Deep Dive: Is The Indie Beauty Industry Really Booming?

If you follow beauty, you may think small independent brands make up the bulk of the industry. It feels like a new line launches daily, complete with inspirational founder story, celeb backer … oh, and some products, too. Teresa Lo, a longtime beauty marketer-turned-CEO of JVN Hair, takes us back to the early noughties, when the indie scene exploded.

“There was so much new opportunity, new tech, new communication and marketing approaches that if you were the first to try it, you gained something—some of those bigger organizations were slower to be risk-taking and try things,” she explains. The mega companies she speaks of? L’Oreal, which as well as its namesake brand owns Lancôme, Maybelline, La Roche Posay and more, followed by Estée Lauder (MAC, Bobbi Brown, The Ordinary), Procter & Gamble (Pantene, Olay, Gillette). You have to scroll all the way down to No. 45, Lush, to find what might be considered an independent brand.

That means indie brands are competing for a relatively small slice of the pie—or palette. New brands continue to launch—last year the number in the U.S. increased by 3 per cent to 4,933—but everything isn’t necessarily rosy. 

“During and post COVID there was a huge explosion in beauty because we were all inside; we discovered, we tried, we dyed our hair, we could try every mask there was,” says Simon Tooley, owner of Etiket, an independent beauty retailer/spa in Toronto and Montreal. There was also a boom in knowledge about products and procedures. “We had nothing else to do but slather on serums and scroll TikTok,” echoes dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss.

But, as with most things, the industry hit a saturation point where there were too many brands, and a “levelling off” occurred. “It’s a hard business,” Tooley says, referring to the complicated process of marketing and selling your products, besides making good ones. Many great indie brands have been purchased by conglomerates (Tata Harper by Amorepacific, Drunk Elephant by Shiseido). However, while venture capitalists were once keen to give big bucks to artisanal perfume brands or skincare startups, the money started to dry up—or, the money men began to demand returns founders simply couldn’t deliver. Along the way, some brilliant, beloved brands went out of business. 

Consonant was founded in Toronto in 2010 by William Baker. Completely self-funded, it was known for its fragrance-free-sensitive-skin-friendly-but-extremely-effective skincare. Kristina Breckon was there almost from the start—first as marketing manager and eventually as president. It closed at the end of last year, despite great products and loyal customers—due to the pandemic, but also because the marketplace was evolving.

“When we were first on the scene there weren’t nearly as many brands,” Breckon says. “Now I think the barriers to entry are quite low, so it’s easy for people to start a brand. But I think it’s very expensive to do it properly, to maintain it and then to compete with the big conglomerates and actually be able to play in those bigger spaces.” She points to one example—free shipping and same- or next-day delivery—offered by large retailers like Sephora. “The expectations that are set by these big companies are sometimes impossible for small teams. We found we were actually having to pull back the curtain and make videos to show people, ‘Here are some packages. This one is going to B.C. and it’s costing us $26 to ship there.’ When we’re offering free shipping over $50 and we’re paying $26 for shipping, how can we survive?”

There’s also been an increasing expectation for founders and owners to rep their brands on social media and become influencers. “They’re having to not only run the company and do all of those things but be in front of the camera and tell their story and bring people behind the scenes and connect,” Breckon says. Coupled with that, influencers, celebrities and experts have started to develop their own product lines, the rationale being that they already have a platform and audience and therefore a readymade group of customers. 

There’ve been varying degrees of success for this; for every Haus Labs (Lady Gaga) or Rare Beauty (Selena Gomez) there’s a Jaclyn Cosmetics (Jaclyn Hill) or Twentyninepalms (Jared Leto), both of which went to the wall in the last couple of years. JVN Hair is one of the unusual brands that came perilously close to disappearing but was saved by Lo and Jonathan Van Ness.

JVN Hair was launched by Amyris, a biotech firm, in 2021, to much fanfare. There was the celeb component—Van Ness is a Netflix star with millions of social media followers. But he’s also an Aveda-trained expert with 20 years’ experience in hairdressing, and his products were really, really good. Lo had worked for Ipsy, Sephora and Biossance, another Amyris label. All the ingredients were there for indie brand success. 

But all wasn’t well behind the scenes. Amyris filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and Van Ness and Lo were left trying to find a new backer for JVN Hair, though at that time neither even had equity in it. “Jonathan is very public facing, but what’s unique about him is he represents the underdog—like the consumers who were not represented in traditional beauty,” says Lo. “He felt a lot of responsibility to prove we can survive this.” It took the pair a year or so to find a backer they liked—a private equity firm—and now both have equity and the power to make decisions about the brand, from its overall direction to shipping costs and raw materials. “I think it’s just taught us to be extra resilient and extra scrappy, [to keep] that entrepreneurial mindset,” she says. 

One area that most of the experts agree is burgeoning is doctor-founded brands—better still if they already have an online presence. It’s the sweet spot between serious expertise and a loyal fanbase. Case in point: Idriss, a cosmetic derm with umpteen letters after her name, and even more (millions of) social media followers.

“I was frustrated by all of the confusion in the marketplace when it came to skincare and beauty products, so my goal on social prior to starting a brand was simply to help provide some clarity among all the noise and debunk misinformation,” says Idriss, who, after being fired when pregnant, was at rock bottom when she started sharing videos in her PJs. “Something unexpected started happening. People weren’t just engaging with the information—they were connecting with the rawness of it all.” In 2020 she asked her followers if she should start a beauty brand, and they said yes; her skincare launched in two years later as PillowTalkDerm, with a name change to Dr. Idriss Skincare in 2024. The current focus is products that contain tried-and-tested gold-standard ingredients like kojic acid and vitamin C for dark spots, and arnica in a roll-on serum that’s meant to depuff.

As Tooley said, beauty is a hard business—and getting harder. Is there still a place for an expert who has a great idea, but hasn’t secured millions in funding and doesn’t have a gazillion followers? Ramya Viswanathan thinks so. She’s a chemist who’s formulated products for many brands, and recently founded her own, Cmpressd Beauty, which specializes in solid shampoos and conditioners. She says you don’t need a big name or a massive following—or even oodles of cash. You just need an idea that people are actually looking for—and the skills to make it.

“I started my company really as a passion project, to simplify my travels when I was going to be living out of the country for a little bit and needed something for space-saving,” Viswanathan says. “I was just passing around samples to other people. Everybody asked me for more.” 

She says there’s a lot of skincare out there, but the haircare area is really ripe for innovation, and there’s plenty of empty space to make your own—better still if it hits some of the concerns people have now around excess packaging, while still being effective. “I haven’t really been leading with the environmental part of my brand. It happens to be plastic free and everything, but it’s just good shampoo.” 

Viswanathan’s brand is self-funded, and she wants to grow at a pace that’s sustainable and allows her to stay involved and in control. Staying involved and in touch, and being authentic to your original vision, is a message all the founders we spoke to have, whether they’re behind-the-scenes scientists or celebrities. “It’s really important when you have that founder there who’s involved and using their own experience, maybe thinking about things that businesspeople aren’t going to be considering. Those are the brands that have a soul,” Viswanathan confirms. —Aileen Lalor