EP227. Is the beauty industry all just fluff?

New beauty brands launch all the time and they generally do all the same thing. They make the same products, they use the same packaging, they rely on the same business model where you sell your products all the time through your website or through retailers. But what if they didn't all follow that model? What if they all did something different? Would that capture people's imaginations and show us that a different beauty industry is possible? Well, my guest today has done exactly that. Erika Jarrots of It's All Fluff has created what I would call an intentional beauty brand. She's intentional in the formulations that she's created, in the messaging she puts out, the packaging she's chosen, the business model she's created, even in the way she sells her products to her customers. Erica's model shows that a different beauty industry is possible. And best of all, Erika was brought to my attention by one of the listeners of this podcast. So a huge thank you to those of you who regularly reach out to me with suggestions and ideas because I'd really love hearing from you. So settle in for today's episode in which we look at a brand that's doing things differently and could inspire all of us to change the beauty industry. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations in which I challenge the beauty industry to become more sustainable, champion, independent and green beauty and encourage you to join me in changing the beauty industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallnayer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have tens of thousands of students in over 190 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode I am joined by Erica Jarratts who founded Fluff Casual Cosmetics in Melbourne, Australia and after having spent 10 years in the beauty industry, previously co founding global skincare brand Hit Frank Body. She thinks that makeup is great but not essential and that the idea of skincare and makeup as a form of self expression and taking care of oneself is a beautiful thing that should be celebrated and never exploited. Fluff was created in 2018 as an antidote to the current beauty industry narrative. For anyone who thinks that the world doesn't need more products, just better products and responsible, transparent messaging, Erica is Also the host of the Pretty Hard podcast, which is all about discussing what we feel when we think about our relationship to beauty, what we've been and are currently influenced by, what we're trying to change, and finally, how hard it is to run and consume a beauty brand in today's digital age. Hi, Erica, how are you doing today?

I'm well, thanks. How are you?

I'm good and I'm really pleased you're here because I'm so interested to hear your story and I'm so pleased that our listeners get to hear your story. So let's get stuck into the story itself. So you run a company called It's All Fluff. What do you do?

It's always funny explaining to people or if they ask for my elevator pitch because I say that I want to sit down with them for three hours and tell them about my life story and my journey or my relationship with beauty and how we arrived at Fluff. But essentially we are a casual cosmetics company is what we like to call ourselves. We operate on a drop model in that our website is only open four times a year for seven days, each time selling our refillable compacts in makeup. So we only have two SKUs of bronzing powder and a lip oil and we ship them around the world. And we've been going for just seven years now.

Just seven years. Well, I'm sure there's seven years packed full of lots of adventure. Well, let's talk a bit more about your, your backstory, maybe not three hours, but let's talk about how you came to what you do, you know, how did you get to the stage of launching? It's All Fluff. What's your story?

Totally. So I struggle with identifying or saying that I'm a beauty founder. I've never been specifically obsessed with beauty or makeup, but I'm very obsessed with people and with brand. So my background is that I am a copywriter. I studied journalism, always wanted to write, love storytelling. And I say that now makeup is really just the vehicle for me to tell stories. But straight out of university I was offered a job at a marketing agency that led me to start a writing agency. We were writing for a lot of female products, beauty brands, fashion brands. And then we actually started our own skincare brand. This is myself and four others and that was called Frank Body. So a few people might know that company. It's a coffee based skincare company and I was with the business for three years before I decided to leave and to start Fluffy. Essentially, I'd Learned so much in the industry, was really exposed to, I guess, the global growth of a brand in my time at Frank Body and had a lot of things that I wanted to prove to myself and others and a lot of change that I wanted to make in the industry through Fluff.

Wow. I mean, that's. That's quite a roller coaster you've been on. Working at Frank Body must have been fascinating as well. So would you say that really primed you for moving on to your next adventure with It's All Fluffy?

Yeah. Look, what I like talking about is that I've had this unique experience in founding two brands, one pre algorithm, so what I say, and one post algorithm in terms of. Frank Body was founded in 2013 at the Peak or the height of brands using Instagram to their success. We had everything going for us and we worked really hard, but we had a novelty product. We were really accessible price point. We didn't have to pay influencers and we didn't have to pay for media spend. So it was a really fun time. And then when I launched Fluff in 2018, we had none of those things. We were a more expensive product. We were competing against a lot of other makeup brands and we were having to pay for both influencers and media spend. So it's been very interesting having those two experiences and kind of having this sort of mindset. Still a Frank Body, but needing to, I guess, take some learnings from it, but then create new, I guess, processes and always be trying to innovate and do things differently just based on the environment and the landscape for beauty brands today.

