Latest news with #Evereden
Vox
17-07-2025
- Health
- Vox
What beauty companies are selling to kids
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here It's not an exaggeration to say that Jessica DeFino transformed my relationship with skincare. After reading her newsletter, The Review of Beauty, I started questioning the purported 'anti-aging' benefits of the products I was putting on my face and asked myself what it meant to buy into a philosophy of 'anti-aging' in the first place. DeFino has probably saved me thousands of dollars on skincare. I am, however, aging. The newest target audience for beauty advertising is decades younger than me: the teens, tweens, and even younger kids flocking to brands like Evereden. And despite some movement toward body positivity since I was a teenager, it feels like young people are growing up in a world with more exacting beauty standards than ever, from viral challenges that pressure them to work on their bodies all the time to ultra-normalized plastic surgery to weird ideas about guys' eyelashes. To be young today is to be bombarded with a dizzying variety of messages about your own beauty or ugliness, coming from some of the world's biggest companies as well as from influencers who are ostensibly your peers. To help me unpack all this, I reached out to DeFino, who got her start as an editor on the Kardashian-Jenner beauty apps, then became disillusioned with the beauty industry and evolved into one of its most incisive and influential critics. In a conversation that has been condensed and edited, she and I talked about MAGA beauty, the potential harms of slathering your skin with retinol at age 8, and why helping young people push back against our disordered beauty culture has to start with examining our own anxieties. Kids' interest in skincare is often portrayed as fun or harmless, DeFino told me. But beauty 'is a multibillion-dollar industry that is built on insecurity, whose physical products and procedures often have very serious physical consequences, whose messaging has very serious psychological consequences,' she said. 'We must take it seriously.' How common is it for kids to be using skincare products that once would have been marketed to adults? And how big of a business is skincare for young people? It's a huge business right now. US households with 6- to 12-year-olds spent 27 percent more on skincare in 2023 versus the year before. Beauty spending among teens increased 23 percent year over year. I don't have this year's statistics in front of me, but I would say it's a very powerful growth sector for the industry. More brands that were formerly targeted toward adults are expanding to target teens and tweens. And at the same time, we have a lot more beauty brands entering the market that are specifically meant for infants, babies, tweens, teenagers. A year or two ago, Dior launched the Dior baby lines, which included skincare and perfume for babies. I swipe through TikTok or Instagram, and I will see mothers putting sheet masks on their 1-year-old babies, 2-year-old toddlers. There's this really interesting trend that started a while ago on TikTok, where moms will hand their babies different beauty products and see if they know intuitively what to do with them. It is fascinating to see these 1-, 2-, 3-year-olds know exactly what to do with the blush brush or a serum or eyebrow pencil. Why has this been happening? Why are we seeing these expansions into younger markets? First of all, I think the collapse of age-appropriate spaces and age-appropriate media has been a huge factor. Just speaking from personal experience, growing up, there were a lot of teen- and tween-focused magazines. There were TV channels where the shows and the commercials were geared towards a specific age group. As media collapses and everything moves online and more into social media, we're all hanging out in the same spaces. It's very easy for a child to get adult content on their 'For You' page. And it's very easy for adults to be fed this teen and tween content to get outraged about. How many stories were there about the Sephora tweens? Which really only fed the trend. There's also basic everyday capitalism: The market always needs to expand. In the past couple of years, especially, we've seen it expand not only to children, but to women who are 70 and 80, who are getting these full-body makeover routines. We're seeing more and more young boys and men becoming interested in cosmetic interventions as well. This is not only a phenomenon for young girls. The market is really saturating every demographic right now. Filters on social media are created with cultural beauty standards in mind. Young girls might not necessarily