Coworking with Lorne Lucree

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Lorne Lucree is a former beauty exec and founder of allergy-care brand Wizard Wellness, sold at retailers including CVS, Target, and Walmart.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I’m the founder and CEO of Wizard Wellness, the first drug-free, steroid-free allergy-care brand built at the intersection of beauty and wellness. My superpower is product innovation: I spent 20+ years in prestige beauty at L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Unilever creating cult products… Now I’m applying that same obsession—sensorial experience, clinical science, packaging, raw material technology, usage ritual—to the most ignored aisle in retail. We’re the first brand to bring nasal microbiome science to allergy care, and my job is to make sure that science feels as exciting and intuitive to a Walmart shopper as it does to a beauty editor. That translation is everything.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? On any given day I might be negotiating content with a macro influencer, reviewing probiotic strain combinations with our supplier to unlock new respiratory health benefits, planning consumer claims testing for formats brand new to the allergy category, meeting with our Amazon and TikTok Shop agencies to read sales data, coordinating inventory for our upcoming CVS and Walmart launches, or sitting in a trade show in Barcelona or Hong Kong studying the latest raw materials and packaging trends. Then I go home and write product briefs for 2028 and try to be the best father I can be to Luna and Lola, my two daughters. The job description doesn’t exist yet—we’re writing it in real time.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Creating Wizard from scratch. What started as a personal frustration—being a chronic sinus sufferer who couldn’t find a single allergy product worthy of a counter—became a full category creation. Building the science, the brand world, the formulas, the clinical data, the retail strategy, and the community simultaneously, from zero, is the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. We launched DTC in February 2026, and we’re hitting over 4,000 retail doors this fall. Every single day feels like proof that the category was waiting for this.

Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? The rise of AEO [answer engine optimization] and how it’s reshaping how consumers discover products, especially in health and wellness categories. When someone asks an AI, “What’s the best drug-free allergy solution,” the brands with the strongest clinical credibility, clearest science communication, and most authoritative content are going to win. That’s exactly the standard we’ve held Wizard to from Day One—IRB-reviewed clinical studies, consumer perception data on every SKU, and a science story that’s genuinely different. AEO rewards brands that did the homework. We did the homework.

What’s your go-to coffee order? If I’m lucky enough to be near a Dunkin’—I went to school in Boston, so it’s a spiritual experience—it’s three extra large hot coffees with five pumps of sweetened butter pecan, skim milk, and a shot of espresso in each. Yes, three. Yes, all for me. If I’m at Starbucks, it’s a venti black blonde roast. I contain multitudes.

Worst piece of advice you’ve received? When I was at that critical, vulnerable moment of deciding whether to actually start Wizard, I floated the idea by someone very well-known in the industry—heads up a major media organization, someone whose opinion I genuinely respected. He told me the allergy category was too sleepy, too pharmaceutical, and too commoditized to build a brand around. That it wasn’t a beauty or wellness play. That consumers didn’t care enough about their sinuses to trade up. I think about that conversation a lot. Especially on days like when we got our first Elle First Class Beauty Award. For a nasal stick.

What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? At 15, it was CK One, the cologne that made every teenager in the mid-’90s feel like they were in a black-and-white Calvin Klein ad. Now it’s a good under-eye brightener and color corrector, because I look like I’ve gotten about three hours of sleep on most days. Which, building a startup into 4,000 retail doors, I basically have.