Based on Julie Rice’s resume, it seems almost inevitable that she’d pursue a beauty brand of her own.
After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a degree in cosmetics and fragrance marketing in 2003, Rice had a ten-year stint working in package and product development with the manufacturer HCT Group. Next, she served as vice president for a small brand exclusive to QVC. Despite the extensive professional beauty industry pedigree, it was two simultaneous events in her personal life that ultimately inspired Rice to found Inner Beauty Cosmetics.
“Basically, my mom had been undergoing treatment for cancer, and I was helping to take care of her,” Rice tells Beauty Independent. “At the same time that happened, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2014.” The health setbacks spurred Rice to seek healthy foods, and home and beauty products for her mother and her. “Cosmetics was the hardest part for me,” she says.
Though she had a wealth of experience in the beauty business, Rice wasn’t very acquainted with clean beauty. In fact, she laughs, “When I was working for the manufacturer, customers would come to me and say they wanted natural products and I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so annoying,’ because it was so much more work!”
And it was work for Rice to modify her own routine. “You’d think because I’m in the cosmetics industry, I would know exactly where to go to find clean cosmetics—and I thought I did know. I went to Whole Foods. I went to Credo Beauty. I went to the spaces that existed to buy clean beauty products at the time,” she says. But after dropping $700 during one memorable shopping trip, Rice didn’t find products she actually wanted to use.
“I was so disappointed,” she says. “I was coming from a place of my own necessity for clean beauty, but I also had a background in product development. I wasn’t going to accept products that I didn’t love. I was like, ‘There has got to be a better way to do this. There’s got to be a way to have these formulas that I’ve been developing for so long and love and, then, just take out the bad ingredients. That can’t be that hard.’”
By 2016, Rice was deep into conceptualizing the brand that would become Inner Beauty Cosmetics. “The industry was more focused on natural beauty at the time,” she says. “Clean beauty was not really a trend. So, I felt the need for it because of my own personal situation and my mom’s. I was like, ‘This is happening for a reason.’ You have to make light of everything, and this was it for me.” By 2017, Rice began product development in earnest.
Between the initial steps and the brand’s 2019 launch, there was the issue of ingredient selection. While testing her formulas at the same time as she was undergoing an immune-modifying treatment for MS, Rice suffered from allergic reactions to the products, especially around her eyes. To pinpoint the ingredients that were causing those issues, she enlisted the help of an eye doctor, dermatologist, allergist and toxicologist.
“She helped me look at every single ingredient in the formulas and determine what was the potential for irritation,” says Rice of the latter specialist. “We went and took out every single ingredient that had any potential for irritation. And, then, we really had to start all over with the formulations.”
Non-irritating ingredients have become a core pillar of Inner Beauty Cosmetics, which incorporates plant-based oils, botanical essences and floral waters into cosmetics made in Italy. Its assortment includes five lip products, eyeshadow, mascara, blush, highlighter, foundation and concealer.
“This brand was born to be a clean beauty brand,” says Rice, estimating that the cost to get it off the ground was around $1 million. “We didn’t just take stock formulas, take out the bad stuff and say, ‘OK, it’s clean.’ We started with stock formulas that were natural ingredients and, then, took out some of the irritating, sensitizing ingredients, but it all had to perform. And, to make it even harder, it had to perform it for people that had sensitive skin. We have even patch-tested all of our products on a hundred subjects that have self-perceived sensitive skin.”
Inner Beauty Cosmetics is sold in direct-to-consumer distribution now, but will enter Nordstrom within the next few weeks. The products will first be sold online within the retailer’s natural beauty selection. Around September, the brand will enter Nordstrom stores. The exact number of doors is still being determined.
Rice was in talks with Nordstrom for about six months after making contact with the department store company’s beauty buyer through a press relations representative who’d wrangled the proper contact information. “We sent some products, and the buyer contacted us back,” says Rice. “I was so shocked.”
Following a 30-minute presentation to a Nordstrom panel via teleconference, Rice received positive feedback on the spot. “The buyer said she loved the pink color of the packaging and the heart [in the logo]. She loved the story of the brand, and she said, because clean beauty was expanding so much and growing within Nordstrom, that that’s really why they were interested in our products initially.” The buyer used Inner Beauty Cosmetics’ lipstick, and Rice relays she informed her, “This doesn’t feel like natural or clean beauty to me. It just feels like a great lipstick.”
The brand is in the process of pursing a gluten-free certification, so that people who have celiac disease can feel safe applying its cosmetics. Cruelty-free certification is on deck as well. “We don’t do any animal testing, and I can guarantee that because we’re such a small company that I control everything,” says Rice. “But I need the certification to say that we really don’t. I think that in order to move into different retailers, we’re going to have to have that certification moving forward.”
Inner Beauty Cosmetics will be expanding its product lineup with a liquid eyeliner dropping soon, and skincare will debut in September. A brow gel is in the pipeline. While Rice declined to disclose the brand’s revenue goal, she shares she’s expecting a 150% increase in its sales from 2020 to 2022 as a result of the Nordstrom business.
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