Kelly Kovack [00:00:09]: This episode is presented by Eco Soap Bank, a global humanitarian non-profit that’s working to save, sanitize, and supply recycled soap with hygiene education for the developing world.
Amy Risley [00:00:28]: Hi, I’m Amy Risley, the founder of Skinfix, and to me, it’s a matter of science.
Kelly Kovack [00:00:38]: Finding a beauty heritage brand is like finding a needle in a haystack. I’m Kelly Kovack, founder of BeautyMatter. Unlocking the value in a heritage brand requires vision and a very particular skill set. The balance is business acumen and branding skill. Legacy can be a liability, or a unique differentiator. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to unlocking the value in a brand’s heritage; every business has a different history. Taking a 160-year old heritage formula for treating eczema and turning it into an innovative and relevant brand is certainly not for the faint of heart. In 2014, Amy Risley discovered Skinfix, nurturing the business into a brand that’s become purpose-built for this moment.
So, hello my friend! I am so happy to have you here, Amy, and it’s nice to just see your face, even though we’re doing this by voice, it’s a podcast, we’re still doing it kind of Zoom-style. So, how are you?
Amy Risley [00:01:48]: I am great, thank you so much for having me. I love your podcast, I love BeautyMatter, and it is also great to see your face, hopefully in person soon.
Kelly Kovack [00:01:58]: I know! You know, in trying to sort of pull this together, kind of putting my thoughts together, I was trying to figure out how long we’ve known each other, because it’s been a really long time. You were one of my first clients when I left Bliss and set up my first consulting shop, which, I mean, that’s over 20 years ago.
Amy Risley [00:02:16]: It was, I think, 1999.
Kelly Kovack [00:02:20]: Wow.
Amy Risley [00:02:21]: Yeah, a long time ago.
Kelly Kovack [00:02:23]: I know. And, here we are.
Amy Risley [00:02:25]: Amazing, and you were amazingly insightful and helpful then and continue to be amazingly insightful and helpful, to my business and the industry.
Kelly Kovack [00:02:36]: Well, thank you for those kind words. But, I just love…you know, it’s always fun to have people on both the webinars and the podcast where there’s a history, because it just feels like you can go so much deeper in conversations, because there’s sort of this shared experience. So, I’m looking forward to diving in to what you’re doing now.
Amy Risley [00:02:58]: Thank you. I’m looking forward to it too. You always ask such good questions.
Kelly Kovack [00:03:04]: Well, alright, so let’s get started. You know, your career has really been this amalgam of big beauty and entrepreneurial start-ups, and since 2014, you’ve been building a brand around a 19th century heritage formula for treating eczema. I love heritage brand stories, I’m a total junkie for heritage brands, and have such respect for people who lead these brands and kind of resurrect these brands, because it takes this passion, vision – they really are a labor of love in many respects, and if they’re not, they don’t work; I think that’s kind of the secret sauce. But, to set the stage, can you share a little bit about your backstory, and how you discovered this business?
Amy Risley [00:03:49]: Yeah, I had worked in beauty, as you know, from the beginning of my career, L’Oréal, and then at Coty, and then I worked for Lauder in the U.K. when they just acquired Jo Malone, so I was part of the team that worked with Jo during her earn-out phase. And then, I moved to Canada, Nova Scotia, actually, where there’s no beauty business, no consumer beauty business…
Kelly Kovack [00:04:12]: But you found one!
