How Sonsie Skin Breaks the ‘Clean Beauty’ Mold

0:00You really have to operate out of this place of, I can change the world with this brand or this product.

0:11What happens when Hollywood icon Pamela Anderson teams up with a trailblazing scientist? Meet Sansi Skin, the sustainable and conscious skincare brand rewriting the rules of beauty. We can open up what we're doing about sustainability, but it has to be fun. It has to be entertaining. Today, we're joined by Kaylee Bratt, a chemical engineer with a track record of turning fresh ideas into multi-million dollar brands. In her new role as CEO, she's the expert Pamela is counting on to take Sanzi's skin to the next level. Because of my background and my relationships and my experience, I'm able to bring something new to market that people haven't seen before.

0:45Kaylee's here to pull back the curtain on what it takes to launch sustainable products and turn first-time buyers into devoted fans. I'm your host, Serena Smith, and this is Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and scaling a business. Kaylee, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Before Sansi, you were the founder of a sustainable hair care brand called Sisto that made very innovatively waterless shampoo and conditioner. Why waterless? I learned liquid shampoo and conditioner were 80 % water on average. And that really blew my mind that we were packaging and shipping water all over the world.

1:26So that fundamentally made me think about how much waste is in beauty beyond water because there's so much impact across the supply chain. So I really dug in and I was like, what can I do to solve this? And that was my response. how intensive was that development process well I went to a lot of labs contract manufacturers I was calling everyone in Los Angeles I was living in LA at the time and no one would make it some people told me it was impossible I also heard like oh that seems obvious if it was possible it would have been done before so I got every answer that you can imagine and I really was like okay, well, I guess I'll just do it myself.

2:10And I did. It was my first formula I ever made. And I took it, you know, from my bedroom floor to Sephora shelves. So. Wow. Truly made in your own kitchen. Yeah. And how many iterations did you have to go through before you nailed it? Oh my gosh. I probably did over 50. Wow. I mean, first of all, it was my first product I had ever formulated. So it's kind of like, okay, you know how to bake a cake, right? But to make like the best version of that cake, how many cakes do you have to make? And I wanted it to work across all different hair types. And I had friends trying it. I actually used to go to the Sephora in Beverly Hills and hand it to the employees working there.

2:54So I did a lot of iterations and it took a lot of time, but it was also the time when I got really interested in like, what is in our products? Where do they come from and really understanding like how we didn't actually know even when we were ordering something what the origin of that ingredient was unless we went digging. I mean when you hear the term waterless for shampoo and conditioner even now it it's like kind of a tough thing to wrap your head around. Do you feel like Sisto was ahead of its time? For sure. I think it's still ahead of the time. It was a very forward-thinking innovative brand that I think was built for like the future of where beauty is going.

3:34And I was hoping it would move a little bit faster in terms of the industry, but there's still a lot of work to do. What did that experience teach you about consumer education and also both the benefits and sometimes the pitfalls of introducing really innovative products to market? Of course, you have to do what the customer wants. And I think Like at the time, I had a really cool concept for a product and a product line. But to your point, consumer education is so incredibly important. And just getting past, you know, the how to use it kind of unlocked something for that brand. But there was still so much of the story that needed to be told.

4:17And at the end of the day, people like, especially in this time period, which was 2019, 2020, 2021, they really just wanted stuff that worked. A lot of people were trying new things during that period because they were home more, which was fun. But fundamentally, like, they wanted to look their best. And we were marketing a lot on sustainability versus performance. And that was a big learning for me. You know, people aren't going to buy something just based off of sustainability. It's got to work. Yeah. It's got to work. Have you been able to take those learnings into product development at Sanzi?

4:55Of course, definitely. I think in terms of brand, especially when you're thinking about sustainability, so many people want to kind of like compromise performance or aesthetics. And we are actually finally getting to a point where material innovation has caught up. So I'm really excited about what we're doing at Sonsi. Okay, but that's a really delicate balance to hit. There's a reason why most beauty brands aren't clean. There's a reason why most beauty brands aren't sustainable. It's more expensive to do so. It does impact the performance. So how are you thinking about that matrix at Sanze of performance versus cleanliness versus sustainability versus the aesthetics versus price?

