
Feelunique Co-Founders Raise $4.8M To Launch Teenage Beauty Brand Indu
Forthcoming teenage beauty brand Indu has raised $4.8 million from around 60 investors, including leading figures in the beauty and retail industries.
Among the investors are Michael Casey, former CEO of Holland & Barrett, Sarah Miles, CEO of Hush and former CEO of Sephora UK, Ian Marshall, former managing director of Benefit Cosmetics, Gail Bojarski, former GM of Benefit Cosmetics, Nick Beighton, former CEO of Asos, Lopo Champalimaud, founder of Treatwell, and Noella Gabriel, co-founder of Elemis.
“We are playing to win,” says Aaron Chatterley, co-founder of Feelunique who’s developing Indu with fellow Feelunique co-founder Richard Schiessel and Reena Hammer, former managing director at Urban Retreat and global director at Soho House. “We want to create a global teen brand. In order to do that, it requires significant capital in terms of building the team that we want and the impact that we want to make on the market as we launch, but, most importantly, the quality of the products.”
Indu’s funding was raised in three tranches. In 2021, it secured $232,000 for conducting market research, starting its team and executing the administrative tasks necessary to begin a company. In 2022, it pulled in $968,000 to strengthen its team and get product development underway. Closed recently, the latest tranche amounted to $3.6 million to support Indu’s direct-to-consumer launch slated for Sept. 13. Chatterley, Schiessel and Hammer together invested roughly $645,000. They retain control of Indu, according to Chatterley.
He estimates Indu’s existing funding could get London-based Indu to profitability in the United Kingdom, where it expects to enter a brick-and-mortar retailer during the second half of 2024, in about 18 months. By that time, however, international expansion should already be on the table for the brand, which is kicking off with some 18 products priced from 8 to 25 pounds or approximately $10 to $32 at the current exchange rate, a price range that places Indu in the prestige beauty segment. Teen-oriented beauty products have traditionally sold at lower prices in mass retail venues.

Outside of the U.K., Indu is eyeing retailers in the United States, Europe and Asia, particularly Australia, and Chatterley reports it’s received an enthusiastic reception so far from retail buyers eager to draw young shoppers to stores. Prior to landing at retail, the brand will host a Covent Garden pop-up in late October. To finance international expansion, Indu anticipates pursuing a series A funding round next year to raise at least $5 million to $6.5 million.
Indu pitched its proposition to 20-plus venture capital firms and received a term sheet from one that it decided not to sign. Chatterley discovered VC firms’ risk appetite for investing in pre-revenue brands is scant, and the due diligence work to try to convince them to back his brand was a tall order. In contrast, he discovered leading beauty and retail figures grasped the white space Indu has identified for better teen beauty merchandise and didn’t take a series of extensive meetings to bring on board. The brand used the platform SeedLegals in its pitching process.
“What our experience has demonstrated is that, if you have a very, very clear market opportunity, and you have a defensible strategy, and you have the right degree of expertise within the team, the money is certainly out there,” says Chatterley. “That’s demonstrated by the fact that the capital that we were able to access came from people who really understand beauty and understand the space that we’re going after. For them, I think it was probably an easier decision than a generic consumer fund.”
Preceding Indu, a number of new teen and tween brands such as Miles, Rile and Gryt have hit the market. Aimed primarily at consumers in the mid-teen years, a distinguishing feature of Indu is that it will span makeup and skincare. All its products tick the boxes of being recyclable, reusable or refillable, and their formulas are constructed with teen skin in mind. Indu’s messaging will be crafted to appeal to both teens and their parents.
“We are playing to win. We want to create a global teen brand.”
“If there are any fully holistic teen beauty brands, there are very few of them. So, although we have a tighter demographic to go after, there’s much less competition within that,” says Chatterley. “Fashion does it really well. There are numerous fashion brands specifically designed for teenagers that teenagers think are cool. But, as a parent, I don’t worry about the impact on their self-esteem because I know that they’re addressed appropriately. They don’t look like they’re going to a nightclub on a Saturday night. They think it’s cool, they’re not being exploited. The price is good, it’s designed for them. So, it’s a win-win.”
The biggest question mark over the brand is whether it can ring true with teens. While Chatterley has two teen daughters, the 14-year-old twins Frankie and India, he’s 56 years old and has never been a teen girl—and he’s well aware of his limitations. To compensate for them, Indu commissioned a study of 2,000 teens to flesh out their product preferences and purchasing behavior. From there, it assembled a committee of 160 teens to vet its products, aesthetics and more.
Indu is a reference to a nickname for India. India and Frankie are on the brand’s committee, and they’re tough critics. Upon testing an initial iteration of an Indu moisturizer, Chatterley recalls that Frankie “looked at me deadpan and she went, ‘I wouldn’t buy it, it’s sticky, and it smells funny.’ And, honestly, I was broken, but we had lots of feedback like that in the early days.”
Indu has addressed the feedback to resonate with its discerning and candid target customers. Chatterley says, “It has to be really authentic because people just won’t buy into it if it’s not, especially teenagers.”
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