This week, I checked in with U.K. wellness leader Ancient + Brave for takeaways from its official U.S. launch, which included a multi-week pop-up in Los Angeles, influencer partnerships and OOH advertising. I sat down with Hannah Rowe, head of U.S. marketing, to unpack the wins, lessons and takeaways from the February launch.
Additionally, the founder and CEO of Tarte Cosmetics launches a supplement brand, heritage water filter brand Brita invests in an up-and-coming shower filter company, and wellness patches top social media’s fastest-growing 2025 wellness trends.
Inside U.K. wellness leader Ancient+Brave’s U.S. launch tour
After two years of explosive growth in the U.K., supplement brand Ancient + Brave is betting big on the U.S. market through a strategic, 30-day awareness push.
“In the U.K., when we first became popular, we were kind of this cult, underground brand that got discovered [by consumers on social media],” Hannah Rowe, fractional head of U.S. marketing, told Glossy. “I think there’s something really interesting about that [as an international expansion strategy].”
Ancient + Brave was founded in 2018 by Kate Prince, a former media lawyer, and has taken on $9.3 million in investment from private equity firm Piper. Its bestsellers include True Collagen and True Creatine drink mixes, which retail for $40 and $32, respectively, as well as the gut-focused True Biome mix for $36, Cocao + Collagen mix for $33, and Triple Magnesium capsules for $32.
The brand has achieved 1,462% growth over the past two years, primarily driven by subscriptions, to reach $74 million in sales in 2025. In 2024, the company was recognized as the fifth fastest-growing private company in the U.K by British newspaper The Sunday Times.
When it came time to conquer the U.S. market, the team leaned into the lack of stateside awareness and planned a month-long, city-specific launch based in Los Angeles. “Especially in L.A., which is a very wellness-forward market, everyone wants to feel like they’re discovering something first,” said Rowe.
Anchored in a one-month pop-up on popular shopping street Abbott Kinney, the activations kicked off on January 28 and ran through the end of February. They started with a lead-gen digital targeting exercise, which resulted in a 4,000-person waitlist to shop. The company oversaw 18 unique events, including community walks, health and wellness panels, a tarot reading workshop, an opening party, and a press dinner, plus provided free drinks and tons of gifting throughout the month to drive foot traffic into the store.
Some events were free with an RSVP, while others required a ticket to offset no-shows and the cost of personalized gifting — a ticket for the tarot reading was $60.
“You have to charge in L.A.,” said Rowe. “There’s a lot going on, whether traffic [or competing events]. We did offer many of our panels as free events, but we would definitely oversubscribe to allow for drop-off.”
Looking back, Rowe told Glossy that the most impactful decision was having a nutritionist in the store every day, which helped to prove authority to shoppers. “The L.A. consumer, especially, is super savvy around ingredients, and the questions they’re asking are pretty hard-hitting — and you need to know the answers.”
The team used a popular local coffee chain, Groundworks, to increase sampling through a free coffee bar where prospective shoppers could mix in Ancient + Brave creatine or collagen to prove its “tasteless” claim.
The team also invested in KOLs like Tamsen Fadal, author of 2025 book “How To Menopause,” who hosted a free community walk and coffee hour. In addition, the company invested in out-of-home billboards around Venice Beach, including the entire front wall of its pop-up, and gave away more than 400 personalized sample sets each day, totaling more than 10,000 samples. Meanwhile, more than 400 people organically posted about the pop-up on Instagram, and the team raised its U.S. follower count on the platform by about 2,400, to over 24,000.
“Everyone that came to the pop-up was like, ‘You kind of came out of nowhere’, which is the kind of feeling we wanted to happen,” Rowe said. The company plans to continue its city-specific launch, with New York City, Austin and Miami up next.
Executive moves:
- Alana Kwarta has been appointed chief human resources officer for Supergoop! sunscreen. She joins the company after 23 years with L’Oréal Group, most recently as SVP of HR. Kwarta is the first in this new role. “As Supergoop! enters a new phase of scale, we need an enterprise-level people leader who can help us build the organization for where we are going, not just where we have been,” Supergoop! CEO Melis del Rey said in a statement.
News to know:
- Maureen Kelly, the founder and longtime CEO of Tarte Cosmetics, is entering the wellness space with a new supplement line named Finnsul. The wellness brand, founded by Kelly and her two sons, Finn and Sully, is set to launch DTC on March 25 with zero-sugar energy drink mixes. The formula will be available in three flavors, with and without caffeine, priced at $29.99 for 15 sachets or $49.99 for a bag with 40 servings.
- Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali, a NYC-based board-certified dermatologist, is partnering with Kith Ivy, the members-only wellness club, for a custom facial protocol. Dr. Bhanusali is best known for being Rhode’s in-house dermatologist and for co-founding Elm Biosciences with Martha Stewart in 2025. The Aesthetica Skin Lab facial is also available at Dr. Bhanusali’s NYC practice.
- Brita Group, the 60-year-old water filtration company known for its pitcher water filters, has made its first beauty and wellness investment. The company took a minority stake in Hello Klean, a U.K.-based shower filtration brand that’s sold more than 1.2 million filters since its 2019 launch. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- Microsoft is the latest company to launch an AI-powered wellness chatbot designed to aggregate and analyze personal health data. The company debuted its new Copilot Health tool last week. Within its Microsoft Copilot app, users can now upload medical records and sync wearables to access personalized health and wellness analyses. Oura Health, Thorne supplements and Open AI’s ChatGPT have launched similar offerings this year.
- Speaking of personal health data, wearables company Whoop is investing in female-focused biomarker testing. The new add-on panel, called the “women’s health specialized blood biomarker panel,” launched last week. It adds 11 clinically backed, female-specific blood biomarkers that expand insight into areas that are frequently under-measured or misinterpreted in traditional women’s health testing, according to the company.
- Nike is bringing back its After Dark Tour, a 2025 female-focused race tour with ancillary community events. The company will host 10K runs and half marathons in cities including Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Mexico City, Manila, Mumbai and Shanghai this fall.
Stat of the week:
The fastest-growing wellness category trends on social media during 2025 include NAD+ patches, collagen eye patches, magnesium lotion and sleep patches, up 2,700%, 307%, 127% and 101%, respectively, according to market research firm Spate’s 2026 Global Culture Shifts Report.
In the headlines:
Peloton is launching bikes and treadmills for gyms, accelerating commercial strategy [CNBC]. Why Is Everyone Lying on PEMF Mats? [Vogue]. Shopify says purchases are coming ‘inside ChatGPT’ through agentic storefronts as OpenAI retreats on Instant Checkout [Modern Retail]. Bamford introduces The Kobido Facial [Beauty News Daily]. Can you really ‘detox’ from plastic? [NYT]. Everyone wants to be a Chinese grandma now [Dazed].
Listen in:
Oura Health, the Finnish wearables company that has sold more than 5 million health tracker rings, is betting on women’s health with the launch of its first-ever proprietary LLM designed specifically for women. Tanvi Jayaraman, MD, clinical lead of health AI at Oura, joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the news, the future of wellness chatbots and the reasons female-focused LLMs will soon be table stakes.
Need a Glossy recap?
Why Botox is showing up everywhere, from your home to Planned Parenthood. After exiting CVS, dermatologist-founded Fig.1 heads to Sephora. Are beauty trade shows still worth it for brands in 2026? Clinique launches first-ever ‘creator-led’ campaign. Ulta Beauty CEO announces TikTok Shop launch, 11.8% net sales jump: ‘We got our swagger back’. Sephora announces partnership with F1 Academy. Exclusive: Fat Mascara is back.
