Meet the two Aussies selling sunscreen to Europeans in winter
Pioneering Australian skincare brand Ultra Violette is preparing to build on its market domination in Britain by expanding into more than 400 stores across Europe next month.
The Melbourne-based business, founded by Ava Chandler-Matthews and Rebecca Jefferd in early 2019, took the British market by storm in 2021, is now stocked in major beauty and luxury retailers including SpaceNK, Harrods, Liberty, Cult Beauty, and Sephora.
The pair’s high-performance SPF products, known as Skinscreen, entered 12 European markets through Sephora last year, including France, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Greece, Germany, and Switzerland.
While predominantly online, there were a number of markets that had bricks-and-mortar presence, with sales prompting the retailer to expand Ultra Violette’s range into 372 stores across Europe from March 6. More than 50 stores will stock the products all year round – a first in Europe in a shift in attitude towards SPF50 sunscreen and its importance in daily skincare regimens. The brand predicts sales across Europe to be up to 10 times the 2022 sales.
Ultra Violette took Australia by storm when it first hit the market in January 2019, winning a cult following for its high-quality, subtle matte finish and lack of stickiness or grease. The product is now on sale in 20 countries including New Zealand, and most recently in five countries across South-East Asia.
Its success in the UK was not initially predicted, with its first retailer, SpaceNK, telling the pair it had fairly low expectations for sales as its sun category had declined 22 per cent in the previous year.
However, by May 2021, Ultra Violette had outsold the rest of the SPF category five-fold, with initial demand forcing the company to ship SpaceNK’s estimated annual volume in the first seven weeks, post-launch, before stores even started to carry the stock when it was only available online.
“From our point of view, the brands have only been going for a little more than a year,” Jefferd said.
“And we did have that self-doubt of ‘Well, maybe it’s just the Aussies that understand that you need to wear an SPF, even if you’re wearing a beanie’.”
Jefferd said every leading dermatologist in the world now recommended sunscreen as the number one skincare product people should be using, however no company had marketed itself as a year-round product to European consumers.
“We knew we had science to guide us, but then we thought maybe it’s going to take them 10 years to get it. So, we said, OK, we’ll send over the stock for your pathetic fifth ranking that you’re telling us to achieve, but we sold through that straight away. The consumer was right and agreed with us,” she said.
In SpaceNK, Ultra Violette is the sixth-ranked skincare brand – not just sunscreen – across the UK and has had number one and number two ranked products in total business over summer 2021 and 2022.
The pair, who met working in the product development team at Mecca Brands, began as a small operation that primarily marketed itself on social media. Last year, they were winners of the Victorian women in international business award at the Governor of Victoria export awards.
Chandler-Matthews said the approach to the skincare category was also changing to cleanse, treat, moisturise – and now protect – which had underpinned a strategic move to incorporate SPF into daily skincare protocols.
“What we’re seeing not just in Australia but globally is the rise of the educated consumer,” she said.
“They’re playing around a lot more with active cosmeceuticals … there’s a lot of interest in all types of treatments, and any skincare expert will tell you that the number one ingredient that you should be using on your skin is a sunscreen to prevent damage.”
Sephora is not Ultra Violette’s only retail presence in Europe, with growth expected in a number of specialised beauty retailers including major German department store Niche Beauty and Ludwig Beck as well as new opportunities in The Netherlands.
Jefferd said there was a clear shift with customers returning to the retail experience after years of heavy online sales during the pandemic and that would mean a shift in the company’s approach.
“If you’d asked us 18 or so months ago we would have been saying the importance of online and direct to consumer and reaching the customer, through e-commerce,” she said.
“You can really feel there’s a correction going on in consumer products and direct to consumer is not going away, it’s definitely going to be better than what it was pre-COVID. As a young brand, it has been important for us to be able to be flexible across both of those distributions of our product.”
She said the brand would invest in building a sustainable business across the region with a number of distribution points in the UK and the Netherlands, and a team supporting retail relationships, operations and education. That means perhaps less marketing and a greater emphasis on educating stores to tell customers about the product.
“We really over-invest in education just to get that kind of daily SPF message through and at the end of the day, it starts in stores. We’re really kind of just chipping away at that, and we know it’s going to be a little bit more of a long game, but it will be worth it in the end.”
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Source: Thanks smh.com