Dr Roebuck’s Cleans Up With New Packaging Emphasizing Its Australian Origins

Less is more isn’t only a mantra that applies to product ingredients. At Dr Roebuck’s, it’s meaningful for branding and messaging.

Armed with a more than 30-year-old family skincare recipe, Dr Roebuck’s traveled from Australia to the U.S. in 2016 to enter Sephora chain-wide with its Pure and Face moisturizers. Although the brand registered strong sell-throughs at the retailer, its prescriptive approach wasn’t meshing with where the millennial-driven skincare market was headed. It decided to change product names — Pure and Face are now Nuddy and No Worries — and packaging to communicate that effective skincare can be fun.

“When we came into the market, we had too much to say. We peeled it back and thought about what people connected to,” says Kim Devin, who founded Dr Roebuck’s with her twin sister Zoe Kelly. “There is a lot of buzz now around Australia, where clean living and wellness is a way of life. We are proud of being an Australian brand, and we really wanted to bring Australia to the world. In our product development going forward, we will be highlighting Australian ingredients.”

Australian ingredients incorporated into Dr Roebuck’s formulas today include caviar lime extract, macadamia oil and kakadu plum. New product monikers speak to the brand’s Down Under origins. In addition to Nuddy and No Worries, products are called Surf Chase, Daintree, Bondi, Tassie, which refers to Tasmania, and, of course, Down Under.

Dr Roebuck’s revamped packaging is an enormous departure from its former packaging. The redone bottles and tubes are white and copper instead of brown and green. Gone are text-heavy explanations of the products. In their place are fanciful script, straightforward product descriptors and lots of empty real estate on the encasements to exemplify the brand’s clean beauty positioning. Product boxes feature images of Australia.

“The original branding was apothecary-based and very similar to Aesop, dark brown and very focused on the chemist feel with our father’s color, logo and his signature on the box,” says Devin. Her father is the doctor that the brand refers to. In September, 13 of the refreshed products are heading to 60 endcaps in Sephora. The retailer’s other doors will have four products — No Worries, mask and exfoliator Byron, serum Perky and eye treatment Down Under — in Scouted by Sephora selections. In total, the assortment spans 20 products.

Dr Roebuck’s worked closely with Sephora to reimagine its look. “You have to be adaptable, willing to take risks and listen to them because they are the market leaders,” says Devin. “You can either be a one-off product or a brand and, to be a brand, you have to do everything in a strategic way.”

She also emphasizes having money to fuel brand growth is important. Dr Roebuck’s closed a round of fundraising in April. The brand declined to disclose the amount it raised. However, Devin is clear it won’t succeed in a competitive industry without capital. “If you think you can be independent and down and dirty without money, I don’t think you’ll make it,” she says. “Unless you’re personally wealthy, it’s not going to happen.”

To make it in the U.S., Devin continues it helps to be on the ground in the country. She moved to Los Angeles a year ago to oversee Dr Roebuck’s American business while her sister remains in Australia to retain the brand’s ties to its birthplace. Around 90% of Dr Roebuck’s sales are expected to come from North America this year.

“I don’t think we would have been able to do this from Australia, but I’m lucky there are two of us. Zoe handles the innovation over there, and I do everything else from here,” she says. “If we moved it all here and didn’t have Zoe over there, we would become an American brand, but because Zoe is there, we can keep the innovation and authenticity alive.”

Although Dr Roebuck’s is relying on North America for most of its revenues, it has aspirations to spread globally. In May, the brand will launch at Space NK in the U.K. “That wouldn’t have happened with the previous packaging,” asserts Devin. “We had a lot of people loving the product, but the packaging didn’t say clean the way we felt it needed to. We could have gone after the spa market with the previous packaging, but we really wanted to go after high-end wholesale. We are proud of what the new packaging is doing for us.”