New Store Vosenna Is Dedicated To Indie Beauty Brands

Elizabeth Devos is fostering the indie spirit in university town Ann Arbor, Mich.

The former college professor has opened Vosenna, a 1,300-square-foot beauty store dedicated to cruelty-free brands made in the U.S. that aren’t owned by conglomerates. It carries 24 brands across the color cosmetics, haircare, fragrance, skincare, body and men’s categories, including Girlactik, Shiro Cosmetics, Fat And The Moon, Brija Cosmetics, Apocalyptic Beauty, Sincerity Bath & Body, Au Naturale Cosmetics, Red Lips Studio and Bee Lovely Botanicals.

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 14-years-old, and I really hated going into a store not knowing what was tested on animals and who cared more about their shareholders than the quality of products they produced,” says Devos. “I have bought indie products from individual brands on their websites, but I felt there was a real gap in the market for people to buy them in-person. Beauty products sell better in-person than online because people want to try them before they buy.”

Devos left her position as an accounting professor at Eastern Michigan University to commit to indie beauty. While the study of accounting seems far afield from beauty, her career has been sprinkled with beauty stints in between academics. She was a coordinator at a high-end spa in Chicago during her undergraduate program and, later on, she received a cosmetology license prior to becoming a professor.

“When I started to put my tenure package together last summer, that’s when I first thought, ‘I could really do this,’” says Devos, divulging she’s plunged $120,000 from her savings into Vosenna’s staffing, inventory and buildout. “I realized I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, and I’ve always had this connection to the beauty industry. I knew for a while now that this was needed.”

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 14-years-old, and I really hated going into a store not knowing what was tested on animals and who cared more about their shareholders than the quality of products they produced.”

To choose merchandise for the store, Devos turned to brands she’d purchased for her own use plus brands she discovered through internet and social media research. Products at Voseanna tend to be on the affordable end of the beauty spectrum. Devos pointed out, for example, that a $70 sugar scrub might be too exorbitant for its customer base. She prefers brands that manufacture products themselves, but, if they don’t do their own manufacturing, she’s interested in them creating proprietary formulas.

“There are quite a few indie brands out there that outsource their production, and all they do is put their name on stuff. I wanted to make sure I didn’t end up with those brands because it made no sense to get five of the exact same foundations for the store, and the only thing that would be different is the packaging,” says Devos. “Some companies will weave quite the story about how they hand make their products and, you look at the product, and it’s the exact same product that comes from someone else.”

Devos is adamant about sticking to an indie philosophy. A brand carried by Vosenna that sells to a major corporation will be ushered out. “Often, when people sell to conglomerates, their ethics are no longer get carried over to the new company, and they lose their original vision,” she says. “I want to make sure that the quality of the products remains the most important thing and not shareholders. We are at a point in time right now where we are so corporate-driven, and so many companies do things for short-term gains for their shareholders to the detriment of their products.”

At Vosenna, Devos attempts to cultivate a welcoming atmosphere for clientele of all backgrounds and beauty needs. Teens and women in their seventies have come through its doors. “I really see my store as a place for people who feel overlooked by mainstream beauty brands. People who might walk into a store that are not done up, we treat them well,” she says, adding, “I definitely see my customer as somebody who wants to get away from products from big businesses and who wants things that tend to have better ingredients, and who are more concerned with quality than advertising campaigns.”

“I definitely see my customer as somebody who wants to get away from products from big businesses and who wants things that tend to have better ingredients, and who are more concerned with quality than advertising campaigns.”

Vosenna gets its name from Devos’s last name, which is derived from the Dutch word for fox. It’s located at the shopping center Lamp Post Plaza near a Trader Joe’s in a space that was occupied by an optometrist for more than 65 years. Devos sought a spot that wasn’t in downtown, where rents can be expensive, but could still draw University of Michigan students. She’s filled the modern and roomy store with fixtures she picked upon the closure of a local Kmart closed and refurbished, and two semi-circle tables topped with makeup displays. Shelf talkers are ubiquitous in the store to tell the stories of brands that may be unfamiliar to customers.

A disappointment at the outset is that, because the Vosenna space was previously home to an optometrist serving elderly clientele seeking glasses, shoppers tend to disregard it, and foot traffic isn’t as heavy as Devos would hope. As a result, she’s doubling down spreading the word about Vosenna through events, collaborations with fitness studios and other retailers, and traditional advertising methods like postcards.

“It’s a lot of highs and lows,” says Devos of her venture into retailing so far. “There are highs when people come in and they totally get it, and I feel like I did this for a reason, and there are lows on days when it’s slow, and I feel this better work.”