To start out, can you just give me a little bit of background about what your company does?
Evereden is a clean skincare brand that's backed by science.
We were created by moms in medicine, three dermatologists, moms who work at Stanford University and Harvard University. Our Chief Scientific Officer is Dr. Joyce Teng and she's the head of pediatric dermatology at Stanford Medical School. The idea was to create something that was not just clean and efficacious, but truly research and science-backed, and products that work with the entire family.
We launch just under three years ago first with a line for babies, so skincare products for infants, and then shortly thereafter we launched a line from moms and women, pregnancy, postpartum products, and also products for women in general.
This year we excitingly launched a few new lines. The kids’ line, which is a skincare and hair care line for children age three to preteen, and we also launched our SPF line, which did extremely well. We've launched two SKUs, sunscreen for the entire family and sunscreen for women. Both of these just flew off the shelves and did extremely well.
Later this year will be launching our medical lines, so eczema products, targeted solutions, really nodding to our clinical R&D background and our moms in medicine. In a nutshell, I think Evereden, we were first to market in this white space of premium, multi-generational skincare products for the entire family, really speaking to family products in a new and modern way.
The goal is to be the number one player globally in this space. Today we are one of the fastest-growing family skincare brands in the US as well as for China. Next year I think it will be all about product expansion and also geographic expansion. To that end, we will be launching into four key markets globally, Canada, Asia, Oceania.
We're excited to be partnering with Sephora because they also really see this white space and huge growth potential within multi-generational skincare.
Can you tell me a little more about what separates a family-focused skincare brand from any other skincare brand?
The products are definitely more gentle, safe. Of course, they still have to be very efficacious. But when you're talking about products for infants or children or just also adults with sensitive skin, I think you have to be a lot more careful about the ingredients you put in. Some no-nos would be, for example, synthetic fragrances, harsh preservatives like sodium benzoate, chemical sunscreens which we know aren't good for you and a lot of research has come out against that. Not only is it not good for you, but not good for the environment.
There is a sense of thoughtfulness and sensibility to family skincare products. But I think what Evereden does differently from other family skincare brands is that we are one of the first to really bring in that thoughtfulness that you've seen and luxury women’s beauty and skincare into family.
So we use a lot of ingredients that you would normally see in a high-end facial serum product at Sephora like rosehip oil, cold-pressed sunflower seed oil. These are not ingredients that you would have seen in other family skincare brands five, 10, 20 years ago, but I think the consumer nowadays is getting increasingly sophisticated and our consumer is the person that shops at Sephora, but now she has a family and she is used to choice and she wants choice and she wants the best for her family.
I understand that your company just raised quite a bit of capital. Can you tell me a little bit about that financial run?
We raised our series C, $32 million. Our lead investors GSR Ventures and they have a fantastic track record and growing international businesses. What we're really excited about with the proceeds of this round is, number one really expanding our sales channels.
Primarily. We've been an online DTC brand in the US and Asia. What we're excited about is building out our retail and omnichannel footprint, so to that end, the Sephora launches globally that I mentioned will be a big push for us next year.
We're also partnering with DFS, so working we're launching with DFS in Macau exclusively in travel retail there. We've also this year partnered and just launched with Lotte travel retail in Korea. The next wave of growth for us will be expanding into new channels, especially in retail.
Number two is really doubling down on our R&D focus and obsession as a company. This DNA really comes from our moms in medicine who come from medical backgrounds. They’re no-nonsense women and they were frustrated with all the marketing noise out there as doctors and as mothers. They couldn't really find a brand or product that they trusted for their own families that they felt was efficacious and safe.
With this in mind, I think it's continuing that R&D ethos of creating science-backed, efficacious and unthoughtful products. We have actually built out our own in-house R&D lab. We've grown our R&D and PD team and I think part of that is being quicker to market, responding more quickly to consumers, and having our own in-house R&D capability will just help us do that faster.
This is something that's fairly unusual. I think most brands do this when there are mega-billion bucks and we're not quite there yet, but for us you know R&D, it’s a strategic focus, always has been.
