After Two Decades In The Beauty Industry, Angela Dubia Created The Online Green Beauty Shop She Wanted

Safe & Chic founder Angela Dubia knows prestige beauty. As an account executive for Parfums Givenchy, she managed over 100 California retail locations, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. While chicness was certainly valued when she worked on Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent and Oscar de la Renta merchandise, safety was not. “No one ever made a peep about anything harmful or toxic in the products,” she remembers. A switch to organic food that restored Dubia’s depleted energy levels caused her to expand her detoxing efforts beyond the contents of her kitchen cabinet and into the contents of her medicine cabinet. It was during the arduous and confusing task of replacing her traditional beauty products with natural alternatives that the idea of Safe & Chic was born. “I wanted to make the process fun and easy for people,” says Dubia. Beauty Independent spoke with her about selling her selection of safe and chic beauty and personal care products in her two-and-a-half-year-old online green beauty shop.

Who are Safe & Chic’s customers?

Our customers range from teenagers to women in their late 60s. We have many customers who come to us after they had cancer. They went through chemotherapy and radiation, and are now looking for safe products. We sell all over the U.S. and a little bit worldwide. Some people really want certain products and don’t mind the extra shipping cost.

What standards does Safe & Chic have for the brands it carries?

Every product we sell is free of toxins, parabens and other dangerous chemicals like SLS found in most mainstream products. They are also cruelty-free with no animal testing. We’ve even added gluten free and vegan sections for people to shop.

How many brands do you carry?

We carry over 100 brands and over 1,500 beauty, skin care and hair care products.

What are some of your best sellers?

Our number one category is cosmetics, especially lipstick and mascara. Some of our best selling brands are Lily Lolo, Kjaer Weis and Fitglow Beauty.

What are your personal hero products?

I’m obsessed with Grown Alchemist cleanser and toner, Patyka eye contour cream and moisturizer, Gressa foundation and Alima Pure finishing powder.

How do you discover new brands and how can they reach out to you?

We find brands through bloggers and from our competition. We have a link on our site that brands can use to submit to us; we prefer no phone calls. It is important that they know that there must be no animal testing and no toxic ingredients before they submit and send products. Once we receive products, we ask for a few weeks to test them.

What’s your onboarding process like?

For a new brand, we will start with a smaller order and cherry-pick SKUs. Some brands are amazing, and we take on everything.  We can get the products up [on the site] in two to three days if the brand ships the next day, which some do.

What are some things that work and don’t work in partnering with brands?

When I see smaller brands that we carry try to drive sales on their own sites. They do a lot of sales and discounts, things we weren’t allowed to do or weren’t able to do because of margins. That can create a weird relationship, something I never experienced in the fashion world. Sometimes, we will move on and stop purchasing from them. The brands that are so wonderful to work with are the ones who are very involved. They will promote you, and they are very generous with sampling. They want to see you succeed.

What are Safe & Chic’s margins?

In general, we use keystone margins [50%]. Sometimes brands will offer better margins when we order in large quantities.

How big is the Safe & Chic team?

We are a small and young team. People work remotely. We manage our own social media in-house. We like to set things up in advance so all we have to do is press the button. At any one time, we will have 15 to 20 staged shots ready to go.

Safe & Chic has over 51,000 followers on Instagram. Do you work with influencers often?

We relied on bloggers and influencers a lot more in the first two years. We’re not doing it as much now because things are happening naturally and organically.

What’s the price range of the products sold on Safe & Chic?

We have a huge range in price on the site. We want to be respectful of those with restricted income. A lot of our customers are seniors on a fixed budget. We can’t only sell those high-priced products to our customer base.

Amazon, yes or no?

We have our own storefront on Amazon. We don’t mind if a brand is sold on Amazon, as long as it’s sold at the own full retail price and is not discounted.

Does Safe & Chic discount?

We will do sitewide sales of 15% max or free shipping on major U.S. holidays. It’s fine if some brands do not want to be discounted, as long as it’s fair online across all stores. I’ve seen many brands fail at enforcing a no discounting rule on other sites.

Do you require brands to provide samples?

We do include complimentary samples in each order. We also have sample kits that customers can buy. We’ve found that foundation is one of the hardest things to buy online. It’s so important to try first. So, we sell a foundation sample kit. A customer can go to a brand’s page like Vapour or Fitglow Beauty, and they list which shades they think would match.

Do you find people purchase foundation after sampling?

Yes, people definitely come back to buy. Sometimes, it will take one or two more orders to get it right. It’s not just the shade, it’s also how sheer they want the foundation, how much coverage they want, etc.

Do you have any pop-ups planned or any plans to open up a brick and mortar location?

We don’t have any pop-ups planned at the moment, but I would be interested to do one in the future. No plans to open a store. When I had my own fashion e-commerce site [Fashion Chateau], we didn’t have a physical store, and I found I was able to focus without the distractions and other considerations that come with a physical store.