Gen Z beauty brand InnBeauty Project has received a minority investment from Strand Equity and Beechwood Capital.
InnBeauty was founded in 2019 by beauty industry veterans Alisa Metzger and Jen Shane, who aim to make “efficacious” products at affordable price points for younger consumers.
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“When you look at the reality of the situation, the average U.S. consumer makes less than $45,000 per year, and most clean effective brands on the market have an average price point of around $60,” Shane said. “Which, to be honest, most consumers really cannot afford. Our mission is to provide quality, innovative care at price points that more people can afford.”
Products include Green Machine Vitamin C + Green Superfoods Jelly Serum, $32; Slushy Serum Moisturizer Crush Infused with Bakuchiol, $28; Glaze Lip Oil, $15, and Green Machine Insta-Glo Resurfacing Acid Mask, $28.
Metzger and Shane said they noticed that in clean skin care, products tended to skew toward older consumers.
“Jen and I saw this huge opportunity for skin care benefits that were outside of aging and wrinkles — skin texture and hyperpigmentation and skin tone and acne — there are so many other skin concerns that were at the surface with slightly younger consumers,” Metzger said.
InnBeauty’s customers are generally between 18 and 32 years old, the founders said.
The brand plans to use the money from the investment as it expands with Sephora in North America. InnBeauty is expanding to Sephora’s 490 stores and 200 Sephora x Kohl’s locations. Industry sources said the business is expecting 300 percent growth for 2021, and about $15 million in retail sales over the next 12 months.
InnBeauty will also use the capital to hire more people in key functions like operations, finance and marketing, to build out infrastructure to support the Sephora expansion and e-commerce sales, to launch new products and to spend on marketing and branding to build the community.
With the deal, InnBeauty brings on investors that have navigated the Sephora landscape before: Strand Equity has backed Youth to the People and Hum Nutrition, and Beechwood has backed Tatcha, Shani Darden skin care and Kosas. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
On the product side, Shane said the brand’s approach is modern, and includes branching into new textures — like with the bestselling Slushy Serum — that were not historically available.
“We’ve been able to take something like a serum category that’s been around for a really long time and approach it in a really modern and innovative way that really resonates with our audience,” Shane said. “Slushy, for example, is such a unique texture and it required a whole new manufacturing process that didn’t exist before, so you will not find another product or texture on the market like it.”
“We’re going to continue to carve out that niche as a brand that really offers true innovation — textures and ingredients you’re not going to see elsewhere combined with superior efficacy. Products you can trust for a fraction of the price,” Shane added.
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