What problem in family-focused skincare is your brand solving?
It depends on the line.
What we're solving are different skin ailments and needs across the family. Some of them are targeted solutions and targeted means like eczema and heat rashes and skin irritation, that we’ll address in the medical line. The other is would be just everyday things that you go through as a parent, as a family member. You need sunscreen and you need to moisturize.
What sets us apart I think in the sort of everyday line, in the baby, kids, mom, SPF line is that thoughtfulness I was speaking to and the innovation that we are bringing in from women’s skincare. What that means is using the best ingredients.
What's been missing in this market prior to Evereden is when you are commoditizing a product and maybe it's sold at a very mask price point, you may not always be able to afford the best ingredients that have been used for a while in women’s skincare and you know that there is that research that backs it up, you know it's efficacious.
What we've done is really bringing some of that innovation and technology for the first time to family skincare, and I think that's really why the brand has done so well.
That kind of market of the Sephora shopper who now has a family, how big do you estimate that market is?
It's a market that's growing. I can say that you know, I think this is Euromonitor data, but in 2025 the premium beauty and personal care industry globally, that's sort of Sephora customer who's looking to purchase good products for herself as well as her family, it's estimated to be somewhere in the range of $68 billion globally. In comparison to the mass personal care and beauty space, I think the mass space is at $60 billion.
Up until now the mass beauty and personal care space has really outpaced premium in size, but that's changed, and that's changing very rapidly. The growth rate for premium is at 17% a year. The growth rate for the mass space it's at 7%, so I think we're just in the earliest innings of this trend that Evereden is first to really capture and see.
One reason why we love Sephora so much, they're a beauty retailer that gets it. They've always been at the forefront of spotting new consumer trends, and this is something that they're seeing as well as we are.
Have you seen any major differences in kind of behavior in this market between your U.S. market and you're Asian market?
We do, actually. In the US, even within our category, consumers tend to respond much more to storytelling and emotions, and this is a very emotional category. But in our Asian market, what we found is that our consumer is hyper and laser-focused on the technicals. You know, give me 10 bullet points on the ingredients in this product. They want to read all about it, they want a whole page on it and that that was interesting to notice. I think the focus on texture and sensorial aspects of the product is very important in the Asian market.
What's the next step for this brand?
The first being, you know our five product categories. What we're so excited about is each of these product categories, baby, kids, mom, SPF, medical, each of these could be entire brands and companies in of itself. So really deepening our potential in each of these lines will be a focus for us in the next year.
The second, we touched on briefly, would be expanding into other sales channels aside from B-to-C and online, which we've primarily been up until this point. The partnerships with Sephora and DFS and Lotte are exciting. The third is geographic expansion, I think we've proven, as a pretty young brand, under three years old, that we can be successful and in very different international markets. China also being one of the most challenging beauty markets to crack, we were one of the fastest-growing there.
We've grown about 300% year-over-year. Last year we grew 300% and we were profitable, and so I think it speaks to the strength of this team and being aggressive to go to market but also be successful at some tough international markets, and we're hoping to replicate the success in the future and other international markets.
In the context of this big capital run, what else do professionals in industry need to know about your brand or this market?
One thing is premiumization. It's something we've seen as a brand, it's something we hear about a lot in the industry and something that we really believe in. We've seen premiumization across a lot of consumer categories, and I think that there are still ways to go in premiumization in skincare and beauty, especially within family where we’re in the earliest beginnings of this trend.
Evereden is one of the first to really find this white space, and I think the reason we've seen the high triple-digit growth rates that we have while being profitable in 2020 is partly because of, of course, R&D and the strong authenticity and branding with the moms in medicine.
It's the great products, but ultimately also, I think we're in the right market at the right time. I think people are looking to trade up. Our consumers are not luxury consumers looking for value. Most of our consumers are consumers who would have purchased something in a drugstore maybe several years ago, but now you know they're used to choice, they're increasingly health and wellness conscious, they care so much about what they put into their bodies as well as what they put on their bodies.
They want to make good decisions for their families and they will spend a little bit more on the best products for their families.
