Starface Founders’ Sustainable Personal Care Brand Plus Shuts Down

Plus, the eco-minded personal care brand from the founders of Starface selling dissolvable body wash packets, has dissolved.

Investors were informed of the closure in July last year after it was clear Plus wasn’t gaining enough traction with consumers to drive strong sales at Target, which introduced it in 2022 about a year after it hit the market in 2021. Although its body wash sheets in wood pulp sachets slashed water usage and carbon emissions, the burden of convincing people to change their shower habits in the name of sustainability proved too difficult for Plus.

In a statement, Plus co-founder Brian Bordainick tells Beauty Independent, “We’re proud of the innovation we brought forth with Plus and the conversation that we started within the category. As brand builders, we take bold swings at issues that impact the lives of young people. That being said, we will not always get it right each time. We learned so much from building Plus that we’ve applied to other opportunities we’re passionate about. We don’t see pivoting or trying something different as a failure—failure is a part of the process.”

Maggie Spicer, founder of Source Beauty ESG, a sustainability and social impact advisory not connected to Plus, believes it failed because “no brand can exist on sustainability alone.” She adds, “Consumers are always going to let performance, efficacy and marketing carry the day. So, while Plus had incredible positioning for their sustainability practices, they may have struggled to find the right product-market fit overall.”

The second brand from Bordainick and Julie Schott, the duo behind 5-year-old cool-kid pimple patch sensation Starface, Plus was a prelude to their releases of additional brands responding to gen Z consumer behaviors and trends. Subsequent to Plus, Schott and Bordainick unveiled Futurewise, an updated twist on slugging or slathering the skin with an occlusive substance, Julie, a cheeky emergency contraception brand, and Blip, a nicotine replacement line for vape users.

Par for the course for Schott and Brian Bordainick’s brands, Plus made a splash out of the gate. The magazine Time featured Plus on its list of best inventions of 2022. Along with Time, Fashionista, Forbes, Fast Company and Elle, where Schott previously was a beauty editor, wrote up the brand. Elle touted it as shaking up clean beauty. But Plus’s splashy launch and relevance to gen Z’s environmental concerns didn’t lead to longevity, an issue that Schott and Bordainick have to contend with across their consumer packaged goods properties.

Schott and Bordainick excel at creating brands with distinctive visual universes and arresting social media feeds. Plus’s bold fonts and colors broke from the design of crunchy sustainable brands at natural food coops and refill shops, and the ability of its body wash sheets and water-soluble packaging to melt down the drain was ideal for short-form videos. SmartSolve was the brand’s water-soluble packaging material supplier.

To amplify awareness, Plus brought on high-profile personality Stephanie Shepherd Suganami, Kim Kardashian’s former assistant, as chief impact officer. Cathryn Woodruff, former director of marketing at chickpea pasta brand Banza, joined Schott and Bordainick as a Plus co-founder. According to Woodruff’s LinkedIn account, she’s transitioned to a head of people role at Julie.

“No brand can exist on sustainability alone.”

As a company, Plus was kept separate from Schott and Bordainick’s other brands and did its own fundraising. The brand raised an undisclosed amount in an oversubscribed round. Schott and Bordainick’s reputation for winning over gen Z consumers was a draw for investors, including ones that have been betting on sustainability as a transformative force in CPG. Briogeo founder Nancy Twine and Swat Equity were among Plus’s investors.

Already a stockist of Starface, Target was eager to get in on Plus, and retail has been at the core of Schott and Bordainick’s approach to distribution. Futurewise succeeded Starface and Plus in Target. Julie is available at CVS, Target and Walmart, and CVS has Blip.

Plus premiered as waterless beauty product concepts in powder and tablet forms were proliferating. Nonetheless, waterless beauty product concepts are nascent, and for a brand like Plus that requires considerable education to school consumers accustomed to washing their bodies differently, the pressures of major retail early on can be especially challenging. Plus may have benefited from a longer runway to educate consumers than the sales expectations of a big-box chain allow.

Even for consumers apt to jump on sustainable products, Plus wasn’t the easiest sell. A discussion in the Subreddit r/ZeroWaste touches on the brand’s body wash format being good for travel, but not regular showering. In a review on the platform Thingtesting, founder Jenny Gyllander wrote, “I don’t think this is an everyday product for me. The logistics of opening a sachet with dry hands, leaving it outside the shower to then reach out to grab it while showering, etc is just not worth the hassle vs a normal soap bar.”

Price was another matter. Plus’s body wash sheets came in packs of 16 for $16.50, and the brand had three scent varieties: neroli, orange and lemon Summer, coconut, sea salt and jasmine Waves, and unscented Clouds. Most liquid body washes at mass-market stores are under $10. In surveys, consumers portray themselves as willing to pay a premium for sustainable products. However, their purchasing behavior often doesn’t comport with their stated willingness.

A source with insight into Plus’s business says, “From the numbers, we know that people like to talk about sustainability a lot more than they put dollars into it. There was a hope that, through social media and the way Starface is able to reach younger audiences, maybe there might be more of an interest, but it’s still a very tough category to crack.”

This article was updated on Tuesday, April 30 to include a statement from Bordainick.