Yeah, I love that pre algorithm and post algorithm. That makes so much sense. Well, let's talk a little bit about how you came to the name. It's all fluff. What does that mean to you and how does that tie in with your overall mission of what you're trying to achieve with the brand?

My time at Frank Body exposed me to a lot of brands in the beauty space. And as social media was growing and as content was kind of proliferating in terms of all of our feeds in our space, I actually became quite disengaged and disheartened by beauty brands and the messaging that was being put out. I was particularly worried about my younger cousins at the time. They were aged 10, 13 and 15, and they had a very different experience growing up to when I did it as a teenager. And while I still had some, I guess, influences that weren't that great within terms of messaging in the beauty industry, I was deeply concerned for my cousins and the messages that they were exposed to. This was at the time of, I guess, the Instagram face and the Kardashians and the image that they were putting out around beauty. And what I really wanted to get across was this idea that while makeup is great, it's not necessary, it's just an essential, which is where the word fluff comes from. It also just happens to be my nickname that a lot of my previous employees called me because of my fluffy, chaotic hair. And also this idea of our head being up in the clouds in the Fluff. But it's this daily reminder and awareness that we're trying to cultivate in our audience and in our consumers that makeup, media, marketing, advertising, it is all fluff. It doesn't mean you shouldn't participate or want to be involved in the beauty industry because it also can be extremely empowering and it's a form of self expression. But just having that awareness, I think allows for a little bit more conscious consumption, both products and of content.

I love that. Well, let's talk a bit about the conscious consumption of products. What you already alluded to it earlier. Can you talk us through how many products you sell at Fluff and what they are?

Yeah. So our two main SKUs are our bronzing powder and our lip oil. The bronzing powder has four shades, which we developed with our community, which is an interesting story in itself. And then the lip oil has five shades. We're about to release a sixth shade. So when I first started the brand, I really wanted to bring makeup back to these foundational products without ever creating a foundation product. And my reasoning there was that there is enough beauty brands, I think, creating foundation products in terms of high coverage, trying to conceal blemishes or lines or all these negatively geared words that we use in the beauty industry. And I wanted to create products that maybe added some warmth to the face, but never tried to mask the inherent complexion of an individual. We really wanted Fluff to be a brand and products for in particular, the girl that likes to get ready quickly, that isn't obsessed with beauty, but still does like to participate. So we have this saying that's really landed with our customer, that it's okay to feel more with makeup so long as you don't feel less without it. And I think our products really speak to this idea. They're almost a transition product. So it's not such high coverage or payoff that you don't recognize yourself when you're not wearing it. It's a really nice Transition or in between product.

Wow, that's beautiful. And I suppose that really fits in with the overall mission and the overall values that sit behind what it means. It's all fluff. That's beautiful the way that you've created that all together. So talk to me about the packaging that you use, because there's something very unique about your packaging. And it certainly stood out to me straight away when I looked at it. What. What exactly have you chosen?

Yes. So our compacts, they're called cloud compacts because they're shaped like a cloud and they're made of a material called Zamak, which is a mix of metal alloys. When I started Fluffle, when we were starting to research the brand and this, we spent about two, three years really looking at our customer, what they were consuming, what we felt like was missing within the industry. We actually were looking at simple plastic clamshell compacts. This was all that was available to my knowledge. But my team and I went to Hong Kong for CosmoProf and spent days walking the aisles of all the thousands of stalls, getting exhausted by what we saw. And it was quite disheartening as well, because I was just like, there's so much stuff. And I really saw at scale, I guess, how much was being produced, and as well, or on top of that, just, I guess, the sheer amount of plastic or the disposable product that was being produced. I was very fortunate to meet a manufacturer who had this material, this Zamek, which I loved. And I had seen this niche beauty brand, Kia Weiss, which is a Danish brand. It's not so niche anymore, but at the time, not many people knew about it. And she was using this Zamak material, which I loved, and I asked them if we would be able to use that material within our own design. It was a very expensive decision. Metal is much more expensive than plastic, but one that we're so happy we made. And it's one that until you receive fluff and you hold it in your hand, you don't realize how special it is. And that the weight of that product makes it feel like something more substantial, something that you do want to keep and hold on to the material itself. And then the design really speaks to one of our references, which isn't trying to predict the future, but rather look back on the past and design that was meant to have longevity. So we reference a lot of art deco jewelry pieces and cigarette cases or the types of objects that women wanted to display or wanted to have on the table when they were with friends or had on their vanity at home really extensions of themselves and their values and perhaps heirlooms that they might pass on. And that's what I get excited about.

