Jennifer Yen, founder of skincare and makeup brands Pūrlisse and Yensa, is ascending the body with her beauty entrepreneurship by introducing scalp care brand Jooy.
The new brand’s hero products are $42 Scalp Resurfacing Serum and $48 Soothing Scalp Serum. The $29 Clarify Shampoo, $29 Clarify Conditioner and $24 Scalp Energizing Brush round out its debut collection. The brand offers travel sizes priced at $11 and refills priced at $49 of its shampoo and conditioner.
Befitting the skinification of hair trend, Yen compares Jooy’s hero products to skincare products. She describes Soothing Scalp Serum as a lightweight moisturizer and Scalp Resurfacing Serum as an exfoliating treatment. She says, “Just like you would exfoliate your face [and] remove the skin cells every week or every few weeks, this is the exact same concept.”
Yen’s brands are heavily influenced by her Chinese heritage, and she set out with each of them to solve a personal problem. On the television series “Power Rangers,” where she starred as villain Vypra for two years, she wore heavy makeup that caused her to have a host of skin issues. She released Pūrlisse in 2008 with Asian botanicals to address them. The brand is inspired by herbal remedies and tea Yen’s grandmother used.
Yen launched Yensa in 2019 after her skin erupted in sun spots and melasma following the birth of her daughter, Gemma. Yensa’s buildable full-coverage makeup powered by superfoods was designed with the clean formulas and high performance she sought.
Yen’s COVID-related hair loss sparked concern about her scalp health and the idea for Jooy. She’s not the only one who experienced COVID-related scalp concerns. Scalp care became a huge focus for beauty consumers during the pandemic as stress led to scalp conditions such as psoriasis and generalized itchiness, and the category boomed as they adopted scalp products and routines.
Sensing opportunity in the scalp care market, Act+Acre, Jupiter, Straand and Canviiy are among several brands that have poured into it. The market research firm Coherent Market Insights forecasts the market on a global basis will advance at a compound annual growth rate of 7.1% from 2023 to 2030 to reach almost $20.8 billion.
“I believe rituals that have been used for thousands of years are always the best.”
Jooy’s tagline is “Never forget your roots,” and it has fermented superfood ingredients like apple cider vinegar, blueberry and rice water, many of which Yen’s mother, grandmother and aunt long incorporated in haircare rituals.
Yen says, “They really believed that healthy hair started at the root.” She adds, “I believe rituals that have been used for thousands of years are always the best. I’m just obsessed with taking the culture, the beauty and these rituals from my Chinese heritage and bringing them into a modern world for women.”
Yen’s Chinese heritage is reflected in her brands’ names, too. Yensa is a play on her last name and “yánsè,” the word for color in Mandarin. The word Jooy was chosen to include Yen’s initials and the number eight sideways. Jooy and Yensa’s products feature eight superfoods, and the number eight signifies luck, health, prosperity and infinite possibility in Chinese culture.
Gwyneth Paltrow played an unwitting role in the naming of Jooy. “I remember reading an article years ago when Gwyneth Paltrow said, ‘Oh, well, Google was trending at the time, and I just put two o’s between my initials and came up with Goop.'” says Yen. “For some reason I’m sitting here really early in the morning just thinking and then I was like, ‘Wait, if I put two o’s between mine, it’s Jooy, oh my God, this is great.’”
Jooy is beginning in direct-to-consumer distribution, but Yen is in talks with a handful of undisclosed retailers to get its products on store shelves. Jooy’s products are formulated to adhere to the clean beauty standards of retailers Sephora and Credo. Yen’s other brands are carried by retailers and e-tailers like Amazon, Nordstrom and QVC.
It cost Yen under $500,000 to bring Jooy to life. All of her brands are bootstrapped. “I want to self-finance it and just have solid and sustainable growth,” says Yen. “That’s my goal.”
Yen isn’t opposed to raising external funds in the future, but underscores there are benefits to not having them. “It’s great for us to create under constraints to really prove that, hey, we could do this, and we can develop something great and believe in our products and believe that people will love them,” she says. “We don’t have to go for the explosive growth.”
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