Amy Risley [00:04:13]: Yeah, and I had a couple of babies and I was a stay-at-home mom for about five years, which was awesome, would never trade that for the world, and thought, “Okay, now it’s time to do something again.” I worked for a company that was selling fish oil to the supplement space, I was very excited by the wellness industry and learned a lot about the regulatory environment related to fish oil and the claims we could make. That company then sold to DSM and moved to New Jersey, and so I was out of work and looking around, and I was introduced to a woman, locally, here in Nova Scotia, Canada, that had a formula that her great, great grandfather created in 1870 in Yorkshire, England and the family had emigrated to Canada in the early 1900s, and he continued to make this formula in their kitchen and sell it privately for decades, and I loved the formula because it had four pharmaceutical-grade active ingredients in it at very high levels, which coming from L’Oréal and Lauder, I never would have historically been able to do. You know, you sort of pick one ingredient, build a marketing story around it. This thing was loaded with actives, but what really captivated me, Kelly, were the letters, basically the early testimonials that people had written to this family over the decades. There were literally hundreds of letters from people who had serious skin issues, things like diabetic foot ulcers, a form of dermatitis called Lichen sclerosus, psoriasis, and had tried everything, seen lots of doctors, tried lots of modalities, and finally found this healing balm from 1870 and it had worked to heal their skin. So, that was the hook, it’s what got me, and I ended up mortgaging my house and buying this little brand, which was a formula and a great name and a great story, and a vision for what clean skincare could really be, and that it could actually be medicinal and truly treat skin issues, serious skin issues.
Kelly Kovack [00:06:08]: So, I find it so interesting that a business based around a formula and an ethos of a brand created in 1870 feels almost purpose-built for this moment in time. It’s clinical and science-based, it’s empathetic, and it lives comfortably in premium and mass outlets. And, I know that it didn’t just happen, you built into kind of the opportunity, obviously sort of a set of circumstances has kind of amplified all of that and really maximized the confluence of trends that puts Skinfix kind of in the crosshairs of the moment. Can you share some of the challenges that you’ve turned into differentiating factors and have actually fueled the growth of Skinfix?
Amy Risley [00:06:57]: Yeah, that’s such a great question. I mean, we love the quote, “Luck is a combination of when opportunity meets preparedness,” and I think that is just absolutely Skinfix. I mean, you captured it beautifully, we have sort of been doing our thing, and then all of the sudden, it’s the thing that is kind of the hottest category of skincare right now. I think for us, the challenge with Skinfix is that we were so early in with this concept. When we first launched U.S. retail in 2017, it was – clean was just happening, clean was really just happening in skincare, and this idea that clean could also truly be clinical, medicinal, was just five years off, it was a long way off. So, we believed in what we were doing, we believed that clean could be truly clinical, could be truly science-led and efficacious, and we kept going with our problem formulations that treated specific skin issues, we worked hard to gather the clinical efficacy behind those products, we worked with the derm community, which was really kind of the long game at the time, because at the time, derms were not interested in clean. We really showed them our science, showed them our formulations, got them on board, and it was a huge challenge because it just wasn’t what people were focused on in that moment in time. They were focused on sort of products being clean and smelling great and having all of these sort of trendy ingredients in them, and there certainly was a market that had true skin issues that were interested in Skinfix, but it didn’t sort of have the momentum behind it that it has right now, and so that was a challenge, sort of staying in the game and really pushing for what we believed in and staying true to our ethos.
Kelly Kovack [00:08:46]: I know that we talked about this kind of early on, that, you know, one of the things about white space opportunities that no one really talks about, and why they’re elusive, is that when you take a white space opportunity and try and put it in a retail environment, there isn’t a natural home for it, and I know that you were kind of up against that, because, you know, you have this portfolio of products that live – that potentially could live in multiple sections in sort of a, call it a Target or the like, and you don’t naturally fit into sort of like the beauty skincare set.
Amy Risley [00:09:30]: Absolutely, and I know you and I have discussed this for a number of years. It was a challenge because, to your point, we could have been in the HAB section, the skincare section, we could have been in first aid, we could have been in the natural set. We were actually put in the middle of the derm recommended skincare set originally, at Target, amongst the Cerave’s, Cetaphil’s, Aveeno, the AmLactin’s, and here we are, this little brand, trying to say, “And by the way we’re clean! We can do everything they can do, but we’re clean.” It was really a challenge, but it was also an opportunity, because it really established the fact that we were truly clinically-led and efficacious, we weren’t just another sort of new, natural or clean product on the market. But, it was hard. I mean, the retailers have always been really collaborative with us in terms of trying to figure out where we fit and what makes the most sense for us.
