The Detox Market has entered brand mode with Detox Mode, its first in-house product offering.
The retailer is starting the brand with a single $32 item – universal body, face and hair dry oil Altogether Oil – proclaiming its proposition to accessibly address gaps in the green beauty market. Detox Mode is expected to expand slowly with highly-differentiated products and could reach four stockkeeping units next year.
“Our approach is to fill in what doesn’t exist as opposed to look at what is making money and replace it with something cheaper, which is what retailers often do,” says Romain Gaillard, founder and CEO of The Detox Market. “There might be demand in deodorant, so a retailer decides to do a deodorant. That’s precisely the opposite of what we are trying to do. We have no dry oils, so we decided to do one.”
The idea for the dry oil sprung from a social media campaign The Detox Market launched in 2016 asking natural beauty enthusiasts to share conventional beauty products they have had a hard time parting with. Respondents frequently singled out body products, and Gaillard identified the body product category as an underserved slice of the green beauty segment generally.
“The big dirty secret is that people are super careful with their face, but, for their body, they were going to CVS and buying Lubriderm,” he says. Detox Mode’s slogan is, “Clean replacements for your dirty beauty vices.” Discussing the body category, Gaillard adds, “There are definitely more brands coming into body, but it used to be side products for a brand focused on face. A skincare brand all about the face would think, ‘Should we do the something for the body?’ Then, they would come out with a very expensive body product.”
For Detox Mode, The Detox Market concentrated on developing a non-greasy, travel-friendly body product. At a 3.4-oz. size, Altogether Oil can be stuffed into carry-on baggage for plane trips. The retailer was also was intent on avoiding palm oil and palm oil derivatives in the ingredient deck. Instead, the ingredient deck consists of jojoba oil and grapeseed oils, vitamin E, aloe leaf juice, ginseng root extract, and sweet orange, neroli, lemon, petigrain, cardamom, patchouli and coriander essential oils.
“Our approach is to fill in what doesn’t exist as opposed to look at what is making money and replace it with something cheaper, which is what retailers often do. There might be demand in deodorant, so a retailer decides to do a deodorant. That’s precisely the opposite of what we are trying to do. We have no dry oils, so we decided to do one.”
“Dry oils don’t exist much in the natural space, and the response we have gotten so far is very, very good. I think people were waiting for this type of product,” says Gaillard. “If you look at the ratio of quality to price point, it has a very good ratio. I think elevated packaging and high quality at an affordable price will be a winning strategy.”
The retailer’s efforts to introduce a brand date back to 2013, and Gaillard reports it scrapped two attempts at brands before finally bringing Detox Mode to life. Among many complications, it had to sort through regulations in two countries – the U.S. and Canada – where The Detox Market has stores. Today, it has seven locations and five installations at Café Gratitude restaurants.
“I couldn’t picture creating something that I wasn’t extremely proud of. I felt it was insulting to our clients,” says Gaillard. “What I wanted to do was create a brand that, instead of just capturing traffic from the store, will create traffic. That’s why it has a different name and its own website. I want something that will be interesting enough to convert people to green beauty.”
Inside The Detox Market, Tasi Ripp Bennett, who was vice president of merchandising at American Apparel and senior merchant at Reformation before prior to joining the retailer last year, was tasked with leading the Detox Mode initiative. Her responsibility was to craft a brand that didn’t look like everything else on The Detox Market’s shelves. Altogther Oil is packaged in a bright blue box decorated with illustrations of women by the artist Regina Yazdi.
“What I wanted to do was create a brand that, instead of just capturing traffic from the store, will create traffic. That’s why it has a different name and its own website. I want something that will be interesting enough to convert people to green beauty.”
The Detox Market considered countless names for its brand. Ripp Bennett threw Detox Mode into the brainstorming mix early on after she attended a Depeche Mode concert. Gaillard gravitated to the name because it underscores the notion of customers switching to green beauty products. He says, “When you’ve been using conventional beauty and are tired of it, you want to go into Detox Mode.”
Gaillard notes the name incorporates Detox to connect the brand to The Detox Market, too. He says, “Retailers sometimes name products completely differently, and they don’t even tell you they’re related to them. I think that’s not very transparent.” Detox Mode will be sold at The Detox Market’s store and on its e-commerce website as well as its own branded site. There are no plans at the moment to make Detox Mode available for broader distribution.
Detox Mode isn’t projected to be a huge business for The Detox Market. However, Gaillard doesn’t anticipate it to break into green beauty with a whimper either. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be a large amount of dollars when you look our overall revenue,” he says, continuing, “I will judge the brand not by how much we are selling at The Detox Market, but by how much we are selling at detoxmode.com. The reason is I want to create a brand that can live by itself and not something that has to be sold only at The Detox Market. I’m very eager to make it a real brand.”
