Indie beauty conversations: A round-up of 2021

16 Dec 2021 --- Inspiration, ingenuity and innovation have dominated throughout the beauty and personal care industry in 2021 — and we have been excited to capture them through our indie beauty conversations. Here, we take a look at just a snapshot of the exciting indie beauty founders and brands shaping the BPC landscape this year.

Shade M Beauty

Early on in our indie beauty conversations, in April, we spoke to the Co-Founder of the halal certified makeup brand Shade M Beauty, Jolie Nubani. We talked about the company’s mission to reach all women, especially those underrepresented in the beauty industry. 

Click to EnlargeSource: Shade M Beauty.Describing the brand as “made for everyone that's been overlooked in the mainstream", Shade M Beauty was born out of the need for representation and product efficacy that fits into the mainstream and fulfil women’s needs - with ethnic inclusivity at its core. 

With around one billion Muslim women globally, the Shade M founders wanted to design products that were celebratory and inclusive of all women. To do so, they created the brand and its products with “diversity, representation and the Muslim woman in mind.” Nubani shared. 

Developing the idea of makeup made for every shade, Shade M created its highly pigmented, clean, halal-certified, PETA-approved, vegan and cruelty free brand. It then launched with its inaugural collection of 15 shades of lipstick called Muse. 

Its highly pigmented lipstick product is halal-certified and is non-drying because it is free of alcohol. Shade M specifically chose lipstick because it is an experimental category that plays on the individual mood and is associated with energy and happiness. 

Cheekbone Beauty

Back in May, we caught up with Jenn Harper, the Founder of Indigenous-owned and founded, digitally-native Canadian cosmetics company Cheekbone Beauty.

Click to EnlargeSource: Cheekbone Beauty.The first glimmer of the brand came when Harper began asking: “Why don't I see Indigenous faces in the beauty space? Why doesn't that exist?" Bootstrapping the business with her own money while working a full-time job, Harper began laying the foundations for the first layer of the brand which was focused on representation, highlighting First Nations Metis Inuit people in Canada. Then the brand discovered Indigenous people globally. 

Cheekbone Beauty is also based on a passion to support causes, with the brand giving away 10% of its profits to organizations that focus on the educational rights of the Indigenous youth. After spending two years conducting extensive research and development, the brand launched its product, Sustain Lipstick in March 2020.

This year has been a year of development and innovation for Cheekbone Beauty, which has seen the indie brand work on numerous launches and developments, including:

• A foundation that uses plant or agricultural waste as one of its main ingredients, so that waste is converted into a usable base for cosmetics; 
• Building its own laboratory to enable it to perform in-house testing;
• Adding shades to current product lines;
• Developing new product lines;
• Teaming up with its “dream” marketing agency, Sid Lee, which has seen the brand unveil its Right the Story campaign in November, expanding its mission to empower Indigenous youth.

Odore

Following an investment of US$830,000, we caught up with Armaan Mehta, Co-Founder of Odore, in June to explore how the brand plans to pursue its three pillars: creation, collaboration and data in the beauty industry.

Click to EnlargeSource: Odore.After looking at how much brands were spending on digital marketing activities, while spotting that innovation and data was not up to speed with all industries, Odore’s founders thought it was “prime for massive disruption”. Delving further into the world of beauty to explore the tangible problems that brands were facing, Odore landed on centering its indie brand on improving the way beauty samples are handed out.

After experiencing a light bulb moment where the co-founders realized that there is so much investment going into the production of samples, the duo sought to find a way to optimize their production, produce smart investment and create the customer journey.

Launching in 2018, Odore first tackled the offline sphere before the online, now offering solutions in both. The brand is seeing the digital side grow exponentially, obtaining 99% of its revenue from its online sampling and platform as of June. Using Odore’s platform, brands can build sampling campaigns using social media, emails or a combination of both to promote their wares. 

With its investment, Odore strives to build up one of the “most talented engineering teams”, focus on further understanding pain points and build effective solutions on its platform. The brand hopes to have an open dialogue with customers to understand what they are trying to achieve. It aims to grow its customer base and ensure it is delivering the best product.

Altr London

We caught up with Alex Doyle, CEO of Altr for Men at Altr London, in August, just as the male beauty name was gearing up to launch its “full-blown” retail range. The brand’s mission is to achieve true inclusivity in beauty and make male makeup mainstream.

Click to EnlargeSource: Altr London.Altr started trading in March 2017 after more than 15 months of development, inspired by Doyle’s own search for a skin care solution for acne. Despite looking hard for a men’s brand that would both conceal and help with his skin long-term, his search proved fruitless and Doyle decided to create his own range that focused on products that are easy to apply and good for your skin.

