The Latest Gen Alpha Brand, Your Skin Stuff Aims To Kickstart Healthy Skincare Practices

Your Skin Stuff hopes to form the basis of preteens’ age-appropriate skincare routines.

Directed at 8- to 12-year-olds and their parents, the Dublin-based brand is launching next month with six products—Gentle Daily Cleanser, Daily Foam Cleanser, Hydration Station Serum, Skin Hug Serum, Sunshine Drops Serum and Morning Glow SPF—priced from 19.50 and 24.50 euros or roughly $21 to $26 at the current exchange rate. Dermatologically tested, cruelty-free and vegan, they’re housed in colorful packaging and formulated to contain ingredients like salicylic acid, aloe vera and vitamin C in concentrations that don’t overburden delicate young skin.

Along with her graphic designer husband Conrad, Ellen Kavanagh Jones, an aesthetician and founder of Waxperts, a waxing salon and leading waxing products line in Ireland, began working on Your Skin Stuff in 2011 with the aim of creating products to encourage kids’ independent skincare maintenance. Kavanagh Jones says, “Our whole mission is that we want to help that healthy skin habit start with Your Skin Stuff.”

The brand’s products have purposes relevant to preteens’ lives and address their skin issues such as breakouts and dry skin. The cleansers, for example, were crafted to balance the pH of young skin and boost moisture and be effective at removing dirt, oil and impurities. The serums were fashioned to deliver efficacious hydration and capture interest from preteens following skincare trends by featuring a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pipette to mirror a format found in adult skincare.

From a brand perspective, Kavanagh Jones believes the beauty market hasn’t yet kept pace with preteens’ interest in skincare, which has surged of late for products from the likes of Drunk Elephant and Sol de Janeiro fueled in large part by social media, and there remains a gap in the market between baby and adult skincare.

Mother to 11-year-old Cooper, Kavanagh Jones says, “We experienced first-hand the gap between baby and adult skincare. Although there are plenty of products and brands for babies, once kid’s get to those in-between years, there’s nothing. It jumps to straight into teenage and adult skincare.” 

You Skin Stuff is plugging that gap—and it’s not the only one. Gen alpha brands—Miles, Gryme, TBH, Indu, Rally Skin and Btwn are others—are proliferating to provide kids’ alternatives to adult products that tend too be potent for their skin or have messages geared to older consumers.

“Sometimes, children get a dumbed-down version of something, and we didn’t want to do that.”

“Sometimes, children get a dumbed-down version of something, and we didn’t want to do that,” says Kavanagh Jones. “We didn’t want to put anything in these products that we wouldn’t like in a product ourselves. It’s the very best of skincare, but with a formula suitable and supportive for that pre-teen skin.”

Beyond its debut collection, Your Skin Stuff has a dedicated sun care range in the pipeline featuring face and body products with higher SPFs (SPF 30 and SPF 50) slated for release early next year. A preteen lip balm is expected in 2025. On top of those products, Jones says the brand is focused on haircare and body care items that could be useful additions to preteen gym bags. Examples include two-in-one haircare products.

Within a year of its launch, Your Skin Stuff plans to spread in stores across Ireland and the United Kingdom. Kavanagh Jones emphasizes it’s crucial for the brand to find “the right retail partners who believe in our product as much as we do and can see what we’re trying to do in this space.” She continues that brick-and-mortar stores offer a space for preteens and parents or caregivers to check out Your Skin Stuff’s products and engage with the brand in-person.

“For a first-time purchase, it is important to see the product, feel it and ask us questions,” says Kavanagh Jones. “You can’t beat that face-to-face part.”

Ultimately, Your Skin Stuff’s retail vision is global, and the brand’s goal is to be at stores worldwide within three years. To get the ball rolling, the brand will be present at the beauty trade show Cosmoprof North America in Las Vegas from July 23 to 25. Prior to that, on July 13, Your Skin Stuff will host a pop-up at Dublin shopping center Dundrum Town Centre.

Kavanagh Jones says, “We are a very ambitious brand, that’s for sure…We have great potential, and it’s a category that will stay.”

For now, Your Skin Stuff is sticking to a bootstrapped path to expansion. “As we grow, we’d need to look at what that might look like, but I don’t think we’re going down an investment route right away,” says Kavanagh Jones. “We want the brand to grow, get stable and develop first.”