Disrupting luxury skincare

THE ELEMIS STORY

A pio­neer in the beau­ty space for more than 25 years, ELEMIS was one of the first brands to remove parabens from prod­ucts and has always led with the need to inno­vate. Hav­ing the customer’s lifestyle needs at the heart of its propo­si­tion is fun­da­men­tal. “It’s about lis­ten­ing to the client and wrap­ping inno­va­tion around what the client wants,” says ELEMIS co-founder Noel­la Gabriel. “As the envi­ron­ment changes, so does our skin and body needs. It’s not about jump­ing on trends; it’s about set­ting trends and chang­ing the land­scape.”

With three dynam­ic co-founders at the helm, Ms Gabriel togeth­er with Sean Har­ring­ton and Oriele Frank embrace an entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it with a per­son­al pas­sion that con­tin­ues to dri­ve the brand vision for­ward. “We have incred­i­ble integri­ty; all three of us wouldn’t still be here oth­er­wise,” says Ms Gabriel. “We are open and hon­est, every ingre­di­ent is looked at, and we always ques­tion, is there some­thing bet­ter?”

With sales in the UK up 18 per cent on last year and dou­ble-dig­it growth of more than 50 per cent in the Unit­ed States, the results speak for them­selves. ELEMIS also con­tin­ues to buck the trend as in Octo­ber the brand saw a 19 per cent increase com­pared with 2 per cent skin­care mar­ket growth, accord­ing to NPD data.

AN EVOLUTION OF NATURE AND SCIENCE

ELEMIS Pep­tide⁴ Night Recov­ery Cream-Oil, launched this year, was a phe­nom­e­nal tri­umph for the skin­care leader. Boast­ing a 100 per cent suc­cess rate in user tri­als, all testers agreed they “looked like they’d had eight hours’ sleep” after using it. At the core of this prod­uct is a new super-botan­i­cal that has nev­er been com­mer­cial­ly grown called night-scent­ed stock. Cul­ti­vat­ed on a fam­i­ly-run farm in Britain, it is high in the essen­tial fat­ty acid Omega‑3 and has an excel­lent lev­el of vit­a­min E – an indus­try first for the brand.

Ms Gabriel says the ELEMIS promise is to deliv­er prod­ucts that peo­ple need and make a real dif­fer­ence. She says: “Pep­tide⁴ was designed for the mature mil­len­ni­al, who is time poor and lack­ing sleep. It nour­ish­es and feeds the skin overnight, so you get that radi­ant, morn­ing glow. We call it beau­ty sleep in a bot­tle and in every coun­try glob­al­ly it has been a suc­cess enter­ing straight into the brands top five.”

For the mature mil­len­ni­al; ELEMIS Peptide4 Night Recov­ery Cream-Oil (left), Best-sell­ing for­mu­la; ELEMIS Pro-Col­la­gen Marine Cream (right)

When it comes to prod­uct devel­op­ment, the jour­ney becomes as impor­tant as the prod­uct itself. Ms Gabriel explains: “The smell, the touch the feel and, of course, ulti­mate­ly the results. We bring out new prod­ucts that excite the client tex­tu­ral­ly. The skin is alive and it needs to be stim­u­lat­ed.”

Beau­ty edi­tors’ favourite ELEMIS’ Pro-Col­la­gen Marine Cream sells one pot every nine sec­onds glob­al­ly. And along with a win­ning for­mu­la­tion, it is the cream’s tex­ture that plays a key part in its remark­able suc­cess. “The after-feel of Pro-Col­la­gen is excep­tion­al,” says Ms Gabriel. “The skin is firm and hydrat­ed, not oily or greasy. It feels like a smooth can­vas on which to apply make-up.”

MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

For 2018, ELEMIS will add to its best-sell­ing and mul­ti-award-win­ning Pro-Col­la­gen range with a brand-new cre­ation, Pro-Col­la­gen Overnight Matrix. Described as the “next gen­er­a­tion of Pro-Col­la­gen”, it uses ground­break­ing drone pep­tide tech­nol­o­gy to tar­get spe­cif­ic areas, where stress has impact­ed the skin and is most in need of elastin and col­la­gen stim­u­la­tion. Clin­i­cal tri­als have proven it to “vis­i­bly bring back bounce” to improve deep-set lines and delay the signs of age­ing.

