Ingestible Brand Aura Inner Beauty Forges Partnerships With Goop, Bergdorf Goodman And The Detox Market
Three-year-old wellness brand Aura Inner Beauty is ready for major growth in 2022. The maker of powder and liquid collagen, omegas, probiotic, nootropic and adaptogenic products is bringing its products to the virtual and physical shelves of Goop, Bergdorf Goodman, The Detox Market and Holt Renfrew.
Founder Avalon Lukacs was inspired to create her own wellness products after dealing with cystic acne in her early 20s while at university. “It really just came out of nowhere,” she recalls. “Almost my entire life, I barely had a breakout. I had really great skin, and all of a sudden I had this raging, very unhappy, difficult skin.”
Lukacs spent four years searching for solutions. She tried topical skincare products and prescription creams without results. Dismayed by the topical approach, she supplemented her diet with ingredients like prebiotics, probiotics, antioxidants and adaptogens—and she achieved the results she was after. “It was my gut flora that was really disrupted and causing this relentless acne,” says Lukacs. “Once I discovered this, I became obsessed with researching ingredients. Aura Inner Beauty Restorative Powder is all of the ingredients that I was mixing and matching that healed my skin.”
In early 2020, Lukacs expanded Aura’s assortment to include collagen drinks in a bid to entice retailers to partner with the brand, but introducing the offerings right as the pandemic hit didn’t have the desired effect. Retailers were shuttering their doors and brand pickups were on hold. Lukacs turned her focus to reducing expenses and reaching out to influencers to raise Aura’s brand recognition. “We worked with some incredible women who organically shared our products ranging anywhere from 5,000 to 200,000 followers,” says Lukacs. “2020 was about making connections with women that genuinely wanted to support us and our story and our products. It really helped get us out of the initial COVID phase.”
The influencer partnerships helped bolster Aura’s DTC sales, but didn’t help the brand secure retail relationships. Lukacs turned to Kelly St. John, founder of beauty brand consultancy KSJ Collective and former VP/DMM for beauty at Neiman Marcus, to assist Aura with making headway with retailers. The two started working together in early 2020 and, now, Holt Renfrew and Bergdorf Goodman have taken on Aura’s full range.
Goop scooped up Aura’s Coconut Marine Collagen Elixir. Along with its launch on Goop’s website, the product was featured in the retailer’s notorious gift guide, which meant shelf space in Goop’s physical stores as well. Aura also had a presence at Goop’s In Good Health Summit, serving collagen mocktails to the 200 or so attendees at a wellness pop-up station.
“We’re still a pretty new brand in the U.S. market and have lots of brand awareness to do ahead of us,” says Alberta, Canada-based Lukacs. “It was good to connect with other women, and a lot of them reaffirmed what I think about most collagen powders, which is that it’s hard to take, it doesn’t blend well or mix well. A lot of the women had actually abandoned the idea of taking a collagen supplement, and they were really excited about our liquid formulas.”
While Lukacs isn’t opposed to Aura entering more retailers in 2022, it’s not her primary objective. Her primary distribution objective is continuing to increase the brand’s DTC sales. Even with the new wholesale partners, Lucas aims to keep Aura’s revenue split 50/50 between DTC and wholesale. She explains, “This allows us a healthy margin, and about 25% of our DTC revenue is through our subscription service.”
Lukacs adds that Aura has long-time subscribers who are on their 26th subscription. She hopes to get Aura’s DTC revenue from subscriptions up to 30% in the next year. “I’m really interested in some of our customers who are on their sixth and eighth order, but still haven’t subscribed,” she says. “How do we convert those returning loyal customers into subscription customers? I’m looking at customizing the program. It’s such a strength for a wellness brand.”
Another goal is to get her bootstrapped brand to $1 million in revenue this year, a milestone she’s confident will happen before Aura reels in any outside investment. Lukacs shares that the brand’s sales grew about 300% from 2019 to 2020 and 120% from 2020 to 2021. She anticipates sales growing around 100% this year.
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