June 5, 2024
Randi Shinder, Founder & CEO, SBLA Beauty
How Celebrities & Female Entrepreneurs Rebooted This $750B Industry
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The personal care and beauty market is projected to be a $750B by 2032—and women and celebrities want a piece of it. Celebrities and the beauty industry have been ubiquitously tied together through generations. In recent years however, celebrities aren’t only endorsing or becoming the face of the brand—they’re now working on their own beauty brands.
Christie Brinkley, the international superstar and seemingly ageless beauty, served as a brand ambassador after being introduced to SBLA Beauty by a friend during the pandemic. The science-backed, non-invasive skincare brand, founded by Beauty Pioneer Randi Shinder, is a new platform of tools that sculpt, lift and firm the face, neck, chin and jawline.
Prior to the rise of the Girl Boss in the 2010’s, that has trickled into the 2020s, Randi revolutionized the fragrance space with CLEAN Beauty in 2002, which became one of the most successful independent fragrance brands of all-time. She followed that with Dessert Beauty with Jessica Simpson, the first brand to exceed $10 million at Sephora, and Fusion Beauty, the first to exceed $50 million at Sephora, before selling both Clean and Fusion in 2009.
Seeking to slow down (yeah right) after launching the I Smell Great brand with Sophia Bush, Randi noticed a white space in the industry, and decided to get back into the lab and invent SBLA. On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles Show, Randi unpacks her secrets to scaling brands and exits, why Sephora shifted away from their Indi-strategy—and why she should be the CEO of Pinterest.
Focus And Filling A White Space Void
Randi has a track record of company launches. She finds a focal point and then creates a company on the back of that point, “Everything’s been launched on a vertical”. When she started Lip Fusion, it was solely focused on Lips, just like how SBLA Beauty focused solely on neck rejuvenation. Truly a testament to what an entrepreneur’s scope should be when first starting. All you need is a single product, even if it affects something as specific as your aging neck, find a gap and fill it.
Celebrities As A Marketing Tool
Recently we talked about how serendipitous crossings with celebrities are a huge push for business marketing. Well, SBLA Beauty has its history with celebrity marketing, but from a more planned approach by launching whole lines with celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Sophia Bush. We asked Randi how important having a celebrity association is, and she said “it’s not what it used to be.” Nowadays, Randi is looking for “an influencer-type relationship where they actually really like the product and want to use it.”
Women Making an Exit
In 2022, companies with more than one female founder received 18.4 percent of all Venture Capital money deployed totaling $42.6 Billion, a 74% increase from 2020 which saw $24.5 Billion, according to Female Founders Fund. They’re also averaging lower exit times in just 7.5 years according to the same survey with some notable exits in recent years. One example is Knix, a women’s intimate apparel brand for periods and incontinence founded by Joanna Griffiths, was acquired by Essity for $320M (the largest publicly disclosed private sales of a DTC company by a female founder).
Startups Are Like Raising Children
Being a serial CEO is like raising kids over and over again—it takes everything you’ve got. When asked about her five-year plan, Randi simply said “I don’t think I’ll be the CEO.” Probably because she will be at the helm of the next multi-million-dollar venture. But in the context of SBLA’s plan, she notes the next step is to ramp up global expansion, as well as start looking at the whole body. Both of these have massive untapped potential, especially for a founder who who has the muscle memory to see around corners and what’s next.
