding characterized by gender-neutral aesthetics generally associated with digitally native brands, not those found in beauty supply stores. “When I first launched, it was hard for me to even get people of color to know that this was a Black-owned brand,” said Addo.
Commercial Strategy: Adwoa Beauty early distribution tactics centered on prestige salons and direct-to-consumer sales. It was focused on opening showrooms to connect with stylists and cultivating a DTC audience. Originally, Addo had been vocally anti-wholesale, but decided to participate in Target’s Takeoff accelerator program to glean insights about distribution in big-time retail.
Target’s mass positioning wasn’t a good fit for Adwoa Beauty, but, in February 2019, Sephora approached the brand, and Addo was sold on launching it at the prestige beauty chain. Currently, Adwoa Beauty is exclusive to Sephora in North America and Canada. It’s in 448 stores. Wholesale distribution represents about 65% of the brand’s revenues.
“Sephora was able to help work through my pain points and concerns about retail,” said Addo. “Can my customer walk in and have an experience? Do your people know what products to give someone with 4C curls?”
Adwoa Beauty’s small team handles the brand’s EDI [electronic data interchange] and inventory management in-house with the software Cin7. Addo says having a tight-knit staff has saved money and made Adwoa Beauty equipped to handle a vast array of responsibilities. “We’ve really developed a lot of skills along the way,” she said. “I’m a rookie for retail, I didn’t know who to go to, but now, after almost two years of Sephora, we could teach courses.”
Social media and funding: For sales driven via social media, Instagram is Adwoa Beauty’s leading platform, but TikTok is on Adwoa Beauty’s 2022 roadmap. The brand recently brought on board a social media and community manager to build its Instagram and TikTok presence. Adwoa Beauty is self-funded, but Addo is looking for a strategic funding partner. “When the time is right, I’ll know,” she says. “I’m always open.”
Lake & Skye
Background: A health crisis prompted McGuinness Somer to explore various healing modalities, causing her to develop a passion for meditation, reiki, yoga, aromatherapy and nutrition. She was motivated by the idea that scent has the power to improve emotions to introduce Lake & Skye in 2015. “Scent is a vehicle for wellness,” said McGuinness Somer, who’s a Kundalini and pre-natal yoga teacher and graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
Commercial Strategy: Lake & Skye’s initial assortment concentrated on rollerballs. Busy adults could throw them in their bags for use throughout the day. The brand landed at mom-and-pop stores in McGuinness Somer’s New York neighborhood. Without a ton of formal marketing and public relations support, its 11 11 scent with notes of white amber and musk became a runaway bestseller. Over the years, Lake & Skye has expanded from perfume to candles and home fragrance.
“It’s easier to almost buy a candle or a hand soap than it is to take the leap sometimes into a fragrance when you’re selling online, but it’s also just experiencing it in a different way to experience fragrance,” said McGuinness Somer.
Lake & Skye has entered retailers like Ulta Beauty, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Anthropologie. In addition, it’s in 150 boutiques in North America and doing steady business on Amazon. McGuinness Somer disclosed wholesale accounts for 20% of Lake & Skye’s sales and another 20% of its sales are from Amazon. It has a staff member dedicated to supporting its Amazon business. McGuinness Somer said, “People were selling our stuff on Amazon, so we wanted to control that, but Amazon has been a great channel for us.”
Social media and funding: Instagram has long been Lake & Skye’s most productive social media platform, but Ulta’s buyers encouraged the brand to jump on TikTok last year to engage gen Z consumers. “It [TikTok] has its own personality, but it’s amazing what it can do for your product and brand awareness,” said McGuinness Somer.
Selling scents online can be a tough proposition. McGuinness Somer pointed out that customer and influencer reviews are integral for selling scent in digital realms. Lake & Skye runs a robust sampling program to dole out samples through its website and retail partners. It has a discovery set with free samples available on its e-commerce site. Two weeks ago, Lake & Skye began raising money to further its reach.
Common Heir
Background: After starting a career in financial consulting, Lin stepped into the beauty industry in a marketing role at Tatcha. Speaking of Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai, she said, “I had never seen anyone who looked like me building something so beautiful and intentional.” From Tatcha, Lin took brand management positions at Proctor & Gamble and The Honest Co.
Along with co-founder Angela Ubias, Lin established Common Heir in 2020 with the aim of producing plastic-free, clean skincare products that delivered high performance. Ubias previously worked at contract manufacturer Texas Beauty Labs, now called The Goodkind Co., in beauty product development. Lin explained, “Where we started from was, is it possible to have the kind of skincare products that my co-founder and I would reach for and have created in the past? And is it possible to do that without plastic packaging?”
Common Heir encases its skincare formulas in dissolvable seaweed capsules to preserve the ingredients like vitamin C and retinol inside them. Lin said, “My co-founder says after formulating for hundreds of brands that this was the absolute hardest formulation she’s ever had to build because of the technical challenges of building a capsule that would be fully dissolvable in water.” The capsules are housed in a luxe paper tube.
Commercial strategy: Common Heir started with only DTC distribution and a single product. Today, DTC is 80% of its business. The brand participated in Credo’s Credo for Change accelerator program, and the clean beauty retailer has picked it up. As a small brand, Lin was worried Common Heir would get lost on its shelves, but, so far, that hasn’t happened. She advised brands to select retail partners that are aligned with their missions. On top of Credo, Common Heir is carried by Anthropologie.
Lin doesn’t have immediate plans to expand Common Heir’s retail footprint. “We haven’t done any outreach in retail mostly because we can’t support the inventory, but we just wanted to use the time to really learn,” she said. “We definitely want to make sure that wherever we are, our footprint isn’t bigger than our ability to support those channels.”
Lin is a believer in third-party validation through certifications and clinical trials to bolster consumers’ faith in a brand and provide differentiation. “In the clinical process, we realized it takes a lot of work to actually make sure your clinicals are very representative of your community. By, default they’re not,” she said, emphasizing, “We just go to great lengths to be the vision that we wanted to create.”
Social media and funding: Common Heir debuted during the pandemic and leaned heavily on digital channels to instigate brand awareness. Its co-founders slid into the direct messages of customers and hopped on Zoom calls with them to understand how the brand could address their needs.
Lin and Ubias bootstrapped Common Heir as much as they felt it was possible to do so. After bootstrapping its launch, they secured $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Trousdale Ventures and Mucker Capital to support research and development, and merchandise, retail and sustainability efforts. “We just wanted to be able to have resources to create something truly innovative that no ever seen before,” said Lin. “So, that’s why we chose to do it and to work with the best people possible to make that happen.”
To watch the replay of this episode on growing beauty brands and other In Conversation webinar episodes, visit Beauty Independent’s library of webinar replays.
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