I think that's so beautiful. And I think that will resonate a lot with the people listening to this podcast today. And you've gone beyond that as well, because you haven't just got this. This beautiful packaging that really means something and has a place of pride on your makeup counter, but you also have gone into refill models with that. So how did that come about and how does that work exactly?

Yes. So the original compact wasn't refillable. Again, it just wasn't something that we had thought about, and I would say neither the industry had thought about. And it wasn't until we started developing additional shades of our bronzing powder and the first development of our lip oil that I realized that we had created this beautiful Zamak compact that people could have for a long time because it was. It didn't break or it didn't wear and tear. And so when customers were getting to the bottom of their pan, they didn't want to throw it away. And I simply told this sort of dilemma to our manufacturer and they said, well, we could make it refillable because we have to put the pan in there. Originally, that was a simple solution in that inserting a magnet at the bottom of the compact and then it allows the customers to just refill whenever they need and swap out colors should they wish as well.

Wow. And I'm sure that has gone down very well with your customers as well. But let's talk a bit about your business model, because I'm fascinated as to how that ties in with all the refills as well. So, first of all, your business model is that you provide batches in time, limited drops. So how does this work? Because this isn't a normal model in the beauty industry that I see others do very often.

It's not normal. And I'm sure we will start seeing more brands take it on in the coming years. Years. However, it wasn't what we originally started doing either. So we were an always on model. And it just reached a point after Covid in that it didn't feel like always on was landing for us. We couldn't differentiate our product from the sea of beauty brands that had also come. The aftermath of COVID I sort of was looking at the situation. Not being an influencer or a celebrity myself, I didn't have that clout or social following to promote the brand or the credibility of being a makeup artist. I really believed and still do believe in our products. But I knew we needed some kind of competitive edge. And what we decided to do was take inspiration from several fashion brands. And particularly skate culture is in general a culture that fluff looks at often, but they do drop models often. And essentially it is a marketing tactic in which we restrict the supply to increase the demand of the product.

So basically what happens is people put their name on a list and then you get to the stage that you open up and then it's all available. Is that how it works?

Yeah. So basically each time we order our product, we order our minimum order quantity. As I mentioned earlier, the Zamac compacts very expensive to make and this allows us to sort of release that minimum order quantity. And it's a first in best dressed policy, essentially. So once they're sold out, we close the store and people aren't able to purchase until we've made our next order. It's also enabled from a business side, us to forecast better in that aspect.

I love that. So how does that work with the refills then? Can you buy those all the time or do you have to go on a wait list for those as well?

So that's something we've just introduced because we're really focused on retaining our current customers and nurturing their product experience. So we've just recently enabled them access to our website via a password so that they can refill at any time. So it sort of separates, I guess, the initial loyal customers from new customers. The new customers just have to wait for first access to a compact, but once they're in, they can always access the site and they'll have first access to new colors or new refills.

Understood. It's a really clever model and as you say, I'm sure others will start to adopt that over time. One thing you said to me when we first met, which I thought was really interesting, is you said, I don't consider us to be a beauty brand. I consider us to be a refill brand. So does that very much stem from this model that you've put together together?

Yes, especially because once you have the compact, essentially you could have it for a lifetime. There's no reason for you to purchase another one, unless another arm of the business is essentially collaborations with artists on the compacts or collaborative colors of the refills. So for me, it's like, how will the customer stay with Fluff? What is the lifetime value for them? How can I keep them engaged? And so it is through continual refill purchases. And we look at that both in experimenting or trying new colors, but also, I guess, just trying to be that one key product that they use. And that's an interesting thing because in beauty, women typically aren't as loyal to lip products as they might be, say a foundation product or skincare in particular, where they can get quite picky with lip products. I find that women have multiple lip products and they will swap and change. Perhaps that's because it's typically a lower price point. But I think all it takes for them to change or to try something new is a friend to show them their lip oil or for them to hear about it. And they might have different ones. So we're trying to, I guess, encourage our customers for Fluff to be their base and their foundational lip product that they always have. And maybe they try other ones on top of that.

I love that. And something else you talked about was the fact that you want people to basically put the compact on the table and for it to be a talking point. And that's, I suppose, a way of spreading the brand through word of mouth as well. That's a really clever concept. But I suppose that's only possible because of the packaging and the model that you've chosen then.

