On Sunday, actor Ashley Tisdale’s new wellness brand, Being Frenshe, launched at Target. Created with Maesa, the incubator behind Anomaly by Priyanka Chopra and Flower by Drew Barrymore, the brand debuted with a 45-product assortment spanning candles, body washes, hair masks and bath bombs.
Like Rosie Huntington Whiteley’s Rose Inc., which was incubated by Amyris and stemmed from her blog of the same name, Being Frenshe is an offshoot of Tisdale’s Frenshe blog. She started to the blog in 2020 to document her wellness and mental health journey. “I wasn’t even thinking about doing a product line. I was very much just wanting to connect with people,” she said of the blog. Through the platform, however, “I started to really understand what [people] were going through in this pandemic and what we were all kind of going through together,” she said.
Tisdale’s blog and the platform it created on Instagram have allowed her a chance to connect with fans on a different, deeper and more meaningful level. “I really connect with people more on Frenshe because I get the DMs versus on my personal [account]. There are so many people on my personal page, and it’s just random stuff people ask me. But on Frenshe, it’s very much this community that is talking to me about mental health,” Tisdale said. Frenshe has 140,000 followers. Being Frenshe, the brand’s new Instagram account, already has 11,000. Tisdale herself, however, has nearly 15 million.
Tisdale had explored launching a brand on her own years ago, but openly said she’d failed at doing so. She was introduced to Maesa by her friend Kristin Ess, whose brand Kristin Ess Hair was co-created by the company and has since launched at Target.
As for selling her own brand at Target, Tisdale said it’s a dream come true.
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Through Tisdale’s own self-care practices, one of her discoveries was the power of scent to positively impact or change her mood. In creating Frenshe, she turned to her own collection of candles to inspire the five scent families she created with Maesa. The resulting collections include Lavender Cloud, to unwind and rest, Cashmere Vanilla, to soothe and comfort, and Bergamot Cedar for balance and harmony. The products enable customers to create their own rituals. For example, Lavender Cloud-scented products can be used to support one’s bedtime ritual.
“The vision for Being Frenshe was born in 2020, while living in an altered world where we needed more care than ever before,” said Dana Steinfeld, svp of Blue Sky brand development at Maesa. “As Covid shifted how we lived, our priorities turned toward safety, mental health and wellness. Consumers sought self-care and recognized scent as an important part of their daily rituals, fueling massive growth and renewed interest in the power of fragrance. Each Being Frenshe scent is designed to enhance your mood. If you are having a stressful day, you can reach for the Unwind & Rest candle and body wash. Or if you’re feeling down, you can apply the Joy & Bliss body oil or the hair, body and linen mist.”
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Cashmere Vanilla is an elevated take on the smell of one of Tisdale’s extremely relatable obsessions: Trader Joe’s Jasmine Rice. “It was wild to [discover that Maesa was able to] create some sort of bubble where they actually captured the smell of the rice,” she said. Bergamot Cedar was inspired by Big Sur, one of Tisdale’s favorite places to visit.
Accessibility is a key part of Frenshe’s brand story and take on wellness. Everything in the collection retails for under $17. “At Frenshe, we believe wellness is for everyone,” Tisdale said. “I just love like how much you’re getting for the amount of money,” she said, noting that she’s personally been using the 14-ounce body wash for months and has yet to run out.
