Evereden is out to be the alpha brand for gen alpha—and it’s taking a leap in that direction with an entrance into Sephora in the United States.
The Sephora U.S. launch marks a big milestone in the New York-based brand’s home market at a time when Sephora is focused on winning the next generation of consumers. Evereden, the brand that started for babies in 2018 and has grown up to cater to teens and tweens, originally landed at Sephora internationally in Canada in 2022 and expanded with the beauty specialty retailer to nine countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, before breaking into its assortment in the world’s biggest beauty market.
“Sephora U.S. for us is more than just a retail launch. It’s a cultural signal. It’s saying that gen alpha is not niche anymore. It’s the next growth engine in beauty,” says Kimberley Ho, CEO and co-founder at Evereden. “We’re not chasing a trend. We built this category. We’re already the market leader.”
Unlike new brands initiating Sephora with no product history or existing sales, Evereden has a substantial sales and merchandise presence. Last year, it crossed $100 million in sales and expects to achieve double-digit percentage growth this year. It has roughly 40 products and is making its Sephora U.S. debut online with 13 heroes in its range priced from $21 to $35 across the skincare, fragrance, body care, haircare and makeup categories such as tinted lip oil, shampoo, conditioner, mineral SPF face cream, gel-cream moisturizer, and hair and body fragrance mist. Its in-store debut is slated for February on The Next Big Thing displays in Sephora locations nationwide.
The Sephora kids craze that burst into the public imagination in 2023 as teens and tweens hunted for social media-loved products from Glow Recipe, Drunk Elephant and Sol de Janeiro exposed gen alpha’s beauty obsession. Gen alpha consumers born 2010 onwards begin engaging with beauty products at about 8 years old compared to nearly 12 for gen z and 15 for millennials, according to a study by Ulta Beauty. Last year, market research firm NielsenIQ noticed households with tweens or teens disproportionately spent on beauty and accounted for 46% of the growth in the facial skincare category.
Although the craze has died down and Drunk Elephant’s sales have cratered in its wake, Sephora, already the favorite beauty retail destination for American teens, per investment bank Piper Sandler’s biannual survey of them, is positioning itself to hold sway over gen alpha for the long term. In advance of launching Evereden, the retailer picked up Sincerely Yours, the Strand Equity-backed skincare brand from Salish and Jordan Matter, the father-and-daughter influencers with a combined 40 million-plus social media followers. Beyond Sephora, the gen alpha gold rush is on with brands like Yes Day, Erly, Saint Crewe, Your Skin Stuff, Btwn, Bubble, Miles, JB Skrub, TBH and Fawn all vying to be the generation’s Rhode or Glossier.
“Gen alpha is not niche anymore. It’s the next growth engine in beauty.”
Ho and Huang Lee, the married couple and former Wall Street professionals behind Evereden, are designing the brand to withstand gen alpha consumers’ constantly changing beauty tastes by operating at their pace. The brand outsources manufacturing, but has an in-house research and development and formulation lab to expedite product ideation that can be translated into feasible products. Evereden can bring a product from concept to creation in six months, which Ho estimates is three times faster than its competitors.
In the last two years, it’s released around 10 products. In August this year, Evereden unveiled a collaboration with Barbie with the Barbie Kids Happy Face Duo containing its face cream and face wash. In March this year, it branched into fragrance with a trio of hair and body fragrance mists—Main Character, Darling and Supernova—informed by insights from 200 tweens and teens. Fragrance had been the most-requested category for product expansion from its customers.
Evereden has additional lip oils and fragrances on the way, and it will extend into another product category in 2026. Dermatologists and mothers Joyce Teng, the brand’s chief scientific officer, Sarina Elmariah and Rebecca Hartman work with Evereden to help it formulate safe and effective products for gen alpha.
“We know this generation has shorter attention spans. They decide quickly if they like something, and there’s a lot of testing and learning that is required from an organization that is focusing on gen alpha,” says Ho. “We’re not precious about our launches. We like to test and learn with our launches. Of course, we put our best foot behind each and every launch, but, at the end of the day, we keep our bestsellers.”
Within its products aimed at gen alpha, Evereden segments by age group, a sign of its maturity in the gen alpha segment. Currently, 90% of its sales are from gen alpha-geared products. On its website, the brand distinguishes products for kids ages three and up and products for teens ages 11 and up. Ninety percent of Evereden’s U.S. sales are from its site and Amazon.
“The mistake I see with a lot of brands trying to jump into this space is speaking to them as a lump generation and developing products to them as this lump generation,” says Ho. “That’s common because millennials and gen Z have a set behavior consumer pattern, but, with gen alpha, I think that our segmented approach is what has kept us really relevant in the last few years.”
“The mistake I see with a lot of brands trying to jump into this space is speaking to them as a lump generation.”
Evereden is supporting its Sephora U.S. launch with a mix of digital and in-person efforts. On Saturday, it’s hosting a skincare gala in Los Angeles, and events in other cities like Miami and New York City are planned. Paid social media advertising and influencer partnerships are important, too. Evereden cultivates a down-to-earth, approachable brand voice in its marketing to communicate with well-versed gen alpha beauty consumers. Ho mentions, for example, that the brand doesn’t have to explain what glycerin is to its audience. Evereden has 246,000 Instagram followers and 195,300 TikTok followers.
Evereden has raised more than $40 million in funding, and among its investors are GSR Ventures, Plus Capital and Siam Capital. Ho says it’s not currently fundraising and is profitable. Evereden was the third fastest-growing brand last year in Sephora Canada.
As gen alpha becomes a prominent force in beauty, mergers and acquisitions activity in the space is sure to heat up. Bubble, a gen alpha player in the mass market, has hired the investment bank Centerview to explore options. An open question in the beauty industry is how large corporations will capture gen alpha consumers and the role of acquisitions in that quest.
To succeed with gen alpha, Ho believes corporations must resonate with young consumers who value wellness, inclusivity and sustainability, and accelerate product innovation. She says they also will “need to master a new complexity: speaking to two generations at once. Unlike prior cohorts, every purchase for gen alpha requires dual buy-in, the trust of millennial parents and the enthusiasm of gen alpha teens and tweens. That dynamic raises the bar. Brands must earn credibility with parents while still sparking excitement for kids…Parents may be reached through authority, safety and education, while kids need engagement, fun and creativity, but both have to feel true to one coherent brand story.”
