DTC clinical skincare brand Dieux is expanding into retail, launching on Sephora’s online store today and in all brick-and-mortar locations early next month.
Launching in 2020 with the Forever Eye Mask, Dieux has gone viral on Instagram and TikTok, with its Deliverance Serum selling out five times and maintaining a waitlist. According to the brand, its hero product, Instant Angel moisturizer, is purchased every five minutes on average. The launch into Sephora, therefore, is an effort to make the brand more accessible to consumers and better meet consumer demand.
We spoke to Dieux co-founder Charlotte Palermino to learn more about Dieux, including background on the brand’s initial launch, how the Sephora expansion fits into the brand’s growth strategy, and Dieux’s plans for further innovation in the skin care space.
About Dieux
Before founding Dieux, Palermino did not hail from a skin care product formulation background; instead, she drew from her personal experience for inspiration in creating the brand. “I spent years building brands and audiences at various media companies and social media platforms, so I’ve always had a strong sense of how to tell a story,” she said, and “because of this, I also saw firsthand how quickly misinformation can become lauded as fact.”
“When I turned 30 and started to explore how to level up my skincare routine,” she explained, “I immediately felt overwhelmed.” Inundated with “over-the-top promises, fear tactics tied to purchasing, [and] claims around “safety” without any evidence,” she shared, “ultimately, it was just a lot of clever marketing that didn’t match up products with results.”
Palermino, therefore, sought to disrupt the market with a brand of her own after “the more I dug, the more I realized I was hardly alone in the skincare struggle,” she said. After learning more about the nuances of skin care ingredients and routines, she joined co-founders Joyce de Lemos and Marta Freedman to found Dieux and “bring transparency and accountability to the industry with clinically vetted products that offer real results.”
Sephora expansion
The move to expand from DTC sales to a more omnichannel approach fits neatly into Dieux’s overall growth strategy in 2024. Palermino is optimistic about what the opportunity will offer the brand. “Launching in Sephora will unlock a world of possibilities for Dieux and the retailer's loyal community who no longer want to bank on miracles,” she said, “and are eager to tap into simplified yet effective rituals that produce real results.”
Further, she added, the expansion has mutually benefitted both Dieux and Sephora as “by adding us to their shelves, Sephora is making a commitment to expand their clinical offerings and ultimately introducing a bevy of new consumers to Dieux who might not have been exposed to us and our mission otherwise.”
Moving forward, she shared, Palermino hopes “that our expansion into Sephora demonstrates that our key brand pillars of transparency, responsible sourcing, and clinical testing for efficacy are resonating with consumers,” and that the partnership will inspire “more and more brands following in our footsteps to make shopping for skincare simpler than ever.”
2024 and beyond
Apart from the launch into Sephora stores, Palermino concluded that in the coming months, Dieux also has “a few exciting launches on the horizon,” with “more to come in this space.” Additionally, while the brand focuses on US operations, international expansion may be on the horizon “as we have an incredible international community,” she shared.
