Before Nopalera went live in 2020, its founder Sandra Velasquez had a clear vision to create an offering akin to L’Occitane for Mexican botanicals. The upscale bath and body care brand encapsulates Mexican identity with its cactus-crowned goddess woman logo and star ingredient nopal, but isn’t isolated to a particular consumer group and doesn’t water down its products or their prices.
“I definitely began with the end in mind, which is something I tell every entrepreneur. Determine where you want to go and then reverse-engineer it,” said Velasquez. “I was building a brand for clean beauty, so it needed to look and feel a certain way. It needed to be at a certain price point, too.”
During a recent Beauty Independent In Conversation webinar, Velasquez was joined by Rachel Liverman, founder and CEO of express facial bar business Glowbar, and Éva Goicochea, founder and CEO of sexual wellness brand Maude, to discuss how they developed their growing companies to stand out in a crowded beauty and wellness market.
Liverman’s family has a long history in the beauty industry. Her grandmother Catherine Hinds was an aesthetician and established aesthetics school Catherine Hinds Institute. Hinds’ daughter and Liverman’s mother, An G. Hinds, was an aesthetician, too, and took over running Catherine Hinds Institute.
Liverman wanted to pave her own path in the beauty industry. Prior to starting Glowbar, she held roles at Birchbox, Stila Cosmetics and Beautyblender. “I had a decade of learning from others and watching them make mistakes,” she said. “I learned so much from them, and I built a network.”
As a young professional, Goicochea worked as a legislative aide for the California Medical Association. She transitioned to fashion and beauty with jobs at Everlane and Josie Maran Cosmetics, where she specialized in e-commerce and social media. Velasquez toured as a musician for 15 years, an experience she says gave her a strong “rejection muscle.” In advance of launching Nopalera, she was a territory manager for Van Leeuwen Ice Cream.
Branding
Velasquez erected Nopalera to show that Latina-created merchandise can and should be sold at a premium. Her culture and confidence guide its branding, products and retail positioning. The products meet Credo’s Clean Standard and are priced primarily from $10 to $34.
She said, “I’m not 26. I was like, I need to build a brand that’s going to win, so I need to learn whatever I need to learn to make sure that that happens. The execution had to be flawless.”
Glowbar’s signature red branding was chosen to skew gender neutral and be bold to command attention. The company’s pricing is intended to differentiate it from its steeper competitors. Its 30-minute facials are priced at $75 for non-members and $55 for clients who’ve purchased a monthly membership.
Maude’s design features gender barrier-crossing shades of white, gray and brown, and its prestige pricing is meant to keep the brand attainable while elevating it compared to other sexual wellness brands. Its prices primarily run from $20 to $79. Goicochea stressed it was important to her to price Maude’s devices affordably.
She said, “At the core of this is really mission, and on the surface level, it’s beautiful products that work that are inclusive of age and gender.”
Funding
Before landing $10 million in series A funding earlier this year, Glowbar was boosted by a friends and family round. The funding was made possible by Liverman’s professional network. “It is relationship building,” she said. “I say that to anyone that I mentor. You never know who can support you in the future. That’s not why you maintain a relationship, but it certainly is a sub-benefit from taking the time to network.”
Nopalera was bootstrapped during its first two years in business. Unable to raise funds from friends and family, Velasquez applied to numerous accelerator and mentorship programs to connect with investors. She participated in the programs Credo For Change and Bridge Mentorship, which is a partnership between the beauty and wellness investment firm True Beauty Ventures and Beauty Independent. In 2022, Nopalera closed an oversubscribed $2.7 million seed funding round.
“It was a long process of cold emailing every investor I had ever met and asking for introductions,” said Velasquez. “Now I have a whole database of investors, but, three years ago, I knew nobody.”
Maude didn’t receive a positive reception from investors out of the gate. Goicochea said, “For them, it was like, ‘We can’t actually invest, and we don’t want to tell our wives, our children and our peers that we have condoms on our cap table.'”
Goicochea’s brother-in-law cold called almost 1,000 investors before XFactor Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital fund for women-led brands, expressed interest in learning about Maude. XFactor Ventures’ Aubrie Pagano led the brand’s $550,000 pre-seed round in 2018.
The same year, Vogue published an article on Maude’s launch, giving the brand validation as the sexual wellness category started gaining steam. By 2021, the brand had raised a total of $10 million in funding over four rounds.
TALENT
On its website, Glowbar lists nine open studio locations and three that are coming soon, and it has ambitious plans to expand its studio footprint. To do so, it must have a robust workforce. “We don’t serve a client until a human being opens our doors every single morning and gives a treatment to our clients,” said Liverman. “So, having a really strong people department and making sure the culture is intact is how we win.”
Goicochea and Velasquez agreed that key hires are paramount in scaling successful brands. At Nopalera, the right marketing, sales and operations talent has been critical. “People make the place, but it’s not just about their resumes,” said Velasquez. “I need you to have experience, but I also need you to have a growth mindset. I need to know that you have a moral compass and that you understand that you are part of a team.”
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