In food and beverage, brands like Clif Bar and Gatorade were built to cater to athletes’ needs and then became mainstream; the same is true for Lululemon and Athleta. But in beauty, no one has approached products this way. This is the thesis for a new brand called Forta, a play on “for the active.”
Its co-founders are college friends Sarah Guller, a veteran investor with experience at firms including TCG — whose past investments include Oura and Vuori — and Lexie Hull, a guard for the Indiana Fever. Forta launched on Tuesday with one product: the $25 Lock & Go Setting Spray.
The duo has been working on the brand for over two-and-a-half years, noting that it took that long just to nail down the formula and the misting mechanism. As an investor, Guller said, “I was seeing hundreds of brands … [but] there was nothing really built around the ideas of lasting and just working,” she said, referencing the brand’s high-performance proposition.
Hull said that, to date, she’s been disappointed with makeup’s ability to hold up through her games. “I would get ready [with] a full face of makeup for a game, then warm up for 30 minutes an hour before the game, and it would already be off, on a towel or a jersey. Or if there’s a little bit left on my face, it [gets] on someone else’s jersey, which is even more embarrassing.”
To create something different, the brand used polymers designed to combat sweat, specifically, Guller said. “A lot of long-wear products are optimizing for [being] waterproof or just for movement,” she added.
To promote the brand, Guller and Hull plan to lean into Hull’s network of athletes. “We’re seeding to athletes who wear makeup, having them use it in their routines and post it on their stories,” Hull said. In addition to gifting product to “basically the entire WNBA,” the brand plans to also gift to gymnasts, soccer players and volleyball players, in part through a platform called Faves, which Hull likened to ShopMy for pro athletes.
The founders are also building early buzz on TikTok, primarily through their own profiles. Guller, who has just under 17,000 followers, teased the brand’s concept in a post offering PR packages to commenters, which garnered nearly 11,000 responses. Hull, who has over 261,000 followers, shared a similar post, noting that 100 people with “the best comments” would be selected at random to receive the brand’s first PR package.
Though athletes are key to the launch strategy, the co-founders stressed they don’t want their brand to be solely for athletes. “That’s ultimately a pretty niche market,” Guller said.
And though Forta is launching DTC, Guller and Hull hope to enter Sephora in the coming years. Hull plays for Unrivaled, which Sephora sponsors, so she has already established essential connections with the retailer. The duo has also applied for the retailer’s Accelerate program. “[We want to have] proof of concept and the ability to say that people love the brand [and] love the product,” Guller said.
“People are really excited about athlete-led brands, which is obviously a very new idea in the space — we’ll be one of the first athlete-led beauty brands,” Hull said.
Athletes have been nearly omnipresent in beauty over the past few years — though more so on the partnership side than the founder side. WNBA players, specifically, have appeared in campaigns for beauty brands including Glossier, Milani, Urban Decay, LYS, Mielle and CoverGirl, among others.
On the one hand, this all makes for excellent timing. “The love of sports continues,” said Quynh Mai, founder of creative strategy agency Qulture. “Now, being fit is almost a luxury item. If you have a great body, if you’re doing Pilates, this is this generation’s luxury item — it’s no longer a handbag. So, I think it’s the perfect time to think about a setting spray and how you look during your workout, because so much of content creation now centers on hitting the gym, being at the gym, post-gym. You live in your gym clothes. So, [this makeup] has a great connection to a trend that’s emerging — where the luxury lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle.”
On the other hand, Mai said, it’s never been harder to cut through the noise. “Engagement is down on social media, and earned media is so hard for brands right now,” she said. “Any brand that launches today just has an uphill battle when it comes to attention.” She noted that the product is novel because of Hull’s identity, but not original, and pointed out that even creators and celebrities with millions of followers can struggle to maintain momentum in the crowded beauty space at the moment.
On Forta’s website, it previews “Product 2” and “Product 3.” When asked what’s coming, Hull said, “We’re going to be getting into more color cosmetics — things for the eyes, the lips, the face. There are so many brands that are built for stillness, and we’re really excited to build a brand that can keep up with both of our busy lifestyles.”
