Bear is bullish on elevated vitamins in the beauty segment.
The Australian ingestible brand has good reason to be confident as it’s rapidly expanded after premiering at Mecca last year to Net-a-porter, Mr Porter and Free People this year. Bear’s sales have skyrocketed 100% every quarter since it’s been available, and it reports that more than 90% of customers repurchase its supplements within two to three months of buying them.
“The best result is when you can get people to come back because they’re really loving the brand,” says Samuel Leetham, CEO and co-founder of Bear, adding about distribution growth, “We really want to be in the top-tier retailers to help us launch new markets. The strategy has been successful despite being a challenge on the logistical front.”
Bear was the first ingestible brand to break into Mecca’s beauty selection. The novelty of the inside-out concept at the specialty retailer was both an opportunity and a challenge for the brand, and Leetham took the Mecca rollout incredibly seriously. With his wife and co-founder Saasha Burns, he visited each Mecca door to talk to staff members. “We felt like politicians a bit,” he jokes, emphasizing, “Education has been the big differentiator that’s driven our success at Mecca.”
“We really want to be in the top-tier retailers to help us launch new markets. The strategy has been successful despite being a challenge on the logistical front.”
The message the Bear leaders communicated to Mecca staff members involves lifestyles. Instead of putting ingredients or health concerns at the forefront of the brand, its four formulas are designed around different activities and professional duties that regularly occupy people. For instance, the brain-powering bestseller Perform is intended for an office worker in a high-stress environment. It contains vitamin B12 to boost energy and bacopa to ease anxiety. Bear’s blends pair botanical extracts with scientifically-advanced compounds.
Another offering, Restore, is intended for the antithesis of an office worker. It’s aimed at retail associates, personal trainers, photographers, waitresses or others like them generally on their feet as they do their jobs and suffering from physical strain. It features vitamin K12 for bones and ginkgo for circulation. The remaining two products, Protect and Explore, were developed for parents and jetsetters. The former has vitamin A and echinacea to enhance the immune system, and the latter has vitamin C and rhodiola to keep users’ bodies performing well as they travel.
Bear’s products are priced at $70 for 60 capsules or, to put it in simpler terms, a capsule costs slightly over $1. “It’s a significant investment daily, but it’s very achievable and appealing to the Bear customer,” says Leetham. Bear’s product pipeline includes a lower-price option. “We want our customers to buy multiple products from Bear and allow them to do that in a way that’s sustainable for their lifestyle while having the same philosophy we’ve taken with all our products,” explains Leetham.
“Saasha and I love putting in facetime with whomever we can. That old-school mentality is close to our hearts. You can instantly get a sense if you’re going to work culturally with someone and their business when you’re with them. You can’t get that over email.”
Bear’s minimalist packaging reflects customers with stylish lifestyles regardless of whether they’re filming on a set or stuck in cubicles. Leetham notes its aesthetic is inspired by brands such as Byredo, Diptyque and Aesop. The brand partnered with designer Dylan McDonough to refine brown bottles and white labels that aren’t cluttered with extraneous words or imagery. Among the few words on the labels are “Good Day,” a play on the Aussie greeting g’day Leetham says highlights that Bear’s vitamins fortify customers for a good day.
Leetham and Burns were moved to create Bear following a trip to a drugstore that left them overwhelmed by the array of vitamins and underwhelmed by those vitamins’ appearances and ingredients. If the resulting brand looked so-so, it wouldn’t distinguish itself from the dull supplements that came before it. On top of the upscale look, gender neutrality is a key element of Bear. Leetham details the brand sought to break from historic gender divisions in vitamin aisles that are purely motivated by marketing as Bear has found women’s and men’s multivitamins largely incorporate similar ingredients.
As the idea behind Bear catches on globally, Leetham and Burns are on the road constantly to manage its retail operations and the infrastructure that supports them. (They take Explore to cope.) The couple tries to spend time in the countries the brand primarily sells in – England, U.S. and Australia for now – to oversee warehousing providers and meet with retail buyers. “Saasha and I love putting in facetime with whomever we can. That old-school mentality is close to our hearts,” says Leetham. “You can instantly get a sense if you’re going to work culturally with someone and their business when you’re with them. You can’t get that over email.”
Feature photo credit: Amanda Shadforth of Oracle Fox
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