Launch Date: December 2019
Geography: New York City, New York
Founder: Francisco Costa, Founder + CEO
Executive Team: Nadia Yousif, General Manager
2026 Full Year Projected Revenue: $5M - $8M, according to industry estimates
Primary Category: Bodycare
Other Categories:
Funding: Partnership
Primary Distribution Channel: DTC
Other Distribution Channels:
Key Retail Partners:
2026 Projected Offline Distribution Points: 200
Costa Brazil is a sustainable beauty and wellness brand created by Francisco Costa, former Creative Director of Calvin Klein, and built on the belief that the spirit of beauty is inseparable from the health of the earth.
Born from Francisco’s time in the Brazilian Amazon, the brand is rooted in the region’s biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, natural materials, and deep reverence for nature. Rather than positioning itself as a conventional skincare company, Costa Brazil was built around the idea of clean luxury rooted in place, using sustainably sourced Amazonian ingredients such as breu resin and kaya oil to create sensorial products that reflect both environmental stewardship and Francisco’s refined design sensibility.
Costa Brazil sits at the intersection of luxury bodycare, fragrance, skincare, and environmental responsibility, bringing the spirit of Brazil into modern beauty through scent, texture, ritual, and responsible sourcing.
Insights: Francisco Costa, Founder + CEO
Why now and why you?
Beauty and wellness are no longer separate from responsibility, provenance, and environmental impact—they are defined by them. At the same time, there is a growing urgency to reimagine how nature is represented and sourced in luxury, particularly ecosystems like the Amazon, which are both culturally vital and environmentally under pressure. Costa Brazil was created at this exact intersection, where consumers are seeking meaning as much as refinement.
What fuels your competitive advantage?
My background in fashion design anchors the brand in high fashion legitimacy rather than typical wellness entrepreneurship. When I launched Costa Brazil, I wasn’t entering beauty as an outsider; I was translating a luxury design mindset into skincare and fragrance. Another competitive advantage comes from a fairly tight combination of origin credibility, ingredient exclusivity, and luxury positioning that most clean-beauty brands can’t easily replicate. The origin story and geographic specificity are an advantage, as the brand is explicitly rooted in the Brazilian Amazon—not just aesthetically but operationally—giving a strong “place-based” identity that many competitors can’t fully own. The Amazon narrative isn’t just marketing; it’s tied to ingredient sourcing and community partnerships, which creates authenticity and emotional differentiation in a crowded clean-beauty market. Costa Brazil's sensory signature builds around Amazonian botanicals like breu resin and kaya oil, which are not mainstream commodity actives.
What’s your proudest accomplishment to date?
I'm proud of our flagship store because it transforms Costa Brazil from a product experience into a lived environment. This store allows us to bring the Amazonian sensibility that inspires Costa Brazil into a physical, sensory form: material, light, texture, and ritual all come together in one place. It’s not just about selling products; it’s about creating an atmosphere where people can slow down and understand the philosophy behind what we do.
What is the one thing you wish someone had told you?
I wish someone had told me that building something meaningful rarely follows a straight path.
You can have a clear vision, a beautiful product, and a strong point of view, but the right partnerships, funding, and timing matter just as much. A brand needs creativity and purpose, but it also needs the right support around it to protect the vision and give it room to grow. That balance is everything.
What would you tell your past self before starting this journey?
I would tell myself to trust the vision, but understand that building a brand rooted in purpose takes patience, resilience, and conviction.
Costa Brazil was never meant to be a conventional beauty company. It was created from a deeply personal experience in the Amazon and a belief that luxury, nature, and responsibility could coexist. I would remind my past self that staying true to that belief, even when the path is complicated, is what gives the brand its meaning.
Costa Brazil has had to navigate unexpected challenges and moments of recalibration, but the journey has only reinforced the importance of perseverance, protecting the original vision, and believing that what is built with purpose can find its way forward.
What does success look like in the next 3-5 years?
Success for the brand in the next 3-5 years is not about scale alone, but about depth and permanence. It means Costa Brazil has stayed true to its original intention—rooted in the Amazon, guided by respect for nature, and expressed through a clear design and sensory language—while continuing to evolve in a thoughtful way. I would see success in whether the brand has built lasting trust with its community, not just in terms of customers, but also in how it engages with sourcing partners and the ecosystems we depend on. It’s about strengthening those relationships over time rather than extracting from them. It also means creating products and spaces that feel essential rather than seasonal—things people return to because they have meaning and emotional weight, not because they are new.
What's one industry trend that is overhyped, and what's being overlooked?
One trend I think is overhyped is the idea that innovation in beauty is primarily about speed—newness for its own sake, constant drops, constant disruption. There’s a lot of energy around acceleration, especially driven by social media and data, but I don’t think that automatically creates meaning or longevity. What gets lost is depth: the origin of ingredients, the integrity of formulation, and the emotional and sensory experience over time. Real innovation to me is not about how fast something is launched, but how enduring it feels once it’s part of someone’s life. In that sense, I think we need less obsession with velocity and more respect for refinement.
How do you think the industry needs to evolve?
The industry needs to evolve from a mindset of consumption to one of responsibility and continuity. For a long time, beauty and fashion have been driven by novelty cycles—constant launches, constant urgency, constant replacement. That model is starting to feel out of sync with how people actually want to live today.
It’s not just about performance or aesthetics, but about creating products and experiences that feel intentional and connected to something larger than the category itself.
If you could wave a magic wand, what one wish would you make for your business?
I would wish for sustainability to be easier to execute at scale. As a brand, we are constantly balancing what we want to do with what is actually available, from packaging choices to sourcing and production. My magic wand would be more access to innovative, beautiful, sustainable materials and the ability to make those choices without compromise.
And if I could sneak in a second wish, it would be for Costa Brazil to reach more people without ever losing what makes it special. To grow with intention, introduce more people to the beauty and richness of Brazil, and continue proving that beauty can be sensorial, effective, elevated, and deeply connected to the health of the earth.