When Altr London started, Doyle explains, the brand was one of the very few makeup brands catering to men. “There was, and still remains, a severe underrepresentation of men in the industry,” Doyle highlights, particularly in terms of both product formulation and marketing campaigns. 

Being a market-creator, Doyle explained that prospecting is crucial for the brand. It has used Facebook as its chief advertising method since its launch as it has been a “low-cost, low-risk opportunity” to advertise the brand without spending thousands on big campaigns. However, the company has found that the costs and (cost per miles) have been rising for years, and that this was particularly accelerated by COVID-19 as marketing budgets moved online.

This year has seen the brand launch its ‘Altr recommends’ strand, where it promotes brands that it loves and complement its own range. Its intention is to bring out a full-blown retail offering in the coming months. The long-term goal of Altr, Doyle shared, is to “make makeup for men a mainstream, every day, every guy thing, and it continues to be our mission to educate and help progress the cause.”

Reduit

Following its arrival onto the delivery device scene in January 2020, we connected with Paul Peros, CEO of Réduit, to learn more about its skin care and hair care innovations and how, via these, it hopes to remove issues around application and ingredient wastage from the beauty segments. 

Click to EnlargeSource: Réduit.Réduit’s R&D process is to take enhanced drug delivery technologies traditionally used by leading pharmaceutical companies and utilize this innovative technology to enhance skin care and hair care application. The Réduit proprietary enhanced delivery method aims to revolutionize the beauty treatment industry by overcoming ineffective applications and the use of unnecessary ingredients in formulations. 

Focusing on education and consumer adoption, Peros highlighted: “Consumers need to be educated on every touchpoint, they need to see, try and adopt a brand new way of delivering skin care when they have most likely been using their fingertips for decades.”

Réduit sees the BPC industry as having far-reaching potential beyond traditional cosmetic applications, reaching all the way into health and wellness-related aspects. The brand’s long-term goals are to bridge the gap between beauty and health and wellness by using its delivery technology to help improve the way consumers administer, apply and benefit from beauty products; to meet all of their needs whether that be in beauty or wellness. 

The brand has also been getting ready to launch its innovation in personalized beauty, which will enable consumers to use their selected beauty brands alongside the delivery innovation.

Everist

After introducing its first patent-pending shampoo and conditioner concentrates, we spoke to Co-founders of Everist Jessica Stevenson and Jayme Jenkins in August about their personal care innovation and the inspiration behind its move towards patent-pending waterless body care products.

Click to EnlargeSource: Everist. The duo talked about the motivation behind Everist’s waterless hair care solutions, the process of making their vision a reality and how they hope to contribute to removing single-use plastic from consumers’ beauty routines. 

Before launching the brand, the founders were struggling to find personal options that they loved, both in terms of performance and convenience. “We wanted to start with something similar to what people were used to using so that mainstream beauty customers could consider stepping into the eco space,” they revealed. To do this, the pair believed they needed to upgrade what was already on the market. 

The result was Everist’s shampoo and conditioner concentrates. The pair revealed that their hair care offering is three-times concentrated, anhydrous and comes in a paste-format that you activate with the water in your shower. 

Everist’s founders have built the business through a zero-waste lens. “We know there is no perfect zero-waste, but our goal is to get as close to that as possible,” the duo shared. For the brand, that means:

• No single-use plastic packaging, using aluminum tubes and implementing a closed-loop program for the caps;
• 100% recycled paper cartons and shipping materials;
• A fully carbon-neutral business model, offsetting through their partner Climate Neutral; 
• Biodegradable, plant-based ingredients and concentrated formats; 
• A local supply chain;
• A 1% for the Planet partnership.

Pre-launch, the brand’s focus was on getting the formulas to a place that could compete with premium hair care using waterless, clean and biodegradable ingredients. Post-launch, it is communicating all of the work the brand has done, and continues to do, in a simple, comprehensive way.  

Everist’s ultimate goal is to make eco easier. It plans to continue to innovate, with patent-pending body care coming next, offering its Everist community solutions which challenge them to make sustainable swaps.

Lofty Box

In September, we spoke to the subscription-based brand’s Co-Founder, Claudia Meller. The UK company teams up with ethical beauty and wellbeing brands to take their surplus stock which would typically go to waste or landfill, and offer it to those who want it. 