be conscious of the fact that, like, I want to look younger, so I'm going to be using retinol or anti-aging creams. But they might be saying, I want to look just like that filter, and that filter is created with standards that prioritize looking very smooth, no lines, no wrinkles, no pores. I think the AI beauty standard and the standard of anti-aging actually share a lot of surface-level qualities. What are the medical or physical implications of using a lot of skincare, especially with active ingredients like retinoids, if you're super young? There are a ton of potential physical consequences the more beauty products you are putting on your face, and that goes for all ages, but especially for younger people whose skin is still developing and can be more vulnerable to potential issues. This new study from Northwestern Medicine looked at the skincare routines of children and teens on TikTok, specifically ages 7 to 18, and how those might damage their skin long term. There's an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients in the skincare routines in these videos, and some potential consequences of that are making the skin more sensitive to sunlight, which of course increases your risk of skin cancer over time; allergies; and dermatitis, which is an inflammatory condition. Any inflammation that can arise from that can also trigger psoriasis, rosacea, eczema, acne. Anything that you put on your skin affects the environment of bacteria that actually is there to keep the skin safe and healthy and functioning. Interfering with the skin barrier and the microbiome by layering on product after product after product can — for anyone of any age — make you dry or oily or dehydrated or sensitized. But particularly in the case of babies, there have been studies linking the overuse of soaps and scented products to developing eczema that carries on throughout a child's whole life. What about the psychological and emotional aspects being initiated into this skincare industrial complex from a young age? The most basic place to start is just to look at the data that we have for how beauty standards affect everyone who is subject to them. We have really strong data that shows that the pressure to adhere to a particular appearance ideal increases instances of appearance-related anxiety, depression, facial dysmorphia, body dysmorphia, disordered eating, obsessive product use and overuse, self-harm, and even suicide. Personally, I think the risks are even higher when you are indoctrinated into beauty culture at younger ages. The psyche is still as vulnerable as the skin is at that point. The younger you internalize a lesson like, I must look XYZ way in order to be beautiful, the harder it is to challenge that later in life. I also think a lot of it reinforces gender essentialism and these ideas of traditional femininity and traditional masculinity that have other sorts of consequences beyond one's own psychological health. These reinforce the conditions of a very oppressive society that believes women should act one way and look one way, and if you don't, you're not good, or you're not a woman, or you're not living up to your biological destiny. Since you brought up gender roles, I'm sure you've seen the discourse around MAGA beauty and conservative 'chic.' I'm curious if you think some of these politicized beauty standards are trickling down to young people. I do, and I don't actually think that's out of the ordinary. What we're seeing in, for example, Evie, which is sort of a right-leaning women's magazine, these are the lessons that are embedded in all sorts of mainstream beauty culture, whether a brand is coded as conservative or liberal. It's hitting in a different way now that conservatives are saying this out in the open, but these conservative messages are sort of the hidden messages in almost all beauty content that suggests you should look different than the way you currently look in order to be beautiful or healthy or happy or worthy. If outrage about Sephora tweens just feeds into more marketing, what is a good social response to some of the trends that we're seeing? When we see our adult behaviors mirrored back to us by children, we can see some of the absurdity of it, and we can see some of the danger of it. I don't think the correct or useful response is to be like, Okay, we've got to stop young girls from doing this. We have to look at ourselves. We have to look at the adult beauty culture that we have created and we're participating in and we're perpetuating. And if we don't think that is something for a young girl to see or to participate in, we have to be part of the project of dismantling that, not just for young girls, but for all women.
