Shoppers at Aillea are getting younger.
The largest concentration of customers at the five-unit clean beauty retailer are 35 to 45 years old, but it’s gaining traction with gen alpha and gen Z. While viral trends play a key role in driving the new customers to Aillea, founder Kathryn Dickinson believes they’re motivated by more than just the latest social media fad.
“A lot of the women that came to Aillea in the early days were either ill or pregnant. Those first customers now have daughters that are coming of age and want to wear makeup. So, the mothers are now ushering them into clean beauty,” she says. “Also, younger kids in general are advocating way more for social issues than they did in my generation. Clean beauty is part of that conversation because it’s led the way with better packaging and ingredients.”
Launched as an online business in 2014, Aillea opened its first brick-and-mortar location in Denver the following year. It’s since expanded across the Southeast with outposts in Atlanta, Charleston, Charlotte and Raleigh. Aillea sells 1,000-plus stockkeeping units from over 40 beauty brands. Its brand partners include Alpyn Beauty, Captain Blankenship, Free + True, Innersense, Kypris, Olverum, RMS Beauty, Tata Harper and Ursa Major. Bestselling brands are Ilia, OSEA, Kosas, Indie Lee, Josh Rosebrook and Vintner’s Daughter.
Initially formed when “clean” wasn’t yet a prevalent term in the beauty industry lexicon, Aillea’s current assortment is largely dominated by many of the brands that shaped the start of the clean beauty movement. As clean beauty has moved from a niche segment to mainstream in the beauty industry, Dickinson has became wary of an attenuation of the concept in the market.
“Everybody slaps a clean label on everything now. I am over every single celebrity coming out with a clean brand, and then you go to dig in and find out they’re not clean,” she says. “If you can’t be in any of the clean retailers, you’ve missed the mark by a mile, but, then again, those brands don’t need our validation.”
Below, we highlight four prominent trends defining clean beauty shopping at Aillea today.
The French Girl Aesthetic
After a tough few years, Aillea is beginning to recover from the effects of the pandemic. Its sales are hitting pre-2019 levels. Skincare and makeup are powering its business as customers embrace a skincare-forward, no-makeup-makeup look that Dickinson refers to as a “French girl skincare aesthetic.”
“People are taking a skincare-first approach to their makeup,” she says. “They want to wear as little makeup as possible by having their skin look amazing.”
Skincare went through what market research firm Circana dubs a “quiet-quitting” phase last year that saw consumers pare back long routines they developed during pandemic lockdowns. At Aillea, customers aren’t into long skincare routines. Dickinson believes that’s indicative of the products they’re using rather than a wider lifestyle change.
“It’s not that I think they’re treating their skin less,” she says. “I think that the products have become streamlined and the products are doing more.”
To achieve a barely-there makeup look, customers at Aillea are gravitating toward glowy complexion-enhancing products and tinted moisturizers like Kosas’ Glow I.V. Vitamin-Infused Skin Enhancer and Ilia’s Super Serum Skin Tint. After the celebrity makeup artist Mary Phillips’s “underpainting” technique involving foundation and countering went viral on TikTok earlier this year, Aillea’s customers would talk about it in its stores.
Bright colors are still desired for cosmetics, but customers employ application techniques to mute them. Booming prior to the pandemic, full-coverage matte lipsticks have taken a backseat to lip glosses and tinted lip balms.
As the performance of clean makeup has improved, the category is converting younger customers accustomed to conventional beauty products. Dickinson says, “I’m starting to find people who before only cared about performance now wanting to make the switch to clean beauty. Makeup is almost like their gateway. Ilia and Kosas are making that shift easy for the younger customer.”
Regular Sunscreen Usage
Similar to other retailers, sunscreen sales at Aillea have historically registered their biggest lift in the spring and summer months. As the sun protection market widens and dermatologists emphasize the sun’s harmful effects on social media, sunscreen is no longer simply a seasonal product at Aillea.
Younger customers in particular are adopting year-round sunscreen habits. Dickinson says, “They’re looking at it from the standpoint of maintenance and being preventative.”
Sun creams like Le Prunier’s Plumscreen and Josh Rosebrook’s Nutrient Day Cream SPF 30 are Aillea customer favorites. Multifunctional tinted moisturizers containing sun protection such as Suntegrity’s 5-in-1 Tinted Sunscreen Moisturizer are go-to sun care picks, too.
Eco-Conscious CONSUMPTION
Customers at Aillea are paying closer attention to sustainable packaging and waste, per Dickinson, and beauty product recycling is on the rise. She says, “Customers are coming in and asking if a particular product can be recycled. It used to be every few months that we needed a new TerraCycle box in our stores. Now I feel like it’s every month.”
Products packaged in glass and aluminum are attracting heightened interest in Aillea’s stores. Requests for solid beauty products like shampoos and conditioners are increasing as well. To satisfy demand, Dickinson is looking to onboard beauty brands specializing in that space.
In-Person Experiences
As fears about the spread of the coronavirus have eased, demand for IRL experiences at Aillea has been roaring back. Customers are indulging in makeovers, mini facials, one-on-one shopping consultations and brow applications in the retailer’s stores.
“Our services are getting busier again. Also, people are sick of buying stuff online, not liking it and returning it,” says Dickinson. “That’s pretty wasteful and a pain in the butt. They really want to see products, experience them and try them before they buy them.”
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