Undefined CEO and founder Dorian Morris is practiced in the art of the pivot. “As I think back on 2018, when I launched at Indie Beauty Expo, the packaging and the value proposition were very different than today,” she says. “I’ve evolved, and I think brand owners have to be OK with evolution.”
Undefined’s evolution, especially from a CBD beauty specialist to a broader beauty and wellness player, has been a crucial factor in the brand spreading its wings. Undefined has landed at 285 Target doors and is available at 500 Whole Foods doors. In addition, it’s featured on Thirteen Lune, Verishop and Flip, and heading soon to 450 The Vitamin Shoppe locations and HSN. The brand’s retail expansion has been made possible by its R&R collection pairing adaptogens with other plant-derived ingredients.
Target has picked up five stockkeeping units from the R&R lineup priced from $24.49 to $28.49: Face Cleanser, Day Serum, Night Serum, Face Moisturizer and Sun Serum, a lightweight fragrance-free SPF 50 product designed to stave off damage from pollution and ultraviolet rays. Since the R&R collection debuted last year, the face serum addressing hyperpigmentation has been the bestseller.
“There are a lot of vitamin C serums on the market. What makes R&R Day Serum unique is it’s not just about hanging your hat on one ingredient. You are getting the brightening power from other actives like alpha arbutin, kojic acid, niacinamide paired with plant magic like licorice root and kakadu plum,” says Morris. “I also incorporate niacinamide and tremella mushroom across the R&R collection.”
Along with its pivot beyond CBD, Undefined updated its packaging with illustrations showcasing people particularly connected to the products. The R&R Day Serum packaging has an illustration of an African American woman on it because more melanin is associated with a greater risk of hyperpigmentation, although a desire for brighter skin isn’t limited to a specific demographic. The R&R Cleanser packaging has an illustration of an Asian American woman in a nod to its formula containing ingredients like green tea, gotu kola and shiitake mushroom used in traditional Chinese medicine remedies.
“I’ve evolved, and I think brand owners have to be OK with evolution.”
An aspect that hasn’t evolved from Undefined’s start at IBE, a trade show operated by Beauty Independent parent company Indie Beauty Media Group, is its wide view of inclusivity. “For me, inclusivity isn’t just about the color of your skin. It’s mindset and economic. I want to bring people into the conservation that have been historically left out, either because they don’t understand it, know where to start or see themselves represented” says Morris. She emphasizes, “As I think about inclusivity, it’s also about economic inclusivity and making sure that people can afford products that make them feel good, look good and focus on their overall health.”
To bring people into the conversation and enable them to buy inclusive beauty and wellness merchandise, she stresses the brand has to go to them and be reasonably priced. Morris mentions the products in the R&R collection are all priced under $30—and they “will always be.” She says, “With my mission to democratize beauty, I need to be where my consumer is shopping.”
Undefined doesn’t sign up for just any distribution deal, however. Morris is interested in having a key partner for each distribution segment (e.g., Target for mass, Whole Foods for grocery and HSN for television shopping), and ensuring her brand isn’t financially crippled by distribution contracts. “Each channel has to be bring something to the table either in terms of the awareness it’s going to provide or the incremental shopper they are going to bring me,” says Morris. She elaborates she closely examines the payment terms of possible deals. Morris says, “Because I’m still self-funded, I don’t want to get into a situation where I run out of money, and a lot of retailers, their payment terms are net 90.”
She continues, “I’ve been having a lot of conversations with certain retail partners and, for me, it’s about how the retail partner is approaching this next stage of retail. The game is changing.” Unlike legacy brands from big corporations, she says, “Indie brands bring incrementality and are going to speak to someone different and offer something different.”
“With my mission to democratize beauty, I need to be where my consumer is shopping.”
Morris, a participant in the Target Takeoff accelerator program last year, praises Target for grasping the paradigm shift. “Target is putting money where their mouth is in terms of giving Black-owned brands the support they need on the operational side with better margin and payment terms,” says Morris, “They are solving problems with cash flow and the overall margin structure. They are one of the few retailers that is actually doing what they are saying they’re going to do.”
To finance its retail rollout, Undefined has depended on money it’s received from grant programs by ThirdLove, Pull Up For Change and more. Morris, a Harvard Business School graduate who formerly held positions at Cover Girl, Sundial Brands, Kendo Brands, General Mills and Macy’s, has considered pursuing external funding, but decided to stick to self-funding so far.
“I have chosen a very different path. A lot of brands and my business school classmates took the path of, ‘I’m going to raise all this money, build a big team, and invest a lot in Facebook and Instagram,’” she says. “I’m going to build slowly and sustainably in a way that’s not going to be driven by paid media. I hope that’s given me a community that is going to grow with me and support me, but time will tell.” Morris notes Undefined’s customer base is strong in cities such as Atlanta, New York, Chicago and Austin where she did events in its early days, demonstrating its customers have been growing with the brand.
If they keep growing with Undefined, Morris indicates they’ll follow future category extensions into haircare, body care and ingestible wellness. And they’ll learn that Morris’s commitment to conscious capitalism is a core pillar of the brand. Undefined has relationships with BIPOC-owned and woman-owned businesses across its supply chain.
“What I would love to see is Undefined being a catalyst for having companies rethink how they go about supplier diversity and adopting the conscious capitalism model,” says Morris. “That’s where a lot of bigger corporations—and I’ve worked for some of them—can have so much impact.”
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