Beauty veterans Lorrie King and Celeste Lee are co-founders and CEO and CMO, respectively, of Caire Beauty. The range launched in January and is designed for women over 40 years old. Clinical-science-meets-vegan is the brand’s positioning, with Defiance Science serving as its proprietary PhD-developed technology addressing skin aging caused by hormone decline and menopause—from facial sags and undereye bags, to loss of firmness and structure in the face and neck.
Lorrie kicked off her career in beauty and CPG at Unilever, spearheading the iconic Elizabeth Taylor and Chloe franchises. Later she became the CMO on the U.S. launch team of Boots in the U.S., Global Marketing Lead for Halle Berry and Celine Dion and other fragrance brands at Coty. Most recently, Lorrie served as President of SiO Beauty, the digital-first, overnight wrinkle-eliminating silicone skin patch brand.
Celeste started her career in beauty with Givaudan, the world’s largest maker of flavors and fragrances as Head of Fine Fragrance Marketing, and subsequently established her own boutique consultancy, working with a range of top tier brands and portfolios including Pernod-Ricard, Kopari, Coty, Colorescience and Avon.
Both women are graduates of The Wharton School, and both started their careers in finance. The duo knew they were creating something important when their friends constantly asked for skin care recommendations because their long-time moisturizers and regimens weren’t doing the job anymore. They met with scientists to understand more about how and why skin aging changes after 40, and again at the onset of actual menopause. Lorrie and Celeste realized there was an opportunity to educate women and create science-backed, clean, hormone-responsive skin care solutions. They like to say that they put the “i” in Caire to symbolize each individual woman’s unique journey. Here, CEW Beauty News caught up with them to talk about the origin of Caire Beauty, how they’re funding the range and what’s next for the brand.
BN: When did you launch the brand?
Celeste & Lorrie: We did a soft launch in the beginning of November, but our formal launch was January 1. We’re actively in-market and we’ve gotten several hundred orders so far. We’re doing pretty well. We’re starting to get subscriptions coming in and we’ve gotten repeat orders. We even have our one or two people who have ordered for the third time. So we were really psyched about that. People notice a difference in their skin. It’s remarkable to hear and see, you know, their feedback starting to come back on our reviews. So we’re really excited about that. We are really trying to tackle what we think are rather large voids. One is the cost standpoint. We’re going to try to stay at $50 as our average price point.
BN: Why did you opt for a DTC company to start?
C&L: We know from Lorrie’s digital-driven experience that this is a highly DTC-friendly age tier. We really want to hone in on Celeste’s notion of hormone defiance as related to skin care. Menopause happens, on average in the United States, at the age of 51 and a half. But the thing is, the hormone decline issue for a woman starts at around 40 or 41. There’s a very important period of time, pre-menopause, when you can actually work on strengthening skin and make sure it’s not fundamentally collapsing.
BN: Tell us about Caire Beauty’s serum and matching mask.
C&L: They feature this hyaluronic acid complex that includes not only the tiniest HA in the world, but also a growth factor that is biofermented in order to signal your own body to produce more skin molecules. This is one of the key ingredients to turn on HA and collagen synthesis together. You actually have these, for lack of a technical word, seeds, in your skin, but because the estrogen and progesterone isn’t turning it on, they just kind of disappear. It’s like a plane taking off but nobody’s in the pilot seat. Every day you have the potential to create all of these cells, but not all of them would ever get turned on. So that’s partially what we’re doing, our complex goes into skin and tells your body to turn more on.
BN: Is there a plan to expand beyond skin care for the face?
C&L: Our focus is strictly hormone-defying science. We’ll be honing in on skin care, and not just for face. So our product roadmap plan is for body care, as well, because one of the biggest issues that came up in our market research and our focus groups is issues with hyper-dry skin. It makes sense because over time, what happens is each skin layer just gets a little thinner. So overall the entire skin barrier is getting a little bit thinner as you age.
BN: Daily hygiene can have an effect on how dry our skin gets?
C&L: Our bodies, especially as we get older, aren’t designed for a [daily] shower or bath hygiene, so the vital oil that’s naturally on your skin is very protective. It’s actually good for you, and the more it’s washed, the more removed. And then you can’t replace it naturally. So that was something that was coming up over and over and over. So we’re using our HA complex that signals better skin, but we’re also adding what we’re calling a biomimetic lipid. So it’s designed to help replenish that layer.
BN: How does this experience differ from Lorrie’s work with SiO Beauty?
Lorrie: With SiO, I was part of an incubator that an investor and his business partner developed, and SiO is a consumer brand within the portfolio. Caire is something Celeste and I started with our own capital. One of the things that we’re proud to say is that we were accepted into the prestigious Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) last year where they select between 10 and 12 companies twice a year in which to invest seed capital. We were the only 100 percent women-founded company. We were the only consumer brand to be selected. We received $100,000 in seed capital and we went through a four-month intensive bootcamp to learn the art of fundraising. We graduated late last year where we had a Demo day presentation at the end of October, and that was to about 500 investors. And now we’re actively fundraising. So this whole piece around the investment world is something that is obviously very new to us, but we’re really proud of what we have accomplished thus far.