Kelly Kovack [00:10:26]: Clean and sustainable brands have really become table stakes. So, it went from you were too early, to everyone’s doing it. The problem is both…you know, they’re open to interpretation, there’s no regulation on terms, and more importantly, it’s not really a differentiating factor. One of the trends coming out of the pandemic, though, is the fact that science is cool, and people want brands that they can trust. How has the shift impacted your business, and what are you harnessing in this moment from a marketing perspective to sort of differentiate from this clean kind of table stakes, undefined landscape we have.
Amy Risley [00:11:10]: Yeah, great question. I mean, the moment is really harnessing us. It is really has just kind of taken us, and we have tremendous talent in our business right now, which is exciting. I agree with you, clean is foundational. I think if you’re going to launch a brand in 2021, it better be clean, you certainly better have a strong position on sustainability, all of the packaging vendors have made great strides with respect to offering packaging that’s more sustainable, but it’s never been the focus for us, it’s never been what we’ve really talked about, it’s just been something that we do, because we believe it’s the right thing to do. The science has always been our most important factor, and the clinical efficacy behind the products, and with COVID, you know, dermatologists, doctors have become really important influencers on social media, as you know. We’re looking to our medical community and our medical professionals for guidance and direction, and the fact that our product is actually clinically proven to treat things like hand eczema or face dermatitis, which are such important issues right now as we’re washing our hands and wearing masks, has just been just a perfect sort of confluence of timing, and we’re also, you know, accessibly priced, we’re not super premium, and I think that in this environment, we’re exactly what the consumer is looking for, and we’re exactly what the medical community is recommending, and we’ve just been incredibly lucky that we exist at this moment in time.
Kelly Kovack [00:12:47]: Do you find consumers are asking different questions now, or framing them differently than they did, say, ten months ago?
Amy Risley [00:12:55]: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, there’s just…there’s a lot of more knowledge around ingredients, but they’re even asking things like, “Is this an FDA approved ingredient?” It blows our mind. We’re like, yes, this is awesome! You actually know what that means, and why it’s important that it’s been proven for decades to treat this concern. They’re asking a lot about the levels of our ingredients, the percentages, which at Skinfix, we’ve always called out on our packaging the percent of our active ingredients, but they seem to be more interested in that. They’re interested in making sure that we don’t have fragrance, things that they’ve learned from a lot of the sort of skin influencer and derm community. Very different questions, I think, then they were contemplating ten months ago.
Kelly Kovack [00:13:45]: You know, one of the offshoots of this moment, I mean, it’s something that we were actually seeing happening as early as 2018-2019, is sort of the rise of real expertise, but overnight, sort of influencers that happened in March when the world sort of fell apart around us, but overnight, these influencers that served up perfectly curated Instagram moments felt so completely out of touch, and those that kind of peddled drama, it’s just like yeah, there’s enough drama in the world. I don’t care who did what to you, and keep it on YouTube and out of my social feed, and it really did happen really quickly. And, the skincare category obviously is having a moment on social media as people look for real information and experts, like you said, dermatologists, estheticians, and it’s also given rise to kind of this new influencer, or this skinfluencer, which I find this group of people so interesting, because they do try and peddle in facts, and there’s a transparency when they’re wrong, and they are very sort of honest about, “Hey, I don’t know everything, I’m not a scientist,” and they’re really sort of having a dialogue rather than sort of pushing information, I think. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this shift and how it has not only impacted the skincare category, but the industry at large, because I think this kind of influencer is here to stay, at least for a while.
