Myavana Co-Founder Starts Online Marketplace Her Beauty Regimen To Be A Launchpad For Indie Brands

Her Beauty Regimen aims to serve as a flexible, founder-friendly alternative to the onerous demands of large retailers.

The idea for the new beauty marketplace came to founder Chanel Martin after a conversation with an indie beauty brand that was forced to exit Target because it couldn’t afford to keep paying for the order quantities necessary to stay at the chain. The enlightening conversation prompted Martin to ask herself, “What if there is a place where independent brands can scale and grow as they’re able to?”

The closure of Ami Colé and its struggles under the weight of pressure to succeed at Sephora solidified the idea for Her Beauty Regimen. It employs a dropshipping model designed to support emerging brands while maintaining low overhead. Brands are charged a 15% platform fee, and they take home the remaining 85%.

She says, “I want to give it a more elevated feel than an Etsy store, not drown you out like an Amazon store, and have the discoverability of a Sephora, but for independent brands.”

Her Beauty Regimen concentrates on haircare, skincare, body care and nail products and has onboarded 36 brands so far and expects to hit 100 brands by the end of the year. The objective is to increase the visibility of primarily clean and niche beauty brands, particularly those that cater to underrepresented consumers. Her Beauty Regimen’s target customer is between the ages of 20 and 65.

Martin studied chemical engineering at Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Institute of Technology and North Carolina A&T with a dream to make beauty products. In 2012, she put that dream into motion by co-founding Myavana. As the haircare startup’s chief science officer, Martin was immersed in developing a digital solution to analyze hair strands and recommend personalized product regimens.

Prioritizing her family, she made the difficult decision in 2016 to step back from Myavana. While focused on her kids, she launched publishing company Beyond the Book Media in 2019 and consulted for brands. Now, with the mom of four’s youngest child being five years old, she’s ready to recommit to building a beauty business.

With the help of artificial intelligence, Martin created a list of nearly 200 indie brands. She cold emailed them to see if they’d be interested in Her Beauty Regimen. She also spread the news about Her Beauty Regimen on Facebook and Threads. Melissa Hibbert, president of marketing and strategy agency Beauty Founders Agency, helped her connect with brands, too.

“I was relentless about following up,” says Martin. “I was trying to be very transparent about what we’re doing, that we’re new, and I wanted people that would be willing to work out the technical difficulties with me, the kinks that come along with any platform and that wanted to be a part of something new and something fresh.”

“I want to give it a more elevated feel than an Etsy store, not drown you out like an Amazon store, and have the discoverability of a Sephora, but for independent brands.”

The marketplace launched in July, and Martin estimates it took under $1,500 to get off the ground. She’s partnered with an investor who’s contributed financially and strategically to Her Beauty Regimen. She declined to name the investor or divulge how much the investor has contributed.

The marketplace offers brands a platform for exposure and sales, and Martin manages digital marketing efforts on behalf of the collective. She says Her Beauty Regimen has spent about $5,000 on ads to date and generally spends about $100 a day. It’s running Facebook, Instagram and TikTok ads and will soon begin Pinterest ads. So far, Martin identifies hair growth oils and body butters as delivering the biggest return on ad spend.

At the end of this month, Martin plans to premiere a podcast called “Her Beauty Regimen with Chanel” featuring interviews with brand founders and beauty influencers. The podcast is part of a broader strategy to spotlight founders, foster community and give consumers deeper insight into the indie beauty brands they’re buying from.

As Her Beauty Regimen grows, Martin envisions it becoming a launchpad for emerging beauty brands and an authority on indie beauty that shoppers flock to in order to assemble their beauty regimens across bath, skincare, haircare and more. “I would love to be a pipeline or incubator for up-and-coming brands to enter into a Sephora, Ulta, Target or Walmart,” she says. “People who love to shop independent beauty, clean beauty, support small businesses, I want us to be the first place that they think of.”