Veíse Beauty is establishing a firm grip on department store and off-price shelves nationwide with launches at Lord & Taylor last month, and T.J. Maxx and Marshalls this month.
The Asheville, N.C.-based producer of small-batch, vitamin-infused beauty and wellness products will bring its Rose & Sandalwood Ancient Healing, limited-edition Pumpkin Latte and bestselling Pore Perfection Masks to 28 Lord & Taylor locations across the country. T.J. Maxx and Marshalls will carry Veíse’s Rose & Sandalwood Ancient Healing Mask and Bentonite Indian Healing Clay, but T.J. Maxx is adding Pore Perfection to its product mix, too.
Veíse, which is pronounced vice, launched in May and connected with buyers from national retail chains at Indie Beauty Expo’s New York edition in August. “We’re a really, really young company,” admits founder Angelica Caporuscio. “I knew I wanted to get into retailers, but had no clue how to even go about that. I found IBE and borrowed the money to go. We went and met a ton of buyers. When we got back [to North Carolina from IBE], all the buyers started to contact us.” Caporuscio attributes the strong buyer response to the brand’s unique look. “We got really good feedback on our packaging and branding,” she enthuses. “Instead of us taking the normal, natural brand approach with frosted white bottles, we wanted to look bright and vibrant and happy. We didn’t want to look like everybody else.”
There were some bumps in the road to early distribution. Caporuscio has already renamed her brand since May, which was previously called FRË Cosmetics. “In the car coming home from IBE, I was looking at our website traffic to see if it picked up [from IBE],” recalls Caporuscio. “Someone had searched for ‘123 Fre Skincare.’ I started doing some research, and I discovered that there was a company out of Israel called Fre Skincare. People were confusing our brand with their brand.”
Though Caporuscio had filed for the trademark for FRË Cosmetics, Fre Skincare, founded prior to FRË Cosmetics in 2014, had the legal advantage. Faced with possible legal repercussions, she quickly made the decision to switch the name. Veíse is a callout to product junkies serious about their skincare, and an acronym for vitamin-enriched ingestibles skincare and essentials.
Caporuscio created the line to clear up her stubborn cystic acne. “Up to 64% of what you put on your skin gets absorbed into your body. Why is nobody infusing their skin care with vitamins?” she says. “It didn’t make any sense to me. Why aren’t we putting things on the outside of our bodies that are also going to heal and rejuvenate the inside of the body at the same time? So, I started to look for ingredients that were really high in vitamins and nutrients. Pore Perfection has 120% of your daily amount of vitamin A in it. When you put something like that on your skin, you’re going to get results really fast because the ingredients are loaded with actual vitamins with healing properties instead of chemicals that have no nutritional value whatsoever.”
Though Veíse’s masks are an early retailer favorite, the line has a diverse collection of health and beauty products — from hand-poured candles to ingestible collagen powder — that’s currently sold on its website. Caporuscio spearheads the site and everything else at Veíse. “I design all the labels, manage the website, the social media, I do all of it,” she says. “It’s an absolute blast. I have my dream job. I don’t mind working super hard to get this where I want it to go.” The hands-on approach provides Caporuscio with valuable consumer insight. “I know about all our customers. I know where they live. I know about their cats and their moms,” she says. “This isn’t just some fly-by-night company. When people purchase our products, I want them to really work for them. I want them to be a customer for life.”
