Pioneering The Healthy Beauty Community
A look back at the beginning of Beauty Heroes, with founder Jeannie Jarnot.
Community is the second part of my 6-part GTM Playbook. If you’re a paid subscriber, you have access to my GTM Playbook series, which I’ll continue to rollout through the end of the year. If you’re building a brand with soul, I highly recommend you subscribe.
In the spirit of community, I am happy to share a series of interviews with brilliant brand founders who have built communities from scratch. These mini case studies prove the power of starting small and scaling with soul.
These interviews are free to everyone. Enjoy!
xxRRM
In a recent post, I shared my definition for community strategy:
A community strategy creates a container for your brand to be experienced and shared among like-minded people — people who gravitate towards each other and naturally resonate with one another based on shared values, beliefs, desires, goals, tastes and preferences. The brand sets the tone, the community creates the music.
The purpose of a community strategy isn’t just to locate a mass of potential consumers. It is to tune into a collective energy, understand what unites them, and serve them. When done right, your brand can become more than a product; it becomes part of a larger conversation, and it can even start a movement.
Two weeks ago, I shared how Cecily Mak’s personal journey led her to cultivate deeper connections within the conscious and sober-curious communities, creating a foundation for her brand, ClearLife. Last week, I shared how April Uchitel turned crisis into a community of c-level executives, creatives, and visionaries who were united around a shared desire to work differently.
Neither founder set out to sell a product. They started by finding their tribe and offering something of real, lasting value: connection.
In this final community case study, I’m highlighting a founder who took on the challenge of launching a new company with an innovative business model in an emerging category. From the very beginning, she recognized that a small, intentional community would be the heart and soul of her brand. What she couldn’t have known was that this community would ignite a movement.
Jeannie Jarnot is the founder of Beauty Heroes, a healthy beauty retailer that has evolved into a global business with an e-commerce platform, a flagship store in Northern California, and a monthly subscription service delivering full-sized beauty Discoveries to doorsteps worldwide.
But that’s today. A decade ago, indie beauty was in its infancy, and the rise of “clean,” “green,” and “natural” brands was still niche. The conversations around harmful ingredients in personal care products were fragmented, taking place in small, siloed communities within the spa and wellness industries, among farmers, formulators, and integrative health practitioners.
As the beauty blogging world began to flourish, these once-hidden discussions started moving out of the shadows and into the fringes of subculture. Jeannie saw an opportunity to serve this emerging community with a unique offering that provided real value and resonated deeply with their concerns.
Today, 10 years later, Jeannie Jarnot and Beauty Heroes are leaders in healthy beauty. Here’s a glimpse into how it all began.
We talk to them. There is no replacement for that. People do not want to talk to bots when engaging with a company they trust.
~Jeannie Jarnot
RRM: Who were the first community members of Beauty Heroes?
JJ: I started Beauty Heroes in the day when you could organically reach people who were interested in what you were talking about. When the Instagram algorithm allowed for you to organically grow your following and engagement was real. Beauty Heroes started just before ‘Clean Beauty’ became a real industry term. In fact, we started before the word ‘Influencer’ was an industry term. Green Beauty was still a thing and we were still talking about ‘bloggers’. It wasn’t that long ago. So our first community members were those early clean beauty enthusiasts, bloggers and people who understood what cleaner, greener, healthy beauty really was. They were also people who already had heard about the brands we were talking about. Additionally, we received an overwhelming number of requests from customers overseas. I wasn’t planning on being a global company, but the interest was so strong, we expanded to shipping globally. Interest came from all over Europe, Asia and the Middle East. And overnight, Beauty Heroes was creating a global community. Today, I feel really proud of that, knowing that we’ve served people all around the globe.
How did you engage and incentivize them?
Through content. Back then, content was king. We created a FREE Ingredient Pocket Guide on our website - and we would offer it in exchange for their email address. We kept them engaged by creating longer form educational content.
What did you want them to know?
The Beauty Heroes mission is to connect people to healthy beauty brands in a focused, intentional and educational way. We wanted them to feel more connected to what they were using on their skin and to know who was making those products. We knew that when our community felt connection to the products and the people who made them, it would build trust and ultimately, loyalty.
What did you want them to feel?
I wanted them to feel empowered. These are people who already cared about their health and the environment. They just needed a company to serve up what they wanted. We wanted them to feel like they found that trusted place.
What did you want them to do?
We wanted them to trust us enough to go on this journey of discovery with us, join our monthly discovery service and find new brands and their Hero products through our service.
What value did they get from participating?
Our members got to discover best in class products at an unbeatable value, made by brands that they identified with. One of our problems was that there was so much value, it was hard to actually believe. People were skeptical at first. It was something we had to work hard to overcome. And ultimately we did, but it took a lot of time.
How has your community informed the evolution of Beauty Heroes?
There was one point where I was encouraged to do some direct founder content, and that resonated really well. When there are important communications, we send communication from me, directly. We did a lot of that during the pandemic. We use our voice authentically as a company and if needed, from me directly, when we need to communicate important brand information.
How do you keep members feeling validated for their participation?
Quite simply we engage. We engage on social media, via email, chat, in person. We talk to them. There is no replacement for that. People do not want to talk to bots when engaging with a company they trust. Sure - automation is great in many circumstances, but it doesn’t work to build an authentic community.
I’ve written about Beauty Heroes quite a bit over the years, and there’s a lot more to learn about Jeannie’s journey, and where Beauty Heroes is headed. Here are a few more resources:
Before Sephora’s Planet Aware initiative, Beauty Heroes paved the way.
The standards that set them apart.
Learn more about their monthly Discovery service.
❤️this series and you!