Influencer Sommer Ray’s wellness gummy brand Imaraïs Beauty has hit a major distribution milestone, a nationwide rollout at Target.
Doubling its total retail door count to about 4,000, the 4-year-old brand is entering all the big-box chain’s stores with six of its seven products: Marine algae and olive squalene-infused bestseller Glow; mushroom-based hair and scalp health supplement Nourish; red wine pomegranate and tart cherry anti-inflammation gummy Youth; gut health-focused Depuff; sea buckthorn, apple peel and broccoli-based anti-blemish Clarity; and its newest launch, Sutra, a female sexual wellness gummy formulated to boost libido, sensitivity and vaginal lubrication. In key differentiators for it, Imaraïs’s gummies are vegan and free of sugar, artificial dyes and gluten.
“From day one, my goal has been to make clean, effective beauty accessible to everyone, and this partnership allows us to reach more people than ever,” says Ray. “Target is the perfect home for Imaraïs—it’s where beauty, wellness, and everyday essentials come together, and I couldn’t be more excited for customers to experience our products in-store and online.”
Imaraïs has created exclusive sizes for Target at a lower price than its sizes to date. While its products are usually housed in 60-ct. bags priced at $49, the retailer will offer 30-ct. sizes priced at $24.99. In entering Target, brands have often pinned down ways to reduce prices for value-conscious shoppers. For example, when the wellness brand Golde landed at Target in 2021, it introduced Super-Ades priced at $14.99 that were roughly $10 to $14 cheaper than the products it had been selling up until that point.
Imaraïs’s Target debut is part of a huge wellness push the retailer unveiled last month that’s bringing over 2,000 new wellness products to its assortment. Other wellness products are from brands such as device specialist Therabody, men’s personal care brand Dr. Squatch and Bero, a nonalcoholic beer brand from actor Tom Holland.
Imaraïs will live in Target’s beauty section next to beauty-cum-wellness brands Lemme, Love Wellness, Good.clean.goop and Vital Proteins. Imaraïs co-founder Aaron Hefter, a 20-year veteran of the Canadian nutraceuticals industry, calls the merchandising area a “super-curated premium beauty supplement section.”
Less than a year ago, Imaraïs arrived in the United Kingdom at 150 Boots locations and in the United Arab Emirates at 100 Super Care Pharmacy locations. Hefter reports the brand’s partnership with Boots has gone gangbusters, and it’s been selling out at the chain this month. In April, Imaraïs will expand its Boots presence to over 200 doors and add four new products to its selection there. Outside of Boots, Super Care Pharmacy and Target, Imaraïs is available at J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, Selfridges and Holt Renfrew. Its sales have increased 150% year-over-year, according to the brand.
Imaraïs worked with retail broker The Moscoe Group to get in front of Target’s buying team. The process took about eight months. Target has been picking up wellness and beauty brands associated with celebrity or influencer power. Lemme, Good.clean.goop and Love Wellness are tied to Kourtney Kardashian Barker, Gwyneth Paltrow and Lo Bosworth, respectively, and Imaraïs’s connection to Ray is certainly a draw. The model, fitness buff and DJ has nearly 24 million followers on Instagram and 1.75 million subscribers on YouTube.
“She’s someone that they saw as a great ambassador for the brand and who could help, I think, bring in a different demographic to their stores than say a Gwyneth [Paltrow] or a Kourtney [Kardashian], so that was definitely a talking point,” Hefter says, adding, “But then again, I think our brand is absolutely unique to anything they carry. I think it was something that they were actually really looking for and weren’t able to find.”
Imaraïs raised $1.25 million in seed funding at a $12.5 million valuation in 2022. Breana Tiesi, star of reality television show “Selling Sunset,” recently joined the brand as an investor and global ambassador. “She loved the products,” says Hefter. “She reached out to us and we started a dialogue together.”
The CEO emphasizes that supporting Imaraïs’s Target business is currently its priority, not pursuing investment or a sale. This week, he’s driving from Toronto, Imaraïs’s hometown, to the closest Target store nearly two hours away in Buffalo, N.Y. to see the brand’s products on shelf IRL.
“We’re almost at this inflection point as a company now with this major retail partnership in the U.S.,” says Hefter. “It’s such an amazing feeling for us.”
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