SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19, 2023 — Iris&Romeo (“IRIS&ROMEO” or the “Company”), a clean beauty brand based in Northern California, has announced a retail expansion into Sephora (“Sephora”), in conjunction with a Series A partnership backed by US-based investment firm, True Beauty Ventures (“True Beauty”), a beauty and wellness dedicated emerging growth fund.
Since 2019, Iris&Romeo has become highly-recognized as a leading innovative, clean, skincare-makeup hybrid brand and is committed to thoughtful, multi-functional hero products for the beauty minimalist. The brand believes in modern essentialism, creating tinted skincare with serum-strength actives, designed to create more time for self care and less waste for the planet.
In conjunction with the Series A announcement, Iris&Romeo’s hero essentials will launch on Sephora.com on December 26th, including the award-winning Weekend Skin SPF 50 and cult-favorite Best Skin Days™.
“Launching at Sephora is a pivotal moment for our brand. It gives us an opportunity to tell our story on a bigger level and for a whole new group of customers to try our products and fall in love,” expressed Michele Gough-Baril, the Company’s founder, “for me personally, it’s a dream come true moment because I’ve worked with Sephora for many years on other brands, and to do it now with the brand I founded is beyond exciting.”
“We’re thrilled to introduce Iris&Romeo to our clients as a part of our growing clean makeup assortment,” said Amy Abrams, VP Merchandising, Makeup at Sephora, “with its minimalist and simplified approach to beauty, Iris&Romeo offers multi-use products that are clean, high-performing, and seek to improve skin’s wellness with every wear. We look forward to introducing this innovative brand to our Sephora community and know that it will be a great addition to our assortment.”
The Company plans to use capital to improve retail readiness through supply chain sufficiencies, elevating brand-first content, and securing key hires to complement its current best-in-class team.
“We are thrilled to bring on True Beauty Ventures as our Series A lead. Rich and Cristina’s expertise in the early stage beauty space is unparalleled. Having Cristina on our board will be incredibly valuable as we scale,” Tara Desai, the Company’s CEO commented, “This Series A funding will unlock the brand’s ability to reach more consumers. Our existing customer base is exceptionally loyal. Strengthening our ability to reach her in more places will accelerate our growth, especially within our 35+ demographic.” Tara Desai joined Iris&Romeo in 2022, after working for brands such as Estee Lauder and Marc Jacobs.
“After three years of building a strong relationship with Iris&Romeo, we are thrilled to announce our lead Series A investment,” said Cristina Nunez, Co-Founder and Partner at True Beauty Ventures . “The brand is at a major inflection point driven by excellent product development, strong consumer demand, and an industry tailwind of multi-functional makeup-skincare hybrids. We are excited to support Iris&Romeo in this next phase of growth.”
ABOUT IRIS&ROMEO
Iris&Romeo was founded by Michele Gough-Baril after two decades in the beauty industry, climbing her way to the top. Burned out by the persistent excess and hustle culture, she stepped away to the healing rhythms of Northern California and gave herself permission to reprioritize her relationship with her body and herself. Iris&Romeo was born as the antidote to the beauty hustle culture and the more is more mentality. At Iris&Romeo, products are brought into the world thoughtfully, consciously, and beautifully. We are committed to multi-functional, all-in-one, tinted skincare solutions of the highest quality and efficacy. We simplify your morning routine and deliver skin wellness—instantly and over time. This kind of beauty—this undone, well-hydrated look combined with serum strength actives—is the effortless bare-faced beauty we all want. Less makeup. More you.
ABOUT TRUE BEAUTY VENTURES
True Beauty Ventures is a beauty & wellness dedicated emerging growth fund that was created to provide not just capital to indie brands in the space, but also true partnership and sector expertise. We leverage decades of beauty-focused institutional investment experience, first-hand operating expertise, and extensive industry insider networks to help businesses scale into successful, resilient, and long-lasting beauty brands.
ABOUT SEPHORA
Since its debut in North America 25 years ago, Sephora has been a leader in prestige omni-retail with the mission of creating an inviting beauty shopping experience and inspiring fearlessness in our community. With the goal of delivering unbiased shopping support and a personalized experience, Sephora invites clients to discover thousands of products from more than 360 carefully curated brands, explore online and through our mobile app, enjoy services at the Beauty Studio and engage with expertly trained Beauty Advisors in more than 600 stores across the Americas. And with its long-term strategic partnerships with Kohl’s, customers can now shop a fully immersive, premium beauty destination, with over 850 locations nationwide. Clients can access the free-to-join Beauty Insider program and digital community, which together enhance the experience of Sephora’s passionate clients.
Sephora has been an industry-leading champion of diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment, guided by our longstanding company values. In 2019, Sephora announced a new tagline and manifesto, “We Belong to Something Beautiful,” to reinforce its dedication to fostering belonging amongst all clients and employees and to publicly strive for a more inclusive vision for retail in the Americas. Sephora continues to give back to our communities and advance inclusion in our industry through its social impact and equity programming, called the Sephora D&I Heart Journey.
For more information, visit: https://www.sephora.com/about-us and @Sephora on social media. For media inquiries, please visit our Sephora Newsroom or email [email protected].
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SOURCE Iris&Romeo
