Body care brand and Sephora Accelerate participant Oui The People is launching with Sephora online on August 22 and entering into 266 doors September 15.
“We are thrilled to introduce Oui the People to our Sephora community as part of our growing body care assortment,” says Brooke Banwart, senior vice president of skincare merchandising for Sephora, in a statement. “As a former participant in our Sephora Accelerate Program, Oui the People has continued to stand out with their commitment to delivering effective and inclusive beauty products that celebrate individuality and promote skin health. We look forward to growing our partnership with this innovative brand and continuing to bring our clients the best in clean beauty.”
Oui The People will be featured in Sephora’s The Next Big Thing assortment and highlighted in its Clean at Sephora section. This will be Oui The People’s first major retail partnership. Being a primarily direct-to-consumer brand since its launch in 2017, founder Karen Young notes that she’s been able to get to know her customers extremely well. She has a community of over 300 members between 25 and 45 years old who she turns to for insights into their skin concerns, product testing and initial feedback. She’s also gotten to know their shopping habits. “We know where they shop, we know where they turn when they think about beauty, we know where they turn when they think about discovering new brands and trying new things and that is synonymous with Sephora,” she says.
The full Oui The People lineup will be available on Sephora’s website. The brand debuted with a single-blade razor and the offering has ballooned to include Sugarcoat Moisturizing Shave Gel-to-Milk, Cheat Sheet Resurfacing Body Serum, Featherweight Hydrating Body Gloss, All In All Melting Body Balm and Full Disclosure Cream Body Polish. Prices range from $28 to $85.
The brand is launching a slew of new products in tandem with the partnership as well. Those include a scented version of its bestselling Featherweight Hydrating Body Gloss in Orange Blossom. It’s a fragrance that Young came across during trips to Morocco and France. “I learned the roots of it, fell in love with the scent, the experience, the way that it was utilized in body care and really wanted to bring our version of that,” she says.
Health Food Prebiotic Lotion and Clean Slate Lactic Body Wash round out the new offerings. The latter includes seamoss which is a nod to Young’s Guyanese culture. A travel-sized All Over Body Renewal Set comprised of Clean Slate Lactic Acid, Cheat Sheet Resurfacing Body Serum and Featherweight Orange Blossom Hydrating Body Gloss will also be available in store and online.
When it comes to expanding the product line, Young aims to identify gaps in the market that drugstore brands may not be able to fill and building from there. She notes that Oui The People is part of what she refers to as functional body care brands which look at the skinification of body. “We think about remineralizing and nourishing the skin through a number of products rather than just saying, okay, well, we’re going to make sure that it’s really nicely hydrated,” she elaborates. “We address not just the outcome like blotchy or discolored or flaring skin, but we help them to build the skin health over time and really go on that journey with them.”
Oui The People has relied heavily on word of mouth to sustain its marketing. Young plans on switching up her strategy in the coming months and experimenting with influencer and creator marketing that’s focused on authentic storytelling around the body. “We’ve been very lucky to have a brand that has been a bit of an indie press darling over the years, so we’ve had a lot of really great results from that,” she says.
Young explains it will be “less of this sort of product shilling and more honest conversations with diverse faces at the forefront of the brand.” She hopes to take advantage of the extra visibility the brand will receive from the Sephora partnership. She says, “We’re facing down something new, but something really exciting now as we think about capturing even more customers but from an authentic and holistic way that’s always been at the root of the brand.”
Participating in the Sephora Accelerate program gave Young a glimpse into the inner workings of the retailer. She learned baseline things like how to ship products, how to think about positioning, how to develop innovative formulas and how to talk to and educate the customer. “It is no small feat to hold hands with a retailer of this size and really go out into the world, solidify ourselves as a new-ish brand and scale up from there,” she reflects.
It’s also not cheap. Young raised more than $3 million in an oversubscribed seed round in 2022 led by New Age Capital. She fundraised knowing that retail was going to be a part of Oui The People’s roadmap down the line. She plans on evaluating the success of the Sephora launch before embarking on the brand’s next round. “We didn’t quite have a pin in the exact time [of retail expansion], but we had a general framework and so we just kind of really worked from there,” she says. “We are lucky to have been really, really prudent and smart with the way that we think about capital use for the brand.”
Oui The People is projecting 200% year-over-year growth for 2023. Looking ahead, Young hopes to continue building on the momentum of what she calls the second wave of body care. She says, “We’re really building out an incredibly innovative pipeline of products, listening to our consumer and leaning into our partnership with Sephora as we get more eyeballs on the brand and more data on how we can become the best body care brand in the US.”
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