5:41The answer is no compromising. So I will not compromise. And I think what that also forces me to do is behind the scenes, we're doing the work. You know what I mean? We're actually working with our partners to develop and to bring something new to market. It's actually a whole team of people sometimes behind a single ingredient or a single fragrance, the single packaging solution. If we just took what was on the shelf today, I don't think we'd even be able to do what we've done so far. But because of my background and my relationships and my experience, I'm able to leverage kind of the behind the scenes people and bring something new to market that people haven't seen before.

6:26Okay. Take me into the behind the scenes a little bit. Like when you first joined Sanzi, you are a newly minted CEO of the company now, but when you first joined, it was to develop products. What was the first product that you were working on? And tell me a little bit about that process of bringing it to life. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing was a cleanser and it's a foaming cleanser. I don't know if you've used foaming cleansers. I didn't like a single one I tried. Yeah, I haven't either. I find them really tricky. And I, again, I kind of challenged this. I was like, okay, is it the fact that it's a foaming cleanser, we have to use so much water for it to foam.

7:06Is this something that I won't be able to make one that we all love. And what I do when I develop a product is I pull benchmarks, which this is like the starting point. You find things that you love. But for that cleanser, I think I pulled 12 different benchmarks. I picked benchmarks from, you know, everything from appearance, smell, feeling on the skin, how my skin looked after I used the cleanser, the foam density, the lather, Like all of these things are incredibly important. And you weren't relegating yourself just to the clean universe of brands. No. You were looking across the spectrum. Yeah, exactly.

7:45And I think that's a mistake that's commonly made is when you go to make a clean product, basing it on a clean product that already exists as well. Because there's material innovation that happens behind the scenes. And you're kind of limiting yourself to what ingredients you're able to use because there's kind of stigmas around where certain things come from or how they're made. that aren't necessarily true anymore. So it's very fascinating. But what I will say around benchmarking is if you went with one or two products, you're likely to get something that's very similar to what already exists on the market.

8:21So with our cleanser, we developed a cleanser that is foaming and also hydrating, which I had never experienced before. And again, I wasn't sure it was possible. But I actually took the lab a paper formula and gave them a really good starting point, called out what actives we wanted, and it came out beautifully. You were saying just a moment ago that there are some misunderstandings or misconceptions about where things are sourced or things that seem like they're bad and maybe aren't. Can you give us some examples? Absolutely. So I think fragrance is one term that has just been constantly kind of fear-mongering in this space.

9:05Totally. I'm afraid of fragrance. Yeah. Fragrance has been demonized. And unfortunately, there's a lot of misunderstandings around fragrance. So a lot of natural fragrance, for example, essential oils contains tons of allergens. So now that because under MoCRA, new regulation in the US, it's required that beauty brands label allergens, you're going to see a much longer ingredient list when you look at those products now. Synthetic ingredients can actually be really safe because you can avoid having those allergens. So there are safe synthetics and there are also, you know, good natural extracts and essential oils can still be good, but they have to be at a low quantity.

9:48So for a cleanser formula, we really kept it simple we put a rose essence in there and it's super low allergen and it was tested safe for sensitive skin so we kind of checked the box on that but I also think when you look at products that are clean they usually either don't smell good or they really smell heavily of an essential oil or you're getting kind of like the clinical smell so this is like a really nice subtle fragrance. And I think that's what people love about it. It's non-irritating, but still has scent, which is a big unlock for the brand as well. Given that your consumer base is, I would imagine, primarily people who are interested in clean beauty and probably know a thing or two about it.

