Ron Robinson founded BeautyStat in 2008 after having a career as a product development leader with Avon, Revlon, L’Oréal’s Lancôme brand, and Estée Lauder. The BeautyStat blog and social media business works with brands on an array of content initiatives to increase brand awareness and boost conversions.
BeautyStat facilitates influencer marketing campaigns, giveaways, sponsored product reviews, affiliate marketing, pop-up ads and more. And over the years, Robinson and his team has done work with brands and retailers including Ulta, Amazon, Target, Coty, stila cosmetics, and Laura Geller Beauty, according to the company’s about page on LinkedIn.
Now, BeautyStat is making and marketing its own beauty products, a business that ostensibly came about purely by accident. “I had no intention of launching a beauty brand,” Robinson tells the press. “I had a meeting with Jules Zecchino, a former Estée Lauder colleague…where he shared a new, groundbreaking technology. I knew at that moment that this was something special that needed to be brought to the consumer. And so, BeautyStat Cosmetics was born.”
Brand beginings
Since that fateful meeting Robinson has put together a small team to support his new beauty brand. Zecchino is now chief science officer of BeautyStat Cosmetics; Paul Wahlgren (of Erasa Skin Care) is the brand’s chief operating officer; Jordan Rolband (of DFO Global) is the chief digital officer; and Donna Barasch is the chief product officer of BeautyStat Cosmetics.
The first product from BeautyStat Cosmetics is the Universal C Skin Refiner, a vitamin C – rich serum that takes advantage of a “patented encapsulation delivery system” to deliver stabilized, pure vitamin C to the skin and promises to brighten, re-textruize, and firm all skin types. The brand has simultaneously launched a moisturizer: the Universal Pro-Bio Moisture Boost Cream meant to be applied after the vitamin C serum.
Bigger and better things
There is more to come from the new BeautyStat Cosmetics team. “We are already looking into expanding this high potency Vitamin C collection,” says Robinson in a media release about the new BeautyStat Cosmetics brand. “We are researching formulating with other benefits-driven ingredients in skincare and color products as well as creating devices and implementing advanced technology,” he says.
For now the BeautyStat Cosmetics products are retailing only on the BeautyStat site, where the original company’s blog and business services live. But Robinson isn’t insistent on having the brand remain direct-to-consumer, ecommerce only. “Our roots are in digital,” acknowledges Robinson. “For the past 10 years, BeautyStat has been creating on-line content to help educate and engage thousands of consumers (We have a consumer database of over 150K). So, with the launch of our beauty brand, selling direct-to-consumer was a natural for us,” he says in the media release.
“However,” adds Robinson, “we understand and respect that some consumers want a compelling experience wherever they decide to shop, so we are open to traditional channels as well.”
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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.