‘Badass Women’ – Ditching The Dirty List for Clean Products and Fun Retail

Ditch the dirty list and become a ‘badass’! Now more than ever, clean beauty curiosity is rising amid COVID impacted shoppers. Prestige clean beauty, according to NPD, is seeing an 11% increase despite the overall 14% decline the beauty industry has experienced during this current year. Credo has defined what clean beauty really means. In an industry full of marketing gibberish, clean beauty provides efficacy, transparency, and a sense of safety.

“Credo is changing perceptions and complexions with its clean-beauty concept.” – Vogue

Building a Next-Gen Clean Beauty Retailer

Co-founders, Shashi Batra and Annie Jackson founded Credo in 2015 with significant attention to “clean” production while pulling from their years of prior experience in the industry. According to Jackson, Batra was intrigued by the organic food movement and that played a significant role in how they wanted to create their company. With discerning consumer bases growing, they tried to meld the same ideals into the beauty industry with their first storefront in San Francisco, CA. During this start, Credo attempted to create transparency in beauty while educating and learning from their expanding, conscientious consumer base.

Raising the Retail Experience Bar

I took a look inside the company to see what makes them tick, and learned that consumers are experiencing a disconnect between themselves and brands more than ever. Jackson and Dawn Dobras, Credo CEO, point to their culture, tech. and a partnership with Hero (aka: Credo live), as having helped navigate the company through the pandemic. While storefront locations closed, Credo live has been a conduit aimed at continuing to educate the consumer, through virtual consultations and direct consumers to Credo products. Jackson and Dobras both credit this partnership with having allowed them to maintain team members, keeping a connection with existing consumers, and directing consumers back to storefront locations as various regions re-open.  

Consumers Switching to Clean Brands

Polls reflect a majority of consumers are using clean beauty products, associate “organic” and “natural” with high-quality personal products, claim they would pay more for better products and are influenced by health and wellness propositions. In 2019, of the $19B prestige beauty market, roughly 53% of skincare brands positioned themselves as either “natural” or “clean”, I'm not sure all of those were. Seems clear that this growth market is not a fad, and I think the established brands will figure out how to scale it up and make some big-bets on clean.

Making Reopening a Positive Experience

Many retailers are struggling to change as they begin to re-open—but are learning to adapt on all aspects of shopping. Credo did a stellar job navigating the downturn and ready for the reopening upswing. “And how do we make this a more engaging and positive experience for customers? If you think about it, beauty was due for a reboot and testers and kind of the old way of shopping, um, really needed an uptick” (Annie). Along with contactless curbside pickup. Credo is started opening its stores, with limited capacity, beginning with the new Chicago location. Moving forward Credo intends to continue furthering consumer education changing mindsets on consumers' view of clean beauty.

What’s Next for the Badass Women?

Listen in to the podcast to hear what they are up to and what's next. As the industry moves forward in post-pandemic times, retailers are shifting to tech. enabled touch-less experiences—with UYOD partners like Revieve to help online and in-store shoppers find and purchase more targeted products and services. And, as consumers open their eyes to new beauty perspectives, Credo is forecasting big increases in demand for clean and sustainable products—they are spot on.

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About The Reboot Chronicles Podcast

‍Hosted by Dean DeBiase, The Reboot Chronicles is a popular no-holds-barred podcast on iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts and YouTube that has been bringing together CEOs, entrepreneurs, authors, and global leaders, for over a decade, to discuss how organizations are rebooting their leadership-competitiveness of everything from growth, innovation, and technology to talent, culture, and governance. Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://www.revieve.com/rebootchronicles

Named a “Growth Guru” by Inc. Magazine, Dean DeBiase is a Faculty Member at Kellogg School of Management and Silicon Valley serial CEO, where he has served in chief executive and chairman roles of more than a dozen emerging growth companies, CEO of Fortune 500 subsidiaries, and a director on public, private, family-enterprise, CVC, PE and VC boards. He is a Technology Fellow at Northwestern University, a Board Leadership Fellow at The National Association of Corporate Directors, and an Advisor to the National Science Foundation. A Forbes Contributor and co-author of the best-selling book The Big Moo, Dean is working on his next book, Dancing with Startups.