Alisa Metzger and Jen Shane launched InnBeauty Project in 2019 with an eye to make high-performance skin-care products accessible to the average consumer. Key to achieving that was breaking into one of the country’s biggest beauty retailers: Sephora. By 2021, the brand had done just that with a debut in Sephora’s Next Big Thing section. Its hero product, the Extreme Cream, has since risen to become one of Sephora’s top five moisturizers, and the brand arrived in Sephora’s U.K. stores in July.
But getting into Sephora — and staying there — is far from easy. Speaking at Day 2 of Glossy’s Beauty & Wellness Summit in Newport Beach, InnBeauty Project’s co-founder Alisa Metzger led a working group to highlight her skin-care brand’s success at the retailer. Below, we share insights from Metzger’s session.
On finding a white space
“We really studied the competition and understood: ‘What does the skin-care landscape of Sephora look like?’ ‘What are their top brands?’ ‘Why are they succeeding, and what are they missing?’ And we were able to articulate what they are missing in that white space and what problem we’re solving for the skin-care consumer that Sephora currently doesn’t necessarily have a solution for.”
“We literally mapped it out and we said, ‘There’s a cluster of brands in the teens, $20s, $30s price point. There’s a cluster of brands in the $60s, $80s, $100 price point. And then there’s this no-man’s-land, and we’re going to be able to convince the competition and convince our customer that this is such a value that they can’t get anywhere else.”
On taking feedback
“You’re building a relationship with this retail partner. You need to be a good partner. And one of the things Sephora is famous for is that they want to be in the kitchen. And what they call ‘in the kitchen’ means they want to be in the weeds. They want to be in the nitty-gritty, especially if you’re a newer brand. But also, as you’re scaling, … like right now, they’re more in our kitchen than they ever were because the stakes are so much bigger. They’re giving us more shelf space. They’re basically taking bigger and bigger bets on all of our products and innovations. And every year they sign up for a budget, and we’re a bigger piece of their budget, so we have to deliver and over-deliver.”
“Having someone come in and almost tear your brand apart piece by piece and say, ‘I like the packaging, I don’t like the color. I think this spot’s great. I think this description is not right,’ or whatever it is, is really scary. And I think it’s really humbling. But do you want to be right, or do you want to be successful? They’ve seen it all. They’ve seen brands win, they’ve seen brands lose. They’ve seen brands have fast-up, fast-down. So, you don’t necessarily need to take every bit of feedback and execute on it. But don’t be reactive.”
“One of the things that we’ve said no to recently is really growing our assortment outside of what we feel is our core assortment. … We’re good at facial skin care. We call it the trifecta; what we want to win at is facial moisturizer, eye cream and serum. For those three categories, if we have — check, check, chec — the top-ranking SKUs, then for us, that’s a home run. Now, there’s so much more in the skin-care category. There’s a lip business that’s on fire. We all know it. We all shop it. And so, we said, ‘There are so many other brands that do lips so much better than us, and it’s such a key staple and core to their brand, we’re not going to try to succeed. We can tactically succeed — like here and there, for holiday gifting — but that’s not going to be the core of our brand.”
On leveraging brick-and-mortar
“Sephora is a brick-and-mortar player, and their stores are very, very important to them. They’re not just an online player. Figure out a market — maybe that’s a market you live in, where you have a strong sales team member — and activate, activate. Go in on a high-traffic day — whether on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday — and do an event. And really understand how your customer is interacting with your brand. It could happen in one door or a couple of doors. Do it on a consistent basis, whether it’s once a month or once every two weeks, and just prove your worth. Because if they see, ‘Oh, this brand activated on a Thursday, and instead of doing $300 a day, they did $1,500 that day,’ that’s really something.”
“We hired full-time account executives who were going to be based in the top regions. Really ask Sephora, ‘Where are your most productive stores in New York, L.A., South Florida, the Dallas, Texas area. Understand those geographies where the top doors are, and try to figure out a way, whether it’s with full-time team members or freelance members, to put people in-store to help educate on your brand. Give product and gratis to the beauty advisors that are in those stores, so that when you’re not in store, they’re advocating for your brand and recommending it to the right customer.”
On getting the word out
“This may sound so obvious, but you have to let your audience know you’re in Sephora. Fill your feed with Sephora shopping bags. Fill your feed with content creators, micro [creators], your team, yourself going to shop at Sephora, and then boost that.”
“It dawned upon us that our Instagram feed was so beautiful and branded, and it was all about the products and education, but we weren’t telling people we were sold at Sephora. And just because it’s in your bio, that doesn’t mean people are seeing that, because when people flip through, they’re not looking at your bio. So we had a rule at one point that, in at least every six tiles, there would be a Sephora shopping bag front and center.”
“Figure out how to get into the sampling campaigns and how to get some marketing dollars and awareness from Sephora through that vehicle. Beauty on the Fly, which is the checkout, I think, is so tactical. If you know there’s that one product where, once she tries it, she’s completely hooked, and you don’t have a lot of shelf space, negotiate to be in the Beauty on the Fly. Just do everything you can to get your little mini or travel size in that bin.”
