How Siia Cosmetics Is Rethinking Prestige Beauty Distribution

08/07/2021 Beauty & Balance

A new cosmetics brand has its sights set on untapped markets — and untapped channels.

Siia Cosmetics, which launched direct-to-consumer earlier this summer, has ambitions to bring prestige color cosmetics into independent beauty supply stores, a channel often overlooked by prestige beauty.

The brand’s initial offerings range from a lipstick, a mascara, eyebrow pencils, eyeliners, concealers, contour sticks, lip glosses, primers and setting sprays. Prices range from $16 to $28. Sales are said to reach $7 million at wholesale in its first year on the market, and more than $30 million in its first three.

The brand’s cofounders came upon the white space while manufacturing wigs and hair extensions. “It’s actually a multimillion-dollar market that isn’t thought of by or front of mind for most of the beauty industry,” said Megan Rein, cofounder. “It’s the segment with the highest-spending consumer base in the world of personal care and beauty, so it’s an incredibly important market from a business standpoint.”

The line, which is formulated with skin care ingredients like jojoba and sunflower seed oils, will see coming category expansions. “Our next step will be to add powder, cosmetics to setting powders, eye shadows, blushes, powder and highlighters. But since we do have our routes of production in South Korea, skin care is a huge thing to bring in,” Rein said.

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Rein clarified that, despite focusing on beauty supply stores now, the brand hasn’t ruled out any future channels or means of distributing its products. “Our mission is to bring the highest-quality luxury cosmetics to the most number of people possible,” she said. “So every channel is open and it’s something we’d be interested in.”

Given the company’s goal of reaching large swaths of consumers, it also brought on celebrity makeup artist and Visionnaire cofounder James Kaliardos as brand ambassador.

“The brand is all-inclusive in that their focus is to reach women and give them high-quality products in places that don’t always have luxury products,” Kaliardos said. “These beauty stores around the country are also often independently owned by women.”

The channel’s clientele, though, meant the products had a high bar to reach. “A lot of the people who go to these stores are professionals, so they are discerning and will know what the product will deliver, if it’s good and why it works, and also want to be inspired creatively,” Kaliardos said.

Beyond the creative challenge, Kaliardos said having more say in the brand’s direction attracted him to the collaboration. “I wanted to go deeper into not just creating imagery, but helping a brand develop,” Kaliardos said. “We’re a little team, and we conceive of full-circle storytelling versus being involved in just a small part of the story.”

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