Sherry Jhawar and Allison Statter, cofounders of Blended Strategy Group, have launched their first brand: Nez.
The duo, who run the Los Angeles, California-based creative marketing and communication agency, have worked together for years in entertainment and influencer marketing, advising and building celebrity- and founder-backed brands.
Jhawar, a Harvard Business School graduate, is one of the founding players behind Eos lip balm. She and Statter (longtime talent manager and leader of brand division at Azoff Music Management, founded by her father Irving Azoff) drove the celebrity partnerships at Eos before launching Blended Strategy Group together in 2015. They currently work with GXVE Beauty by Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Meyer Fragrance & Beauty, Live Tinted by Deepica Mutyala and the Mane Addicts by Jen Atkin.
The two are now looking to disrupt body care with a brand of their own. Out Wednesday, Nez is a deodorant company offering mini aluminum-free, dermatologist tested, vegan formulas.
“I have been very obsessed with this category, because my personal background is that I happen to be a breast cancer survivor,” Jhawar said.
In remission for more than 11 years, Jhawar was 32 years old when diagnosed. The experience made her rethink everything she was using, including deodorant. (Partnering with the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Nez is donating 1 percent of annual deodorant sales to the organization year-round.)
While aluminum-free, vegan brands exist on the market today, “I still never saw anything that truly innovated in this category,” she said.
Divided into life moments — “workout sesh,” “board meeting” and “date ready” — in six scents (fresh and smoky options), the products target different body sweats.
“I was like, ‘Wait, this is crazy,’” Jhawar continued. “We segment everything in our beauty regimen, oily skin, dry skin, frizzy hair, straight hair coily hair, color treated hair. Physically we are sweating through two different glands. We were sweating for different moments, yet deodorant is one size fits all.”
Nez’s “workout sesh” is for increased body temperature and movement, while the latter two address sweat created by stress and anxiety.
“We brought on a dermatologist to help us really understand how sweat works,” Jhawar said. “We have eccrine glands and apocrine glands. So eccrine are all about external things, so working out. And with eccrine sweat, it’s very wet. It’s very liquidy, but apocrine sweat is stress sweat, anxiety sweat, and that’s when you’re nervous.…That is actually thicker sweat. It sits on the body, so it can get more smelly because it mixes with bacteria.”
A bundle of three is available for $20 via the website, Nezcare.com. Made and packaged in the U.S., ingredients are sourced globally. They’re “naturally derived,” according to Jhawar, outside of the fragrance — which follows the common beauty retailer’s requirements for “clean.”
Nez is meant to be taken on the go and reapplied as needed.
“It really is about destigmatizing application of deodorant,” Statter said.
Source: WWD