Definitely. And it's not something that, I mean, I guess I had the foresight to be like, this is beautiful and looks very different to other lip balm products. But all you have to see or think about is that if you were to have your chapsticks or your Blistex or your pawpaw on the table, everyone knows what that is. There's no reason to sort of comment on it. But when you see the Fluff lip or this beautiful silver metal object on a table, it looks like jewelry or it looks like this sculptural piece of art. People are drawn to it as a conversation starter. A lot of people use it as like a fidget in their hand because of the way the compact slides open instead of open and closes on a hinge. So there's so many points of conversation. And it really, for us, we say it's like wearing not your heart on your sleeve, but your heart on your face or your lips. When you wear Fluff or you're a fluff customer, you're talking about the values you have, not just around product formulations or perhaps plastic free packaging, but also about the messaging of the brand, which is very much around less is more and not being defined by the external appearance. But we like to think of beauty more as sort of this attitude and feeling which every brand will say. But it's something that we're really trying to explore with the conversations with our audience.

Yeah, it's very intentional, what you're doing, and I think that's absolutely beautiful. Is it hard to cater for enough skin tones when you have a smaller range?

Yeah. So our bronzing powder is a really interesting one. We originally launched with one shade to the Australian market, and we launched with, I guess, the budget that we had in terms of shade development. And as soon as we knew that we had to create new shades, I had a choice of essentially picking a Pantone book or sending our manufacturer competitor shades and saying, do this, or talking to our customer base, and then just the consumer base, people who hadn't bought from Fluff and saying, what do you actually need from a bronze powder? I didn't want to make that decision for people that didn't have my skin tone. So we reached out and worked closely with a few of our community members to develop the next three shades, which is a lot smaller than other brands. And really interesting that Fluff has never received criticism around our shade range. And I think that's because the darker shades, per se, are so different from what you would find from other brands. Our third and fourth shade are a sort of soft orange and a bright orange. And so this was a really interesting exploration of color theory. Whereas you might look at a lot of other brands who simply do darker shades of brown, we worked with our community to understand that when you apply an orange blush or bronzer to those areas where the sun would naturally hit, that is the warmth color that you're trying to achieve. The orange combined with the natural skin tone. So it was really fascinating. And it also allowed us to, I guess, offer those two orange shades as blushes to our existing customer base, too.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, community engagement is everything, really. And I think often it's something people are scared of doing. But when you reach out to people to ask them for their opinion, they will help you make your business and your products better. And it sounds to me like that's exactly what you're doing.

Definitely. Yeah. We're about to do another big customer survey, which is me sitting on calls for an hour or so with a large group of customers. And I love it. Like, it can be a big amount of time spent and can feel a bit tedious, But I think it's really good, as a founder, to sense check your vision or your assumptions about the brand, because sometimes it goes in a direction that you might not have thought it would go in. And sometimes you have to relinquish that or surrender to what your customers want for the brand or what they're telling you they want.

Yeah. How do you see Fluff fitting in the mainstream beauty industry? Or do you see it even fitting in the mainstream beauty industry?

Yes and no. I mean, I think the best advice I've received from an unofficial mentor was to stay outside of the industry and to just do what we believe is best and it is better to be on the outside. And I truly believe that. I think the most stress that I've had in business is when I have compared Fluff to other brands or tried to be like other brands. I mean, we obviously are a beautiful looking product and a makeup product, so in some ways we are a part of the industry. But I believe that our messaging is quite counterculture in terms of being all about less or about actually saying that the beauty industry is oppressive in any way. I don't think any other founder or beauty brand says that. I think they don't talk to the realities of the industry and that it is built on often fear mongering or speaking to people's insecurities. So we're trying to acknowledge the industry that we're operating in and again saying, look, we want to participate because we love makeup. We don't think it's about boycotting it in any way, but it's about offering an alternative narrative and products and brands to what is currently out there.

Yeah, it's beautiful what you're doing. And you're right, hardly anyone is speaking up to talk about these things. You've been in beauty for a while now, I think over a decade. And you have your own Medium blog, which I have been reading. And you wrote an article on Medium a couple of years ago which said that the beauty industry had aged you. How do you feel about that now?

Yeah, I love referring to the beauty industry as the brutal industry. And it is a very interesting one because all at once I am trying to tell women in particular to embrace their natural beauty or to think about beauty more in terms of identity and more in terms of other factors other than your external appearance. And yet we are constantly looking at or I am constantly looking at myself in the mirror and I am watching myself age over these years in business and seeing or experiencing the very things that I see the rest of the industry telling us is not beautiful or it's not right. So it takes a lot of sort of, I guess, inner resolve or discussions with myself to not or to resist the temptations of the beauty industry and its messaging. And I think that stress, that internal confusion or that internal conflict is what I say is aged me in the process.