10:35Those of us who are interested in it, we have kind of been trained on the like fragrance is terrifying model. So how do you effectively message to the consumer that it's safe? I mean, honestly, all the testing that you can do, just starting with a safe for sensitive skin claim is really important. Most brands don't have safe for sensitive skin. And also, when you think about where these women are coming from that are moving towards clean, like there's periods of life where you think about switching up your routine. And for us, our customer is actually 80%, 45 plus, which is incredible. A really fun market.

11:11and they're coming usually from luxury brands. They're used to something that's actually very heavily fragranced and at a much greater price point. So Sanzy offers something that's super accessible, but still gives the feeling of luxury. And I do think fragrance plays into that where it needs to. So some of our products are fragrance free. Other ones do have a subtle hint of fragrance, but it's not overwhelming. And then our other customers, which are coming from brands that maybe they've outgrown. They're growing up a little bit. They're maturing in the market and they want something that works, but they don't want to jump into a doctor brand or a clinical brand.

11:52Sanze has kind of been a good response to that because it balances clean with efficacious. I had read that your demo is a little bit older than one might assume. My assumption would be that most of the audience engaging with clean beauty is on the younger end of the spectrum. Like, to what do you credit capturing that audience and how are you doing it? Is it the Pam effect? Is it your social media strategy? I would imagine at that age range, it's maybe not so much that. How are you doing it? Yeah, it's a combination of everything. Obviously, Pamela's audience is all ages. It's global. So that's helping.

12:32But I think what's resonating with the older demo is just this like honesty and transparency that we have. We're really good about answering questions. And as you'll see the brand change and evolve over time, we're going to be offering more and more transparency. And I think that's something that as the older demographic has gotten more interested in what's in their products, those legacy brands are not interested in responding to that. Transparency is a term that gets spattered around a lot these days. What does it mean to you at Sansi? It's not only saying, you know, these are our ingredients, right?

13:09With our fragrances, for example, on the cleanser, you won't see fragrance on the label. You'll see that rose extract and all the elements that are inside of it. We did a limited edition rhubarb balm, which is really fun. And we worked with a small woman-owned business out of Canada, which was actually a company I had advised in the past that built a completely transparent fragrant supply chain. So we can actually go and create these really luxury smelling fragrances, but we list every single ingredient. And that's kind of the first step. I think the second step is education. Like once you open that up, then you have to explain what it is.

13:49And so we're going to be doing a lot more of that. There is the clean side of things and then there's also the sustainable side of things. And they are not the same thing, though people sometimes use them interchangeably. How hard is it to do both? I don't think it's difficult. One, I think you should ask questions, right? We only know how sustainable we will be if we do have that transparency. I don't think they should be used interchangeably because I think all brands should have access to the information that they want, right? You should know where your packaging is coming from. You should know where your product's made.

14:31You should know where your ingredients are coming from. But we don't always ask those questions as brands, and now it's becoming more standard. Are we getting the answers we want is the question. And so at Sonsi, we've been able to do that behind the scenes. when it comes to sustainability again I think it's about education like we can open up what we're doing about sustainability but we have to explain every step along the way we can't just introduce a new material for example like we did with our adapt cream we did a home compostable material that looks and feels like plastic when people get it if they haven't read that it's not plastic, they think it is.

15:11And so there's just so much to talk about there, but we have to be really mindful about how we are educating and how we are articulating what we're doing differently, because if we don't, then it'll just seem like greenwashing. And that's what a lot of brands have gotten themselves into. So we see a lot of backpedaling in this space right now as it relates to sustainability. Right. It feels like a lot of brands are actually moving away from sustainability. And what the statistics are showing is that there's potentially waning consumer interest in that. Does it feel that way to you? I think it depends on what generation you're talking about as well.

15:54And geographically, I think there are shifts. I think from the brand side, we haven't done the best job at saying what it is that we're doing in the same way that clean is kind of fading, right? We're seeing this kind of movement away from clean because now consumers want to know like, okay, what makes this clean different than that clean? And so we really have to talk about what we're doing better and get people interested in it again, but it has to be fun. It has to be entertaining. Totally. It can't be spinach. Yeah, exactly. So I think there will be an emergence, maybe in a more creative way, especially with where storytelling is going for a brand.

