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Jessica Alba’s Honest Company has had a bumpy ride since its inception in 2012. But the company just landed a $200 million investment and announced a bunch of big changes.
The Honest Company, which started with household products and baby items with an emphasis on “clean” ingredients, launched the Honest Beauty line in 2015. Hair products came in 2016, and a millennial-focused skin care line launched last year. Starting in July, Honest Beauty will be completely overhauled, according to WWD, which notes that the company’s biggest demographic for beauty products is moms ages 25 to 35.
The beauty line will relaunch with fewer products, new formulations, new packaging, simplified product names, and a lower price point. (For example, a face oil that is currently $55 will cost $35.) “Having too many things isn’t always a good thing, and being more specific and curated in your offerings is actually better,” Alba told the trade paper.
Honest Beauty currently sells via its own site, at Target, at Ulta (hair only), and on Amazon, and will continue to do so once the new products launch. (Many of the company’s products are currently discounted 25 percent at Amazon.) The prices have always seemed slightly high for Target, so the price correction makes sense. Daniel Martin, the makeup artist now most famous for doing Meghan Markle’s wedding makeup, will still be actively involved in the beauty line in his role as creative color consultant, according to a company representative. Jennifer Yepez, Alba’s personal hairstylist, used to be an ambassador for the hair care line, but there is no one in that role at this time.
The changes will be limited to beauty and new baby products for now, though a brand representative tells Racked that “there is a lot more innovation to come in the next year” for the company. The brand has added an in-house lab to focus on product formulation and innovation.
This feels like a fresh start for a company that has dealt with multiple lawsuits and some terrible PR over the past few years. In 2016, a lawsuit alleged that some of its cleaning product ingredients were falsely labeled. That was settled in 2017 for $1.5 million, and a similar suit over false claims was settled for more than $7 million a few months later. The brand has also been called out for making sunscreen that doesn’t work. It had to recall baby wipes because some were contaminated with mold. Then it had to recall organic baby powder for possible contamination. All in all, it was a series of very unfortunate events for a company whose name is “Honest.”
The Honest Company was once valued at $1.7 billion in 2015, with prospects of an IPO and rumors of an acquisition by Unilever, which eventually acquired Honest’s competitor Seventh Generation instead. Now, the company will use the $200 investment from L Catterton, a large firm that invests heavily in the consumer brands, to fund its new innovation labs and expand globally. A sale or IPO seems to have been tabled for the moment.
An executive told WWD that Honest Beauty’s sales were up 34 percent last year. Honest hasn’t received the same sort of social media buzz that other makeup brands have, but the push here is to grow the whole enterprise into a “mega brand.” And the clean beauty market is the hottest it’s ever been, and growing. Pricing products appropriately and tightening up the selection seems like a good idea. Target has been expanding its so-called clean beauty assortment through the years, including stocking a limited edition collection of products by Beautycounter, a “clean” multilevel marketing brand that has been growing rapidly and can be considered one of Honest Beauty’s main competitors in the space right now.
Alba has mentioned that she will step back from the day-to-day operations to focus on her acting career. She has often been compared to that other actor turned natural lifestyle entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, who has done much the opposite and turned most of her energy to Goop.
Whether Honest can pick up the growth trajectory it had three years ago remains to be seen, but the company seems committed to regaining customers’ trust.