Key Takeaways:

• “Sephora teens” made people aware that kids were buying into skincare, but often unsuitable anti-aging products, opening up an opportunity for teen-specific brands.
• Sephora has embraced young consumers by merchandising Sincerely Yours at launch.
• Teen-centric brands are redefining skincare as a form of self-care, offering gentle and effective products. 

It was only a matter of time after “Sephora teens” first made headlines in 2023 for young kids buying anti-aging products that the beauty industry would adapt. Now, a plethora of teen-centric brands have launched, offering products purportedly better suited to this demographic.

Since the beginning of the year, new brands like Erly, Sincerely Yours, Pour Tous, and Yes Day have popped up, all with Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers in mind. According to Boston Consulting Group, there’s a need for teen-centric brands: US teenagers now begin buying beauty products at an average age of 12, about a year earlier than teens just a decade ago. And with that comes more opportunities for sales. Teens already represent about 10% of the US consumer beauty market and in 2023, teen beauty spending grew 23% year over year—more than double the growth of the overall beauty market then, which rose just 9%.

What’s different about the teen skincare brands from their more mature counterparts, however, is how they market their brand purpose and product functionality. You can’t exactly talk to teens about anti-aging products, how to revive “tired” skin, or any other subliminal beauty standard messaging. Instead, many of the brands seek to reframe beauty through the lens of hygiene (skincare is just like brushing your teeth!), offer gentler products focused on skin barrier protection, or simply approach teens and young girls altogether quite differently.

To gain a better understanding of each approach, BeautyMatter connected with three brands—Pour Tous, Sincerely Yours, and Flamingo—to gather their insights.

Pour Tous

Erica Buxton and Tamany Vinson Bentz, along with their five other co-founders, all had a similar experience to one another. Their own teen children wanted to use skincare and engage with branded communities but were gravitating toward anti-aging products or acid-rich options they saw on TikTok.

And while products suitable for teens already exist, their kids perceived those brands as being for babies or toddlers. Buxton said that because of this, the packaging design took the longest to conceptualize compared to other parts of the brand. In August, Pour Tous launched with six products ranging from $15 to $26, including a cleanser, moisturizer, serum, and three “boosters.”

The perspective of gender-neutral Pour Tous is that skincare is closely tied to cleanliness and hygiene, and does not have to be directly tied to beauty standards. The team began working on the brand 18 months ago, shortly after the "Sephora teens" took over headlines.

“I try to teach my kids to take care of themselves and their health. Just as we teach them to brush their teeth, I'd like to teach them to wash their face and what skincare looks like when it comes from a healthy place, rather than trying to achieve a beauty objective,” said Vinson Bentz. “But if I don't have tools to help them engage in the industry, I can't teach them that [perspective].

Both co-founders acknowledged that the initial launch period is a test and are using a two-pronged approach to reach their customer base. The first is an if-you-can’t-beat-them, join-them attitude with TikTok marketing, and partnering with TikTokers who are older teenagers to their mid-20s, and whose sphere of influence trickles down to young teens. The second prong involves marketing directly to parents of teens, the co-founders said.

Sincerely Yours

In early September, Sephora announced it was the exclusive retail partner for the newly launched Sincerely Yours, marking its first serious embrace of the Gen Alpha consumer.

Sincerely Yours emerged out of a need that Julia Straus, co-founder and CEO, and Dr. Mara C. Weinstein Velez, a New York-based dermatologist, identified when they discussed the Sephora teen headlines in 2023. Both acknowledged at the time that there were some positives surrounding teen interest in skincare, as it meant they were starting healthy habits around hygiene and sun protection, but they also saw that available product options and media content were not developed for teens and could cause issues for young people.

“[We saw] an opportunity to both serve a [young] customer who is now increasingly exposed and interested in skincare, but also help parents navigate that co-purchase decision and do so in a way that is simple,” said Straus.

An investor in one of Straus’s former businesses connected her to Jordan Matter, a YouTuber with over 32 million subscribers, and his 15-year-old daughter, Salish, with whom he frequently collaborates, to co-found Sincerely Yours. After partnering together, Sincerely Yours created a 32-person teen advisory board, invited from Salish’s network and the children of the co-founders and their friends. There is a board meeting with them every quarter, in addition to ongoing text message conversations about packaging, color schemes, and even social media strategy. There is then another group of 60,000 teens who regularly answer polls from Sincerely Yours via text.

At its launch, Sincerely Yours offers four products priced from $22 to $28, with a focus on skin barrier protection. From a branding standpoint, Sincerely Yours is framed as “authentic sincerity,” said Straus. She said the team’s research revealed a desire for a “gentle and sincere approach” to teen skincare that is “never performative” or marketing-heavy.

“The North Star remains the opportunity to build confidence and to think about this category as a form of self-care,” said Straus. “Skincare can be that first step to taking care of yourself independently and be an opportunity to [combat] a sense of conformity or a sense of pressure. [As a brand], I think you have to lean into that challenge and make sure that we're not white-washing or ignoring it or glazing over it.”

For its Sephora debut, the team aimed to lead with the brand and its launch, rather than marketing the products first. Initially, Sincerely Yours is targeting Jordan and Salish Matters followers, and according to their YouTube channel, Sincerely Yours sold out on Sephora.com within the first hour.

Flamingo

Flamingo, through its charitable initiatives, is taking a wildly different approach to talking to teens and young girls through its partnership with Girl Scouts of the USA.

In 2023, Flamingo announced it would donate $1 million over the course of two years to support research and subsequent programming for Girl Scouts around body confidence. In August, the fruits of that work came to fruition in the Body Appreciation Program. The focus of the program is body neutrality, an evolution beyond the body positivity movement.

Rather than thinking about the body through the lens of perception (e.g., “I look beautiful”), body neutrality is about appreciating or acknowledging what the body is capable of, emphasizing bodily autonomy and the options for engaging with one's own body. Some of this can be traced back to Flamingo’s early advertising. Although it offered hair removal products, the advertising did not state that people should shave or otherwise remove their hair to fit a certain mold or expectation.

“What we've done [as a brand] is try to be as neutral as possible. 'If you want to do this, [take these steps]' and not emphasizing the body part ... that's a responsibility that we have to not push young people to one thing or one standard of beauty,” said Maggie Hureau, Head of Social Impact at Flamingo-owner Harry's, Inc.

Flamingo developed the Body Appreciation Program in collaboration with experts from Black Girls Smile and the National Alliance for Eating Disorders, tailoring the program to different age groups and piloting it across Girl Scouts. Hureau said there is no Flamingo branding or association in the program.

The program for Daisy Girl Scouts, which serves the youngest cohort with participants in kindergarten through first grade, includes segments about what the body is capable of and what it feels like to move one’s body. Older kids then learn about how people feel about their bodies, how others perceive their bodies, and their own reactions; the eldest kids learn about media perceptions and messaging around body image. Throughout the program levels, Girl Scouts can earn lifestyle badges for completion.

“We've never seen this type of [media] access before ... [young people] know how to research products and look for products, and they may see recognizable names using certain items, and why wouldn't they want to replicate it?” said Hureau. “We older folks need to take responsibility and be empathetic that this is [similar to] the world that we grew up in, and that it’s hard, and we shouldn't want to replicate that.”

While the success of these brands and product narratives is still unfolding, they will ultimately serve as a test bed for Gen Z and Gen Alpha beauty demographics. If they succeed in balancing the needs of teens and tweens while also providing peace of mind to their parents and guardians, it could reshape some of the early experiences of beauty consumers and offer a roadmap for other brands.