16:35I think we'll see more opportunities, but I do feel like it's been pulled back a little bit. Tell me with specificity how you're tackling that at Sanzi. I think packaging, like I said, that's an easy one to talk about because it gives people a tangible thing. They can see it, they can feel it, they can experience it, and that's really easy to explain. So we're starting our kind of education around this with packaging. Where we're going is into formulations and ingredients and also not just sourcing, processing, but how things are actually made and how that impacts the environment. and I think it's also been glamorized a little bit behind the scenes to either be like a brand that is you know harvesting something from a garden or from synthetics in a lab like there hasn't really been an in-between but there's an emergence of new innovation and biotech where we're actually growing you know naturally derived ingredients essentially so those lines are starting to blur.

17:42And I think there's a lot of conversation to be had. But when you see, okay, we can produce something that has lower environmental impact, take like a rose oil, right? Rose is something that it takes a lot of time to grow. It's seasonal. You can't get it all times of the year. And you get such little output from each petal, which has been a marketing story in the past. But if you kind of think about it from this new perspective, it's actually like a lot of natural resources going into that. So if we can grow it in a tank, just the part of it that we need, it's lower environmental impact and you still get like this amazing ingredient.

18:23So you get the best of both worlds. I mean, I think something that I struggle with as a consumer is that it feels like so much of the onus is placed on us, right? And obviously, like as human beings, we're all inundated with so much information. We want to be able to construct like binaries or rubrics for ourselves. Natural, good, synthetic, bad, you know, right? Fragrance, bad, unscented, or fragrance, fragrance-free, good, right? And then as it turns out, it's not that simple, right? So for you, as somebody who's on the inside, who knows this stuff inside and out, Where are you finding the biggest like growth edge and challenges at Sanzi in terms of getting that information to the consumer in a way that feels good to them and not overwhelming and is helping the bottom line of the brand, but isn't an oversell?

19:17We are definitely leaning into the storytelling element. So you'll see it more next year. We just did our first campaign in October, which was really fun. Yeah, the garden core of it all is so fun. Garden core. We love it. We actually put that compostable packaging in the video and you can see Pamela like kind of pulling it up from her garden bed. And we have photos with the flower in it and all of this. And it makes you think like, why would they be planting plastic, right? So you're sparking curiosity and then someone has to go further. They have to go to your website. They have to learn more.

19:55so I think we can do it through storytelling it will definitely be a slow roll because we have to do it mindfully and playfully and have fun and that's who we are as a brand like we're a lot of fun but I think when it comes to how we're educating like we can't veer off of who we are so we need to keep that resonating with our audience in the same way that you know they come and buy a lip balm because it smells like rhubarb. Right. What, from a storytelling perspective on social, do you feel like it's really working for you guys right now? Well, our garden girl persona, who I'm sure you've seen, resonates with all of our demos.

20:36Like everybody loves the garden girl. And that was something we actually did. We did a pop-up with Shopify and we thought, okay, how do we tell everyone that we're taking the garden and bringing it to life in New York City? And we just thought, oh, what if the garden girl was like going around New York doing silly little things? And then we're like, what if she was duplicated? What if there were a bunch of her? Like it might seem crazy. And we did, we lined up a bunch of girls. We handed them a garden hose, watering cans, baskets, like gardening shears. And we just like released them into the wild.

21:20I don't know how else to say we literally just released them. And we didn't even really give that much direction. We were just like, oh, these are kind of the scenes. And, you know, three of the girls took the garden hose and started doing jump rope. We were like, okay, this is great. Like, it was amazing. We didn't even tell them what to do. So you saw the impact that that had on social in the digital realm, but what impact did it have in real life for passersby on the street? As soon as the, I guess, crowd of girls left, we actually staged them out of my apartment in the West Village. So my friend texted me two minutes later and was like, is this for Sansi?