With soar­ing con­sumer demand for veg­an prod­ucts, ELEMIS will also unveil a new Super­food Skin­care col­lec­tion in Feb­ru­ary. Com­piled of a Super­food Cleanser, Day Cream, Night Cream and Facial Oil, the prod­ucts aim to “bal­ance and strength­en skin with pre-biotics”. With extracts from greens, grains and super­foods, the range will leave the com­plex­ion “fresh, glow­ing and super healthy”. ELEMIS’ Super­food has been designed to tar­get the ever-chang­ing need of the mature mil­len­ni­al.

THE SKINCARE DISRUPTOR

Excit­ing prod­uct releas­es are not the only inno­va­tion from the brand this year. ELEMIS has dis­rupt­ed the tra­di­tion­al on-counter beau­ty expe­ri­ence with its new ELEMIS Skin Exchange con­cept, intro­duced at John Lewis in London’s Oxford Street. This new con­cept has led to a 37 per cent increase in ELEMIS’ ser­vices since its launch in Sep­tem­ber.

It’s the evo­lu­tion of a lega­cy British brand into a skin­care dig­i­tal dis­rup­tor

The new per­son­alised facial expe­ri­ence has the time-poor mil­len­ni­al cus­tomer at its heart and com­pris­es three fif­teen-minute “skin fix” ele­ments, aim­ing to deliv­er “max­i­mum results, in min­i­mum time”.

Ms Gabriel says she designed the new facial con­cept like a build-your-own sal­ad bar. “You pick your base, then add your fill­ings and final­ly the all-impor­tant top­pings. And wow, what they deliv­er to your skin is what you will see in the mir­ror – the results are instant,” she says.

A DIGITAL INNOVATOR

It launched #ELEMI­Sev­ery­day this year, a new dig­i­tal lifestyle cam­paign that hand­picked some of the UK’s biggest influ­encers to cel­e­brate the “lit­tle things that make your skin, body and day a lit­tle bit bet­ter”.

As part of the cam­paign, it appoint­ed four ELEMIS ambas­sadors, who “embody the #ELEMI­Sev­ery­day phi­los­o­phy and who live it”. The ambas­sadors have been shar­ing insights on the brand to their fol­low­ers with lifestyle tips, arti­cles and all-round inspi­ra­tion.

“I use the Pro-Col­la­gen range and I’ve nev­er seen such a big change in my skin. The prod­ucts real­ly work, which is why I keep going back to them,” says ELEMIS ambas­sador Anneli Bush.

Lifestyle influ­encer Ms Bush of annelibush.com says the part­ner­ship with ELEMIS was a nat­ur­al one for her. “I absolute­ly love ELEMIS. They are con­stant­ly bet­ter­ing their prod­ucts and they real­ly lis­ten to their cus­tomers. The Pro-Col­la­gen Marine Cream with SPF 30 is my absolute hero-prod­uct and the one I tend to rave about the most,” she says.

It is the first time ELEMIS has brought in a third-par­ty skin­care solu­tion and it did so in response to cus­tomer demand. “We were con­stant­ly see­ing influ­encers talk about how they loved using the ELEMIS BIOTEC Cleanser with their FOREO,” says Ms Gabriel.

Respond­ing to chang­ing envi­ron­ments and lifestyle are key influ­ences in new prod­uct devel­op­ment for ELEMIS. But the con­stant need to inno­vate and dis­rupt con­tin­ues to dri­ve the brand for­ward to its glob­al suc­cess. ELEMIS is now on a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ve in the Unit­ed States, embrac­ing a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy to dis­rupt with rel­e­vance through the Super­food launch exclu­sive­ly online and a game-chang­ing influ­encer cam­paign in 2018.

“It’s the evo­lu­tion of a lega­cy British brand into a skin­care dig­i­tal dis­rup­tor,” says Ms Gabriel.

THE ELEMIS STORY

AN EVOLUTION OF NATURE AND SCIENCE

MORE THAN SKIN DEEP