Artis, the luxury beauty brand that has sold over 1 million brushes in 30 countries and is in over 600 retail doors, wants to continue its growth trajectory by moving into skin care.
On Feb. 26, the brand relaunched four brushes, which originally sold as a set of five that retails for $160. Designed specifically for skin-care application, brushes can now be purchased individually for $38 to $75. The purpose, according to the brand, is to make the products more accessible to consumers.
According to Jeremy Adelman, Artis co-founder, pricing the brushes separately versus being locked into a set will also act as a “door opener” to the brand. Currently, Artis’ core customer group is women in their 20s to 40s. Though the interest in skin care among the brand’s current consumers is small, in its first day of selling the individual brushes on Artisbrush.com, 40 percent of purchases were made by new customers, the brand reported Tuesday evening. Currently, the individual brushes are available only on the brand’s e-commerce site.
“We [asked] customers, and we saw a huge number wanted these brushes as individual products,” said Adelman. “But we wanted to get a read first on [consumer interest] in the products by offering the kit first.”
That Artis is shifting its focus from cosmetics to skin care is strategic, as the skin-care market has picked up speed recently. The U.S. skin-care market saw faster growth than makeup and fragrance in 2017, according to a 2018 report from NPD Group.
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Artis has been trying to expand its reach in a number of ways as of late: In September 2018, it debuted a pop-up in New York City, relaunched its website and debuted a subscription service for its brush-cleansing system. The latter has been profitable for Artis, as its cleansing system now makes up 10 percent of the company’s annual sales, Adelman said.
Separately, Artis sees the attention to skin care as an opportunity to reach men, as well. The global men’s grooming products market is projected to grow at a rate of 5 percent between 2018 to 2023, according to market research group Mordor Intelligence. The men’s skin-care market has seen a number of recent entrants driving this growth, including Counterman by Beautycounter, Oars + Alps, Baselight by Bespoke Post and Hims.
“This [relaunch] was the next step for the brand, and it crosses genders, too. We hear that men want these products,” said Adelman. “As the business grows, why not offer brushes to them?” However, Artis makes a conscious decision to use gender-neutral language in all its marketing and online content so that “any gender” can have a comfortable experience.
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To promote the individual brushes on Tuesday, Artis launched an email campaign and updated its homepage to feature the new offerings. Prior, it teased the debut on Instagram, where the brand has 330,000 followers. The brand will also seed product to not-yet-determined unpaid influencers (both men and women), as well as to customers throughout the next few months.
“We are seeing people are more mindful of their skin regimen, and [our brushes] are part of that process,” said Adelman. “This relaunch is another step as we continue to expand in the skin-care space now and in the future.”
