It’s a fresh start for Jouer.
The Los Angeles-based beauty brand, launched by Christina Zilber in 2008, has tapped Frances Grant as president.
“She has a strong understanding of the business behind the business, but also how to market the business, which is what I’m really, really excited about,” Zilber said. “It’s one thing to hire somebody who can operationally run the company, but somebody who actually knows how to strategically grow the company is what I was looking for. I think I found a unicorn in Frances.”
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“We have a lot of synergies in terms of values,” Grant said.
With a background in marketing, Grant began her career in beauty at L’Oréal in Paris and New York, working at Lancôme and Kiehl’s, before joining Shiseido as senior vice president of marketing. She then led the North American marketing team at Charlotte Tilbury and consulted for the likes of No7, Dior and Puig.
At Jouer, she looks to revamp the brand — which is celebrating its 15-year anniversary this year.
“I was digging into the weeds before joining,” Grant said. She’s read practically every brand review, she laughed.
“Everything is very healthy at Jouer,” she went on. “We’ve acquired a lot of consumers, but what we haven’t been as good at is driving that lifetime value of the consumer, really driving it, having her purchase across categories, and so on.”
Sales at the company have been relatively flat for the last three years, “hovering around $10 million” year-over-year, she said. A digitally native brand with a big social following (more than 1 million on Instagram thanks to Zilber, the face of Jouer), retention numbers are in the high 20 percent and low 30 percent, she added. The consumer ranges in age between 18 to 70, but the core buyer is 35 and up.
The plan moving ahead is to create a retention strategy, rebrand the website and “clean up” product offerings.
“We have too many skus for a brand our size, in terms of the size of our sales. We’re spread too thin across too many skus,” Grant said, continuing that unproductive skus will be discontinued in favor of a strategy that focuses on hero products.
Jouer’s bestselling product is the $32 Soft Focus Hydrate + Set Powder, which hydrates and covers fine lines, followed by its lip oil, lip enhancer and concealers. This year the brand will focus on skin care, with the January introductions of Luminize Overnight Dark Circle Slugging Balm, $30, and Hydrate + Repair Skin Barrier Cream, $40.
“We’re anticipating strong double-digit growth for next year, and then continuing in 2024 with more strategic retail partners to really scale the brand,” Grant said.
The executives decided to pull Jouer out of brick-and-mortar at Sephora, instead choosing to put its energy on the d-to-c business and Amazon. The products are also available in-store and online at Anthropologie, as well as online at Beautylish and Revolve.
“They’re a phenomenal partner when you want to scale and when you have sort of the backbone behind it that can fuel that engine, and we were a little bit naive going into them,” Grant said of Sephora. “We weren’t ready necessarily from a sales point of view or an education point of view.…What we’re doing now is rebuilding on the back end in terms of the processes, and supply chain wise, so that we have the right inventory at the right time and can go after those opportunities.”
When Zilber began Jouer — French for “play” — she was a mom of young kids. At first, her focus was on packaging, creating customizable compacts for the woman on the go. But as she began product development, she turned her attention to ingredients, infusing skin care ingredients into cosmetics.
“Clean was not even a concept then,” she said. “It wasn’t even a word that people were using. But the idea was there — what are you putting on your skin? It matters. That has always been the core DNA of Jouer. It’s about the product, formula over everything.”
The goods are sourced and created globally. Zilber looks to the experts, she said, “in Canada, in [South] Korea, in Germany.”
“We do manufacture all over the world which can be a problem especially when we have supply chain issues,” she said. “We’re trying to resolve that….I will say that nothing, none of the formulas are manufactured in China. I’m also really careful about the paperwork, and we are certified cruelty-free.”
Jouer is also gluten-free and entirely vegan as of 2023, she added.
Managing a team of 12 full-time employees (and a list of contractors), Zilber, at the center, is staying connected to her audience while wanting to provide “accessible, affordable, luxurious products that perform.”
“We just haven’t necessarily done the best job of giving them the right content at the right time that would serve them and their needs,” Grant said of followers.
“I have this goal that I want every professional makeup artist and every woman that’s got a drawer full of makeup or a handbag with a little makeup bag, I want to see Jouer represented in a core product,” Zilber said.