Forbes
22-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Teens And Tweens Are Obsessed With Evereden's Skincare Brand For Babies—Now It Brings In $100 Million A Year
K imberley Ho's dining room table is almost always cluttered. On any given afternoon, the 35-year-old cofounder and CEO of Evereden, the New York-based cosmetics company for kids, risks ruining the white marble surface by testing bright-colored lipsticks in the shape of crayons and other beauty products aimed at Generation Alpha, or people born after 2010. 'We now have a laboratory with chemists, and research and development specialists,' says Ho, a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 class of 2019, 'but I have never been willing to leave that part of the job—being product-obsessed is in our DNA.' Since cofounding Evereden in 2018 with her husband, Goldman Sachs alum Huang Lee, the brand now brings in $100 million in annual sales after finding a market for family-friendly skin and haircare products for babies and preteens. Many of her earliest customers were young mothers searching for safe products for their sensitive skin infants. Having raised some $40 million in venture capital funding between 2018 and 2021, Evereden, like its client base, has matured, expanding to include face serums, conditioners and perfumes engineered and marketed specifically to kids, preteens and pregnant mothers. While the company sells in Sephora across eight countries outside the United States, including Canada, Australia and the Philippines, most of its revenue comes from direct-to-consumer sales online. 'Billions of investment dollars have gone to women's beauty, cosmetics and skincare, but none of that innovation and investment really went into family skincare,' Ho says. 'That mismatch just didn't make sense for me.' Because of social media, Gen Alpha first interacts with a beauty product at 8 years old, according to a consumer trends study done last year by Ulta Beauty. That's a marked difference from younger Millennials and members of Generation Z, who on average first engaged with this industry at 15 and 12 years old, respectively. 'Clearly these young consumers are interested in skincare and are exposed to the internet…they probably need some help picking the right product,' says Dan Su, an analyst at Morningstar. 'Otherwise, they would be going to products that are designed for adult skin that may not really serve their needs.' 'The most interesting thing [about Evereden] is the tween space,' Su continues, 'which is catching the attention of the companies and investors and the beauty space.' Born and raised in Malaysia's bustling capital city Kuala Lumpar, Ho grew up with two entrepreneur parents, who founded a printing company. 'I was a literal startup baby in my mother's womb as she was hauling boxes because she couldn't afford to hire anybody,' she says. As a teenager, she became obsessed with getting into an Ivy League school—later pivoting to apply early to Stanford based primarily on campus photos of sunny California on the university's website. 'That was my first time in America, when I landed in SFO to attend Stanford,' she recalls. With clear, glassy skin and a quick smile, Ho presents as an Elle Woods-type, someone who has never considered anything to be impossible. During her first semester as an economics major at Stanford, she witnessed her peers trying to get in good with Goldman Sachs representatives at recruiting events. A few years later, in 2013, she became an investment banker at the elite Manhattan firm for a few years after college, later moving to the asset management firm Oaktree. At Oaktree, Ho first started seeing troubling patterns in several big beauty brands she worked with, ranging from billion-dollar lawsuits concerning undisclosed health risks, to an influx of indistinguishable direct-to-consumer brands, to smaller quality issues consistently swept under the rug. 'It was a lack of care and the integrity of some of these products that made me uncomfortable as a consumer, a beauty lover and someone who grew up with very sensitive skin,' Ho recalls. 'The light bulb moment came to me when my friends back home in Malaysia were starting families, and they would beg me to bring home these big American brands that were so-called 'clean and safe.' But because I was an investor behind the scenes in many of these brands, I knew that they were not as honest as they claim to be.' Having seen a giant hole in premium skincare products, she decided to leave Oaktree in 2017 to launch a high-end family cosmetics brand that became Evereden. Ho emailed her proposal to 50 dermatologists at top medical institutions to help her formulate her products. Dr. Joyce Teng, head of Stanford Medical School's pediatric dermatology department, invited her to pitch her company in person. Ho's concept immediately resonated with Teng, who shared the story of her youngest daughter's struggles with severe eczema. Teng soon came on board as the company's Chief Science Officer and was later joined by two other mothers who worked as doctors at Harvard Medical School. Cosmetics do not require FDA approval before going on the market, but sunscreen and over-the-counter eczema products do. Evereden receives FDA approval for these select items, and its team of doctors allows the company to make claims of being safe and 'clinically tested' for all other products across the board. Evereden launched in 2018 with one line of baby skincare products following a seed fundraising round led by Sidekick Partners, a Texas-based venture capital firm. In 2019, the company expanded into skincare for mothers, which included oils made to mitigate stretch marks. After surpassing $1 million in revenue in its first few years of business, the company started to add kids' skin- and haircare into the business. 