Shortly after bringing Lord Jones into Sephora locations in July, the beauty retailer is expanding its in-store assortment with CBD beauty brand Saint Jane.
Saint Jane, which is less than a year old, first made an appearance on Sephora.com in May. After its online debut, the brand’s Luxury Beauty Serum that contains 500 milligrams of CBD and retails for $125, has been a top-five best-selling product within the CBD category and a top-15 best-selling skin-care product on Sephora.com, said Saint Jane founder and CEO Casey Georgeson. Other beauty brands that sell products within Sephora’s CBD digital lineup include Josie Maran and Flora & Bast. Saint Jane will debut as Sephora’s second CBD brand in physical retail on Jan. 10, when it launches in 280-plus stores. Lord Jones, for its part, expanded into about 170 Sephora stores this past summer.
There has been talk by industry insiders that Sephora is developing its own set of CBD guidelines, much like it did for clean beauty with Clean at Sephora in 2018. Despite the mad dash for retailers to stock CBD beauty products — Ulta just expanded its assortment with Kopari last week — no set of standards for ingredient levels or efficacy claims has emerged. Saint Jane appointed Dr. June Chin as chief medical adviser to show its commitment to ingredient transparency and the levels of CBD that are best suited to an individual’s needs.
To equip Saint Jane’s in-store launch — the beauty brand is also sold at Space NK, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue — it is producing approximately 200,000 samples for Sephora’s Beauty Insider program that counts 25 million customers as members. Additionally, Saint Jane has created 280 boxes of product and videos to educate Sephora associates and hired a Sephora-specific staff member to manage day-to-day operations and communications. Georgeson said this move into Sephora has been the brand’s largest investment and that spend was well into six figures.
This level of commitment is warranted not only because Saint Jane is such a young brand, but also because it will be featured in Sephora’s “Stress” animation. Animations at Sephora, which are themed around trends, happen 12 to 15 times a year. Involved brands are promoted in all of Sephora’s marketing levers, including in-store wall and table placements, beauty adviser communications and online. Saint Jane would not share annual revenue for 2019, but Georgeson expects to grow the business by 300% in 2020 largely via retail partnerships, since as a CBD brand it still can not advertise on digital channels such as Facebook or Instagram.
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“We want to nurture this relationship so that all of our retailers are not growing a mile wide and an inch deep,” she said. “Every retailer places a specific role for us because of our inability to advertise, and Sephora adds credibility to our brand. We need an A-plus in Sephora to succeed long-term.”
Saint Jane will be developing Sephora exclusives following its in-store launch. However, Georgeson said there is more to do with the brand’s two face-and-body serums in brick-and-mortar locations before moving on to a slew of new products.
“There is more wood to chop here, so we want to be careful not to move on from products too quickly. Our pipeline is rich for the next year for Sephora, our other partners and for direct-to-consumer. We are understanding ways to launch exclusives and create buzz for every channel,” said Georgeson.
