This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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In the big wide world of health and wellness, there is always a buzzword du jour. In the past couple months, you’ve likely heard buzz about gut health and GLP-1s, ingredients like creatine and colostrum, and, of course, protein. For many of these trends, Arrae, the supplement brand co-founded by Siffat “Siff” Haider and her husband, Nishant Samantray, has been right there, answering consumer demand with a product featuring that of-the-moment ingredient or speaking to a top-of-mind concern.
Wellness is Haider’s passion and something she enjoys thinking about constantly, she said, both to live her best life and to get ahead of the zeitgeist for the brand. She also has a built-in focus group via her online community of 117,000 Instagram followers. Her podcast, “The Dream Bigger Podcast” — where she focuses on business, beauty and wellness — has another 38,000 Instagram followers. Arrae, meanwhile, has 222,000 Instagram followers.
On June 12, the brand introduced its first protein product, Clear Protein+. A box of 20 single-use sachets is $55, without a subscription. The protein is raspberry yuzu flavor, which Haider likens to a “raspberry refresher.” In addition to its hero ingredient, hydrolyzed whey protein, it includes electrolytes and collagen peptides.
In this episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Haider chats with Glossy podcast co-host Sara Spruch-Feiner about how she stays on top of wellness’s next big things, how she knew creatine was going to have a big moment and what’s special about Arrae’s latest launch.
But first, co-hosts Lexy Lebsack and Emily Jensen discuss some of the week’s biggest beauty news, including Unilever’s acquisition of the buzzy men’s grooming brand Dr. Squatch, which recently made headlines for selling soap infused with Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater. They also touch on Glossier’s search for a new CEO, as current chief Kyle Leahy is set to step down at the end of the year, and Dossier’s expansion into brick-and-mortar retail.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
On trend forecasting in the wellness space
“Our goal isn’t to get on trends as they’re already popular, because by that time, it’s actually too late for us. Our job is to properly forecast what people are going to be looking for. A lot of my function in the company is trend forecasting. Wellness is obviously my life’s passion, and that’s because I care about it for myself. I want to make sure I’m living well and feeling like the best version of myself. And as I do that, I want to help other women also do that. … We’re always talking to our community. We want to know what products they want, and we want to know what problems they want solved.”
… for example, predicting creatine’s big moment
“I started to notice that there was a lot of literature around creatine for women all of a sudden. [And] this started to happen about three years ago. Then I joined this gym that I currently go to, which was founded by a doctor, and the first time I got my blood work, he was like, ‘You should start taking creatine, because you’ll see a big difference in terms of your performance and how you feel and your cognitive function.’ So, I started to take creatine. It was a powdered format, and I loved the impact that it was having on me. But I started to see that it had certain things that needed to be tweaked. As an example, I hated the form factor. It was really difficult for me to have the powder every single day, especially if I wasn’t having a smoothie. The other issue I noticed was that sometimes the creatine would make me feel bloated. And as I started to speak to girlfriends about it, even people who were ahead of the trends, they were wanting to take creatine, but they had similar issues to me. … So, around a year and a half ago, we started to work on creating a creatine gummy. It took over 300 iterations.”
Entering the protein market
“We just released our product Clear Protein+. … It is essentially a combination of 15 grams of grass fed whey and collagen [peptides] and electrolytes. The reason we wanted to come up with a formula like this was not to compete with protein powders on the market — because I think there’s a use case for that, and there’s a use case for this. This honestly tastes like a raspberry refresher. It’s also super light. It goes into your water and it dissolves right away. It’s something that people can take on the go with them or when they’re traveling. Currently, there’s a lot of conversation about women wanting some sort of protein or collagen, and of course, hydration. This is like a protein top-up on the go, and I think that’s what people are looking for, right? Everyone’s lives are kind of chaotic, and so to offer something that you’re able to throw into your bag and make a better choice for yourself is how we approached this.”