'We expanded mostly because our customers were growing up and were saying, 'Hey, my baby's no longer an infant,' Ho says. 'In fact, they have an older sibling. Do you have products for children?'' The brand's presence in several niche subcategories is paramount to its growth, especially on Amazon. Within a few months of being on the market, the company's haircare products grew to No. 1 in Amazon's kids' hair category—a sector that had been relatively unexplored at the online retail giant. Products for preteens quickly became Evereden's fastest-growing segment. Kid Stuff: 'With our lab, our product development life cycle is three to six months,' Ho says. 'So, we're launching products three to four times faster than any one of our competitors.' Evereden Evereden raised money twice in 2021. The company's Series C round brought in $32 million and was led by Menlo Park-based GSR Ventures. Much of the funds raised in the Series C went toward building the company's own formulation lab and team of dedicated chemists. 'This not typical in the skincare or beauty industry,' Ho says. 'Typically, only the L'Oréals, Unilevers and P&Gs of the world have their own formulation labs.' Most emerging cosmetics brands—including Hailey Bieber's Rhode Beauty, which recently sold for $1 billion to Elf Beauty—use third-party chemists and labs that charge a fixed rate for formulation while simultaneously doing the same for dozens of other competing businesses. The industry standard to develop a new product with one of these outsourced companies is usually about 18 months. 'With our lab, our product development life cycle is three to six months,' Ho says. 'So, we're launching products three to four times faster than any one of our competitors.' Evereden began launching around 10 products a year starting 2021. Over the next four years, the company added enough products to address every need across its age categories, including hair, skin, body, fragrance and cosmetic products—effectively becoming a one-stop personal care shop for families. Since 2021, Amazon consistently delivered about half of Evereden's annual sales. Ho was also naturally conscious of the brand's presence internationally, given that she originally dreamed up her company after her friends in Malaysia asked her to send clean and safe American products for their newborns. While Evereden is in retail locations abroad, nearly all total sales still come from online purchases. The company had a net profit last year after reaching $100 million in sales. Within the last few years, Evereden's growth has coincided with marked increases in preteens flooding retailers and social media to test, buy and show off comically extensive skincare routines. Sephora's 2023 annual report stated that the number of its customers aged 9 to 12 doubled over the last five years, and the global children's cosmetic market was worth an estimated $1.6 billion in 2024. 'We are a multi-category, multi-generational brand, which I think is unique on the market,' Ho says. 'No single SKU makes up more than 20% of our total sales. And we have hero products in each of our categories.' While Evereden has reaped the benefits from the rise of so-called 'Sephora kids,' the brand's recent growth is not directly related to TikTok-influenced children. For one, Evereden isn't in major U.S. retailers such as Sephora or Ulta yet—although Ho hopes to secure a big retail partnership this year. Evereden's growth has also coincided with the rise of young kids developing an interest in high-end skincare brands such as Drunk Elephant and Laneige. Those brands often notably contain anti-aging components or exfoliating chemicals that dermatologists have said can cause considerable damage to young skin. Evereden is priced premium, especially next to a $5 bottle of Johnson's Baby Lotion, but the brand is relatively inexpensive compared to these adult brands piquing kids' interests. A 50 ml jar of Drunk Elephant's moisturizing cream costs $69, whereas a comparable cream from Evereden is less than half that at $28. Drunk Elephant reported sales of $120 million when it was acquired by Shiseido in 2019, but that figure dropped 65% in year-over-year sales in 2024, due in part to the losing its older consumer base as the brand soared with kids and tweens. 'I haven't really seen any specific brand gaining traction,' Morningstar's Su admits. 'I think it is reasonable to think that some of the large brands in the personal care and beauty space would be doing research and coming up with products. But it's just that it's very specific.' Su says that Evereden may face challenges since there might not be sufficient consumer data to help them with product development. She also notes that companies across the board are being given the chance to identify and understand young consumers based on their social media use. 'Every generation grows up faster than the previous one,' Ho says. 'Gen Alpha have grown up on social media, and they all have cell phones from eight years old.' On Evereden's TikTok account, there's a pinned video with half a million views that begins with two children—around six years old—dabbing one of Evereden's cream products on their faces, cosplaying as miniature versions of adult influencers who have made millions doing the same on their own accounts. It's somewhat uncanny seeing such small children expertly pose in front of the camera, but most of comments on the video address something along the lines of 'Can you please send me your products?' More from Forbes Forbes Patrick Schwarzenegger's Next Big Flex By Simone Melvin Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Art & Culture 2025: Meet The Artists, Designers And Entrepreneurs Shaping Style And Taste By Simone Melvin Forbes How Crumbl Devoured America By Simone Melvin Forbes Hailey Bieber's Skin Care Firm Rhode To Be Acquired By E.L.F. Beauty In $1 Billion Deal By Gigi Zamora
