Naturally Original Is Restaging Kiss My Face and Yes To—And Hunting For Other Brands That Could Use A Refresh

As the beauty industry moved from natural beauty to clean beauty, some brands in the earlier natural beauty wave drifted off course.

That’s the case for Kiss My Face and Yes To, two natural beauty mainstays that have been battered by ownership, leadership and market changes. Now, they’re headed by new management at Lionel Capital-owned Naturally Original, which is being steered by president John Reppucci, who’s on a mission to revive Yes To and Kiss My Face, where he’s returned after holding various sales roles from 2007 to 2015 before an almost six-year stint as VP of sales and GM at Thayers Natural Remedies, a brand generating $44 million in sales in 2019 that was bought by L’Oréal in 2020 for nearly $400 million.

“If you would have talked to people when I was at Kiss My Face the first time around, they would have said I was Kiss My Face. I was very involved in the company, not just in sales, but in every aspect of it,” says Reppucci. “In my mind, Kiss My Face was a much sexier brand than Thayers was. I left because I wasn’t aligned with what the private equity firm at the time was doing. So, I felt I needed to come back to finish off that chapter.”

Founded in 1980 by Bob MacLeod and Steve Byckiewicz on a 200-acre farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, Kiss My Face originated with olive oil bar soap, a product that has remained a staple of its selection. Caltius Equity Partners invested in the brand in 2010, and Lionel Capital acquired it in 2018. Lionel Capital licensed Kiss My Face to Windmill Health Products until last November. The firm picked up Yes To last year from San Francisco Equity Partners.

Lionel Capital acquired Yes To from San Francisco Equity Partners last year. It combined it with Kiss My Face, which the firm purchased in 2018, in the company Naturally Original. C BROWN

Created by Israeli manufacturer Sea of Life, entrepreneurs Ido Leffler and Lance Karish sensed Yes To, originally named Yes To Carrots, could have global appeal. They took it over and brought it to the United States in 2006. The brand focused on fruit and vegetable ingredients, and swelled to multiple lines starring the likes of cucumbers, grapefruit, avocado, tomatoes and watermelon.

At one point, Yes To’s retail network reportedly encompassed 12,000 outlets in 16 countries. At the moment, Reppucci approximates the brand is in 5,000 retail doors. It’s long been strong at mass retailers such as Target. At its height, Reppucci estimates Kiss My Face was in 5,000 retail doors, a number that’s shrunk to 2,000. While Kiss My Face’s retail distribution in the past extended from Whole Foods to Walmart, its strength has been in the natural grocery channel.

Five years ago, Kiss My Face and Yes To were generating about $30 million and $100 million in sales, respectively, according to industry sources. They peg their current sales at roughly a fifth and a tenth of those amounts. Reppucci’s goal is for Kiss My Face to reach $20 million in sales in the next several years and for Yes To to reach $40 million to $50 million in sales in the same period.

Reppucci thinks Kiss My Face and Yes To are being weighed down by bloated assortments. The former has about 80 stockkeeping units, and the latter has about 300. Reppucci plans to rationalize the brands’ product lineups, give their packaging eco-friendly makeovers and refresh their designs with rebrands that will start to filter into the market in 2023.

“We are trying to buy brands that complement each other in that, like with these two brands, they need to be rebuilt.”

Kiss My Face will reintroduce sunscreen, a product that had performed well for the brand, and highlight its legacy. “We need to play on the fact that we are a pioneer in the industry,” says Reppucci. “The packaging was always sort of fun and playful, and it hasn’t had an element of seriousness. So, I want it to have that element of seriousness for believability, but I do want there to be a playful element with a retro ‘80s feel that’s pretty relevant to today’s consumer.”

Kiss My Face will zero in on 35- to 55-year-old consumers that have been its core audience. Yes To skews gen Z and millennial. During his previous tenure at Kiss My Face, Reppucci says the ownership concluded the brand “was a millennial, gen Z brand that was sassy and young. It wasn’t. It was more gen X. The marketing and branding were speaking to the wrong consumer. With me at the helm, I can change all of that.”

At Yes To, Reppucci identifies the key problems that engendered its decline under prior ownership as “overspending and doing everything they had to do to get distribution.” He elaborates, “They became a very commoditized brand. They were very successful with single-use masks and wipes. That’s really what they are most known for.” Yes To was also hurt by a recall of its Grapefruit Vitamin C Glow-Boosting Unicorn Paper Mask in January 2020. Around a year later, the brand settled a class action suit involving claims the mask caused skin irritation and redness for $750,000.

Reppucci isn’t doing away with Yes To’s masks and wipes or its fruit and vegetable ingredients. Instead, he’s modernizing them. He expects to up the sustainability profile of the masks and wipes, and integrate function into Yes To’s product propositions. He explains, “In other words, Yes To moisture barrier control or Yes To hydration. It will still have great ingredients and ingredient callouts on the packaging, but not have the fruit or vegetable be as front and center.”

Naturally Original is looking for brands to acquire that will complement Kiss My Face and Yes To. President John Reppucci believes its portfolio could reach five to six brands.

Along with deepening Yes To’s and Kiss My Face’s penetration in its existing retailers and growing to additional brick-and-mortar retailers, Reppucci is intent on bolstering their Amazon presences. At Thayers, a single SKU—Rose Petal Witch Hazel Facial Toner—garnered 89,000-plus five-star reviews on Amazon, an achievement that persuaded retailers to pick up the brand. “They see that online is very successful, and they want that consumer in their store,” says Reppucci. At Kiss My Face and Yes To, he continues, “Part of our strategy is to have success on Amazon to make retailers salivate.”

Naturally Original has 16 people on its team and a remote office model. The company is interested in enlarging its portfolio with natural brands that, similar to Kiss My Face and Yes To, have sputtered recently, but retain consumer awareness. Reppucci figures the portfolio could swing five to six complementary brands. “We are not trying to buy competing products. We are trying to buy brands that complement each other in that, like with these two brands, they need to be rebuilt,” he says. “There are so many brands that would complement us.”

The brands have to have the capacity to resonate with consumers and retailers beyond the natural beauty positioning that was their initial differentiator. If they can’t do that, they may wind up like Aubrey Organics, a heritage natural beauty brand that closed this year.

“There’s no natural channel anymore in terms of retail,” says Reppucci. “I have been on this side of the business for a long time in my career. People like me have done our jobs and spread the word so natural will always have a place, and it will continue to have a bigger place. It’s going to be clean and better-for-you, and better-for-you means so many things in today’s world versus years ago. It’s not just what’s in it, it’s the packaging, what recycling options are available, how many uses you can get out of the package.”