Almost four years ago, attorney Adia Goss finally succumbed to her long-simmering passion for beauty and started a beauty blog called Adia Adores. Now, she’s taken her involvement in beauty a step further and launched e-commerce site CVTD Beauty.
“I really would love to transition and have my career focused on the beauty industry, but I don’t necessarily envision my path as being a full-time blogger,” says Goss. “We are all familiar with what Sephora offers and that type of shopping experience, but a lot of people are overwhelmed by that experience. I thought I could extend my blog and curate a selection from smaller brands that not only have effective products, but are brands I could really get behind whether it’s because they’re sustainable, have clean ingredients or philanthropic aims.”
CVTD Beauty went live late last year with two brands Kaike and Pinch of Colour. Its selection has expanded to seven brands across makeup and skincare, including From Molly With Love, Noyah Cosmetics, AEnon’s, Native Nectar Botanicals and Mullein & Sparrow. Noyah Cosmetics and Mullein & Sparrow are the bestselling brands to date.
Goss hunts for brands at trade shows, on social media and in stores. She ran across Pinch of Colour at Anthropologie. “My assumption was that natural makeup wasn’t as good as conventional makeup, but, when I tried it, I loved it, and it forced me to challenge my assumption,” she says. “I really wanted to carry it, but I was nervous because Anthropologie is big, and I’m a new store. I just emailed through the website, and that really gave me confidence to reach out to other brands.”
Goss was drawn to Kaike’s joviality. “It’s not intimidating,” she says. “Sometimes natural products can seem very high-brow and inaccessible to the everyday consumer. I really like that the brand is very accessible, and I didn’t think it was going to scare away my consumers.”
CVTD Beauty has attracted a mix of millennial and gen z consumers. Goss indicates the former winds up at the e-commerce destination through her YouTube channel and is inclined to shop for makeup, while the latter often comes via Instagram and tends to look for skincare.
The brands available on CVTD Beauty contain natural ingredients, although Goss doesn’t require them to be exclusively natural, and are owned by women entrepreneurs. She’s interested in bringing in more masks, hyperpigmentation remedies and makeup to the site, and maintaining a blend of makeup and skincare products.
“I want to my site to be a resource that makes natural skincare and makeup more accessible to black women,” says Goss. “I don’t think there’s a lot of information about certain skincare concerns that black women are focused on. The main one people ask me about is hyperpigmentation. In general, there’s a movement focused on wellness and self-care for black women, and I think my store is positioned to leverage that trend, and show how skincare can be part of a women’s self-care routine.”
CVTD Beauty typically introduces a brand with two to three stockkeeping units before delving deeper into its repertoire. “Even if I grow to 20 brands, I want the site and store to feel curated, and I want it to feel like the products were culled from the best,” says Goss. “I don’t know if I will ever necessarily carry every product from the brands.”
The brands are housed on an online shopping platform that Goss designed to be elegant and functional. It uses a brownish version of pink to vary from the blush version of the ubiquitous color, and organizes offerings by beauty category, brand, skincare concern and new arrivals. “I want people to feel like they are getting something special when they shop from CVTD,” says Goss. “I don’t want it to feel like they’re searching on Amazon where it’s an endless list of images and not any story or explanation.”
Goss’ biggest sticking points so far are figuring out how much to concentrate on influencer marketing versus digital advertising, and the extent to which she should mention CVTD Beauty on her blog and in videos. Goss posts on her blog and CVTD Beauty once a week, and uploads a YouTube video once a week.
“I don’t want my YouTube channel to seem like an infomercial for the store,” says Goss. “You see that from the big beauty influencers. At first, you love them because they’re honest, but, then, you start to think: Are they really being honest? I don’t want my viewers to feel like that. I try to highlight products from my site on YouTube videos, but only when it makes sense anyway.”