Amy Risley [00:15:33]: I love it, I embrace it. I think it’s been an incredibly important shift, and I agree, I think it’s here to stay. I think that the honesty and the transparency, and also the level of sot of research that these influencers are putting into the products and the category, and establishing sort of what their ethos is – not pushing it on other people, to your point, saying, “This is what I think. This is what I know, and this is how I know it and this is why I think it, but you do you.” I love it. I think it’s so refreshing. I mean, I had reached out to Hyram Yarbro, I think it was about 15 months ago, I was supposed to go to Hawaii on vacation and I was following him, and just loved his ethos, we’re very aligned in our ethos about formulation, and I had reached out to him and asked if he wanted to have lunch with me when I was in Hawaii last Christmas, and it was really sort of at the precipice of him gaining traction on Instagram, he hadn’t launched TikTok yet. We just had lunch and I asked him a lot of questions about sunscreen in particular, because I don’t know a ton about sunscreen and I was asking about that. But, he loves Skinfix, he loves the way we formulate, and that has been incredibly helpful to us as a brand, but I just…people like him, people like Carmine Montalto, Skincarma, I just love the fact that they have a strong point of view, you know, they have a really strong ethos, and I think it’s great for the category. I do think it’s causing major changes to the category and major shifts, and I agree it’s not going away, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out, but I love the transparency, I love the education that they’re giving to consumers, and I love the dialogue that we’re having in skincare right now.
Kelly Kovack [00:17:25]: Yeah, I think it’s such sort of…the passion that they have is so kind of palpable, where the influencers that were kind of rose to success are sort of a different genre, where it was a bit more manufactured, and listen, they were very much on trend at that moment, of serving up these beautifully curated, perfect moments on Instagram, but this is a totally different animal.
Amy Risley [00:17:56]: It really is, and you know, I have two Gen Zs living in my house, a 15 and 16-year-old, a 16-year-old daughter who is very engaged in social media, and I love the fact that they’re getting this level of information, this level of honesty, this level of dialogue across all categories, but particularly in skincare. I think it’s great, they’re getting information, and they’re able to make their own opinions about that information, but I embrace it.
Kelly Kovack [00:18:26]: Do you see your daughter is kind of gravitating to skincare more than color?
Amy Risley [00:18:35]: Absolutely.
Kelly Kovack [00:18:36]: Well, obviously because their mom is in the business, so maybe that’s sort of a weighted question.
Amy Risley [00:18:41]: Well, she could be more loyal to Skinfix, she could be more compliant with her skincare, but no, I mean, we went through the gears of the big Ikea makeup drawers and just piles of makeup, and I’d come home from the Women’s Wear Daily event and she’d pilfer through my makeup, and now she’s streamlined her makeup, she uses very few things, but she’s also streamlined her skincare. There’s this trend, as you know, towards using less skincare, really minding the skin barrier, not over exfoliating, not over sort of attacking our skin with all kinds of things, not chopping and changing as much as we used to. I find that there’s a few core products that she uses every day that she replenishes, that’s kind of a new trend as well. I mean, there’s been so much chopping and changing that she’s kind of like, “These are my cores, and then I might add a few things here and there,” but definitely skincare is winning the day, in my opinion, amongst the Gen Zs.
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Kelly Kovack [00:20:39]: Do you think that this – I mean, it definitely is this less is more kind of trend, buying good quality. It’s kind of a very almost traditional way of thinking, but you know, the beauty business, for so long, especially if you’re in retail, has been…growth has been fueled by launches and SKU proliferation. Do you think this new mindset is going to have brands kind of rethinking how they tap into growth? Because it’s not necessarily…I’m not sure new is going to be the lever it once was.
Amy Risley [00:21:10]: 100%. I mean, you look at Liah Yoo and Krave Beauty, and she’s got the tiny little collection of Krave skincare, and she hasn’t launched anything I think in a year, over a year, and she’s blowing up. I mean, Sephora asked us not to launch anything all of last year because the Sephora consumer is just really getting to know Skinfix, and they wanted them to really get to know the brand, and it was hard for me, because I love to innovate and there’s so many categories I want to tackle, but to just not launch anything and to really get the consumer comfortable with the products that we have. I think it’s a definite shift, and I think it’s a good shift. You know, there’s a lot of waste in the category, there’s a lot of in and out. How many times have products launched and been gone in a year or two? And think of all of the sort of wasted time, money, and environmental impact of that. So, it’s a huge change for our industry.
