As Canada’s economy bounces back faster than the U.S. due to better containment of Covid-19, accessible skin-care brand The Ordinary is heading to Sephora Canada’s brick-and-mortar stores as part of an expansion in its home market.
Adding to an existing presence on Sephora Canada’s online shop, Toronto-based Deciem is launching eight The Ordinary products in all of Sephora’s 78 locations across Canada on August 28. Products featured are bestsellers out of The Ordinary’s 46 items sold on Sephora.ca, which has seen 152% growth in online sales of The Ordinary products in the past year, according to Sephora Canada. Deciem also owns several other brands including NIOD and HIF.
“Our beauty community is fond of The Ordinary, a brand with effective formulations and innovative skin-care technologies,” said Jane Nugent, the senior vp of merchandising for Sephora Canada.
“We know that sometimes The Ordinary can be daunting from the outside,” because of the sheer range of products available, said Dakota Isaacs, Deciem’s market director for North America. “By beginning with a strategic mix of really our most-loved SKUs that are already available at Sephora online, our goal was to bring the existing love, momentum and buzz for the brand into stores, but in a digestible format.”
The brand’s best-selling product on Sephora.ca is its Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%. Its Multi-Peptide Serum for Hair Density is also a popular product, with 97,700 loves on Sephora’s Canada site. The brand started selling on Sephora.ca in 2017, and then relaunched on the site in 2019 after retail relationships had been paused in 2018 by Deciem’s late founder Brandon Truaxe.
“The biggest trend that we have really seen is just that people are being more thoughtful” in their skin-care purchases during the pandemic, said Isaacs. “That’s [in the] brands they’re purchasing from, because of the stance that those brands are taking on important issues, or they’re being more thoughtful about how a product actually reacts to their skin.”
The in-store launch is occurring on its originally planned date. It dramatically expands the brand’s physical store footprint in Canada beyond the 10 Deciem stores in the country. Outside of its DTC channel, the brand is also available online in Canada via Well.ca and Socialite Beauty.
With its coronavirus rates more under control, Canada’s retail market is back in action, with all of Sephora’s locations in the country now open. All 10 Deciem stores in Canada are also open, with only its South Greenville location still limited to click-and-collect. This is further ahead than the U.S., where five of Deciem’s nine stores remain closed.
The Ordinary is one of the most affordable skin-care brands on Sephora, with product prices generally in the $6-10 range, which is substantially lower than the next tier of $25-$30. While the concept of accessibly priced skin-care is now a global phenomenon, Canada was a key starting point.
“As a Canadian brand, it was really Canadians who first loved and trusted The Ordinary and really believed in what we were doing,” said Isaacs. “This idea has taken over the world. A good amount of it started in Canada and specifically in our little HQ, to be precise.”
