Ranavat Expands Sephora Partnership With All-Door US Rollout

A year after entering about 250 Sephora stores, Ranavat is expanding across the beauty specialty retailer’s roughly 535 locations in the United States. 

The Ayurveda-inspired skincare and haircare brand will have eight products featured in The Next Big Thing displays: Cream Cleanser, Resurfacing Saffron AHA Masque, Renewing Bakuchi Cream, Fortifying Hair Serum, Regenerative Veda 4 Bond Repair Shampoo and Conditioner, and Brightening Saffron Serum in two sizes, a 30-ml. size and a 5-ml size. An expanded assortment with Ranavat’s Restoring Moonseed Treatment and Facial Polish will also be available in 20 Sephora doors in a linear display starting Sept. 11.

Sephora, which Ranavat launched at online in February last year before landing at physical locations, has put the brand’s sales on track to triple by 2024 from their 2022 level. Currently, retail accounts for approximately 40% of the brand’s sales, and direct-to-consumer distribution accounts for the rest.

Ayurvedic skincare and haircare brand Ranavat is expanding to all Sephora doors in the United States. The brand launched at Sephora online in February prior to rolling out to 250 locations in August.

The brand is sold outside of its website and Sephora at Bluemercury, Amazon, Harrods, Holt Renfrew and Cult Beauty. Prior to Sephora, DTC accounted for 80% of Ranavat’s business. Between 2019 and 2021, the brand’s sales advanced annually by triple-digit rates. 

Ranavat’s strong momentum has been aided by shout-outs from celebrities such as Mindy Kaling, Hailey Bieber and Gwyneth Paltrow. Within six days of their March premiere at Sephora, its products Regenerative Veda 4 Bond Complex Shampoo and Conditioner sold out on the retailer’s website. Last fall, Regenerative Veda 4 Bond Complex Shampoo and Conditioner garnered a waiting list of over 3,000 shoppers after selling out on Ranavat’s website. On its launch day in June, Ranavat’s Glossing Hair Masque beat projections by over 90%.

Michelle Ranavat, the Indian American founder and CEO of Ranavat, boils her namesake brand’s success at Sephora down to the strength of its differentiated products. “If you discover the Brightening Saffron Serum, whether it’s the scent, the texture, the immediate results that you get from the product, there’s not many, if any, products that have those same ingredients within Sephora or those that can dupe it,” she says. “Having that really keen point of differentiation with our product helps Sephora because we’re filling a white space for them, but it also helps us as a brand because we have so much more intellectual property and innovation around what we’re creating.”

According to Ranavat, it’s the first South Asian-founded Ayurvedic skincare brand to launch at Sephora, but it isn’t the only beauty brand with South Asian roots generating buzz at the retailer. Kulfi Beauty is making the jump from online to brick-and-mortar when it arrives at over 300 Sephora stores in the U.S. and Canada on Sept. 1. Shaz & Kiks launched online at the beauty specialty retailer in May, while Live Tinted debuted at Sephora Canada last month. Mango People launched online on Aug. 18, too.

“Having that really keen point of differentiation with our product helps Sephora because we’re filling a white space for them.”

From the moment Ranavat began developing her 6-year-old brand, Sephora was a goal. However, securing a partnership with the retailer wasn’t easy. When Ranavat pitched Sephora initially, she says the retailer was largely focused on bringing in CBD and wellness brands. To win over Sephora, her brand fine-tuned its positioning. 

“It was really building that story in terms of what their customer is looking for, not just today, but in the future. How does Ranavat play into that? How do we give Sephora something that’s going to surprise and delight their customers?” says Ranavat. “How are we playing into what the customer’s looking for on a forward-looking basis and be lifted by the tailwinds of these trends, but not feeling like we are just growing because of them?”

Sephora buyers offered Ranavat feedback that the brand should elevate its design. It executed a rebrand in 2020 that changed packaging, product names and some pricing. Brightening Saffron Serum, its hero product, was formerly known as Radiant Rani Serum and priced at $90 for a 20-ml. size. It now retails at $135 for a 30-ml size. Overall, Ranavat’s individual products are priced from $15 to $135. Ranavat says the rebrand “really struck a chord” with Sephora buyers. 

Ranavat has trimmed a retail network that previously encompassed retailers the likes of Neiman Marcus, Free People and Beauty Heroes. “We’ve taken a narrow and deep approach to our distribution knowing that we want to meaningfully expand within Sephora,” says Ranavat. “I think, if you really champion your relationship with Sephora, it is very hard to maintain relationships with other retailers. So, you have to pick, in my opinion.”

Ranavat has taken a narrow and deep approach to retail distribution, and it’s exited the majority of non-Sephora retailers it once was in to help support its Sephora business.

Expanding through Sephora’s The Next Big Thing assortment reduces many retail-related costs like fixtures and sampling. However, the self-funded brand has made large investments in its team in the past year. Ranavat says, “Our biggest investments, besides inventory, have really been in areas that benefit us as a brand in general, and they also benefit Sephora.” 

Recent key hires at Ranavat include VP of operations Joshua Jones, former VP of operations at SOS Beauty, and senior director of education and product Kristene Salbu, who formerly headed education and training for perfumes and cosmetics at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Salbu is assembling an in-house sales team to support Ranavat at Sephora. The brand aims to have two sales representatives in place by the end of this year and double that number by next year. Ranavat’s internal team contains 10 employees. 

Ranavat says, “Education and being with that customer at point of sale and really sharing the magic of Ayurveda, that’s really critical to our brand’s success because we have a lot to tell the customer.”