Kelly Kovack [00:22:13]: You know, one of the other – I mean, there are so many things that have changed in the past ten months, but I think one thing that I think is going to have kind of a very profound effect is the fact that any roles around distribution, preconceived or otherwise, have literally been decimated. I mean, brands, to be successful now, have to meet consumers where they are, be it Neiman Marcus, Sephora, Target, Amazon, online or in-store. The same customer is in all of those places, and it’s really more of a mindset of convenience and being there when she wants it. Can you share your thoughts and experience on this shift, and kind of the convergence of mass and prestige? Because you’ve been doing this before this happened.
Amy Risley [00:23:08]: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s a perfect moment for us.
Kelly Kovack [00:23:13]: I know, I’m so happy for you.
Amy Risley [00:23:15]: Well, thank you. We’re one of those few brands, I think, that can live in both environments very comfortably, because we’re sort of premium at mass and accessible at prestige. I love the sort of blending of the channels. I think it’s exciting for skincare, and I do think it’s going to cause a little bit of a shakeup, because while there’s a convergence, I still think there is very much, I think, right now, a value mindset, and certainly the skin influencers are helping to promote that. I think this idea of a skin cream for $200 is not something that Gen Z is really embracing, and I think to live in a mass environment, or to live in sort of a Kohl’s and Sephora environment, I think you do have to respect certain pricing thresholds. But, I do think it’s exciting. I mean, you look at something like The Inkey List and The Ordinary sold at Sephora, I mean, it’s $10 serum, and so there is no such thing as, I think, mass and prestige anymore in that sense, I think, to your point, it’s about meeting the shopper where she is at, giving her access to the product where she is. I know, just again from my own experience with my kids, there’s just such a different mentality around the price of something. They’re very value-focused. This generation is very value-focused. They want a good product, but they want a deal, or they want something that’s not crazy expensive, it’s a totally different thought process than when I was their age, and it was all about having access the Crème de la Mer, or the most expensive product. It’s just a very different mentality and this blending of channels is just really helping to create more of a sort of democratization of skincare shopping, and it’s exciting.
Kelly Kovack [00:25:10]: You know, because you live in kind of these very different environments, do you show up differently based on the environment? Obviously, there’s a consistency in brand and that type of thing, but do you kind of shift messaging or shift assortment, or you know, make adjustments based on sort of the context of the distribution?
Amy Risley [00:25:37]: We don’t. We’re exclusive at Sephora now, but we are going into the Kohl’s and Sephora partnership, which we’re really excited about, and I think the beauty of our brand is we’re very much consistent in our messaging. We’re about delivering science-led, effective products to treat certain skin concerns, so that messaging doesn’t change no matter where we’re at. It’s about this product treats this condition, and this is why. So, our messaging doesn’t change, how we show up doesn’t change, our ethos doesn’t change. It makes it easy to flex.
Kelly Kovack [00:26:17]: You know, I think another sort of distribution thing that is changing is historically, distribution choices really help define the positioning of a brand, if you’re luxury, professional, mass, you kind of…maybe it was for ease, you were pigeon-holed, and there was this hierarchy of you had to start sort of at luxury and work your way down, you could never start at the bottom and work your way up. But, looking at the future, I don’t think that touchpoint is going to, from a positioning standpoint, be a branding lever anymore.
Amy Risley [00:26:55]: I totally agree.
Kelly Kovack [00:26:57]: How do you think brands are going to define their place in the beauty ecosystem without those rules that used to define distribution and then as an extension of that, sort of their place in the pecking order of beauty?
