Creator Nova — The Product Development Platform for Creator Beauty Brands
Ever thought about starting a beauty brand but didn’t know where to start?
Photo by: @raphaellovaski Image Source: Unsplash
Today, we are excited to announce Creator Nova.
Creator Nova is a digital platform which provides design, manufacturing and fulfillment support so that diverse creators can seamlessly launch their own premium beauty brands. With Creator Nova, creators can serve their following without being burdened by the operational difficulties of managing a beauty line.
Our founding team brings strategy and operations expertise from key sectors including beauty, big-tech, D2C start-ups, and venture capital to make Creator Nova the platform that will change the face of the beauty industry.
Catering to the Next Generation of Beauty Consumers
The founders of Creator Nova recognized a few critical trends that indicate a huge opportunity for the beauty industry to cater to the next generation of beauty consumers.
- First, the next generation of consumers are totally digitally native. They will discover, research, discuss, and purchase products through social media. Also, they have deeply personal relationships with the creators they follow, and often make a purchase decision based on their recommendations. According to a survey done by Mintel, 70% 18–34 year-old women have made a purchase from an influencer.
- Second, these next-gen consumers prefer personal, intimate shopping experiences instead of purchasing mass-produced items. They want to feel an authentic and personal connection to the brands they buy from. That extends to buying from creators that they know and love — 86% of next-gen shoppers would be interested in seeing brands from their favorite creators.
- Third, creators recognize they are uniquely positioned to offer products that their followers will love. Unfortunately, starting a beauty brand can seem unattainable for many. Oftentimes, creators have a strong grasp of what their followers would want in a product but do not have access to the money, knowledge, and resources to launch a product. In a world where as many as 90% of beauty product launches fail within a year, launching a beauty brand feels like a nonstarter.
These trends led us to this question: What if we provided a platform for creators to easily design, manufacture, and sell their own line of beauty products to reach this next gen beauty consumer?
Democratizing Entrepreneurship in Beauty
There’s a reason why few creator-founded beauty brands scale into multi-million dollar companies. Some influencers have existing connections in the industry, and others have access to capital that is outside the reach of most people. The endeavor is particularly high-risk for the creator- if something goes wrong and a mistake is made — it falls on the creator’s shoulders alone. Botched launches and lack of resources to adequately respond can cause many brands to fail before they can ever really get started. Even worse, these mistakes are often due to a poor choice in suppliers and manufacturers, but the creator is the one who suffers.
Creator Nova partners with you in the following ways to help mitigate and reduce this risk:
- Creator Nova has a network of high-quality curated suppliers. We provide transparency and ease in working with these third parties.
- We give you recommendations on how much inventory to order and reorder based on engagement and follower metrics. This means you release the right amount of product at the right time.
At Creator Nova, we believe entrepreneurship should be more accessible to maximize the potential of individual creators and small businesses looking to achieve their “growth moment.” You don’t need to have millions of followers or know the “right” people to turn your vision into a reality. As the creator, you will focus on the design and requirements of the beauty product you know your followers will love. Creator Nova will focus on all the details behind the scenes — handling logistics with samples, payments to the suppliers, inventory management, and more.
Our Team
Since the idea was conceived in early 2020, our team has put their collective skills and expertise to really hit the ground running.
James and Mark met at Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. After receiving their MBA, James moved to San Francisco to work for various direct-to-consumer startups, including a nail polish brand, and Mark moved to China to work for Alibaba. Having witnessed the power of content creators and influencers in the beauty industry and the challenges for them to build and scale brands, we decided to launch Creator Nova to provide diverse content creators and influencers tools to develop successful brands.
Grace joined the team with experiences in beauty product development, strategy, and supply chain from BareMinerals and Urban Outfitters.
With our cross functional expertise, our team is uniquely positioned to help you launch and scale your brand. If you’d like exclusive access to our beta program — visit us at https://www.creatornova.com/ and join our Creator Nova Insiders program.
Sources:
Mintel: Beauty Influencers — US — February 2019 — Beauty Influencer Analysis
Deloitte: “Shades for success: Influence in the beauty market”
