Lorne Lucree has had many stops during his 17-year beauty industry career, including at L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Luxury Brand Partners, Voyant Beauty and Unilever, where he was most recently a strategic innovation advisor for the prestige division and SVP at Tatcha, but he’s never gone out on his own—until now.
The product development and marketing expert has launched consultancy Quiet Coyote, which aims to be a one-stop shop that brands, investors and more can turn to for guidance on formulation, sales, sustainability, packaging, contract manufacturing and profitability. It has two payment structure options, and charges $400 to $600 hourly for short-term projects generally lasting two weeks and a flat fee for long-term projects generally lasting three months that equates roughly to the same hourly rate.
“I’m able to touch different pieces where normally consultants would have boundaries or constraints,” says Lucree. “Innovation is broader than a net new product. It’s not just about briefing a formula to a contract manufacturer. It’s about sustainability and traceability. It’s about packaging. It’s about your technology story. It’s about your testing and claims strategy. Where I have seen the biggest gaps is thinking about the cost of goods and margins and how to partner more effectively with your contract manufacturer.”
Quiet Coyote is catering to brands of varying sizes and stages across beauty categories. Lucree has experience with new and established brands and behind the scenes of brands on the supply and wholesale sides. He developed One/Size by Patrick Starrr at Luxury Brand Partners, shaped the indie beauty-dedicated manufacturing arm Atelier at Voyant Beauty and supported the Sephora business and product releases at Tatcha. He’s also a member of the Conscious Beauty Advisory Council at Ulta Beauty.
Lucree is particularly passionate about founder-led brands and aspires to someday launch a brand of his own. Quiet Coyote tends to partner with brands before they hit the market and mature brands that require a refresh to connect with contemporary consumers. It’s serving investment firms in due diligence capacities, too.
For emerging brands, Lucree says cutting through the clutter to reach consumers with a story that resonates with them is the toughest challenge today. “How do you think about what’s going to make sense for your brand DNA and weave that through from a storytelling perspective?” he asks. “So, what do your formulations and packaging tell about you as a brand, and how do you bring that to life? When you are scrappy, things can be missed at the beginning, and then you try to back into those later on. Understanding them early can be really helpful.”
An adept trendspotter, Lucree has his eyes on the market to identify opportunities for nascent brands and new products. As he gets underway at Quiet Coyote, we asked him to fill us on the trends he’s picking up on in skincare, haircare, makeup, wellness and fragrance.
Skincare: After a rush to ingredient alternatives deemed safer or gentler (e.g., retinol alternative bakuchiol), Lucree believes there will be multiplication of types of powerhouse ingredients and a ramp-up of consumer education on their distinct qualities. He points to Glow Recipe’s new Blackberry Retinol Blemish Serum, which has retinol, retinal and retinyl ester, as illustrative of powerhouse ingredient multiplication. “The customer already knows retinol works, and they’re along for the journey,” says Lucree.
“Innovation is broader than a net new product.”
He identifies Cocokind’s consumer education on retinol as exemplar. The brand sells Advanced Retinol Gel 0.5% for experienced retinol users and Beginner Retinol Gel 0.1% for first-time retinol users. Lucree says Cocokind and its founder Priscilla Tsai have “done a beautiful job of building the story of protecting the skin. It’s a big thing to launch a retinal serum because it can be more irritating, but they are really educating the consumer on when and why to do it. It doesn’t stop with 98% less wrinkles.”
As aesthetics enter the skincare chat, there’s increasingly a convergence between ingredients in aesthetics services and ingredients in skincare products. Exosomes are a prime instance of aesthetics and skincare intermingling. On top of the ingredient intermingling, Lucree says, “You are seeing derms getting asked for less overly done procedures. At-home results are slowly starting to converge with aesthetics results.”
Haircare: Products addressing hair loss will continue to proliferate, according to Lucree, but they will drill down into psychographics specific to certain phases in people’s lives and the hair textures or changes occurring at those phases. “It’s becoming more emotional around that, and you are seeing care come into it versus a sterile, clinical approach,” says Lucree.
Following the bond-building craze focused on adding ingredients to hair to strengthen it, Lucree predicts detoxing the hair to strengthen it could be the next craze. He points to L’Oréal Professional’s Metal Detox Pre-Shampoo Treatment, Sulfate-Free Shampoo and Hair Max as propellants of the hair detox movement. Jolie’s shower filter preventing hair damage from minerals like calcium and magnesium is another hair detox entrant. Lucree says, “It’s about, how do you remove to improve overall hair and scalp health?”
Makeup: Multitasking makeup is gaining steam as consumers look to save money and slim their routines. Lucree foresees it evolving to produce unusual, playful combinations and even push the envelope further on multifunctionality. For example, bronzing toner is an atypical vehicle for integrating makeup properties into a skincare staple. With tinted moisturizers, Lucree envisions amplifying the skincare benefits to the point where a consumer could skip a traditional moisturizer.
Wellness: Lucree posits that the longevity trend turns beauty conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of tackling issues once they happen, it urges consumers to act preventatively to stave off issues years in advance of when they might happen. And through artificial intelligence-powered technology advancements and genetic testing, preventative products can speak directly to issues individuals might face.
“I see this becoming personalization 2.0,” says Lucree. “If you can solve issues unique to you, you can control your health destiny. This is a personalized way to rethink aging and even scalp and hair health.”
Fragrance: The skinification of everything has encompassed fragrance—and Lucree envisions it only escalating in scent. He anticipates fragrances incorporating ingredients and engaging in storytelling on skin microbiome and hair and scalp health benefits. Lucree says, “The next phase of this will be to understand, how can fragrances be performance fragrances?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.