Business of Fashion
15-05-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
The Tariff-Proof International Expansion Playbook
Los Angeles-based fine jewellery maker Angara was already well on its way to reducing its dependence on the US for sales before President Donald Trump announced his tariff plan last month, entering India at the end of last year and planning a number of international launches for 2025. But the rapidly unfolding trade war propelled Angara to make those moves more quickly, said co-founder and chief executive Ankur Daga. The brand now expects to enter countries including Japan and Singapore at least a quarter earlier than planned. 'The US has become increasingly uncertain,' Daga said. 'If we were to predict revenue at a quarter or a year or five years, it's just so hard to do here.' The US and China agreed earlier this week to lower tariffs on each other's goods. But though the worst case scenario was avoided, duties are still higher than they were a few weeks ago. Dozens of other countries could see tariffs imposed in July, and a global 10 percent levy remains in place. The prospect of higher manufacturing costs, and worsening US consumer sentiment, means new geographies are increasingly important to brands' bottom lines. For American companies committed to their global ambitions, going overseas offers an escape from turbulence at home. To make their global expansion bets pay off, brands will have to continue to grow their network of suppliers, manufacturers and distribution partners to be closer to their new selling locations, which should be selected carefully. 'Whatever diversification you have achieved so far, you've got to put it on steroids,' said Anshuman Jaiswal, chief business officer at software firm OnePint, which helps global businesses manage inventory. Going Global With the Trump administration's tariff plans still in flux, picking the right locations to expand into is paramount. US brands facing economic tumult at home are entering or doubling down on overseas spots where they're already seeing demand — and with minimal exposure to tariff upheaval. Countries where consumers are still willing to pay premium prices are particularly appealing, especially as many shoppers in the US are reaching the limit of their spending power. Angara, for example, is targeting countries where, unlike in the US, demand for high-end gems shows no signs of slowing down. They're already seeing results: Angara's sales in India surpassed $1 million just six months after entering the market, Daga said. New York-based kid and teen-centric beauty label Evereden is planning to enter the Middle East in the next year, where consumers are more apt to splurge on luxury fragrances and less likely to be deterred by price increases, said Kimberley Ho, the brand's co-founder and co-chief executive. An added bonus? Demand for skincare and fragrances among Gen Alpha in the region is growing, too. 'There is a nine-figure opportunity from the Middle East for Evereden alone, so we are not going to let tariffs stop us from that,' Ho said. Bulking Up DTC With many finer tariff details still in limbo, brands are also trying to wrestle back what control they can in order to more quickly respond to an ever-changing situation. Some are doubling down on their global direct-to-consumer businesses, where they can control everything from pricing to marketing to shipping. The wellness brand Apothékary, for example, managed to lock in rates with its American manufacturing partner earlier this year after the value of the dollar fell, which reduced the cost of buying US-made goods in other currencies. This in turn allowed the brand to hold off raising prices on its online store across the more than 200 countries it ships to, said founder and chief executive Shizu Okusa. Having consistent prices across markets is critical for Apothékary as it looks to increase its global customer base on its direct platforms. The brand is also launching exclusive products for its online store, such as a recent collaboration with berry-maker Oishii, Okusa added. Once established in a new market through DTC, brands can use those results to test their strength in that region before further expanding through local retail partners — regardless of tariffs. US-based cosmetics label Merit Beauty, for example, entered Sephora UK in March (prior to tariff implementation), significantly expanding its reach in the country. While the UK economy has problems of its own, Merit was confident in its decision because it had seen two years of strong DTC sales, and British customers had been asking for a way to shop the brand in real life, Philippe Pinatel, Merit Beauty's chief executive, said in a February interview with The Business of Beauty. For Okusa, managing international expansion amid tariff uncertainty is also a chance to create a more efficient business in the long-term. 'I am not going to waste a good crisis,' Okusa added. 'A good crisis means you're taking stock of headcount; you're taking stock of efficiency in your marketing; [and] you're taking stock of your most valuable customers.'