I completely understand that. I recognize a lot of what you just said as well. Imagine that you could wave your magic wand and you could change anything. What would you most like the beauty industry to change?

That is a great question. If I could. I think there should be some really big regulations around filters on social media. I know that this is a topic that is currently being discussed and people are championing, but I think there are very unrealistic images of beauty still circulating. And I think some of the filtering apps that are available are just straight up not okay and should be banned. I would love to see some of the bigger beauty brands or heritage brands committing to refillable products or reducing their plastic production. I fully understand how hard it is, and especially with the minimum orders that they're dealing with and interrupting or changing their product line. But it would be great to see some more collaboration there. I would love to see influencer payments regulated. I think that influential people are a great thing. I'm not against Ambassadors for Brands, but I think that the financial remuneration should be regulated. I think it's very unfair how it's sort of really only allowing the people with the big budgets to participate. And then, I mean, they're the. They're the main things that come to my mind. And then, I mean, I am quite outspoken about my feelings around invasive procedures or I have my personal opinion around Botox and cosmetic surgeries in terms of the message that it's sending out to younger women in particular. So I would like to see potentially some regulation there around what is shown on social media. But I know that these things, that some of them feel inevitable or inescapable, which is really frustrating.

Yeah, well, I think those are all very valid points and who knows, maybe over time they will start to become reality. What is your big vision for Fluff? Where would you like to take it?

What we have done recently with Fluff is explore these sort of artist or brand collaborations. We recently worked with a visual artist and tattooist in Australia who applied her tattoo craft to hand engraving 100 of our compacts. And that was a really different way for us to work with an individual as opposed to just a typical, say, influencer collaboration or for us to just change the appearance of our compacts. And I love that it made each piece one of a kind. It was very much like A piece of art that hopefully people will hold onto for a long time. And we're curious about exploring that. Like, we see the future of influencers moving away from the social media influencer to artists being the influencer. Like, I'd love to support that. I'm a creative at heart myself. So it's like, how can we tell a story of beauty in a different way? And that could relate to Fluff releasing more than just a makeup product. That could be a homeware product, that could be a fashion item, but it really would be quite small batch, quite specific or intentional around that person. I'm quite invested in those relationships being quite personal and people that I have met and know and admire myself. Not just based on clout, but also then understanding who our audience resonates with. So that's exciting for me and in terms of me thinking about doing different, differently, because I think we are seeing a lot of the same same in the beauty industry. And I don't really think there's any point of us existing if we aren't doing something new. Or at least that's not where I started.

Fluff, I love this. I think what you've created is absolutely beautiful. I think your mission is wonderful. I think what you're doing is fantastic. Erica, it's been so lovely having you on the podcast today. Where can people find out more about you? Where can they come and buy from? It's all fluff.

Thank you. So, yes, our website isit'sallfluff.com and our socials are it's all.fluff on Instagram. We also have a TikTok which gets some very interesting views, so I would love people to look there. My Instagram is just my name. It's a little bit tricky to spell, but I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. And my medium is just Erica Jarrett's on Medium, which you could also link to. And I think I really am passionate about people reading those posts because I really do talk about these sort of ideas that beauty is so much more than makeup, as well as our podcast, which is called Pretty Hard. And that is all about discussing our relationship to beauty and the influences over time and the common experiences of different people. So, yeah, we're just really trying to challenge the idea of content, the idea of products and the formulations people are using and encourage people to sort of go back to something a little bit more simpler in their routines, in their content consumption, in their product consumption, all of that.

Love it. We will include all of those links in the show Notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much to Erica for joining me today. And if you'd like to try out it's all Fluff, then Erica has very kindly provided a 10% discount code for listeners. Just use the code FORMULAB all one word together. Formula B when you visit itsallfluff.com I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Erica has created something very different. How do you think a business like it's all fluff with its intentional messaging and its fascinating time limited drop model could change the beauty industry? Leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. And if you want to hear more about some of the topics that we covered today, please do delve back into the podcast archives. So some great Examples include episode 137 in which I interviewed Melody Reynolds of Elate Cosmetics about her mission to get her customers to buy less, or episode 143 in which I interviewed Shannon Goldberg of Izzy Zero Waste Beauty about her refillable mascara model, or episode 138 in which I recorded an opinion piece to answer the question, does the world need more beauty brands? There's a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. So a huge thank you for joining Erica and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is, and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn. We're everywhere and come and give me a Follow Lorraine Dharmeyer on Instagram and LinkedIn, visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today. Sa.