New England's winter weather does no favors in the beauty department. Dry skin, flyaway hair and never seeing the light of day might have some us looking more like the Crypt Keeper than our normally flawless selves. I am one such individual, so I'm jumping on this "new year, new you" bandwagon for a second and exploring a share of local startups in the beauty business.
We might not be known for this space, but turns out we have more going on than I expected. Some of the ventures I found still had their own, high-tech Boston spin to them. But others are surprisingly true to the traditional beauty business.
When it comes to cosmetics, sometimes (most times) less is more. And I'm not talking about just application. Follain is a beauty store that sells a curated selection of skincare, hair care and cosmetic products. Its store fronts, which you can find in Boston, Washington DC and Nantucket, feature more than 40 U.S. brands of healthy beauty products. So you can find everything you'd ever need, without being bombarded by the 300+ brands that Sephora carries. Founded in 2013, Boston-based Follain raised a $3 million equity round last August.
It might sound counterintuitive to slather your visage with pure oil to ease your skin woes, but I can personally attest that it’s a complete game-changer. Raw Is Everything is a company founded by three female HBS MBAs and it sells 100 percent unrefined, cold pressed, organic oils for skincare. Unlike other products, which are full of chemicals you can barely pronounce, Raw Is Everything’s oils naturally keep your skin in tip-top shape without clogging your pores or prompting breakouts.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever passed on shaving because it’s too much of an ordeal.
BusyBeauty is making the process less tedious with its showerless shaving gel. So you can shave wherever you want, whenever you want. The venture’s taking preorders for its first product now, and from the looks of its AngelList page, it seems to have dry shampoo and showerless body wash in the works. Aquaphobes rejoice.
BeautyLynk is a startup offering on-demand beauty services. It helps beauty professionals, giving them the flexibility of the on-demand economy, while letting consumers book beauty appointments whenever and wherever it's convenient for them. The venture took home $50,000 at last year’s MassChallenge awards and is currently operating in Atlanta, Boston and Washington, D.C., with more to come.
Gone are the days when BOTOX and fillers are taboo. (Thanks, Kardashians.) And one Mass. company is offering boutique services for your "lips + lines + lashes." LexRx was founded by two nurse practitioners and has expanded from Lynnfield to downtown Boston, with the recent opening of its Newbury Street location. It allows for lunchtime pop-ins and online bookings, so the process of getting in there is painless.
MiniLuxe is like the crčme de la crčme of nail salons. Founded and incubated out of Cue Ball Capital, MiniLuxe is a teched-out version of nail salons of yore. Not only can you book and manage your appointments online, you'll also see that its salons are spotless. Last summer, the startup raised $7.5 million and it now has storefronts across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Texas and California.