In 2020, the founders of Lofty Box were discussing ways in which a small business might get their product in front of new customers without breaking the bank through expensive advertising and PR. The duo couldn't find any product boxes with sustainability and small business at the heart, which inspired them to make their own.

Click to EnlargeSource: Lofty Box.“We are both passionate about supporting independents, but also living sustainably and saving stock which may go to waste for one reason or another, such as best before dates,” said Meller. The duo decided to combine these two aspects into one box.

They have seen how there are a lot of brands trying hard to make sustainable products, but it is often very difficult for them to achieve with the funds they have available. Meller gave the example of recyclable and biodegradable packaging being “much more expensive” than that which you just throw away.

Lofty Box strives to support as many small businesses as possible. Its founders are passionate about creating a community of both entrepreneurs and consumers who want to live in a more sustainable world. “Our aim is to connect these two and help everyone make more informed choices,” Meller said

When we spoke, the brand shared that it has a few new products in the pipeline, including a Christmas 'special' and a more tailored box.

BrainTrust Founders Studio

In November, we talked to Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, Founder of BrainTrust Founders Studio, which entered the space in October 2021 with the aim of helping Black-founded brands run their beauty businesses. 

After seeing an explosion of new Black-founded companies launching in the past year, Bracken-Ferguson designed BrainTrust Founders Studio for the specific needs of Black beauty and wellness founders. The brand aims to be a scalable way to create parity and equity by providing additional business, financial, marketing and technological brain power through a global community of founders. 

Click to EnlargeSource: BrainTrust Founders Studio.“As a Black female founder myself, I understand the myriad of unique challenges facing Black founders today,” shared Bracken-Ferguson, whose expertise lies in the beauty and wellness business, from brand ideation to development and consumer adoption.

“There is drastic inequity in the beauty space,” Bracken-Ferguson says. To help Black-founded beauty brands and entrepreneurs succeed in the industry, BrainTrust Founders Studio offers three tiers of membership: start, grow and accelerate. Through its start tier, new brands are incubated, leveraging data and artificial intelligence (AI) software to help match culturally-responsive companies with a new suite of products for consumers. Through its grow and accelerate tiers, the brand is providing resources and the pathway to ensure the sustainability of these businesses so they can fill retail shelves and the marketplace with more diverse products.  

The trust has a number of corporate partners including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Salesforce, Afterpay, Clearco and SHE Media who provide services including education, seminars, 1:1 coaching, financial support, free office space, hiring support and inventory and marketing funding.

BrainTrust Founders Studio’s short-term goal is to continue the work on developing the technology behind its platform using AI, machine learning and business automation tools to properly match resources with founders’ needs. Its main long-term goals are to invest in founders as they progress through its platform and to create physical studio locations where startups will have access to business tools, operational services, wellness breaks and office spaces to provide the support they need to run and grow their business.  

Obvs Skincare

We also talked to UK-based beauty startup founder Sian Louise as she was celebrating her brand’s launch on to the skin care scene in May this year. 

Describing Obvs Skincare as “turning a negative into a positive”, Louise explains that when she originally started her small skin care business, she “needed a distraction from life, lockdown and COVID-19.”

Click to EnlargeSource: Obvs Skincare.Louise candidly shares that before her second miscarriage in January 2020, following her second round of IVF, she started eating organic and switched her skin care to more natural substances to aid her pregnancy. Being a polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) sufferer, she struggled with acne but, being pregnant, Louise wanted to find an organic solution that she could apply topically and wouldn’t harm herself or the baby. 

“Unfortunately, I miscarried again,” Louise shares. “I decided to take the negative energy from this experience and turn it into a positive.” From here, Louise began further researching biochemistry, natural ingredients and sustainability in the beauty industry. This exploration led to the creation of the brand’s Organic Intensive Skin Recovery Cream, a product that Louise said “cleared my acne within a week, and also cleared up my friend’s baby’s nappy rash overnight”. 

The Obvs Skincare founder formulates and makes all her skin care from her bespoke home studio and laboratory in her garden. “I am scientifically minded but a hippy at heart, so I wanted to make sure my business was organic, biodegradable, vegan and sustainable - which gave me the name, Obvs.” 

The brand hopes to change people’s mindsets about skin care. “I am trying to educate consumers that you do not need lots of the water-based products out there when they can use smaller amounts of oil-based products, regardless of skin type,” says Louise. In addition, she aims “to educate as many people as I can of the benefits of natural skin care ingredients, and that they do have a choice when it comes to plastic-free packaging”.

Thank you to all the indies who have shared their stories in 2021.

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist