No Passport Required: Beauty Industry Vets Create Travel-Inspired Nomad Cosmetics To Transport Consumers Around The World Via Palette

Beauty industry veterans and married couple Felicia and Antti Rintanen have traveled to more than 70 countries. They developed the makeup brand Nomad Cosmetics as a reminder of where they’ve been and to transport customers to places they may never go.

“Nomad is [about] seeing beauty from around the world and creating makeup inspired by different exotic destinations around the world,” says Antti Rintanen. “We describe it as global beauty that’s locally inspired. It’s all about exploration and discover and relating that to beauty.”

Nomad launched in 2015 with palettes dedicated to four cities: New York, Stockholm, Florence and Marrakesh. Today, the brand has single eyeshadows, and eyeshadow and highlighter palettes with nearly 10 destination themes, including Sydney, Berlin, Havana, Antilles and Around The World. The Rintanens have gone on two trips around the world.

Marrakesh Medina is Nomad’s bestselling eyeshadow palette. It has seven soft matte and eight shimmer shades infused with argan oil in hues ranging from warm nudes to vivid emeralds. Every palette from Nomad contains a hero ingredient (Havana products have papaya seed oil, and Berlin hemp seed oil) and packaging design evocative of the city that’s spotlighted.

“Coming from a diverse Western culture, it’s a huge shock going to Medina. You see all these small alleyways, people selling their work in the souks, the different smells, sounds and colors. You still see the carts on the donkeys, their main form of transportation,” says Rintanen. “The Marrakesh palette is all about bold, vibrant looks.”

“We describe it as global beauty that’s locally inspired. It’s all about exploration and discover and relating that to beauty.”

Nomad’s graffiti art New York collection is a nod to the city’s edgy, urban vibe. Its Stockholm highlighter and eyeshadow shades run the gamut from subtle champagne to vibrant plum like the Northern Lights that serve as their muse. While the palettes have been popular, the Stockholm light gold highlighter is Nomad’s bestselling single item. Rintanen says, “It works for all complexions and creates this beautiful sheen that you can build up as much as you want.”

Nomad’s original Florence palette featured an eyeliner and lipstick, but brand has recently stuck to eyeshadows and highlighters. Rintanen explains, “Creating eyeshadow-only and highlighter-only palettes allowed us to focus more on bringing the exciting stories of our destinations to life. It also allows us to focus on those categories where we have a superior product.”

Of course, palettes are a dime a dozen these days in the cosmetics market. Nomad is banking on its unique travel positioning, quality and playful color selection to separate it from the pack. “What we love about that concept is that it gives us a lot of freedom to bring these destinations to life so that we can create beautiful designs and choose from a wide variety of eyeshadow shades that help us bring that vision to life,” says Rintanen, elaborating about Nomad’s quality, “We were able to create a powder that is four times finer and allows you to have a really creamy, buttery feel. It’s buildable and blendable.”

Nomad previewed a Tokyo palette at Indie Beauty Expo Dallas earlier this week. Rolling out next month, the spirited palette’s shadows have camellia oil, an ingredient popularly used in Japan to nourish skin, and multichrome pigments reflecting light in many directions. Nomad is centering its product development efforts on eyeshadows and highlighters this year, but isn’t opposed to branching outside of cosmetics in the future. Rintanen says, “We’ll explore expanding into other categories within beauty in the long term, but will only do that once we have developed a superior product.”

“We know of many small indie beauty brands that partnered with national retailers, but ultimately were not successful because they did it too early.”

The Rintanens have over 35 combined years of beauty industry experience. They met in Geneva in 2006, when they were both working at Procter & Gamble-owned Max Factor. Felicia has largely concentrated on the product development end of the beauty business, and Antti’s responsibilities have spanned planning management, marketing and operations as well as product development. At Nomad, they guided sales to 10x growth last year. This year, the brand’s sales increase is expected to be similar.

Nomad’s prices principally run from $12 to $37, and the brand fits squarely within the masstige segment. Antti Rintanen says, “We needed to have a price point that allowed us to create the product quality that we wanted to have and that our users would expect from us. We didn’t want to be a luxury brand that’s trying to create a luxury pricing where you’re just paying for marketing and packaging. Luxury pricing is often about artificially creating scarcity. We are a high-performance, premium product, but, within that, we wanted to have pricing that makes our offering attainable to as many people as possible.”

The indie makeup brand refers to its customer base as beauty nomads. Rintanen says, “They are people who are passionate about exploring and learning [about] new destinations and experiences.” In each box sent out to customers, Nomad places handwritten postcards corresponding to the destination of the palettes purchased. Rintanen says, “We’re growing a lot, but we still want to have that close connection with our customers.”

Nomad currently depends on a direct-to-consumer model. It’s considering retail, though, and large retailers like Ulta Beauty and Sephora are on the brand’s retail wish list. However, it’s waiting for the right time to scale before it tackles the proposition of chains. “We know of many small indie beauty brands that partnered with national retailers, but ultimately were not successful because they did it too early,” says Rintanen. “If we connect with a retailer that shares the same passion for exploration and discovery, and has the same passion for creating and sharing stories with consumers as we do, then we are open to partnership.”