In BeautyBio’s first few years of business, founder and CEO Jamie O’Banion was selling the brand’s prestige skin care products solely on HSN, delaying a brick-and-mortar retail expansion until her youngest daughter hit Pre-K. The day she dropped her off for her first day, she returned inbound calls from Neiman Marcus, and debuted at the retailer the following spring.
So began BeautyBio’s retail growth, which has particularly jump started in the past few years. Consumers’ interest in DIY self care during the pandemic gave its skin care devices a boost, and its retail footprint has expanded from 300 to more than 1,700 locations including all Ulta stores. And last August, the company was acquired by Rhyz Inc., a subsidiary of Nu Skin Enterprises, which owns beauty device and product company Nu Skin.
O’Banion, who has remained on as CEO, shared with Retail Brew the factors that led to its recent “explosive growth” and how resources unlocked from its acquisition have helped to further accelerate it.
Glow-getter: The brand was founded in 2011, when O’Banion, inspired by her father, a cosmetic chemist, stepped into the lab herself, becoming an early mover in the retinol space by creating its three-step retinol line R45. This was followed by a slew of other skin care offerings and tools including its GLOPro Facial Microneedling Tool, which has brought in $100 million in sales for BeautyBio since its debut.
While it spent its first few years selling through HSN, physical retail now serves as its most lucrative channel, followed by DTC, and then TV. Selling in these different channels has helped it reach multiple generations, O’Banion said, from the older shoppers tuning in to home shopping to the tweens strolling the Ulta aisles.
That wide demographic and channel reach has been crucial for the “health of our brand,” O’Banion said, and the company has found success by leaning into it. There is a BeautyBio team member “whose entire role is ensuring that we are showing up with something that’s special and different and fun for each channel,” she said, which could mean giving a retail partner an exclusive color, size, or product bundle.
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“Really trying to begin with the end in mind is so important,” O’Banion said. “It’s so tempting to make a knee-jerk decision and just satisfy a singular channel or moment without really stepping back and saying, ‘OK, how did that impact everyone?’ There’s been a lot of thought that’s gone into how we launched, where we launched, and what we launched.”
Clear the way: While O’Banion admitted the acquisition was “like sending your baby off to college,” she said it has helped the brand more closely—and quickly—meet retailers’ needs. Its latest product line, Blendrops, a three-SKU line of SPF 40 priming drops, debuted in March, and BeautyBio was able to debut the entire line at once, rather than introducing one at a time, which was a request from Ulta (the retailer has an exclusive lead on the product line).
Pre-acquisiton, the brand would’ve started by launching just one of the products, testing the performance before adding to the line. Since the products contain sunscreen, they are regulated by the FDA, so it can take more time and a larger investment in inventory and team to bring all three to market at once. With the expanded regulatory and compliance resources Nu Skin and Rhyz provide, the brand had the bandwidth to put all three out at once. Now, O’Banion said, “If we’re confident in it, we’re going to make a bet on it.”
For new beauty tools, the innovation cycle pre-acquisition would take two years, including the patent filing process (which can take a long time—its GloPro patent took five years, O’Banion estimated). Now, thanks to the legal team it has access to, this has been cut in half, “lightspeed ahead of what we would be able to do,” O’Banion said. The additional resources has ultimately allowed the company to multitask, which means additional larger lines like Blendrops to come, O’Banion said, sharing that BeautyBio has another new product collection slated for later this year.
“We get to parallel path things that we might have had to pick a lane, historically,” she said. “And that only enhances experience across every channel.”