Ingestible Beauty Brand Glotrition Is On The Go At Retail

Glotrition is making distribution gains as stores continue to carve out real estate for ingestible brands.

The brand that pairs a serum with a collagen peptide drink is entering Saks Fifth Avenue after launching last year on QVC, where its presence is increasing, and in Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s locations. The retail growth is expected to help push Glotrition’s sales to close to $2 million this year.

“It’s fun to see retailers taking this category seriously and really trying to make space for it,” says Lisa Pineiro, a former health and science television news reporter who introduced Glotrition in 2015. “Glotrition is inside-out beauty done the right way. We focus on solutions for your skin that are ingestible and topical. We call it dual-delivery skincare. It’s really that one-two punch of doubling up on active ingredients from the inside and outside that are feeding all the layers of your skin and giving you great results.”

Glotrition has been grabbing territory at retailers by proving its worth. At Nordstrom, the brand sold out three times following its online debut, and swiftly went from e-commerce to in-store placement. Glotrition’s Collagen Glo Advanced Skin Powder is situated in Nordstrom’s beauty and fitness departments. The brand began on QVC’s beauty offshoot Beauty iQ by selling out and, now, it’s headed to an appearance on the home-shopping network’s main channel.

Despite Glotrition’s expansion, Pineiro readily acknowledges retail isn’t easy. Glotrition wasn’t as successful as she would’ve wanted it to be at Anthropologie. The brand broke into the lifestyle chain last year, but has pulled back from it. Pineiro believes Glotrition didn’t hit it out of the park at Anthropologie because it couldn’t provide critical on-the-ground support to drive sales.

“Glotrition is inside-out beauty done the right way. We focus on solutions for your skin that are ingestible and topical. We call it dual-delivery skincare.”

“For a product to move off the shelf, it takes a lot of brand awareness. We weren’t there yet to be able to sell enough at Anthropologie,” says Pineiro, emphasizing, “You have to be realistic about what it takes. You have to have a plan. For newer brands that are extremely well-funded, maybe they can afford to have vendor reps in every door, but, when you’re small, it’s a challenge. We have tried to bring vendor reps to doors that we thought were the most important.”

Glotrition had experiences at Soft Surroundings and QVC UK that taught Pineiro valuable business lessons, too. In 2017, QVC UK marked the brand’s home-shopping premiere. It was a disappointment. “I cried and thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I should just go and get another TV job,” recounts Pineiro. “What I have come to learn about QVC and home shopping in general is that, if they are selling you in the wrong category at the wrong time slot, you are in front of the wrong audience, and it’s not going to do well.” Glotrition has scored with a beauty-oriented audience at QVC in the U.S. instead of the fitness-oriented audience it was in front of at QVC UK.

Early on in her brand’s existence, 50-year-old Pineiro figured Glotrition’s core customers would be women around her age fighting lines and wrinkles. Soft Surroundings, a retailer strong with older gen X and baby boomer shoppers, seemed like a good fit for those customers. It turns out Soft Surroundings wasn’t a good fit, and Glotrition’s sweet spot is women aged 25- to 40-years-old more interested in preventative products than heavy-duty anti-aging treatments. Pineiro says, “They understand that ingestible beauty works and what you feed your body from the inside is as important for your skin as what you put on the outside.”

Nathan Judd, managing partner at retail brokerage firm CCi, has been pivotal in shaping Glotrition’s recent retail strategy. Pineiro says he instructed her that Amazon’s luxury beauty platform would be a smart move because it didn’t discount. So far, Glotrition’s position on the platform hasn’t inhibited its retail advancement elsewhere, and it ensures the brand is available to Amazon shoppers seeking convenience. Pineiro also credits Judd for calming her down if she doesn’t hear back from a retail buyer.

“When you are starting out as a beauty brand, you think, ‘I want to be in all these retailers,’ but it’s really hard to find out who the decision-makers are and, even if you get their contact information, it’s hard to get them to respond to you.”

“When you are starting out as a beauty brand, you think, ‘I want to be in all these retailers,’ but it’s really hard to find out who the decision-makers are and, even if you get their contact information, it’s hard to get them to respond to you,” says Pineiro. “I told Nathan, ‘It’s so frustrating that I can’t get anyone to respond.’ He said, ‘The buyers that were in charge of a handful of brands a few years ago are juggling 75 to 100 different brands today. So, don’t take it personally.’”

Initially, Pineiro set out to sell Glotrition at spas and, compared to large retailers, they weren’t difficult to approach. She says, “I could finish my television show in the morning, put samples in the car in the afternoon and go visit a dozen spas to give them samples. I was able to get good face time with decision-makers. The spa business is very accessible.” Of course, Glotrition didn’t secure deals with every spa. It has, however, landed at Hiatus Spa + Retreat and The Spa at The Crescent, among other spas.

As Glotrition spreads at stores, spas are pursuing the brand as well, a development Pineiro welcomes. Glotrition has been aided by the release of 10 Day Quick Glo, a 10-pack of its powder that allows customers to test its collagen drink first with a $32 purchase for a 10-day supply instead of an $85 purchase for a 30-day supply. Pineiro says, “In 2015, when I was driving around to different spas, if somebody told me, ‘Just relax, at some point, spas will call you,’ I wouldn’t have believed it, but it is really a great spa product because it’s so easy to sample to clients.”