Skyrocketing Men’s Skincare Business Brickell Breaks Into The Women’s Segment With New Brand Eight Saints

Josh Meyer wasn’t surprised to discover that almost a third of the customers for Brickell Men’s Products, the men’s skincare brand he founded with best friend Matt Bolduc, are women. However, he was surprised to discover those women were largely buying its products for themselves.

“They went to Amazon and looked for natural eye cream, and we popped up. They thought, ‘Wow, your product is amazing, and it costs half the price.’ For men, $40 is pretty much the highest you can go for an eye cream. For women, there are eye creams that are $200,” says Meyer. “We started getting more and more requests from women asking us to build something for them. Since we already have a huge population of women using our products, it’s a natural extension.”

Meyer and Bolduc have answered women’s requests with Eight Saints, an 11-item line centered upon eight hero ingredients, including hyaluronic acid, glycolic acid, peptides, squalene, and vitamins E and C, that’s steeper than the men’s brand preceding it with prices running from $39 to $105. Based on Brickell’s success with its Restoring Eye Cream For Men, Meyer pegs Eight Saints’ eye cream All In as its probable bestseller, and hydration gel Night Shift, brightening cream Cloud Whip and conditioning oil High Society are expected to be popular as well.

“There’s so many brands, ingredients and products. There’s serums, face masks, face gels, face creams, face moisturizers. With Eight Saints, we tried to distill it down to only the products you need with key natural ingredients that science supports,” says Meyer. “It’s all about clarity and making it simple while still have a robust routine.”

Rather than create a standalone women’s brand, Meyer could have entered the women’s skincare segment by transitioning Brickell to unisex positioning to broaden its appeal to women or developing a women’s branch of its men’s line. He studied men’s brands that have attempted to attract women customers via those strategies and learned they damaged their reputation with men. Meyer reasons Brickell’s masculine branding and products directed squarely at men are critical draws. Abandoning them in pursuit of women could be detrimental.

“We started getting more and more requests from women asking us to build something for them. Since we already have a huge population of women using our products, it’s a natural extension.”

“We didn’t want to hurt the Brickell line, and what we’ve been able to build there from an image and brand standpoint,” he says. “We weren’t looking at as if we were only going to go after the women who use Brickell. We want it to be its own self-sustaining brand. I’ve done Brickell for five years, and it’s an established company now. I enjoy starting brands, and it feels like a new challenge in a very competitive market with a lot of great brands. Some of it’s just ego. I want to build an amazing line in a very competitive space. I want to see what I can do.”

Before Brickell, Meyer had been a part of launching seven companies and Bolduc had three under his belt. Together, they invested $250,000 in a software company. The software company fizzled, but Meyer and Bolduc didn’t give up hope that they could hit upon a lucrative idea. The idea for Brickell arose out of a picture that an ex-girlfriend snapped of Meyer in which she smoothed out his wrinkles.

“I was like, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ but it made me think about aging and skincare. I was 27 at the time. Typical guy, I’d never thought about skincare. I go the gym. I take care of myself. I can’t have gluten or dairy, so I’m very health-conscious. I started looking at skincare products to see what I should be doing,” says Meyer. “I saw that there was this whole world of men’s skincare, and it was booming, but I couldn’t find a higher-end organic and natural option. I told my business partner, and he thought I was onto something.”

It took $10,000 to get self-funded Brickell off the ground and, today, it’s one of the fastest-growing men’s skincare brands on the market. This year, Brickell is on track to surpass $20 million in sales. It’s available in around 30 retail doors, notably at Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus, yet Meyer says 99.9% of its sales are from e-commerce. At the beginning of Brickell, the brand chased small retailers, but Meyer believes that tactic was a mistake, and he’s not repeating it with Eight Saints.

“The main challenge is shouting against everyone else who is shouting in the same massive, competitive market.”

“We have talked to a couple of larger retailers and, if we do proceed, it’s going to be in a concise way that works for us,” he says, speaking of Eight Saints’ distribution plan. “We know e-comm works. So, if the retail side doesn’t play out, that’s fine, too. Once you build a good brand, retailers come to you. They don’t want to fall by the wayside. They want to pick up cool, trendy brands.”

In its first year of operation, Meyer forecasts Eight Saints will contribute 5% of his company’s sales. In five years, he foresees its sales outpacing Brickell’s sales. Inside the company, Jennifer Maxcy has been appointed brand manager of Eight Saints. As the brand expands, Meyer will hire additional employees specifically dedicated do it. Brickell’s current staff amounts to nearly 40 people.

Similar to Brickell, Eight Saints is turning to its sample kit to drive customer acquisition. The kit is $10 at Eight Saints and free at Brickell. Dissimilar from Brickell, Eight Saints will be helped by women sharing skincare suggestions on social media, where men mostly don’t tell friends about their personal maintenance habits. Social media advertising costs, though, are double to target women, according to Meyer.

“The main challenge is shouting against everyone else who is shouting in the same massive, competitive market,” he says. “Women are shouted at more, but they’re more willing to change. I still use a handful of products that I’ve used since I was 6-years-old, and I have no desire to change.”