Alpyn Beauty, the 3-year-old clean skin-care brand, is deepening its relationship with Sephora.
Alpyn Beauty markets itself as a “wild-crafted” brand with ingredients sourced directly from its home base of Jackson Hole, Wyo. On Tuesday, the brand debuted its latest product, the Triple Vitamin C Brightening Bounce Cream, and announced its expansion to Sephora’s full national fleet of approximately 500 stores taking place on October 8. It has sold through Sephora.com since March 2020 and is also sold through Credo, Detox Market and Bluemercury. According to a brand spokesperson, between its launch in 2018 and 2020, the brand’s DTC e-commerce sales have grown triple digits year-over-year and are continuing to grow in the high double digits in 2021. Sales with retail partners are also increasing by “high double digits” year-over-year in 2021. The privately-owned brand is projected to grow its overall sales by over 30% in 2021 and expects to double sales in 2022.
“At this point, we are working at the top of the funnel and increasing our brand awareness. Sephora can not only help you do that with our own dot-com site, but also socially, as well,” said Nance Hastings, Alpyn Beauty president, who joined in May. “There’s such a strong story to tell, and we want to tell it and do it in a way that is on our terms and maintains our brand equity.”
To emphasize the “wild-crafted” element of the brand, Alpyn Beauty’s Sephora gondolas will feature imagery of Alpyn Beauty founder Kendra Kolb Butler at her residence in Jackson Hole. Alpyn Beauty also created a flagship brand video featuring Kolb Butler to show to Sephora beauty advisors during training. The video can be accessed through Sephora’s internal training portal, as can one-minute videos about the brand’s products. Alpyn Beauty also sells serums, moisturizers, cleansers and face masks. It’s a similar strategy to the brand’s communication with customers via social media, where it has approximately 27,000 Instagram followers, as well as TikTok and YouTube accounts. Notably, Alpyn Beauty has its own in-house creative and marketing teams.
“We’re [trying to] educate them through this big library of imagery and [videos that encapsulate] the smells and sights and sounds of Jackson Hole,” said Kolb Butler. “We wanted to transport our customers into the woods where we harvest from and let them understand what the flowers sound like when they’re rustling in the breeze. We’re trying to bring some nature into people’s lives.”
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There will also be a “robust” paid digital advertising program to promote the Sephora expansion and drive customers to the retailer, said Hastings. The brand has an existing sampling program with Sephora, wherein it participates twice a year in Sephora’s complimentary checkout sampling with sachets. It also offers deluxe samples once a year to customers through Sephora’s beauty rewards redemption program. Hastings said she hopes for Alpyn Beauty to offer deluxe samples up to three times a year in the near future.
“[For now] we will continue to focus on product development and new innovations … There’s a way to mix these plants to some other categories within our realm. Maybe makeup, fragrance or body care, [but] we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in terms skin-care formulas,” said Kolb Butler. “International expansion is in our future at some point [too]; we’ve had [retailers] come to us from all over the world [asking to stock us].”
