After Entering Target Last Year, Pursoma Expands Its Mass-Market Footprint With A Walmart Launch

Swoon-worthy baths shouldn’t be isolated to one-percenters.

Pursoma, the clean bath products brand that started in the high-end wellness category in 2014, is busy democratizing its better bathing products, first by placing them in 400-plus Target locations last year and now by rolling them out to 2,000 Walmart stores. In Walmart, its 48-oz. bath soaks Digital Detox Sleep, Sweat It Out Body, Cleanse Your Mind and Goodnight Moon, a baby and child offering, are priced at $7.99, roughly $2 cheaper than they were when Pursoma initially entered the mass market. Each bath soak package yields six to eight baths, leading to the price per bath ringing in at less than $1.

A natural alternative to Epsom salts that dominate bath soaks, Pursoma’s version contains French grey sea salt harvested from salt beds on the coast of Brittany with rakes and wheelbarrows. Amanda Saper, senior merchant for personal care at Walmart, says Pursoma’s products exemplify the self-care trend that Walmart believes will only increase. She adds, “Walmart customers are continuing to look for natural and more sustainable products to use during their personal care routines. Pursoma fits that gap.”

For a smaller brand, Shannon Vaughn, founder and CEO of Pursoma, points out it’s extremely difficult to deliver the sort of affordable pricing that mass-market shoppers demand without assistance from the mass-market retailers it’s stocked in. She commends Walmart for being a great help in that regard by covering shipping costs she estimates have shot up around 50%. Otherwise, Vaughn says, “You would never be able to give the customer more value because you are just eaten by the cost of shipping and raw materials, but, if the retailer is willing to support the shipping cost, then we are able to work with them on the end price.”

In the spring of this year, Pursoma’s sales at Target jumped 105% from last year. November to March is generally the hot period for hot baths. Overall, Vaughn describes Pursoma, which she shares brought on a “private investor” a few years back, but hasn’t had institutional funding, as achieving “slow and steady growth.” She says, “We are not a heavily funded company where we can spend tons of money on marketing, so we really rely on the marketing we have done to build up the brand over the years, and we rely on customers reading the ingredient list, seeing it’s a better option and coming back to us.”

With Pursoma’s limited marketing spend, Vaughn has realized she shouldn’t expect the brand’s sales to skyrocket overnight at retail. Pursoma has a slim, but mighty staff of about six people that understands the expectations. “You get a retailer and all of a sudden you are like, ‘I have to grow and expand, I need so much money,’ and then it doesn’t happen as quickly as you think it does. It takes time to build your customer base inside that retailer,” says Vaughn. “We’ve learned that we are much better staying small, staying true to the brand, and having people inside the company who really love the brand and love bathing.”

“Walmart customers are continuing to look for natural and more sustainable products to use during their personal care routines. Pursoma fits that gap.”

As it extends its reach in the mass market, Pursoma still has a high-end range with about 20 products, including the $16 bath salts Sweat + Rest, Après Savasana, Minerals de Mer, Just Breathe, Unplug, Moonlit and Bain de Pied along with $40 body oils and $30 12-packs of herbal teas. About 30% of the high-end range’s sales are from retail, and it sells at Goop, Violet Grey, Erewhon and select Four Seasons properties.

“Our luxury collection skews toward the consumer that wants a single-serve bathing experience. They’re more inclined to purchase the whole ritual, which is dry brushing, soaking for 20 to 30 minutes, putting on the oil after the bath and drinking the tea,” says Vaughn. “They do more of the luxury spa experience, and we wanted to bring some of that experience to a value-driven customer who may be more time-constrained. The way we able to not compromise on product efficacy and ingredients is really being creative on how and where we sourced the raw materials to cut down on transport, customs, shipping and containers.”

On the mass side, on top of Target and Walmart, Pursoma is carried by Kroger, Grove Collaborative, H-E-B and Harris Teeter. Vaughn says, “We want to reach the customer where they are. If they are online shopping for gifts or something special for self-care that’s on a recurring subscription model, we can service the on our website. If they are shopping for essentials in food, drug and mass, we want to be available to them as a healthy, clean option that’s at the same pricing structure as the rest of their essentials. At the same time, our luxury collection allows you to have a much more expanded spa experience. We could never be able to offer those products as an essential.”

While it didn’t make sense for Pursoma to secure full distribution at Target or Walmart right out of the gate given its size and capabilities, its goal is to achieve that breadth as early as the end of this year. At retailers, Vaughn cautions it’s important for Pursoma to be prominent in geographic locations that have a concentration of consumers who are regular bathers. “Typically, we find that, if they are bathers, they are bathers. That’s what they do, they like to take baths,” she explains. “Everybody else is like, ‘I haven’t taken a bath in years,’ and they are hard to convert.”

Today, Vaughn characterizes Pursoma as in “strategic growth mode, making sure we can always maintain the end result for the customer that’s high quality and that we are not overextending ourselves where things get out of control. We are in a really good place.” Her grand ambition is for Pursoma to be “known as the most natural clean bathing experience that you can buy anywhere you are.”