LONDON — It’s been a busy nine months for Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode, which she went direct with in June 2022.
This year, she launched in the U.K. with an instant sell out collection of the serum, a moisturizer and a lip treatment all under 30 pounds; she introduced a facial essence to mark the anniversary of her brand, and brought out a limited-edition of the lip peptide treatment inspired by Krispy Kreme’s strawberry glazed donut.
The 26-year-old is now ready to venture into a new category — color — with four tinted versions of the peptide treatment to coincide with Rhode’s European expansion.
“I love correlating everything to food and different things,” Bieber said in an interview from sunny Los Angeles.
The shades are named ribbon, toast, raspberry jelly and espresso. The first is a delicate shade of pink that’s a subtle hint to her past as a ballet dancer and the pointe shoes she used to wear; meanwhile, the rest are a nod to her day-to-day activities, from eating toast with jelly to drinking coffee, which she only has one cup of a day.
The decision to start with the lip treatment was a natural progression.
“It makes a lot of sense because it’s an existing formula that we already have and as we expand, I want it to always feel like it’s a high rate of skin care and makeup that’s enhancing your natural features and skin,” said Bieber, who is set on making sure that her brand is recognized as a skin-first brand.
As soon as she started working with her labs, she had plotted the idea of what her products would look like if they were to move into the color category.
Bieber, a self-proclaimed formula-head, delves into the making of the product from start to finish. She understood that adding color to the lip treatments would result in changing the formula, which is why she opted for them to be unscented.
“I didn’t want us to start being overwhelmed with the smells. I want it to feel a little bit different than the regular peptide treatment,” she said, suggesting that for a bit of scent, it should be layered with the scented peptide treatments.
“This is the drop for fall and winter colors, although they can work for any season. I feel like it is nice to have these berry, brown and beige shades. I swear I wear a different one every single day,” she added, pointing out that she was wearing the espresso shade.
As Rhode readies itself for the rest of Europe, she wanted to treat her customers with “something new they can get their hands on.”
Feedback is an area that she has been monitoring behind the scenes. She reveals that the most dedicated fans of the brand have managed to get their hands on her products no matter the hurdles in place.
The Rhode lip treatment is on pace to sell a million this month, it’s been their top-selling product since launch and has generated 6,300 reviews giving the product five stars. The total waitlist for the product have totaled to 570,000.
“Some will get a P.O. box in America, get it sent there and then someone ships it to them. People have been super committed, so I really appreciate that,” Bieber said with a grin.
Brand accessibility is a key pillar to the Rhode strategy and with the big fan base, it has allowed the company to order larger quantities and reduce costs.
Bieber is open and hopeful about the future of her brand. She wants to partner with a retailer at some point to give her customers even easier access to her products.
“That’s definitely part of the plan going forward. I want it to be really thoughtful and really planned out. I see us doing a pop-up in the next year maybe as that’s a fun way to interact with people, chat to them and to talk about the products with them,” she said.
Bieber credits Rhode with teaching her the ins and outs of building a business. She explains that the brand has become the topic of her everyday conversations, from thinking of new products, discussing development ideas to the marketing side.
She was recently named in WWD x Beauty Inc x FN’s Women in Power list for her beauty brand and the Rhode Futures Foundation, which met its goal of supporting 1,000 women and their families by 2023. That entails donating at least 1 percent of sales to different organizations that provide women of color with resources needed to “direct their own futures,” according to its website.
“My biggest advice would be, as women, I feel like our intuition and our gut is so powerful. Listening to your gut is always really important when building a business because there’s been multiple times where I’ve had to fight to do what my gut was telling me when other people potentially didn’t agree,” Bieber said.
In an interview earlier this year, Melanie Bender, chief executive officer of Rhode, told WWD that the brand “crossed the eight-figure threshold over a six-month period with just 11 days of selling. We’re going in there and making big orders for a young brand like us, which then lets us tap into more of those cost efficiencies that you typically don’t get until you’re maybe a L’Oréal or Estée Lauder.”
Bender said the brand has had international reach from the get-go — it launched in the U.S. in June last year followed by Canada, and the U.K.
“About 50 percent of our traffic comes from outside the U.S. despite not really doing any active marketing in those international markets,” Bender said.
“India is one that I’m particularly excited about because of what a huge and growing beauty economy it is. It’s our number-two international source of traffic after Canada,” she added.
The road for Rhode is only getting bigger.
Source: WWD