Amy Risley [00:27:11]: Yeah, I truly believe brands are going to have to have a very strong point of difference that’s really related to what they’re delivering to the consumer, what’s the proposition that you’re delivering vis-a-vis your formulation and your ethos? I think it’s going to change dramatically the landscape, and I do think, personally, that over the next decade, there’s going to be a bit of a shake-up. There’s a lot of saturation in the skincare market. There’s a lot of same-same, and I do truly believe that the brands that have a reason for being are the ones that will go the distance. I think it’s going to be harder to build a brand based on sort of a marketing story, or to your point, a distribution position that it really sort of is an extension of a marketing story, I really believe. I mean, we talk to quite a few strategics, there’s obviously a lot of interest in what we’re doing, and what I hear consistently is they love the fact that there’s meat on the bone with Skinfix, that it starts with an ethos and a product sort of strategy and a formulation strategy, and that marketing-driven stories are harder to scale and they don’t have as much longevity, and we really have the meat on the bone, and I think that’s what’s going to be required for brands to kind of go the distance in the future. I think the private equity community is looking for more substance, the strategics are looking for more substance, they’re looking for the next heritage brand that’s going to last through decades.
Kelly Kovack [00:28:39]: You know, isn’t it funny, because literally, I was having conversations with people, call it two, three years ago, where heritage brands and sort of legacy brands were almost perceived as not cool, not sexy, not relevant, and to me, I’m just like, you know, I never really believed that, and kind of the magical unicorn thinking, to me, like listen, I don’t have an MBA, but I can add, like the numbers just didn’t make sense, and I love how all of the sudden, there’s this shift to respecting heritage and kind of organic, slow, regular growth, rather than the hockey stick.
Amy Risley [00:29:30]: Absolutely. I mean, I met Craig Dubitsky once, who is the founder of Hello, you know Craig, I’m sure.
Kelly Kovack [00:29:36]: Yes, one of the happiest people in the industry and most generous.
Amy Risley [00:29:40]: He’s amazing, but he said to me, it was early days in Skinfix, and he said, “Amy, an overnight success is a decade,” and I remember thinking like, “What?! A decade?” But, it’s true. You look at Supergoop, I mean, they’re 15, 16 years old, Urban Decay, 20 years old when they sold to L’Oréal. I think there’s this image of bands just flying, as you say, like the hockey sticks, the Drunk Elephants, or the Its or the Glossiers, and those are the real sort of outliers, but the rest of us, if you really stick with your ethos, like Holly has done with Supergoop, this idea of teaching people that they need to wear sun care every day and that sun care is a foundation of skincare, I mean, it took a number of years to gain traction, and now she’s flying, and I think Skinfix is similar to that. It just takes some time. I think if you’ve got something that can go the distance, it’s probably going to take a little more time to build it. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but that’s sort of how it feels, that it takes some time to kind of educate people on what you’re doing and to get people on board.
Kelly Kovack [00:30:51]: And, that long-term thinking really requires a different discipline when it comes to how you look at growth, because you really have to have an eye to profitability to have this ability to go the long haul, if you will, rather than sort of fast growth, quick exit. It’s a different way of having to look at kind of cash flow and funding the business to hit that inflection point.
Amy Risley [00:31:22]: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think absolutely, and if…I think if brands are coming into the space with this ideology of you know, I’m going to capture this moment and I’m going to build it quickly and exit, they’re probably setting themselves up for trouble, or failure. I think you have to – I mean, I wish I had had more of a long-term mindset, frankly, when I came into the category. I think we had a lot of buzz and interest early days with Skinfix, and I think it got us sort of thinking beyond ourselves, and it does take time, and it is important to think about slow growth and to think about doing it in a way that is sustainable, in a way that is reasonable, and to not try to sort of blow up too quickly. It’s really important.
Kelly Kovack [00:32:20]: So, I know your mind is probably looking far beyond the strange moment we find ourselves in, and you’re probably thinking way beyond past COVID, so I’m curious, what is the future for Skinfix?
