Fashion founders are launching beauty brands to take advantage of TikTok trends
Hi, and welcome to Glossy’s Weekly Recap, where Glossy editor-in-chief Jill Manoff breaks down the industry conversation that ruled the week and highlights five of the latest must-read Glossy stories. Sign up here to get Glossy’s daily, in-depth coverage on the businesses of beauty and fashion in your inbox every weekday morning.
A fashion company founder introducing a second act in the beauty industry is not uncommon. For example, there’s Victoria Beckham who followed up her namesake fashion collection with Victoria Beckham Beauty in 2019; Jenni Kayne who launched beauty brand Oak Essentials in 2021, nine years after starting her fashion business; and Katherine Power, founder of fashion publication Who What Wear, who has since introduced skin-care brand Versed and makeup company Merit.
Among the latest to expand to beauty through an all-new brand, versus a category expansion, is Rebecca Allen . Three years after launching her namesake footwear brand, with a focus on offering “nude” styles for more skin tones, the Goldman Sachs alum got to work on Helix Hair Labs in 2022.?
“The way consumers discover brands today is so driven by social media that you need products that can play well across these channels,” Allen told Glossy. “Footwear is challenging for a number of reasons, and when it comes to social media, nobody's watching people try on shoes.”
They are, however, watching beauty tutorials and showing off beauty-focused before-and-afters.?
Allen began exploring white spaces in the beauty industry during the pandemic, “when nobody was wearing shoes.”?
“We started by thinking, ‘We’ve built this small community – what else can we sell them?’” she said. “When we started digging into hair, we realized that it’s a whole world unto itself and not something that could fit under the Rebecca Allen brand.”?
Part of that digging included holding virtual interviews with potential customers across demographics about their hair routines, which revealed consumers’ new prioritization of hair health. Helix Hair Labs subsequently launched to cater to this demand, with long-term goals of offering a full product lineup inclusive of hair accessories, hair tools and wet products.??
“Different brands focus on different aspects of hair health, but we're coming at it with a comprehensive approach,” Allen said. “As we see it, every time you touch your hair is an opportunity to work toward your hair health goals or detract from them.”?
After soft-launching with a handful of accessories, Helix Hair Labs introduced its first hair tool this year, which kicked the company’s awareness into high gear. Dubbed the Curl Definer, the $47 tool caters to people with curly hair, whose hair health journeys have historically been thwarted by chemical processing and heated styling. After much social listening, the realization of the Denman brush’s popularity among people with this hair type and 18 months of product development, the Curl Definer was born.?
“We wanted to bring a tool to market that was super demonstrable for social, had all the functionality [of the tools this demo loved] and looked more beautiful than anything else out there,” Allen said.?
She added, “There’s a belief that people with curly hair can wash and go — that curls just do their thing and don’t require much effort. That’s not true at all.”
Developed with a design firm, the Curl Definer features a magnetic dock allowing it to be mounted in the shower, where it’s best used, and removable “teeth” allowing users to eventually buy different versions best catering to their curl size.?
To market the product, the company has focused on educating customers on its functionality via its own social channels, as well as gifting the tool to a variety of influencers, including hair stylists. The Rebecca Allen shoe brand’s social channels also promoted Helix Hair Labs at its launch.?
The Curl Definer unexpectedly sold out in two months, after a post showing a creator using it on her daughter’s hair put the brand “on the map,” Allen said. The tool will be back in stock later this month.?
“Launching with such a differentiated tool is part of why we’ve seen success,” Allen said. “If we had just gone to market with wet products, we’d be lost in a sea of everybody else.”
However, Allen hopes to soon launch a wet product,?in the form of a curl and treatment gel, allowing the brand to sell a tool-and-gel bundle.
Currently, Helix Hair Labs sells on Amazon, Urban Outfitters' website and its own website, as well as at Thirteen Lune. Allens said she plans to build up the brand’s product offering and community before starting conversations with the major beauty retailers.
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As for the future of her shoe brand, Allen said that she’s setting it up “to run itself” and is currently “in talks with partners who can take it to the next level.”
She added, “Helix is my main focus.”?
Along with building out the product assortment, Allen’s plans for the brand this year include “getting smarter about stock as we better understand demand” and “setting up smart workflows to scale our content, gifting and influencer relationships.”?
The brand is positioned well, considering beauty trends’ direction, Allen said.?
“We saw the trajectory of skin care shifting from wet products with high-performance ingredients to at-home tools and devices based on efficacy. …. And now that everybody is thinking about their scalp as the next frontier of their face, all these lessons learned about skin are being applied to hair,” Allen said. “So it makes a lot of sense for folks to now start thinking about leveling up their tools. And there's a ton of white space for hair tools.”
Catch up on the week’s 5 most-read beauty and fashion stories below.
Late last month, age longevity company Modern Age announced the closure of its business after failing to secure adequate outside capital.
The Fifteen Percent Pledge calls Ulta Beauty’s Muse Accelerator program a blueprint for positive systemic changes to the beauty industry. But how did the retail heavyweight take the program from idea to tentpole project in less than three years? As Ulta Beauty prepared to onboard three more mentee brands from its program and kick off its third accelerator cohort this summer, Glossy sat down with the executive behind the standout program to learn more.?
Unilever’s head of beauty marketing sat down with Glossy to discuss Nexus's new partnership with Sofia Richie Grainge, including the brand’s strategy behind the one-year contract, the dissemination of the marketing materials and the ad buy supporting it.?
The business of sponsoring teams and athletes has always been both a financial boon and a mark of pride for sportswear companies. But as sports continue to grow in popularity, events like March Madness, the New York City Marathon and the Summer Olympics in Paris are becoming bigger brand battlegrounds. One estimate put soccer viewership at around 40% of the entire human population.
On February 2, brands and retailers including MyTheresa, E.l.f Cosmetics and Alo Yoga launched the first fashion experiences for the Apple Vision Pro, a mixed reality headset from Apple. Nearly two months in, those experiences are getting more sophisticated.
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2x Founder and Investor Previously co-founder and CEO at Rebecca Allen (acquired??)
11 个月Thank you so much Jill Manoff and Glossy for sharing the exciting early days of Curl Definer and Helix Hair Labs. The future is bright and we'll be back in stock in a few weeks! https://helixhairlabs.com/products/curl-definer