22:02Like, it was actually funny that people knew it was our brand. which is so amazing because that's where, you know, you're building this world and you realize that people connect to it and relate to it. So, I mean, this whole rules of the garden campaign has really brought the brand to life for the first time. Tell me about the at-home compostable packaging that you've introduced with your Adapt Cream. And I have to, like, I have to specify that the at-home component of it is big because like for instance, you get a lot of these like compostable bags that your clothing gets sent in in the mail, but they have to be composted at commercial facilities, which then like leaves you in this position all the time where you're like, is it just like ending up in the trash?

22:48You know, it's like, it's kind of halfway to the solution, but not all the way there. And then sometimes just gives you more anxiety. Yeah. This is at home compostable. Like how watershed is this for the industry. And what does it signal to you? I mean, it's huge. First of all, this material innovation, I have been following the company for over three years, just waiting to bring it to life. And I had pitched it to Sanzee, I guess it was over two years ago now. And I had brought it to some other brands as well. I was like, hey, founder friends of mine, you guys should be using this. It's really, really cool.

23:27Everyone was like, oh, how much does it cost? You know, oh, like, is it reliable? Do they have the testing? And of course they did. But the response from the Sanze team was like, how quickly can we get everything into that packaging? You know? So I think first of all, for us, it was really important to bring this with the adapt cream, but also see where else we could take it. So it's in our cleanser refill now as well. And when we talk about compostability, again, it goes back to this education, sustainability, what does compostable mean? And to your point, home compostable is a huge deal. So that's why I was so excited about it.

24:07I mean, I literally was shouting about this material and I was hoping like we would see so many brands adopt it. And maybe even after this episode, you know, people will be like, okay, I need to go check that out. But it is a huge deal to have something home compostable that, you know, can have a water-based material in there because that's something that we've seen some home compostable things and it's like, well, you can't use it with a water-based cosmetic. It's like - Because it'll cause it to degrade. Yeah. Yeah. So this is stable until it gets to the soil and these microbes essentially that made it take it back.

24:44They view it as food. It's a really cool thing. Industrial compostable materials, I feel like they were an interesting solution, but to your point, consumers were so confused about what to do and how to use it. And the good thing about this material as well is even if it ends up in a landfill or an ocean, it actually still breaks down. It's also certified biodegradable. So if you don't home compost it, you don't have to worry about what happens to it. although of course we want to encourage home composting, we realize like it's maybe not available to everyone. Maybe you have an apartment and your city doesn't have composting.

25:26So what's the next best thing you can do? Should we anticipate that the entirety of the Sanze line will at some point be in this packaging? That's the dream. That is truly the dream. It's going to take a lot of development work, but I'm hoping that honestly, we can bring a group of brands together to develop more molds for this material. You know, it's really a case-by-case new material. And the jar was a really easy thing. Bottles were kind of the second easiest. I really want them to do tubes. So if there's any brands out there that want to do tubes with us and experiment with them, this is an open call.

26:04You heard it here first. There's so much innovation happening, right? The technology is changing quickly, which must be incredibly exciting for you. where do you feel frustrated? Where do you want the industry to get from an ingredient perspective, from a sourcing perspective, from a packaging perspective, where it hasn't landed yet? Yeah, honestly, it's adoption. It's really at the point where innovation has come far enough. We need brands to take it into the world, to educate on it and to use it. Without volume, these things will never become like fully commercial. and become a standard. You know, you can think of like these dental flossers, there's like a cornstarch version that's fully home compostable.

26:50Those are kind of mainstream now, like you'll find them discounted in TJ Maxx, you know what I mean? So to me, that signals, okay, this is something that we have seen everywhere, people are using it, it's at an accessible price point, can afford to be in a TJ Maxx. Are people buying it? Are people not buying it? That's what we're not entirely sure of, but I can tell you that I buy them. So hopefully someone, but I think we need to get to that point with beauty. Like we need more brands to say, okay, I have a jar. Glass is also expensive, you know, and it has a pretty large distribution footprint.