Amy Risley [00:32:32]: Well, right now, I mean, our partnership with Sephora is phenomenal. I mean, as a partner, as a retail partner, they are just awesome, we love working with them, we have an exclusive agreement with them that right now, we have now plans to disengage from, and so, as we look to the future, really for us, there’s a lot of categories, a lot of skin issues, a lot of skin concerns that we want to tackle, and so we want to be very careful and deliberate about launching new products, we don’t want to obviously launch too many at one time. We want to make sure that the consumer – that there’s a need and a desire, but our growth, for the sort of medium term, is really inherent in launching new categories. So, we’re launching into a new category this fall with Sephora that we’re really excited about. I mean, when your name is Skinfix and your ethos is fixing skin and healthy skin, I think there’s a lot left for us to tackle, a lot of concerns and conditions that we are excited about hopefully bringing healing solutions for. So, that’s really where the majority of our growth is. There’s obviously new distribution opportunities that are popping up, and we’ve got some new markets that we’re looking at, but we’re trying to, to your earlier point, not go too quickly. You know, really get a foothold in the North American market, really prove success with Sephora. We have a huge opportunity to scale around DTC, still a small portion of our business and has potential to be a lot greater, so I think between sort of mining what we have in terms of our own distribution right now, and then looking to introduce new categories that can help heal other skin concerns, that’s really where we’re looking in terms of the future.
Kelly Kovack [00:34:20]: I have one last question. You know, you have a couple decades of beauty history under your belt. What do you think the future of the beauty landscape is going to look like in the next three to five years?
Amy Risley [00:34:35]: Such a good question. I mean, I do think there’s going to be quite sort of a sifting through of brands. I think there’s just so much right now. I mean, as you know, barriers are so long to entry, and there’s been a lot of newness on the market, which is exciting and fun, and there’s obviously been a tremendous amount of innovation, but I do think that there’s going to be sort of a shake-up, if you will. I do think that obviously, DTC is going to continue to be really important, and I think there’s going to be some really interesting new personalization technologies and AI technologies. You look at a brand like Function of Beauty, I think that’s very exciting, but I think there’s going to be fewer of us. I think you’re really going to need to have a point of difference and deliver something innovative on the market in order to survive. So, I think there’s probably going to be fewer brands than there are today, but really smart, exciting new concepts.
Kelly Kovack [00:35:41]: Well, Amy, thank you so much for taking the time today. It’s always – I mean, I always love hearing kind of where you are in the Skinfix journey, because, you know, it’s crazy to think the brand is as old as it is, yet it feels sort of so contemporary at the same time, and I think that’s kind of the art of reinventing heritage brands. So, congratulations, because it is not easy to do.
Amy Risley [00:36:10]: Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate you having me on today, it’s been awesome to talk to you, you asked such great questions. I love reading BeautyMatter, it’s so thoughtful and insightful, and it’s great to see you. I’ll see you for cocktails in New York soon.
Kelly Kovack [00:36:27]: Yes, soon, soon, I hope, I hope. Well, thank you Amy, and we’ll talk real soon.
Amy Risley [00:36:37]: Okay, thanks so much, Kelly. Bye!
Kelly Kovack [00:36:44]: For Amy, it’s a matter of science. Amy is one of those rare talents that has the skill to seamlessly navigate big, corporate brands, and the ability to roll up her sleeves and do what it takes as an entrepreneur. She’s turned a 19th century skin healing ointment into an award-winniing clean, clinically active skincare brand vetted by unbiased dermatologists. Having a portfolio that stretches from eczema to diaper rash and from skincare to tattoo care might seem like a stretch for many, but not for Skinfix. This is a business that is skilled at defining white space and pioneering categories, comfortably living in premium and mass outlets, delivering efficacious products at affordable pricing. This heritage brand is perfectly positioned to maximize the confluence of trends and the needs of today’s beauty landscape. So, in the end, it’s a matter of science. I’m Kelly Kovack, see you next time.
Amy Risley [00:37:45]: I’m Amy Risley, and to me, it’s a matter of science. When you’re treating skin issues and working to create a healthy skin barrier, it’s really important to create formulations that have scientific, clinical efficacy.
Kelly Kovack [00:38:01]: It’s A Matter Of is a production of BeautyMatter LLC. You can find more content and insights on
www.BeautyMatter.com, and follow us on social media @BeautyMatterOfficial.
