Vogue: Consumers have increasingly high expectations of skincare products. How has Refy found it navigating the market?
It’s a difficult Beauty to crack and gain the trust of the customer. We’re a beauty brand, but we’ve always kept things simple with real performance-led products and a simple routine, and we’ve worked really hard to educate our marketing team on simplifying the messaging to what the consumer really needs to know in terms of how ingredients work and what they do. The team has actually shot the community trials to go into a campaign to sell the product. With skincare, it can be difficult to see the results compared to a lip product or colour cosmetics, which are quite visible, but I think the way it’s been shot will help in terms of education. We’ve got sampling products that we’ll use in our in-person events and activations around the time of the launch to get it into as many hands as possible and show that the results are really credible.
Vogue: How does creating and selling a skincare product differ from makeup?
It takes a lot more testing from the product team really early on in terms of working with dermatologists and understanding the field a bit more. Innovation is what drives every product, no matter what category, especially as the market can be overwhelming. Our product team works super hard to find the gaps and pain points from our community. We’re constantly asking what customers are finding difficult or what they’re missing in their routines, then trying to think of how to incorporate the solution in as few products as possible.
It’s also different in terms of how you sell it. We did really worry about how we were going to bring it to market — our customer loves an instant result and before-and-afters do really well for us — so it was about understanding how to get the results across to our customer.
Vogue: What did you learn from the fashion launch?
When we launched fashion, it was to explore a lifestyle offering and reach a different type of audience. We did it as a limited-edition collection around a mascara launch, and the strategy was to test and learn. With beauty and skin products, the lead time is a lot longer, whereas lifestyle pieces are quicker to develop, so it’s about finding the right time. I think if we ever did a fashion launch again, it would be interesting in the future to do it on its own rather than launching it with a beauty product to make sure each side has its own time to shine. We’re planning to bring the fashion and lifestyle piece into Refy World, too, because we’re constantly getting requests from people asking if they can still buy the hoodies or T-shirts.
Vogue: Tell me more about the Refy World launch.
Refy World is our new members hub that we just launched [in December]. It’s a digital space that brings together our online experiences with our in-person experiences to give customers more access to upcoming events and exclusive experiences based on how many orders you’ve placed with us. People will be able to get invited to our events before anyone else. When we’ve done some tests, a lot of the community wants to be involved in exclusive tests of products, so we’ve been working with the product team on how we can bring that in.
Vogue: What’s next for Refy?
We’re always looking at what’s next. We don’t necessarily look at categories but instead routines or products that fill the gap. Next year, we’ll have a massive community focus to get feedback on what customers want from us.
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