The Honest Company, founded by Jessica Alba, launched its beauty site today, Honest Beauty. While the Honest Company focuses on baby products and home cleaning supplies, Honest Beauty is all about make up and skin care. The line includes 8 colors for foundations and the website features a diverse array of models, so you can easily see how a product might look on your skin tone, plus make up tutorials by Alba herself.
In her words, “I am a woman of color and when I started acting when I was twelve years old, good lord, it was hard to find some good foundation. And I just felt like every other beauty line made me feel like I needed to be somebody else.” While some ONTDers are pressed that she struggles with a multi-ethnic identity, Alba's European & Mexican roots inspired her inclusive take on the sites products & marketing. The sensitive snowflake ONTDers will appreciate that Honest Beauty products are not tested on animals and are free of parabens and synthetic dyes & fragrances.
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She worked on "Get the Look" video tutorials (won't embed, but you can watch on the site) where she demonstrates some of the products- really helpful, since it's nice to see how different prodcuts apply. She said making the tutorials gave her a new respect for Youtubers who do nothing but put make up on all day on camera.
Prices are somewhere between make-up counter brands and higher-end drugstore brands. A sheer lip crayon runs about $18 and it's $28 for a 1 ounce tube of tinted moisturizer with SPF 20... I wouldn't rely on the SPF though (see next cut). Just like with the Honest Company, customers can "Bundle" and get regular shipments of prducts to save money. A free trial will get you a cute sampler, but then they'll charge you $50 for the 3-product-bundles after that unless you call to cancel. If it's like Honest Co, you can space out your bundles farther apart than 1 month if you need to.
Jessica and other women of color may need their naturally protective melanin, becuase the Honest Co is facing a $5 Million lawsuit that their sunscreen is ineffective & mislabelled. Photos of sunburns have been cropping up on social media, posted by people who used the Honest Company Sunblock and still got fried. Alba says the lawsuit is "baseless" and she emphasized that people need to understand that natural mineral-based sunscreens need to be re-applied frequently, as they don't penetrate the skin the way chemical sunscreens do. I've used it and I agree - it has a different consistency than chemical-based types.
ONTD, what marketing angle are you using for your new make-up line?
Paraphrasing is mine; sources are Yahoo article and Honest Beauty.