New Tween Mom-Founded Gen Zalpha Brand Saint Crewe Is All About Age-Appropriate Skincare

During a Sephora trip with her 10-year-old daughter in January last year, evidence of the lure of adult skincare to tweens was all around Erin Piper.

“I needed a concealer, and it was slammed,” she recalls. “I was seeing 10- and 11-year-olds with $300 to $400 of products in their baskets. My daughter asked if she could get something, and she walked up to me with a retinol eye cream…It was beautiful packaging, I could see why she was drawn to it…I started looking around for something that was appropriate for her to use, something that didn’t have harsh actives like retinol or glycolic acids and came up empty.”

Piper, a Baton Rouge, La.-based therapist to college-age women and mother of two, was inspired to fill the void. She says, “Girls and young women pull so much of their confidence from how their skin looks, and I remember thinking how much fun it would be to create something of quality with high-quality ingredients I could be proud of and look other mothers in the eyeballs and say this is great for your child.”

Now, Piper is launching Saint Crewe, a new brand focused on age-appropriate, playful skincare for members of gen alpha and gen Z. Teens and tweens’ tremendous appetite for beauty is evident not just in Sephora, but in investment bank Piper Sandler’s biannual survey of teens, which showed in the fall last year that teen beauty spending increased 6% year-over-year to $342, although spending on skincare dipped 4%. According to a report by Ulta Beauty published last year entitled “Generation Joy” that publication Business of Fashion cited last week in an article on gen alpha brands, gen alpha begins experimenting with beauty products at 8 years old, half the age of millennials and gen Xers.

With 47 million-plus members in the United States, gen alpha, encompassing individuals born between 2010 and 2024, represents about 13% of the American population. There are nearly 70 million gen Zers in the U.S., where they’re about 20% of the population. Gen Zers were born from 1997 to 2010.

Saint Crewe’s debut collection includes four products: $32 Clean Beam Balmy Dream, $38 Team Gleam, $44 Goji Go + Glow and $42 Water Whip. The products were developed in collaboration with dermatologists and tested on 100 people prior to launch to verify their effectiveness and gentleness for young skin. They adhere to Ulta Beauty, Sephora and Credo’s clean beauty guidelines.

Clean Beam is a milky cleansing balm featuring bisabolol, ginger and turmeric that melts into the skin to remove sunscreen and makeup. Team Gleam is a water-gel serum packed with goji berry and microalgae to help balance the skin microbiome and fight environmental stressors’ impacts on the skin.

Goji Go + Glow is a mist with aloe juice, microalgae and goji berry addressing excess oil to keep breakouts at bay and support the skin microbiome. Water Whip, a light gel cream containing marine algae extract and vitamin E, is designed to deliver hydration and a lit-from-within glow.

Compared to the skin of mature adults, the skin of teens, tweens and young adults in Saint Crewe’s wheelhouse is more sensitive and prone to irritation. Generally, Piper points out that young skin doesn’t need products aimed at collagen boosting, brightening, firming or anti-aging. The misuse or overuse of products with ingredients for those benefits can damage the skin barrier and cause dryness and breakouts or other skin conditions.

Piper says, “[My kids will say], ‘I saw this on TikTok,’ and I’m like, ‘You saw a grown woman using that, your skin is different, you need to use products that are appropriate for your skin, and you also have to consider what other products you’re using on your face.’”

She enlisted assistance from beauty and wellness veteran Laura-Lucia Carothers, her friend and former COO of Natural Endurance, president of PerioSciences and director of public relations, special events and advertising at SkinCeuticals, in creating the products. Together, they sought to kick off Saint Crewe with a tight edit of products, believing that the skincare universe is complicated already and doesn’t need another brand that’s going to complicate it much further. Saint Crewe’s four products are intended to complement each other.

In its gen alpha article, Business of Fashion describes gen alpha consumers’ love for packaging colors spanning the rainbow—and Saint Crewe’s packaging is squarely in the rainbow oeuvre with vibrant orange and blue. To align with consumer expectations of sustainability, the brand’s primary packaging is made of 50% post-consumer recycled materials, and its secondary packaging is described as fully recyclable.

Piper says, “We wanted something clean and sophisticated that hadn’t been done and still felt playful, a happy, bright experience from start to finish.”

Next up for Saint Crewe is securing its goal stockists: Credo, Sephora, Ulta, Bluemercury and Violet Grey. The competition for retail placements and gen alpha dollars is fierce, however. Saint Crewe is hardly alone in identifying the gen alpha skincare opportunity. Brands such as Btwn, Evereden, Bubble, TBH, Your Skin Stuff, Rile, Gryme and JB Skrub are tapping into it, too.

“As a parent, I have to say ‘no’ to so much—no to social media, to phones, to harmful ingredients,” says Piper. “It’s really great to say ‘yes’ to skincare and to be a part of something so fun that they love to do with their friends.”